Love and Sacrifice: The Peace Offering
Leviticus 3:1-17
Pastor Bob Hiller
3/7/2010
Isaiah 25:6 On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine-- the best of meats and the finest of wines.
1. Because of God's favor and grace in this meal there is ______________ between God and His people, and by extension, ______________ His people.
2. Jesus' primary mode of ________________ took place around _____________ tables.
3. Jesus create such a shalom event and people primarily at the ____________ ______________.
4. What if our meals at home looked like an ______________ and a ______________ of this meal?
Scripture Readings
Leviticus 3:1-17
Colossians 1:15-24
John 17:20-26
Take It With You!
During the season of Lent we will be examining the sacrifices prescribed by God in the book of Leviticus. Here we will offer thoughts and meditations on the sacrifice of Christ to help us as we contemplate and discuss and wrestle with the messages.
The practice of hospitality has fallen on bad times. Fewer and fewer families sit down to a meal together. The meal, which used to be a gathering place for families, neighbors, and "the stranger at the gate," is on its way out. Given the prominence of the [Lord's] Supper in our worshipping lives, the prominence of meals in the Jesus word of salvation, it is surprising how little notice is given among us to the relationship between the Meal and our meals. Our surprise develops into a sense of urgency when we recognize that a primary, maybe the primary, venue for evangelism in Jesus' life was the meal. Is Jesus' preferred setting for playing out the work of salvation on this field only marginally available to us? By marginalizing meals of hospitality in our daily lives have we inadvertently diminished the work of evangelism? And is there anything to be done about it?
*Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. 215.
In Holy Communion, the forgiveness of sins moves from the one-dimensional forum of declaration into the realm of three-dimensional manifestation. Grace becomes tangible, sensational, eventful. Just as the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord are the real facts from which discipleship originates, so too the Lord's Supper serves as a commons source for Christian reality and experience of God's real voice and real presence.
*Rev. John Bombaro, Holy Communion as a Strategic Plan for Church Growth. in Modern Reformation Magazine, July/August 2009.
