Jared Longshore's Blog, page 20

Bread Is Made to Be Broken

Any outside observer of the Lord’s Supper can see that it is more than a meal. Such an observer gets the sense that participation at this table comes with certain obligations. All meals carry some obligations with them. If you eat at another’s table, you understand there are certain duties, even if they are simply showing up on time, saying thank you, and being a polite dinner guest. But this outside observer would quickly get the idea that more will be required of him at this table than simply saying thank you. And he would be right.

While it is by grace and grace alone that we come to this table, it does not follow that we can come and go, disregarding the commands of the Lord of the table. The One who says, “This is my body broken for you,” also says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” So while none of us are Jesus, and it is most important that we keep that point clear, every Christian must be like Him. It would be foolish of us to think that we are bread like Christ is bread and that we will not be broken as He was broken. It would be silly for us to think that we will proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes and not follow Him to Calvary.

Christ suffered for our welfare. And Paul picks up this theme saying that death was at work in him while life in those to whom he ministered. So it must be with us. As you come to the One who sought your good, seek one another’s good. As you come to the One who interceded for you, intercede for each other. And as you come to the One who protects and defends you, protect and defend one another.

Bread is made to be broken. And when it is broken, it nourishes others. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Mercy to Thousands

The Lord’s kindness is seen in that He shows mercy to thousands of generations of those who love Him and do His commandments. Baptism reminds us of this very kindness. Here God’s covenant promises are revealed, claimed by parents, and signed and sealed by water. These promises include new life and eternal salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. As they have always been, these covenant promises are kept by faith. So our hope is not in the water but in the God who ordained this sacrament. His name is Faithful and True.

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When the Room Is Full of Fumes

With the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, we all know that the room is full of fumes. This knowledge is a grace from God. He would be perfectly just to wipe our nation off the face of the earth without warning, given our high-handed and unrepentant sin. With the sexual corruption and abortion that marks our land, we have reached the point where one wonders if God will have to apologize to Sodom if He continues to spare us. We should be grateful that mercy belongs to the Lord and He indeed will show it to whomever He pleases. This is precisely what He has done for us. So one of the points we must keep in sight as we navigate the days ahead is that it is sheer mercy that has kept us from devolving into national chaos.

My friend Doug Wilson has been preaching for a good while now that we should not take the bait. That counsel is all the more fitting right now. But one does wonder if people can resist the bait that is now being dangled. Might there be another attempt upon Donald Trump’s life? Of course, there might be. And would CNN come out with another disgusting headline about it? Of course, they would. And are you really going to trust that the liars and thieves who have compared Trump to Hitler are going to start acting like decent people? If you’ll buy that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona; from my front porch, you can see the sea. Our material problem is that the hits will keep coming. Our formal problem is that a nation that spends the kind of money we spend on pornography isn’t exactly what you would call a bastion of temperance and fortitude. In other words, we will only have more fumes pumped into this building, and we are the kind of people that like to play with matches.

That folly was on full display during the first day of the Republican National Convention. In the immediate wake of God mercifully protecting former President Donald Trump, the RNC thought it would be a good idea to platform an unrepentant whore and a Sikh to pray to the demon-god Waheguru. The temptation for most conservatives at the moment is to mumble qualifications and attempted justifications. It doesn’t matter if the majority of the RNC doesn’t worship Waheguru. It doesn’t matter that these moves are simply political and an attempt to get elected. They certainly are. We can agree on that point. It also doesn’t matter that Harmeet Dhillon, the Sikh who prayed to the demon, offered up a similar prayer at the RNC in 2016. We should readily admit that we have a long and ongoing cancer. We should do so while also noting that you can’t roll the clock back too far in the United States and find the RNC promoting the bald-headed, porn star, atheist lady. Some things indeed are genuine developments. The fact is, a person who attempts to justify the abomination of platforming Ms. Rose and the Sikh prayer has lost the plot entirely. That is a person who simply isn’t reading the story we are in at the moment.

The former president was an inch away from losing his life, and our nation was an inch away from chaos days ago. The blood hasn’t even dried on the bleachers, and the RNC publicly praises a prostitute and a foreign god in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our rot runs deep, a point that is manifest given that the same diversity, equity, and inclusion were on display in the secret service as multiple women were employed to shield the former president from gunfire during the assassination attempt. The pictures and videos are shameful and hard to watch. Not only or primarily because they depict gross levels of incompetency and embolden serious enemies of our nation, but because they evidence that we have become a cowardly and misogynistic nation who pay women to shield men from bullets.

Add to our story that we are coming fresh out of NatCon, where J.D. Vance, Trump’s new VP pick himself, spoke. Senator Josh Hawley called himself a Christian Nationalist. Albert Mohler insisted that we maximize the Christian commitment of the state. And Doug Wilson admonished Donald Trump that as he loves God, the country, and his own soul, he should give explicit glory to God in the name of Jesus Christ. Go ahead and anticipate plenty of conversation about the size, impact, and viability of the Christian Nationalist movement, or what place and influence it has in the GOP. All of that is fine and good. But the major story is not the morphing of the Republican Party in the Trump era.

The main story is that you will have Christ as Lord over your nation and politics or your nation and politics will come to ruin. You will bow to the Lord’s warnings or you will be broken like Pharaoh, who hardened his heart. It is one thing for the RNC to contract the Sikh in 2016 to offer thanksgiving and petitions to an idol. It was wicked back then. But it is another thing entirely for the RNC to offer up strange fire and platform the slut with the forehead tattoo after our tyrannical COVID lords suppressed the worship of God and freedom of man, the George Floyd riots set cities ablaze across our country, and an assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump exposed our monumental ineptitude. That’s going full Pharaoh, after the ninth plague.

There is only one way out of this tinderbox. Repent of your sin and confess Christ as Lord. “Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest” (Psalm 95:7-11).

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A Glutton and a Drunk

It is universally accepted that Christians should be Christlike. But you will not find universal agreement on what it is like to be Christlike. Many young boys have grown up being reminded by the church ladies that they should follow in the ways of Jesus, these church ladies being the type who will not abide a foul tongue and never miss a ladies’ luncheon to discuss The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Homemaking. But the boys eventually come across the gospel truth that Jesus came eating and drinking, and was accused of being a glutton and a drunk, only to have the church ladies look on in dismay as the young men’s bible study marches off to the local pub singing, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.” The church ladies wag their fingers. The boys continue, “Though none go with me, I still will follow.”

The charges against our Lord were false. But they were reasonably false. His first miracle was turning water into good wine in order to keep a wedding party going. He multiplied fish and loaves to feed 5,000 and made sure there were leftovers. Of all of the sacraments He might have left us, He gave us bread to strengthen the heart and wine to gladden it. He had nothing to do with the self-made religion which flies the three banners overhead: Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. That self-righteous religion has the appearance of godliness and it is plenty tough on the body. But it isn’t the least bit tough on the flesh.

If you would truly crucify the flesh, and if you would genuinely be Christlike, then you must know what it means that the Son of Man came preaching the year of the Lord’s favor. Believe Him and you will be as new wine skins swelling with His new wine. Disbelieve Him and you will be as old wine skins burst apart by His fermentation.

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Or America in 2024

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;

An army, whom liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, England in 1819

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The Sign Giver

Legalism can take on many forms. There’s the easily identifiable form of adding to God’s commands. Then, there is the legalism of holding to God’s actual commands in an attempt at self-justification. But, you might avoid both of those forms and still fall into the legalism of stripping God’s law from His hand. This frame of mind says, “Well, I just do what is right because it is right. Isn’t that enough?” Well, no, it is not enough. We love God’s law because it is good and because we love the law-giver.

The same principle holds true at this table. We love this sign because we love the Sign-Giver. And you must be sure to look through the sign to the Sign-Giver. The life you now live you live by faith and you will have no life at all apart from faith. The bread is not enough. The wine is not enough. The command to come indeed is potent and it is a command that converts the soul. But it must do that. It must convert the soul. The word, like the seed from the parable of the Sower, must find good soil. Only then will it yield a crop.

There is a way to go through life oblivious to the signs. You can allow that one way your wife has fallen short to take center stage, forgetting how many meals she has cooked you. You can focus on that one thing your husband didn’t do, while failing to see all of the sacrifices he has made for your family. And you can do the same here at this supper. Read the signs. This bread is the body of Christ broken for you. This wine is His blood shed for your sin. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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No Empty Promise

One of the kindnesses of God is that He has not left us without His Word. He testifies through creation, through the Scriptures, and through His Son. He has also delivered His Word through the sacrament of baptism. In baptism God announces that the old has gone and the new has come. He declares that we are buried with Christ in baptism and raised in Him to walk in newness of life. This Word from God is not an empty promise for the Father announces it by the Spirit, and it is confirmed in the Lord Jesus Christ in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen.

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Form and Freedom

Any good leader will tell you that you want both form and freedom in an organization. The form without freedom approach sucks all of the life out of the room. Yes, the table is set perfectly. But the spirit of this dinner is such that all you can hear is the clinking of forks on plates amid those deafening silences. Everything is indeed in its place. But you should have seen the lash employed to make it so. In the face of this error, the libertine in us wags a finger and insists that freedom will be championed and all of that crusty form forsaken. But the freedom without form approach results in mom cooking no dinner, dad bringing home no bacon, and little Johnny throwing the steak knives at his sister’s door.

So form and freedom together is the target. But hitting that target is not simply a matter of balance. The goal is not 50% form and 50% freedom, as if you were cooking some soup putting in a dash of one or the other. After all, if you only have 50% form, then you’re left with 50% disorder, and only 50% freedom means 50% slavery. Yes, form and freedom must go together but in a way that you are entirely free and entirely formed. You’re looking for 100% form and 100% freedom. Our LORD said, “if the Son sets you free you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). And the same God said, “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

This is not easy, of course, and we might want to echo the disciples who once said to our Lord, “This is a hard saying, who can hear it?” His reply to them at that time is fitting to this teaching as well. He said, “It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63).

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No Warrior Scolds

“And peace, Eustace. Do not scold, like a kitchen-girl. No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language.”

C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

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Harmony at the Table

Proverbs tells us that a dinner of herbs with love is better than a steak dinner with strife (Proverbs 15:17). And you have surely experienced this first hand. You have made all of the preparations for a lovely sabbath dinner, but then when coming to tuck in at the table all parties forgot to bring kindness with them. Or, you are out to a fine restaurant to celebrate an anniversary and it is as if the legions which went into the swine seemed to ruin your candle lit meal around that expensive piece of Wagyu beef.

The same holds true around this table. There is no greater feast in the world. But that does not change the fact that, if you come with something against your brother, then the whole thing becomes unsavory. If you come in unbelief, then what is sweet will be bitter to you.

Paul’s instruction is that we would be of one accord, which is to be harmonious. Harmony does not consist in everyone singing the same note. But the notes do have to get along. The notes must appreciate each other. They must recognize each other.

You may not struggle with the sins that beset the sopranos, and you may not always understand why the tenors do what they do. But you must at least appreciate that the sopranos are finite creatures like yourself and the LORD loves them as He loves you. Yes, you may not know what the tenors are up to but you can be grateful that they are up to it.

What you cannot do is be bent out of shape by those other voices, be that envy for their graces or strife when they’ve gone off key. The key to the freedom and harmony of any organism is our Prince of Peace who died to put an end to all of our fussing. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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