God Feasts with Us

Transcript

I'd like to ask you to turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah 25 this evening. Isaiah 25. We'll begin our reading in verse 6. Isaiah 25 and we'll read verses 6 through 9. Hear now the word of the Lord.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow of aged wine well refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, "Behold, this is our God. We have waited for Him that He might save us.

This is the Lord. We have waited for Him. Let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation." This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank You that though we rebelled against You and were lost in our sins, that You saved us, that You reconciled us to Yourself, that You drew us near to Your presence, that we might accomplish that for which we were created, namely communion with You. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. If you grew up in a typical evangelical church like I did, you probably have a particular mental picture of what the Lord's Supper looks like.

For many modern evangelicals, the Lord's Supper is understood as a bare memorial. We do this because Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." And so we remember. We think back to the cross. We try to feel grateful, and that's about the extent of it. And the theological term for that is memorialism, which traces back to the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli.

It's the idea that the Supper is essentially a mental exercise. It's simply a moment to recall what Jesus did for us. But this evening, I want to show you from the Scriptures that the Supper, the Lord's table, is far more than that. The table is the most significant, tangible expression of the communion with God for which we were both created and then redeemed. As we'll see this evening, at the table, God Himself feasts with us.

And in that feasting, our faith is strengthened, our souls are nourished, and we truly enjoy communion with God. Now, in order to understand the significance of the Lord's table, we need to see it within the larger storyline of Scripture. And that story from beginning to end is a story about God dwelling with His people. That's why He created us. It's a story about communion between the Creator and His creatures.

Of course, the story begins in the Garden of Eden. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in a garden that was a sanctuary, a place where God Himself dwelt with His people. He walked with them. He talked with them in an unhindered, open fellowship that Adam and Eve enjoyed with their Creator. And notice what God placed in the midst of that garden sanctuary.

He placed the tree of life. God provided food that was the context of communion with Him. Eating was embedded in the experience of fellowship with God from the very beginning of creation. But of course, it was also eating that broke that fellowship. Adam and Eve ate what God had forbidden, and the result was that they were exiled.

They were separated from the presence of God east of Eden. They were cast away from the garden, away from the tree of life, away from the table of communion. And so really, one way of looking at the rest of the biblical storyline is God working to bring His people back to the table of His presence, back to the table of communion. And we see this even with what He did with His people, Israel. When God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, what did He command them to do?

He commanded them to eat a meal. The Passover was a meal eaten in haste on the evening of deliverance with the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts so that the Angel of Death would pass over them. And this was not just a one-time event. God said to Israel in Exodus 12-14, "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to Yahweh throughout your generations as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast." So it was a memorial.

It was a feast. God ordained a meal as the means by which His people would regularly reenact and remember His deliverance. And what's important to recognize is that it was in the eating itself that they remembered. Not just in their minds, it wasn't just an intellectual exercise, but in the tactile experience of gathering together and eating the Passover lamb, the meal itself was the memorial. Well, then also consider the peace offering of Israel, sometimes referred to as the fellowship offering, which is described in Leviticus chapter 3 and 7.

If you think about all the different sacrifices of Israel, unlike the burnt offering, which was entirely consumed on the altar, the peace offering or the fellowship offering was shared. A portion of the offering went to God on the altar, a portion went to the priest, and the rest was eaten by the worshipper and his family. This offering was, in effect, a shared meal between God and His people. The fellowship offering was a picture of covenant communion expressed through eating together. That's the significance.

And even inside the tabernacle, and later in the temple, there stood a table. The table of Shobret bread in the outer room of the tabernacle and the temple held 12 loaves referred to as the bread of the presence, one for each tribe of Israel, which set continually before the face of God and communicated the idea of communion. The table in the temple was a perpetual reminder that God's people had a place at His table. They belonged in His house. They were welcome in His presence through the sacrifice of atonement.

They were, that was expressed through that bread that was on the table of Shobret in the tabernacle and the temple. But perhaps most remarkably, after God gave the covenant to His people at Mount Sinai, we read this stunning account in Exodus chapter 24 and verse 9. "Then Moses and Aaron, Nadeb and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under His feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for His clearness, and He did not lay His hand on the chief men of the people of Israel." Note this, "They beheld God, they ate and drank." They saw God, and what did they do in His presence? They ate and drank.

Covenant communion expressed in a meal in the very presence of God on the mountain. That was a significant moment of communion in God's presence, and it is in this theology of communion with God, with feasting as an expression of communion with God, that sets the context for the passage that I read at the beginning of the sermon, Isaiah chapter 25. But before we get to Isaiah 25, I want us to consider that text in the context of a very familiar passage to us all, and that is Isaiah chapter 6. Because Isaiah 6, as we all know, we rehearse this regularly in our church, Isaiah 6 gives us a vision of heavenly worship that sets the pattern for worship that shapes everything we do when we gather. We know this passage well, right?

Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up. The seraphim cry out, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory," and then Isaiah recognizes his unworthiness to be in the presence of God, and he cries out, "Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips." And then the seraph takes a coal off of the altar, and he touched Isaiah's lips with that burning coal, and he says, "Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." And then the Lord says, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And Isaiah responds, "Here am I. Send me." This, of course, is the gospel in miniature, and it is the pattern that shapes gospel-shaped corporate worship, what we call covenant renewal worship. As we rehearse often in our congregation, and we've mentioned this many times in this series on corporate worship, every time we gather on the Lord's Day, we are reenacting this gospel pattern.

God calls us into His presence, we confess our sins, He assures us of pardon in Christ, He speaks to us through His word, and then He sends us out. But the gospel picture does not finish in Isaiah chapter 6. Really, the rest of Isaiah after chapter 6 is the message that God gives to Isaiah to preach to the people. It's the sermon. In Isaiah 25, the text that we read at the beginning of the sermon is what comes after the sermon in the gospel-shaped heavenly worship service.

It's the climax of everything. It's the goal of everything. And what is the climax of God's redemptive plan? What is the climax of heavenly worship as Isaiah sees heavenly worship and then receives the message of God? What is the climax of the whole thing in Isaiah chapter 25?

It is a feast, a lavish, overflowing, abundant feast on a mountain, the mountain of the Lord. And at this climactic feast, as we read, the veil is removed, death is swallowed up, tears are wiped away, the reproach of God's people is taken away, and the people cry out, "This is our God; we have waited for Him." That's the climax of the whole thing. Now, do you see how this promised feast in Isaiah 25 fits in this storyline of feasting and communion with God that we've seen in the previous scriptures? Remember Moses and the elders in the mountain. They saw God, and what did they do?

They ate and drank. Isaiah is taking that event and projecting it forward in an eschatological feast. The covenant meal on the mountain in that future eschatological feast becomes a feast not just for the nation of Israel, but for all peoples. And that feast is the fullest expression of everything that God has been working toward since the garden, unhindered, complete, joyful communion between God and His people. And notice in our text what God does at this feast.

He doesn't just merely invite His people to the table. He makes the feast. He is the host. God prepares the richest food and the finest wine. This isn't a potluck where we all have to bring part of the dinner.

God Himself sets the table. God Himself provides the meal. God Himself destroys the enemies of death and sorrow and reproach, barriers that have kept His people from full communion with Him. And again, this is really the heart of the gospel. This is the story of what God is doing in redemptive history.

He is preparing a feast in His presence for His people. He is working to bring His people back to His table, back to unhindered fellowship with their Creator that was lost in the garden. And then in the New Testament, Jesus picks up this same imagery of feasting. In Luke chapter 14, the master of the house sends His servants out to the highways and hedges to compel people to come into the great banquet. In Matthew 22, the king prepares a wedding feast for his son and invites everyone that he can find.

Those aren't just chance stories. Those are not just incidental illustrations. Jesus is telling us what the kingdom of God looks like. It looks like a feast. It looks like Isaiah 25.

And then on the night before he died, Jesus told His disciples in Luke 22, 30 that they would eat and drink at My table in the kingdom. Jesus there is speaking specifically of the promised feast that Isaiah prophesied. It is the consummation of all things, the day when we will sit at the table of God and we will feast with Him forever. But we're not there yet. We haven't yet arrived at the great feast of Isaiah 25.

Christ has, of course, accomplished our redemption. The veil has been torn. We have been brought near by the blood of Christ, but death has not yet been fully swallowed up. Tears have not yet been completely wiped away. We still groan, as Paul says, waiting for the redemption of our bodies.

We still live in a world where sin clings to us, where sorrow visits us, where death takes from us the people that we love. We are, in other words, still waiting for that great feast. We are, the people described at the end of Isaiah 25 verse 9 who say, "We have waited for Him." We are waiting for a feast. We are waiting for the mountain. We are waiting for the day when God will swallow up death forever and we will dwell in His presence at His table.

So the question before us then is what has God given us in the meantime as we await for that great eternal banquet? As we live in the midst of unclean people and even our own sin? As we still experience death and suffering and sorrow, has God given us anything to comfort us, to strengthen us, to assure us as we await for that great eschatological feast? He has. He has given us the Lord's table.

On the night when He was betrayed, while He was observing the Passover with His disciples, Jesus took bread 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." And in the same way, He also took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." You see the Lord's supper will be observed each week on the Lord's day, is a feast of remembrance in the same way that Passover was a feast of remembrance. It's so much more than just a mental exercise. In fact, Paul communicates this in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 16 when he says this, "The cup of blessing that we bless," notice this, "is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" The word participation there is koinonia, fellowship, communion. Paul is saying that when we eat the bread and when we drink the cup, we are actually communing with Christ. We're not just thinking about Him. We're not just remembering something that happened long ago, no, we are actually communing with Him. The Lord's table is not just a memorial.

It is a meal of fellowship with the risen Christ who is spiritually present with us at His table. Our confession, the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, puts it well. It says that worthy recipients really and indeed receive and feed upon Christ, but then it very quickly makes the point that we do so spiritually, not physically. So Christ is truly present in the meal, but He's present spiritually. The elements don't magically transform into the body and blood of Christ.

We rightly reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but in rejecting that false doctrine of transubstantiation, we need not fall in the opposite ditch and strip the supper of its spiritual reality. Christ is the host of the meal. He is here with us. He is in a distinct and real way spiritually present among us as we gather at His table. This means that the Lord's table is far more significant than how many modern evangelicals treat it.

God is actually feasting with us. He is feeding us. He is communing with us at His table and in so doing, the table then is a means of grace to us. It is more than just remembering what Jesus did for us, although of course we do that, but eating at Christ's table is actually a means of grace for us and it is a means of grace in a couple of significant ways. First, God has given us the table to confirm our faith.

What is faith? Faith is confidence in things not seen. That makes sense because we are not yet at the final feast. But in God's great love toward us, He condescended to give us something real and tangible to help to confirm our faith. Here's how.

When you hold that bread and when you hold that cup, you don't need faith to believe that they're real, right? You can feel them. You can see them. You can smell them. You can taste them.

And this really is God's blessing to us. This is God's way of saying as concrete and real as the bread and cup are in your hands and in your mouth, so concrete and real is your communion with God through Christ. It's that real. And what we experience now spiritually will one day be our experience physically at the great marriage supper of the Lamb. That's what those tangible expressions, those symbols of Christ's broken body and shed blood do for us.

They help to confirm our faith. As Paul says, as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until when? Until He comes. Notice those words. Until He comes.

The table is oriented towards the future. Again, typically when we think of the table, we think of it as oriented toward the past. We're remembering the death of Christ, and yes, we do that. But the table is also significantly oriented toward the future. Every celebration of the supper points forward to the feast of Isaiah 25.

And that forward-looking proclamation then strengthens our confidence. It strengthens our faith in what Christ has done and what He will yet do. He will come again and we will enjoy a great banquet in His presence. But second, the second way that the table is a means of grace to us is that the supper is a genuine means of grace that spiritually nourishes us. When we come to the table in faith, we are fed.

Our fellowship with Christ is strengthened and deepened. We don't just eat the bread and drink the cup merely as ritual obligations. We eat and drink and are nourished in our souls by Christ through this meal. And third, the table also expresses our communion with Christ, but also with one another in the body of Christ. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10.17, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." We don't come to the table as isolated individuals.

We come together as members of one body. The table portrays and reaffirms our union with Christ and the fact that our union with Christ is corporate. It's not just individualistic. It's a bond and pledge of our communion with Christ and with each other. And so the Lord's table is not just a bare memorial.

It is a foretaste of the feast of Isaiah 25. It is a meal that God has given us while we wait for the day when death is swallowed up and every tear is wiped away. At the table, do we believe this? At the table, God feasts with us. And yet, it's not yet in the fullness of the consummation of all things, but truly and spiritually by faith, He is feasting with us as we eat and drink in His presence.

This is why the table belongs to the heart of our worship. It's the climax. It's not just something that we tack on to the end. The table is the climax of covenant renewal worship, a Christian worship service that re-enacts the gospel where God calls us. We confess our sins.

He assures us of pardoning Christ. He speaks to us through His word. And then, as the climax of all of that gospel representation in the service, Christ invites us to sit at His table where we feast with Him. This is why we celebrate it weekly. We need the blessings of this table weekly just as much as we need the sermon weekly and the scripture readings weekly and the songs and the prayers weekly.

We need this table. But, of course, this too is very rare for modern evangelicals, at least. It wasn't rare in the past, but it's rare in modern evangelicalism. When someone brings up weekly observance, you'll often hear something like this, maybe if you've mentioned to someone that we celebrate the table weekly, this happened to me just last week, someone might say something like this, "Well, if we do it every week, won't it become routine?" And my answer to that is this, yes. It will become routine, and that is a good thing.

And I want to take a few moments to just remind ourselves of why it is a good thing for the table to be routine. Number one, routines reveal our priorities, don't they? When we establish routines for ourselves or for our families or for our church, we reveal that that thing is very important to us. That thing becomes routine precisely because we have prioritized it so highly that we simply don't have to decide whether or not we're going to do it anymore. It's become the regular, non-negotiable part of our lives, and the same is true for frequent celebration of the Lord's table.

It reveals how important that we believe the table to be. Our children notice when we do something regularly without even telling them they can see that this must be important. A visitor who comes to our service a few times will recognize that this is something that we prioritize. Making the table routine communicates that this meal with God is central to who we are as a church. But number two, we miss routines when they are absent.

When we establish something as routine, we miss it when we don't do it anymore. We may not think much about it consciously as we do it regularly, but if it's gone the absence is striking. I mean, think about dinner in your home. Is dinner in your home routine? Well, yeah.

No one in your family wonders whether you're going to eat dinner tonight. When I ask Becky, which I do most afternoons, what's for dinner? She doesn't reply, "Well, you assume we're having dinner." No, it's routine. But try skipping dinner one evening. See if anybody notices.

Everyone would feel the absence, wouldn't they? And if celebrating the Lord's Supper becomes routine, then we begin to expect it. And in some ways, we don't even think about it. We don't even wonder, "Are we going to celebrate the table this morning?" But if I were to walk into the sanctuary one week and the table was not set, I would notice. Something would be different.

Something would be missing. We would feel that. Three, routines form us. And this really is one of the most significant points. Think about it this way.

When we want to learn something, whether it be a particular skill like playing an instrument or learning a sport or mastering a craft, what do we do? We practice. We develop habits. We rehearse the necessary motions over and over until they become second nature to us. The same is true for cultivating a life of communion with God, which is what we ought to be seeking to do as Christians.

Holiness, according to Hebrews 12-14, is something a Christian must strive for. Paul told Timothy to train yourself for godliness in 1 Timothy 4-7. Communion with God is not automatic. It takes discipline. It takes practice.

It takes the regular repeated word-ordained means of grace that God has given us. This is one of the most powerful purposes of the routines that we develop in corporate worship, including the Lord's table. They form godliness within us. They are means of grace by which the spirit of God progressively works his word into our souls so that communion with God and love for God and obedience to God becomes routine. That's what we want.

We want obedience to God to become a routine in our life. We don't have to agonize over it anymore. It becomes the habit of our hearts. You see, the routine, disciplined use of word-ordained means of grace like the Lord's Supper progressively forms us into the image of Christ. When we routinely celebrate the Lord's Supper, communion with God through Christ becomes a habit, and that habit then forms us to live in light of that reality every day of the week, 24 hours a day.

When we face temptation, we resist because pleasing God has become our habit. When we sin and break fellowship with God, we feel an emptiness because communion with God has become routine. We miss it and that compels us to repent and return to Christ. Let me press a little further into this in one more area of application because I think it touches something very practical about how we actually experience the table when we come to it each week. How do you come to the table each week on the Lord's Day?

If the Lord's Supper is merely a memorial, if it is nothing more than a mental exercise in which we try to recall what Christ did on the cross, then it would make sense that our posture at the table would be introspective and somber. It makes sense that we would bow our heads, we would close our eyes, we would sit in silence, and we would try to conjure up in our minds an image of Christ's suffering. It makes sense that the mood would be something like a funeral. Again, if you grew up in modern evangelicalism like I did, that's kind of what the Lord's Supper services were like. That's how many of us have been taught to approach the table.

We treat it as a time for quiet, inward, individual meditation. We try not to notice anyone around us, we sit still, we're solemn, and we wait for the service to be over. But brothers and sisters, if what we've seen this evening is true, if the table is not merely a memorial, but a genuine feast with the risen Christ, then that posture doesn't fit. Think about it. When you're invited to a feast, is the appropriate response to sit in silence with your head bowed?

When a king invites you to his table, do you stare at the floor and try to ignore the other guests? Of course not. What do you do? You celebrate. You look at the others who have been invited.

You rejoice that you are there in the presence of the king at his table. And that's what we need to do. That's the posture that we need to develop at the Lord's table. This is why we sing at the table on Lord's Day mornings. Singing is a proper response to what has happened.

Christ is the host of the meal, he is spiritually present with us, he is feasting with us, he is nourishing us, and we are not alone, we are surrounded by brothers and sisters who have been brought to the same table by the same gospel. The right response to that reality is not somber introspection, it is joyful celebration in the presence of the king. Yes, of course, we remember Christ's death. Yes, we remember the cost of our redemption, but we don't remember those things as those who are mourning at the tomb. We remember those things as those who know that Christ is risen and that he is present with us and that this meal is a foretaste of the great feast to come.

So the next time you come to the table, don't bow your head and try to shut out the world. Lift up your eyes, look around at your brothers and sisters in Christ, sing, rejoice, it is not a funeral, it is a feast, Christ died so that we can be here and he is present with us as we eat and drink. Let the table be what God designed it to be, the most joyful moment of our worship where the people of God celebrate together as they commune with their savior and with one another because of the broken body and shed blood of our Lord. You see from the garden to the Passover, from the peace offering to the table of show bread, from the elders feasting at Sinai to the vision of Isaiah 25, God has been telling one consistent story. He is bringing his people back to the table.

He is preparing a feast, a lavish, abundant feast of rich food and fine wine on his holy mountain. And at that feast, death will be destroyed, tears will be wiped away and his people will cry out, "Behold, this is our God, we have waited for him." That's the future that we have coming for us. We're not there yet, we still live in a world marked by sin and sorrow and death but God has not left us without a table. He's not left us empty handed. Every week when we gather for worship and comes to the Lord's table, God is feasting with us.

Not yet in the fullness of Isaiah 25 but truly and really by faith. Christ is spiritually present at his table. He is the host and as we eat and drink, our faith is confirmed, our souls are nourished and our communion with Christ and with one another is deepened. Every celebration of the table is shaping us. It's shaping us into a people who long for the day when we will finally sit down at the great feast on the mountain and say together, "This is our God.

We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation." Until that day comes, we must come to the table with expectation, with joy, with thanksgiving. We come in faith and we come to have our faith strengthened because at that table, God feasts with us.

Let's pray together. Father we are so grateful that even though we live in a world of sin and we still battle our own sinful temptations and we suffer, we experience sickness, we experience death and loss, that you have not left us without a tangible expression of our communion with you that helps to give concrete confirmation to our faith. We praise you for your table, this table that strengthens us, this table in which you feed us through your word, this table in which we experience communion with you and with one another. I pray that we would rejoice in this table, that we would come with expectancy each Lord's day, longing for that day when we will sit on your heavenly mount and we will sit at your table and we will feast with you for all eternity. We praise you through Christ in his name, amen.