From Screen to Table

Good morning, church. We’re in part 3 of our series Connected. Finding Real Community in a Digital World. And we’ve been talking about the fact that although technology has made it easier to be connected, we are actually feeling more lonely and isolated than ever. But the question isn’t that we need to give up our screens.

It’s not that we need to give up our smartphones and our iPads, but whether we should recognize that there’s no substitute for face-to-face fellowship. And as we think about that, that we’re not saying one is evil, we’re just saying it’s not preferred, that there’s something better than digital connection. The Apostle John observed the same thing, that face-to-face fellowship is to be the first thing that you would choose. And so here’s what he says in his second letter. Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink, Instead, I hope to come to talk to you or to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete.

And so he wasn’t saying paper and ink are evil. He wasn’t saying that you need to stop writing letters. He was saying, no, it’s the best I can do right now, but I can’t wait to be face to face with you because then our joy will be complete. He just recognized the superiority of face-to-face connection. So it’s about priorities.

It’s about what you’re gonna be devoted to. And not seeing digital communication as being a substitute because it’s not a good substitute. It’s not to be preferred. And so speaking of the word devoted, that reminds us of our theme verse that we’ve been reminding ourselves of every week, Acts 2:42. And they were devoted, this is the first century church, they were devoted to 4 devotions.

They were devoted to the apostles’ teaching, to studying God’s word. They were devoted to the fellowship of being together. They were devoted to the breaking of bread, of bread, eating meals together, and to prayer. And so those 4 devotions, we’ve already talked about the first 2 in the previous 2 sermons, talking about those 2 devotions, and today we’re gonna be looking at breaking of bread, the idea of eating meals together. And we’ve entitled this From Screens to Table, because the idea is that we’re to be devoted to the table.

In other words, face-to-face having and sharing meals together. Because we long for the connection that a shared table provides, but we’ve traded the screen for the table. Now picture, if you will for a moment, the modern American family at dinner. Everybody’s there, everybody’s got a plate, the food’s been passed around, everybody has their head bowed.

Not praying. Dad is checking the scores.

Mom is in a group chat that she’s trying to keep up with. The teenager keeps laughing. For the last 11 minutes, he’s been staring at his phone, apparently watching some group of reels that no one knows what he’s laughing about. And then there’s the little girl and she’s sitting there with an iPad leaned up against a bottle of ketchup playing with her food. You don’t have to picture that very closely, do you?

All you have to do is remember your meal last night, because the truth is that’s, that’s every American family right now. We’re, we’re all at the table together perhaps, but we’re not really together. We’re present, but our souls are absent from the fellowship that we’re called to. And, and you might say, well, you know, that’s not good manners, is it? But it’s more than a matter of manners, it’s a matter of formation because this way of living is forming our new society.

And even more importantly, parents and grandparents, it’s forming the way our children interact with each other and with grown-ups. Just last month in an article published by researchers in JAMA Pediatrics, this is a journal to Physicians. It reports what Americans are saying about their family meals. It says that 78% of parents report using phones and screens at the table at their house, and 70% of children. Now what troubles me about that is I’ve been telling you that there’s an increase of young people using screens, and that’s true.

But what troubles me about this statistic is it’s actually the parents are worse. At the dinner table. The article goes on, the lead author in the study said that parents assume that simply being at the table means they’re giving their children attention, but the research suggests that a parent’s physical presence can quietly become absent when they’re absorbed in a screen. Present in body, absent in soul. But it’s not just families, it’s everywhere.

It’s the whole neighborhood. In his book, Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone, he says back in the ’70s, the average American household had friends over for a meal about 15 times a year. So that’s a little greater than once a month, that people would have somebody come over and eat at their house about 15 times a year. So most Americans got together at least once a month. But now face-to-face time, according to Derek Thompson’s research in his article, The Antisocial Century, he says it’s dropped in the last 20 years 70%.

So just in the last 20 years, he says that young people hosting a meal or going to a party at someone else’s house is down 70% in the last 20 years. We have bigger kitchens than our grandparents ever did. We have farmhouse sinks, double ovens, marble countertops, fancy dining rooms with place settings on them. But we just walk through the dining room on the way to the recliner so we can kick back and look at our screen while we eat our meal. It’s not just the table, it’s the way we’re not gathering around it anymore.

We’ve come to a place where we don’t have undivided attention with each other because we’re settling for a substitute. I wonder, have we lost one of God’s ordinary means of grace for growing our fellowship, our families, and our church? Just the ordinary means of grace of breaking bread together so that we get our bodies fed, but our souls and our relationships as well. Well, in the book of Acts chapter 2, Luke described how the first century practiced a rhythm of gathering in the temple regularly to worship and how they gathered house to house to share meals together and fellowship together and how God caused that church to just grow and explode in the first century. And I believe today we can experience that same kind of growth.

We can experience that same kind of Christian fellowship around the table. And as we look at the text today, we’ll be looking for 3 practices that help us experience that kind of fellowship, that kind of Christian community around the table. We’re gonna look at 2 verses today from chapter 2 in the book of Acts, verse 46 and 47.

And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. This is God’s word. Let me pray and then we’ll dig in. Lord, I pray right now that you’d give us hearing ears, that you’d give us receptive hearts.

And Lord, I pray for myself, Lord, that you would allow me to get out of the way and let you speak for yourself through your word and through your Spirit. Lord, we pray this now in Jesus’ name. Amen. So we’re talking about 3 practices that we see in this text today that will help us experience Christian community around the table. Here’s the first practice: gather regularly.

Gather regularly face to face. That, that we see in these verses that, that there’s repetitive here, verse 46 and 47, this phrase day today, or day by day. So there was this practice, this regularity of gathering day by day. You see it in verse 46 and again in verse 47. They had a rhythm of life that they were practicing.

Verse 46 says the church gathered. Verse 47 says that the Lord added. So day by day they gathered, day by day the Lord added. They did their part, which was to gather. And God did what only he can do, and he added day by day those who were being saved.

Notice that this practice of this rhythm of gathering regularly, and you kind of might picture right now that we’re gathering on the first day of the week in a public place, so they gathered publicly in the temple, and then they gathered personally in houses. And we have a ministry in our church that we call community groups, and these are small groups that meet in homes and they gather and they follow the same rhythm. You know what we decided when we planted Eastgate Church? We decided let’s not try to reinvent the wheel. Let’s just do what the church did from the beginning.

Let’s gather regularly face-to-face and let’s hear God’s word and worship and learn together in public places, in the temple courts, And then during the week, let’s meet in homes and share a meal together and study God’s Word together and pray for each other. And let’s then— let’s see God add to our church. Because remember what Jesus told Peter? He says, upon this rock I will build my church. He never called us to build the church.

He called us to be the church. In order to be the church and let Jesus build the church, we must gather. We just make it a priority to gather regularly and day by day to attend to what he’s called us to. Notice there are 2 parallel participles here, attending and breaking, attending and breaking. So breaking is the second one.

The word attending could have also been translated devoted or devoted, they were devoted to. It’s the same word that’s used up in verse 42 in the original Greek. And so they were devoted to worshiping together regularly, and they were devoted to breaking bread together. Now when they say breaking bread, they’re not just talking about, oh, we just break bread. No, that’s a euphemism for having a meal together.

It would begin with the breaking of bread and an opening prayer. So who usually the host of the house would break the bread and pray over the meal, and so it meant to have a meal together. And they met not only in public places but in homes. You see, if our church only happens in rows, we’ll miss out what our church can grow together in circles. We need both.

We need rows and circles. We need we need that rhythm of gathering in rows in order to. To experience the unity of worship together and having big gatherings where our vision is expanded for how the church is growing and we hear God’s Word proclaimed and so that we’re able to sit under God’s Word and be discipled. And then we also need to gather in circles. And so we see this rhythm.

Luke repeats this as a pattern that’s a settled practice in the early church. It’s not just the early days of the church, but as we get into chapter 5, they’re still following this practice It says in chapter 5, verse 42, and every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. In other words, they’re still preaching that Jesus is the Messiah, He’s the Christ, and how are they doing it? Temple courts, house to house. That was their rhythm.

That was their rhythm. They followed that regularly. When Paul planted the church in Ephesus, he followed the same rhythm. We see in Acts chapter 20 that he talks about how that was his practice. He says, you know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you, but have taught you publicly and from house to house.

He didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Paul planted churches and he did it the same way the first century church started, publicly and house to house. If you read the book of Acts, you find that he actually rented the Hall of Tyrannus. He rented a place ’cause the church grew so fast in Ephesus, he had to rent a facility for his public space. And so they were meeting in the Hall of Tyrannus, you can read about that, for 3 years.

Now someday when we get to heaven, I’d like to sit down with Paul, and Paul’s got a lot that he would be like telling me about, and I’d love to hear it, but I’ve got him on one thing, it’s a small thing, but it’s one thing. One thing I can say to Paul, hey, hey, you were renting a facility for 3 years, and that’s pretty hard, I know what that’s like, but we rented ours for 19 years. For 19 years. And, and see, the truth is about Eastgate Church— Eastgate Church did not start in a building like this. It didn’t start in a church, church building.

It started in my living room. It’s in— it started in the same house I live in today. It started in a little house, in a little living room. I invited about 40 people when God called me to preach and to start a church. I invited about 40 people ’cause I wasn’t from here, so I didn’t know a lot of people to invite.

Most of the people I knew, I knew from having been in the workplace or neighbors I knew. And out of the 40 people I invited, about 10 or 15 showed up at the first gathering in my living room. And then the church, boy, we grew it big the following week. It grew from like 15 to 7 the next week. And that was counting me and Robin.

Me and my wife, so we had 5 people show up, praise God. But in the next 3 months, we actually had 3 community groups meeting in 3 different homes. In 90 days, God added to it. And what was our secret sauce? We were devoted to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer in homes.

And people would just sit around my dining room table, and then it got too big for my house, and so because I was like the oldest guy in the church and I was 32. And so we were attracting kids from Barton College and young married couples who didn’t have kids yet. And they loved being in houses and just sitting around. And so I led 3 different nights, 3 different homes for really almost a year because I didn’t have any leaders yet. And so I was just out every night.

Leading these different groups, and, and God provided the increase. We— and so then we started renting facilities because within 90 days we were like, okay, well, we probably should start meeting all of us together, and nobody had a house big enough for all 3 of these groups. And so we were, we were small groups before we had, you know, public worship. And so we rented Forest Hills Middle School. If you grew up in Wilson and used to drive by Forest Hills Middle School back in the ’90s and all the way into 2005.

For 15 years we rented Forest Hills Middle School. We used to drive by, my daughter, when she was like 5 or 6 years old, we’d drive by during the week and she’d look over there and she’d say, Daddy, there’s people in our church today. And I’d say, Well honey, we let the school use it during the week.

But we were over there for 15 years and we were looking for space, but the whole time our church was growing and we didn’t want to limit what God was doing. And we know the church is not the steeple, the church is the people, it’s not the building. And so then we grew and then we rented Community Christian School on Packhouse Road for 4 years when this property became available. And so we bought this property and, and the church is still growing. But what we’ve been doing has not changed.

Devoted to God’s Word, devoted to the fellowship, devoted to sharing meals together. That seems weird, doesn’t it? But that’s part of it. And not just the meal, but the table, the Lord’s Supper, which is represented also by the meal, and then to praying together. If we will gather regularly face-to-face, We can’t cause the church to grow, only Jesus can do that.

And he promised if we would be the church, he would build the church. And so we just said, let’s just be the church. And look what God has done. 2 campuses, one in Rocky Mount, one in Wilson. Look what he’s done.

Look at the giving report we were able to give this morning from our It’s Time generosity initiative. I’m not celebrating me, I’m not celebrating you, I’m celebrating what Jesus is doing, his faithfulness through us, ’cause our job has always just been to gather regularly and worship him and let him add to their number daily those who are being saved.

Praise God. Thank you, Lord. If we will be the church, he’ll build the church. And that’s what he calls us to do. And so for nearly 35 years, it’ll be 35 years in November, November 1991, 7 people in my living room.

And I’m so glad that God called me to it so I could see you and we could be together here worshiping today on this day. So let’s, let’s make gathering face to face a priority rather than something we do when there’s nothing else on our schedule. Let’s make celebrating on the first day of the week, worshiping in the temple courts as it were, and then during the week house to house in a community group. Some of us, some of us feel like, you know, our houses are too small for this. Like, I don’t know if I— I don’t know.

Or we’re afraid to go to someone else’s house. But let me, let me just kind of get you to think about something. Now we’re row to row right now, but just kind of think, is there somebody in the room that, that I’ve never said hello to? And maybe even take a bigger step. This is going to scare you.

I know it’s going to scare you. What if you invited them over for a meal at your house? And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, man, I have to clean for a week to get my house ready for company, you know? And, um, and, and plus my kids— oh, my house is so chaotic.

I don’t know. I don’t know if I want them to see the way my kids behave. And, and, and I’m not a very good cook. And, uh, and, and so I know, and, and you’re afraid to invite somebody over, but what if, what if we started opening up our homes that way? It doesn’t require a special meal.

It doesn’t require special plates or— all it really requires is an available heart, an open door, and an invitation. The Lord grows real community when we gather regularly face-to-face. So think about it. Think about what God wants to do when we gather. Here’s the second practice.

The first practice is to gather regularly. The second is to share meals gladly, heart to heart. We’re still in verse 46. Luke continues. He says they received their food with glad and generous hearts.

They received their food. How do you receive food? You eat it. Yeah, and so it was just a way of, some translations say they partook, they partook of their food. Yeah, well, I partake of food too.

Do you partake of food? And so when I receive food, I put it in here. And so that’s really all it is. And that’s really what they’re saying. But what the focus here for Luke was, they were having ordinary meals.

They were just doing what people do, just eating food. But it was their heart that he wanted to clue us in on. And he said, when they received their meals, when they ate their food, they did it with glad and generous hearts. So he gives us these 2 attitudes they had when they shared meals together and this habit, this practice they had that they did it with glad, that word glad could have been translated with joy, and exultant hearts, with joy-filled hearts. Now look, just getting a good meal can fill me full of joy.

You know, when you get older, just a good meal and a nap afterwards, that’s pretty good, right? But they were gathering together with one another, and there’s something about sitting across the table from someone that maybe you don’t know ’em that well, but you start talking about the food, And you start talking about your favorite whatever, and it just kind of lowers the barrier and enables, it’s like it enables the relationship to go deeper when you share a meal together. So they were glad. And as I said before, these meals, this breaking of bread here, he says they received their food. This was a meal.

It may have been a meal that included The Lord’s Supper. It may have included that, that they had communion together. I think often they had practices that some have referred to as agape feasts or love feasts where they would get together as a church family and they would have a meal that might be preceded with or followed at the end with taking the Lord’s Supper and remembering what Jesus did. And so I think it’s both and. That they were doing this gladly, and they did it with generous hearts, it says.

Now, that generous word is of interest. It originally or literally had the idea of the smoothness of soil without stones. And so that’s why it was often translated simplicity or sincerity of heart, because Just picture soil without stones, the smoothness of it. I remember my wife’s father, my father-in-law, he had 2 acres and we would go to visit and he used to till up about an acre of it for a garden. And he and his wife, they loved to garden and can and do all that, but he had stony soil.

And he used to say, Gary, My land grows rocks. And so every year he’d be like, no matter how many times I till, he goes, and he had stones stacked up all along the edge of his garden where every, he goes, you think you got ’em all? He says, I’ve been 40 years, I’ve been gardening here, 50 years, I’m still growing stones. He was looking for smoothness of soil. And that’s what we’re looking for, for simplicity.

My son Jonathan and I, who pastors our Rocky Mount campus, we were studying this week. I’m gonna, y’all tell him now, I’m gonna quote him. This might be the first time in so many years that we’ve worked together, I’m gonna quote him instead of him quoting me. Here’s what he said when we were studying this word. He goes, Dad, I got a quote for you here.

He says, the gospel smooths out the rough places in our hearts so that we can truly fellowship. He did all right on that one, don’t you agree? I decided I’d put that in my notes. Now y’all tell him so I get credit. So you put those 2 together, glad in simplicity, full of joy and empty of pretense.

That’s what makes a real table of fellowship. Not the menu, not, not the home decor, not the pretty soaps and candles in the bathroom, although that’s nice. But the gladness and the generosity. It’s a description of Christian hospitality, and Christian hospitality begins with remembering that it was Christ who first welcomed us, ’cause hospitality is welcoming. Here’s what Romans says in Romans chapter 15, therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

So welcome one another. Welcome. Do you know the people on your row? Welcome them. Say hello to them.

You know, sometimes people say, well, your church is getting big, Pastor Gary, and the church is getting big. And it’s only as big as you let it get because we’re big on Sundays, but we’re small in homes every week. We gotta grow big and small at the same rate. And the other thing is, if there’s people on the row that you don’t know, well, you know how you could know ’em? Say hello today, you know, to someone.

Welcome them to the church and say, have we ever met before? And then they say to you, well, I’ve been coming here for 3 years. Well, you know, it’s about time that y’all met, okay? And so say hello to someone next to you. Be welcoming and welcome them for the glory of God.

Peter goes on in his first letter to talk about hospitality. He says we should be glad and not grudging with it. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. So when you welcome someone today, don’t tell ’em, well, I’m just doing it because the pastor told me to. But no, do it, do it and be glad about it.

After the first service, I preached this sermon first service and I had people come out to me afterwards and one lady came up to me and she said, we’re going out to lunch together. I said, who you going out to lunch with? She goes, And she goes, I think they’re all the way down there to guest services, and she named who they were. And I said, so y’all gonna— and she goes, I told ’em, let’s go out to lunch like the pastor said. We’re gonna go out and eat together.

And I said, well, hold up. I’m gonna go down there and see if it’s true. And so I went down and talked to those 2 ladies, and I said, such-and-such up here says that she invited y’all to go to lunch. Is that true? She says, yeah.

And I said, good, I’ll give her credit now. Go back and tell her. And she goes, you did not do that. I said, yes, I did. I went down there to find out.

If you want credit, I’m gonna go verify, okay.

And so invite somebody to go out to eat with you. Now, do you know the difference between entertaining and hospitality? A lot of people wanna entertain at their house, and that’s why they won’t ever have anybody over. Entertaining says this, come and see what I have prepared for you. Hospitality says, come and share what God has given me.

Or come and share what God has given us, like that. And so entertaining worries about whether the house is spotless, the food is impressive, and everything goes according to plan. That’s entertaining. Hospitality makes room for another person even when the house is lived in, the children are noisy, and supper is only soup and sandwiches. That’s hospitality.

So here’s the challenge, and I wanna make it small on purpose. If it’s small, maybe you can do it. Why not sign up on your connection card to be in one of our small groups? We call them community groups. Or better yet, let’s try this.

Let’s see if this works. If you’re already in a community group, lift your hand and hold it up for a second. Okay, hold it up. Don’t put it down. Now, if you’re not in a community group, look around on your row or nearby and see if you like anybody you’re looking at.

And if you do, Go to them afterwards and say, is there room at the table at your community group for me?

I’d like to try it out this week. And if you had your hand up and you looked around, maybe saw some people who didn’t have their hand up, you can do likewise and say, I noticed you didn’t have your hand up. I’d love for you to come and try our community group out this week where we’re devoted to 4 things. To the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. And so invite people.

That’s your challenge. Paper plates are fine. Chick-fil-A on the way is fine.

And put the phones away.

Not as a rule, not as a law, but as a gift to the others at the table. And the gift is you fully present, listening, and fellowshipping. That leads us to the 3rd practice. Here’s the 3rd practice. We, we’ve said gather regularly, share meals gladly, and then finally witness God’s work in life after life.

Witness God’s work in life after life. We’re in verse 47. Now watch what happens when the church gathers regularly and shares meals together Watch what happens. 3 things spill out of that room: praise, favor, and life change. Because they did it?

No, no. The secret sauce wasn’t that they gathered regularly and shared meals. It was that the Lord Jesus— that the Lord gave an increase. Their part was to gather and His part is to add. I can’t help but wonder if revival hasn’t come to our nation, to this city, because of our low priority about gathering, because it seems a small thing that he would call us to gather regularly and share meals, like, oh, do I have to eat?

With other people, to have together and praise God and share God’s Word and study. Oh, you mean that’s what, that’s my part, and then the Lord will grow the church? The Lord will bring revival? That’s what I’m seeing in the first century. That’s what I’m not seeing on display in the American church today.

It’s why a few years back, 2018, I was on a study break. I take a week at the end of every year and I go away and I read and I study and I pray and ask God to give us a fresh vision for the upcoming year. And this particular year, the Lord just impressed upon me to gather pastors in Wilson to pray for revival in our city. And I was like, Lord, surely there’s another pastor in town that has more influence than me. Why are you asking me?

Is that really you, Lord, or is that just me in my head? What, you know, just trying. And so I thought, well, I’ll start with one person when I got back. So, so first week of January 2019, I called my good buddy Pastor Rusty over at Peace Church, and I said, hey, I really feel the Lord impressing me to call pastors together to maybe have a I don’t know, a monthly breakfast and pray together for revival in our city. And I’m kind of thinking non-denominational, as long as they believe in Jesus and the gospel and can work together to see the gospel saturate our city.

He goes, man, Gary, the Lord’s been putting that on my heart too. I said, well, why didn’t you do it? The Lord had to get— he had to turn to me and get it going. He goes, well, that’s— so we got 8 pastors to show up at Denny’s in January 2019. And we’ve been meeting monthly ever since.

And I have like 25 pastors on my list right now that, that, uh, get a monthly email from me. I’m still trying to wave the banner, hey, let’s gather and pray and see if God will add to their number. That’s what we’re doing, and we’re still doing it, and across the city. And so, uh, we’re praying for revival in our city, and we’re asking God to do it. We want to see God’s work I’m getting older and I’m still praying, God, what would it look like to see a spiritual movement in our city?

What would it look like? I wanna see it. And so we’re praying for that because only God can do it. What’s it look like here, this outcome? They praised God.

These gatherings, it caused praise to come up in them. It caused them to have favor with the people. It says all the people. What is— I think I’m seeing here is that It wasn’t just the people in the church, it was the people outside the church started noticing these people, and they had favor with those people. God gave them favor with outsiders.

This past Monday evening, I got invited to go to one of the community groups and go out to, my wife and I go out to dinner with them, and I told Robin to let them know that we would go. And she said, well, Gary, they’re not gonna— they’re gonna meet in Goldsboro for this restaurant in Goldsboro, and it’s 7 o’clock, and you like to go to bed early. And I said, I do, I do. I go to bed early ’cause I get up early, but you know what? I’m preaching on this this coming Sunday, and if I say no— this is what God does to me, y’all.

Like, if I’m going to preach on this, I guess I better not be a hypocrite. They’re inviting me to go and break bread together in Goldsboro. And so them people kept— I didn’t get home till 10:30.

My goodness, if you was waiting for my one-year Bible devotion the next morning, it’s their fault because I could not get up early enough the next morning to put that out as I normally do. But we had a great time. And the favor in that restaurant, we stood up, there’s like 20 of us there, this is a big small group, we stood up and the leader of that group prayed for us and prayed for, brought the owner of the restaurant over and introduced him and prayed for him, and we felt God’s favor in that restaurant. You know why? ‘Cause we just got together and ate with glad and generous hearts and God gave us, That’s what happens.

Jesus talked about a people like this. He said in John, by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. I think it just kind of shows the world when we share these meals together, whether it’s in public or in private. And so let us make room at our tables. Let us make room in our hearts for gathering regularly with one another.

The farmer can get the rocks out of his soil, he can prepare it, but he can’t make the seed and he can’t make the seed grow. But we can decide together and we can decide to break bread together and then we allow God to do the work. The first-century believers regularly met and gathered between the temple and the table. They worshiped together in the large gathering And they shared their lives in the intimacy of their homes. They gathered face to face and Christ made them one.

They shared meals heart to heart and Christ filled their hearts with gladness and generosity. They witnessed God’s work in life after life because the Lord was continually changing lives. But Christian community does not ultimately begin with our invitation to invite someone to our table. It really begins with Christ’s invitation to come to his table. That’s really where it begins.

And throughout his ministry, Jesus sat at tables in homes, and he said yes to people that respectable society would reject. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He welcomed the guilty, the ashamed, the lonely, the spiritually hungry. And then on the night before his crucifixion, he invited his disciples to the table, and he broke bread, and he said, this is my body. Whenever you eat it, you do it in remembrance of me.

You see, unless you’ve been invited to that table, nothing I’ve talked about today will really make sense, nor will it have the outcome that I’ve described, because it’s not just the fellowship. It’s not just the one anothers. Those are healthy for humans. We, we need that. But it’s the part that God does that only God can do.

And when we say yes to the table that Jesus invites us to— come unto me, you that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest— he invites you to the table. Come, my body is broken for you. At the cross, his body was crucified, his blood was shed for our sins. But 3 days later, he was raised from the grave and lives today. And after his resurrection, we hear this story in the book of John that poor Peter, he had denied Jesus 3 times, even though he didn’t want to, even though he said he never would, he did.

And on this particular day, he had led the disciples, and they all looked to him as a leader. He led the disciples to go fishing. I mean, he felt like he’d lost his calling, I’m sure, and he said, well, let’s just go fishing. At least I’m good at that. And they fished all night and didn’t catch anything.

Turns out he couldn’t go back to his former life. He wasn’t good at that anymore. And then someone started beckoning them from the shore. Someone on the shore had a little campfire going with some fish cooking on it. Someone had made breakfast.

And John hears a calling out, and this one on the shore says, why don’t you throw the net on the other side? And they did, and they pulled up a catch so big it filled the boat. And John said, it’s the Lord. And Peter goes, what? And he dives in and swims ashore, didn’t even help the guys get the fish in.

And they come in there, and Peter runs up to Jesus. Can you see him dripping wet? He runs up to Jesus and he says, well, Why don’t you bring some of the fish you caught over here too? And as they sat around that meal, that breakfast that Jesus prepared, he said, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know all things.

You know that I love you. Feed my sheep, he said. And 3 times he asked, and 3 times Jesus answered. And Peter was restored to his calling. And to his love of Jesus, because Jesus invited him again to the table.

I don’t know where you’re at today. Maybe you need to come to the table for the first time. You’ve never come to Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Or maybe you’ve been drifting, you’ve been isolating. That’s what the flesh, that’s what the world, that’s what the evil one calls us to do, is to isolate.

To pull away. Maybe that’s been you. You’re a believer, but you’ve been hurt by the church, or you’ve been hurt in some relationship with a Christian.

Why don’t you come back to the table? Do you love me? He says. Do you love me? Come back.

Come back to the table. Let’s pray.

Lord, I first of all want to pray for that person that’s never come to you as Lord and Savior. They’ve never come to that first meal that you offer, and this is my body which is broken for you, this is my blood which is shed for you. That they’ve never come to you and said, I’m a sinner, I need a Savior. If that’s you right now, my friend, right in your seat, right in this moment, this holy moment, why not pray with me? Why not pray like this?

Right, right where you’re at. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner. I repent of my sin. I turn from it and I turn to you. I believe that you died on the cross for my sins, that you were raised from the grave.

I believe that, that you live today. Come and live in me. I invite you by your Spirit to come and live in me and save me and make me a child of God. I want to follow you. Forgive me of my sins.

I want to follow you as my Lord and Savior all the days of my life. And if that’s you today, you’ve come to the table. And the scripture says if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Others are here today and you’ve drifted. You’re lonely.

You’re looking for Fellowship. I don’t know where you are. The Lord does. He’s been speaking to you this morning, right? Why not right now just say, Lord, forgive me for pulling away from you and from your people.

Help me to plug in all the way so that this rhythm of life— house to house and temple courts— this rhythm of life of gathering regularly with God’s people, I want to do that. Help me, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.