Coming home. The whole of redemptive history can be summarized with this theme of coming home. You can be yourself in the presence of a holy God.
We were created by God to know him, to enjoy him, to image him in all the world. We were welcome guests at his table of creation in the garden of Eden.
Yet, we sinned. Our sins drove us from the presence of God. They drove us from our home with God. Our created purpose, to be at home with God, was placed out of our reach.
We longed for home, but could not go home.
We looked for a place where we could be with God. Something to fill the empty place in our heart that waw left by the absence of God.
Then God came to us. He spoke to us. He entered a covenant with us. “I will be your God, and you shall be my people.”
“When you worship, I shall be there.” You can taste home in worship. You can reach it from there.
He then gave us the tabernacle, then the temple. God and man can meet together there. Heaven and earth come together there, they overlap in that place. It is the family gathering.
Then we forgot; again. We rested in the temple, not in the God who met with us there. So our sins drove us from home again – into exile this time.
But there was a promise of coming home again. God would provide a way. God would sen d his Son, the seed of the woman, to reconcile us to God, and bring us home again.
And so he did. The blood was shed, the tomb was empty, and the front door stands wide open for our return.
Today, in communion, we come home. We are at home with God. We dine at his table, with the whole family. We are ourselves in the presence of God, again. We are home, again. We can taste home from here.
The one requirement is simply this; that you rest in and trust the God who has spread this table. The God who has fulfilled his promise and reconciled us to himself. The God was has invited us home through faith in Jesus Christ.
If you do not have that faith; don’t come to this table.
If you have that faith, come. Come boldly, come joyfully, come just as you are. Be yourself in the presence of God. Here, at this table in the midst of worship, heaven and earth overlap. You are in the presence of God again, you are home.