The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Mendon, Nevada. Song of Songs chapter 1, we'll begin reading back in verse 5. What you're about to hear really is the word of your Lord and God who sits on a throne that is above every other throne. So as we hear these words, we listen to them not as the words of men, we listen to them as what they are, the words of the King of Kings. The song says, in verse five, I am very dark but lovely. Oh, daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kadar, like the curtains of Solomon, do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock? Where you make it lie down at noon? For why should I be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions? If you do not know, O most beautiful among women, follow in the tracks of the flock, and pasture your young goats beside the shepherds' tents. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with strings of jewels. We will make for you ornaments of gold studded with silver." Well, this is indeed the word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated and please pray with me. Our great God and fathers, we come before you this afternoon, and we look a second time to your word. We pray that you would, yet again, draw us, your bride, near to yourself. We pray that we would know by faith that you are near, that we would have some sense that you dwell among your people. We pray that you would send forth a sense, a taste, of what will fully be realized in heaven. When you say to us, I will be their God, they will be my people, and I will dwell among them. Lord, we thank you for Sabbath days that give us a foretaste of heaven. We thank you for ways in which we hear music from the land that is to come, where we receive tokens of what awaits us. We pray as we hear from your word, and then we draw near to the supper, that you would be pleased to draw your little lambs unto yourself, that you would, as Isaiah 40 says, carry them under the shelter of your own cloak, that next to your bosom we would dwell, and that we would know something of the love that you have for us. We pray this in our Savior's great and mighty name, amen. As we turn again to the Song of Songs, one thing, and Pastor Eric, I think kind of, well, not kind of alluded to it, addressed it directly this morning with the sermon titles, I told Carolyn she has all the right in the world to put in parentheses NCA after any title. Not Carolyn approved. So if you don't see that, you can only deduce one thing. She approves. She probably even likes it. As we delve into the Word of God this afternoon in preparation for the Lord's Supper, we wanna pick up again from the Song of Songs and by kind of swift review as the bride in verses five, six, and seven wrestles with the inner conflict of the Christian life there might not be a more appropriate Sunday upon which to have that text than a Lord's Supper Sunday. Have you ever gone to the supper drawn near to the Lord's table with a sense of conflict in your own heart? A sense of, I, on the one hand, know I am his child, and on the other hand, if I could look at myself in any real sense, and I'm careful to use that exact wording, look at myself, what would be the one thing I would have to deduce, gazing upon myself and asking the question, am I worthy to go to the table of the Lord? The answer's gotta be no. Right, like if I just look at who am I that I would be welcomed at the king's table? Who am I that I would be given tokens of his body and of his blood and would not just reach out my hand but take them and celebrate that covenant meal? Who am I or who's my family's house that that would be earned by me. I mean, you always should have a sense of, well, I'm a nobody from nowhere, and I have no business on my own drawing near to the Lord's table. And yet you know that the Savior on the night before he died set the supper before us and then commanded us as people to celebrate it until he comes back. He's not come back yet, so guess what we do? We continue to celebrate the supper. So even as we look at the supper, we feel a bit of that tension that the bride does in verses five and six. Lovely in that he's made me a son, or he's made you a daughter. dark by our own sin. And even considering just this last week or the last month or the last year or however, what kind of time measure you want to give to it considering that tension. I hope that the sermon this afternoon goes a long way to removing that inner conflict. goes a long way to removing that hesitancy to go to the table. You might say, well, that sounds like a tall order. If you could see my heart, you would see every reason why I should go haltingly or not at all through the Lord's table. And I would say, well, I don't argue that point. If I could see your heart or you see mine, what would you see? Well, you would see someone who's been under the sun a long time and is marked by a sinful world. But I don't want us to find our confidence or encouragement by looking at ourselves. If you look there, you'll never find it. If you want to run through the situational report in your own heart and mind as to how did this week go? I missed a quiet time. Prayer's not been great. Who am I kidding? It's hardly been at all. However the stock goes, if you look at you you should find no good reason to go to the table. There's one exception. That is to the very self-righteous person who would say, it's been a great week, I have every right in the world to go to the table. That's also very wrong-minded and wrong-hearted, right? If we're going to say, how do we go to the table unhaltingly or without that conflict, to some degree, well, I'm not gonna find the answer in me. And you're not gonna find the answer in you. Where we're gonna find that answer, I trust, is in the Word of God specifically, not so much in what the bride says to him. Though there's encouragement to be found, I mean, if you just look at verse seven, and you think about the way that her soul loves the Lord, I mean, that's getting you halfway there from her love, and then ultimately to him, but let's consider the groom's love. of his bride. What does Christ, the Lord of the table, think about his bride, the church? And that, I think, would go not just a long way. That should be a balm to the afflicted heart and the conflict in the heart of every Christian. Consider with me the bridegroom's love of his bride. Look at verse 8. For the first time in the drama that is Song of Songs, we've been introduced to the bride, we've been introduced to the supporting cast, the many, so we've had the one and the many, and there's been kind of this antiphonal back and forth singing that happens between her and the daughters of Jerusalem, and now we're introduced in verse eight to, I would argue, the main character, in the book Song of Songs. We're introduced to the bridegroom himself. Verse seven, she calls on him. She says, it's not the first time she's called on him. She called on him in verse four, where she said, draw me and that petition to be brought near. And we're connecting the dots a bit. She then says, and I will run. So this draw and then responding to God's work in the heart. It seems like he answered there. but she requests of him to tell her where he's pastored his flock so that she might lie down at noon, and he answers in verse eight. Now, some would argue that If you look at verse eight, now again, they don't have, the lovely titles that you have in your English Bible are not, well, they're not in the real text, right? That's the editor trying to help you. So if your Bible is ambiguous, or they say over verse eight that it's the they, or the third party speaking, the reason they would say that is there's not anything within verse eight itself that is clearly marked out as who's speaking. Verse nine is, the singular I compare my love that's obviously the husband but there might be somebody look at verse 8 and say well is this the church answering the requests of the bride the many saying to the one here's how you find him and it's possible because of the phrase I know we're getting a little technical out of the gate here but hang with me It might be that because of the phrase, oh most beautiful among women, throughout the rest of the book Song of Songs, is only ever used by the many of the bride. So it's always the church that would refer to the bride as almost beautiful among women. However, if you look at the content of what is being said, In the context of verse seven being addressed to the husband, I think there's a really good argument to be made, and I'm convinced it's the Lord himself answering in verse eight. He says, in the backdrop of her darkness, the backdrop of her unkept vineyard, the backdrop of her as a lost lamb who's seeking rest and refuge and hasn't found it yet, The words of verse eight should come as a balm to every hurting Christian soul. If you do not know, how does he describe her? Oh, most beautiful among women. He actually bestows on her, the bride, the church, here in verse eight, a title which reveals how he himself sees her. This is not her summary of herself. This is not the summary of her best friend who's like, no, really, you are a catch. And if you settle, no, that's not what it's about. This is the bridegroom's view of her. Now I think it's vitally important that we look at that title and then consider it's the church that then picks that title up throughout the rest of the book in chapter 5 verse 9 and chapter 6 verse 1. The church takes that title given by the husband to the bride and they start using it for her. But let's not forget where it began. It began with the husband's view of his bride. Oh, most beautiful among women. You might say, well, what about the sin? What about the blackness? What about the unkept vineyard? What about that she's lost? What about all of these elements that were in conflict in her and caused her to pray, haltingly so, but pray nonetheless, It's as though he doesn't even gaze upon that. He sees the bride clothed in his own righteousness and she is lovely to him. Is that the response we would have expected? Not if we were thinking our way through it. We might have expected him to say, all right, honey, it's not as bad as the situation might look. The suntan will go away. The elements of things that have accosted you will subside. We can figure this out. We can send you to the dentist if there's any kind of problems there. None of that. I would expect a bit of a maybe rebuke, like, you know what? You should have kept the vineyard. You didn't keep the vineyard. You know better. Kind of made it clear when I left you in chart. Like, we would expect that. We would expect reprimands to be meted out to the bride in that text, wouldn't we have? You might say, I don't know if I would have thought that. Just consider yourself. How many of you think of when you go to the Lord with an unkept vineyard? Do you think of him as viewing you this way? Or do we like the servant thinking I'm a harsh master? Master that throws sin back in our face. That's not what we find in verse eight. Though we would have expected a bit of a rebuke. There was a dear friend of mine, at the last church, one son, I forget why he pointed it out, but I thought it was humorous, nonetheless, he wanted to know why there was such a drastic disparity between two public holidays. And I said, well, what are you even talking about? He said, well, He says, this bugs me, Mother's Day, you guys do this amazing sermon and songs exalting motherhood, and we're thankful for mothers, and then when Father's Day comes around, we get yelled at. He says, on Mother's Day, it's like, everyone loves their mom. He said, Father's Day, it's like, you scrubs, get it together. We would expect that sort of response from the bridegroom on the heels of verses five, six, and seven, and yet we find no such thing. We find that she is to him fair, lovely. His elect chosen bride is beautiful to him. He has chosen her before the foundations of the world, and while we don't have all of the answers to all of the questions. I wish we did, but most of that's above our pay grade, right? So we might say, well, why did he choose the bride that he did? And why did he choose me to be part of that bride? And what did he see in me that was even remotely lovely? All of those questions of which we have no answer other than, well, he did what he did for reasons unto himself, and we don't know them. are a few answers we have. He chose you. You can't argue that. He loves you, and you can't argue that either. You might say, I don't, I don't understand either of those. That's fine. You don't have to understand them, but you do have to receive them as taught clearly in God's Word. that for reasons known to himself, he loves his bride. Though the sun has looked long upon us, though a vineyard be unkept, though last week or last month or this morning on the drive, in the car, with the kids to church, though all of that is what it is, it does not change the fact that you are part of his chosen bride. And he says, of all of them, most lovely. Now, we're gonna argue that that loveliness is something that is brought about and brought into existence by him, but nonetheless, that is how he sees his bride. You might say, I don't see me that way. Well, that's fine, you're not the husband. husband or the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, says of his church in verse 8, O most beautiful among women. That should be one of the most humbling things you could hear, and yet if that doesn't cause you to be drawn to such a one, I don't know what could. If the zealous love of the Son of God for you, in spite of the faults, in spite of the sin, if that's not enough to draw you to say, I will draw near to the ever lovely one, nothing will draw you. But I'll tell you, you'll find a whole lot more encouragement by gazing upon Him and that truth than looking here. If I look here, ugliness. If I listen to what he says in verse eight, beautiful bride of mine. And then he tells her how she might find him. Verse eight, in the middle, he says, follow the tracks of the flock and pasture your goats beside the shepherd tents. We know the bride from verse 8 does not make the best decisions because she has goats. Anyone who has goats didn't think it through. Saying I know this from experience, I always wondered why people would give goats away for free. There's a reason. Anyway, it's a different thing altogether, but she's told, follow the tracks. The idea is of that of the shepherd and the sheep have moved on. She's been left behind or lost or wandered from the path. So it's like as a sun-beaten briar, a brittled lamb, the shepherd says, follow the tracks. You wanna find me? You want to be welcomed into the rest and the refreshment? that your master has for you, follow the tracks of the flock." He's actually pointing her to the way in which the other sheep have likewise found him. And if you could consider that for just a moment, you would realize a few things could have such a biblical testament to that's exactly how we would find him. Hebrews chapter 6 verse 12, so that you may not be sluggish, but listen what he says, be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. The idea is the church has walked the same paths throughout the ages, throughout the centuries and throughout the millennia. to find their way to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, how do you find him? Well, you find him the same way sheep have always found him. It's not like in one age we find him through mysticism, and then in another age we find him through asceticism, and then in another age we find him through rationalism. No, he's found the same way throughout every age. He doesn't change. Now we change, we wander, we go astray, but he doesn't. And so when he calls the bride in verse 8 to come and find him, his instructions could not be more clear. Find me the way that every sheep finds me. Follow the tracks of the sheep. The idea is to walk the way that those who've gone before you have walked. And then if you jump that, you know, go to that step and then say, well, why did they walk the way that they did? Well, they walked the way that they did because those who were before them did it. And they did that because, well, there was not a many, but a one who walked it before them. The way that the people of God draw near to God have been beautifully mirrored or mimicked for them by the Lord Christ himself. If we get to the second volume in Pilgrim's Progress with the story of Christiana. We make it all the way to the end where she's already received the summons to show up at the Celestial City and 10 days from receiving it. And this is actually one of the last paragraphs of that volume. Now listen with song of songs on your ears. Listen to the way Bunyan wraps up the story of Christiana. She said, I see myself at the end of my journey with my hard days behind me. I'm going to see that head that was crowned with thorns and that face that was spit upon for me. Until now, so this is reflecting on her life. Until now, I have lived by faith based on what I've heard, but now where I go, I shall live by sight and shall be with him in whose company I delight myself. I've loved to hear my Lord spoken of. and wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, I have longed to follow in his steps. His name has been sweet or fragrant to me, as honey and more fragrant than any perfume. His voice has been pleasing and I've longed to see his face more than most people desire sunlight. How did Christiana describe her Christian life as she was about to cross over the river and go to the celestial city? She said, in reflecting on what life was like, it was this, a constant desire and seeking out where did he walk and leave his footprints in the earth that I might follow there and walk where he walked. What is that if not what verse eight is talking about? Following. the steps or the tracks that she or that he has left for us his bride I say well what tracks is he left what could he have but by way of a gift to the church what is he left behind that we might follow him, and not just follow him, but find him, apprehend him, lay our hands upon him, or like the scene in, oh, it's the end of Genesis where Jacob is finally brought to Egypt. I mean, you remember that scene where they'd been separated for all those years and word comes to Joseph that Jacob or Israel, his father, is coming, so he gets in his chariot and he rides up, I think they were in Goshen, and says that he, having tracked him down, fell on his neck and wept a good, long time. You realize that's the Christian life. it ends with a falling on the neck and a weeping a good long time before he wipes the tears away. That journeying towards him is the Christian life. Now what is he left that we would follow? What are the tracks? Well, the tracks would be obviously the godly lives that the Christians ahead of us have lived in the pursuit of heaven. But what ways have they done it? Well, they've done it through two primary ways, and there's more than this, and there's elements beyond that, but we're just gonna hit two this afternoon. The first way that he's always been found by his people is when they seek him in his word. Did he not leave you His revealed word that you might go to Him and know Him. Have you ever in your life, kind of coming through a week, just feel battered and beat up and lost and wayward or sideways, and you go, I can't find Him. My prayer time is cold or nonexistent. My Bible reading is distracted. My heart is cold. My mind wanders. I don't know where to find Him. you come into the Lord's house on the Lord's day, and what do you find? Tracks where the sheep have for thousands of years walked, and you find him as revealed in his word. You find him declared to your soul again, and you find him readily available to his people. Or have you ever just felt lost, like a ship without rudder or sail tossed at sea? You felt like everything in your life was just pushing you around at its will and not yours, and you open your Bible, and you find promises in God's word that anchor your soul, and you find them. You find the one that you love with your very soul, and he left tracks that you would find him, and there he is. The other way that he's been found by the church throughout the last 2,000 years, would it surprise you? It's the Lord's table. What is this if not him leaving tokens of his love for you? What is this if not Him drawing you, calling you? Come, find rest at noontime. Come, find shade. Find refreshment. Come, find help. Find, not just like this disembodied help, find a loving Savior who says to you, oh, most beautiful, my bride. The church has been the unworthy recipient of the Lord's table since the Lord instituted it 2,000 years ago. She has long, for the past 2,000 years, been drawn to the table at His, not just command, but at His kind invitation. And far from the table being, and now there's times in our, in our weird way of thinking, where we're either self-righteous on one end of the spectrum or on the other end of the spectrum, but both sides is a form of self-righteousness, we can say, you know what? It wasn't a good week. It wasn't a good month. I don't deserve the table, as though the table was a reward for strong people. It's not. It's help for weak people. So if you come to the Lord's table and say, weak briars through and through, he gives help. It's actually one of the ways, according to our confession of faith, where the Savior imparts strengthening and encouraging grace to his people. words we use to describe that the table is that he nourishes us that he cherishes us odd that we would use the two words to describe a husband's role in Ephesians chapter 5 towards his bride and we say look nourishment cherishing it's what he does in the table So if you go to the table in weak, battered faith, saying, I love him, not perfectly, but I love him, he strengthens that faith, and he works. And you might say, well, I don't know how he works in the soul. That does not prevent him from working in the soul. There's ways that he brings strength into the heart of a Christian by use of the supper, and he works in ways where we do not know how it does it. I don't know how exactly all of those elements work, but here's what I know. You can find him. He dwells among his people in a special way when the supper is served, and he strengthens his people through the supper. It's the voice of the shepherd. It's like you can hear him just beyond the veil. Follow the tracks. I left you the supper. I command you to do it. Follow them. By faith, follow. Stretch out your unworthy, undeserving hand, and by faith, eat and drink and find the shepherd of your soul there for you. Spurgeon says, be sure that you do follow the ancient ways with regards to the Christian, interesting word, ordinances, very word used for the supper. Do not alter them, but keep to the good old paths. The paths the sheep have trodden for hundreds of years. So Christian, has Christ ever felt far away? You might say he feels that way right now. Follow the tracks of the sheep and go to where he feeds his sheep. Isn't that what happens each and every Lord's Day here? is not the proclaiming of the word of God one of the ways in which the great shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, feeds his sheep. Don't ever let a sense of weakness or weariness or sinfulness keep you from church. Go to where he feeds his sheep and find him there. Do you ever, or maybe you feel this way today, do you feel distant from him? Then go to where he set the table. A table set by the king where he invites weak, weary Christians to come and taste that he is good. To find out that he really is all that he says that he is. What an opening to the words of the bridegroom in verse eight. Full of love. full of compassion, full of a knowledgeable lover of the soul who says not only, it's not like he calls you to the table, you show up, you're like, I thought you had it all together. No, I find it different. No, he calls you to the table because you're weak, because he knows your need of him. There's a second piece to which, well, there'll be a third one as well in the time that we don't have remaining, There's a second piece here, and this was the one that gave rise to the title, verse nine. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots. You might read that, and I'll restrain myself from wanting to laugh too much at it, but this is one of the reasons why I don't think this is marital advice. I just don't think that this would go over well, no matter what you said before or after, unless you just said sorry, and I'll never say that again afterwards. But here, he has another title for her. not most beautiful among women. He's used that in verse eight. He adds another one. I mean, he's lavish in the way that he heaps up praise for his people. He calls her, it's the first one. I mean, it's this long, beautiful name. It has comparison in it. Here he simply calls her his love. Some titles are beautiful because they're just elegant and big, and some are beautiful for their simplicity. my love." And he likens her to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots. As I've mentioned before, many commentators would look at the verse 9 and they would say, see, we know it's Solomon's wife, the daughter of Pharaoh, because of verse 9. And I would say, especially if it was Pharaoh's daughter, she would not like you calling her her daddy's horse. So that, yeah, I don't think that's it at all. So what is he saying? Why would you draw that? Especially if we think it's Christ and his church, why would he say a mare among Pharaoh's chariots? And while we could kind of poke and describe some of the, maybe the cultural things going on there, we'll just cut straight to the chase. How does she describe herself with the imagery of five and six as a, Just a run-down servant girl. That's the imagery. How does she describe herself in verse 7? A lost little lamb. How does he respond in verse 8? Well, he actually uses the same imagery of verse 7 to draw her in, follow the tracks of the sheep. He uses the pasturing pictures at the end of verse 8 of shepherding your goats here beside the tents. But he shifts the imagery in verse 9. There is a sense in which he's emphasizing her loveliness as well as her strength. No longer a little lost lamb, but a war horse, you could say. Those fit to parade the king. in the world. He actually uses, and it's not the only time he'll do it, he'll use military language to describe the church. And he loves to bring in all of the elements. In a sense, is the church lamb-like? Oh, obviously the church is lamb-like. Is there another sense in which she's like a run-down servant who's been overworked and just has nothing left to give? Well, yeah, there's another sense. Is there another sense where she is like the very war horse Militarily speaking, well, absolutely. You might say, where else in the Song of Songs would they incorporate military language to talk about the church? Well, one of them, not just, this isn't by any means the only time, but in chapter six, verse four, the husband says to the bride, again, another reason why I don't think this is about Christian marriage, because I don't think you should say this to your wife either, You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners." Now, depending on what she did or didn't do, that might be true. She might be terrible as an army, which case backtrack whatever it was quickly. That's not what he's referring to. Is there a way in which the church is the church militant while here on the earth? Didn't we teach this truth to our kids in the most simple of songs? I'm in the Lord's army. Yes sir. I always liked that one as a kid. Well the same imagery is here. He encourages her. He not just compliments her, but he speaks of what he is bringing into being in her midst. James Durham says, you are neither so weak nor so black and unbeautiful as the world thinks of you. And as you estimate yourself, My testimony of you, he's speaking from the husband's perspective, is better to be believed than either the world's or your own, and I assert that you are stately and strong, beautiful and comely. It's as though the husband, or not even as though, the husband can see what the world cannot see of the church. The world would see just a ragtag group of people that they think are fanatical and weird. Part of that's true, but the world would just see, I mean, 1 Corinthians 1, the word of the cross is in the world's eyes, the word he uses is moronic. They think you believe in a fairy tale. They think you're wasting your life. They think you're crazy in the way that you order your house and your marriage and the way that you have morals and the way that you do this or not. They think you're crazy. The world cannot see the beauty of the church. And there are times where the church herself can't see the beauty of what God is bringing to be. There's times where The church can only see the downfalls and the shortcomings and the weaknesses that she forgets what her husband has said of her, stately and strong, comely and beautiful. Jeremiah Burroughs says, the beauty and the glory of the believer are very much hidden from the world. Our life is a hidden life. The work that God is doing is on the inside and cannot be seen by the world and at times is not even seen by the church. And you'll notice he says in verse nine, he says, I compare you my love. The sense that he uses there, it's not like he's like, ah, what do I say about you? Yeah, you're like a horse. Yeah, that'll work. Like, no, that's not the sense of it at all. It's not just that it's the thing that came to his mind. The sense is that it's that which he himself is also bringing about in her life. The husband is at work in the life of the church, strengthening her, training her. with regards to what the psalm says. He trains my hands for war. Growing her and nurturing her. He began the good work. He is continuing that work and he won't see that work fail at all. He's the one bringing this to be. Christ at work in the life of his bride making her into whose image was it? His. He's forming Christ in you. Is that not beautiful? Is that not strong? Is that not lovely? James Durham again says, there is the cause. Why the bride is so strong and stately. He makes her so. There is in believers an undauntedness of spirit and an unconquerableness and overcome they cannot be. Better fight with all Pharaoh's chariots than to fight with her. a beautiful way of describing the people of God. What a beautiful way to speak of the way that God has worked patiently and powerfully in the life of his church for all the years in which she's been. Think of all the centuries that have come and gone, and yet the church continues still. Think of wave upon wave of generation that have come upon the earth and crashed, and wave upon wave of the church that has unfolded through time and history, and she's here still. And not a weak, staggering, nothing of a church. The gates of hell cannot withstand her. They can't stand up against what he is making her to be. That's the work of the husband in the life of the bride. We'll have chances to speak of this often throughout the Song of Songs, so we won't belabor the point much here. Look at verse 10 and 11. Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with strings of jewels. And then the many respond that they as a church also contributing in this way will make for you ornaments of gold studded with silver. She is lovely, not simply because of who she is and what he's making her, but she's lovely in the sense that she's covered in jewels and gold chains and ornaments. She's well adorned, and you'd have to ask yourself, well, where did she get that? There's only one place. She got it from the husband. Does he not give gifts to his church? Does he not delight to lavish his love upon her? Does he not delight to bestow things upon her as gifts, as kisses of his grace, where when she sees them, she's reminded what? He loves me. When the world sees it, they can only deduce one thing if they could deduce anything at all, is that obviously that husband loves that wife. Is not the supper a way in which he has blessed his church? shown them as a mark of his love, I love you. What else could you walk away from the supper that is set before you today thinking? What other message could you possibly take away other than he loves me, and he loves me still, and he'll love me to the end? That he's not given up on the church, It's not like he's gone away and forgotten about you, but he sent fresh tokens of his love and his grace that you would be reminded on a regular basis he loves me. Even though he now dwells bodily in heaven and I'd be upon the earth, yet he sent tokens of his love that I would know and that other believers would know he loves his people zealously. He loves his people so much he could not suffer her to not be reminded of it regularly. That's why he gave you the supper. That's why he gave you tokens of abstract ideas? No. That's why he gave you tokens of him and what he is and what he has done. There have been those who've likened the supper to tastes of the wedding feast before the wedding day. It's a beautiful way of describing, and we would all do that as kids, right, when mom wasn't looking with, we tasted the cookies before they were cookies, and they were still dough, and we all denied whose finger swipes were all over it, but it was a foretaste. Some have viewed the supper that way. The husband giving tokens to his bride saying there's a day coming. There's a day past that you should remember when he laid down his life for you. And we remember him in the supper. There's a present reality where he is strengthening and encouraging his church. There's a present reality, but there's a future one as well. There's a day where we will sit Isaiah chapter 25 says, and will eat food and drink well-aged wine in his presence on the day of days. This is for his bride to remind her until that day, I love you, I will continue to strengthen you, and I will bring into completion what I started in you. If we could think of that when we draw near to the supper, we would find nothing but encouragement. You might say, but I'm a sinner still. It's a table set for sinful Christians. It's a table set for the weak, for the needy, for those who are desperate for more of the Lord Jesus Christ and would have him and follow the tracks that he has left for us to follow. Let's pray. Our Father, as we draw near to you, we pray, oh God, that you would encourage us with fresh tokens of your love. As we consider Christ and the supper set before us, may it be what we sometimes accidentally call it, celebration, a rejoicing in who you are and what you have done for us. We pray this in our Savior's name. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com