Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Come to the Table

Andrea Walechka

Come to the Table - Part 1

If you ever have a carrot dangling in front of your nose, but you never can reach it, and that's how I felt with communion.

I never could comprehend what is this service really about?

But beyond that, I couldn't figure out what's the real deal.

We're going through this exercise, this ritual, and what's the purpose of it.

But today, it seems very empty, doesn't it?

If you don't, once you get done with this class, even just today, 1 class, you're gonna have a whole lot more information than what you've, maybe know it, maybe you don't.

I'm assuming from my experience, most people haven't.

But you're gonna have so much more information just with today, and it's going to be on the full washing, you're going to be like, full washing is going to be completely different for you, because it's going to be encountering Christ face to face.

Now for the disciples, it was not empty for them because their experience, they talked with Jesus.

They were there when he went into the clouds.

That's why when they participated in a Lord's Supper, it was a completely different experience.

And really, that's why it's empty, because we don't truly know him.

I mean, do you pour your guts out to the Lord?

Do you have answers to your prayers when you pour your guts out?

I've been having an extremely rough 4 or 5 days with some issues going on in my home.

And this morning at worker staff meeting, nobody knew what was going on.

And the pastor, he was sharing, do you have a crisis in your life?

I mean, why would he talk about communion?

I mean, I've been really scared about this class.

I've been really nervous about this class.

Because to me, this is a very heavy topic.

And I've always felt that it should be a man, a pastor, teaching it because of the seriousness of it.

But it wasn't until I did my first time of this that I finally realized why God wanted me to have this passion is because how I despised it so bad.

And that's Really, if people will be honest, most people don't like communion either.

So they have someone share, I don't like communion.

And they're like, really, I can relate to that.

Then it's because of what I'm going to be sharing.

If you have to miss anything, don't miss Thursday.

But anyways, for the disciples, it really was an experience.

It was a life thing for them, a heart thing, because of how much they knew Jesus.

It was a real up close, in touch experience for them.

So when we talked about is it informed, there is no material out there, really.

I requested it to be here at ABC and I forgot to bring it with me, but it's the Lord's Supper, thoughts on the Lord's Supper and devotions on it, you know, 40 days, that book.

Yeah, I don't remember, it's either number 4 or 6.

That will give you some more information.

It's not as in-depth as what I would like to see it, but it will give you a good starter to get going.

Did you know that the communion topic, I think I was sharing it before we started recording, was the most controversial topic in the Reformation days.

The Catholics fought about it with the Reformers, and the Reformers fought about it amongst the Reformers.

Because it was all on what you're going to do, how you look at that bread and that juice.

The Reformation Protestant churches split on this issue.

And I asked an author 1 time in the church, and I said, why isn't there any material on communing?

He said, it's not a controversial subject.

And I'm really, you better go back to your history book.

But what I said to him was, you know what?

When my Bible study comes to church, and they need to wash feet, it becomes extremely controversial.

I have, my Bible studies have run out of the building, and it was at Marquette.

So Barb, I don't remember his name now, but he was a black gentleman.

He did not, Soul Train was his nickname, But anyways, he ran, man.

Some people do communion every single day, like in the Catholic Church.

And then you have like Church of God, they do it once a year.

Now, if you bring really extreme, the Jehovah Witnesses, you as a church member don't get to do it.

You, as a lay member, don't get to do it at all.

And you'd have to be pretty lucky to have 1 of the 144, 000 in your midst in order to watch it.

And does it have meaning for Christians currently?

You have to ask yourself, what does communion mean?

Is it a cracker, and is it a juice, and you snack it, and rub-a-dub-dub, and off we go with our feet.

Come to the Table - Part 2

We have 4 promises that are at Passover time.

And they're always discussed at Passover time.

Now I think it would be good if we would talk about them at communion time.

So it says, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rid you out of their bondage, I'll redeem you with a stretched out arm and I'll take you to me for a people." Those are the 4 promises.

So each promise was to be a personal and living reality for the Jews that first Passover night.

Because they were leaving, They were going out from underneath the burdens of the Egyptians.

They were no longer going to be stuck in that work mode, in that oppression mode, burdensome mode.

That backpack was falling off their back.

Do you read anywhere in there about a human being doing any of that?

So anyways, no, this is the Lord who is promising every single 1 of these things.

So the Lord will bring you out from under the burns of the Egyptians.

He's gonna bring you out of their bondage.

He will take you to Him for a special person.

So every Passover meal, the Jews discussed these promises so that created their reason, their identity as a nation, it created them for their existence.

And the Passover, you notice, they weren't a nation till they came out of Egypt.

So we need communion as much as the Jews needed Passover to unify us, to recreate us into an identity, to an existence.

It gave them purpose to be on this planet and it set them apart from everyone else.

When a non-believer comes into church and we're doing communion, it must look strange to them because they have no experience with who we are communing with.

You know, you and I don't do Passover because we're not Jews.

God doesn't want us to do Passover anymore.

Because that nation is history as far as salvational merit.

The Jews are not the ones who are bringing salvation to the world.

They refused to be Israel, which is a symbol of Christ.

The nation of Israel was to be a symbol of Christ, and they rejected their purpose and existence.

So now God is like, I'm going to start over, kind of like the Noah thing.

He's going to start over with a whole new nation, which is the believers in Christ.

And Noah's not only Seventh-day Adventists.

And so anyways, I run into them all the time in my Bible studies.

So anyways, God is trying to recreate us into his nation to that will really represent Christ.

So, Christ brings us out from under habitually destroying sins.

We can be delivered and freed by Christ's pardoning power.

His great and far-reaching hand will redeem us with frightening judgments on Satan." If you remember during Passover, the last thing was what?

All the Egyptians first born was going to die.

Because God was killing, He was destroying the strength of that nation, their hope of their nation.

Jesus will take us close to His heart and soon to His heavenly home, always to live in his presence.

So communion represents the prophecy of Genesis 315.

I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed.

It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

This is the prophecy that was done, that is at communion time, that entity is hatred between sin and righteousness.

If we did not have that gift of hatred for sin, we would never come to the Lord.

If you ever notice in prisons, there is still a level of righteousness, a standard we can say.

It used to be years ago, When the homosexuals got put in prison, they didn't live.

Not the homosexuals, I'm sorry, the child molesters.

The inmates could not, that was below their standard.

And it's interesting, even in the worst environment you still have a standard that that is not acceptable.

Now there's just so many of them in there they can't keep up.

You don't hear so many getting killed anymore.

But anyways, that enmity is prophesied and it comes true at communion.

Communion is going to create a new hatred for sin.

Because when you're washing the feet, you recognize, oh I got this wrong, I do that wrong, I don't think right with this.

It's like, man, I just hate it that I'm not like Christ.

So the power of Satan and the power of sin will be broken.

So then communion will then be able to direct us to another event, which is the Second Coming.

All Christ's promises culminate at the Second Coming.

So, both are memorials of God's deliverance from slavery and sin, because that's what they're remembering every year they do Passover.

And they're supposed to be thinking God took us out of sin.

I'm afraid they don't think about that too much.

But that's what communion is to remind us of.

God died, you know, Jesus Christ died for me.

I don't have to live with pride or lust or thievery or, you know, just go down the list of the 10 Commandments.

When I'm doing communion, I'm like, Wow, God delivered me from my past.

Whatever your past is, you're free of that.

Both are reminders of God's power on behalf of His people.

Come to the Table - Part 3

Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can be here.

We pray that you will join us, that you will teach us, myself included, that we'll be blessed, that we'll understand communion in a way that will draw us closer to Jesus' heart.

And may we be melted in more surrender than before.

Alrighty, we are coming to the table and we are now at the Bread of Life to give some of you a review.

We have a couple of them that are here for the first time.

We've been talking about the foot washing aspect of communion.

And then we got into the covenants of communion, which necessitated the need for the foot washing when you get into the covenant, because you have to be at peace with each other and the foot washing washes our sin away so that creates the peace that we need to have between us and Christ.

And now we're moving into the bread of life and It's a very simple article of food.

I mean, how many of you had bread at breakfast or at lunch today?

It's on most everybody's table, most every meal.

Especially, I had a pastor from Bulgaria, and the concept was, if you had bread, you could live.

If you did not have bread, life was over.

But basically all bread is is ground up grain, some sugar and water, and a regular loaf would have yeast in it.

In the farmer world, if you have bread, life is good.

So anyways, it is a really huge staple, And because it is such a common thing, Jesus used it as an object lesson so that whenever you're eating a meal, you're going to be thinking the bread of life.

You notice he used parables and he used objects and there was a purpose behind that because He wanted us to, every time we're going through our life and we look at something that He talked about, we'll instantly connect it to Him.

So when you have a regular lunch or breakfast or meal, it's a mini communion meal.

Not with all the sacredness per se attached to it like at church, but because you have your meal in front of you and you have your liquid and you have your bread, you will instantly be thinking the bread of life and the water of life.

I never realized that until after I got studying into this, how a regular meal really is a reminder of communion.

So then we can be thinking about Jesus all the time.

When you're sitting down, when you're rising up, when you're walking through the way, like it says in the Bible, to teach our children.

So, do you remember the lady in the Old Testament, the widow of Zarephath?

To show the importance again of the bread.

When Elijah came, he said, make me a little bit of bread, give me a drink of water, and get me a little loaf of bread.

She says, Well, I am here to pick up these sticks, I'm going to go make my loaf, and I'm going to feed it to my son, and we're going to die.

So in her mind, after that bread was gone, there was no more life.

But she went by faith, and then they did have the flour and the oil all the time.

It represents life, hope, joy, strength, and fortitude.

And that's why Jesus employed it for communion and so much more.

So the bread of communion, it is representing Christ's body and most people know that.

The problem that various churches, They use yeast in their bread.

We were just talking earlier about the Methodist church.

It's just a regular loaf of bread out of Walmart.

And when you have communion in a Methodist church, you all file up to the front and you tear off your piece, you dip it in the juice and you chop it down, and that is communion.

If he did sin, we wouldn't be needing And we couldn't have communion.

Because you have to have a perfect, sinless sacrifice.

There could be no scars on them, no boo-boos.

It had to be absolutely perfect as a lamb could be to represent Christ.

And so this communion bread, it also has to have no yeast in it because Jesus had no sin.

To eat a regular loaf of bread for communion means our understanding of Christ's character and life are very confused.

There are people out there who say Christ sinned.

And for a Christian who's reading their Bible, that should be like totally bonker kind of thinking.

Because if Christ sinned, we have no hope of going to heaven.

Because then he'd be in the same boat we're in and he would need a savior.

But we don't want to have our concept of Christ's character confused when we approach communion.

It is misrepresenting who He is and it declares a false gospel.

You know, it's interesting, you're like, well, a false gospel, Why is that?

Well, if we say that Jesus had sinned, and he gets to go to heaven, then we can retain our sins and go to heaven.

The very popular idea is, you can keep on sinning and go to heaven too.

But if you look in your Bible, it's in Matthew 1.

This is a huge verse that I share in my Bible studies with folks.

In Matthew 1, Verse 21, when you're there say Amen.

For those of you who are able to bring your Bible.

Matthew 1.21, and I got the old King James.

She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people." What's the next word?

I was studying with a lady from Sudan and we were studying this and she says, what does from mean?

I'm like, oh my, I'm not an English major.

I stood up and I said I've been sitting here and I'm going from there to here Am I still over there?

I Went from I Moved so I can't stay So if Jesus is saving us from our sins, if this is my sinful state and he's saving me from this, I am moving over here to an unsinful state.

I can't stay here and still be over there.

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Come to the Table

Come to the Table - Part 3

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