The following is a new announcement from Pastor Michael Mang for all to consider before coming to the Lord’s Table each Sunday. The following announcement will be provided in the bulletins which are available to download and print from the bulletins tab on this website. However, given its length it is provided here to give all sufficient opportunity to read and consider it ahead of time.
Announcement:
All are invited to the Lord’s Table who have been baptized, have publicly professed faith in (either before a congregation of the Lord’s Church or to a body of Elders in a church where the Gospel of Christ is embraced) and allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior from your sins, and are members of the visible Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you have not publicly professed faith in Christ Jesus – the eternal Son of God who took on human flesh, lived a perfect, sinless life, died on the cross for sins, rose bodily from the dead, and who is returning to this earth in power and glory – please refrain from partaking of the Lord’s Table.
We invite you to respond to the Gospel by first understanding that you have sinned personally against the God who made you and have violated His good and right laws for you to follow. God is holy and has every right to separate you from Himself and from all that is good and beautiful because of your freely chosen disobedience to Him. But the really good news is that you can be restored to the God who made you because of what Christ Jesus has done on the cross as a perfect substitute and payment for the penalty that you owe and deserve. Simply believing and trusting in what Jesus did for you means you will belong to the LORD God forever. Abraham, the Biblical example of one who was restored to God by faith alone, trusted God’s promise and the LORD God credited it, that trust, to him as righteousness. God has shown His love to the world, and to you, by giving His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not die and be separated from Him forever but rather have the life man was created to have in the presence of God, a life that never ends.
This means that you cannot DO anything to earn your place with God. However, a true faith in Christ Jesus comes from a God-given desire that will produce behavior that does those things that are pleasing to Him.
Please seek out and contact one of our Pastors or Elders to talk more about your eternal future. You can find their contact information in this bulletin. They will be glad to show you from Scripture, God’s Word, how you can have a relationship with God through Christ Jesus and have true peace and security with Him.
If you have professed faith in Christ Jesus, have been baptized, and are a member of the Church, yet there is a distance between you and the LORD because of cherished and unrepentant sin and transgressions of God’s laws, we warn you to refrain from partaking the elements of the Lord’s Table today. Scripture tells us that partaking of the Lord’s Table is a participation, a communion, in the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16). God’s people cannot partake of His holy Table while at the same time engaging in deliberate and conscious violations of His commands for us as His holy people. If this is true with you, the LORD graciously promises that, if you confess and turn from whatever thinking or behavior that is contrary to His nature and His Word, He is faithful to forgive and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Until you have confessed and turned from whatever this breach of faith might be, please refrain from partaking of the Lord’s Table.
This does not mean that as a professing follower of Christ you are required to be perfect and flawless before communing with Christ at His Table. The Table is for you to be nourished and strengthened even more in your faith and love for Christ. You may have worries and doubts that God loves or hears you because your faith is weak. You may have sinned, confessed, and turned from it to the Lord before partaking, but still your heart condemns you. When you come to the Lord’s Table, the Lord by faith assures you that you belong to Him, and He belongs to you. If, despite your sins and imperfections, you can truly say that the LORD is your Shepherd, that the name of Christ and His smile is the desire of your soul, then take the LORD at His word that you are ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven!
Come, and dine with your Lord and Savior.