This holiday season (remember that holiday comes from “holy day,” which means especially set apart for remembrance) we are facing an especially trying time that is unique to many of us. We will be thinking about ways we can gather to celebrate God’s good gifts while considering how we can best maximize the good of one another.

While these times may be unique to many of us, we should not think that these difficulties are new for every believer throughout the world. There are many who have been meeting in underground churches worried that someone may be infiltrating the church to report leaders and the flock to the government.

At any minute the authorities could storm into the gathering. A loved one likely, even now, is imprisoned, separated from family and the church, expecting capital punishment for his or her Christian faith.

Somewhere else in the world a family member may be dying from a disease (like Ebola) or fighting cancer in isolation with a weakened, frail and dying immune system while life is slipping away.

In each of these situations, family members are not able to provide face-to-face and hand-to-hand care for their loved ones who will be stepping from this life into eternity.

Despite these trials, the children of God are promised the care and comfort of Jesus Christ through the Spirit of Christ by the Word of Christ. It is the new creation power of the Word of Jesus that gives light to spiritually blinded eyes in order to see the salvation of Christ and grant life to the dead soul in order to trust in Christ.

The Word of Christ that makes us alive together with Christ is the same Word that promises to strengthen, sustain, shepherd, and sanctify the daily life of the child of God. The Word of Christ is the child of God’s great gift! 

The Bible exalts the priority of the Word of God in the lives of believers. We have only to glance through the wealth of promises in Psalm 119 to witness the ministry of God’s Word to the believer’s heart. Let’s look at a few of them.

• God’s Word keeps us from sin (Psalm 119:11).
• God’s Word delights us as much as in all riches (Psalm 119:14, 16).
• God’s Word fills our deep longings (Psalm 119:20).
• God’s Word renews and strengthens our life (Psalm 119:25, 28).
• God’s Word keeps us from pursuing worthless, selfish gain (Psalm 119:36).
• God’s Word reminds us of God’s steadfast love in salvation that we might have an answer for those who taunt us (Psalm 119:41-42).
• God’s Word comforts us in our affliction (Psalm 119:50).
• God’s Word provides the content for our songs in our sojourning (Psalm 119:54).

This is just a taste of the many promises of God’s Word for us! Indeed, the Word of God is our spiritual food and like food, it serves to not only nourish our hearts and minds with the promises of God for us in Christ, but also serves to build up our spiritual immune system to guard us from sin and its consequences.

But let’s not forget the One who feeds us with His Word, the Head of the body, Jesus. The Apostle Paul, in Ephesians 5:22-33, tells us that Christ is the Head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior (5:23).

As the Savior of His body, Jesus sanctifies and cleanses His church with the Word (5:26). As the Savior of His body, Jesus nourishes and cherishes His church (5:29). Nourish involves “nurture” and “feeding.”

Cherishing underlines Christ’s tenderness in caring for His church as His bride (another metaphor for Christ’s relationship to His church), a bride that is fragile, yet precious for He purchased His bride with His precious blood and united her to himself to receive the blessedness of His goodness!

What a beautiful picture! Jesus lovingly cleanses, sanctifies, feeds, and tenderly cares for His church.

How does Jesus cleanse, sanctify, nourish and cherish His church? Well, it is helpful to consider the context of Ephesians. In Ephesians 4:11-16, Paul writes that Christ gave shepherds and teachers to His church to equip the saints, to build up the body of Christ (11-12).

The spiritual means Christ employs to equip the saints through His shepherds and teachers involves “the knowledge of the Son of God” and focuses as its goal on maturity unto the fullness of Christ (5:13). To paraphrase Paul, Christ feeds his body, the church, with the knowledge of Himself through teaching and shepherding.

Yet, this spiritual feeding not only grows the church in the maturity of Christ-likeness, but it also serves to protect the body from being “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (5:14).

Paul says, rather than be crushed by the attack of false doctrine, the truth is spoken in love so that the body will together “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (5:15). And there we have it.

Like food that nourishes and protects the body, so Christ uses the teaching of His person and work (think of the content of the gospel taught in Ephesians 1-2) and the teaching of His character (think of the ‘put on Christ’ content taught in Ephesians 3-6) to grow us in Christ and in so doing protect and provide for each member of His body.

Brothers and sisters, let me put it in these terms: When you sit down with your family over an incredible meal, think of the blessedness of gathering together on the Lord’s Day with the members of the church to be fed and protected through the teaching of the Word of Christ.

Take a moment to give God thanks and praise for caring for your soul along with your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ! Be ready to come to the banquet of God’s Word with God’s household with ready and expectant hearts, famished for the teaching of Jesus! Together we will be fed, together we will grow, together we will be protected by our Savior.