communion

A Table of Rejoicing

by Ben Zornes · Apr 24, 2024

We must not grow indifferent to the message which Jesus came with. He came bringing Good News. His presence upon this earth was the inauguration of the good times. And though He has ascended to the Father’s right hand, He remains with us by His Spirit. The Good News has not become stale; the bright luster of the Gospel has not been corroded into an oxidized patina. Rather, it grows brighter with each day and through each age.

So then, this isn’t a table of gloom. It isn’t a table for stirring up pity upon poor Jesus. It isn’t a table of sorrow. Rather, this is where you can taste true joy and hand it to your fellow saint. This table is a memorial of Christ’s Gospel. The death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ is still good news of great Joy.

And not only is the joy undiminished, the joy of the Lord is and ever shall be your strength. And you need strength indeed. There are enemies within and without. Inward sin to subdue, and high towers of evil that need the Jenga treatment. There are wild places that must be tamed. There are toddlers to train in the ways of Jehovah. There are teens who must be readied to go out and make good trouble for the true troublers of Israel. There are aging saints to be tended to in their final days. There is wealth to be made and generously given away. There are houses to build and homes to be furnished with the grace of hospitality.

All of this must arise from the joy of the Lord which is proclaimed here. Your sins are forgiven because Christ’s body was broken and blood spilled on your behalf. And God ordained this so that He might feast with you at this table of rejoicing.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

A Feast of Humility

by Ben Zornes · Mar 7, 2024

It is possible to eat & drink the elements on this table and not partake of the spiritual reality they point to. This table is laden with incarnate humility. Christ humbled himself to death, and invites you into the glory He obtained in His humiliation. But to do so, you must humble yourself. If you haven’t noticed, however, that’s not something we generally like to do.

The ungodly hate the thought of humbling themselves. History is littered with examples of hubris and pride of man. Think of the tower of Babel. Or of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue of…wait for it…himself. Another example which isn’t recorded in the NT, but took place in the days of the early church is worth bearing in mind: Nero once set up a 12 story statue of…you guessed it…himself. That man makes Narcissus look positively unassuming.

But this meal is not a mirror for you to fondly gaze upon yourself. It is sign of God’s oath to bind you unto Himself through the humiliation of Christ. Set before you, by the kindness and love of God, is the glory of humility. Here is the flesh and blood of the Lord of glory, who became the man of sorrows.

How is it that the vanity of man’s empires are brought low, while Christ’s empire marches on to universal conquest? It is all due to the great humiliation of God the Son. And He invites you to join in the glory of lowliness of mind. The glory of service. The splendor of being spilled out. As Jonathan Edwards put it, “Humility is a most essential and distinguishing trait in all true piety!”

The meek of the earth gather here at the Lord’s table to feast upon the humble God who descended into the depths, in order to raise you up into His glory.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

The Thunder of God’s Kindness

by Ben Zornes · Feb 27, 2024

The kindness of God comes to us, at times, like a lightning strike directly overhead. This is how the prophets’ words ought to sound to us when we read them. Think of the words spoken by Amos: “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies (Amo 5:21).” Or what God revealed through Joel, “the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it (Joel 2:11)?”

God won’t abide cosplay Christianity. He won’t turn a blind eye to a double-tongued religion: praising Him one minute, and cursing your brother the next. This Supper isn’t quaint. It is potent. It is the Supper of the Lord Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth. The food here is the very body of the only man who never sinned. The wine is the blood of the God who became a man to take sinners’ doom. As the hymn puts it: How sweet and awful is this place?!

This bread is life, eternal life. You must eat it with faith and not fright. You must drink this wine with trust and not trifling. God has graciously given unto us this sign of His covenant mercies, and we must not receive it with the air of deserving entitlement. Rather, come with the boldness of faith. You must come with humility; not a mousy and timid faith. A faith that clings to Christ alone as your Savior and King.

God’s thunder is kindness. It is meant to shock us to a sober faith. It draws us away from our sins of pretentious pride in true repentance. If we live with a true repentance and faith God promises the sweet & gentle rain of His mercy: “Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people (Joe 2:18).”

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Rich in Mercy

by Ben Zornes · Feb 21, 2024

The central message of the Gospel stands in stark contrast to the central message of our age. Modern man has embraced a message of victimhood without sin, morality without a standard, and science without truth. Mankind wants covenant blessing but is horrified by the specter of covenant curses looming over covenant breakers. This is an era where we know there’s great evil afoot, but our ability to actually identify evil has been so warped by the corruption of our age that we just cannot spot it.

So then, the Gospel stands forth and offers a staggering message for modern man. Your sins are great and many, you have not only broken God’s law, you’re incapable of even living up to your own imagined ideals for morality. You are lawless, and as the Apostle John put it, lawlessness is sin. But God is rich in mercy.

God has purposed to satisfy the just requirements of His Holy law, and at the same time extend mercy to fallen mankind. We are lawbreakers, but God applies to our account the record of the only perfect Law-keeper: Jesus Christ His Son. All your sin is swallowed up in His righteousness. All of the cruelty you’ve shown to others and they’ve shown to you, might be reconciled by the tendnermercies of Your loving Father. All the damnable rebellions to the God who made you are cast into the sea of His promise to forget your sins.

All of that is brought with force upon us in this supper of the Lord. In order for you to get off scot free, God ordained to send His Son to die in your stead. While He drank up the cup of bitter wrath, you now taste the sweet wine of grace. While Christ was broken, you are made whole. And this rich mercy is received by faith alone.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

The Source of True Community

by Ben Zornes · Feb 13, 2024

One of the primary themes of the NT is what is sometimes referred to as the “one anothers.” We’re told to love one another (Jn. 13:34), serve one another (Gal. 5:13), bear each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), forgive one another (Col. 3:13), encourage/edify one another (1 Thes. 5:11), confess sins and pray for one another (Jas. 5:16), be kind and tenderhearted to one another (Eph. 4:32), and submit to one another in the fear of God (Eph. 5:21).

One clear implication of all these passages is that Christianity is not intended to be an individualistic faith. It is rooted in the context of community. You cannot go it alone. Of course, in the face of persecution many saints have endured isolation and imprisonment; but that’s the exception not the rule. What needs to be seared into our minds is that all of these “one another” imperatives find their footing here in this covenantal meal which we share.

You cannot forgive one another outside of the covenantal forgiveness we share in Christ. You cannot bear the burdens of the body if you are not a member of that body. Your encouragement of other saints cannot be edifying if it isn’t rooted in the death, burial, and resurrection which this meal proclaims we are joined to. You cannot truly love others (either fellow saints or enemies) if you haven’t been bound to Love Himself through the covenant of grace memorialized here.

As Christ binds us together in true communion with Himself and one another, His Spirit enables us to glorify Him in the performance all the covenantal duties we owe to one another. This is a mercy in the midst of the many mercies of God to us in this sacrament. It clarifies where to spend our limited energy: spend yourself upon doing for one another what Christ has done for you.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

The Architecture of the Lord’s Supper

by Ben Zornes · Jan 31, 2024

Part of Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 11 has to do with the architecture of their meeting place. It was common for the saints to gather in the homes of wealthier Christians. The architecture of the home was such that there would be a decent sized atrium for the people to gather, but when it came to partaking of the Lord’s Supper they would split into two separate groups.

The wealthy and important would go into the more comfortable dining area, while the lower classes––the poor, the widows, the slaves––were left out in the courtyard atrium. The rebuke of Paul about those who rushed forward to eat and leave others to go without has this architectural component in mind. The Corinthians seemed to have carried over to the Lord’s Supper Table a mindset that was not intrinsically wrong when it came to their own supper table. Their servants didn’t feast at their master’s table; they were busy serving, after all. What was a somewhat indifferent cultural practice had become a deadly ecclesiastical practice.

This Table was not their table, it was the Lord’s. This was Christ’s Supper. So their division of rich and poor, important and inferior, high and low was completely incompatible with the rite which Christ gave to His church.

The message here is that male and female, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, great and small all fully partake of the great grace of Jesus Christ. You are welcomed to God’s supper table. Therefore, we must not come to this table with pride and presumption. Rather, with humble gratitude you lay hold of Christ, the entire Christ; which means that as you then pass the bread and wine to the person beside you, if indeed they are in Christ by faith, they too are receiving all of Christ.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Give the Blessings Away

by Ben Zornes · Nov 21, 2023

We are told that that this cup is a cup of blessing. We should consider, then, what God teaches us to do with blessings. If your mindset surrounding God’s blessings to you is to become a doomsday-prepper, jarring & canning all the blessings in order to line the shelves of your tornado shelter, you have missed an important element of the nature of God’s blessings. They go bad if you try to confine them, hoard them, or bottle them up for a rainy day.

This principle is demonstrated all around us, but take, for example, the blessing of marriage. The mutual love which the husband and wife bestow upon each other replicates and becomes offspring. Couples who impose childlessness upon themselves are misusing the blessing of marriage, and as such the blessing goes stale. But in the giving away of the blessing, more blessings come. When your children grow into adulthood, you ought not hold them hostage. Rather, you send them out with your blessing, in order to increase the blessing through the formation of their own households, fruitful endeavors, and conquests.

God demonstrates this reality for us. Father, Son, and Spirit exist in the everlasting blessedness of pure delight & love. Yet God determined to create this world in order to fill it with manifold displays of His goodness. That’s why butterflies have colorful wings, and resplendent nebulas birth new stars, and sunrises parade in changing robes of grey & red & gold.

But God’s generosity of blessing is on fullest display here: in the body of Christ, given for you. The Father crushed His Son, the One most blessed forever, to bring about greater blessedness in our redemption. And so, God shows you how to both receive and give blessings. You receive it in order to spread it around in order for it to return to you once more in increased glory.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

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