Even So Come Lord Jesus - Part 3 — Art Katz

Continue, Lord, to express your great heart. You know the beginning. You know the end from the beginning. You know what you are moving toward. And we just thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to have a continuation.

Bring us, my God, to the apex, the conclusion of these days. That's in your heart. And receive my gratitude along with the saints, Lord, for how preciously you have expressed yourself in these days. We want to catch up every word, Lord.

We want to hold it in our spirits. We want to examine this mirrored statement, Lord, from this angle and from that. We want to catch the reflection of your glory. So we thank you, Lord. Precious God, come and continue and address us as the high priest and the apostle of our confession, our prophet, priest, and king.

And delight your own soul in doing it. We thank you and give you praise. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I thought maybe a little review of the great Psalm 102, make sure that we have the sense of it. I was looking over these notes and I thought, boy, they're good.

Psalm 102 and the Sovereignty of God

And it wouldn't hurt to hear this. That began with the distress of the psalmist, which was calculated to bring him to the acknowledgement of the divine sovereignty. And when Israel and ourselves will recognize the Lord in our severest dealings as enthroned.

And that his name is really the issue, not our relief. And that this is greater than any consideration for ourselves. Then we will have the faith that understands and expects the divine deliverance in the time that is appointed.

For something of so ultimate a kind as to affect the nations is the demonstration of God through a transcendent church. I hope when you hereafter read Psalms and elsewhere, and it talks about his praise to all the ends of the earth.

Or show the nations that you're God. Show them that they're but a spit in the bucket. Put the nations in their place. There's like a theme that runs through the Psalms that shows that there's an ultimate intention of God for the nations.

Everything is calculated to that end. For the earth is the Lord's, the nations and the fullness to Him, and those that dwell therein. So we need to enlarge our view to understand God's scope and his concern for his whole creation.

And that the Bible begins, the whole redemptive drama begins with the sons of Noah. And the races or nations of mankind that issue from them. And the very next chapter is the rebellion of nations already assembling and seeking to make a name for themselves.

And a tower more high than the heavens that God has to disperse and confound and confuse them by dividing them with different forms of speech. So the very inception of the whole drama, out of the flood, hardly have the waters receded, so to speak.

Then the nations are showing themselves in rebellion to God. Choosing their own location, choosing their own destiny, choosing to exalt themselves and make a name for themselves above and higher than the Lord.

Nothing has changed, though they have been dispelled and separated. This desire of exaltation is yet central. And the rebellion against God, however veiled, however sanctimonious the nations are in making some minimal allusion to God, they are their own masters.

And the world has paid an enormous price for this rebellion. War, rivalry, we talked about it last night, Verdun, World War I, the wasting of entire generations and even to this hour. More in the 20th century than all of the centuries that have preceded it.

The Millennium, Final Rebellion, and the New Creation

And it will end when the Lord will be Lord over all. When he will be seated in Zion, when his Lord will go forth from the place that he has designated. And even then, after a thousand years, Satan is loose.

And what's the first expression? Rebellion against God. Where does it take place? In Israel, against Israel. That's how inveterate, excuse my language, that's how ingrained human, what's the word, depravity is.

That even after a thousand years of golden rule, of enlightened, selfless, benevolent rule of God out of Zion, it doesn't take Satan long to again deceive the nations, turn them to God, and to God's elect nation, Israel, where they meet their final disaster.

And then there's a new heaven and a new earth, and the Lord has fulfilled everything, and the whole earth will be filled with his glory. In this psalm, Israel has been chastened to recognize the sovereignty of God in her misfortune.

As I said, that the issue of God's name is the issue, and that that is greater than concern for self. The church has finally broken through her own preoccupation with herself as a false center, in and by her final ability to identify with a fallen Israel in her judgment.

This having compassion on the stones and pity upon her dust is not a mere sentimental aside from a distance, it is the very identification with Israel in her shame and in her judgment, which as Jesus showed in his baptism with John, his identification with Israel in her sin, her shame, and her guilt.

The church has followed the Lord and has taken his own character and identity as it is expressed to Israel. This coming of age for which the Lord has waited releases him to succor, S-U-C-C-O-U-R, I think you spell it in Australia, and deliver Israel before the face of all nations.

God says elsewhere, I will not do this in a corner, but before the face of all nations. For the whole drama is staged for the nations. Israel is going to be sifted through the nations. This shows that the nations are God's overwhelming and ultimate concern, and that chapter 12 that follows the Tower of Babel and the dispersal of nations, is the selection of Abraham from a nation, a Semite, from Ur of the Chaldees, and that from and through him, God's answer to the rebellion of nations is to derive.

Did you think that chapter 12 just followed chapter 11? Abraham is God's answer to the rebellion of nations. God selects one, and from him are to come the twelve tribes, the patriarchs, the twelve tribes of Israel, and from Israel in her fullness, the church.

All of that calculated to bring an answer to the rebellion of the nations stated in chapter 11. It's good to see the faith in this context, don't you think? And this recognition of God by the nations causes them to fear the name of the Lord, and all authority above and below to bow before his majesty, for the greatest visible demonstration of God, long hidden through the ages, is when he appears in his glory in the building up or the restoring of Zion.

Israel’s Future Deliverance Through the Nations

The Psalms, we haven't even looked at this, where he looks down from his holy height, because he hears the groans of the prisoners, and in hearing and setting sets free those who are doomed to die, who are otherwise totally helpless.

This is not poetry, this is descriptive of how desperate Israel's plight will be, at the end of the age, that is yet future, we're at the threshold, that God himself will come actually as deliverer, and bring a remnant out of totally helpless situations that could not be alleviated by men.

And the nation that is centered in man, and that celebrates man supremely, needs to see this and to receive this deliverance by the supernatural intervention of God, for we Jews are supreme humanists, and nothing is more offensive to us of a supernatural God, who actually invades history, intervenes and acts, but when it will be on our behalf and save us out of chains and dungeons and places of darkness, we will be eternally grateful for just that God.

You can look at your own leisure at Isaiah 35, other statements of Israel in the wilderness in the last days movement through the nations, and how there is a presence with Israel, that God addresses and says say to them, your God will come, he will deliver you, because their hands are hanging low, they are abject, they are depressed, they are crushed, they are without hope.

And we know from the past holocaust, that those who perished were not necessarily the physically weakest, but those who were void of hope. Many survived who was weaker than those who perished, because they had some form of hope or another.

There is a power in hope, even false hope, sustains how much more true hope. And so, at a critical juncture, Psalm 35 describes Israel about ready to perish in the wilderness of the nations. They are in rugged locations, dry, arid, so much so that unless water breaks forth out of the soil and pools of water, they will perish.

But what causes the water to break forth? A people who are in the wilderness whom God can address and say, when they speak to them and say to them, your God will come, he will deliver you, he will vindicate you.

And when they hear that word, the eyes of the blind are opened, the lame leap and water breaks forth out of dry ground. If that is not God's people, the church, the servant people of God, able to speak to Israel who are disconsolate and nigh unto death for want of any hope, there's no light from their tunnel, they've never been in the wilderness before.

Have you ever been lost in the wilderness? It's terrifying. You can be the most sophisticated Jew, so long as you're sitting in your academic office or your penthouse condominium. But be in the wilderness, you don't know how you got there, you don't know, there's no visible trail, there's no way out, it's a terrible sense of lostness and being stripped.

It's terrifying. And God is going to bring this sophisticated people into that wilderness for just that purpose, for their stripping. And they will be immensely grateful that there'll be someone there to lead them, guide them and speak to them.

So how is it that when God says, tell them, why doesn't he tell them himself? For the same reason that he doesn't raise the bones himself. The church has a role to play for God, as God, in his authority and in his love.

Prophetic Speech as the Word of God

For that statement, your God will come, opens the eyes of the blind and makes the lame to leap. Because it is not a human word. It's not a mere word of kind intention. It is the word of the Lord. It is a prophetic word that constitutes event for the despairing.

The whole issue, and this saves Israel, who would otherwise die before the Lord comes. They have to have a word of hope before the Lord comes. But who is there that will be in the earth at that time that can speak a word of that kind, that can bring that kind of hope and that kind of response before the Lord comes.

That is more than and other than mere human well-wishing. Are we capable of that word now? Can we speak a word when the Lord will direct us that is not some solo performance but the expression of the corporate life of the church with one mind, one heart and one will to speak with God.

Can we come into that place of obedience? Can we be commanded? Has God dealt with our various opinions? Well, I don't know if that's the word. Maybe they should hear this. Maybe they should be reprimanded.

Maybe. There won't be any maybes in that day. He will have a people who are totally obedient, totally submitted. Not automatons who have been robbed of their identity but saints gloriously alive in all the fullness and stature to which they are called but they will be of one mind, one heart and one soul and when God says speak, they will speak and they will speak his word and it will be as if God had spoken it himself.

You cannot tell where they end and he begins. How do we speak now? If the Lord will help me, then I'll do this for him. Right? We are an independent entity and he's another one. If we can get his help, then we'll do something for him.

Well, that's okay. That's kid stuff. That's elementary, my dear Watson. That's not his intention. His intention is that our thought is his thought. Our word is his word. That we live by his life. That we are not independent from him or other than him.

We are in union with him. That his thought and his word is our word and his speaking. And therefore it has a power of a creative kind, of a prophetic kind to raise the dead or to give hope to the despairing and even to make the wilderness break forth into pools of water.

That makes charismatic stuff look pale. So his name is revealed when he looks down from his holy height and he speaks and he hears the groans of the prisoners and sets them free. His name being revealed is what he is in himself, both in his compassion and in his power.

Looking down is compassion, but setting free is his power. And that one act provoked by Israel's desperate need, the Lord reveals himself as the God who is both compassionate and able. And that this knowledge that is revealed or declared in Zion affects all nations and gathers them to worship the Lord and bring their kingdoms.

So all rebellion is put down, everything is submitted to God and his praise rings forth from all the earth. Because he is its creator, greater than its creation and is the same forever. He regards the prayers of the destitute and will not despise them.

And we said that the destitute is not Israel but those so identified with Israel in her judgment that our prayer is the prayer of the destitute. It is a desperate prayer. It's not praying for someone the peace of Jerusalem as we now pray.

Of course that's nothing. It is being in the situation of Jerusalem and that when we're praying for their peace we're praying for our peace for we are joined and one with them in their plight. That is the prayer of the destitute.

And that's the prayer that he hears and that he answers. And then it said the psalm ends with let this be recorded for all generations to come. Why? Because there's nothing further to come. This is the end of history and the commencement of the millennium.

Recording the Final Demonstration of God

This is the last divine act. The last intervention of God. The last demonstration of himself. So much so that all nations now bow before him. That was the whole purpose for history. History has been accomplished.

But what about generations yet unborn? How shall they praise the Lord who have not been participant and have not witnessed this? Well, they shall hear of it by the report. Let this be recorded for all generations to come.

God's final and ultimate last demonstration of what he is in himself. So that people yet unborn may praise the Lord. So everything ends. Everything is completed. The union of himself with his church. Israel redeemed and restored.

And the nation submitted to God. And his blessings fill the earth. Sounds like a snap. Glib, easy little formula. But the role of the church is crucial to all. When my servants... What is the set time to favor Zion?

When my servants shall have compassion on her stones and pity upon her dust. If you do not... If I have not yet convinced you that present and modern Israel will be reduced to rubble and to ruin. Read the prophets.

Read the cry in Isaiah. I don't remember which chapter. 49. The land has become our destruction. Read Jeremiah 30. 31. The time of Jacob's trouble. When I try to persuade the leading prophetic voice in Israel whom I've known for 30 years who happens to be Dutch.

That there's a time of calamity coming for Israel. And that the scripture shows that Jerusalem will be rebuilt upon its own ruins. Oh, Artie said, look, it's happening right now. I'm in his office in Jerusalem.

And there he shows me the earth moving equipment. I said, you dear man. Read the scriptures carefully. Yes, Jerusalem will be rebuilt upon its own ruins. Upon its own heaps. And then a lot of verse in the same chapter says as unto the Lord.

I said this building is unto man and will constitute the ruins. But that building that will be as unto the Lord will be appropriate for the king who will have his sanctuary and dwelling at Zion. I'm embarrassed to go to Jerusalem now.

I have no pleasure in modern Israel now. The weeds, the cracks, the jerry-built houses, the neon signs, the sleazy dives and amusement and all. Is that a place fit for a king? That has got to come down.

And all that it represents and something be raised up as unto the Lord is more than a catch word. Unto the Lord is appropriate for the Lord. Holy, holy, holy. And what then would be a bride appropriate for the Lord?

Adorned for the bridegroom we know is more than hair and jewelry. What is the adorned wife of 1 Peter 3? A woman of a quiet and meek spirit which in God's sight is of great purity. Imagine a church like that.

Baptism and Union With Christ’s Death and Resurrection

In union with the Lord. Having the same heart, mind, personality, compassion. Okay. Now how does communion fit into all this? Two great sacrament saints that have suffered loss in our generation because they have not been fitted in to the understanding, the cosmic view of the faith and therefore have become trivialized or have lost their greatest and significant meaning.

Baptism for many is merely getting wet. As I have been, what's the word? Pinching saints in all these weeks of travel. If your baptism was only an obedience you've only gotten wet. You've only received the value of baptism if you with understanding and faith knew that you were being buried and desired burial because why should you let a corpse rot and stink that has been willingly brought to death because you know in yourself that in yourself, that is in me and in my natural man is no good thing.

Very few saints have ever entered the waters of baptism with the intention of being buried. Only with the intention of getting wet and fulfilling some kind of minimal obedience and therefore they come out, they get dried off and they're no different than when they went in.

Unless we have died with him and been buried with him how shall we also be raised with him unto newness of life. The whole issue of resurrection and the ability to move and live and have your being in that life is the union with that life because you have first been in union with his death.

Baptism is a brilliant provision from God to have union with him in an act that we perform in waters that he has described as representing joining him in his death and burial that we might be raised up from them unto newness of life no longer to live unto ourselves nor for ourselves but unto him and by him and for him.

What makes the newness of life new is that it's no longer serving our purposes but his. That's the newness of it. And in a world that is hostile to God and enmity with God and even a religious world in which such a believer will stick out like the proverbial sore thumb and draw attention to himself if not opposition and persecution we need the life of God.

Oh, what do I have to do to persuade you? Get down on my knees that the life of God is not a phrase with a nice sounding lilt it is the provision of God that we might serve him that we might fulfill this great cosmic destiny it cannot be fulfilled by well-meaning intentions but I know you would prefer that it would because if it could be fulfilled by well-meaning intentions on the basis of your life then you would get the glory, right?

Then it would be a feather in your cap rather than coming to the glory of God. For of him, what does Paul say at the end of Romans 11 of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever.

A true saint does not want any personal glory. A true saint shuns any personal glory. A true saint who is a saint knows that he knows that any ability that he has any enablement, any grace is God. That's why he can receive compliments of the kind that he's paid it's to the glory of God.

Because what were we? We were taken from a dunghill we were beggars on a dunghill who had no distinction we were the world's rejects we had no qualification but he took us off the dunghill and he makes us to sit with the princes of his people even to become the princes of his people which implies a royal distinction of a governing kind.

Eternal Life and Ruling With Christ

It's not just a mansion that we're going to inherit but a place of rule with Christ over his great kingdom that will require a glorified body that we might ascend and descend and be one day in Manila the next day in Melbourne because there's something to mediate and arbitrate about the kingdom the inheritance of the saints is the privilege of the kingdom which is so great a privilege that the scriptures uses an equivalent phrase eternal life.

What must I do to inherit eternal life is not the issue of longevity of unbroken life but the privilege of rule and service and distinction in the kingdom of God forever. That's why Paul was outraged when he found two Greek Christians from Corinth on their way to a world court to resolve some debate some issue between them.

He said what are you guys doing? What are you doing? You're going to a world's court to resolve an issue between you as believers get one of the weakest and loneliest of the saints to resolve that. Don't you know you're going to rule over angels?

Don't you know you're going to rule over nations? How unbecoming that you condescend to find a solution of your difficulty from the world's court when this difficulty is given by God for you to find the wisdom in him to resolve that will fit you to rule from the heavenly places.

Remember the parallel text to Psalm 102. The deliverer coming out of Zion is Romans 11 .25 that when the fullness of the Gentiles come in so all Israel shall be saved as it is written the deliverer shall come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob.

What is the key that permits the deliverer to come out of Zion? The fullness of the Gentiles be come in. So are you ready for this? What does it mean the fullness? Numerically I believe it means that a number have been found for his name in every nation who will fulfill the vacancies created in the heavenly places over the nations that have been occupied by usurping fallen angels.

You didn't know that the fullness of the Gentiles be come in a number from all nations to fulfill the exact number of vacancies created by the casting out of angels. Fallen angels who have fathered Lucifer in his revolt in heaven and yet had continued in their governmental role to become the gods of this world the principalities and the powers of the air.

They will come to a final defeat through the church when the lord will allow them. Boy it might go in places. In revelation 13 .7 he gives to the beast power to overcome the church. That sounds like our end.

The Church’s Suffering and the Victory of the Cross

What is the lord up to? Giving the beast power to overcome us? To do to us what they did to him on the cross? Exactly because that's where they received their initial defeat was at calvary. He made of them an open spoil a public example and disarmed them by receiving the full bore of their bitter vehement opposition to himself in violence and bore it unto death with equanimity and grace and even a forgiving spirit.

And in that way in which he bore their attack he exhibited god had he railed back had he said you dirty brakabraks who are telling me come down. And you'll believe me. Is that the gratitude I get? Ha ha ha.

I come and I'm born in a stable. I lay aside my deity. I'm stripped of everything. I've lived 30 years as nothing in the least of all peoples to take upon myself the form of a man and be confined in a body and suffer in that body beatings and destitutions.

And now I'm hanging on a cross and you're mocking and taunting me. And all of this is intended for your salvation. Well then you'll get what you deserve. You dirty brakabraks. Many of you know him. He went as a lamb to the slaughter and opened not his mouth.

And you can believe he was not swallowing down this anger. He was full of compassion and mercy even for those who were inflicting his death. Father laid not this sin to their charge. And some dumb centurion who had hung many men on crosses and heard them squirm and rail and carry on.

That's what he expects. That's what men will do when their flesh is attacked and their life is threatened. He saw this one who did not clutch his life but gave up the ghost in such magnanimity and grace that he had to say truly this is the son of god.

You know what our destiny is? To reiterate the lord's death at the end of the age and bear our suffering unto death with the same grace that he exhibited that what he performed in himself he will have expressed again in his body.

And that is the end of the age. I didn't plan to tell you that I don't know that you're ready but it has to be on record because I may not come again. I'm telling everyone this is the last visit. So something has to be stated and later on he'll bring it to your understanding.

And what's our reward for this? The same that was his reward the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the statement of the father's acceptance and approval of the son's sacrifice. When Jesus went down into the waters of the Jordan and came up the voice of the father rang out.

This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased what he has done in this humiliation of identifying himself with the sins of Israel and going down into it is a preview and a picture of his last act. His first act is the picture of the last act his submission unto death for the salvation of sinners his own nation.

The Triune God Revealed in the Cross

And in doing that he is revealing God. Nothing so reveals God as Jesus on the cross. Nothing more reveals the triune God than Jesus on the cross. The son crying out to the father my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

And giving himself as a sacrifice without spot by the eternal spirit and not by some human courage. Both the father, the son and the spirit are exemplified and demonstrated in the final act of Jesus on the cross.

The cross is ultimate and it reveals ultimately the God who was crucified. We Jews have paid such a price in rejecting that testimony and dismissing the crucified Christ as some misguided character who had messianic pretensions and ran afoul of the Roman authorities and suffered their death.

It fixed us in a monotheism that is false. Once the triune God is revealed to continue to assert a monotheistic belief in God after the revelation of God in his triune fullness becomes now error. It's not the whole truth and therefore it's a lie.

And how does a sin bring its own judgment? Our insistent monotheism inspired Mohammed to form another heresy called Islam. It's a monotheistic cult inspired by a defunct Judaism and an equally defunct Christianity who though it's subscribed to a triune God doctrinally lived and operated as if God is a monotheistic God.

And what has come now to haunt Israel? What is the greatest threat to Israel's life? This heresy you see how your sins come back to haunt you. So the cross is crucial. And Israel's final suffering and ours is a reiteration of the cross a final statement to the powers of the air to a people who will not say how come me?

Why do I have to suffer this? But they count it all privilege and in their death they exhibit such a grace. They defeat the powers by being defeated. They overcome him by being overcome by the blood of the lamb the word of their testimony not having loved their life unto death it's not natural that we should relinquish our life where Stephen the first martyr who was the prototype was a young man with a brilliant future brilliant confounded the doctors of the law.

His face shone like an angel. What a tragedy that such a life had to be taken prematurely. But it was not premature. He finished the course before him and he could with joy give his life and even forgive his murderers because he knew Jesus had already risen and was ready to greet him and take him up unto himself in the place of government and glory and rule from the throne of heaven.

I see the Lord. I see the glory. I see the heavens open and the glory of God Jesus standing waiting to greet him every season. So don't you know you're going to rule over angels and over nations. And where are you going to get the savvy the wisdom.

The with what spirit will you rule. Will you be heavy handed and throw your weight around and now you were at the bottom. Now you're at the top and you're going to take advantage. Or will you rule in keeping with the meekness of the lamb the sweetness of his spirit.

David describes the rule of a king as a soft mist coming down over the earth. When it says he will rule them with a rod of iron it doesn't mean he's going to clobber them. Baptism in water is the induction into the life of God.

Now what do we do if we were only sprinkled. What do we do if our baptism was only a getting wet and a wanting to fulfill some ordinance or requirement. How do we should we get baptized again. Not necessarily read Romans 6 again where Paul speaks to those who have already been baptized but didn't understand its meaning.

And begins by saying don't you know that as many of you as were baptized into Christ were buried with him unto death therefore and he goes right on if you have been buried with him you have been risen with him unto the risen life.

You can regain and give meaning to your baptism that it did not have when you performed it by bringing now by faith this meaning to your baptism to the degree that you now desire it. Are you willing to be buried that you might be raised.

And do you have the confidence that if you're buried unto death that you will be raised. Can you take the Lord's word for it that because I live you shall live also. It's an issue of desire and faith.

Receiving the Life of God Through Ministry

And not the least of my functions with Tony is not to proclaim these truths but to demonstrate them unless you think that I'm some extraordinarily gifted man and that what you're enjoying is something of a human rather than of a divine kind.

The one thing that would shatter that illusion is follow us around for six weeks and the eight weeks that preceded it in Russia Poland the Ukraine Holland Germany England Scotland and I don't know how many other countries day and night and follow us in the Philippines and Singapore and Indonesia.

And now here every single time has been different than other. And when we arrive we have no ground plan no thought how or what. So we have seen the remarkable unfolding of God by his life in each place the body gets weary but the life this would be impossible unless the life of God was bringing forth his own intent and wisdom in his own manner and kind.

That's why you're so privileged. This is rare. You can hear a lot of gifted clever men with a gift of gab or even better and more. But to receive something out of the life of God as our brother said the other day kids life this is beyond instruction it becomes an event in itself and it's not waiting for your your comprehension in order to receive the value that will come later as the deposit has been made the word has been sown by the life of God and over a course of time the spirit of God will bring it progressively to your understanding.

But the work has been performed as only he can perform it. It's a resurrection phenomenon. Now why is it so important that you should not only hear such a word but recognize the source of it. Because your call to fulfill the mandate and the charge that has come to you in these days by the same life by which it has come you have received it by the life you'll fulfill it by the life.

That's why the issue of baptism as entry into the life and reckoning yourself dead on the basis of your baptism and alive unto God. Romans 6 .11 is the continuing key. See how important these sacraments are and see how they have been trivialized by the church and robbed of their ultimate meaning and made only religious.

Communion as Union With God and His People

What is the other sacrament. It's the one that we're now going to partake the Lord's Day which in my early days I shuddered when the month that once in a month occasion came in my Pentecostal church when we were given little plastic cups and away from what an ordeal couldn't wait for it to get over.

It was so without meaning to quaff something back at some note by the minister in charge. Ok let's take the cup together. The fact of the matter is we were not together. We were alongside each other but we were not together.

Communion is what this is about. It's union with God and with man. And that validates the reality of what it is that we're eating and drinking. If we are only alongside it's just a wafer and a fluid. But if we are in union with God and with his people that's the cross vertical and horizontal then it mediates its reality and power.

So when we moved into community it wasn't once a month it became once a week and then it became every day as it has remained to this day daily communion. Why? Because the demand of the faith the kingdom realities are of such a kind that we need to continually to be refreshed and renewed and empowered by the life of God in his body and in his blood.

These are not symbols. Symbols will not give you anything. They're vacuous and empty. And the Protestants have reduced the vital elements of God's body and blood into symbols. Fearful lest we subscribe to the transubstantiation business.

Well I know that this bread is not actually his body. I'm not holding a piece of oozing of flesh oozing with blood. And I know that the wine is not literally his blood. But I believe that it is the substance of his body and of his blood the essence the value, the power, the reality in what I'm holding and eating and drinking.

And I hold that cup spirit of the Lord substance of his character and the essence of his spirit. What spirit is it? It's the spirit by which he gave himself without spot unto God as eternal sacrifice.

Of course it's called the eternal spirit. It's a spirit of sacrifice. It's a spirit of giving up. It's a spirit of giving the whole thing over for the other for another for the others. It's contrary to the human spirit which is to take care, number one the spirit of God is exactly remember what you said about that woman who came and broke the alabaster box and the disciples had indignation at the waist.

He said, hold it you guys what this woman has done over which you are indignant at the waist because all she had to do was screw off the cap and just spritz out a few drops. But no, she smashed this box that was ornate and beautiful in itself and let the whole treasure be poured out.