The sense of smell is one of the most powerful of our five senses. A person can be deeply engrossed in thought, focused on a particular task, when all it takes is strong aroma to completely capture the attention and redirect focus. You’re walking through a shopping mall focused on those last few Christmas gifts you need to pick up for your wife and kids. And then it hits you; like a sucker punch you weren’t expecting! The sweet, warm, delicious aroma of cinnamon rolls! Oh you’ve smelled it before…you’ve tasted it before! And they are so, so, good!! I suppose someone could say, ‘You’ve already experienced a cinnamon roll. You know what they taste like. You should be satisfied.’
But that’s not how it works. 1 Peter 2:2-3 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. It’s kind of like the old Lays Potato Chip commercial where the catch line was, “Lays. Betcha can’t eat just one!” When we partake of something that truly satisfies our yearning, it leaves you longing for even more. Each bite is satisfying…. but you want more!
When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer, we say that He “lives within our hearts”, and He does in the form of the Holy Spirit. But Jesus desires a nearness with us that can only best be described as consumed or eaten.
In John 21:12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” The King James says, “Come and dine.” In any case, He says, ‘Come and fellowship with me. I want you to come and dine with me, dine on me!’ Earlier in John 6, Jesus had been teaching that He was the “Bread of life”. Everything they needed for eternal life was in Him, not in some loaf of pumpernickel.
John 6:35 “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
In the true context, “Come and dine”; Jesus is inviting His disciples to a breakfast of freshly caught fish, cooked over a campfire on the beach. But in a deeper sense, His words imply a holy nearness, a loving togetherness; the same table, same menu, sitting side by side, reclining together. So we see that Jesus’ simple invitation teaches us union with Jesus, as we feast upon Him (“dwelleth in me, and I in him”), as well as fellowship with the saints, because the nearer you get to Jesus, the nearer you’ll find yourself to like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ.
The apostles were 12 different men with 12 different personalities, many of them with different occupations, from different walks of life. They most likely had varying opinions and views about many things, and like Christian believers today, they probably disagreed about many things. But one thing they, and we, have in common is we all have the same spiritual craving for Jesus. He is what makes us all one. Jesus is what makes our table common. His broken body and shed blood saved us all…and we just can’t seem to get enough of it!
“To look at Christ is to live, but for strength to serve Him you must “come and dine”.
Charles H. Spurgeon
“It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4
In Christ,
Rick