Sermons from Redeemer Community Church

Joel Brooks: 00:00

If y'all would, open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 11. We've got a a lot of moving parts tonight, a lot of things that we're going to do, and so I'm not going to preach for terribly long, because I don't want us to feel rushed as we look at baptism, as we partake in communion, as we take time to pray. First Corinthians chapter 11, we'll begin reading in verse 23. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you, Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Joel Brooks: 01:05

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and you drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Pray with me. Our father, we are grateful for a time that we have together We get to sing to You. We get to read Your word and be shaped by it.

Joel Brooks: 01:33

We believe that through Your Spirit opening up your word, there's a mighty power to transform us, to make us look more like Jesus, and we pray that would happen. We pray that no attention would be drawn to any man, whether it's a musician or a speaker or anyone. That all our attention would be fixed on you Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. Lord, I I pray that you would speak tonight, that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord may your words remain. We pray this in the name of Jesus.

Joel Brooks: 02:15

Amen. There's a lot of things that, I really loved about my freshman year at the University of Georgia. I mean, you you love the freedom that immediately comes when, you can stay out as late as you want. You could, you know, pretty much do whatever you want. I love the new friends that I was meeting.

Joel Brooks: 02:37

I I like going to football games, tailgating, but probably what I liked most was the meal halls, at least at Georgia. They were phenomenal. You could have whatever you wanted, anytime you wanted. And so if if I wanted, you know, pizza, you know, for lunch or for dinner available every night, or Mexican food or Chinese food or any kind of American food, and so I I ate 5 times a day. I would always have, 2 lunches and 2 dinners.

Joel Brooks: 03:10

And I I love the food there, but one of the things I realized I missed and it surprised me was I missed my mom's cooking. The reason that's surprising is my mom was a terrible cook, an absolutely terrible cook. But it wasn't so much the food, it was it was the community. It was the family that ate together. I don't know about you, but I grew up with family dinners, in which we were all forced to sit down at a table together and eat together.

Joel Brooks: 03:46

The meals, like I said, my mom wasn't a great cook. That's putting it mildly. She fixed not just on 1 or 2 occasions, often things like liver, and collards together and we would be forced as children to eat that. The only things like we really enjoyed and we were excited about was Sloppy Joe night or taco night. I mean those those were those were the winners, but there were only a few winners in this household.

Joel Brooks: 04:12

And we would all gather around at the table and we were to eat and we were to have good dinner discussion, as my mom would say. You know, you couldn't just talk about anything, certainly nothing vulgar or anything like that. That's not appropriate for the table. We're gonna have some good conversation. And so we tried to have good conversation.

Joel Brooks: 04:32

We even had family breakfast together on Saturdays, in which my dad, no lie, would have breakfast on the table 6 AM every Saturday. And so we would all gather around and we would have to eat breakfast together during that time. It it was pure misery actually, thinking back. Pure pure misery, but I do think of it fondly for some reason. In keeping with this tradition of the family meals, our family eats together every night.

Joel Brooks: 05:06

And I would say that one out of every 3 is really good. Alright? The meals are always great, but but but one out of 3 family dinners actually doesn't end with a fight, or with food being thrown or for somebody complaining if it's they don't like the taste, they don't like the texture, they don't like the person sitting next to them, or they didn't want milk, they wanted water. I didn't want water with ice, I wanted water without ice. Alright.

Joel Brooks: 05:31

That that's a common common theme, common meal. Parents are all nodding. They're like, yes yes. It it doesn't get better. But we are committed to doing it anyway.

Joel Brooks: 05:43

We're we're committed to having our meals together. It's something that the early church was committed to as well. In Acts 242, you read that they, the early church, they dedicated, devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And the word there, breaking of bread, some scholars, think that, well that was a meal that they just ate. They had potluck dinners a whole lot.

Joel Brooks: 06:14

And others would say no, that's referring to communion, and the answer is yes on both of those, because the Lord's supper, communion, was never done apart from a meal. And so what was happening was the early church was gathering often to eat together, to commune with one another and to commune with the Lord and partaking of the Lord's supper. And I would imagine that probably for the early church, one out of every 3 meals was good, and that they probably had a whole lot of fights and a whole lot of arguments just like our family does and maybe the family that you grew up in. Seriously, you you would have Jews and Gentiles eating together who had never eaten together before. You think that my kids argue over what they're gonna eat?

Joel Brooks: 07:06

Put Jews and Gentiles together and and the argument will begin. But yet they did come together and eat. You you had 2 completely different traditions, you know, of of how you would go through life and this affected all of their lives. Gentiles had a completely different life than the Jews had, yet they came together at the table. You had rich and you had poor gathering at the table, different classes, that didn't happen at that time at that time.

Joel Brooks: 07:32

And so I'm sure there was a lot of friction that happened when Christians came together to eat, partake of the Lord's supper, but they were committed to it. You know, one of the reasons when you go through the New Testament, you have all of these one anothers, there's over 70 one anothers, like love one another, be kind to one another, be compassionate with one another, forgive one another. Well, the reason you have to tell people to forgive one another, be kind to one another, tenderhearted to one another, forgive one another, the reason you have to say those things is because people were getting on one another's nerves. The early church, yeah, their meal times probably weren't the most peaceful. There was need for forgiveness, need for kindness, and yet despite all that they were committed to eating at the same table together.

Joel Brooks: 08:26

If you look at the early church, maybe the Corinthian church, the first chapter chapter of Corinthians says that there are many divisions among you. People were very divided and fighting and it manifested itself at the Lord's supper, in which the divisions even came there when they were eating, and Paul said stop it. Stop it. Not stop taking the Lord's supper. Not stop eating together, but stop fighting.

Joel Brooks: 08:54

Come together. Serve one another, and then he reminded them of the meaning of the meal. And that's what I want us to do is to remember the meaning of this meal. It's what we call a sacrament in the church. Jesus could have picked any number of things as a sacrament in order for us to remember him.

Joel Brooks: 09:22

He could have picked a song, his favorite song and said, you know, I want you every night to gather together and sing this song or he could have given them something to read every night. I want you to read this and remember me, but he doesn't, he chose a meal. He picked breaking bread and drinking wine together. Why? Of of everything that was at his disposal, why did he pick bread and wine?

Joel Brooks: 09:53

And I wanna give three reasons. First, we we've already kind of looked at. It reminds us that we are family. I say this often and I hope this sinks in and I will continue to say this, Christ gave his body to create a body. He gave his body to create the church.

Joel Brooks: 10:21

Through the Holy Spirit, we are actually closer together than any kind of blood relative or kin. That's astounding. Alright. You can be a, you know, long hair, tattooed, liberal, uneducated. You you have posters of Hillary Clinton on your wall.

Joel Brooks: 10:43

But if if you believe in the Lord Jesus and he has saved you, then we have more common more in common than, you know, a clean-cut conservative guy who's had the same haircut for the last 40 years who doesn't know Jesus. We have far more in common. We have a bond that endures for eternity. God has built something unique in this family, and we're to have family dinner together. 2nd, Jesus chose for us to have a meal together as a way to remember Him because, because we need food to live.

Joel Brooks: 11:31

We need food to live. Food sustains us, food nourishes us, and just as you cannot live without food, you cannot live without Jesus. Just as your bodies hunger for bread, we hunger for Jesus. Remember, he called himself that he is the bread of life. He's the one we hunger for.

Joel Brooks: 11:53

He is the one who nourishes our souls. And in this mysterious way, when we come to this table here and we eat the Lord's supper together, Jesus comes and he communes with us, and we we feast on him, we nourish our souls on Jesus. 3rd reason Jesus chose bread and wine, a meal, as a way to remember him is because eating together is necessary for celebration. It's necessary for celebration. You can't celebrate without food.

Joel Brooks: 12:36

Have you noticed that we don't do communion? We don't practice communion. We don't just eat and drink communion. The church has always said we celebrate communion together. It's something that we celebrate and just as, in a celebration there's there's often proclamation.

Joel Brooks: 13:01

For instance, you know, you say, Merry Christmas. You say Happy New Year. You say Happy Birthday. In the same way in our celebration at the Lord's table, there's a proclamation. Paul says it is often as you eat of this bread and you drink of this cup, you proclaim my death until I come.

Joel Brooks: 13:20

And so we're eating, we're feasting together, we're celebrating and we're proclaiming. We're proclaiming the the death and the resurrection of Jesus. And we're not only proclaiming that to one another, We are proclaiming it to one another so we can be encouraged, but we're also proclaiming it to the unseen powers and forces of this world. We're proclaiming it to heaven and earth that Jesus died and through his death we have gained victory and that Jesus is Lord over all. So we proclaim that to all, celebratory when we come to this table.

Joel Brooks: 14:02

And so it's for the these three reasons that I think Jesus chose a meal as a sacrament and to help us to remember Him. And that's what I want us to do. I want us to remember Him tonight in the context of a family meal in which we celebrate with one another. And we're gonna take communion a little We've we've done it this way some, but a little different than what you might be used to and we're gonna serve one another. Paul, when he did address the Corinthians in the text that you just read and there was all that selfishness and all that fighting, he reminds them of who they are as the people of God.

Joel Brooks: 14:41

He reminds them of Christ laying down it down his life. Then he said, when you come together, serve one another. Serve one another. That's so much about what the book of Corinthians is about, even when it talks about the spiritual gifts. The spiritual gifts are used to serve one another for God's glory.

Joel Brooks: 15:00

When we come to the table, we serve one another for God's glory. And so we're gonna do that tonight and so, this is how we'll partake, is after you you take the bread and just just break off a piece and you dip it in the wine and take, after you've done that I want you to take the elements yourself and then I want you to turn around and I want you to serve the next person in line. And then they will take and when we need take, take the elements and then serve the person behind you. And so we can all serve one another, the broken body and the blood of Jesus.