Jesus Above All — R.G. Lee

Jesus Christ Exalted Above Every Name

The two passages of scripture I always put together in my own thinking as I think about Jesus. One is in the second chapter of Philippians, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not a prize to be gained to be equal to God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of man, of a servant.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God hath also highly exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and think in heaven, and think in earth, and think under earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Along with those verses, I put a verse in the third chapter of John's Gospel, the 31st verse. He that cometh from above is above all, and he that cometh from heaven is above all. Of course, if men set their minds, and their mouths, and their pens, and their pulpits, and their printing presses, and their quivers, put it to portray all that Jesus was, is, and evermore will be, in his glory, his greatness, his goodness, and his grace, they set themselves to a task that puts men and angels to an eternal nonpluss.

Much may be said about Jesus in one century, and still more in other centuries, still he put it to say it will not suffice, put it to portray all that Jesus was, is, and evermore will be, in his glory, his grace, his goodness, and his greatness.

Can one little coal of fire warm a thousand cold hearthstones? Can one little rosebud perfume this stifling atmosphere of a polluted city? Can one little cup of water cleanse a thousand dirty hands? Can any musician play Beethoven's Night Symphony on a tin whistle?

You say, no. And I say, no more. Can all the words of the wisest of men, most skilfully combined and most eloquently spoken, set forth Jesus as he deserves to be set forth in the minds and hearts of people today?

No mortal can with him compare among the sons of men. Fairer is he than all the fair who fill the heavenly train. As I said before, Jesus today is heaven's bread for us hunger, heaven's water for us thirst, heaven's light for us darkness, heaven's glory for us shame, heaven's grace for us guilt, heaven's forgiveness for us sins, heaven's beauty for us ugliness, heaven's wisdom for us folly, heaven's peace for us strife, heaven's comfort for us sorrows, heaven's justification for us condemnation, heaven's salvation for us damnation.

Oh, who can paint him? Let the sweetest tone that ever trembled upon the harps of heaven be this chord. Let the enchanting seraphim whose anthem is eternal be done by wonder, praise, adoration, all melt into muteness as they reach to the Christ, the only perfection earth has ever known, the one eternally above all.

Christ’s Eternal Unity With the Father

I love to think how Jesus is above all in his source. The 17th of John's Gospel, Jesus in that marvelous prayer he prayed to his Father, testified that he had grown with God before the world was but loved by the Father before the foundation of the world.

Meaning what? Meaning that he was co-existent, co-essential, co-eternal, co-equal with God. And Jesus himself said, the Father and I are one, oh and he won. No husband was ever so one with the wife of his bosom.

No wife was ever so one with the husband of her heart. No child was ever so one, oh and he won with his mother from the moment of his conception as was Jesus with God. They gloried their heads, they loved their heads with and for each other before this world ever was.

No beams of light ever came so brightly from the sun. No fragrance ever seemed so sweetly from flowers. No crystal streams ever came so purely clear from crystal fountains as did the delights of the Holy, Holy, Holy Father's heart with the Christ Holy Son and the love they had and the glory they had with and for each other before this world ever was.

Father's love and glory. The Blessed Holy Spirit himself was never excluded. And again Jesus is above all in his relation to this physical universe in which we live, this material universe, because he conceived it by his wisdom and created it by his power.

And he's the designer behind all the designs of this universe, the lawmaker behind all its laws, the great creator behind all creation. How do I know this? I know it from this blessed, marvelous word of God.

John 1 says, all things were made by him, and without him were not anything made that was made. Paul, the great Aristotle and Demosthenes of the Jewish race, the great apostle of the gospel, wrote this to the Christian at Colossae, all things were created by him, things on earth, things in heaven, things visible, things invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by him and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

What a wonderful cluster of all things there. And turn to the first chapter of Hebrews, you'll find another verse that gives us the all things. Listen. God, who has sundered times and died with manners and times past, taken unto our fathers by the prophets, hath in these latter days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world.

And again, Jesus, above all, in the way he came into the universe, he conceived by his will and created by his power, being the designer behind all the designs of it, the lawmaker behind all its laws, and became a human being without any earth or father.

In eternity Jesus rested on the bosom of the Father without any mother, and in time he rested on the bosom of the Mother without any earth or father. He is above all in the way in which he came into the world and became a human being.

Jesus as the Revealer of God

And I love to think of Jesus above all as the revealer of God. John 1 .18 says this to us, No man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him, he hath exegeted God.

In Jesus' silence of God broke into full voice. One day Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and thou shalt satisfy us. That will be sufficient. I think Jesus had rebuke and shelter in his voice when he answered Philip.

He said, Have I been so long time with you? And yet thou hast not known me, Philip. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, show us the Father? For Philip, you have seen me work, you have seen the Father work.

You have seen me walk, you have seen the Father walk. You have heard me speak, you have heard the Father speak. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, show us the Father? And what Jesus was in the days of his place on this earth to the prodigal, the publican, the harlot, the hypocrite, the saint, the sinner, the disciple, to the devil, to rich, to poor, to men, to women, to boys, to girls, to scholars, and soldiers, and peasants, and philosophers, and kings, and queens, and beggars.

That is God always, everywhere, to everybody. Jesus was God manifest in the flesh. And I love to think how he is above all in his supernatural power. His power is superabove all the powers that men know anything about.

We have a little old hell-bound human race sitting down, boasting about his power. Locomotives of power, planes of power, armies of power, navies of power, satellites of power, bombs of power, all this power we boast about.

And we do have power because human beings discovered something that Jesus put in the universe, nuclear power. But Jesus said, all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth. And his glorified body in heaven today, which body we're going to see some blessed day, thank God, one finger of his glorified body in heaven, and we're going to have more power in it than all the hydrogen bombs men could invent and explode in fifty years.

All power, said he, is given unto me in heaven and on earth. He's above all in his supernatural power. And I love to think how he is above all as a teacher. I've had some teachers in my life I wish I could forget their names.

One or two of my educational dandas kind of break into the house of my faith, kind of get me to doubt some things in this book. But you know how far they got? Just as far as a canary bird was trying to fly across the Atlantic Ocean with a Washington Monument tied to its tail.

One or two teachers I've had I wish I could forget. But Jesus was the greatest teacher of all. And he stands out above all teachers as a great palm tree in a desert of mediocrity. He stands above all teachers as a thousand bulbs chandelier of a little cluster of people in flickering candles.

He flows among all teachers as a deep crystal clear river in the middle of a shallow babbling in the day sometimes muddy brooks. The hypocritical religious authorities of Jesus' day sent some officers to take him and outlanguish to arrest him.

These officers came back without taking him, without arresting him, without handcuffing him. These religious authorities who were rebuking that word said, The warden shall bring him. His answer given, never may a man speak like this man.

Yes, Jesus was a teacher, a marvelous teacher Jesus was. And Jesus believed all the Bible said. He used the Bible to illumine the midst of his cross. He used the Old Testament scriptures in knowing what the New Testament would be when it should be written.

He said, Sanctify them by thy truth, thy word is truth, all of it is truth. If one part of the Bible isn't so, none of it is so. If I can't believe all the Bible, I can't believe any of it. I wrote a book.

I don't know whether you've read it or not. If you haven't, don't claim to be educated. That's what I tell college faculty and students. My book at first was called Lord I Believe, published by the Broadman Press, and they dropped publishing of it.

Baker Bookhouse was publishing it again under the title, Talks About Miracles. I wrote that book when I passed the first Baptist church in New Orleans. Tulane University students used to come to hear me preach.

Then they began to ask me up to that student forum and let me talk 20 minutes. That's one of the hardest things I have to do is to speak 20 minutes. You've found that out already. I had a man with a stopwatch.

If I went one second over 20 minutes down on the stopwatch, he'd press his finger on a man with a Chinese gong and boom, boom, boom. Then they'd shoot questions at me. Sometimes they kept me there an hour.

Wonderful students they were. One question they asked me was, and my book talks about the miracles of actual questions that they asked me and actual answers I gave them. They want to know me, where Cain got his wife.

I told them I didn't know and I didn't care. She suited Cain, she suits me. I said, I know a lot of homes and a lot of folks with lots of better offers. Some men let other women alone, some men let other men alone.

One very beautiful Auburn-haired, green-eyed girl asked me a question. Very sweetly she asked me. She said, Dr. Lee, do you really believe that the whale swallowed Jonah? I said, my dear, I believe all that the Bible says, all of it.

Not some of it, not most of it, all of it. The Bible tells me that God prepared a big fish to swallow his runaway preacher. I said, if God could make a preacher, he'd make a fish big enough to swallow him.

I said, I'll tell you something if you don't already know it. If that fish had to hold down some of your professors three days, it'd never hold him down. I don't make fun of anybody's face. I never have, never intend to.

But there's one young man down there had the biggest nose I've ever seen on a human face. Oh, it was a waffle. And he had a little tiny mustache right beneath that nose, sort of Hitler-like. Tiny mustache.

Of course the mustache was small because nothing grows in the shade. And he came up to me with a super silly smear on his little Hitler mustache lip and said, Now, man to man, honest to God, you believe Balaam's last talk?

I said, yes, I believe Balaam's last talk. Being the female, the species, she had the advantage to start with. And I said, sir, did you ever hear Madame Schumann sing? He said, no, sir. I said, I did.

Paid $5 to hear her. Worth more than $5 to hear her sing Silent Night in German and English. I said, you ever hear Caruso sing? He said, no, sir. I said, I did. I paid $7 to take my sweetheart and myself to hear him sing.

Worth more than that to hear him. I said, I can go down to my house, sir, start a little wax disc to rolling, and out of the point of that needle will come Madame Schumann's voice and Caruso's voice. By the way, this hadn't happened when I talked to him, but in 1952, I was in a Bible conference in New York.

I read one day in the New York Times where they were having a commemorative concert at a certain park, Amgen Park, I think. I didn't know anything about the park. Didn't know where it was or how far it was.

But I got a cab and went out. And there were 6 ,000 people there. And I have a picture in one of my scrapbooks because keeping scrapbooks is one of my hobbies. There were 6 ,000 people out there. And it was just as worshipful an atmosphere as we have in this auditorium this morning.

You know what we were doing there? We were sitting there and listening to a man sing who'd been dead 30 years. Mr. Caruso's 30th anniversary of his death. And we were sitting 3 ,000 miles from where he was buried, his body.

We sat there, worshipful attitude. Some people had tears on occasion. For an hour and a half we sat there and heard a man sing who'd been dead 30 years. And we heard it by means of the phonograph. Now listen to me.

If man can compress Caruso in the microscopic point of a needle, make him sing for an hour and a half, 30 years after he's dead, and 3 ,000 miles from where his body is buried, you think God Almighty would have any trouble?

Ain't no cloth-head, water-eyed, democratic donkey talk. I don't. I believe this book, all this book. I don't have any trouble believing it. And Jesus believed it. He said, Sanctify them by thy truth.

Thy word is truth. He said, Search the scriptures. For in them ye think ye have eternal life. For there they which testify of me, for Moses wrote of me. As I said yesterday morning, Jesus is the theme of this book.

Take Jesus out of this book. It's like taking the heat out of fire, melt it out of music, numbers out of mathematics, mind out of metaphysics, facts out of history, fiction out of literature, brains out of the skull, expecting intelligence is brought out of the body, and expecting it helps.

This marvelous book, infallible in its authority, inherent in all its statements, immeasurable in its influence, inexhaustible in its adequacy, regenerative in power, personal in application, a miracle book of diversity and unity, of harmony and infinite complexity.

Jesus believed it to be truth. And I believe what Jesus believed. I'm going to preach it that way. I preached it that way down in Memphis. The spiders didn't spit in the webs of my Baptist either. Let me say something else.

The Sinless Life of Jesus

Jesus, above all, in the way he lived, nobody can find any fault in what Jesus said or did. One day Jesus said to his enemies, and he had plenty of them. I have enemies. I've told the people over my convention that if when I die, somebody gets up and says, Dear old Dr. Lee, with some hoot-owl voice, you know, never met an enemy in all his life.

I said, I hope God will raise me to life long enough to stick my head out of the coffin and say, That's not so! No man can take a stand against liquor today and not make enemies, or communism and not make enemies, or liberalism and modernism and not make enemies, no enemy!

The boast is poor. No enemy! He never diced a cup from purging lips. No enemy! He never hit a traitor on the hip. No enemy! You've been a coward in this life. No enemy! The men have turned to wrong to right.

Jesus had his enemies, but none of them could find any fault in what he did or said. Jesus' life on this earth was a very biography of perfume. It was a overflow of graciousness. It was a thrill of the uncataloged.

It was a language of the unuttered. And Jesus wore the white flower of a blameless life in the midst of a crooked and a perverse and adulterous generation, like the generation in which we now live. And Jesus was so finely strung, so unutteredly keyed to truth, to mercy, to justice, and to love, and so quickly felt the sorrow, the sympathy, and the indignation which wrong and injustice in vapor elicits from all our souls.

Temptations never loosed the moral fiber. Popularity never caused him to hurry. Antagonism never caused him to delay. He never made any apology for anything he said or did. Never acknowledged there was any need for repentance on his part.

He was a sinless, absolutely holy, H-O-L-Y, Holy Christ! And the devil could not get him to fall. He's above all as to life. Can you find anybody in this world who never said anything they shouldn't have said?

Didn't you? Or did something they should not have done? Jesus was absolutely sinless. He never made a mistake. He never said something he should not have said. He never stayed silent when he should have spoken.

He's above all as to the life he lived. I challenge all the microscopes of skepticism, all the telescopes of infidelic observation, all the X-rays of investigation to find anything, anything, anything wrong in the life of Jesus, by word or by deed.

Christ’s Sacrifice and Suffering on the Cross

He's above all. Let us enter Holy Rites Sanctuary a little bit for your prayer. Jesus is above all in the sacrifice he made and in the suffering he endured in our behalf. Some man wrote a book and said the greatest sacrifice ever made was when Solomon dedicated the temple to Jerusalem and killed 22 ,000 oxen and 120 ,000 sheep in the sacrifices.

That and so. He wrote beautifully, but he wrote error. The greatest sacrifice ever made in all ages was when Jesus, the Lamb of God, died on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem at the place called Skol.

He brought a beast on Jerusalem to slay to give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away to sacrifice a nobler name and richer blood than they.

He saw me plunged in deep distress and flew to my relief. For me, he bore the sinful cross and carried all. He suffered. He suffered physically, but he suffered more in his soul. He said to his disciples, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.

I can hardly stand it. I'm about to die. My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. All suffering is the most terrible suffering in the world. Victor Hugo in that great novel, which I think is the greatest novel ever written, that's just my idea.

You can have your own. Picture that truth and John's black hair that turned white in a single night. White hair, black hair turning white in a single night. When I was in Paris, I said to my dear friends, Arthur and Muriel Johnson, two of the sweet friends I have, I said, I want to see the little room in which Queen Marianne and Epps spent their last hours.

He said, I can take you to it. It's below the Seine River. We went down the steps below the Seine River and I gave five dollars to the old guard and guard. He said, Come, sir. These dungeons, you see, people starve to death and are marauded to death.

Nobody cared. No beam of sunlight ever entered any of these dungeons, sir. Not a beam. Down the corridor of the dungeons we went to, we came to the little room, little plank floor and little wooden swinging doors where Marianne and Epps spent their last hours.

The old guard said to me, That chair, sir, she sat in just before she went to the death wagon and said, this little handkerchief on the glass she used to wipe her tears away. She had a lot of them to wipe away, sir.

That blade on the wall chopped her head off. But come, sir. Your feet are walking on the same planks her little feet walked on. Your body's going through the same little wooden swinging doors that her body went through to the death wagon.

Come, sir. Took me out to the place where the guillotine had been. He said, Here, sir. They chopped off her head. And I remembered my history a bit how an executioner when his head fell in the basket he picked it up with a hair as it dripped blood and her eyes looking like glass marbles in the head.

And his hair was crammed full his hand was crammed full of hair white like wool white as snow which three days before had been black as a crow's wing. What made Marianne's black hair turn white in three days?

Soul suffering. That did it. Soul suffering. Jesus said, My soul is exceeding sovereign to death. I have a sermon that's being published this year. Two deaths died by one man in one day. Jesus died on a cross.

He died two deaths. A physical death and a spiritual death which was absent from God when he cried, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? All the days that I knew and all my life just had one night to them.

The old preacher Amos said to his great congregation one day as he preached to them there's coming a day when the sun shall go down at noonday. I can hear those folks going to their tents after Amos preached and talking to each other.

Well, I'm 85 years old. I have never seen the sun go down at noonday. Have you, Rebecca? No, I'm 70 years of age and I have never seen the sun go down at noonday. No, I haven't either. I haven't either.

The sun going down at noonday, the preacher must have been a little wrought up today. He must have been a little bit on high tension, a little bit nervous. No, the preacher can't get wrought up today and worth shooting.

One of my deacons came by one Sunday morning when I had preached and said, You seem to be wrought up today. I said, Yes, I'm wrought up. When are you going to get wrought up? That day came. Midnight came down in his black garments and pushed noonday with her bright, resplendent garments off the throne of the universe and sat down on the throne and spread his black garments all around us, a little terrestrial ball.

As we call it in one of our hymns. And the earthquake thunderously and rumblingly and grumblingly rolled forth its dirge and erupted it. And there in the temple was running too from the top to the bottom.

And in that darkness Jesus said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's when God turned Jesus' soul into hell in those three hours of darkness. Jesus went to hell for me. Jesus went to hell for all of us.

Let me give you some words from a man who had a greater mind than I could ever hope to have, a great theologian, a great preacher, founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Dr. B .H. Carroll.

He used to preach an hour and a half and two hours. Listen to what he said. It's unquestionable that Christ's soul entered hell while he was on the cross. He had died the spiritual death which is absent from God when he said,.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? This must be interpreted literally. During that time of the seeming eternal duration of Father's death, his face was hidden, his back was turned, and in that awful darkness the Son of God endured the pangs of spiritual death and desolation.

And the devil and demons were around him and the thirst of hell was upon him. But Jesus had said by the prophet these two things, the pangs of hell get hold upon me, but God does not leave my soul in hell.

Dr. Carroll goes on to say this. Jesus was in hell. He was not there to stay. He came out of hell to say to the Father, Receive my spirit. You are no longer forsaken of God, the Father. Christ descended to hell within the three hours of darkness when he was God-forsaken and in the power of Satan to death by one man one day by Jesus who suffered in hell for you and me.

Death, Burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus

And let me say this. It is above all that things come to pass. The Bible speaks about death being our enemy, the last enemy that shall be destroyed. Oh, death whose only flower is a faded garland on coffin lids.

Death whose only music is a sob of broken hearts. Death whose only pleasure is fighting through the falling tears of the world. Death came into my house and left me a lonely house, left me with a heartache looking at the vacant chair at the table, left me with a silence unbroken in which I can't hear the voice I loved to hear for over fifty-seven years.

Death has done as much for some of you. And death laid hold upon Jesus. They never did stop until they killed him. They said, He's a king! His enemies said, If he's a king he ought to have some royal insignia with high office so they cut his back to shreds with a scourge.

If he's a king he ought to have a crown so they crowned him with piercing thorns. If he's a king we ought to say so so that it spit in his face. The mouths that had kissed the mouths of harlots and been placed on rum jugs and uttered their dirty jokes and profane words did spit in his face.

If he's a king we ought to reach out our hands to him so they beat him up with their hands and pulled out some of his beard. For he fulfilled the scripture. I gave my back to the smithers and my cheeks to them that cupped off their hair.

They said, If he's a king he ought to have a throne so they nailed him naked to a wooden cross and lifted the cross up. They killed him. You and I killed him. Our sins killed him. He bore our sins right on a tree.

Our sins were the scourge that cut his back to shreds. Our sins were the dirty sputum that befouled his face. Our sins made the procession loaded down on the wooden cross and fell beneath it. Our sins pulled out his beard.

Our sins.

Beat his face to the floor. Our sins churned him with thorns. Our sins nailed him to the cross and our hearts were the hard hammer that drove him there. We did it. You did it. We did it. We did it. They killed him.

I'm glad that Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man, I believe it hadn't been for him, Jesus' body would have been taken out and jumped on the garbage heap with dead dogs and lambs and cats and all the other refuge.

I believe that. But Joseph went in to see Governor Pilate, and here's the way I picture it in my own mind. The Governor is in his office. Some soldier standing out there with spears to guard him. And Joseph the rich man came in and Governor Pilate, who had a yellow cotton string that had a backbone, said, Joseph, what can I do for you?

And Joseph the rich man said, Governor, the man dead on the cross out there, whose death you signed, named Jesus. And he did. I said, well, I don't know if you'll let me have his body and bury it. Well, Governor Pilate called a Roman and sent two of his soldiers and said, is he dead already?

The soldiers said, yeah, Governor, he's dead, all right, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead. Well, Governor Pilate gave Joseph of Amathia permission to go take the body of Jesus down and bury it. The Bible doesn't tell us this, but I think this is what happened.

Joseph went out on the street and he met Nicodemus, who also had been a secret disciple of Jesus. He said, hello, Nick, hello, Joe, where you been? Nick, I've been to see the Governor. What do you want to see the Governor for?

I want to know if you'd let me have the body of Jesus to bury it. He said I could. Do you want to help me? Sure, Joe, I'll help you. Nicodemus, Joseph of Amathia, pulled out the nails, took his body down, wrapped it in linen clothes and put the spices in it and put a napkin around his head as was accustomed for the Jews to bury, and put him in that tomb.

He went out of the solid rock, yonder and derailed him to death. The Roman Empire rolled a big stone to the door and sealed it with seal and put it on his told us to watch it. Everybody said he's dead.

Brian bought him ears with tears in his now seeing eyes said the one who made me see is dead. Mary Magdalene out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils said the one who took the devils out of me is dead.

I wonder why they wanted to kill him. A man with a withered hand reached over and touched his wife's cheek and said honey the one who made my hand hold is dead. I wonder why they wanted to kill him. And if old Zacchaeus was living I think he would said the one who changed my life is dead.

All of them said he's dead. And Mary said the one to whom I gave birth the one who nursed my breast son of God is dead. I hear old sin cry to death with his raucous sinful voice. Hey death you got that fellow Jesus?

Yes sin. I got him I'm gonna accuse him like I killed all the folks that ever came to my power. First day the second day old sin called out again. Hey death you still have that fellow Jesus? Yeah I had him sin.

Don't you worry. And I'm gonna accuse him like I took all.

The kings and queens and crown folks of all ages that ever came in my power. I'm gonna keep him. The third day morning old sin called out. Hey death you still there? I'm gonna accuse him like and queens I'm gonna accuse him like I took all the kings and queens and crown all ages that ever I'm gonna accuse him like I took all ages that ever came in my power.

I'm gonna hold you up to God like I took I took all ages came in my power. I'm gonna to land on the Mount of Olives. The whole mountain is going to spread wide open. Part will go one way and part another.

He is going to set up his throne in Jerusalem and make real what he promised in the Luke, the first gospel he gave to him, the throne of the Father David. God hasn't done that yet, but he's going to do it.

The Bible tells me that the time is coming when little children can play with highland moccasins and rattlesnakes and cobras and not be hurt. Has that time ever been? No. The Bible tells me that the time is coming when the ferocity will be taken out of wild animals and the lamb shall lie down together and the lamb will not hurt the lamb.

Has that time ever been? This book tells me that the time is coming when men shall beat their swords in the process and their spears in the pruning hooks and men shall learn war no more. Has that time ever been?

Look at Cyprus today where the Turkish army marches! War! No, that time never has been, but it's going to be when Jesus comes back and reigns on this earth a thousand years. Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, come quickly.

When he comes it's going to be the Master's reckoning day, it's going to be the Servant's pay day, it's going to be the King's coronation day, it's going to be the Bride's wedding day. Amen! He will so come quickly, Lord Jesus.

A Personal Pledge to Jesus Above All

When I think how Jesus is above all, I'd like to say to him today in my heart, and I'd like you to say it too if you will, what Shakespeare pictures Portia saying to Bassanio, her lover, is she said, For you, my Lord Bassanio, I would be troubled twenty times myself, one thousand times more frail, ten thousand times.

And I'd like to say to him this morning as we turn and go away, For you, my Lord Jesus, I would be troubled twenty times myself. I'd like to be a thousand times better for thee than I've ever been, until thou shalt come again, or until thy holy face and hand shall open the gates of grace to me, shall open to me the gates of glory beyond which I'm going to see some angels' faces I've loved long since and lost awhile, and best of all I'll see Jesus, and I'll walk around a little while with him in the fields of glory.

Would you like to say that to him this morning? For you, my Lord Jesus, I'd be troubled twenty times myself if I could. I'd like to be a thousand times better. Would you like to say that? Well, say it to him while we bow our heads.