One of the martyrs for our faith from the past is a man named William Tyndale, who was, from 1524 to 1536, in exile from his homeland, England. Why? What did William Tyndale do that was so terrible that he had to be in exile for those 12 years? He translated the Bible and printed it into English.
In 1531, after being in exile for seven years, an English merchant named Stephen Vaughn came to visit Tyndale. He was sent by Thomas Cromwell, who was King Henry VIII’s advisor. King Henry had offered mercy to Tyndale if he would stop printing and distributing the English Bible. He wrote,
“The king’s royal majesty is so inclined to mercy, pity, and compassion.”
Stephen Vaughn wrote a letter back to Cromwell, which included his conversation with Tyndale and his response. This is what Vaughn wrote. It’s old English, so put your thinking caps on. This is 500 years old, people. He wrote,
“For after sight thereof I perceived the man to be exceedingly altered, and moved to take the same very near unto his heart, in such wise that water stood in his eyes, and answered, [so this is Tyndale speaking,] ‘What gracious words are these! I assure you, if it would stand with the King’s most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the Scripture to be put forth among his people, like as is put forth among the subjects of the emperor in these parts, and of other Christian princes, be it of the translation of what person soever shall please his Majesty, I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, not abide two days in these part after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this be obtained.’”
In other words, I’ll do whatever you want if you just let the Bible be printed. No comments, no commentary. Nothing. Just the Bible.
“‘Until that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer.’”
In his great biography on William Tyndale, David Daniell writes this:
“We have, in those words, a portrait of Tyndale’s single-minded endeavor. Those modern writers who accuse Tyndale of having a mean tetchiness of spirit cannot have read that letter of Vaughan’s. Not least important is his willingness for someone else’s translation to be promoted, just so long as King Henry can act as the emperor does, and let his people have the Scripture…”
But Henry would not allow an English Bible to be printed, and Tyndale would never make it back home.
Five years before that letter, in 1526, Tyndale had successfully translated all of the New Testament and printed it into English. He began smuggling them into England in bales of cloth, helped by the cloth merchants. He later smuggled them in flour sacks, and chests with false sides, and watertight boxes inside barrels of wine or oil.
In 1530, Tyndale translated—from Hebrew—the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). His study of the Old Testament gave him new insights into the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament. Four years later, in 1534, he published a revised New Testament, which David Daniell calls “the glory of his life’s work.”
One year after that, Tyndale was caught and imprisoned in Antwerp, Belgium. He was charged with heresy in August of 1536 and sentenced to die. Tyndale was never married. He was executed when he was 42.
What we see in William Tyndale’s life— By the way, that biography is fantastic, by David Daniell. I think it’s just called William Tyndale: A Biography, by David Daniell. What you see is that Tyndale centered his life around one thing: the Bible in English. That’s what he gave his life for. His mission was clear, and so everything else that wasn’t central to his mission, he was willing to give up on. His mission was the Bible in English.
In the text we come to today, in Matthew 17, is just a little picture of Jesus’s life, a little story of what happened. In it, we see Jesus’s willingness to act in such a way that his mission stays central in his life, and he’s willing to adapt or give on other things in order to keep his mission central.
The main point, I think, in this text is that Jesus exemplifies Christian freedom and Gospel mission. What Jesus does here is he accommodates himself to a custom that was secondary to his mission.
Now, the word “accommodate” is tricky because it can be bad or good, but I’m going to use it anyway. By accommodate, I mean he was willing to adapt to meet a need. Jesus never accommodated on truth. He never accommodated on his mission. He did accommodate on secondary things that were not central to his mission.
Let’s walk through this story and then apply it to our lives. So, four parts of the story, four applications to our lives.
1. The prediction
I’m going to start with the first two verses, which are the prediction. These first two verses are Jesus’s second prediction of his death and resurrection. That’s his mission. His mission is the truth of the gospel that will change the world.
The first part of the sentence is striking, I think, because Jesus says, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men…” The Son of Man, the son of all creation, is going to be delivered into the creation. He’s going to be given into the hands of men and submit himself to them. What a contrast between those two phrases, and what humility!
But also, the word “delivered” means literally “betrayed.” This is the first time that idea comes out, that Jesus would be betrayed into the hands of men. The disciples’ response is also new when they hear this. It says that they were “greatly distressed.”
That word for “greatly distressed” is also used later in Matthew 26:21-22, when they were eating together at the Last Supper. It says, as they were eating, Jesus said,
“Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
And it says they were very sorrowful and then began to ask,
“Is it I, Lord?”
“Very sorrowful” and “greatly distressed” are the same word. That’s how they felt both times when Jesus said someone’s going to betray me. He said it again, and they were very sorrowful, so sorrowful that they seemed to miss the last sentence that Jesus said. We call that burying the lead. That’s the important part.
Have you ever heard something so shocking, so surprising that whatever was said after that you missed because you couldn’t believe what you just heard? Jesus says, “I’m about to be betrayed into the hands of men, but I’m going to rise again!” And they’re so distressed about the fact that he’s going to be delivered into the hands of men. You can imagine that reaction. That’s the prediction.
2. The tax
Secondly, the tax. This tax situation demands a little explanation as to what’s going on here. It’s interesting that this story is only included in Matthew, no other gospel. Matthew, the tax man, includes a story about taxes. Of course he does.
The half-shekel tax that’s referenced here is the census tax that was introduced in Exodus 30, which was collected to pay for the expenses of the tabernacle and then the temple. It was a tax that every adult Jewish male, whether inside or outside Palestine, was required to pay. There were a few exceptions, but mostly, all the men were expected to pay. It was seen as a patriotic duty.
The tax man in this situation wasn’t collecting taxes to give to Rome. That was Matthew. He was the bad kind. This guy was collecting taxes for the care of the temple. It was seen as a normal part of Jewish life. It was patriotic. It was something that they did, and it was okay.
So that’s what this tax is. The tax collectors weren’t hated like those who were collecting for Rome to pay their expenses for their invading army.
Now, Jesus was already getting a bit of a reputation with how he viewed the temple.
In Matthew 12, Jesus said that
“something greater than the temple is here,”
which didn’t quite sit right with his hearers. In fact, his reputation regarding the temple would become significant in his execution.
Later in Matthew 21, he attacks the money changers in the temple and kicks them out. They were exchanging money for this tax, in part. In Matthew 23 and 24, he made the statement,
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.”
That’s why they killed him. That was one of the things that they quoted at his trial and execution because of his relationship to the temple.
Most of that hadn’t happened yet, but Jesus was already getting this reputation. The tax collector comes to Peter and says, “Is your teacher going to pay the tax?” He asked it in such a way that expects a positive response, because that’s what everybody did.
Peter gives this one-word affirmative: yes. You can almost hear the yes. “I mean, yeah. I think so. Yes.” It seems like (based on the way Matthew writes the story of what happens next), Peter said yes because he assumed yes, but he was going to ask Jesus about it.
The comparison
Matthew says, before Peter can ask Jesus, Jesus speaks up. We see that in verse 25: the comparison. When Jesus and Peter enter the house, Jesus speaks of the incident before Peter can speak. This is what Jesus says:
“‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?’ And when he [Peter] said, ‘From others.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are free.’”
What in the world is going on here? Jesus switches to a broader tax. He kind of zooms out and switches to a broader tax comparison. He’s now comparing general taxes to this temple tax.
I have a little chart there in your notes because I love charts. They help me visualize what’s going on. So I have this little chart in here to help you see what he’s doing.
First of all, that left column, taxes of the earth. Earthly taxes are meant to pay for expenses for the royal house. A king will exact taxes to pay for his own expenses (palace, family, needs, all that stuff, and more). The “ruler” is the king. The “sons” would be his family. The “others” would be people who are not his family.
Jesus is saying, when a king is going to levy a tax to pay his expenses, does he go to his family and say, “Hey, you guys need to pay taxes for our expenses”? No. That’s ridiculous. No, he goes to people who are not part of his family and taxes them in order to pay for the needs of his family. (I know talking about taxes in church is what nobody wants to talk about, but that’s where we are today.) That’s the illustration Jesus gives.
Now he’s comparing it to the temple tax. The temple taxes are the expenses for God’s house. The ruler is God. The son of God is Jesus. He was just declared at the beginning of this chapter, at his transfiguration, “the Son of God.” Peter was there, Peter saw this happen. So it’s very obvious: Who is the son of the God whose temple this is? It’s Jesus, and by implication—
Jesus has already asked the question, “Who are my brothers and sisters and mother? It is those who do the will of God.” So, by implication, Jesus is the Son of God, but anyone who hears and does the word of God, who is in Christ, who is connected to Christ spiritually, and is his spiritual family, they are also the sons of God. The “others” would be those who are not part of God’s family.
There are a lot of things here, but a couple of things you see are that whoever is not Jesus’s brother by faith is not part of God’s family, and whoever is part of God’s family has a different citizenship. So Jesus says, therefore, the sons are free (in the illustration), and therefore, Jesus is free from the temple tax because he is the Son of God. And by implication, Peter is free.
So what’s Jesus going to do? He’s not going to pay the tax, of course. Do you pay taxes that you don’t have to pay? I don’t. I’m a low-tax guy. I don’t pay taxes I don’t have to. It seems like Jesus just made an argument for, “The answer is no, I’m not going to pay the taxes.” But look at what happens next.
The solution
Verse 27, the solution. Jesus then describes this fantastic provision of providence. He says to Peter, “Go fishing with a hook.” It’s the only time in the New Testament that Jesus tells his followers to fish with a hook. It’s always a net, except for here. Here he says, “Go put a hook, God appointed a specific for you to catch. Your first fish, you’re going to pull that fish up and he’s going to have a shekel in his mouth.”
The provision was enough to pay the tax for two people: Jesus and his brother Peter. Jesus says to do this for what reason? In order not to give offense. This is helpful and significant.
The word “offense” is the word “skandalizō.” It’s the same word (in its verb form) that Peter Hubbard pointed out in Matthew 16:23 (in its noun form) at Jesus’s first prediction of his suffering and death, when Peter said, “Uh-uh,” and Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan, for you are a hindrance [a skandalon]. You are offensive to me. You’re offensive to my mission. Get behind me. Get out of the way.” Same word, but this is in a verb form.
This is the action that Jesus takes to accommodate himself. He says that he and Peter are free from the tax. They are essentially not obligated to pay it at all. But then he says, “Pay it, in order not to be unnecessarily offensive.” Then he provides for the payment in a miraculous way. Don’t you wish you could go fishing and pull all your taxes out of the ocean and pay for them?
Applying the Story
That’s the story. Let’s think about how we can apply this. There are at least four ways—starting with the end, with the provision, and going from there—there are four ways we can think about as we seek to apply this teaching. So here we go.
1. Provision
Number one is provision. Jesus provides for his people as they walk with him in a couple of ways.
First, Jesus identifies himself with his disciples. Notice, when he gives the tax comparison, he could have used the singular “son,” but he uses the plural “sons.” He has already been declared the Son of God, but he doesn’t just say “then the son is free.” He says the sons are free. He’s identifying himself with his brothers, with us.
He’s already told them how to pray. You pray, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” He already said, “You have a different relationship with the God of heaven because of me than you’ve ever had before.” We take it for granted, the Lord’s Prayer. But when Jesus said it, it was a completely different thing. They didn’t call God “dad.”
Jesus is giving his followers a different relationship with God in heaven; he’s pulling them into God’s family. So when he says “sons,” he’s connecting his sonship to his spiritual family, to them, and they’re standing before God.
Then secondly, he cares for Peter by (and another way we see his provision) is that he pays the tax. He pays his tax. The question was, is Jesus going to pay the tax? Not, are Jesus and Peter going to pay the tax? Jesus provides the tax for himself and Peter. This is not a huge point, but it is there. The tax collector asks for that, and you see the kindness that expresses the heart of Jesus in a microcosm of his overall provision for his people.
Jesus provides for his people as they walk with him, and not always in the way we expect. We are continually surprised at the way God chooses to work. Oftentimes in our own lives and in my family, we see God work, and we’re like, “Oh, we did not see that coming.” Nor could any of us have predicted it, but there he is. That’s how God works.
2. Freedom
So first is provision, second is freedom. Disciples of Jesus need clarity on freedom because Jesus says the sons are free and then pays the tax. The disciples of Jesus can sometimes misinterpret the implications of freedom.
1 Peter 2:16 calls us to “live as people who are free,” and as freedom-loving Americans, sometimes we interpret American freedom when we read these verses, which means “I have to do anything I don’t want to.” But that’s not what Jesus means when he talks about freedom. Freedom has at least two implications in this text. They are…
(1) Freedom serves greater purposes. In other words, freedom is not absolute autonomy. It is not, “I only answer to me.” 1 Corinthians 9 begins with this. He says, “Am I not free?” Yes, Paul, you are free. But later in verse 19, he gives a guideline for that freedom. He says, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.”
His freedom is present. He intentionally becomes a servant with his mission in front of him. He intentionally limits what could be an expression of freedom in order that he might serve. So you have these weird things in the New Testament that Paul does when that mission is in his mind.
For example, in Acts 16, Paul has Timothy circumcised for the sake of his ministry. Timothy’s dad was Greek, and Paul felt that having Timothy circumcised would further his ministry. But in Galatians 5, Paul says that if you accept circumcision, you will be severed from Christ, which is a graphic way to express what he’s saying: If you decide to live by the law, you will be cut off from Christ.
Now, which is it, Paul? Is circumcision good or bad? Well, it depends. If you’re using it in place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it’s bad. He could say, “We’re free! No one has to be circumcised,” in that context, but then he doesn’t do that because it depends. “I’m making myself a servant that I might win more.” So freedom serves greater purposes. It’s not absolute. We have greater loyalties.
2. Freedom submits to lesser obligations.
Then the second idea there is it submits to lesser obligations (when possible). It serves greater purposes, and it submits to lesser obligations. Jesus is perfectly willing to submit himself to a social norm that he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to. He knew better, but he submitted himself to it.
We all experience social obligations or lesser obligations. It’s like, what do we do or not do? I was trying to think of examples in my own life that I could apply it to. I thought of a few, and some of them I haven’t done well, and they’re very instructive for me.
I was thinking about this example that I think might be helpful. If it’s not, come up with your own. This one was helpful for me, and I hope that it stirs your thinking.
We live in a society where it’s normal and common for men to remove their hats at many strategic times (national anthem and prayer, to name a couple). When you’re praying, men remove their hats. My boys grew up in Boy Scouts. We end meetings with prayer, “everybody, remove your hats.” In any kind of gathering, you remove your hat for prayer.
We were in Cody, Wyoming this summer. Great town, they have rodeos every night in the summer, so we went. They started with a gospel presentation and prayer in Cody, Wyoming, at the rodeo. All these cowboy hats come off. Everybody removes their hat during prayer. That’s a social norm.
Now, I don’t share that as a conviction personally. I don’t think I have to remove my hat before I pray to God. I think that I can be disrespectful to God with my hat off, and I can be respectful to him with my hat on, and vice versa. I don’t think it’s a biblical principle that I must remove my hat. That’s just what I’m thinking.
So when we’re in a situation like that and they say, “Remove your hat for prayer,” I could go, “I don’t need to do that,” because I know better. I know that I don’t think that matters to God. So I’m just going to leave my hat on.
Is that really the best? I don’t think it is for me. I think it’s better just to take it off. What do I lose? Nothing. It’s not central to the mission, so I can remove my hat in freedom. I am free to keep it on, but I’m also free to take it off, because who cares? That’s kind of what I’m thinking there. Does that make sense?
I wonder if there are other things we can think about that show how Jesus is like, “I’ll just pay the tax.” He could say, “No, I’m not going to pay it.” Or he could just go, “Yeah, I’ll pay it.” He accommodated to them.
If you stop there, you might get the impression that Jesus was like a politician who licked his finger, stuck it in the air, and saw which way the wind was blowing. “Sure, I’ll do whatever. I don’t care. I’m just going along with the flow.” But that’s not Jesus.
3. Mission
Number three is mission. Disciples need clarity on offending. Sometimes Jesus accommodates, and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes Jesus is a peacemaker, and sometimes he’s not. In fact, Matthew 10:34, Jesus said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” But in John 14:27, he said, “My peace I leave with you.” So which is it, Jesus? Is it peace or not peace? Are we supposed to offend or not offend?
Like I mentioned a while ago, the word “offense” has its root word “skandalon,” and so I wondered how that’s used in the New Testament throughout Jesus’s life. I started looking up all the usages of the word skandalon (in its verb form) in the New Testament to see if there’s a consistency. Like, did Jesus always offend these kinds of people but not these kinds people. Is it identity grouping? Where Jesus is offensive consistently here and not here? And it’s not.
It’s not grouped. He’s not always offending one group but never offending another group. He sometimes just offends everybody, and other times he doesn’t offend. So what’s the difference? What I saw was that sometimes Jesus and his followers are willing to offend if it’s their mission, if it’s the truth that’s at the center. And if it’s not, they weren’t.
Causing an offense is not wrong just because someone is offended, by the way. Just because I offend you or you offend someone else doesn’t mean you’re wrong. We don’t measure whether or not what we should do by whether or not everybody’s going to be happy. That’s called the fear of man, and it’s a snare. Rather, we live with the fact that if we are going to speak the truth, sometimes it’s going to offend people. That’s what happened in Jesus’s life.
Sometimes people get the idea that Jesus was kind of a really nice guy who walked around, never stepping on anybody’s toes, had product in his hair, and was really a great guy, like Mr. Rogers. But that’s not Jesus.
Other people have this idea that Jesus only offended the super religious people like us, the committed people. They called them Pharisees and scribes and other things back then. Those are the people that Jesus offended, but no one else, and that’s not true either.
I have this chart in your outline, trying to compare a few passages. That word is used so many times in the gospels and in the epistles. I just wanted to show a little connection here, a little comparison here. Jesus offended people when truth was at stake, when clarity of mission demanded offense. So let me give you some offensive illustrations and some non-offensive ones.
The first one is in John 6:61. After declaring himself to be the bread of life to the people and his disciples, not just his disciples, but everybody was grumbling. Jesus said, “Do you take offense at this?” Offense, skandalon.
In Matthew 15:12, when discussing what does and does not defile the person, his disciples tell Jesus that he was offending the Pharisees.
In Galatians 5:11, Paul (using the same language) says that it was for freedom that Christ set us free. But then he says, if he preaches a gospel of circumcision, “the offense of the cross has been removed.”
Those same ideas that we were talking about earlier, about being severed from Christ, Paul says the cross is actually offensive. If you preach another gospel, you remove the offense of the cross when it’s supposed to be there.
But also, there were times when Jesus sought not to be offensive, like the passage we’re looking at today in Matthew 17:27. He did “not [want] to give offense to them.”
When you turn the page into Matthew 18 (which we’ll get to after Advent in January), Matthew 18:6, when Jesus illustrates the simple faith of a child, he says that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin…” “Causes to sin” is skandalon. Whoever offends one of these little ones, it’s better if a cinder block were tied around his neck and he were thrown into the ocean. That’s rough. He actually says “millstone,” but you get the idea.
In Romans 14:13, Paul writes again, warning us against causing our brothers to stumble. Paul instructs the church never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.
Jesus says in Matthew 11:6 (I put this at the bottom), “Blessed is the one who is not [scandalized] by me,” one who was not offended by me. Why? Because their eyes and their ears are opened by faith to the truth. To the one who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
When our eyes and ears are open to him and open to the truth of God’s Word, we are not offended. We’re following the offensive one, and we are not removing the offense of the cross. When God’s Word was at stake, Jesus and his followers were offensive. And when it wasn’t, they weren’t.
Brothers and sisters, I have a burden for us in our day because we live in an age where religious and non-religious people take the values that Jesus exhibited (and that we hold dear) and they twist them on their head against Christians. They twist the meaning and values of God’s Word against truth-speaking Christians.
Affirmation is the worldview du jour, and those who hold that worldview find the biblical teaching of anthropology repulsive. What the Bible says about people, every age seems to have its challenges.
In the early church, they had to answer the question, “Was Christ divine?” and “Was Christ fully human?” They answered those. In the Reformation, they had to answer the question, “What does justification by faith mean?” The question of our day is, “What is a human?”
Carl Trueman, a biblical scholar, wrote recently— He’s said it over and over again, but recently wrote again in a piece saying the questions of “what is a woman” and “what is man” are really subsets of the larger question of “what is a human?” Anthropology, the biblical idea that we are created in God’s image, male and female, and that is good, and that is what God wants, is the challenge of our day.
To not affirm puts us in a place where we are at odds with the world. But we should expect this because we follow the way, the truth, and the life. But Paul says in Romans 1 that the world and those who hate God suppress truth. So people who are truth, who follow the God of truth, will necessarily offend people who are seeking to oppress truth.
When we speak truth, when we open God’s word and speak what God says, and that’s offensive, that’s okay. Nor do we want to intentionally try to offend. We don’t have to be jerks, but we are truth people, Church.
Christians are told that not affirming is not loving, and therefore, since God is love, “Do you really follow God if you don’t love?” Taking the definition of love from a God who is love and turning it on its head.
Many Christians who have stood in truth have experienced the reality of what Jesus said, that “I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” Others have sought to accommodate in a bad way by denying the truth and hoping to avoid the division of family that the truth of the gospel brings. In other words, we sometimes want so badly not to offend that we remove the offense of the cross. That’s just one way.
I wonder if we don’t offend people where the Scripture offends, if we have walked away from the truth. We are told that we must not stand on truth to follow the Scriptures, which is truth. It’s so undercutting.
I was thinking about William Tyndale. He often offended people because of his mission. I wonder if his friends and family at times said, “What are you doing?” Like, nothing in the Bible says you must print the Bible in English. There’s no verse that says that. “What are you doing? Stop it. You’re going to lose your friends, your family, and your life.”
But even when Tyndale was arrested, he stayed on mission. He converted the jailer, the jailer’s daughter, and most of his family. He couldn’t stop. He asked for a coat, a hat, socks, a Hebrew grammar, and paper so he could keep translating the Old Testament. He wouldn’t stop.
Tyndale was convicted and condemned as a heretic, and on October 6th, 1536, he was tied to the stake, strangled to death, and burned. John Foxe said his last words were, “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!” About two years after Tyndale’s death, Henry VIII required an English copy of the Bible to be placed in every parish church in his kingdom.
I wish I could tell you more. So many things that we have in our English Bible are 500 years old. William Tyndale invented inversions and phrases of words that needed to be translated from the original languages into English that didn’t exist yet, like the word “scapegoat.” That’s Tyndale.
85-90% of the Bible that’s in your hand or underneath the seat in front of you, the English Standard Version, 85-95% of the New Testament is Tyndale’s. In 500 years, words and phrases have not been improved upon what Tyndale wrote. About 50% of the Old Testament is Tyndale’s.
It’s amazing how God used him. We are all beneficiaries because a man gave his life to get this Bible in the language that you speak. I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t.
It isn’t our goal to be unnecessarily offensive, but if we are to follow Jesus, we will offend. We’ll seek to accommodate where we can, but when the truth is at stake, it will sometimes happen because the very gospel we proclaim is a stumbling block. We need clarity on offending.
Then lastly, number four—and then we’ll celebrate the Lord’s Supper together—is salvation. Jesus accommodated himself through the cross. The cross (Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection) is the only hope for someone who has been offended by the truth of the Gospel. It’s the only hope for someone who has been destroyed by the evil of this world. It’s the only hope for someone who has sought not to be offensive and compromise the truth of the Gospel. Only Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection can bring us back from the brink.
The story we read today is a simple picture of how Jesus accommodates to humanity. It starts with his prediction of what’s going to happen to him. It’s fitting that it does so because God accommodated himself to humanity in the incarnation. Jesus is God with us.
In his suffering and death, Jesus accommodates himself to us. We hear that language of “he for us” in Isaiah 53:5. That by his stripes, we are healed. He took our transgressions on himself and gave the healing to us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says the same thing: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He takes our sin, we get his righteousness.
In Jesus’s resurrection, he is our representative by faith. When he walked out of the tomb, the Bible calls it the firstfruits of the resurrection of all those who are in Christ. He’s the first one, and it ensures that God can do this, and he intends to do it all the more. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is that reality that this bread and juice pictures when we take the Lord’s Supper together. It is a remembrance of Christ’s broken body and shed blood, his sacrifice on the cross— the bread representing his body, and the cup representing his shed blood.
So Church, brothers and sisters, we invite you to partake in this meal with us if you are a follower of Jesus. If you are in Christ by faith, take in faith. If you’re not, please refrain. The call for you is to turn to Christ. The Lord’s Supper is to be received with thoughtfulness and thankfulness, 1 Corinthians tells us, as we think thoughtfully of each other and are thankful to the Lord as we share it together.
There are people who are going to come to the front, pass out bread and a little cup to each person, and then I’ll come back up to lead us in taking it together.
