A Christian's Guide to Feasting + words from elders

Welcome to the Grace Church Weekly Podcast. We're an international church right

in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden.

Each week, we share a message that's rooted in the faithful teaching of God's

Word and open to the vibrant work of the Holy Spirit among His people.

Here's this week's message.

Grace Church is led by a team of elders.

So it's not, we don't have one pastor and then other people.

We have a team of elders, pastors, same word, same meaning in the Bible.

And so we have a team of a guy called Simon, who's through the Swedish group.

We have a couple of guys called Gilbert and Biomungu who are leading our Swahili congregation.

And then we have Steve, James, and myself.

And we're a team of elders that lead Grace Church.

And what we thought we would do on this Sunday is just to have a little opportunity

before I talk about a Christian's guide to feasting,

is just to have a little opportunity for James and Steve to share as elders

just some things that have been on their heart recently for the church and wanted

just to share with you those things, just to hear heart,

hear what we're thinking about as your elders and as your leaders and how we're

praying for and caring for the church.

So I can't remember who we said was going first. Was it Steve?

Steve is going to go first. so please leave come and share.

We had a prayer meeting, was it last Friday? And I shared something then.

I feel like God wanted me to share again today.

We've been talking a lot about testimony. You hear us, you regularly will hear

us ask for what's God doing in your life.

Is there any testimonies about, you know, whatever we want to hear back.

And we don't often hear too much back.

And we've been praying about this because we know it's so important to the life

of the church. And we've been praying and almost feeling a little spiritually,

what's the word, covetous about these testimonies. I want testimonies in the church.

I'm not ashamed to say it. It's, we need to see the work of Christ in our community.

And I was praying about it. I just feel like God laid some things in my heart.

I just wanted to share with you today.

It's really important. You think about what a testimony does.

It's, you're giving witness to what God has done in your life.

And when you look through the Old Testament, and through all Scripture for that

matter, God is really clear about how He wants His people to handle the times

that He's stepped in and He's done things for them.

And mainly, don't forget it. And so I want to read just out of Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 9.

Deuteronomy 4:9

We hear a little bit of God's heart around this.

He says, only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget

the things your eyes have seen and let them fade from your heart as long as you live.

Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Now, I want us to remember what has God done in our lives.

I want to also tell you there's no such thing as an old testimony.

So when there's an invitation to share testimony, does not have to be something

that's happened in the last seven or 30 days.

Because your testimony is actually, it's the cornerstone that God is building

this relationship in your life on.

That testimony we hear in Revelations 12, it says they overcame by the blood

of the lamb and the word of their testimony.

You've got a testimony that God has given you.

Some of us may have more things to say than others, but that's fine.

God still expects us to be fruitful with what he's given us.

And when I was praying with this, God reminded me about the parable of the shrewd

manager, the parable of the talents.

Jesus is explaining the kingdom. He's like, the kingdom is like this.

Pretty much people are given different amounts of things. And when the master,

the manager who comes back to collect, he expects a return on what he's given them.

And the one who doesn't use it loses it and actually gets reprimanded for not doing that.

Now, we have this phrase in English, use it or lose it.

Now, sometimes you get benefits at work, and if you don't use that expense,

you're not going to experience the benefit of it.

We have testimonies. We need to use them.

Those should be our stories that our children keep hearing over and over again.

And people who are close to us, everyone knows that story because we've told a million times.

Because it testifies to the glory of God. And especially as we keep praying

and asking God for more testimonies.

We need to show them, God, I'm asking you for another testimony.

Look what I did with this.

Look at how much I've glorified your name and told people about this thing you did in my life before.

See how much glory I gave you? And if you think about God as a shrewd manager,

think about God as an investor.

I have a picture of Shark Tank, you know, a dragon's lair, I would call it.

They want to invest for this and you get a good return. We need to be able to

show God, God, you'll get a good return for the work you're doing in my life.

Because we need to remember that God is very concerned about his glory, getting glory for him.

Everything he's created is for that purpose. It's for his glory.

So as we're praying, let's continue to remember the testimonies that we've had.

We've got a few opportunities coming up.

There's an opportunity on the 14th. We're going to be sharing just a few testimonies

about what God's been doing in the life of people.

We're hoping that people are coming who are not familiar with church.

This may be the first time they hear that God is alive and working.

So we want to have testimonies there.

We'll have another time after Christmas. We'll have another service.

We're gonna have an extended time of testimony.

Like I said, this could be from any time. So if there's something that you feel,

God has done something amazing in my life, I want to glorify him for that.

I want my testimony to be shared.

You can come to me, come to Phil. I would love to talk with you.

We need to really treasure those testimonies and do our best to use them to

replicate faith in other people's lives and also to glorify God and thank him

for what he's done. Amen?

That's all for me. James, come on up.

Phil asked us just to share a bit of what's on our heart. And my old church

was very different to this one.

It was in a little housing estate.

I remember once somebody asked a question, they said, put your hand up if you've

lived here all your life.

And normally like one or two hands, like if we ask this here,

not many hands would go up.

Like 75% of the hands went up. There was one point where I lived about 10 minutes

walk from church, and there were 15 people who lived nearer than me.

It was that kind of church, people have been there forever, everyone lived close.

Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with not that, but completely different to Grace Church.

At this church, people come sometimes for a few years, sometimes for a few months,

sometimes in the summer just for one week.

And it can be challenging sometimes as an elder to kind of navigate that.

I remember having a lovely conversation with someone in the summer.

They were really interesting, really enthusiastic.

I was like, anyway, what brought you to Stockholm?

I went, oh, we're just here for a week's holiday.

I almost went, okay, bye. which

is of course a very unchristian reaction but mentally

thinking oh they're only here for one week

but actually one of

my passions as an elder is that really two things

that when people come into the church whether it's for one week a year or a

decade i really pray and try and encourage that two things happen firstly that

they are better off for having been with us at grace So they've grown, they felt discipled,

they felt loved, they felt cared for, they found community.

And it's really encouraging. We have a number of people who came and have left

that have made really good friends and are still in touch with people from grace.

Some of our best friends were here for one year, seven years ago,

but we're still in touch and they still bring lots of encouragement.

And then the second thing is that no matter how long people are here,

though the church is better off for having had them here, whether it's through

service, whether it's through community, whether it's through prayer, encouragement.

And that's really my passion that.

So the Lord has brought so many people sort of through the doors for different

periods, different timescales, but it's a tremendous blessing.

It's a tremendous privilege that we have that one thing in common. We have a savior.

We have a savior who loves us, who died for us.

And I just want you to encourage you that if you're new here,

or if you're only here for a short time, or if you're leaving at some point

soon, you're every bit valued by the elders, but more importantly,

you're every bit as valued by the Lord.

And I want, as an elder and part of the team, we want to really make sure that

people really feel that and see that here.

Just going to read three verses from Colossians, and then I'll hand over.

Sort of been having half an eye on your notes, Phil. Looks like a good sermon. Looking forward to it.

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves

with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues,

put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

So my prayer for the church, my encouragement today, is that we live those values.

We live as God's people, wholly and dearly of it. And let's just pray.

Father God, we just want to thank you, Lord, that you've brought so many people

here from all kinds of different backgrounds, different geographies, different timescales.

We thank you, Lord, for gathering us here in Stockholm, Lord.

We thank you that we all have stories to tell.

We all have amazing accounts of how you've worked in our lives.

Father, God, just encourage us to share this with one another.

Give us the confidence, give us the courage, give us the desire to share how

you've worked in our lives.

Father, we pray that we'll grow close to one another, that we'll feel supported

by one another, that cared for and loved by each other.

Just help us to grow as a church. Help us to grow in the coming weeks and months

close to one another, close to you, we pray. Lord, in your name. Amen.

Thanks guys, great to hear from you.

Just a quick comment about the teaching program, let you know what's going on.

We've paused our series on 1 Samuel as we move towards Christmas.

So next week we've got a guest speaker, Andreas Frankner, he's a pastor at Korsheerkan.

He'll be coming to visit us and it'll be a bilingual, we'll have our Swedish

friends come and join us and so it'll be a mixture of Swedish and English.

And then we've got our Christmas service on the 14th and a couple of Christmas

things and testimonies to round out the year.

At the start of January, we're going to do a short series on spiritual growth.

How do we set ourselves up for growing in Christ, growing in maturity,

growing in our relationship with God in the coming year?

And then we're going to have a series of apologetic ones asking some of the

bigger questions about trusting the Bible,

suffering, how do we know God, what has God done for us, That will create an

opportunity both hopefully to equip us, but an opportunity to invite people too,

so that they will be able to hear and consider some of the responses to some

of the big Christian response to some of the big questions.

And we're going to be thinking about how we can follow up. We want to keep growing

as a church that reaches out to people.

And then after that, we'll pick up our story back to 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel and

pick up the story of David and what happens when David becomes king and all

the things that God does through establishing the house of David, both good and bad.

So that's what's giving you a little bit of a preview into the teaching that

will happen in Grace Church on Sundays through from now through into some of 2026.

But today we're going to look at a Christian's guide to feasting.

Some enthusiasm there, feasting, yes, great.

An author, I've never heard of him, but it was a great quote,

so I'm using it, a guy called Charles de Lint, he wrote, our lives are stories,

and the stories we have to give to each other are the most important.

Our lives are stories. That's a great idea. It's a beautiful idea. It's also kind of scary.

People read our lives and make interpretations of our lives long before they listen to our words.

The things that they see, the way that you are, the way that you dress,

all forms an impression of the kind of story that we're telling.

And so when people see us in our homes and our workplaces and the friendships, what story do they get?

And so the question isn't, is my life telling a story?

The question is, which story is my life telling?

And God is a brilliant storyteller. And right at the heart of how God teaches

his people to follow him is by asking them to do things that tell a story,

which is where feasting comes in.

Now, food and meals are important in every culture.

Imagine if I asked you now to just imagine a feast.

All going to be very different menus. The feasts for my South African friends

and my Indian friends are not going to be the same. They're not imagining the same dates.

We've got jollof rice from Nigeria. They go, yes, can't have a feast without that.

And someone else is thinking about, has had feasts, a Thanksgiving feast.

So we've all got different things about what we think is essential to feasting.

It also shows that in every culture, no matter where you're from,

meals are a really important place, not just of friendship, but a place also

where stories are told and where stories are reenacted.

It's a way of teaching that reminds us that our lives are signposts pointing

towards a greater truth.

And there's a lot of feasts in the Bible and each one had a slightly different purpose.

Here are two examples. The Passover

feast retells the story of Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

How did God rescue our people when we were slaves and under oppression.

What did God do? And each year there's a meal that tells the story of the Passover.

There's a feast of tabernacles, tells the story of how the people of God wandered

in the desert for 40 years, living in tents, tabernacles.

They lived in tents. And so they've got a feast that tells the story.

And then there's Jesus, who seems to just eat his way through the Gospels.

John introduces us to Jesus at a wedding feast, where he's making gallons of wine from water.

And Jesus gets invited to meal after meal.

And combining these ideas of stories and feasts, Jesus tells some of his most

famous parables while he's at the dinner table.

But Jesus is so unfussy about who he accepts an invitation from that he gets into real trouble.

It creates controversy. In fact, so much so that one of the accusations against

Jesus is that he's a glutton.

And a glutton is someone who has got no disregard for limits when it comes to eating and drinking.

This is the accusation of Jesus. He eats and drinks way too much and with the wrong people.

So and so Luke says, the Son of Man came eating and drinking.

Luke 7, 34.

But what story do the meals of Jesus tell?

The tables of Jesus become places where, amongst other things,

welcomes to a place where sinners are welcomed, where social barriers are broken

down, where stories of the kingdom are told, and where forgiveness is found.

And then the early church, there's a lot more I could say about Jesus and food,

but then in the early church, food was central to the life of the church.

They broke bread together and had fellowship meals.

Communion became, or the Lord's Supper, became known as love feasts.

And some people so misunderstood what the Christians were doing at these love

feasts, they thought they were cannibals because they heard them talking about

eating the flesh and drinking the blood of someone called Christ.

And finally, the climax of the whole Bible is the wedding supper of the Lamb

and his bride, the church.

Revelation 19 says, blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of

the Lamb. This is the whole point.

This is where we're heading, pointing towards.

There's going to be a glorious day where Jesus comes again, and it's going to

be like this amazing, incredible wedding banquet.

And the ones who are blessed are the ones who are invited to come to the wedding

feast of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.

There was a priest and real foodie. His name was Robert Farrakapon.

And he said, to be sure, food keeps us alive. But that's only its smallest and most temporary work.

Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities. It's to kind of get our

heads in the right space of the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet

and just see how gracious the Lord is.

There's a pattern all the way through scripture about feasts and food.

And every feast tells a story and God keeps inviting those who you would least

expect to join in, including you.

And people are storytelling creatures and feasts are stories for us to tell.

Feasting in the Bible is never just about eating.

It's about participating in a story of God's welcome and God's grace.

And in this next month, there is just the tainty, incy, incy possibility that

you might do some feasting.

Some of them, others will invite you to, and others you may organize yourself.

I wonder who will, maybe we'll set up a sort of a church kind of score sheet.

Who's going to have the most Yule boards between now and the end of the year.

It's not a competition. Well, it might be a competition.

Of course, the biggest one of all is Christmas.

So if feasts tell a story and our

lives tell a story, what story will your feasting at this Christmas tell?

Parents, in the way that you celebrate Christmas, what story are you inviting

your children to take part in?

What are the messages? What is the story that they're going to go,

ah, this is what Christmas is about from the way that our family celebrates.

What will they learn? What will they take on board?

What is the message that the way you feast and the way you celebrate communicates?

Who will be at the center of that story.

If Jesus' tables were places of welcome, mercy, grace, and maybe our Christmas

tables can also in some way echo his.

Now, I have to be a little bit careful here because my DNA is part human, part Grinch.

So do you know who the Grinch is? Maybe that's a cultural one.

The one who's kind of like really about Christmas.

That's me.

And honestly, I'm not always sure that the patterns that we've learned to copy

about how to celebrate Christmas always tell the story that we think is most important to out.

Now, here's a warning from the book of Isaiah. In the book of Isaiah,

there's many Christmas verses that we'll pull out.

We won't pull out this one from Isaiah chapter 1, verse 14.

Isaiah 1:14

I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals.

They are a burden to me. I cannot stand them.

So, on the 14th, when we invite our friends to join to the world, this will be my verse.

It won't, it won't. But why would God say to the people of Israel,

your annual festivals are a burden to me. I cannot stand them.

Well, because while they were feasting, they were also turning a blind eye to injustice.

And specifically, the ones without a family, the widow and the orphan,

were being excluded and being oppressed.

Their religious feasting and worship had become separated from obedience to the commands of God.

It wasn't supposed to be that way Compare what I've just said from Isaiah With

these instructions that God gives For one of the feasts,

This festival will be Deuteronomy 16 You want to bring that one up, Carl?

That'd be fantastic This festival will be a happy time Of celebrating with your

sons and daughters Your male and female servants the Levites,

foreigners, orphans and widows from your town.

For seven days you must celebrate this festival to honour the Lord your God

at the place he chooses for it is he who blesses you with bountiful harvests

and gives you success in all your work.

The festival will be a time of great joy for all.

Notice it's both seven days long and that God commands you.

It's God's command that you have a happy time.

Now, sometimes we have a, like, enjoy yourself, kids.

It's not like that. He's saying, go ahead, enjoy yourself. Have a great time.

And often we don't think of God as being the sort of God who would say to you,

go ahead and enjoy yourself. I want you to celebrate.

God is for holidays and celebrating.

But he is also important to God that it is possible for all the people and not

just some of the people to be able to do that.

The foreigner, the orphan, the widow, the servants, the workers,

they are to be invited to join the party too.

So that was the story that God wanted his people to understand.

They had been foreigners, workers, servants, slaves, and they had not been allowed to feast.

Moses went to Pharaoh and said, let us go to go worship the Lord. No.

And they weren't supposed to make the same mistake. They were supposed to tell

a story of God's gracious, generous, abundant provision and their trust in him.

And the invitation was to enjoy God's grace was so much bigger than they realized.

Now Christmas is an annual festival, perhaps the closest thing we have to a national feast.

So is there a way in which you celebrate Christmas that you could tell the right kind of story?

Here's what happens if you only get half the story. When I was growing up,

my family would always invite people to join us on Christmas Day.

So in the morning before they arrived, we would open presents, which I enjoyed.

We would go to church, which I didn't. We would eat a big, big roast dinner

and have trifle pudding, which I enjoyed.

We would be forced to listen to the Queen's speech, which I didn't.

And then we had to do something quiet while some of our guests fell asleep in our living room.

And I wondered why I had to share my Christmas with these weirdos who didn't

have anywhere else to go.

So if you get an invite from us to join us on Christmas Day,

you know what that means, right?

It means we want you to come to our house.

The story I was being schooled in was incomplete because my parents never joined the dots for us as kids.

What was the link between the duty of including people who had nowhere to be

and no one to be with and the story of Christmas?

So sharing became a sacrifice and never a joy.

Welcome became a duty and never a delight.

Hospitality became a burden and never a blessing.

We weren't invited to be gracious hosts with my parents.

They were the hosts and we just had to put up with it. We

were never invited into the story in a

way which helped us to see this could be a fun celebration and there's a room

to tell the story of what God is doing and the way God has included us and the

way that God looks out for the widow and the orphan and includes them into the

feasting. And that's an amazing thing.

The story of Christmas is the incredible story of God's gift to us that brings

us into the family of God.

In Emmanuel, God with us, we find a friend we didn't know we could have,

bringing us into a fellowship more precious than we ever dreamed,

giving life where before there was loneliness and hope where before there was none.

The story of Christmas is the radical invitation of God to sinful people.

And it includes this extension of who the family of God now is.

In Christ, the family of God widens to anyone who would come,

not just to the Jewish people, but to anyone who would come through the door of Jesus Christ.

So in it, it opens up the doors to the house and the home of God.

And if our lives, if our church, if our Christmas is not shaped in some way

to tell that kind of story, well, then it's some other kind of story that we're telling.

As Steve wrote in the latest newsletter, which I hope you've read and got,

He said, Sweden is filled with people who feel alone during the dark months.

Many in our international community live far from family.

I pray that you will remember them.

Lives have been changed simply because someone opened their door and made room

at their table for one more.

Hospitality doesn't need to be perfect to be powerful. It just needs a heart

whose intention is to love others.

One of the most powerful tools you have to share the gospel is something you do three times a day.

One of the most powerful tools you have to share the gospel is something that you do three times a day.

Eat a meal and invite someone to join you.

The gospel isn't, just to be really clear You must invite someone to your house

on Christmas Day That isn't the message of the gospel It isn't a new law that

I'm giving It isn't a new law,

it isn't in the Ten Commandments And it isn't in the teachings of Jesus That

on Christmas Day you must have someone that you don't really know And you don't

really like and have them come around to your house for food,

That's not the message here The message is that the gospel, though,

does redefine our notion of who our family is. Who is my neighbor?

Jesus changes the definition. Who is my family?

Jesus changes the definition.

And so life and love gets bigger and richer and truer because the gospel has

come to us in Christ Jesus.

And as we step into the same story, as we step into the story of Jesus and start

to live it out in our lives,

we experience his life and love working through us as we start to be shaped

by the gospel that has changed us.

So we bear witness to God's grace around the table.

Around the table, bread is broken. Cups are shared. Blessings are given.

Around the table, conversations take place that can cause hearts to burn,

eyes to open, and people for the very first time perhaps to recognize Jesus for who he really is.

So this Christmas, don't hunker down in the bunker of your home. Life is busy.

December can be busier than most in part because we're buying into a different story,

often it's a different story which makes us get really busy and a bit stressed

out and we start doing things which wear us out and so when it gets to Christmas

we just want to kind of shut the door,

have a few days off and recover.

But we can live a different way. We can get through this coming month in a different way.

And we can, instead of kind of trying to survive it, we can learn to find a

way through Christ to thrive in it and open it up to spread the joy,

to play the games, to watch the films, to tell the jokes, to give the gifts,

but do it in a way that tells the story of the laughter and joy that Jesus has brought,

the meal that he has invited us to share with him.

Revelation, Jesus says, knocking on the door of a church, which has realized

its wealth, but forgotten the gospel.

He said, I stand at the door and knock.

Anyone who opens the door to me, I'll come in and eat with him.

Isn't that amazing? In Revelation, this letter to the church in Ephesus says, you're so wealthy.

You've got so much, but you've forgotten me.

So I'm standing at the door knocking and what will happen if you open?

I'll come and eat with you and you with me.

Let's be together. And let's not trust in the wealth of our physical resources.

Remember, all of these things come from the provision and the grace of God.

We are so fortunate. Thank you, Lord, for all you've done.

So they were told, the people of God were always told to rejoice in the presence

of the Lord, to feast under his goodness.

Where has all this come from? Thank you, Lord.

And we make our homes a picture of the home that he is invited to,

the home that one day we will eternally be in and in the family that he's adopted us into.

You can get creative in this, but in the coming feasts, I want to encourage

you to think and to think now because when you get to Christmas week,

you'll be too late by then.

Plans too set, energy too low, opportunity gone.

Think now, think now

about the story you would like your feasting to tell and who you would like

to tell it with and how you can put Jesus right at the heart of your feasting

and the celebration and the stories we will tell.

Every feast, every life tells a story.

What story will yours tell? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the story you have invited us to be a part of.

That at the center of this story is someone else, Jesus Christ,

at the heart of it, who has through his life, death, and resurrection opened up a way for us,

to have life and life everlasting,

to have joy and joy eternal, to know a new family with a new home,

with a new name, with a new destiny, with new spirit, with new hope.

Forgiven, and all things made right.

And one day we look forward to that incredible time where you will put the world

to right and you will rest and invite all those that trusted in you to an incredible

banquet to join in this celebration of the victory of the Lamb of God.

Thank you that you're inviting us to live in that story. What a great story.

What a great joy it is to be included.

Thank you for the celebrations that we have and the way that our lives can reflect

something of what you've done.

And I just pray you'll help us. Give us an imagination, give us creative ideas,

give us energy, give us help, even if it's in small things or it feels big, whatever it is,

to just tell in the way that we live, in the way that we celebrate,

in the way that we party to tell your story.

We ask your help in this. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

We hope that this sermon has encouraged you.

If you'd like to learn more about us, visit us online at gracechurch.se.

Thanks for listening.