Dear Family at Christ Community,

    On the last Sunday of 2017, we have the Lord’s Table to look forward to as we conclude our Advent Series. In John 2:1-12, Jesus performs His first miracle at the wedding in Cana as He turns the water in the jars for Jewish purification rites into the finest of wines. This miracle frees the master of the feast and the newly married couple from their guilt and shame of not having enough and allows the celebration to continue with the best saved for last. What a glorious picture of what He has come to do for all who believe in Him! We too will be freed from the shame and guilt of not having or being enough while also being eternally included in the celebration of our restoration to God in which the best has been saved for last.  

    Both the miracle performed at the wedding in Cana and the elements of the Lord’s Table direct our gaze from the broken things of the earth to the restored things to come in the last Advent of Christ. The broken and offered bread declares yet again that the pain and cost of our sin has power over us no more. The overflowing and extended cup fills us with newness of life, joy, and peace worthy of celebration. Dr. Edmund Clowney gloriously captures this in a sermon on John 2:1-11 as quoted by Timothy Keller in Encounters with Jesus:

Jesus sat amidst all the joy of the wedding feast sipping the coming sorrow so that today you and I who believe in him can sit amidst all this world’s sorrow sipping the coming joy.

     As we approach the end of one year and the dawning of another, fix your eyes not on what you failed to accomplish or hope to accomplish but on what has been accomplished for you in Christ alone by faith alone through God’s grace alone. Prepare for the Lord’s Table by giving thanks for God’s many blessings over this past year asking the Spirit to show you the ones that you may have missed. Pray for the tenderness of heart to forgive others as freely and thoroughly as you have been forgiven in Christ. Ask the Lord to bear fruit in your life worthy of His glory.

In Christ,
Cameron