“A Thousand Words Worth”

Preached by Rev. Ed Brouwer at The Gathering Place, Osoyoos
Pulpit Series Volume 18, Issue 25 September 7, 2008

Did you know that there are 591 pictures taken every second? That's 51.1 million every day. We take 3 billion photographs just during the Christmas holiday season. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, that’d be a big book. We do all this to help our memory. We need things to strengthen or jar our memory.
The Bible makes an interesting statement in Proverbs 10:7 (NIV) "The memory of the Righteous will be a blessing!"
If you store good things in your mind, that's going to be a great blessing to you. II Timothy 2:8 "Remember Jesus Christ..."
Never forget what Jesus did for you on the cross. Keep Jesus fresh in the photo album of your mind.
At one time in London, there was a Christian restaurant owner named Emil Mettler, (a close friend of Albert Schweitzer). Mettler would never allow a Christian worker to pay for a meal in his restaurant. One day he opened his cash register and a British Secretary was astonished to see among the bills and coins a six-inch nail. What was it doing there? Mettler explained, "I keep this nail with my money to remind me of the price that Christ paid for my salvation and of what I owe Him in return."
We need to do every thing we can to remember Jesus. So today we celebrate communion.
I Corinthians 11:24-26 (NIV) it says: 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, after supper he took the cup, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim (REMEMBER) the Lord's death until he comes.
I pray this service will be a turning point in your life.. like the nail in the cash register. As you enter in today think on Jesus.
Think on what Jesus did for you, stir up your memory. Stir the depths of your heart. "This do in remembrance of me"
If you can lets kneel together as we thank God for the blessing of the bread and the cup.
Today we have the advantage of reading about what took place on Calvary. We can picture in our mind's eye how it must have been. Yet, we have a disadvantage...we weren’t there!
Had we been there, I think the impact on our minds would’ve been even greater. I wish we had a picture of that.
We need to pray that God will paint a picture on our minds of what actually did happen, perhaps then we’d respond to that.
"You hold in your hand the symbols of the body and the blood of our Savoir. He spent those two things for us.
The first symbol is the symbol of His body which is the bread. Jesus is the Bread of life.
Jesus told His disciples, Take and eat. This is My body which is broken for you.'
In this same manner, He took the cup. The cup contains the pure juice of the grape.
Jesus said to His disciples, Drink ye all of it.

Dr. Thomas Welch (1825-1903) was the communion steward of the Methodist church in Vineland, New Jersey. The son of a Methodist minister, he himself studied to be a minister.

However, due to voice problems, Welch decided to become a medical doctor and later a dentist. At the time, unfermented wine (grape juice) was not available year round for use in communion.
(From history we know that unfermented wine was widely used and preserved in ancient times. William Patton in his classic book, Bible Wines and the Laws of Fermentation (c.1870), documents four methods of preserving grape juice in The Bible times. Apparently, these methods had fallen into disuse.)

In 1869, Dr. Welch began to experiment in his kitchen with concord grape juice, using the pasteurization techniques developed by Louis Pasteur just four years earlier. He soon perfected a process for preserving grape juice and began marketing it with the label Dr. Welch‟s Unfermented Wine.

He produced it with the thought of providing churches with an alternative to alcoholic wine, never envisioning a beverage for the general public. His son, Dr. Charles Welch, envisioned greater things and bought the business in 1873. Charles said that the company was born, out of a passion to serve God by helping His church to give communion as the fruit of the vine instead of the cup of devils.

In 1893, the grape juice business really took off when samples were given out at the Chicago World‟s Fair and the name was changed to “Welch’s Grape Juice.”

Today, Welch’s is a $650 million a year business. Welch’s Grape Juice made worldwide headlines in 1913 when Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, gave a formal state dinner honoring the retiring British ambassador. He served Welch’s Grape Juice instead of fermented wine. Bryan was a dedicated Christian who once ran for U.S. President.

Worldwide headlines were made again in 1914 when Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the U.S. Navy, forbade the use of alcoholic beverages aboard navy ships and substituted Welch’s Grape Juice in their place. Thomas B. Welch proved the truth that, I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me Philippians 4:13
His son, Charles, demonstrated the Truth, where there is no vision, the people perish Proverbs 29:13.

The next time you see “since 1869” on the Welch’s Grape Juice label you can remember this service… and now you know the rest of the story!