Gooding, David: 2 - Symbols of Remembrance

And so we come to our second session. While in one sense we have more material to f- to cover, yet is it better known and therefore will not take us so long a time to select its leading thoughts. We must now think about a second set of symbols, that they were likewise completely perverting. And that may seem strange to us if we have not considered it lately, because the second set of symbols were no less than the bread by which our Lord Jesus asked us to remember him, and the wine, the cup of wine, by which we remember the fact that he poured out his blood for us. Nevertheless, the fact is true. Says Paul, the Corinthians were coming together and behaving in such a manner that it was not possible for them to eat the Lord's supper as it should be eaten. The Greek may even be translated that they had no intention of, uh, eating it as it should be eaten, for the simple reason that they had lost sight of the meaning and the significance of those sacred symbols. So tonight, in our first half, we shall be thinking of their fault in this matter, but once more in particular about the way in which Paul goes around correcting their fault. He quotes them, of course, what he himself had received from the Lord Jesus about the significance of the Lord's Supper, and so brings them back to what lies at the very heart of our Christian gospel. It would appear that the way they came to spoil these symbols was that they were much attached to the early Christian custom of meeting together for a meal of friendship and fellowship, in some sources called agape, where it was thought, or it is thought, that each one would have brought his contribution in good Greek fashion and eranos, in which each person brought their contribution and then shared out one with another what they had, so that the rich who brought more should share out their superfluity with the poor who couldn't afford to bring so much, and all would be satisfied. The occasion, of course, was, uh, to eat, but not just to satisfy crude hunger, but to have the eating express the common bond of love and fellowship that exists between believers. That then was their early custom, and a highly to be praised custom it was. It is so easy, isn't it, to sit in formal meetings of a church and scarce get to know the person that sits beside you as a person. You know him just as somebody that occupies a pew somewhere near you. To get to know them in the atmosphere of a Christian meal and fellowship is a delightful thing and can only eventually enhance our spiritual worship. But unfortunately, with these Greek Christians, the habit grew that the, the love feast was turned into a common meal, where in complete disregard for one another, each hogged away, uh, what he had. And the rich brought plentiful supply without bothering to share it, just treated it as though they were at home and ate to their full and beyond, and brought their drink, and some were full, though if the Greek is to be trusted, some were a little bit tipsy by the time they had finished. It had, of course, a most unfortunate effect on the poorer members of the church, that when they saw their richer brothers and sisters thus indulging in the kind of spread that the poorer people saw once in a blue moon, it made them feel alienated and scarce welcome and humiliated because they were only able to bring their small provisions. It was therefore denial in the first place of Christian love. Instead of promoting fellowship, it did the very opposite. More seriously, they so concentrated on this so-called love feast, that by the time it, by the when it became time to eat the Lord's Supper in remembrance of him, they were scarce in any fit state to do it. And if they did it, it was nearly a mockery because they couldn't concentrate on what they were doing. And Paul now proceeds to rebuke them for this grievous fault, and then to put it right. That may seem very, very distant to us here tonight, who would never dream of doing any such thing. You'll see our organizers made us content with a biscuit, uh, and a cup of tea. Worthy men. But I have been at the Lord's Supper, not in this country, but in another one that should be nameless, where, I suppose you would call it music, was so loud and raucous that when the Lord's Supper was kept and the wine and the bread passed round, I could hardly hear myself think, let alone concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. So I shall not count myself necessarily superior to these Corinthians, but seek to listen very carefully as Paul corrects them. And how will he do it? Why, of course, by bringing them back to the significance of those symbols, the bread and the wine. He says, I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he brake it and said, this is my body which is for you. This do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come. No words of mine are necessary to show that the significance of these two symbols, the bread and the wine, take us to the very heart of our Christian gospel. And the observation underlines the lesson that has now been recurring many times. It is possible for us Christian people, even in church activities, gradually to drift away and lose our grip on the very basic elements of the gospel and fail any longer to perceive their wonder and their wealth, so that they become mere routine trivialities, and we go through them thinking of a half a dozen other things, not concentrating, distracted on this and that, until the routine becomes empty of meaning, and being regarded empty of meaning is sometimes then discarded as being unnecessary. How could we ever forget it? You know, our Lord could have chosen many ways by for by for his people to remember him by. He could have ordained that when we meet together, someone should have got up and read in official voice the Sermon on the Mount. That being so, we should have remembered him chiefly as a teacher of ethics. Now, he did teach ethics, but that's not how he asked to be remembered. He could have ordained that somebody should have got up and read select miracles that he performed. And thus we should have remembered him chiefly as a performer of miracles. Now his miracles were important and exceedingly significant. That is not how he asked us to remember him. Taking what lay at his very and had done from the moment he stepped out of heaven. What surely must lay at our hearts, and if anything, bind us to him. He chose these humble elements. Take, eat this bread, he said, to remind you of me, that I gave my body for you. Get up and drink it, and the wine will recall for you my blood, and remember I poured out my life for you. How could we forget it? How could we let anything come and distract us from it? What hurt we should do to the Lord Jesus? Deftly, but solemnly, Paul puts into the description of his instruction from the Lord Jesus. I received from the Lord that which I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, the night he was betrayed. Remember it. What a sermon it preaches. How shall I easily lift up my heart to the Lord Jesus? To think that on that very night, when he instituted this remembrance feast, there was one there at least who was about to betray him. And another that was about to deny him. And all the others squabbling about irrelevant things and distasteful, who should be biggest among them. And if that was their heart, what about mine? And who should describe that kind of love, that knowing Peter and the rest, he gave his body, and he gave his blood. How should we forget it? Though, to be sure, Peter says that there are pe- are Christians, I suppose they're Christians, that, uh, presently, as they march on in life, forget also the cleansing of their former sins. You know, it sounds incredible, doesn't it, what ho? But then, uh, we have precedent for it. The dear Israelites had been slaved in e- slaves in Egypt, you know, and they groaned and they muttered and they cried and they called out to God, and God eventually heard them and brought them out, you know, through the blood of the Passover lamb and through the baptism in the Red Sea. And all went well, and they scurried away and got away from Pharaoh as hast- fast as their little legs could carry them and got a few miles down the road, and you know what? Forgot what the whole thing was about. Oh, that's impossible. Well, it happened anyway. I said, what are we doing here in the middle of the wilderness? This is rather ridiculous, you know. And we remember the garlics and the onions and the cucumbers. Been helpful if they'd have remembered a few more things, such as taskmasters. And came to suggesting giving up the whole scheme. She said, incredible. In middle life, we can behave sometimes as though we had done what Peter says some do, forget what the whole thing was about, the cleansing of our former sins, and begin as believers to behave sinfully and selfishly, and compromise the Lord's name and glory. And lest we forget, wisely did our blessed Lord tell us to take bread and wine and remember him. We'll say, I'm afraid the routine would, uh, dull it of its significance. Mm-hmm. I suppose you can get used to being forgiven, can't you? Becomes kind of ordinary. You know, I remember when, uh, strawberries were looked forward to once a year, you'll see, because they were rather rare things, and strawberries were marvelous. They're not marvelous now, is it? You can get them any day of the week. Forgiveness like that. Not if I will do what the Lord Jesus said, and let God's Holy Spirit bring afesh to me. The meaning of that bread and wine and what the Lord Jesus did. To take the bread and the wine, symbol of the body and blood of Christ that Christ gave that I might be forgiven, and to come to that ceremony with sin unconfessed, lightly, and not attending to what I'm doing. That is a very solemn thing, says Paul. That could be to be guilty of the body and blood of Christ, guilty of murdering the Lord Jesus. You say, how come? Why, it is the fact, isn't it, that in a very profound and real sense, it was our sins that killed the Lord. And as we remember it, the first thing we do is to repent again, isn't it? And we have his forgiveness. To sin and not repent, and yet take that cup, is to be unashamedly, unrepentantly guilty of having killed the Lord Jesus. You will say the best thing then is to stay away. Oh come, how could you think such a thought? What, so that you can go on sinning? No, the best thing is to calm. And to remember what our sins cost him. That we might repent the more deeply. And live thereafter the more holily. But there is another side to it, isn't there? When our Lord Jesus took the cup, he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. So this is a matter that we must attend to when we drink the cup at the Lord's Supper. It is not simply that his blood was poured out that we might be forgiven. It is that in handing us that cup, he calls us to observe that this cup is the new covenant in his blood. Play, what does it mean, the new covenant? The very ceremony by which our Lord Jesus introduced it, simple as it was, recalled, of course, the old covenant. When God gathered the Israelites around Mount Sinai, announced his propositions to them that they should be his peculiar people, a kingdom of priests, if only they would keep the terms of the covenant, and the people said they would be agreeable. So God had Moses recite the terms of the law that should be the basis of the covenant between them. Not content with that, God said, now the people have heard it, but Moses write it in a book that it might be ba- there in black and white, so that no one thereafter will say, but I didn't know that was in the covenant. So Moses wrote it all in a book, and then he read and made it very clear he wasn't making it up as he went along. He was reading it from the book. These were the terms of God's holy law that formed the basis of their covenant. And the challenge went out to the people. Did they or did they not accept these terms? And they replied, all that the Lord has commanded we will do and be obedient. And that being so, Moses brought the covenant victims and had them slain, and he caught their blood in a basin, and holding up the basin full of blood before the people, he said, this is the blood of the new covenant that the Lord makes with you, the terms of which you now promise to obey. That was the old covenant. You see the similarity, don't you, between that and what the Lord Jesus did as he took a cup and filled it with wine, and holding it to his disciples, he said, this is the blood of the new covenant. Why should you need a new covenant if you already had an old one? Well, there were certain deficiencies in the old covenant, of course. It wasn't the old covenant's fault. But the old covenant, the best it was could do was to have the laws inscribed, its terms inscribed on a tables of stone. You'll see written by some master mason, or as the text says, by the very finger of God, on tables of stone. And you put them in the tabernacle for good preservation, and they told the people what the people had to do, and it was excellent. You couldn't find fault with it, except it didn't work. Why didn't it work? Well, the law, those tables of stone, you see, could tell people what to do, but it couldn't give them the puff with which to do it. It could tell the people what not to do, but could give them no power to refrain from doing what they should not do. And in the end, they broke the covenant. And God set them aside. When God did that, at the great exile, he moved Jeremiah to prophesy that one day God himself would bring in the new covenant. Why another covenant if the first one didn't really work? Ah, because it is a new covenant, and the new covenant old covenant. And these are its terms, aren't they? But why should I tell, why should I tell you? Come, come, come, sir. I feel like calling for volunteers just now. Eh, let me see, somebody who has been observing the Lord's Supper this last ten years. fifty two times a year. We'll cut off the odd two and say fifty times a year. Five hundred times you've kept the Lord's Supper and taken the cup, yes? Uh, could I call on you now to stand up and repeat the words of the covenant? Well, I won't do it now, though, because, no, because you can surely, can't you? All of them? I hope we could. Otherwise, we weren't really attending, were we, to what the Lord was saying when he handed the cup. And what was he saying? This cup is the new covenant in my blood, and here come the terms of the covenant. I will write my laws on their hearts, and on their minds will I inscribe them. They'll say, Mr. Preacher, when are you going to get round to the real point of the Lord's Supper? It's the worship meeting. Did you not know that? Well, I've heard so say, and there's no other thing on earth calculated to move our hearts to worship, is there, than the remembrance of the Lord Jesus. But actually, in the New Testament, you'd be hard put to it to find any instruction, wouldn't you, that at the Lord's Supper you're supposed to worship, wouldn't you? Carry on worshiping. I'm not discouraging you, sir. By all means, worship. How could you refrain from worshiping the Lord if you remembered him? But what he was primarily concerned with as he handed the cup is, this is the new covenant in my blood, and what I'm proposing to do is to write my laws on your heart. Oh yes, there will be forgiveness. You will not be perfect at once. You are to know that your sins and iniquities God will never bring up against you in the court of his justice. The penalty has been paid once and for all through my blood. This is the blood shed for the forgiveness of sins, and God himself, in the terms of the covenant, says their sins and iniquities, I will never reap up against them, bring them to remembrance in my court of justice. The whole business, as far as the penalty goes, is finished. Marvelous, isn't it? But it doesn't mean that because my sins and their penalty will never be brought up against me again, I'm free to do as I like. What is it to be a redeemed man and to be a redeemed woman? It is to be under a new regime. Don't call him king if you don't want to, but pray call him Lord, and it comes to nearly the same thing, doesn't it? And it's the Lord who stands and says, as he hands us the cup, I will write my laws on your heart. They were a marvelous crowd, were those Corinthians. And there were some who doubtless criticized Paul for preaching to Corinthians the doctrine of justification by faith. I dare say they were tempted to say, now look at it, Paul. You see, Paul, you stupid. If you will go around preaching to people that they can be saved by faith apart from the works of the law, well, what do you expect? Preach that to Corinthians. You will get a marvelous Irish fry out of them. You will indeed. They'll be inventing all kinds of sins and, uh, and, uh, uh, uh, aberrations if you tell them that they can be saved and sure of it. You ought to preach them the law. Not so, says Paul. For the law can tell people what to do, it can't give them the power to do it anyway. And I have seen a miracle happen in Corinth, says Paul. For God has made me efficient as a minister of the New Covenant, and what God is doing is writing his laws not on tables of stone, but on fleshy tables of the heart, using me as a pen and the Holy Spirit, so to speak, as the ink. The blessed risen Lord has written and begun to write on the hearts of the Corinthians, and that takes some doing, doesn't it? You can write laws on a bit of stone because the old granite stays put, you know, and so long as you've got a sharp chisel and moderate, uh, technique, you can get the old letters to stay put. You try writing a message on people's hearts. Well, they're slippery things, aren't they? Like trying to write a message in olive oil. Mm. And yet, and yet, this is the genius of our blessed Lord, risen from the dead by his Holy Spirit through his servants, the apostles and the evangelists and the teachers, using them as pens, engraves his message, the laws of God on the heart. What does it mean? First of all, it means to give them the very life and nature of God, and then to educate them so that that life can be developed. Oh, what a lovely thing the Lord is saying, my sister, my brother, when he invites you to remember him. Not merely that he's cancelled your sins and their penalty in the past, he's going to make you like God, he's going to make you like himself. I promise it, says he. And I seal my promise with my blood. I don't know about you, I suppose when you come to the Lord's Supper, that you come every week, uh, hurrying to get there and glad to come and ready to burst forth into praise. You're marvelous. I don't always. I come after a difficult week. And boundless disappointment at my shabby substandards of Christianity. Saying, where were all my resolutions of twenty years ago, and am I no better than this? And is it worth trying to carry on? Shouldn't be thinking of those things, should I? What, I should be like you, full of the Lord. When I get round to it in the end, when he hands me the cup, you see, and I take it, and he, knowing the worst, says, but you see, I've signed it in my blood. I'm going to write my laws on your heart, and do it he will. Oh, blessed Lord, one day we shall be conformed to his image. And you say, Lord, but this week I failed. I know that he says, listen, their sins and iniquities. I will remember no more. But come, won't you? For the Lord means business. And if I don't come, and if I come unworthily, carelessly, without any attempt to discern myself, just living as I always do, not meaning business with the Lord and constantly saying to the Lord, now Lord, what's the next thing that's got to change in my life? Lord, please deal with this. But just coming, bo, carelessly. Then what will happen? Well, my dear fellow believer, what will happen is this. The Lord has covenanted to write his laws on your heart. Signed a covenant in his blood, and he'll do it. Only this time it mightn't be so comfortable for you. Do it, let him do it with my cooperation. Yeah, sometimes that will be painful. But if I don't cooperate, it is a covenant. And if it means rigorous discipline, he will not stop short of that rigorous discipline to write his laws ever more deeply on my heart. This is the gospel, isn't Isn't it? it? Do we have to come? Let me tell you a story. It's the prerogative of the elderly to reminisce. Why shouldn't I? I was in a country far away from this, and in a church I'd never visited before. And of a Sunday morning, they had two sessions. The first session was the Lord's Supper, at which I was invited to pass on a word. Then after some break, they had a second meeting at which I was invited to preach. That was all done. As they drove me home, and they had so many, uh, miles to drive me home to where I was staying, one of the elders asked me, I should have been more sensitive and told him before, shouldn't I? What did you really think of our church today? He said it was marvelous. It was a... I said I enjoyed the Lord's Supper, and I was, I was struck with how many unconverted people you got at the second session. Because at the Lord's Supper, there was a handful of people. At the second session, there must have been getting on to a hundred or more. I said it's marvelous to get such a crowd of unconverted people into the second session. And their faces fell. But they weren't unconverted people, he said. They were members of the church. Members of the church? But they weren't at the Lord's Supper. No, he says, in our church, the majority don't come to the Lord's Supper. I said, go on, really? Well, he said, you can't make them come, can you? You can't tell them they have to come. They'll come. That set me a thinking. Can you... Well, I've never been an elder, you'll see, so I've been excused the, the, the decision, but, but can you tell people they've got to come to the Lord's Supper? We better put the question to the Lord Jesus. Lord, uh, do you tell people that they ought to come to your, to remember you, or have you left it optional? And when I think of that, I can't help remembering what, uh, what, uh, Luke tells us in his early history of what happened on the day of Pentecost, you know, when the multitude that so recently had denied that Jesus was the Messiah and had him crucified, were brought to repentance by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit. So they came to the apostles and said, what shall we do, you'll say? They came to believe that Jesus was, after all, the Messiah. They murdered him. That was a pickle to be in, wasn't it? And in great consternation, they came to the Apostle Peter and said, what will we do? He said, you better start repenting, I should suggest. He didn't tell them to believe, you'll see. They believed already that Jesus was the Messiah. That was why they were upset. They were wondering what to do about the fact they'd murdered him. He said, you better start repenting. Ah, yeah, and what will that mean? Well, you'll be baptized, every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus. That was inconvenient for some of them. Surely it was. I can imagine some chap coming up to Peter and say, have a word with you, sir, after the meeting. Yes, my boy, what is it? Uh, uh, well, you said that, uh, if we really repented, we ought to be baptized. Yes, I did, yes. Well, you know, I have repented, but, but, um, you see, uh, baptism would be highly inconvenient for me. My father is a leading member of the Sanhedrin, you see, and, you know, it would be awfully embarrassing for the family if I, if I were to get baptized. So, uh, yes, I just come to make sure that I, I, I, I can repent without being baptized, can't I? What would you suppose Peter would have said? Oh, my boy, he would say, did you not stand publicly here some weeks ago and say, crucify him? And you stood with his murderers, and now you've repented? Well, let me tell you, God won't take your say so. Unless you're prepared to show by your actions that you mean what you say. In publicly, you denied him. Now publicly, you will confess him. And if you're not prepared, God isn't prepared to take your say so for it. So they got baptized. Well, of course they did, because they had really repented. And then having repented, as says, uh, Luke, this is what they did. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship. Well, of course they did. If they really believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and Peter and company were his apostles, and Jesus was God's son incarnate and heir to the universe, of course they came and consorted with the apostles and were eager to learn everything they could about the Messiah. How not? Because I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but that's as far as I'm interested to take it. I don't want to take it any further and get deeper into these things. You don't. You don't want to get very deep into heaven, I suppose. And they continued in the fellowship. Well, of course they did. You listen to John talking about great eternal word that was with the Father and was manifested to us, and we beheld him, and we saw him, you know, and we touched him and we handled him, wa- and we saw his glory as of the only begotten of the Father, and we're writing to you. We want you to share our fellowship. Our fellowship is with the Father and his Son. And to say you've repented and believe in Jesus, but not interested in his fellowship, would be odd talk, wouldn't it? You'd be a half lunatic. And they not only continued in those things, they continued in the breaking of bread. Of course they did. Once they said that Jesus wasn't the Messiah king. Now they said they'd repented, and they come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah King. And they learned from the apostles what the Messiah had said the night in which he was betrayed. Come, remember me, and I will write my laws on your heart. How could I say I had repented? If, in effect, I turned around to the Lord Jesus and said, well, that's as may be, Lord, I have repented. But as for your writing your laws on my heart and my coming to remember you, I don't see actually the need for that, you know. If the king says, come, take this bread, take this cup, let me remind you that I died that you might be forgiven. And my purpose in saving you is that you and I might do business together as I write my laws ever more deeply on your heart. Oh, as the king says that, how should I stay away if I could be present. And if I do stay away, because I'm careless, and for some not adequate reason, how shall I face the Lord Jesus and persuade him that I have actually repented and received him as Lord? Sometimes it is said that the Lord's Supper is such a solemn and grim time that you can concentrate too much on it. I suppose there is some truth to the idea. We do remember that the blessed Lord who died is risen. In the act of remembering him, we do this until he come, and we remember his promised return. But how shall we say that remembering the Lord's death is so lugubrious as would put us off? If it is, friend, don't go to heaven. You wouldn't be advised to. For the song sheet has already been printed, you know, in heaven, at least the beginning. And it is this, unto him that loved us and loosed us from our sins in his blood, to him be the glory and the honor and the majesty forever and ever. Amen. Not for all eternity will God or you forget that you were once a sinner, and Jesus died for you. And it will remain the greatest wonder that ever will be revealed to you. Though the experiences of God's eternal heaven be wonderful beyond our wildest imagination. Imagination. My dear brothers, it can be that the Lord's Supper become arid. We cannot command our emotions, can we? Sometimes our emotions flow, and sometimes they ebb. And to be frank, we come and we're not feeling full, abounding, bursting with all of praise. Young people are, but us old people, we're a different story, you'll see. Let's come nonetheless, wouldn't we? Suppose your dear wife gives you, sir, some remarkable Christmas present, the like of which you've never had in all your days. And you'll see she's saved up all her housekeeping money and skimped on the Brussels sprouts for months to buy you this present. So happens that when she gives it to you, that you're having a bit of a sort of a hangover the day before, and you don't feel very good. You'll say, well, I don't feel like saying thank you, my dear, so I shan't. You'll say, well, I can't help it, I don't feel like doing it, but this I must do. Look at this thing. And you jolly well take yourself by the, by the, uh, the collar, don't you? And you shake yourself up and say, ha ha, well, in the end, it's not a matter of emotional feeling. This is what the Lord Jesus did. And I deliberately call on my soul to remember and to bless his holy name. God forbid that I should ever let anything else so distract me that I could not attend to the remembrance of the Lord. For this, in the end, is the secret of his empire. This is how he proposes to govern us from now to an endless eternity. What does it mean to be redeemed human being? It means to be put under a new regime. We should also have considered tonight that it means to be part of this great new entity, which is the body of Christ. But the clock has defeated us, or at least defeated me. By your leave, perhaps at your pleasure, I shall delay the discussion of that topic until our next session together. When we shall consider together the great new entity that is the body of Christ, and pass from that to thinking about what our glorified and redeemed personal body should be when the Lord Jesus comes again. The Christian philosophy of man, what it means to be a redeemed man and woman under the new regime. That's been our study tonight. Let's conclude it with a word of prayer. Lord, the things of which we have thought this evening from thy holy word have for me- many of us been things that we have known of many years. We bless thee for the experience, unaffected and unpretended, that even here on earth, this is a theme of perennial freshness and ever renewed power. And Lord Jesus, we turn to thee from the page of thy word to thyself personally, and we bless thee, thou glorious Son of God, thou Son of Man. We bless thee for coming, for taking our humanity, and for dying for us at Calvary. We bless thee, thou hast loved us while we were yet sinners, knowing all we were and should be. We bless thee, thy death is sufficient to cover all our many sins and more beside. We bless thee even more this evening for thy faithful covenant. Thou art writing, thou wilt yet write thy laws on our hearts, and our hearts leap within themselves tonight as we rejoice in prospect of one day attaining the glory of God, and this we owe to thee. Draw near, Lord, tonight we beseech thee as we go to our homes, for the day is far spent. We pray that thou wilt come in. May we not constrain thee to come in to our homes and the home of our heart. That thou wilt have converse with us and we with thee, according to thy promise. If any man open the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me, in private and in the public meetings of the church. If tomorrow we are spared and we come to meet to remember thee, O Lord Jesus, grant we beseech thee that as of old, having expounded thy word and warmed the hearts of thy disciples, thou didst make thyself known peculiarly and personally in the breaking of the bread. So shall it be. So that today and tomorrow, under thy headship, we may make progress. For the time is short, and the journey's end is near. We would be the more like thee before the great day when we meet thee. And thus we bless thy name, and by thy grace depart in thy peace, giving thee thanks. Amen.