"...the God we worship is still the God of details and is still indignant when we reject His commandments for the sake of our traditions. One example will have to do here: it is abundantly clear that Jesus instituted a meal that involved wine, not unfermented grape juice, and at several points in this point, we have examined some reasons for His choice of wine. Yet, in our great wisdom, we have decided that wine is so dangerous that it has no place in the House of the Lord on the Sabbath day, while ignoring the fact that the danger of wine is precisely one of the reasons for drinking it.
"More generally, contempt for the Lord's table is contempt for the Lord of the table, and this is true for the church as it was for ancient Israel. Matthew Henry wisely applied these verses of Malachi to 'those who live in careless neglect of holy ordinances.' If this is the case, man churches today live in open contempt of their Lord. The Lord has provided a generous meal for His people; we have a sacrifice from which even those who served in the temple had no right to eat. Yet we complain that it makes the service too long and is inconvenient and it is repetitive and it is boring and maybe the roast in the oven will burn. 'My, how tiresome it is,' we sniff (Malachi 1:13), and thereby prove ourselves sons of Esau."
-- Peter J. Leithart, Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper, 116.
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