From Today’s Bible Reading. Wednesday, Nov. 18
Acts 27:35 (ESV): And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat.
These words are not the ones spoken by Jesus at the institution or the last supper, as much as they sound like it. They are supposed to sound like it.
This is how Acts describes the table that the Apostle Paul set for a ship full of sailers and prisoners in the middle of a storm just before the ship was about to wreck and they all had to swim to shore or die. Do you need to read that again?
Here is a very significant principe in the world God has made and, especially, in the church that God has called to assemble.
First, God created a world in which His creatures gather for worship every seven days. The 1689 Confession reads this way:
It is the law of nature that in general a portion of time specified by God should be set apart for the worship of God. So by his Word, in a positive moral and perpetual commandment that obligate everyone in every age, He is especially appointed one day and seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy to Him. From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ the appointed day was the last day of the week. After the resurrection of Christ it was changed to the first day of the week, which is called the Lord’s Day. This day is to be kept to the end of the age of the Christian Sabbath, since the observation of the last day of the week has been abolished.
And so, we gather to be fed with the Word and the Table, every week, as often as we come together. Then this heart, this thanksgiving, lives at our tables every time we sit to eat our daily bread from the hand of the Lord. The stability, the formation that happens there in this repeated practice will ground your faith and your family when everything else is going crazy. At the risk of being too cheesy, even in the midst of a storm.
So, come to the Table of the Lord. Get to that Table. Fight, scratch and kick to get to the Table where Christ nourishes your faith with the ordinance of bread and wine. And, set your table, giving thanks, no matter what else is happening, even storm and the threat of death. Set your table. Do it again. Do that for 100 years.
