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Our Lord Jesus instituted this meal, so it is from God. But with these plain old plates and cups, and simple bread and juice, where do we see its divine nature?
That\u2019s easier to see if we think of what this meal would be like if it had been devised by man.<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, a friend who had been on many cruises told me about the institution of the Captain\u2019s Table at that time, where you had the honour of dining in the presence of the captain in charge of the ship.<\/p>\n
You needed a special invitation.\u00a0 Most people wouldn\u2019t be invited until they had been on 20 cruises, so it\u2019s at a great personal cost to you.\u00a0 And it also relies on your social status, on who you know.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s very exclusive.\u00a0 People at that table enjoy it because most people are not invited.<\/p>\n
It involves some pretence. You\u2019ll need the finest clothes, and be careful of what you reveal about yourself, you can\u2019t mention your past mistakes.<\/p>\n
In reality, the Captain has no personal involvement, and the next day he may not even remember you.\u00a0 That meal and cruise is just a temporary escape from the basic problems and strivings of this life, and after the cruise nothing has changed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the opposite of our meal here in every way.<\/p>\n
Here we face the cause of this world\u2019s basic problems, the sin of mankind.\u00a0 But here we celebrate how God has acted through Jesus\u2019 victory on the cross to set things right, to restore us and all creation to His perfect righteousness.<\/p>\n
Here you are the specially invited guest of the one who rules over this world and every cruise ship on it.\u00a0\u00a0He has chosen you to dine with him now, and forever more. He not only remembers you, but he knows you completely, and loves you more than you can understand.\u00a0 For your invitation came at a huge cost, which has been paid personally and in full by Jesus, in his death on the cross.<\/p>\n
Your invitation doesn\u2019t depend on who you know \u2013 but Jesus wants you to know him as your Saviour and Lord.\u00a0 This table is only the beginning, as through his Spirit he comes to live in us, and we in him.<\/p>\n
\u00a0He excludes no-one, Jesus died for all mankind.\u00a0 It\u2019s tragic if people exclude themselves by thinking they are good enough through what they have done.<\/p>\n
\u00a0There is no pretense here.\u00a0 We need to be honest to God in seeing our misdeeds and our need for his salvation.\u00a0 Our best clothes won\u2019t do, only the covering of Jesus\u2019 sacrifice makes us acceptable to God.<\/p>\n
\u00a0In Jesus, our fundamental strivings and hunger are satisfied, as He sustains us through this world and into eternity with him.\u00a0\u00a0In John 6:35, Jesus said, \u201cI am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Our Lord Jesus instituted this meal, so it is from God. But with these plain old plates and cups, and simple bread and juice, where do we see its divine nature?That\u2019s easier to see if we think of what this meal would be like if it had been devised by man. Twenty years ago, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26778"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26783,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26778\/revisions\/26783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}