Dennis Tuuri

Lord, oh ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars. Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

He maketh them also to skip like a calf, Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn. The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness. The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve and discovereth the forests. And in his temple doth everyone speak of his glory.

As we come to worship God, let us make confession of our sins with the prayer provided.

Almighty and merciful God, we realize and confess before thee that if thou shouldst regard our merits, we would indeed be unworthy to lift up our eyes toward heaven and present our prayers before thee. Our consciences accuse us, and our sins testify against us. We also know that thou art a righteous judge, punishing the sins of those who transgress thy commandments. But thou, oh Lord, hast commanded us to call upon thee in all our needs, and hast in mercy promised to hearken to our petitions.

This is not because of our merits, for we have none, but because of the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom thou hast appointed as our mediator and advocate. Therefore, we spurn all other help, and take our refuge in thy mercy alone. We acknowledge that thou hast showered upon us so many blessings that we are not able to comprehend them, much less to enumerate them. It behooves us so especially to acknowledge that thou hast led us to the light of thy truth and to the knowledge of thy holy gospel.

Yet we being ungrateful have forgotten thy benefits. We have departed from thee and have followed the desires of our own heart. We have not honored thee as we ought. We have grievously sinned against thee. If thou shouldst stand into judgment, we could expect nothing but eternal death and condemnation. But, oh Lord, behold the face of thy anointed and hide thy eyes from our sins, that thy wrath through his intercession may be removed.

Work mightily within us by thy spirit in order that we may daily mortify our sinful flesh more and more and do thou renew us to a better life. We pray thee for all these things, even as our faithful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself has taught us, saying, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

The Lord sitteth upon the flood. Yea the Lord sitteth king forever. The Lord will give strength unto his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace. A soft answer turneth away wrath. The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright. The eyes of the Lord are in every place. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life. A fool despiseth his father’s instruction.

In the house of the righteous, is much treasure. The lips of the wise disperse knowledge. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord. Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way. Hell and destruction are before the Lord. A scorner loveth not one that reproveth him. A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance. The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge.

All the days of the afflicted are evil. Better is little with the fear of the Lord. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox with hatred. Now let’s turn to 1 Timothy 4:1-5.

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

These verses speak to the lies of the present world system. Perhaps the biggest lie is the lie that all things that we see with our eyes have meaning in and of themselves. Secularism, some people have asserted, and I think it’s probably true, is probably the greatest heresy on the face of the world today.

Secularism says that there’s no meaning behind anything. What you see is what you get. The reality that we can perceive with our senses and measure and test is the only reality there is and it speaks to nothing beyond what it is. That’s secularism. And that’s probably the greatest heresy of our days.

And it’s a hard thing to walk about in a world when the participants in that world, the people involved, most of them continually shout through their actions, through their deeds, and often times their very words, “There is no God. There is no God. There is no God.” A religion is perhaps tolerated as mythmaking, as a way to get us through the night when we get a little afraid of things we don’t understand. But other than that, religion is seen as having no real significance.

Statism, which is a terrible evil, represents the state representing God to the people, and it really is an outgrowth of secularism. Now, most of us this last week had Thanksgiving meals. Most of us probably had those meals with families and we probably went through a great amount of ritual in those meals. We had several of our relatives over, my parents, and we were talking. I told my mother about some of this and she said, “You know, you start wondering why do I do these things at dinner? Why do I set the table this way? And why do we have Thanksgiving meals in a different way? And why do we when we have dinner, do we have these little rituals we go through?”

Well, there’s two alternatives we can take to dealing with the rituals of food and eating and of thanksgiving that we have in this country. One alternative is to simply get rid of them. The secular model would say that what we’re doing is progressing and getting rid of all those rituals. The other approach though is to think through those things and begin to wonder why do we go through these acts? Does eating mean something more than just eating? Is thanksgiving more than just acknowledgement that in the chance of life that we have been given these things through chance and we are therefore give thanks to some sort of God of chance.

Well, what we’re going to try to do this morning is really make application of the last dozen or so sermons dealing with communion to our lives through the vehicle of the normal family meal. The purpose of this is really in the last point of the outline, the fourth point, the resacralization of life. And it really isn’t the recentralization. It’s an understanding of the sacred aspect of life.

Sacralization is a big word simply to regard something as sacred or as holy or as set apart or consecrated for particular use by God and directed by his word. And one of the great tasks of the Christian church, I think in 1989 in the years to come will be to proclaim forth that what we see has a significance beyond what we see. And we’re going to talk about that this morning and use the family meal as the vehicle to take what we’ve been talking about in terms of communion and bring it into all of our lives through the vehicle of the family meal.

Now, we’re going to start then talking about and correlating some of the things with family meals to communion itself. The first part of the outline is the communion of the family meal. Now, the verses we’ve just read from 1 Timothy 4:1-5 are very interesting verses and we could spend a lot of time talking about lots of implications, but for the purposes that we’re dealing with today, we’re going to focus on the last three verses, verses 3, 4, and 5.

And of course, the point of these verses is that there are heresies that have been then, there are heresies that continue today to tell people you can’t marry and you can’t eat certain kinds of food. Now, of course, the reformers saw these verses as directly related to the Roman Catholic Church, which forbad the clergy at the time of the reformation to marry and also to abstain from meats for instance on Friday during the tradition of the church. And certainly that’s okay. But what’s important here is that we see that these texts don’t just correct a problem in terms of prohibitions that God’s word doesn’t sanction.

It moves positively to tell us some things about what we do in terms of eating specifically that are quite important. And the four basic concepts are really laid out in verses 3, 4, and 5 for us. Verse 3 says that you know these people are wrong and in error because God has created these things to be received with thanksgiving. Now, the word for receive there means a partaking. And in fact, probably some of your newer translations, it has participation or the concept of partaking. It’s more than just taking something. There’s a participation with the thing that you’re eating, so to speak. There’s a participation, almost a communion aspect of that, as it were.

Now, remember we talked about communion. The very first sermon we gave in communion. We looked at 1 Corinthians 10 and we said that our communion is with the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 10:11 and 12 primarily pointing us to the manifestation of the body in the local church and we one of the reasons why we talked about that and why one of the reasons that Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 points that out is he says look at the people of Israel who partake of the things on the altar don’t they have a communion with the altar through partaking of the food and we talked about how that when you have people centered around a particular ritual or element there’s a communion that exists among them because they’re all eating of the same thing and participating in the same ritual.

And so in the context of 1 Timothy 4:3, the participation in the food that God has provided through his creation with thanksgiving can be done individually, but it normally happens in the context of a family meal. And so in the same way that communion teaches a unity amongst the people in the church because we all go downstairs, we all eat of the same loaf of bread, we all drink the same kind of wine at the same time.

And it’s very important we do it at the same time because of this reason. It’s a picture of the communion of the church as the body of Christ. And because the family meets together around a common dinner table and has this partaking of the created things of God in terms of food, there is a communion around the family table. And it’s important to recognize that.

Now, it’s important here maybe to make a couple of comments about the correlation between the church and the family. And I’ll just offer this up briefly as a way of kind of prodding you into thinking about some of these things. We have oftentimes talked about the family, the church, and the state as three separate spheres. And there’s certainly much truth in that. But there’s also a danger, I think, in looking at things that way.

The Puritans, we’ve talked about the phrase the family is the first and best church, the first and best state, an oft repeated dictum in Christian Reconstruction circles that really straight from the Puritans. The Puritans understood that correlation between the church and the family, but they understood it really in a different way than perhaps some of us talking about these different spheres think of sometimes.

The Puritans saw the church and the state necessitated by the fall and that prior to the fall that the family would have sufficed to meet the religious and civil needs of the population apart from the fall. But the fall necessitated these two other institutions, the church and the state.

Now, there are lots of things to talk about in this regard, but let me just give you a couple of quotes here to help you understand what the Puritans were thinking about when they said these things. This first set of quotes I’m going to read is from Worldly Saints, a fairly recent book that will be in the church library as soon as I am done with it. And that in God’s providence, Roy brought to me at a meeting we had this last week. You know it really was very helpful to me.

Ryken writes in Worldly Saints. He says the Puritans’ favored image for the family was a church. Richard Baxter wrote that a Christian family is a church, a society of Christians combined for the better worshiping and serving God. William Gouge said that the family is a little church while William Perkins wrote these families wherein this service of God is performed are as it were little churches, yea even a kind of paradise upon earth.

The Puritans knew that the church can never be a substitute for the religious life of a family. In fact, the health of the church depends on what happens in the family. Richard Greenham claimed that quote, “If ever we would have the church of God to continue among us, we must bring it into our households and nourish it in our families.” And so they saw the great importance of the family in terms of the church.

And they saw it a little bit differently as I said than just three separate spheres. The family provides people for the institutions of the church and the state. And you really cannot have a proper state or church apart from proper families. While the reverse isn’t really true. You could have and have had in the history of men states that have been terribly idolatrous and yet families remain intact. And so the family is sort of a primary sphere as it were from which these other two institutions come out and develop and the Puritans understood that.

The relationship I’m trying to draw here then is one of seeing things in the church as really being correlative to things happening in the family and the Puritans understood this. The Puritans had a great grasp of the Old Testament and because of their understanding of this connection between the church and the family, they looked at certain elements of worship of the church in the Old Testament and saw significance then not just for what happens at the temple but for what happens in families as well.

For instance, they looked at the morning and evening sacrifices that were required under the old covenant system at the temple. And they as a correlation then saw the need for family devotions in the morning and in the evening because they knew that the scriptures spoke about prayer as being a sacrifice as it were of the lips of man. And of course they have good biblical warrant for this.

In Psalm 141:2 we read, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” And so the psalmist wrote in terms of his prayer being a fulfillment as it were of the requirement of the evening sacrifice.

In a sermon in 1755 by, I believe, William Seward—I couldn’t read the name to what was written on the particular sermon. I had it come out of that what is that called that collection of early works in America that’s available on microfiche—but any event, in a sermon in 1755 we find the same reference to morning and evening devotions and the two sacrifices and again quoting the psalms. And in this particular sermon he quoted Psalm 92:2 which says it is a good thing to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night.

Again, correlating the morning and night, the prayers and the devotions that would happen in the families to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. And I think this is the way God wants us to think. Remember, we’ve been talking all along about how what happens at church on Sunday is the matrix, is the pattern for what we’re supposed to do during the week. And so, the morning and evening sacrifices that were required in the old covenant at the temple then became fulfilled in the new covenant times in terms of the morning and evening devotions and prayers of the faith.

Now the Puritans also saw a correlation between the Old Testament sacrificial system occurring at an altar and the family meal happening at a table. And it’s important to know here that of course the altar was a flat surface under the old covenant system at which things were placed, at which the offerings were placed. Remember we’ve talked about in terms of covenant meals that some of those meals that were placed there, some were eaten by the offerer himself.

There were some of those sacrifices that were placed on the altar that were eaten by or a portion of them eaten by the priest who ministered in the temple and then much of the sacrifices were dedicated totally to God. And he had a burnt offering that went up to the nostrils of God as it were and in a sense he ate of those offerings. And so the altar is a presentation of something, a setting apart or a consecration of something for a religious purpose.

And the central idea there is one of eating. And so the Puritans saw that offering in the old covenant system happening on the altar and they developed the concept of the family altar and so that the table we have in our homes also is an altar as it were upon which food is laid and upon which people partake.

Now there’s a correlation between that and the Lord’s table as well because the book of Hebrews talks about how we have an altar which those that serve at the temple or in the sacrificial system cannot partake referring to the participation we have in Jesus Christ. And so it’s proper to think of communion and a communion altar in that sense as being reception of food given reminding us of the work of our Savior Jesus Christ and our participation by belief in that in the benefits of his sacrifice.

And so there are these correlations that the Puritans drew between the church and the family between sacrifices and in our sacrificial prayers and devotion times and between the altar and the meal on Sundays as it were and the meal at home during the rest of the week. Very important to notice that.

Now in terms of this point then the partaking that we’re talking about here it is analogous to the partaking at communion making us one and the partaking of the meal together in your families again pictures and bonds together the family in a covenantal unit.

By the way, I thought I’d just mention in terms of the morning and evening devotions, one thing you might think about doing is we have the particular doxology we sing at the end of the first half of our service, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Remember when I preached through that, I mentioned that Bishop Thomas Ken as far as I know, that was the only song he wrote. That’s the last verse. Actually, there were three songs for a morning, an evening, and an afternoon song that he wrote. I believe it was morning, evening, and afternoon. Might have been morning, evening, and midnight. But in any event, there are in most hymnals, good hymnals, you can find copies of both that morning that Bishop Ken wrote and the evening song.

And they’re very good doctrinally speaking, and they’d be excellent for use for you in the mornings or in the evenings in your family to sing it together. Your children know the tune of course from singing it here every week.

Okay. In terms of this correlation between the two activities, Edwin Morgan essentially said the same thing in the book called The Puritan Family. Morgan said this: if the church showed its domestic origin by including children with the parents, the family gave signs of its former ecclesiastical activities by conducting regular religious devotions.

Though the church had undertaken public organization of religious instruction and worship, the family continued to perform these functions privately. Every morning immediately upon rising and every evening before retiring, a good Puritan father would lead his household in prayer, in scripture reading, and in singing of psalms. Whenever they sat down at table together, he offered thanks to the Lord.

And I’ll give you three references here from The Puritan Family that if you can find them, I’d like to see them. And if I had gotten a hold of these, I might have gone too long this morning. So, it’s probably fortunate that I didn’t in the providence of God. But three Puritan works talking about the giving of thanks to the family apparently according to Morgan are a book by Thomas Manton called the Practical Discourse on Prayer, a book by Deodat Lawson, The Duty and Prosperity of a Religious Householder, and Cotton Mather, a book called A Family Sacrifice.

So, in any event, through those documentations and the other ones I’ve read from the other book on the Puritans, we see this correlation in the Puritans’s mind between what happens at church and then what happens at home. And so it’s important to keep that in mind in terms of our meals.

Now, I guess what I’m saying here then is that first of all, there’s a correlation because we all partake of family meals at home. As a result, there is a communion and a participation with one another in the covenanted household at home around that meal.

Now, I think in terms of this, it’s important to realize then that it helps us to understand a little better perhaps the prohibition in 1 Corinthians 5:11 that we are not to take anybody who is a so-called brother or fornicator or covetous or idolater or a railer or a drunkard and to such a one as this he says don’t even eat with such a man.

The prohibitions against eating with those who are excommunicated from the church even in your private families has correlation to what we’re talking about this morning. There is an excommunication that occurs from the Lord’s table and then it has significance for the eating of meals outside of public worship as well.

Now, you know, there’s how you apply that is another matter, but the point is the scriptures do draw some sort of correlation. And I think that apart from understanding this concept of the meal from 1 Timothy 4 being a holy thing and being a participation in a covenant group together, you wouldn’t be able to understand that verse very well.

Thomas Howard—I’ll be quoting this book a couple of times this morning. Keith loaned me this book, Keith Hansen. It’s an excellent book. It’s called Hallowed Be This House. And Howard really deals with a lot of what we’re talking about this morning in terms of the secular world around us and the need to understand the secular world that it isn’t a secular world that is really a sacred world.

And he what he does in this book is he goes through each room of the house looking at it from more of a biblical perspective and imagining things to us as it were in terms of the reality of God’s world. Well, in any event, I wanted to quote from Howard at this point.

Yeah. In terms of this fellowship that goes on and certainly most of us who can think back to last Thursday and relate to this. Howard says that sometimes on an especially festive occasion, the question of mere nourishment is almost wholly transformed in the right. Now we are thinking not of filling our stomachs but rather of fellowship. We invite you. We welcome you. We sit down at the table with you. We break bread with you.

To be sure, there is a biological need being met here, but the meeting of that need is not now foremost in our minds. It has been caught up and made the vehicle of a great and splendid thing, fellowship. And most of us, as I said, can relate to that, at least from a Thanksgiving meal.

I guess what I’m saying is that the ordinary meal that Paul is talking about in 1 Timothy 4 always has that aspect to it, the aspect of fellowship and communion. But secondly, that the scriptures go on to say that the participation, the communion we have with the item we’re eating and with each other as a result of it is to be characterized by a eucharistic element.

And so we have the eucharistic necessity of the family meal in terms of thanksgiving. In verse 3, it says that God has created all these things to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving. Twice repeating the word thanksgiving. And the word here for thanksgiving again is the same word we talked about last week, essentially the base word for the term eucharist.

And so there is a eucharistic element to every meal. It’s interesting that some people like to look at 1 Timothy 4:1-5 in terms of communion and happening having application to communion and that certainly would be true but it has primary application not to what’s happening on the Lord’s day but to what happens every day of the week that being rather obvious from the context of these statements.

There is a thanksgiving that is a necessity as part of the family meal in Christian households.

Now again I’m not trying to draw an absolute equation between communion and the family meal because obviously communion is separate from the family meal and is a sacrament whereas the family meal is not. Nonetheless, it is important to see the correlations of communion into the family meal and thanksgiving is an integral part here of receiving the food which God has given to us.

Again to quote Howard on the concept of thanksgiving that happens at the table, Howard says, “What is this eucharistic vision that is supposed to be at work over our meal? Is it not simply the getting into focus of what we see in a blur all the time anyway? Namely, that we have no life except what we owe to the laying down of some other life. And hence that thanksgiving is the most appropriate response.

The eating of food is seen not so much as the gobbling of what is my due as the receiving of a most holy benefit. Holy because whether the ox in the stockyards knew it or not, as he is being hit on the head, or the kernel of corn as it was being pulverized in the mill, this is death in order that something else or someone else, me, might live.”

Again, he says, “This sitting down around the table with our family or friends is an act in which we may perceive and mark and celebrate the thing which is true that our fellowship with each other is most literally a meeting of eating, a matter of eating together. Since it is here that we not only profess but also enact our common indebtedness to the word, to the order of exchange of life.

As you and I break this bread together, we signal and enact together our participation in the order of creation. We both depend on bread to stay alive and we seal our solidarity with each other. This bread broken between us will become the sign of the love that will obtain between you and me. My life laid down for you. My life drawn from yours laid down for me. For Christians, of course, the whole thing is caught up in the biggest transaction of all of which all these smaller transactions are but examples.

Namely, the life of the Lamb of God laid down so that we might live. We had cereal this morning and during our devotions I asked one of my younger children if anything had to die in order for him to live and he said no at first but it was Rice Chex I think and the fact is that rice was taken and the rice was killed separated from its life so to speak it was pulverized made into a mash and then made into these little flakes and so it’s a good way to teach our children that something had to die in order for us to take this food and live.

And because of that, it should bring us to a point of thanksgiving. It should help us to realize that the basis for all that, the whole thing that all that is picturing in creation is the death of the Savior giving us life eternal. And so our family meal as well should be a eucharistic event, so to speak, a time of thanksgiving to God for the food.

It is interesting here, by the way, that the verses actually say that these things are good when received with thanksgiving. And the implication of that is that when most people eat their cereal or when most people eat their food and are not thankful to the God who provided it, it isn’t really good to them either.

The scriptures say that to the impure, all things are impure. Not because the things themselves have this impurity in them, but rather because of the lack of thanksgiving. So as the heart of communion at our worship service downstairs is eucharistic, thanksgiving to God for all the things that were remembered there. So our family meal is also at the heart of it according to 1 Timothy 4 by the command of God is to be a sense of thanksgiving.

Additionally, it says that we’re supposed to this thanksgiving consists of the element being consecrated. Verse 5 says it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer. Talking about food here says the food is good if received with thanksgiving. And the implications of that are that it is sanctified. It is set apart or consecrated by the word of God and by prayer.

Now it is interesting that some people again this is the primary part of this verse they like to apply to communion because at communion most churches use a prayer of consecration for the elements in addition to thanking God for the bread and for the wine. You’ll notice that I usually include a prayer where that God would set apart these things from common to sacred use.

And when you look at this verse for justification for that’s okay but the problem is it also leads you to realize that whenever you have Rice Chex at home or whenever you have a hot dog at home, you’re to do the same thing. You’re to set it apart or to consecrate it. The word there hagios means to set apart for God, to set apart for his purposes. And so it is to set it apart for a holy use.

You’re familiar with this word because in terms of baptism, remember we say at the end that 1 Corinthians tells us the unbelieving husband is set apart or sanctified by the wife. The children are set apart in a special sense consecrated to God’s purposes when one of the two parents are Christians or professors. And so the same thing is that’s the same word that’s being used here.

And so if we see our children in a different state because of the sanctification of the parents, we should see our food in a different state as well when we come to God for it and give thanks for it and set it apart from common to sacred use. And so there is a sense in which that prayer of consecration is what we do at every mealtime.

Now Vincent in talking about this particular word of consecration or set apart says it does not mean declared holy but made holy. Thanksgiving to God has a sanctifying effect. The food in itself has no moral quality but acquires a holy quality by its consecration to God by being acknowledged as God’s gift and partaken of as nourishing the life for God’s service.

And that’s the second element. There is a consecration that’s spoken of here. And because we set apart our food as it were to a sacred use, we also indicate through that consecration that whatever life we receive from God in that dead food that he makes life to our bodies that service is to be used for him. And so Matthew Henry in terms of this verse says that we have it from him then and we must use it for him.

The consecration means there is a specialness to our meal but it also means there’s a specialness to the service that we do as we use the energy provided by that meal. Now this has an Old Testament analog as well.

In Deuteronomy 12:14 and following and also in Leviticus 17:8 and following we have described the prohibition on the eating of blood. Now in both texts the law starts with the proper way to kill, bleed, and then partake of a sacrificial animal and which you would expect. But what’s interesting about both texts is that after that specific instruction for specific sacrificial animals is given, then there are instructions given for the animals that are killed out in the forest that are going to provide food for your common use.

Okay? So, first there’s instruction about sacrificial meal and then there’s instruction about meal in your home. And in both cases, blood is prohibited. Now, there are some things that are somewhat different for the two meals, but the point I’m trying to make here is that there is a ritual that God has prescribed under the old covenant system for killing something in the woods.

And that ritual included bleeding the animal, taking that blood that you get from the deer that you shot out there, bleeding it immediately, pouring that blood out on the ground and covering it up with dirt, a ritual, okay? And it means something very important. It goes on to say in the text involved that the life of the flesh is in the blood. And so part I think of what was going on there, of course, was the idea this was pointing to the coming of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That was part of what was being spoken of.

And additionally, it was an acknowledgement that life comes from God and life is to be returned to the earth which God created. The created life which we take, we return to God in terms of service and we acknowledge his control and ownership of all of life.

This consecration then of the food in the old covenant system through this specific mechanism or ritual giving for bleeding the animals we shoot for food has a correlary in 1 Timothy 4:4-5 in the new covenant. Whatever we take, whatever is put before us, whatever we are to eat, we are to also set apart and go through this ritualistic prayer as it were, meaning something very important, an acknowledgement upon our dependence upon God for life itself.

And so the consecration in communion has a correlary to the consecration of the elements of our food at home as well. Very important to recognize that.

One other aspect of this consecration besides service is also joy. In Deuteronomy 12, it gives the instructions for how you bleed an animal if you shoot him out in the field. It goes on then to talk about the joy with which you’re supposed to celebrate before God in terms of the use of the rejoicing portion of your tithe.

And so part of the consecration of our of what we have of the elements of food themselves to God indicates our need to use the energy to serve him. But it also indicates our great rejoicing in the fact that he has given to given life to us.

The consecration is said in 1 Timothy 4 to be specifically through the word of God in prayer. Fairbairn in his comment on this verse says that God’s word to man warranting him to use the created gift and man’s word to God acknowledging the gift and asking his blessing upon it is what is meant by the word of God in prayer.

In other words, the word of God tells us that God has given us all these things for our food. He gives us a warrant to use those things for food and we then acknowledge the gift that he has given to us and ask his blessing upon our food through the prayers. So the sanctification happens through the word of God and through prayer.

Hendrickson summing up this section then said that for the Christian eating and drinking are no secular activities. While before partaking of food, man utters his petition and thanksgiving, God at the same time pronounces his word of blessing. There is a benediction as it were that comes upon those people that eat their food gratefully and thankfully to God.

Now if we understand these things correctly then that there is a participation in the food that God has given us, a communion with those we eat it with as a family meal, that family meal is to be characterized by a eucharistic celebration, and that family meal is to be understood in terms of a consecration of the things that God gives us using the service for his purposes in terms of kingdom work as well.

All of these things then provide a vehicle to us to take what happens at communion and at the center of our worship service into the rest of our week. And so it provides for the resacralization of life through the family meal.

Now, we said last week that to sum up communion, we said that communion is a eucharistic worship, a worship of thanksgiving. That thanksgiving was for a heavenly perspective. And what are we doing when we thank God for the food? We’re returning in terms of our dinner table to a heavenly perspective of what we’re doing. We’re saying that what we have here is not just stuff on earth as it were. There are heavenly realities that are pictured in this meal that God has given us life.

He has been gracious to us ultimately in Jesus Christ and also through the provision of his creation. So as in communion we have a heavenly perspective, so in our family meals we have a heavenly perspective and as communion is we give thanks to God at communion realizing that the heavenly perspective shows us our fellowship in the church. So we give thanks at our family meals realizing that the heavenly perspective that we obtain when we set apart our food for the purposes of God’s kingdom indicates a realization that we have communion with each other at our dinner tables as well.

And as communion realizes that fellowship is on the basis of the Christ whom we remember and whose death we proclaim, so also our family altar and our meal time should be filled with instruction to our children about the realization that when we thank God for this food and for the life that he gives us from it, it really points to the Jesus whom we remember and the Christ whose death we proclaim.

And as communion, that also indicates to us that this thankfulness we have is as recipients and dispensers of the grace of God. So our family meals as well should be realizing and we should teach our children. It shows to us the grace of God and giving us food to eat and then that we should use that grace by extending grace to others and inviting other people to our family meals and partake of our food.

So the model for eucharistic worship given in terms of communion is a fit model to take into our meal times together. Our meal time should be one where we remember the food that we celebrate the people that we do that in the context of in a specific time in which we eat involving a thanksgiving and a ritual in terms of that time.

The dinner table should be seen not just as some place where we go to get nourishment for the rest of the week or for that day where we perform a biological function as it were of filling our faces and tummies and getting nourishment through energy. The dinner table should be seen as a sacred thing as having an importance and a holiness to it, a hallowedness to it that God intends.

Now that seems to me to be the clear teaching of 1 Timothy 4:1-5 and these other scriptures as well, that the dinner table becomes then a means through which life itself is seen as resacralized because 1 Timothy 4 doesn’t just speak about food. In verse 4, it says that every creature of God is good, nothing to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.

You see, he’s talking in the first context here about food, but the term he uses for every creature is a term meaning any created thing. And so, what we’ve talked about here in terms of correlation to communion through the family meal can be seen as extended into the rest of our lives as well because everything involved in our lives is interaction with the created order.

All that we see is created by God. All that we see fits into verse 4. It is a created thing and it is to be received with thanksgiving from God’s hand. Nothing in the created order is supposed to be said to be inherently and of itself evil. It can be used for evil purposes, but this scripture affirms that it can be used for holy purposes as well.

And so besides just seeing the correlation of communion to the family meal, the family meal in terms of 1 Timothy 4:4-5 and ordinary food as seen as a connector into the rest of our created lives as well and in working with all of God’s creation. The same elements are present therefore in terms of the necessity to approach everything in life as sacred, as a holy gift from God, to be used with thanksgiving and to be seen as set apart for holy purposes through prayer and through the word of God.

And so there is a correlation here into all of life.

1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” 3:23 says, “And whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men.”

1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ concerning you.” Ephesians 5:20, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have in the family meal then a picture of the transitioning as it were of holy worship into our families and then into the rest of life as well. Now, I guess what I’m trying to get you to see here is the necessary connection pointed out in 1 Timothy 4:4-5, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless we do something about it.

These are great truths we’re looking at this morning. But what it means is you have an obligation in your families to change the way you eat your meals and to continue to improve on what the scripture says in terms of that eating. Now, we’re most of us in the context of households.

And I guess what I’m saying is when we have the offering here in a couple of minutes and you come forward to offer yourselves, your bodies, your possessions, all that you are to God and for the purpose of his service, this morning, I want you to think specifically about what you’re going to do at meal time during the rest of this week.

And I guess what I’m suggesting is that meal time should be a time when we teach our children thankfulness. We shouldn’t allow grumbling at the table. We should move to suspend or excommunicate or minor excommunication in terms of unthankful children who come to the table and say, “You have to sit aside here. Food is partaken with thanksgiving and consecration to God. Go sit down for a while. You can thank God for this food.”

Perhaps it would be good for us to spend certain periods of our week or months or years on a somewhat regular basis in terms of fasting to remind our children what real hunger is like. My wife had an idea for Thanksgiving in the morning. We didn’t have turkey till about 2:00. And she wouldn’t let the children have anything but five kernels of corn until we ate the meal at 2:00, reminding them of the pilgrims and the starving time that they went through.

And perhaps periodic fasting would be a good thing to remember at our at our family dinners as well. It’s a time to teach thankfulness. It’s a time to teach community. Our children, you know, we try to teach them downstairs reading bread with everybody else here. You’re part of an extended family. That means something to them. But it means a lot more to teach them at every meal time during the week that we’re part of a family here.

We’re to treat each other kindly according to 1 Corinthians 13, loving each other within the context of the family. There’s lots more we could be said about this, but the whole point is we’re supposed to see communion and its significance for the table and its significance for the rest of our lives.

And the dinner table provides a great way to make application of all that we’ve said over the last 12 weeks in terms of our families and then in terms of all that we do as well. Dinner time consecrates as it were the energy we get from God and that energy goes into all the world.

Zechariah 7:5-6 we read the following: “Speak unto all the people of the land and to the priests saying when ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months even those seventy years did ye at all fast unto me even to me. And when you did eat and when you did drink, did not you eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?”

We’re afraid that all too often today, the natural thing to do, the way society pushes us, the modern heresy, instead of being an absence from certain foods, the modern heresy is to eat for ourselves and drink for ourselves, seeing food and drink as a secular activity having nothing to do with our holiness to God. The scriptures say differently.

Some of our family last night watched Miracle on 34th Street. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that movie or not. Probably most of you are. The movie was half right and half wrong. The movie, as many good movies do, had a correct diagnosis of a problem. The problem addressed in Miracle on 34th Street was secularism, was having no imagination. It was seeing nothing beyond facts, what we can measure and perceive with our senses. There was an absence of faith in Miracle on 34th Street.

And the whole point of the movie was try to reinvigorate faith. So it had a good diagnosis, but it had the wrong answer. The answer to the problem of faith is not a leap to a belief in Santa Claus or something. The answer to the problem of a lack of faith in the world and a secularism that we see and saw in 1947 when that movie was made is these simple truths found in 1 Timothy 4:1-5.