8/20/2019 The Lord's Supper Corrects our Perspective on the
Past
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#42. The Lord's Supper Corrects our Perspective on the Past
Hebrews
12:1 – 4 — Therefore,
since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let
us
also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily
entangles us, and let us run withendurance the race that is set
before us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter
of
faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and has sat down atthe right hand of the
throne of God. 3 For consider Him who has endured such hostility
by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary
and lose heart. 4 You have not yet
resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against
sin;
We are looking at the way in which our participation in the
Lord's Supper can restore a right
perspective for us, and in this meditation we want to see
how it can help us to look back upon the
past and have our hindsight corrected.
We have already reflected on the fact that Christ commands us to
take the Supper in
remembrance of Him, but this devotional expands upon that idea.
Consider what the writer to the
Hebrews says in the passage above. There is no better place for
us to fix our eyes on Jesus thanat the Table, where through the
eyes of faith we see Him enduring the cross and despising theshame
for us. No better place to reflect on the hostility he endured from
sinners against Himself,
though He had done no sin. Well then, says the writer - if you
dwell on these things you will not
grow weary and lose heart in your own much less intense
struggles with sin.
How often do we reach a point in the Christian life when we feel
unworthy of our Lord, and are
tempted to throw in the towel? How often does our spiritual
warfare as believers seem like morethan we can bear and we want to
desert the battle ground? Jesus understands these things and
here we are told that it will help us enormously if we spend
time thinking about what He
endured, so we can gain a better perspective on our own
sufferings and avoid losing heart. Surely
there cannot be a better place than the Table to meditate on
what He endured, so here we can getour perspective on our current
situation sorted out by remembering all that Jesus went through
to
be our Savior.
But there is another way in which the Table can help us with our
hindsight. We are inclined to
forget what we were like without Christ - the mess that He
pulled us out of. Our past lives
disappear into a convenient fog and we start to think more
highly of ourselves than we ought to
think. Pride elevates our standing in our own eyes so we begin
to believe we are not so bad afterall, and our sins are not so
serious. Then we come to the Table and the fog blows away. We
were so bad that our only hope of salvation was for Christ to
die on the cross for us. We
remember again the horror of what happened at Calvary - the
blood of God's precious Son
flowing plentifully, the darkness that came over the land, the
desertion by the Father of His beloved Son, the loud cries of
Jesus in anguish and then in triumph and we we realize that
this
was for us, or more personally, it was for me. It was my sin
that made this necessary if I was
ever to be saved. So the Table provides a much needed
corrective, humbling us to the dust andreminding us that without
Jesus we are nothing and we can do nothing.
We need our perspective to be adjusted regularly and the Table
is one great place that God has
http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Hebrews%2012.1%E2%80%934http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Hebrews%2012.1%E2%80%934http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Hebrews%2012.1%E2%80%934http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Hebrews%2012.1%E2%80%934http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/Hebrews%2012.1%E2%80%934
