Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
Before we open up God's word together, I I just have to say I am it it blows me away that on the worst possible day, I mean, let's just call it for what it is, it's horrible out there. And and that you guys came. I mean, we have not only filled up this sanctuary with all of our services, but we filled up across the street at 4th And Spring. To those who are there, just thank you for for not leaving and going home, but for for staying over there. But I'm just deeply impressed.
Joel Brooks:So, stars, parades in heaven for you await. If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Matthew chapter 18 as we continue our study on the life of Peter. For those of you who have been here on a membership Sunday, perhaps you have heard me say that there are more than 71 anothers in the New Testament, that we are commanded to love one another, greet one another, show hospitality to one another, be kind to one another, serve one another, encourage one another, bear one another's burdens, and and on and on. In all of these one anothers, they imply not just close relationships, what they imply is that the church is family. That's how close we are.
Joel Brooks:This is why we call one another brother and sister. Some of you call me brother Brooks. Don't. Brother's fine, Brooks is fine, Rev Jeb, Jebi, all of that. There's something about brother Brooks together.
Joel Brooks:But but we do. We have this family kind of relationship. Every family, though, has its own little quirks. If you were to think of all the local churches around here in Birmingham as as individual family units, all the families have different personalities. You have some families that are kind of reserved and proper, very formal formal.
Joel Brooks:They they have a choir, they listen to string music, they might light candles, talk in hush tones. You have other family units out there that are way more casual. It's, you know, shirts or t shirts and flip flops, or they give one another high fives, and that's great. I love the diversity in all of our families. If I were to describe Redeemer, we're we're kind of like high church trailer trash.
Joel Brooks:And and hold on with me for just a moment here. Okay? We're we're this weird, crazy blend. I mean, we have people in ball caps, some people in ties, some of them wear that together. We serve real wine and grape juice for communion.
Joel Brooks:We sing ancient hymns, and then we also sing modern songs and say the same line over and over. I mean, we have been set free as a church many times. We have dwelled on that fact. And here we are, we're sitting in pews, we're looking at beautiful stained glass, and yet, just a few weeks ago, we rented out a brewery and we were playing tug of war in the rain in between bites of sausage. I mean, we are this just really eclectic group, and I love it.
Joel Brooks:I I love who God has brought here and who we are as a family. Now, one of the things about being a family is we don't just love one another, it means we also will have conflict with one another. It's inevitable. All of those one anothers in scripture, they imply those deep relationships, but they also imply that we will be hurting one another. We'll be sinning against one another.
Joel Brooks:That's why we need to be told to be patient and kind and forgiving to one another. And so, that's really what this passage here is about. As we continue this study in Peter, Jesus is going to teach Peter and and all the disciples here how we are to respond to one another when someone in our family has sinned against us or perhaps we have sinned against them. And so Jesus is gonna teach how we seek reconciliation, and he's gonna show us what forgiveness looks like. And so let's look at Matthew chapter 18.
Joel Brooks:We'll begin reading in verse 15. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
Joel Brooks:And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
Joel Brooks:As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times or your translation might say 70 times seven. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.
Joel Brooks:So, the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay you back everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a 100 denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him saying, pay what you owe. So, his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will repay you. He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.
Joel Brooks:When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then, his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. But pray with me. Father, thank you that we get to call you father because you have made us your children. We are family here in this room.
Joel Brooks:And, Lord, I pray that you would teach us as a family how we are to relate to one another, how we are to take sins seriously, and how also we are to seek reconciliation. Show us how we can live out all of those one anothers. Lord, for that to happen, we need to tune our hearts to you. And so I pray in this moment, my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Early in my pastoral career, I had a older, wiser pastor tell me something. He he said, son and I don't actually remember if he said son. It was implied.
Joel Brooks:He said, there's going to be some people who don't like you in your church, and they're going to leave. Be thankful because there's going to be other people who really don't like you in the church, and that's going to be the reason they stay. And I thought, you know, wow, but there's not many truer words that have ever been said. And I'm sure I'm not alone in in kind of feeling this. Probably all of you, even though you're not pastors, you have experienced that to some degree and and maybe in your friend circles.
Joel Brooks:Maybe maybe somebody has been upset at you, and as a result of that, they have left your friend group, they've left your book club, maybe your bible study. Maybe they they left the group text they were on, and so you got that little message, so and so has left the conversation. And you're like, good riddance. And then, there's other people who have been probably upset at you, really upset at you, and that's why they've stayed. And they've stayed, and they've kind of just made your life miserable.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you are hoping for the day you see that little they have left the conversation, But until then, you're just going have to keep getting all these passive aggressive texts. Know, texts like, you look great tonight. I I wish I could wear something so daring. Or I I came across a free counseling service online, just putting it out there for whoever might need it. Jesus Jesus gives us another path that we could take.
Joel Brooks:He recognizes that all of us here, we not only sin, we sin against one another. Every one of us. There's gonna be times for for each of us that we will lie to one another. We're gonna deceive. We're gonna slander, we're going to gossip, we're going to be rude, we're just going to say some really unkind things.
Joel Brooks:Every one of us is going to do that at some point. So, how do we want people to respond to us when we do that? And how are we supposed to respond to others? Well, Jesus, he he doesn't say, you know, when when that happens, you just pack up your bags and you get out of there. And he also doesn't say that you you dig your heels in and you stay and you punish that person.
Joel Brooks:No. He gives us a path here of treating sin seriously, but pursuing reconciliation and repentance. The first thing that Jesus tells us to do here when when someone has wronged us, and and by wrong, he's not talking about a little trifle matter here. Otherwise, we would be just nonstop going to one another. It's he's talking about if somebody has seriously wronged us.
Joel Brooks:He says that we are to go to that person and we are to tell them their fault. Now, for those of you here who hate conflict, just know that Jesus is not making a suggestion. Jesus is commanding you to go to such a person. For those of you who love conflict and you know who you are, if you're not, the person next to you knows who you are. Just keep in mind that the point of going to such a person and telling telling them their fault is reconciliation, and that Paul tells us in Galatians six, we're to do this with a spirit of gentleness.
Joel Brooks:In other words, if you really like rebuking people, you're the last person who should be rebuking people because your heart is like, I want to see a I want to see a restoration of a relationship here. But, make no mistake. Jesus, he tells us, doesn't suggest he tells us to go. We're not to ignore the wrong. We're not to sit there and stew.
Joel Brooks:We're not to talk to a bunch of other people first, you know, and kind of create allies against a certain person. We certainly don't post anything online about it or reply in their little comments. We go in person. I was a communication major at the University of Georgia pre email, so things have changed. We've actually got a whole lot more methods of communication now.
Joel Brooks:I mean, now, we can communicate by email, by Slack, by text. You could tweet something. You could post something on social media, like, all these different ways of communicating with one another. But let me ask you. Do you think we're better at communication?
Joel Brooks:Do you I know we have more methods, more means to do it with, but do you think we've actually become better at communicating with people? Let me ask you this. How many of you have ever sent a text to the wrong person? I mean, I think all of us have. We we sent a text to the wrong person, but I bet you've never talked with the wrong person or had a conversation with the wrong person.
Joel Brooks:You don't make that mistake face to face. Lauren is in my phone, in my contacts, as a wifey. Not because I've I have many wifes out there. I just it's not why, one wifey. She's listed as a wifey because she's I want her to be first.
Joel Brooks:She's she's first on my contact list. But what it means is sometimes when I'm in a real hurry and I'm doing things, you know, sometimes we're texting on a computer, sometimes we're texting on your phone, sometimes I I actually hit just above it. And Aaron, one of my friends Aaron, has gotten some pretty spicy texts from me over the years. And I could tell you that, like, I would never say that to him in person. I don't make that mistake in person, face to face.
Joel Brooks:And just so you know, I still, from time to time, I just send him some of those texts to play with him. And you should have seen my daughter, Georgia, she was here at the last service, and she's just like, oh my gosh, dad, you send spicy texts. Yes. Yes. We are married.
Joel Brooks:But but Jesus is like, go in person, one on one. Have that conversation. And the reason that we do so there's several reasons. One, this keeps resentment and hatred from building up in you. Here's the thing, if you don't have an actual conversation with that person, you're going to have an imaginary conversation with that person.
Joel Brooks:You know what I mean? You're you're laying in bed at night and you're just thinking through all the things you want to say. Oh, next time I run into them, I want to say this, I'm going say this and this. Here's the deal, imaginary conversations actually turn into real hatred and bitterness. They're being corrupt in your heart, and Jesus says, don't do that.
Joel Brooks:Don't actually go to the person. Second, we we go to the person because when we do so, it usually deescalates the conflict when it's just two people talking about it. We don't escalate it by going to all the others or posting something online, and all of sudden, things just blow up out of control. And finally, we go to a person one on one and we talk because we might realize we've been wrong or we might realize we're the person in the wrong. And that and that maybe we misheard something, that maybe somebody miscommunicated what another person had said or we misinterpreted something, and really, this entire conflict has just been in our heads.
Joel Brooks:Did you guys know that there is another reverend Joel Brooks out there who leads a marriage ministry called Romantic Warrior Ministries? I didn't know that until somebody local here in Birmingham apparently read something of his and they got really angry at it, and so they reached out to me and said, how I can't believe you would write something like this. And, I was like, gosh, do really think I would have a ministry called Romantic Warrior Ministries? Come on. But, because this person, thankfully, just came to me first and went face to face, it was an easy thing to resolve instead of going and spreading things to other people.
Joel Brooks:So, Jesus, he wants us to go there face to face. And, the goal of going to somebody and confronting them this way with their sin is that this person would repent and that we would be reconciled. Reconciliation is the goal. But, as we know, that does not always happen. And so, Jesus says, when that doesn't happen, then take two or three other people with you from the church, believers with you, to go and talk to that person, and he tells them, goes, when you do that, I'm actually there in your midst.
Joel Brooks:I am present with you as you do that. And, if the person still refuses to repent, well, then the whole church is brought into the discussion, and if they still refuse to repent, Jesus says, you treat that person like a tax collector or a Gentile, which means we treat that person like a non Christian. Some of you are probably wondering, well, what does that look like? Well, how do you treat non Christians? I hope you treat them kindly.
Joel Brooks:I hope you're constantly pursuing them and sharing the gospel with them. I hope you're inviting them to church. So, somebody when when we see them or we treat them as unbelievers, we are still pursuing them with the gospel. But, what it does mean is we no longer see them as family. And so, there are some things that they can't participate in because it is family.
Joel Brooks:And so, for us, here at the church, we would remove them from the church roles, from membership, we would, we would remove them from being part of a home group, and we would not allow them partake in a family meal of communion. And, if, you're thinking, gosh, that sounds really harsh, it's because it is. It's severe, but it's a severe mercy. That's what it is. It's a severe mercy.
Joel Brooks:I mean, we're letting a person who know, who does not take their sin seriously, that that sin is serious. And, that's the the way we we go about doing it. We're not talking about you you don't do that with somebody who's just struggling with sin. No. That's an action you take towards somebody who who sees their lifestyle, their pattern, that's not even sin.
Joel Brooks:They're not even acknowledged. That's not sin. I am free to do whatever I want. And, when a person takes that step, that's when you have to show them the severity of their sin, hoping it would wake them up. It's like, oh, so this really is not compatible with the Christian lifestyle.
Joel Brooks:And, once again, your hope in doing this is that they would wake up and that they would repent. Now, after hearing Jesus teach on this and pursuing this reconciliation, Peter decides he needs to chime in. He needs to let Jesus know he's been listening. And so, he asked, Lord, how how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?
Joel Brooks:Now, Peter thinks here he is being really really gracious with his response. I mean, forgiving somebody who has wronged you in the same way, wronged you seven times, that's a lot. Would you do that? I mean, seven times? The Jewish tradition of the day is you only had to forgive somebody three times who had wronged you.
Joel Brooks:To forgive them more than that, you would just be considered a fool. I I the image that I have in my head is is like, you know, Charlie Brown and Lucy. How many times is Charlie Brown supposed to forgive Lucy when she puts the football there for him to kick and she takes it away? I mean, it's just like every time. And he misses, of course, he falls on his back, and then not long later, Lucy says, I'm I'm you know, this time, for real, I won't do it, holds it, and we all know what's going to happen.
Joel Brooks:She's going to pull it away, he's going to miss, he's going to fall on his back. Are you really going to do that seven times? Only a fool would do that. Only a fool would believe that's actually real real repentance there. And so, Peter thinks he's being over the top gracious in his response.
Joel Brooks:But Jesus says this, no, you don't forgive seven times, but 77 or really, it's seven times 70 times, which is Jesus' way of saying, there is no limit to how many times you must forgive. In Luke's version of the story, it's somewhat comical. The disciples hear that and they actually cry out, Lord, increase our faith. And they don't say, Lord, increase our love, because it's not just love that you need to forgive somebody. To forgive somebody that many times, it's increase our faith because you don't think it's even humanly possible to do it.
Joel Brooks:And keep in mind, Peter has already walked on water. He had that much faith, yet, when it comes to forgiving someone, a brother or sister who has wronged you over and over and over, he says, well, that's just impossible. You're not to give me more faith to do that, Jesus. Now, Peter doesn't know this yet, but he is actually going to need that type of forgiveness by Jesus. You know, when Peter asked, how many times must I forgive the person who has wronged me?
Joel Brooks:You know what Jesus could have said? He was probably thinking it. I don't know, Peter. Just how many times would you like me to forgive you of the times that you wronged me? It's a great question, Peter.
Joel Brooks:Just how great do you want my forgiveness to be of you in the future? I mean, Peter knows he's a sinner, but he has no idea as to the depths of sin he's about to go plunge into and just how desperately he's gonna need such extravagant forgiveness. And so, Jesus right now is already preparing him, already teaching him about how God is going to respond to Peter when Peter fails Jesus in such a way. And to flesh this out even more, to really anchor this into Peter, he tells Peter this story. He tells him a story about how a servant owed a king 10,000 talents.
Joel Brooks:That's the equivalent of about a zillion dollars. I mean, I I gave up trying to calculate it. It's hard to know any exact amount, but a talent was worth 6,000 denarii. Denarii was equivalent to a day's wage, so you're looking at sixty million days wages. To put that in perspective, that would be well, it would be you would have to work every day, seven days a week, for a hundred and sixty five thousand years to pay this off.
Joel Brooks:It's a zillion dollars, might as well be. You you you can't pay it off. So the king, he was just going to sell this person off and move on. But the servant fell on his knees and begged for patience. Patience.
Joel Brooks:I'll I'll I'll pay you all back if you're just a little patient with me. King's thinking, like a hundred and sixty five thousand years of patience? He can't pay this back. But the king, he doesn't give him patience. Instead, he gives him forgiveness.
Joel Brooks:It's astounding. I mean, the servant humbles himself and asks for patience, but instead, he is granted forgiveness. And here, Jesus gives us such a beautiful picture of the gospel. We are the servant. That's his point.
Joel Brooks:We are the servant. We are the ones who owe a debt that we could never ever repay, no matter how patient God was. I mean, there is you could, for the rest of your life, you could sell everything you had and just give to the poor, and it would not be a drop in the bucket compared to what you owe. You could spend every hour for the rest of your day serving in homeless shelters or in nursing homes, and it would not even scratch the surface. It's not patience is what we need.
Joel Brooks:God, just give me a little more time. I'll turn over a new leaf. I'll become better this time. I really, really will. We don't need patience.
Joel Brooks:We need forgiveness. That's our only hope is that he forgives us of this debt, and Jesus does. God has graciously forgiven us because Jesus has paid the debt for us. So, we get this beautiful picture of the gospel here. Back to the story here.
Joel Brooks:After the king forgave the servant, the servant's liberated. He's he's set free. What's he going to use his freedom for? Well, he goes and he finds a fellow servant who owes him a 100 denarii, which is about $15,000, so that's not nothing. But it's a lot less than a zillion.
Joel Brooks:We can we can all agree on that. It's less than a zillion. This fellow servant begs for patience so he could pay him back just like he had done earlier with the king. But instead of giving him any kind of patience or forgiving his debt, instead, he has him thrown into prison. We read that this person's fellow servants saw what their colleague had done, and they were deeply disturbed by it.
Joel Brooks:I just wanna stop there. That that that line just hit hit me this week. They were deeply disturbed by it. Church, we need to remind ourselves that the world is watching. They're watching.
Joel Brooks:They're watching how we, who claim to worship a gracious and forgiving God, how we, who claim we have been forgiven and changed by God, how we now respond to those who are sinning against us. They're watching. Will we show the same kind of forgiveness and compassion that our father has shown on us, or will we show that we don't understand his grace and compassion at all? The world's watching. These fellow servants are saying, how how would this person respond?
Joel Brooks:And when they saw what he was doing, they said they were deeply disturbed. And so, go to the king. They tell the king all about it. The king has the servant brought back to him, and then we read these words in verse 32. Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant.
Joel Brooks:I forgave you all that debt because he pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother. You could add sister, brother and sister from your heart.
Joel Brooks:The servant made two tragic mistakes. First, he forgot just how much he was forgiven. And the second is he thought that because his master, his king was so incredibly gracious, that meant he would never judge. It's a mistake that I think a lot of people make. We love to talk about the love and the compassion and the grace of God, and therefore, we already just think such a God would never ever judge.
Joel Brooks:But yet, we hear or see we that a gracious, loving God does get angry at sin, and this person is judged for it. The main point of this story is pretty simple. It's this. Since you since you have been forgiven of such a huge debt by God, you should therefore go and forgive others who owe you just a small debt. Since you have been forgiven of so much, certainly now, you could go and forgive others of a little.
Joel Brooks:Forgiven people forgive. That's what this is about. Forgiven people forgive. In Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer, after Jesus teaches the whole, you know, forgives forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, he adds this, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your heavenly father forgive your trespasses.
Joel Brooks:Jesus doesn't talk this way about other things. And, somebody, please, after the service, if you could find an exception to this somewhere, come come and talk to me, but I haven't been able to find it. He doesn't say things like, if you're not kind to others, God's not going to be kind to you. If you're not giving to others, well, then God's not going to give to you. But here, he does say, if you don't forgive others, God's not going to forgive you.
Joel Brooks:There's something about forgiveness that is unique. And, I think it's because forgiveness is at the very heart of the gospel. If you don't understand like that you've really been forgiven, like and that doesn't overflow into the rest of your life, you don't get the gospel because forgiven people forgive. You can't help it. Any of you guys watched Ted Lasso when it came out on Apple TV?
Joel Brooks:You watched that. Anybody? Raise raise your hands. Yeah. Synergy let that evil stuff into straight into your home.
Joel Brooks:Actually, at the last service, I said HBO, and somebody came, and they quietly corrected me in gentleness after the service, and I thanked them. I said, sorry. Apple TV. Alright. So, Ted Lasso.
Joel Brooks:It's fascinating. You pull up, if you go to YouTube, if you're not familiar with it, looks like almost every one of you are, there's two clips from the show that are by far the most watched. You already know what they are. First one, twenty something million times, at least when when I was looking at this, it's the dart scene. I mean, we know when when Ted Lasso, he's like, oh, I didn't know I was right handed, you know, and he's just like he's just he does the darts, and he just sticks it to old Rupert there, and we're all like, yeah.
Joel Brooks:I mean, we all we felt great when he did that, didn't we? Because you like seeing justice or or you like seeing a person get punished, that arrogant, pompous person. Oh, yeah. Feels good to judge somebody. Second most watched clip just under it was on forgiveness.
Joel Brooks:And you you know the scene there. It's it's Rebecca, Ted's boss, and she has undermined him at every turn without him knowing it, traded away the star player, tried to get newspapers to write humiliating articles about him. I mean, everything she's been against him from the start quietly, and finally, she she comes to him, and she just comes clean. And Ted looks at her and says, I forgive you. Why is it that everybody wants to watch that?
Joel Brooks:Why I mean, so many people, they're just drawn to that moment. They watch that clip over and over. I have. I've watched it over and over. Why?
Joel Brooks:It's because there's something really powerful about forgiveness. Like, it's something we are all hoping for because we instinctively know we have a debt we cannot pay. There's no way we could ever make this right. And what do we long to hear? I forgive you.
Joel Brooks:And, that forgiveness has a transformative effect on us. Rebecca, she's not the same person anymore. She now becomes a forgiving person, a a kinder person after this. That's what the forgiveness of God does for us. I think people are drawn to that clip because it's a gospel moment.
Joel Brooks:What Jesus is teaching here is that forgiveness is like the oxygen we breathe. We breathe it in, but then we have to breathe it out in order to breathe it in, to breathe it out. The one thing you cannot do is what the servant did, breathe it in and think you could just hold on to it. Just hold it. Forgiveness doesn't work that way.
Joel Brooks:We breathe forgiveness in, and then we breathe forgiveness out so we could breathe more forgiveness in, so we could breathe that forgiveness out. If we're not breathing out forgiveness to other people, we can't ever truly take in the forgiveness of God. Remember, forgiveness transforms us. And so, if you're having a really hard time or you just cannot forgive, Jesus is saying, Take inventory of your heart because you very well might have never accepted my forgiveness of you. In order for us to be the family that God wants us to be, this is something we have to learn as a church.
Joel Brooks:If we truly wanna have all of those one anothers in the New Testament, we have to know how we can deal with the sins and the wrongs we commit to one another, how we we go to each other in person in order to try to restore this relationship, and we have to learn to show forgiveness, the same forgiveness to others as God has shown to us. And that's what brings us here to this table. It's actually a perfect perfect message to go with the Lord's Supper here because here, we are reminded of Jesus' forgiveness of us and the cost of it. You know, when the king forgave the servant of his debts, the debts didn't magically disappear. It's not like the debts are just gone.
Joel Brooks:Somebody had to pay for the debts, somebody had to absorb the debt, and the king did. The king took the loss. And, it's the same when Jesus when he when he forgives or when when God forgives, he's he can't just forgive and it magically disappear all of your sins. They've got to go somewhere. And, what we read in scripture is that Jesus, he took those sins to the cross.
Joel Brooks:Jesus paid our debts through his own blood. That event was so important that he actually gave us a meal in which we could regularly remember that, in which we remember that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it, and he said, this is my body given to you. In the same way, he took the cup and he said, this wine is my blood poured out for your forgiveness. As I mentioned earlier, this is a family meal here, and so this table here is for all of you who have professed that your only hope in life and death is in Jesus, that what you need from God is not his patience so you could turn over a new leaf. What you need is his forgiveness that he offers you now through the blood of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:If you believe that, this table's for you. And this is how we're gonna take communion this morning. We're gonna start with those in the balcony. They'll come down, and then those in the overflow rooms. If you would come down these center aisles here, as you do, just take some of the bread, dip it in the wine.
Joel Brooks:As you take the bread, you'll hear the words, this is the body of Christ given to you. As you dip it in the wine, you'll hear this is his blood shed for you. After you take, you're you're welcome to stay up here and pray, or if you would return to your seat using these outer aisles. But if you would all now stand as the servers come up, and I'll pray that the Lord blesses this time. Lord Jesus, now as we as we partake in communion, would you allow us through your spirit to truly commune with you?
Joel Brooks:You gave your body to create a body, to create this body here, this beautiful family that we have, and we don't ever wanna take that for granted. Thank you for paying our debts, Jesus. And we pray this in your name. Amen. I