Breaking Bread Together

SERMON: 2009-11-08--ac0933--breaking-bread-together SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:44.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with the speaker's exposition on the phrase 'breaking of bread.' The main sermon material concludes at segment [31], after which the content shifts to a musical interlude (starting around 00:39:38), marking the end of the primary teaching portion. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:16:40.900-00:16:44.120, 00:40:21.200-00:40:25.300, 00:41:02.260-00:44:42.440 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, as I pointed out a number of weeks ago, the phrase "they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread" for the early church referred to two separate though interrelated practices. First of all, it related to their habit of sharing meals together. Scripture goes on to say in verse 46, "They broke bread in their homes and they ate together with glad and sincere hearts." This early church, they loved hanging around with each other and sharing their resources. Secondly, it referred to their practice of celebrating the Lord's Supper. And each of us has heard the familiar words of the institution given to us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where he says, "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you." The Lord Jesus on the night 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, after supper he took the cup saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink of it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink of this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." So the early church, when they talk about the breaking of bread, they talk about the fellowship they have sharing meals and then by extension the fellowship they would have celebrating communion. And according to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the two often rolled into each other. And you might recall from 1 Corinthians chapter 11 that posed some problems because even while they were confessing unity in Christ in the celebrating of communion, the rich ate over here and the poor ate over there and they were denying by their actions what they were confessing by their profession. And so Paul said, "That's not a good thing. You're under judgment because you're behaving hypocritically." The fact then that they were devoted to the breaking of bread here in Acts chapter 2 has some pretty profound and practical implications for you and me. In the time that we have this morning, I want to try to walk you through two of those. The first is this. We need to, I believe, take seriously the practice of hospitality. Peter says, Romans 12, 13, "Share with God's people who are in need, practice hospitality." And Peter in 1 Peter 4, 9 says, "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling." Now the word hospitality, as you can imagine, relates to the word hospital and the word hospital in turn relates to the word host. And hospitality in the dictionary is defined as this. It is defined as the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. And I'm sure all of us here have either given hospitality or received hospitality at one point or another. I'll never forget as a youngster of 10, when our family first came to Canada from the Netherlands back in 1958, as our family was trying to settle in, my older brother and I were farmed out to another church family where we were looked after by them. And my memory of that is twofold. I made my first dollar working with him in his neighbor's orchard, which I thought was a lot of money in those days. My other memory is of how ravenously hungry we were and how good her homemade bread tasted. Because you see, we had just come off a 10 day ocean voyage and half that time I'm sure spent being seasick and throwing up, so the food just really hit the spot. And I appreciate to this day the hospitality those folks extended to us. A little bit later on, once our family got settled a little bit, another family came from the Netherlands, stayed at our house for the better part of a month, as I recall, until they in turn found their place on their feet and got settled in. Hospitality is a Christian virtue that is uniquely characteristic of God's people. Now when it comes to hospitality, here is a very interesting thing. Human nature being what it is, even our most selfless actions, not infrequently, include a selfish component, doesn't it? I was thinking about that when I was a kid, reading these Bible stories where Abraham, for example, in Genesis chapter 21 meets up with his dude called Abimelech. And you know how in the Old Testament when people would meet up with each other, they would bring presents to each other and not just a little bottle of wine or a slab of cheese for your wine and cheese party, but like tons of money and goods and I remember thinking to myself as a kid, "Now why in the world would you want to be that generous?" Until it finally dawned on me that in that culture, the recipient was required to return an even greater gift. So the more you gave, the more you got back. So it wasn't always altruistic. It wasn't always just for the well-being of the other person. It also had a selfish return. And I suspect that if you and I are really honest with ourselves and we look at how we spend our time and who we invite over and who we are friends with, it's not all altruistic. It isn't all about the other person. It has a lot to do with me. Look at who your friends are. Who do you invite over? Who do you like hanging around with? Who are part of your social environment? And most of the time, it's people we like to be with. It's people who are like us. It's people who can maybe help us along on the social ladder of life. It's people that we in some way benefit from, and that's not all bad because the reality is that relationships get established along those kinds of natural fault lines. And we all need places and relationships where we can be comfortable and where we can be ourselves. But please understand this with me. Our way of doing friendships and our way of getting as much back as we're giving is very different from the standard the Lord Jesus establishes in scripture for those who are his children. Listen to these sobering words from Luke chapter 12. He says, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, brothers or relatives or your rich neighbors. If you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." The test of our spirituality is not how generous we are with those we like or those who will return to us what we have first given them. No, the test of our spirituality is how much we go out of our way to give without expecting anything in return. Listen again to how Jesus puts it in the Sermon on the Mount. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that. But he says, "You be perfect, mature, complete," is the word in Greek, "even as your heavenly Father is perfect." In other words, God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good. He makes the rainfall and the just and on the unjust, and you and I are measured spiritually, not by how nice and kind we are to those we like and to those that we would like to hang around with. No, the measure is how much of ourselves are we giving to the least, and the lost, and the last. Pretty sobering thought, isn't it, Don? You say, "Well, that costs me. That wears me out." Yeah, it wore Jesus out to the point that he hung on the cross. But why did he hang on the cross? Because his hope was in the Father, the Scripture says, "And God will repay you at the resurrection of the just." There isn't a tear we cry. There isn't a sacrifice we make. There isn't a slap in the face that we receive because we have poured out our hearts in love, but God takes note. He all writes it down in his book of life, and come the final day of the resurrection, He will more than compensate us for everything that we have lost. But you see, that's what it means to walk by faith. And so the early church's practice of breaking bread together refers, first and foremost, to the practice of hospitality. And practicing hospitality, then, for you and for me, has some very practical implications. Let me spell it out a little bit further. Let me give you some concrete examples of how we can be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. First of all, consider joining one of our welcoming ministries here at church. Let's say that you're the kind of person the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, and He's saying to you, you know, you ought to be far more giving than what you are. You're a taker. You've grown up enough in Christ. You ought to be a giver now. Well, here's a good practical entry way, in an organized fashion, non-demanding, pretty much, that you can get involved in. And I suppose, ideally, we ought to be so concerned about one another, we don't need to organize it, but you know how that goes. And so we have these welcoming ministries, don't we? When you come into the parking lot, there are parking lot attendants. You come in through the door here, or any one of the other doors. You have greeters who welcome you. When you come into the auditorium, you've got ushers who hand you your bulletin and who are there to serve you in any way that you need to be served. We have people at the information desk. We have people taking their turns serving coffee. Why do we do that? Because sometimes those are the first faces that you meet up with when you come into this place. And while sometimes in those ministries, we think, "Well, you know, how important is that sort of stuff, really?" Well, you ask the person who comes in, laden down, broken by the battered bruises of life, and there is somebody who knows them by name. Cannot tell you how many times we hear affirmation. You know, we talked earlier about Al Bunster and his father dying, and Al knows more people by name in this church than most of the rest of us put together. And what a greeting to be known by name when you're new and when you're stranger. So think of entering one of those ministries, talk to the people at the information desk or talk to Valerie. I'm sure we can always use additional volunteers in those areas. Secondly, be proactive. Be proactive in meeting new people. Now we like to pride ourselves around here of being a generous and a welcoming community, but many of us were shocked back in June when Deborah Murphy, in her public testimony, shared her story. Do you remember her story? She had come to us at the orchard location years ago because she and her family were driving a long way to attend church. It was becoming very difficult, and they had been recommended to coming here because this, she said, was a warm and welcoming place. Well, she came in, nobody spoke to her. She said, now nobody spoke to her. She went downstairs to try to mingle with people, nobody spoke to her. She stood with her back against the wall, overwhelmed by the crowd, left the way that she came, and didn't come back for eight years. It was only when they had more children and the drive to the church where they were attending was too long that they decided to try again, and now they are an incorporated part of this community. It's not the only people this has happened to. I've heard of other people having similar experiences. We can't prevent all of them from happening, but we can each take responsibility. And one of the ways in which we can take responsibility in a community like this is instead of just gravitating towards one another and our friends, which is one of the valid reasons for coming to church, we look around and we try to spot those who are on their own or who have no connection. Some churches have what they call a one-minute or a three-minute rule where after the service you're not allowed to talk to the people that you normally talk to. Instead, you go to find people who are new to the community and you introduce yourself. And when you introduce yourself, don't make the mistake as many of us do asking the question, "Are you new?" Because a lot of us, when we ask that question, "Are you new?" we get the response, "No, I've been coming here for three years. I've been coming here for six years," and you go like this, "Oh my goodness, I really stepped into that one." No, no, just say, "Have you been coming here long? Is there anything that I can do?" Be proactive. Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. And then thirdly, from a very practical point of view, the one that is the most costly of all, expand your social circle. And by that I mean invite people over to your house. Have them over for dinner. Make them part of your friendships. And that's really where the rubber hits the road because most of us, we have enough social connections, we're not looking for more. But fact of the matter is, unless new believers and new visitors are incorporated into our friendships and our relationships, they're not going to long term be part of community. And you and I, we have an obligation then to open up our hearts and open up our homes and take people in. And I don't often do this, but John and Sandra, and I don't know if they're here this morning, are they here? Right in front of my nose here. How many people here have had the privilege of sharing John and Sandra's hospitality? Put up your hand. Look around you. It's okay. Turn around. Put your hands. Put them way up there. That's incredible. That is a quarter or a third of this congregation that have been over to their house and have eaten their hamburgers. Must have cost them a fortune. But they can't do it alone. And if you like to learn how to do it, if the Holy Spirit nudges at your heart in that direction, then talk to them and they will be happy to share this ministry with you. The ministry of hospitality is incredibly important. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews, sometimes when we open up our hearts and homes to strangers, we entertain angels unaware. So first of all, breaking bread together means the early church practiced hospitality and you and I, we need to practice hospitality. Secondly then, it means that we need to avail ourselves of the means of grace. And the means of grace in this context particularly refers to the celebration of Holy Communion or the Eucharist as it is called around the world. And by extension, the public worship service. Means of grace are channels that God has established through which He pours out in your life and in my life the blessings that we have in Christ. Remember, Tina, earlier in the praise and worship, He talked and He prayed about God. We want to connect with you. We want to experience you. Well, God says if you want to connect with me and if you want to experience me, then utilize the means of grace that I have established. And there are many different means of grace. When you spend time at home in prayer or read your Bible, that is a means of grace that enables you to draw near to God and Him to draw near to you. So there are particular means of grace that God has established in Scripture that apply to us corporately. One of those is the celebration of Holy Communion as we do regularly monthly here. And then by extension, the public worship service where we break bread, if not literally, then spiritually as we open up the Scriptures for our reflection. Now I said a number of weeks ago when we looked at this passage first that the breaking of bread or the celebration of communion biblically involves a five-fold confession. Whenever we take communion, I'm confessing I'm a sinner, I can't save myself, I confess that Jesus not only died for my sin but that He arose for my justification, in Him I am righteous before God. I confess number three that Jesus by His Holy Spirit comes to live in me, to impart to me what in Christ I have. He changes me from the inside out. Number four, I'm baptized into the body of Christ, which means that no matter who I am or where I find myself, Christ in me will impart to me the skills that I need to do life with my wife, with my kids, with my friends, and with my community. And then number five, Jesus is coming back and everything that is left unfinished in the here and now is going to be finished then. And so whenever we break bread together in the celebration of communion or for that matter whenever we preach the Gospel, we are celebrating those five aspects. And when we come in faith receiving, then what happens is that God through His Holy Spirit imparts to me the reality of His presence and His power. Lord's Day 28 of the Heidelberg Catechism, I quoted this previously, puts it this way, "As surely as I receive from the hand of Him who serves and tastes with my mouth, the bread and the cup of the Lord given me is a sure sign of Christ's body and blood, so surely He nourishes and refreshes my soul for eternal life with His crucified body and poured out blood." And you know what's amazing about this? This is true whether I am aware of experiencing this or not. I spent the Better Party yesterday in Toronto area at a brainstorming session with a number of pastors and other stakeholders and present at that meeting was a woman who reminded me that close to 20 years ago I had led a retreat up in Thunder Bay. It would have been in the days when Bill Versteeg who was interred here at one point had taken a call up there and she reminded me that at the end of that retreat we had celebrated communion together. I don't even remember any of the details of this, but she says she remembered that particular communion experience because it's the only communion experience that she had ever had in her life where she could literally feel the shivers run up and down her spine. And there are times for many of us, if not all of us, in worship or in communion where we become uniquely aware of God's presence. But I dare say more times it is simply an experience and a statement of faith. And I can see as minimizing the importance of being present in worship, I can see as minimizing the importance of being present in communion because we say, "Well, I didn't feel anything. I didn't learn anything. I didn't experience anything." Don't you believe it for one minute? Because God imparts His grace to you deep in your soul and deep in your spirit the benefits of union with Christ even when you are not conscious of that happening. And if you don't believe that, look at your food you eat. Most of us don't remember the food that we ate the week before. I do because I was in the hospital. And I must say, the hospital food isn't as bad as they say that it is except for the oatmeal. Whoever made the oatmeal for breakfast needs to be sent back to oatmeal-making school because it was beyond a description. Anyway, I digress. Just because you don't remember what you ate the day before yesterday or last week or last year doesn't mean the nutrients have not gone into you and become part of you. And the same thing is true spiritually. And again, if you don't believe that, watch what happens when you don't attend worship for a period of time. At first you'll have some hunger pangs and some guilt pangs that says, "You know, I really want to be there," but that wears off pretty quickly. But what happens is you lose your appetite for spiritual things, you lose your hunger for the things of God, and before you know it, your heart is elsewhere and you're no longer concerned or worried about it. And I often say to people, "The less you want to go to church, the more you need to be there because the more God wants to speak into your life and the more the devil wants to hold you back." Don't sit around and belly ache that God's not good and that He's not interested in you and that you're not His favorite one when you're not taking advantage of what He offers to you. Remember the parable of the banquet. The father says, "Bring the men." All the invited guests say what? "We're too busy. I've bought me a cow and I've married me a wife," as the medical mission sisters sang years ago. The kids always turned that around, didn't they? "I married a cow and I bought me a wife." It's a great little song. But don't complain that God's not hearing your prayer, that you're not growing, that you're not passionate about the things of God, if you're not at least doing what you need to do. And so make every effort to avail yourselves of the means of grace. Practically speaking, that looks like this. Number one, we need to make every effort that we can to be present when the bread is broken. Not only literally in terms of the Lord's Supper, but also symbolically and spiritually when the scriptures are opened. The Bible puts it this way, "Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day that is the final day approaching." I've said this before, in the average evangelical church in North America today, on the average Sunday morning, about one third of the people active in that community are absent from collective worship. Did you know that? And some of the reasons for that are perfectly legitimate. You come off a late night shift, you're ill, the kid is ill, you have to make that family trip that cannot be made any other time, and I would never want to put a guilt load on you that says, "You gotta be here regardless of why." But you know just as well as I do that not all reasons for staying away from collective worship or from collective communion are legitimate reasons, often they are excuses. I party too late the night before and I'm really too tired to roll out of bed. I got myself stuck into too many wrong things this past week and I don't really want to face God and I don't really want to face God's people because right now I'm just really down on the world. And Sue, that I haven't seen in 33 years in Timbuktu, today is the only day that I think I ought to get in my car and go visit her. And the reasons and the excuses go on and on and on. And if you don't mind my saying so, let me give you some very practical advice if you're sporadic in the attendance of worship. Make it your default position to say, "I belong to Jesus, I belong to collective Christian community, and I'm going to do everything that I can to be there whenever I can." It's not hard to come up with reasons not to be, and as I said some are legitimate, but if you start off with the default position that says, "Will I or will I not?" Then you are robbing yourself of the means of grace and then don't be surprised when the world has more attraction for you than has Jesus and the power of the gospel. Are you hearing me? You never know when you come here if Jesus isn't ready to speak to you in some deep place of your heart. Not only that, but the people around you need your presence. Ever think about that? You know, most of us, we think, "Well, nobody will miss me when I'm here or no one." Well, Steve and Deborah and their family, they always sit on the road behind us here. And when they're not here for whatever reason, I know they're not here. Why? Because Steve always sings in my ears. And Steve's not a bad singer. But we need each other because a crowd draws a crowd. How many restaurants do you go to if you only ever see one or two cars parked in the parking lot? You immediately conclude, "That's not a place where I want to eat." Because if it was a good place, then a lot more cars would be there. Keep that in mind. Make every effort you can to be present and put to death whatever excuses you come up with because the devil knows how to whisper into your heart, "This is the last thing that you want to do or the last place that you want to be." Number two, come prepared. Scripture says, "Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve morn and wail. Change your laughter to morning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up." Time was, not that many years ago, for most evangelical Protestant churches, Sunday was a high and holy day and Saturday was lead up to the Sunday and preparation day. Some of you will remember that. Mother peels the potatoes on Saturday night for Sunday or makes the soup. Come Saturday night, all the kids get plunged into the bath, sometimes all into the same water, and they get scrubbed clean. All the work gets done so that come Sunday morning, all these kids in this family can dress in their fine Sunday go to meeting clothes and come to church, not only once, but twice if you can believe it. I would be the last to say that that was just an idealized world and that the exterior things are ultimately the things that matter, but you know as well as I do that today we have moved far away from any level of preparation. More often than not, we just roll out of bed and we congratulate ourselves because we can make it and dressing up, well, I think the only place that I know of pretty much where people dress up today are funerals and that is rapidly diminishing, I've noticed, in weddings, but even that is declining and again I'm not holding that up as a virtue because the danger is that we place the emphasis on the outside. The argument used to be in our tradition, if you're going to go meet the queen, would you go dress like that? And the idea was that if you didn't give God your best in your clothing, then you were letting God down. Well, the sentiment is good, but God looks on the heart and not on the externals. But how much preparation do we undergo in order to meet with God? Physically, we ought to be in good shape, that is to say sufficiently rested up the night before so that you can stay awake in the service, look, I've got a little story for you here that's dangerous for me to share with you because I know you're going to turn it on me, but the minister gave his Sunday morning service as usual, but this particular Sunday it was considerably longer than normal. You see why I hesitate to share this with you. Later at the door, shaking hands with parishioners as they moved out, one man said, "Your sermon pastor was simply wonderful, so invigorating and inspiring and refreshing." And the preacher, of course, he broke out in a big smile. I mean, how often do you get that kind of affirmation? Only to hear the man say, "I felt like a new man when I woke up." Get enough sleep and you won't have to worry about falling asleep. Emotionally, we got to unload. If you come here Sunday morning or Sunday night and you've got the whole world resting on your shoulders, you're going to have a hard time connecting with God or connecting with other people. And spiritually, of course, we've got to clean up our lives so that we're confessed up and we can meet with God because God is a holy and a mighty God, and I'm all for the familiarity that we have with God as our Father, but remember He is also awesome. He is holy, and to be allowed into His presence is an incredible gift. So we need to be present, we need to prepare for His presence, and then just very quickly as I wind up, we need to prepare to contribute. That is to say, we need to give the life that He places in us. Scripture says, "When you come together, everyone is a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church." You know what happens when God's people get together collectively? When you get together collectively, if Christ is in your heart, then Christ in each of us, as He flows in relationship, first with God and then with each other, it recreates the presence of Christ in our midst. Jesus said, "Where two or three, let alone many more, are gathered together, there am I in the midst of you." And so when you come to church, you're not just coming to receive. Receiving is important, but receiving is for the purpose of life flowing through you and out through you into the lives of other people. And that means when you come here, you need to not only be present physically, but you need to be present emotionally. You need to be present spiritually. You need to have your wits about you. How many people aren't there who you're going to meet up with on a given Sunday morning whose week has been terribly difficult, whose soul is in anguish, and who are just longing for somebody to see them, for somebody to love them, and for somebody to put an arm around them? And it's easy for us to measure the effectiveness of collective worship by saying, "Well, it did something for me," or, "It did not do something for me." But you know as well as I do that one of the best ways for you to grow spiritually and to experience the presence of God is come out of your shell, step into somebody else's world, step into somebody else's space, and allow Christ working through you to bless somebody else. And you will discover that in the process of doing that, not only does somebody else get blessed, but you get blessed. A year ago last December, major study appeared in which 4,700 people had been studied for 20 years, and the subject matter of the study was, "What does happiness do when it lives in my heart?" Do you know what they discovered? That a happy person, a person in a good frame of mind, in a good space, imparts life to other people up to three degrees, that is to say, it passes to the next person, to the next person, to the next person. Between 9 and 34% of people who come under the influence of a positive person experience a positive effect of that, and that positive effect can last up to one year. Do you know that? Now, the opposite of that is true too, first major study ever undertaken. If you're around a person who's grumpy, and you hang around with that grumpy person long enough, it doesn't take very long before that grumpiness rubs off on you. And so, I'm arguing that each of us has an obligation not to pretend to be something other than what we are, but to be in a place where the Spirit of Jesus fills us with His presence and where we can take the anointing that He places on our lives and we can invest it in somebody else. And you know what's amazing about this? This will happen in the most unusual ways, ways that we can never think of or imagine. And I close with this story. At my Toronto meeting yesterday, there was present a colleague, a pastor, who has just finished a 12-year pastorate in one congregation and has just now moved to a new pastorate. I had never met him before, I don't believe, but it so happens, because of family connections with his congregation, that he was here at that Profession of Faith service back at the end of last June. And he was telling the group yesterday, and this was completely unsolicited on my part, he was telling the group yesterday there were two things about this congregation that had really struck him. One was the intergenerational aspect of our community and our life, and you may or may not realize this, but John Roper tells me the average age in this congregation is 32. Interesting as it might. Half younger and half older. That was one aspect that struck him. But the other aspect that struck him, and he didn't know who it was, but he referred to Elsie here. And Elsie was walking up one of these tiers or something or another with her walker, and she was singing and humming away at the end of the service when the praise team was doing another song as the people were exiting. No words up on the screen, contemporary worship song. And here's Elsie, she was just singing away, and it blessed him to the core of his being that there was this kind of life and this kind of vitality in a person like Elsie. Now here's the funny thing, and don't be insulted Elsie, but Elsie can't carry a tune worth diddly-squawk. That's right, she says, it's a joyful heart, and that's the point that I'm trying to make. In the old building, Elsie used to sit right under the microphone that recorded congregational singing. And more times my wife would shake her head, and she said, "I can hear Elsie above everybody else." And there are times when Elsie is singing up here, if she really gets going, she's powerful enough to throw the whole praise team off. But that's a joyful noise to the Lord. And here's a pastor, listen to this, here is a pastor who one year ago seriously questioned his calling to the ministry, wondering is it worthwhile to continue. When he comes here, he doesn't know Elsie from anybody, doesn't know most of the rest of us, and God speaks to his heart because of Elsie's joyful noise to the Lord. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:21.200; remove through 00:44:44.000] Now isn't that [CUT] something, isn't that something? Now if the Lord can use Elsie that way, how can he use you and me if we are just authentically ourselves in union with Christ and allow his love to flow through our lives into the lives of other people around us? That's what the breaking of bread is about. We draw life from Christ, the life from Christ living through us becomes a blessing that flows from generation to generation for the glory of God. Take us to the river, take us there in unity to sing, song of your salvation, to win this generation for our King, song of your forgiveness, for it is with grace that river flows. Take us to the river in the city of our God, take us to the throne room, give us ears to tell, mercy it has triumphed, triumphed over judgment by your blood. Take us to the throne room in the city of our God. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon us, this is the year of the Lord. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon us, this is the year of the Lord. Take us to the mountain, lift us in the shadow of your head, this is your mighty angel, who stands beside the ocean and the land, in his heavenly mercy. Showers are a dry and barren place. Take us to the mountain in the city of our God. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon us, this is the year of the Lord. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon us, this is the year of the Lord. Take us to the river, take us there in unity to sing, song of your salvation, to win this generation for our King, song of your forgiveness, for it is with grace the river flows. Take us to the river, in the city of our God. Take us to the river, in the city of our God. Take us to the river, in the city of our God. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:44:44.000; resume after this marked segment]