The bread of the Church Pastor Juan Andrés Pérez
First Communion Service
Guatemala, April 2, Year of Abundance
It is a good thing to have a spiritual house, but how many of us have wandered searching for one? As Christians it is necessary to have a spiritual father and spiritual brothers to be able to grow as the Lord desires. The Holy Spirit wants to feed us with His bread, He wants to remind us what the Bible says about our spiritual house. Since we are sons of God, we should not be begging for bread outside God´s house; from the parable of the lost son we learn that in the Father´s house there is enough bread for us. Lk 15:17 says: “But when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father´s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”. We know there is abundance of bread in the House of the Lord, therefore we must present ourselves to partake in the Holy Supper. Perhaps, in our walk we might feel that something is missing, we attend events, go to different congregations, but we are not yet satisfied. That is why we need to go to our Father´s house with sincerity, to quench our thirst and hunger for the Word of God. The Father gives us spiritual coverage in His house; as God´s children we need both bread and spiritual coverage, this is important to form our identity in God. The Bible mentions that we must find the true bread, the bread of Life, let´s see some breads that we should not eat: 1) Bread of sorrows, Psa 127:2, 2) Bread of wickedness and wine of violence, Pro 4:17, 3) Bread eaten in secret, Pr 9:17 4) Bread of deceit, Pr 20:17 5) Selfishness bread, Pro 23:6 6) Bread of deception, Pr 23:3. We should avoid these breads, lest we are eating them. On the other hand, let´s see the Church´s bread: Mrk 7:27 says: “But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children´s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”” From here, we see that children´s bread is the bread of liberation. This bread is not only for non-believers but specially for the children of God; we constantly see that there are many things within our soul that need to be healed, such as ancestral curses, oppressions, sadness, evil desires, evil thoughts, deranged imagination, etc. This bread of freedom is our Lord Jesus Christ; we can be Christians, pastors or ministers, but we all need constant liberation. Paul says in I Co 5:8 “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” The unleavened bread is Jesus, a man without sin, without hypocrisy. As the Son of God, He went to the cross to pay our sins, therefore we must be holy as He is holy, I Pe 1:16. We cannot celebrate feast to the Lord if we have sins within us, therefore we need to recognize them in order to be partakers of His blessings. We must aspire to be holy all the days of our life. Another bread that we need to eat is the bread of sincerity and truth, this bread will keep us from living in hypocrisy or lies, we need to be sincere, honest, we cannot hide ourselves from the light of the Word. A Christian should always be sincere, and he has confront all lie as the Word says in Eph 5:11, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.” As servants of the Lord, we need to be determined, not like those who call evil good, and good evil, Is 5:20. Although we suffer persecution, we always have to speak the truth, the Word of God is the truth and it proceeds from His mouth, Mt 4:4. The Lord is always speaking to us, and we are living in a spiritual house where there is fresh bread, the bread of life; we should never accept to eat moldy bread, which is the bread of religiosity. Spiritually talking, we need a father which can lead us, explaining the Word of God as Philip did with the eunuch in Acts 8:26. Therefore, in this opportunity we see the importance to explain the bread of the Holy Supper, which is Christ as we read in Jhn 6:35 “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” I Co 10:16 states: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” Every time we eat the bread and drink the wine of the Holy Supper, we eat renovation, we strengthen our faith and our service to the Lord. This is also a bread of commemoration, since we remember the death of Christ, knowing that His return is near. When we partake of the bread and wine, we die to ourselves and we come to a new life in Christ, therefore let us come to the House of God, a house where there is abundant bread for us. Bethlehem!
Transcribed by Luis Fernando Ramírez
1 This study can be printed and copied by any means as long as the source from which it was obtained is cited.
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