From Russell Moore’s Tempted and Tried:
Don’t let your urges scare you. Let them instead drive you to pray for the wisdom to see what you were created to be and to do. Watch the triggers in your life that lead you to hunger for what you want, and be warned. But in the meantime seek to direct your appetites toward the ways in which the Word of God and the order of the universe tell us they can be fulfilled. And then seek to learn to long more for their ultimate resolution in a new creation.
This is another reason why the church shouldn’t neglect the Word of God, in every from God has given his Word–not just written or spoken propositions. God knows our frame and he knows we must not only cogitate on his Word-we must chew, swallow, and digest it. The Lord’s Supper is Jesus’ sign in bread and wine of his presence with us, of his dawning kingdom. Every time we gather together to eat bread and drink wine together, we hear Jesus announcing, “Your sensory appetites are real and good and created, and they are pointing beyond themselves to something beyond all you could ask for or even imagine.”
The Lord’s Table, then, isn’t just a visual aid to remind us, as though it were a memory-jogging tool. As we gather together around the Table, we are being trained to eat the ‘big table’ in Jerusalem. And we’re announcing to ourselves, and to the satanic powers in the air around us, what’s really true. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” is a sham. The alternative is not a refusal to eat, drink or be merry. That would be ingratitude. Instead, with the resurrected Jesus we sing out, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for yesterday we were dead.” –Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried, pp. 74-75
[This is from a section in his book that looks at how Christ dealt with temptation and conquered Satan through his life, death and resurrection. There are great implications for us as Christians in this great truth. Moore here puts his finger on one of them.]
[Tempted and Tried is available at Amazon or Westminster]
Possibly Related posts:
- Are You Able to Drink the Cup?
- Put Down the 2 Buck Chuck and Drink from Heaven’s Cellar
- The Big Picture: Exalting Jesus as Preeminent
