Luke 7:33–35 | Eating and Drinking

Eating and Drinking

Luke 7:33–35

Luke 7:33–35

Jeremiah Fyffe

That You May Have Certainty | Jesus According to Luke

LIGHTLY EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Please keep your Bible open with me this morning to Luke chapter 7, beginning at verse 33. We are giving attention to this as part of our sixteen-week series in the Gospel of Luke, where we are considering what Luke himself says is the purpose of his book: that we would have certainty about the things that we have been taught. And certainty is certainly about Christ and his gospel.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Last week we concluded our first four-part miniseries within this sort of four-part set of four-part series. Last week we concluded our time in the signs and parables, asking the question, who is Jesus? This week we begin the second four-part series on the four meals of Jesus. There are a number of meals of Jesus in Luke, but here we consider, who does Jesus welcome? We have seen who he is. Now how is he in the midst of his ministry?

This morning’s passage serves as a sort of introduction to these meals of Jesus in Luke. And we have certainty of many things, really, as we move through these weeks together. We have certainty about who Jesus is and what he came to do. But we will also watch him as he welcomes people to his table. And what we see is he welcomes a people who are sinners to his table because he is the Savior of sinners. We will see a Master around many tables giving sinners confidence that they may trust in his grace. And that is my prayer for us also: that we sinners would see that we can have confidence, certainty, to trust in the grace of our Redeemer. Let us pray together.

Charity at the Lunch Table

Few of us have more of an anticipatory experience, maybe a concerned experience, when we remember how utterly important it was when you would sit down around a meal table, a lunch table, perhaps in elementary school, junior high. And there are other kids there, and you are wondering, how is this going to go for me?

This morning I have a tragic confession. It is an honest confession, and I mean it when I say the word confession. I have confessed this a few times along the way, but this is a memory that grieves me. In my lunchroom in elementary school, I was assigned to sit with seven other students—the round tables, eight people to a table in elementary school. This was upper elementary at this point. One of the kids in the school was named Charity, and she did not fit in very well with the other kids. Really, I do not think she fit in very well with any of the other kids.

At some point during a few of our lunches per week—and this happened on repetition—all of a sudden during one of those lunches, one of the kids at the table would shoot their hands up through the air and shout, “Whoever is touching the table loves Charity.” Now you can imagine what would happen in this circumstance. There is a certain tragic humor to it. All of the other kids would shoot their hands up in the air as well, of course, right? Because nobody wants to be caught touching the table, because if you touch the table, you love Charity.

And of course I had this problem. I believed in Jesus, and I was a Christian, and people knew it. And so I remember the sting in my conscience as I was stuck. I knew I could not lift my hands off the table. So I came up with something to help my little elementary-school self out of this situation. I would, with a supposed faith, form an escape. I would say, “Yeah, so I love Charity, but only in God’s way.”

Now here is what I did not know until many years later. I was actually in college when I found out that the word charity, her name, is the word for Christian love. And it shoots to my heart to this day: charity is grace. Brothers and sisters, my love for Charity was not in God’s way. And you can feel that in your bones. You know it is true. But how many times do we also use that sort of mentality as an escape?

If I loved Charity as Christ loved, I would have stood up from my seat across from Charity. I would have walked around the table, and I would have asked to sit next to her. And you know what we do there? We would begin to eat and drink together. It is that simple.

The Son of Man Came …

This morning, our passage—the heart of the passage—is a phrase that we are going to spend the whole time on this morning. Verse 34: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking.” This is the way of the grace giver. As we look at that together, I want to consider the Son of Man. The Son of Man came. I mean, that already is grace. The Son of Man came.

Now the Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite term for himself. It comes from Daniel chapter 7, where the Son of Man is given by the Ancient of Days everlasting dominion and glory and a kingdom that shall not be destroyed. Now I want you to take that. We already have this image in our mind of what Jesus is like, even from the illustration that I have given. But Daniel 7 gives an illustration of what the Son of Man is. He is the one that is given by the Ancient of Days dominion, glory, and a kingdom that shall not be destroyed.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Now, what would you expect when the Son of Man appears and Jesus self-identifies as the Son of Man? What will he do? How will he inaugurate his kingdom? Will he raise a mighty scepter? Will he rule with an iron fist? And when some kid declares who loves Charity, he says, “Shut up. I will tell you who loves Charity.” Demand and establish a rule, a disciplined, fearsome army to enforce his way. What we find out in our passage today is the answer to the question, how does the Son of Man come?

Why

But before we can ask further how he came, I want to consider and remember why he came, because they are not the same thing. We are told in our passage he came eating and drinking, but that is not why. It is not the purpose of his coming. I would take us to two of Jesus’ own most clear statements regarding the purpose of his coming. Mark chapter 10, verse 45. We went to this over and over when we walked through the Gospel of Mark together a couple of years ago. Mark 10:45:

Mark 10:45

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

— Mark 10:45, ESV

Mark 10:45

Now reconcile that with Daniel 7. It is going to take some work. It is reconcilable. Jesus himself says he is the Son of Man, and his is the glory and the dominion. But the why of his coming is actually to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many. Now Luke, our own gospel in this series, in our current study—in Luke 19:10, Jesus gives perhaps the most clear and concise answer to the purpose of the Master. Luke 19:10:

Luke 19:10

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

— Luke 19:10, ESV

Luke 19:10

You want to know the mission, the purpose of Jesus? To seek and save the lost. This is the purpose of the coming of the Son of Man. In both places, he says it is the Son of Man. That is his business in his incarnation.

But who would have expected that the one who would establish dominion and glory would do so serving and seeking to save the lost? So few expected that the Messiah would serve. The expectation of a Messiah is that perhaps he would conquer. I mean, dominion and all, right? And if few expected the why of his coming, nobody expected the way, the how of his glory and dominion and honor.

How

And that is what the topic of our time this morning is: the how of his coming. How? “The Son of Man,” verse 34, “has come eating and drinking.” He came eating and drinking. This is the manner of his coming. Now, eating and drinking—again, I want to be clear—eating and drinking are not his mission. He is not here to just hang out with sinners. He is here to save sinners by the work of his cross, the victory of his resurrection, and the preparation of his ascension, and the call one of these days that he would come and get those sinners that he has redeemed to himself, to his eternal kingdom forever. That is the why of his coming, but how did he go about it?

The mission of Jesus is to give his life, to seek and save the lost. But how did he go about the proclamation of the good news? How and where did he go about the mission? The how of the mission takes place, it turns out, around a table. That is interesting. What an interesting place. Who would have read Daniel 7 and said, “I bet you that Son of Man comes down and eats and drinks with the least and the furthest from obedience to his good way”? The how of the mission is meal tables to bring sinners into the table of his kingdom. In the coming weeks, we will see in the Gospel of Luke that he comes to save sinners. And the way that he comes to save sinners is to gather them around a table first.

The Meal Table in the Scriptures

So let us consider—I want to spend a few moments to consider the meal table in the Scriptures. Really, this is just a very quick biblical theology of food. I would encourage you to jot a couple of these notes down, because a quick biblical theology of food, I hope, will form our biblical imaginations. When we encounter food—and we encounter food, like I intend to encounter, I think it is brats and hamburgers today, right? I intend to encounter brats and hamburgers today. And I want to have a biblical imagination about what those things are when we enjoy them coming off of our grill with a couple friends this afternoon.

A quick biblical theology of food. The first gift of the Creator to his new creation was a garden full of food. The first gift: food. And the command, the first command, is, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Genesis 2:16, ESV). Like, go enjoy. I made a whole garden for you. Go enjoy the abundance of the garden. And it was in the same garden that the first sin was taking food in pride and disobedience outside of the way of the provision of abundant joy. So right out of the gate, food is both a divine and abundant provision and a test of obedience.

Genesis 2:16

Later, worship at the temple centered around what? Food, festival, fellowship. All of these are linked together. A significant portion of the law involves what to eat and how to eat it and how to fellowship around that food together. And the promise of God’s covenant to Moses was a land flowing with milk and honey. Food is inherent to the promise that God has for a people that he has reserved for himself. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper then is that which the Lord gave to his people by which they would remember the grace of salvation. A supper, a meal—food is given to remember grace. Eat and drink, and so participate in the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. First Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

The most visual and participatory element of our celebration is a meal. Like this moment, even right now, the word preached. Yes, we are in a room. Yes, you can see me, but you cannot see the word, can you? It is participatory with our ears. But in this meal that we gather around, we participate with our hands and our mouths and our smells and our visualization of the family as they gather around that table, and our ears as we say, “The body of Christ broken for you.” “Thank you, brother.” “The blood of Christ shed for you.” “Thank you, sister.” And we sit and we partake. Eating and drinking is given meaning as it transcends food and becomes fellowship and communion.

The promise of the gospel then expands on the promise of a land of abundance by securing a redeemed people of God—and I find this fascinating—with a promise of a great gathering out from among all the families of the earth, reclining at table with God. Here are the words of Jesus. Luke chapter 13, verse 29. Write this in the margin of your Bible there in Luke 7. Luke 13:29:

Luke 13:29

And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.

— Luke 13:29, ESV

Luke 13:29

What is your anticipation? What are you longing for? What is your appetite for the kingdom of heaven? Reclining at table with God. The Son of Man comes eating and drinking. Why? Because according to the plan of God, for his kingdom and for the people of his kingdom, eating and drinking around a table together seems to be the whole purpose of creation and salvation.

That is the end of worship: to worship by living in the presence of a holy God, and in that place we can recline at table with him. You see, the table is not about food. The table is about grace and reconciled fellowship. So when I eat a brat, when I eat a hamburger—I am going to eat them both—I am going to think about grace, and I am going to think about reconciled fellowship with the people that sit at my table and long for when we recline at his.

The Gospel Imbues Eating and Drinking with Purposeful Meaning

You see, what the gospel does—the gospel of God that has worked its way out through the whole of the narrative of Scripture—it imbues, it works into eating and drinking a purposeful meaning. First Corinthians chapter 10, it says this:

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

— 1 Corinthians 10:31, ESV

1 Corinthians 10:31

Why? Because eating and drinking—and so I do not overstate the case, but rather quote the Scriptures—everything that you do is imbued with a meaning of the glory of God. To dine at table of the Lord is the very purpose for which we were made, alongside the whole of the rest of our lives.

There is a song. It is one of my favorites. It is a raucous sort of song. It is by Soma Music, and it is called “King of the Ball.” And I want to quote it for us today. It is in reference to this longing to recline at table. I love the images, the vividness with which this author imagines the kingdom.

Gather round for the feast,

All creation, man and beast.

At the center of it all

Sits the king of the ball.

Play the trumpets and the melodies,

Bang the drums and your tambourines.

Break the bread and pour the wine.

Drink it in and have a good time.

Oh, what a party. Oh, what a feast.

A beautiful circus of crazies and freaks.

If you read the Scripture and you give it attention to those to whom the Lord goes to sit and recline at table, wisdom is justified by all her children, and all those children are going to be gathered around a crazy circus. They know where they came from. Crazies and freaks gathered into a holy kingdom of priests worshiping our God.

The Link Between the Table and Grace

You see, there is a link between the table and grace. Food and grace are linked. I am going to offer three words with a final sort of wrap-up word. Food and grace are about fellowship. It is about sitting together. It is about reclining at table in identification with another. It is why it is not just that I should have left my hands on the table and said, “Yeah, well, I love Charity. Deal with it.” I should have gotten up and reclined at table with her. It is about sitting down together in fellowship, identification.

Food and grace are secondly about provision. We bring nothing to the table. The table is set before us by an abundant divine provision. It is why, when we come together, we pray and we thank God in the meal: “God, thank you for your provision of this food.” I cannot make food grow. I cannot do that. I cannot make calories appear. We are, to this day, technology or not, dependent upon life, and we do not make life.

Grace and food are a sign of provision, and grace and food are about hospitality. We welcome both the stranger and our neighbor to sit with us that we would dine together. And I think this word pulls all three of these together: that the neighbor and the stranger would dine together as family. Who is it that reclines at table with God in his kingdom forever? Well, the family. That is who. The dominant meaning of food throughout the whole of Scripture is fellowship and provision and hospitality for a people brought into the family of God. Let that fill your imagination every time you participate and consider participating in a meal.

The Substantive Nature to Food and Grace

There is a substantive nature to food and grace. And I wrestled with that word substantive because I am like, “What does that even mean?” Let me get to it. The meal table takes this beautiful theological, doctrinal reality that can feel like an abstraction and a metaphor, but it can take that theological and doctrinal reality about grace, and it gives us a tangible substance, a substantial physical enjoyment together. When we chew on bread and when we drink together, there is a substantial reality that says, “You know what? We are participating in a provision that is provided by our God.”

And that is not more metaphor. It is real. It is actually what is happening today at this table. And it means so much more because at this table we participate in the grace of God, and that is real and it is substantial. Peter Leithart, he offers this quote:

For Jesus, “feast” was not just a “metaphor” for the kingdom. As Jesus announced the feast of the kingdom, He also brought it into reality through His own feasting.

So when he says that you would feast with God, it is not to behold some distant hope while doing something else. To feast with God was to recline at the table with Jesus. People did that. Do you know that? And the least expected of people reclined, received that invitation and call to dine with God at the table.

What Jesus is announcing as he went about eating and drinking is that the gospel does not create a mere collection of individual disciples who wait individually and personally for heaven, all the while they are doing super spiritual things, super religious stuff, while waiting for the King to return, when they personally and individually are called into his kingdom and they get a nice house there. The gospel creates a people who have been brought into the very mission of God, who have been invited to dine together with Jesus. And then, having dined with Jesus, we are sent out into the world to gather the rest of the family, because there are still open slots at the table, and the Father has made a great and abundant provision that ought to be enjoyed.

But what does the family look like? God will fashion a family, but the family that he fashions, will it be the brightest and the best? It just so happens that as we give attention to the gospel’s account, God is heralding a kingdom while dining with sinners.

Now here is the thing, though: before you think that Jesus went only to the least, let us remember who the least really are. Jesus, if he was eating a meal with someone—and he ate a lot of meals with people—he was always eating with a sinner. You know the difference between the sinners and the righteous in the gospel account? Read it, and you will see it. The difference between the sinners and the righteous is the sinners are the ones who sat with Jesus, and the righteous—they were not righteous. They were merely those who presumed themselves to be and refused to recline.

Jesus never had a meal with anyone who was not a sinner. There were many who stood and scoffed and accused on the outside looking in and presumed themselves righteous. But all of those, they belonged at the table where grace was being meted out to them. But they were prevented not by Jesus’ call or invitation. They were prevented by their own self-righteous pride that set them apart from being a sinner who dines with Jesus.

You see, Jesus, when he sat at table with sinners, he turned so many of those tables into tables of grace. And we will look at a few of those tables in the coming weeks. In the end, his meals with sinners became the fellowship of the redeemed—brothers and sisters dining at table together on the provision and the hospitality of the Son of Man. And when they participate in the hospitality of the Son of Man, they are seeing and learning to savor the Father’s love.

Friends, it turns out that eating and drinking is—it is the super spiritual behavior of heralds of the kingdom of God. That changes everything for me. I have been in the church since before I can actually remember. And when I imagine the behaviors of the religious life, the faithful things that religious people do, I do not always think of eating and drinking. But it is the super spiritual behavior to fill a table and dine with sinners.

Friends, it turns out that as a people of grace, our tables become a real demonstration of eternal hope. Our tables are functional longing, longing for the final table and longing for the family to fill it out. We believe that the Lord has made provision. And so at our tables, we give thanks. We believe that the Lord has opened hospitality to us, and so we open our tables to others. And we believe that the Lord has brought us into fellowship as a family together. And so for the sinner, our meals become an invitation to grace. And for the redeemed, our meals become a foreshadowing of the everlasting kingdom.

I want to go back, and I want to connect this to a parable that Jesus gave that we gave attention to just a few weeks ago: the parable of the good Samaritan. The point that I came away from that parable—Jesus is giving this to a people that would exclude people from the category of neighbor. The question is, who is my neighbor? Surely I can carve out substantial categories from the category of neighbor. And I think that we do the same thing with a meal. There is no category of human that can be carved out as not belonging at your meal table. Like, Selah.

I know what you just did. You did exactly what I did. I was doing it. I could name a few of them that I just—qualifications. I came up immediately with, “Well, I mean that category. Describe to me how that one works.” I do not know how that one works, but I just know that it is not a category that is excluded from the category of neighbor. Period. Deal with it. Selah. Sit in that, and then figure it out.

I do not know how to do some of those categories. I do not know how that functions, and certainly a couple of them, I do not think that they function real well if they were at my table. I just know that it is not a category that is carved out from the idea of neighbor. Do I at least, even if I cannot figure out how to make that table work, do I long that it would? Do I long that we would share in a table here and then?

Tell Me About Your Table

So tell me about your table. We all have one. You might say, “Well, I am not much of a cook, and I actually do not have a dining-room table. I have just a tray that I set up in front of my couch, and I have only got one of them, and it is small. I am not much of a cook. I am an introvert, and I do not have much space in my home.” And yet somehow everyone manages to eat somehow, somewhere.

Your table might be Chipotle, or as we call it in our staff room, we call it the cafeteria. Your table might be Five Guys—upgrade, all right? Your table might be a porch with a grill—upgraded even more. Your table might be a dining room or a dorm room or a school cafeteria. You have a table. You do. You eat at it.

The point is this: the Lord has given you a place of provision. He has provided for you. And if you all have eyes to see it, your meal, wherever you eat it, is already a fellowship with the Lord. You are already enjoying the grace of his hospitality. And part of the reason why we pray at the meal table is to give thanks for the food, but also to remember before the Lord what the food means. It means grace. It means charity. It means love.

If the provision and fellowship and hospitality is what the Lord has done for you, no matter where you partake, it becomes an opportunity to share hospitality with others. I literally mean—again, I do not know exactly how it works—I literally mean that little table that you set up by your couch, wherever it is.

CPCoast Came Eating and Drinking

What would it be like if CrossPointe Coast came eating and drinking? CrossPointe Coast does not have a detailed visionary strategy of ministry programs by which we will take Brevard County for the kingdom of God. The way of our ministry from the inception is to be in the way of Christ and his proclamation. Our ministry is a practical demonstration of Christ’s kingdom. May it be said of us simply, they came eating and drinking. “A friend of tax collectors and sinners”—that simple. That seemed to have been their strategy. It is what they were doing all the time. As Matt Hardy used to say in the early days of CrossPointe Coast, at the end of our time together, he would say, “Till we eat again.” And it was that simple.

Now how will this be so? How will we be accused of this? Because we make our way around the table and sit down with the downcast and rejected in Brevard County, which means we need to see them. We need to go and find some way to be proximate enough that they would actually be functionally a real neighbor, and then dine. Maybe it is at their table. Maybe it is at ours. But we would partake of the Lord’s provision together.

So may the wisdom of our hospitality be found as we, first of all, take delight in the way of Jesus. That should be the first object that fills our imagination: to delight in the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus, from the first command of creation to the final command to recline at his table, is that we would have fellowship together with God. Delight in fellowship with God functionally, practically, with your bodies.

Imagine your meal tables as a fellowship together, heralding the gospel in our conversations around the table, that secondly, may our neighbors begin to delight in the way of Jesus with us. They have already dined with us. Will they dine with Jesus in his kingdom forever? Is that what we long for? Is that what we speak about? Is that the topic of our meal conversations even when the neighbor is not there? Do we care about the kingdom, and does food draw us there?

Mess Hall, Buffet Table, or Something Else?

One more clarification. Is the meal table that we would imagine a mess hall, a buffet, or something else? At CrossPointe Coast, we do not think of ministry as either a mess hall or a buffet table. At CrossPointe Coast, even as a people together, ministry is not efficient or institutionalized like a mess hall. Neither is it a series of buffet programs, individually catered to consumeristic desires and wants.

Rather, the image that we have in our mind of a biblical life of ministry, the how of the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is a long and slow meal. Literally into the evening, moving to the couches and coffee and conversation. It is a place where we might actually be called friends, where strangers and neighbors can become friends with those among whom we minister, so that our love is not a means of evangelism, but a functional reality of our fellowship.

Eating with Saints and Sinners

We ought to look like a people eating and drinking with both saints and sinners at the same time. I think this is so important to how this actually functions. Jesus’ disciples were with him at these meal tables where he partook with sinners. Eating and drinking with saints and sinners at the same time is not a metaphor.

As we actually practice hospitality and expand the meal table to literally include families and cultures and nations, both strangers and neighbors, we will see what God has done at our tables begin to be a little embodiment, a little microcosm of what God is doing in gathering a people to his kingdom. As we see in the parable of the good Samaritan, there is not that little subset that is excluded, but they are provided for and brought in, that our meal tables would be a way that the far off would be brought near.

Now in the first years of CrossPointe Coast—we are about fifteen years old now—in those first few years, this idea of fellowship around a meal table was an aspiration, something that we were longing would appear. Sandy and I, we had already enjoyed much of it in our practice of an open table in our home, both in prior ministry as well as in the early days here. So many of the early partners at CrossPointe Coast—some of you in this room—came into CrossPointe Coast through our dining-room table. It was really sweet then and now.

But over the course of the last decade and a half, what has happened is these meal tables, these workday and Sunday-afternoon lunches and these lingering conversations are the way that you—not we, but we together—have brought news of the kingdom to Brevard County. That is the strategy.

The Coming Year at Christian Care Ministry — CCM

The coming year, as I look at what things look like in the coming year, we are moving in January into Christian Care Ministry. Now in our move there, moving our celebration-service gathering into that space, we also lose this incredible gift of a facility that we have all week long. The staff has already begun moving down the hall, and we are in smaller rooms down here at the end of the hall. We are essentially moving again into a rented Sunday-morning gathering in January, and our church will again become a church distributed.

But I would argue that has already always been true the rest of the week. In many ways, nothing really changes. In the coming year without a weekday building, it does have real effect, but we have to intentionally labor as a people distributed to meal tables. That is how I want you to think of it. You are not distributed just not here, but when you go and be the church, go to meal tables where you can be intentional, open with your lunches and your coffees and your offerings of hospitality with evening meals.

It is going to require—I think this is going to be the hardest thing. It is already, for those of you who have already caught this biblical vision, and as those others of you would begin to participate, one of the greatest costs. It is going to require not filling our lives with activities that are so much a part of the social norm. Because if your life is filled with activities, your dinner table may not even happen, let alone can it be full with people. It can crowd out the opportunity to share our lives with others. It is truly, functionally, really, just as is reported with Jesus, countercultural.

So instead, what we can do is we can free our lives, listen for opportunities to enter into the lives of neighbors and their activities, even as our own tables are not rushed onto the next activity. The Son of Man came eating and drinking. He lived a life reclining even as he lived a life of suffering proclamation.

An Invitation to Dine

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and before he gave his life for the redeemed, he left us an invitation to a meal. In a moment, we are going to take communion. And for those who know Christ and you believe in him for the forgiveness of your sin, you who have confessed your sin, receive the grace of forgiveness—the table is open to you. Come, remember. Come and fellowship. Come and dine.

And then go and set a table again this week. No, it is not the table of communion. It is the table of fellowship that is an image of what it would look like if those who were at that table belonged to Christ. And invite a neighbor and a friend, a coworker and a stranger to eat with you. When? Well, when do you eat? Like, then. That is when. And pray for opportunity. Leverage conversation to be a herald of the gospel, yes, and above all, a lover of the human soul, one who longs that the family’s fellowship would extend to even more sinners.

For those who do not yet know, those who have not yet trusted in Christ, perhaps you do not think you are worthy to dine with Jesus. And friend, there is actually a gift in that. There is a gift that you are not the self-righteous one who is not coming in because you think you are too good for Jesus. But know this: there are none who are worthy to dine with Jesus. Perhaps you are still trying to prove to Jesus that he would make a good decision if he invited you in, if you tried to live a certain way, if you tried to clean yourself up a little bit. But there is no cleaning yourself up enough to be worthy of the Son of Man’s majesty and glory.

The only way that we would be fit for his table is if the Son of Man would come and dine with us, and if we would humble ourselves that the only means of approach is through forgiveness that is offered through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross in your place. This is the only means of admittance: his grace received with faith. So I call you who have not yet believed to trust in the provision of Christ, that you can do nothing except confess and repent of your sin and believe that Jesus has actually invited the actual you, the real you. He sees who you are, that he would have you recline at table with him by the provision of his love and grace.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.