Hear God Out

        Probably no other words in the English language can raise your hackles (and mine) faster than the words, “You’re a sinner!” If our anger starts to smoulder and our blood starts to boil, we should calm down and hear God out.

        Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a whole book about the mind of the maker (small m’s) and some of the thoughts her work provoked are these: The potter expects the clay to obey him so, by his choice, he can make Denby or Royal Doulton; the painter expects the canvas and the paint to obey him—Picasso or Rembrandt; God is our Maker and has the right to our obedience. If we disobey (that is, “sin”), God has the right to scrap us and start over. But He tries to save everything He has made.

        The question then becomes, what is the cost to reverse or cancel or “justify” one sin? God’s gauge of the value is “the soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezekiel 18:20) The statement is absolute—whether it is one sin or a million. Only our eternal death or the death of Jesus meets that requirement.

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Is this the very first communion?

        Read Luke 24:13-35

        Of course there was communion between the disciples and the Saviour over bread and wine many times, perhaps daily, during the years of His ministry on earth. But the cross makes a greater break in history than His birth ever did.

 

       These verses make a wonderful story in themselves—imagine being in a seminar about the Messiah, taught by Christ Himself! And not just an academic discussion, but to realize that this is the God AND this is the Man who experienced all this—all these scriptures were about Himself.

        We can bring this story into our own day as a pattern for worship, or the “breaking of bread”, as we call it. First of all, we know that a church gathering can be as small as “two or three”, brought together by the Lord, and He will join them (Matt.18:20). Cleopas and his friend were joined by Jesus that Sunday morning on the road to Emmaus. They came with all their sadness, disappointment and defeat; they came without hope. Even the rumour of His resurrection didn’t cheer them. They even rebuked Him for not knowing how they felt.

        Then Jesus took control of the conversation: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” From these few verses we judge that there are at least three things that make valid content for communion with Jesus and for worship: 1) “All the Scriptures concerning Himself”, that is, the entire Old Testament, 2) all that these two disciples knew about His life, that is, all the gospels and by extension the entire New Testament, and 3) His resurrected Self, right there in front of them.

        After taking them through all these details, he pretended to be leaving but now “their hearts were burning within them”—they couldn’t let him go, whoever he was!

        At this high point of love for this stranger, the bread was broken and they knew Him—those hands that broke the bread still had the scars of Calvary! They recognized Him at last and were content when He left (as we should be at the end of our worship time), but their very next thought was to tell others that they had seen Him. If only we loved Him as much!