Dear Family at Christ Community,

     This Sunday we will receive the nourishment of the word from Jeremiah 29:1-14 and from the bread and cup to encourage and equip us to be missional in the everyday circumstances of life. We will be reminded by the word read, confessed, prayed, sung, preached, and witnessed in the Lord’s Table that we can do this because of what God has done for us in Christ and continues to provide in the Holy Spirit. As John so simply puts this profound truth in 1 John 4:19: “We love because he first loved us.”

     The elements of the table remind us that we were helpless in our being separated from God. It declares that we could not help ourselves and needed a Savior to conquer sin and death on our behalf and that Jesus has accomplished this for us eternally! In his commentary on Psalm 119:174, Charles Bridges gloriously calls us to:

Look at (salvation’s) ground — that work of Calvary’s cross once ‘finished’ (John, xix. 30), and leaving nothing to be filled up or improved; standing out in all its glorious completeness; constraining the admiration, and encouraging the confidence , of the chief of sinners; but wholly disclaiming all assistance from the most eminent saint. Look at its simplicity — not keeping the sinner aloof from the Saviour, not hedging up or bewildering the open freeness of his path, but bringing him immediate peace and joy in resting upon the great atonement of the gospel.

     The work of salvation is finished on our behalf so that we would be set free to participate in displaying this radiant glory to those who are around us every day who walk in darkness. In preparation, first give thanks for the pronouncement over the judgment of the totality of your sin, “It is finished!” in the person and work of Christ by God’s grace. Second, ask the Lord to give you the eyes to see and the ears to hear those who are in desperate need of a Savior that are in your spheres of influence (i.e. home, neighborhood, work, school, regular places of engagement, etc.). Third, ask the Spirit to prepare the way for you to engage some of these people with the beauty of the Gospel. Fourth, give thanks that the result fully resides in the work of Calvary’s cross with nothing for you to add to or could possibly take away from. As we come to the table this Sunday, may we come as those overwhelmed by God’s love for us with a growing desire to share this with those around us!

In Christ,
Cameron