by Kevin Burton
Last Sunday on Page 7 we talked about breakfast. Today, even better food for thought.
Did you know, there’s a new day coming? I mean a totally new day. A capitalized New Day kind of new day.
Think about it, breakfast with Jesus!
In John 21:12, Jesus issues the invitation to His disciples, “Come and have breakfast.” Today Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life Radio Ministry breaks down all that included in that short sentence.
“In these words the believer is invited to enjoy a holy nearness to Jesus. “Come and eat,” implies the same table, the same food, and perhaps it means to sit side by side and even to lean on our head on the Savior’s shoulder,” Begg writes. “It is being brought into the banqueting house, where the banner of redeeming love, waves in welcome.”
“This invitation gives us a vision of union with Jesus, because Christ Himself is the only food we can feast upon when we eat with Him. What union is this! It has a depth that reason cannot fathom.”
“Ponder His words, ‘Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,” Begg writes.
Those words have been off-putting to many, including the Jews who first heard them. They asked, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat,” (John 6:52).
More than being unworkable it sounds barbaric to the natural man, thinking and reasoning on an earthly plane.
This eating and drinking, I take to mean consuming the word and the will of God and making them a part of you. We remember this when we take communion at church. The crackers and juice are symbols of the body and blood of Christ.
Begg writes that the Lord’s invitation to breakfast also has meaning to believers in relation to each other.
“It is also an invitation to enjoy fellowship with the saints,” Begg writes.
“Christians may differ on a variety of points, but they all have one spiritual appetite. And if we cannot all feel alike, we can all feed alike on the Bread of life sent down from heaven,” Begg writes.
“At the table of fellowship with Jesus we are one bread and one cup. As the loving cup goes around, we commit our lives to one another. Get nearer to Jesus and you will find yourself linked more and more in spirit to all who like yourself are supported by the same heavenly manna. If we were nearer to Jesus we would be nearer to one another.”
“We also see in these words the source of strength for every Christian. To look at Christ is to live; but for strength to serve Him, you must eat what He provides.”
“We work too often in a sense of unnecessary weakness because we neglect this perception of the Master,” Begg writes. “None of us need to put ourselves on a low diet, on the contrary, we should fatten ourselves in the Gospel so that we may derive strength from it and extend every power to its limit in the Master’s service.”
“Then if you would realize nearness to Jesus, union with Jesus, love to His people and strength from Jesus, “come and have breakfast” with Him by faith.
“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” John 6:56-58 NKJV).
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