Confession, Consecration, and Communion

Each Lord’s Day, God summons you – you individually, and you corporately – you as individuals and you as families and you as His church, the body of His Son, the Bride for His Son, the work of His hands, the sheep of His pasture. We come again and again, but it should never be dull or monotonous for those with eyes of faith. The remaking of the world, our world, is taking place as we gather.

We come and confess our sins because they have been paid for at the cross. We do not have to bear them, we do not have to pay for them. The Sin-Offering has been made and so we stand in that sin-offering, that once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are made clean again because He died for us.

We come and offer up ourselves, all of ourselves, in the Ascension offering. Our prayers, our songs, our praise, offered up in Jesus’ name and with the shouts of our Amens, are received in the presence of the Ancient of Days at His throne, where He speaks His Word to us, cutting us open with the precise skills of a sovereign surgeon whose word is sharp and reveals to us who we are in graphic detail. He cuts us apart, arranges us, finds us in Christ, and receives us as perfect because of His perfect righteousness. He re-arranges us, renews us, instructs us, and tells us His story and how we are in that narrative again – and we find ourselves made new in the New Man, in Christ.

We come to a Table of Fellowship and in the essence of what was pictured through the Peace Offering, where God, priest, and confessor ate together in the sweet fellowship of full reconciliation, love, acceptance. We even find ourselves called sons and daughters of the living God, co-heirs with Christ, reigning with the One who sits at the right hand of His Father with all authority over heaven and earth, even down the details of our coming week. We will walk with Him this week because we have supped with Him this morning.

So come and worship – worship the God who is remaking us all into the image of His Son by the power of His Spirit. Do not hold anything back, do not doubt Him, His goodness, His love, His acceptance of you in His Son – do not doubt the work of His discipline in your life through trials and sufferings – speak to Him about all these things, and find your glory in His, your life in His, your eternal joy in Him through His eternal joy over you.