Van Bogard Dunn - "Living in the Proverbs" (July 7, 1957; May 25, 1958)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Pastor 1 | As Christ hath loved us. | 0:04 |
Thy life is within our souls, | 0:07 | |
but our selfishness hath hindered thee. | 0:10 | |
We have not lived by faith. | 0:14 | |
We have resisted thy spirit. | 0:17 | |
We have neglected thine inspirations. | 0:20 | |
Forgive what we have been. | 0:24 | |
Help us to amend what we are. | 0:27 | |
And in thy spirit, direct what we shall be, | 0:30 | |
that thou mayest come into the full glory of thy creation, | 0:35 | |
in us and in all men | 0:40 | |
through Jesus Christ, our lord. | 0:43 | |
Amen. | 0:47 | |
And now, as our savior, Christ, hath taught us, | 0:49 | |
we humbly pray. | 0:53 | |
Our Father, who art in heaven, | 0:55 | |
hallowed be thy name. | 0:59 | |
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, | 1:02 | |
on earth as it is in heaven. | 1:06 | |
Give us this day our daily bread, | 1:09 | |
and forgive us our trespasses, | 1:12 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us. | 1:15 | |
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. | 1:20 | |
For thine is the kingdom, | 1:26 | |
and the power and the glory forever. | 1:28 | |
Amen. | 1:33 | |
(church organ playing faintly) | 1:40 | |
(church choir singing) | 2:33 | |
Pastor 2 | Let us hear now | 7:42 |
the reading of the morning lesson. | 7:43 | |
"You have heard that it was said, | 7:48 | |
'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' | 7:51 | |
But I say to you, love your enemies | 7:55 | |
and pray for those who persecute you, | 7:59 | |
so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven; | 8:02 | |
for he makes his sun rise on the evil and all the good, | 8:07 | |
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. | 8:12 | |
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? | 8:16 | |
Do not even the tax collectors do the same? | 8:21 | |
And if you salute only your brethren, | 8:25 | |
what more are you doing than others? | 8:28 | |
Do not even the Gentiles do the same? | 8:31 | |
You therefore must be perfect, | 8:35 | |
as your heavenly father is perfect." | 8:39 | |
May God bless this reading of his Holy Word. | 8:44 | |
Amen. | 8:48 | |
(church organ playing) | 8:51 | |
(church choir singing) | 9:08 | |
Pastor 1 | The Lord be with you. | 10:29 |
Congregation | And with your spirit. | 10:32 |
Pastor 1 | Let us pray. | 10:33 |
Let us offer unto God our prayer of thanksgiving. | 10:41 | |
For the life which thou hast given and preserved, | 10:47 | |
for the world in which we dwell, | 10:52 | |
and for the hope of everlasting blessedness, | 10:56 | |
we thank thee, oh God. | 11:01 | |
For all the difficulties and distresses which have molded us | 11:05 | |
and for he consolations which have refreshed our weariness, | 11:11 | |
we thank thee, oh God. | 11:17 | |
For comfort and help, | 11:21 | |
in sorrow, in pain, in bereavement, | 11:25 | |
we thank thee, oh God. | 11:32 | |
For the warnings of thy spirit speaking to our spirits, | 11:36 | |
when the sky was bright and all men spake well of us, | 11:42 | |
we thank thee, oh God. | 11:48 | |
For the life and doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 11:52 | |
for his love and sacrifice, | 11:57 | |
for his boundless compassion, | 12:02 | |
and for the glorious company of those | 12:06 | |
who have followed him in weakness unto victory, | 12:08 | |
we thank thee, oh God. | 12:14 | |
Let us offer unto God our prayer of intercession | 12:20 | |
for the world. | 12:23 | |
Oh God, the creator and sustainer of all mankind, | 12:26 | |
we pray for all thy family upon earth, | 12:31 | |
and for every agency of world cooperation, | 12:36 | |
that it may grow in usefulness and power. | 12:40 | |
For thy universal church, | 12:45 | |
for the world organization of nations, | 12:49 | |
for international federations of labor, | 12:54 | |
industry, and commerce, we beseech thee. | 12:57 | |
For all the departments of state, | 13:04 | |
for all ambassadors, ministers, and diplomats. | 13:08 | |
For all prophets and pioneers | 13:14 | |
who have seen the promised land (inaudible) | 13:17 | |
and dedicated their lives to its service. | 13:21 | |
For the common folk in every land | 13:26 | |
who long to live in peace and quietness, | 13:31 | |
we beseech thee. | 13:36 | |
Let us offer unto God our prayer of intercession | 13:40 | |
for the church. | 13:43 | |
Most gracious Father, | 13:46 | |
we humbly beseech thee for thy Holy Catholic Church. | 13:48 | |
Fill it with all truth, in all truth, with all peace. | 13:54 | |
Where it is corrupt, purge it. | 14:00 | |
Where it is an error, direct it. | 14:06 | |
Where anything is a myth, reform it. | 14:11 | |
Where it is right, strengthen and confirm it. | 14:17 | |
Where it is in want, furnish it. | 14:23 | |
Where it is divided and went asunder, | 14:28 | |
do thou make up the bridges in it, | 14:32 | |
for the sake of thy son whose church it is. | 14:36 | |
And let us offer unto God | 14:43 | |
our prayer of supplication for ourselves, | 14:44 | |
a God of company of his people. | 14:51 | |
O God whose days are without end, | 14:57 | |
and whose mercies cannot be numbered, | 15:02 | |
make us, we beseech thee, deeply sensible of the shortness | 15:06 | |
and uncertainty of human existence, | 15:12 | |
and let thy holy spirit lead us through this present world | 15:18 | |
in holiness and righteousness | 15:23 | |
all the days of our lives, | 15:27 | |
that when we shall have served thee in our generation, | 15:31 | |
we may be gathered unto our fathers, | 15:36 | |
having the testimony of a good conscience | 15:40 | |
in the communion of thy holy church, | 15:46 | |
in the confidence of a certain faith, | 15:51 | |
in the comfort of our reasonable religious and holy hope, | 15:56 | |
in favor with thee, our God, | 16:04 | |
and in charity with the world, | 16:08 | |
and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ | 16:14 | |
be with us all evermore. | 16:19 | |
Amen. | 16:25 | |
(church organ playing) | 16:30 | |
(lively church music) | 19:43 | |
(church choir singing) | 20:30 | |
Pastor 2 | Almighty God, | 23:51 |
in whom we live and move and have our being, | 23:53 | |
we present unto thee these gifts, | 23:57 | |
the symbols of ourselves, our souls and bodies, | 24:02 | |
to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee | 24:09 | |
and to thy son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 24:17 | |
Amen. | 24:24 | |
(church organ playing faintly) | 24:27 | |
Pastor 2 | Let us pray. | 25:05 |
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts | 25:11 | |
be acceptable in thy sight, | 25:17 | |
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. | 25:20 | |
Amen. | 25:25 | |
Shortly after we had moved to Jackson, Tennessee, | 25:33 | |
we were visiting in West Kentucky. | 25:37 | |
And I overheard my small daughter, | 25:41 | |
who is now approaching her seventh birthday, | 25:44 | |
trying to describe just exactly where we lived in Jackson. | 25:47 | |
She said, "We don't live in the downtown of Jackson. | 25:53 | |
We live out in the Proverbs." | 25:56 | |
And I wonder if that isn't exactly our trouble, | 26:02 | |
that we do live out in the Proverbs. | 26:06 | |
Perhaps we have reduced | 26:11 | |
the great soaring throughs of Christianity | 26:12 | |
to a shrewd calculating wisdom that will enable us | 26:17 | |
to get along in this world. | 26:21 | |
I think that living in the Proverbs | 26:26 | |
must have been some of the trouble | 26:30 | |
with the people in the First Century. | 26:32 | |
I have just read for you a passage of scripture | 26:36 | |
from the fifth chapter of Matthew. | 26:39 | |
This is a part of the familiar sermon on the mountain. | 26:42 | |
I think that in this passage of scripture, | 26:46 | |
Jesus is attacking life in the Proverbs. | 26:49 | |
He is contrasting the exciting, thrilling venture of life | 26:55 | |
in the kingdom with a life of shrewdness, | 27:02 | |
a calculating, a pedestrian life | 27:05 | |
that seeks to measure out its affection | 27:10 | |
according to affection received. | 27:14 | |
Specifically, this passage of scripture | 27:20 | |
is an attack against all forms of exclusivism | 27:24 | |
in our affection. | 27:29 | |
Jesus was addressing his words through good men. | 27:34 | |
I think he was addressing his words through the best men | 27:38 | |
that he could have found in his century, | 27:41 | |
just as you and I this morning would represent | 27:46 | |
the best of the life of this community. | 27:49 | |
And as Jesus talked to these men, | 27:53 | |
he found it necessary to contrast | 27:57 | |
what had been said to them with what he wanted to accept, | 28:00 | |
what he wanted them to accept | 28:05 | |
as the demand of God for their life. | 28:06 | |
He said, "You have heard | 28:10 | |
that you ought to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. | 28:15 | |
But I say to you, love your enemies | 28:20 | |
and pray for those who persecute you." | 28:24 | |
And then Jesus went on to illustrate | 28:31 | |
the kind of life that he wanted men to live. | 28:33 | |
And I think you see some of the genius of Jesus | 28:38 | |
in the way he illustrates his kind of life. | 28:42 | |
I find that in my own preaching, | 28:45 | |
when I want to illustrate the great attributes of God, | 28:47 | |
I turn again and again to the trivial, | 28:51 | |
and I lift up the sentimental and the boggling, | 28:54 | |
and try to use these things to illustrate the life of God. | 28:58 | |
But here, Jesus turns to the life of God | 29:03 | |
in order to illustrate what the life of man ought to be. | 29:07 | |
He points to that all-inclusive providence of God, | 29:13 | |
which causes his sun and his rain | 29:17 | |
to come up on the good and the evil, | 29:21 | |
the just and the unjust. | 29:23 | |
Now I don't find that particularly convincing. | 29:27 | |
You see, I can't see the nature of what Jesus saw it. | 29:31 | |
I can look at it as seriously and as earnestly as I can. | 29:36 | |
And I seek to find there a love and the tenderness | 29:42 | |
and the compassion, and somehow rather, it escapes me. | 29:46 | |
And especially it escapes me at a time like this | 29:50 | |
when we have just seen the claw of nature, | 29:53 | |
the cruelty and the hardness of nature. | 29:57 | |
All of these things come rising to my mind | 30:01 | |
when I try to see the love of God in his providence. | 30:05 | |
And frankly, I can't see it. | 30:10 | |
Perhaps someday, I may be able to see it there, | 30:13 | |
but if it is ever possible for me to see it there, | 30:17 | |
it will be because I have seen this love of God | 30:20 | |
commended to me in something else. | 30:24 | |
Jesus speaks with authority in this passage of scripture | 30:27 | |
because he lived the kind of life | 30:31 | |
that caused another to say of him, | 30:34 | |
"God commended his own love toward us | 30:36 | |
And that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." | 30:40 | |
Now when Jesus said that we should be perfect, | 30:49 | |
perfect even as God is perfect. | 30:54 | |
Perfect with a love that is all-inclusive. | 30:59 | |
He said something that lays upon my life and upon your life | 31:04 | |
a demand that we cannot escape. | 31:08 | |
We cannot escape it in the life of the church. | 31:11 | |
It may well be that we can escape it somewhere else. | 31:15 | |
But if we take this redemptive community serious, | 31:18 | |
then it follows that this is something that comes to us | 31:23 | |
with a tremendous demand. | 31:26 | |
As I read the New Testament, sometimes I get the idea | 31:32 | |
that Jesus is speaking to me in a vacuum, | 31:37 | |
that he's speaking to individuals | 31:39 | |
who never lived as I lived, | 31:41 | |
but it does not take a whole lot of imagination | 31:44 | |
to realize that those who heard | 31:47 | |
this staggering statement the first time | 31:49 | |
were men who lived in families, | 31:52 | |
they were men who participated | 31:55 | |
in the religious institution of their community, | 31:57 | |
they had civic responsibility, | 32:00 | |
and he spoke to them about an all-inclusive law | 32:03 | |
that could only be expressed through these institutions. | 32:06 | |
And yet, somehow rather, as men responded to him, | 32:10 | |
they found that these institutions | 32:13 | |
were shattered and destroyed | 32:15 | |
and then put together again by what he had said | 32:17 | |
and by what he wants. | 32:21 | |
So then, let us turn to look at our own lives. | 32:25 | |
Lives that are lived in relationship to other people. | 32:32 | |
Let us look at the dear beloved institutions of our life. | 32:38 | |
You know, I have a family, | 32:46 | |
and I think that I am a good family man. | 32:50 | |
Sometimes my wife has a different idea about that, | 32:54 | |
but I try to love my children | 32:59 | |
and I try to provide for my wife, | 33:04 | |
and I find myself, again and again, | 33:09 | |
realizing that there is some conflict | 33:12 | |
between my human love for my family | 33:14 | |
and this demand that Jesus makes upon my life | 33:18 | |
for a perfect love. | 33:22 | |
An active goodwill that is all-inclusive. | 33:25 | |
And when I experienced these conflicts in my own life, | 33:31 | |
I find myself throwing up my hands and saying to myself, | 33:36 | |
"God, you cannot expect that of me. | 33:43 | |
You cannot expect me to give up certain things | 33:47 | |
within the circle of my home. | 33:52 | |
You cannot expect me to realize | 33:54 | |
that there is a higher loyalty | 33:56 | |
than the loyalty that I owe to my family." | 33:59 | |
And yet, again and again, | 34:03 | |
this is exactly what God asked me to do in Christ. | 34:06 | |
And I believe that, again and again, | 34:11 | |
it is exactly what God asked you to do in Christ. | 34:13 | |
I mentioned my daughter a moment ago, | 34:20 | |
how easy it is for a preacher to make capital homiletical, | 34:24 | |
capital of the lives of these children. | 34:29 | |
Not everything that my Susan says can be used in a sermon. | 34:33 | |
There are some things that she says to me | 34:39 | |
and to her brother and her sister | 34:42 | |
that are devilish and I think are mean and wicked. | 34:45 | |
She's not very old, but how mean she can be. | 34:51 | |
And if I love her simply as one who can capitalize | 34:58 | |
on the nice things that she said, | 35:02 | |
before long, I find it that I do not love her at all. | 35:06 | |
I can only love her under God, | 35:11 | |
and I can only love her | 35:15 | |
with a love that includes those things | 35:17 | |
that are very unlovable about her. | 35:19 | |
And it is our experience in the church | 35:23 | |
that as we give up the family of man, | 35:25 | |
we receive again the family of God. | 35:29 | |
You must be perfect. | 35:34 | |
And when Jesus said that long ago, | 35:40 | |
it must have been difficult to accept. | 35:42 | |
And when he speaks to us, | 35:47 | |
it is still difficult to accept it. | 35:49 | |
And yet it is the best news about family life | 35:53 | |
that we have ever heard. | 35:56 | |
For in hating our fathers and our mothers, | 35:59 | |
in hating our brothers and our sisters, | 36:04 | |
in hating them so that we might love God, | 36:09 | |
then we find impossible, | 36:14 | |
not as a direct result, but as a byproduct, | 36:15 | |
love these as they should be loved under God. | 36:20 | |
There is another institution that is dear to our hearts. | 36:28 | |
You are here this morning in this chapel | 36:35 | |
because you love the church, | 36:38 | |
because you are devoted to it. | 36:42 | |
And our experience in the church, again and again, | 36:46 | |
is a tragic experience. | 36:49 | |
It is an experience of struggle and trial. | 36:52 | |
For we find that this demand of Jesus | 36:59 | |
is a judgment upon the life of the church itself. | 37:02 | |
Now, I'm a Methodist. | 37:07 | |
I think that there are a lot of reasons why I'm a Methodist. | 37:10 | |
One good reason is because my father | 37:15 | |
was a Methodist preacher | 37:17 | |
and I had very little chance to be anything else. | 37:18 | |
Now I have discovered in the city of Jackson, Tennessee, | 37:24 | |
a tendency on my part to identify the church of God, | 37:29 | |
not simply with the Methodist church, | 37:33 | |
but with my particular local congregation. | 37:36 | |
We're trying to build a church. | 37:40 | |
And because we were trying to build a church, | 37:43 | |
it is absolutely necessary | 37:45 | |
that we attracted people into that congregation. | 37:47 | |
And I go out beating the bushes | 37:51 | |
and compelling them to come in. | 37:53 | |
And I find myself in opposition | 37:56 | |
to the six other Methodist ministers in that small city. | 37:58 | |
And I draw a circle that shuts them out. | 38:03 | |
I draw a circle that shuts out | 38:06 | |
the life of their congregation. | 38:08 | |
And I feel that the kingdom of God will only come | 38:11 | |
through the Forest Heights Methodist Church. | 38:15 | |
And I loathe who steal my (inaudible) | 38:19 | |
And I'm sure that they hate me | 38:25 | |
when I'm successful in stealing them. | 38:27 | |
Now If I behave in that manner | 38:30 | |
toward other Methodist ministers, | 38:32 | |
you can imagine I do when I get into contact | 38:34 | |
with Baptist and Presbyterians | 38:36 | |
and members of the Church of Christ, and so on. | 38:38 | |
You see, it is so easy to make our church life | 38:45 | |
a thing of life into Proverbs, | 38:52 | |
a shrew calculating wisdom of the world, | 38:56 | |
where we use it to shore up and cough up | 39:00 | |
and strengthen the exclusiveness of our affection. | 39:03 | |
Be ye therefore perfect. | 39:12 | |
You must be perfect. | 39:15 | |
This comes as a shattering judgment | 39:20 | |
upon the life of the church. | 39:22 | |
But the very fact that this demand | 39:25 | |
is in the life of the church opens up for us, | 39:26 | |
the possibility of giving up the church of man | 39:30 | |
and finding within this redemptive community | 39:33 | |
the church of God. | 39:36 | |
I'm not talking about any easy ecumenism. | 39:40 | |
I'm not speaking of high level | 39:46 | |
inter-denominational relationship. | 39:48 | |
I'm speaking of that in life of the church | 39:52 | |
which begins to reach out and to embrace, | 39:55 | |
a life that moves within us, sometimes against our own will, | 40:01 | |
but moves nevertheless. | 40:05 | |
It does not come necessarily in the dramatic. | 40:09 | |
It may come in the ordinary, in the common place, | 40:14 | |
it may come in the life of a little church, | 40:19 | |
it may come in the life of a big church. | 40:23 | |
I heard of this this past week, | 40:28 | |
a Presbyterian minister, | 40:31 | |
a Presbyterian minister committed to his own denomination, | 40:35 | |
performing a marriage ceremony in an Episcopal church. | 40:42 | |
The rector of that Episcopal church, | 40:48 | |
being a man committed to his own tradition. | 40:50 | |
But somehow rather, their commitment to that tradition | 40:55 | |
was a commitment to God himself, | 41:00 | |
and through that commitment, they were able to cooperate | 41:03 | |
in joining together a man and a woman in holy matrimony. | 41:06 | |
This is the perfection of the life of the church. | 41:14 | |
You must be perfect. | 41:21 | |
We have just passed through the celebration | 41:28 | |
of July the Fourth. | 41:34 | |
And when we come to July Fourth, | 41:37 | |
we are all conscious of the fact | 41:39 | |
that we live within the state | 41:41 | |
and that we have a responsibility that is civic. | 41:45 | |
Now, what about this nation of ours? | 41:51 | |
Does this demand of Jesus come home to the life | 41:55 | |
that we are seeking to live in this community? | 42:00 | |
Does it have anything to say about our civic responsibility? | 42:06 | |
You know, it's so easy to be pagan and still be American. | 42:11 | |
I hear a lot about America for 100% of America. | 42:18 | |
You know who a 100% American is? | 42:26 | |
A 100% American, according to the propaganda, | 42:31 | |
is a man who shares all my prejudices, | 42:36 | |
who bolsters up all my dogmatism, | 42:40 | |
who draws a circle around his civic responsibility, | 42:44 | |
and shuts out all those who are different. | 42:49 | |
And you know the people who are different. | 42:52 | |
(inaudible) | 42:56 | |
Are we doing anything exceptional, | 42:58 | |
when through the life of the state, | 43:00 | |
we simply love those who love us, | 43:02 | |
when we give our active goodwill | 43:06 | |
to those who have given their active goodwill to us. | 43:08 | |
Have we done anything that sets us apart | 43:13 | |
as peculiar and different? | 43:15 | |
There is nothing exceptional about that conflict. | 43:18 | |
The pagans (inaudible) | 43:22 | |
Now how should a Christian accept this demand | 43:27 | |
for perfection within the life? | 43:31 | |
Now do not misunderstand me. | 43:35 | |
I would not attempt this morning | 43:38 | |
to give you any discourse on political science. | 43:40 | |
I know nothing about that, or practically nothing about it. | 43:42 | |
But I am a Christian, or seeking to be a Christian, | 43:47 | |
and I am a citizen, | 43:53 | |
and my Christianity must work out in the life of the state | 43:56 | |
or I am studied in that particular area of my growth. | 43:59 | |
I read just a few months ago a book | 44:06 | |
that was written by a man in tribute to his father. | 44:08 | |
J.C. Smuts has written a moving biography | 44:15 | |
describing the greatness of his father, | 44:19 | |
Jan Christian Smuts. | 44:22 | |
Now you all know that General Smuts | 44:24 | |
was a leader in the Boer Rebellion. | 44:27 | |
He served as a general in the Boer Army, | 44:32 | |
fighting the British empire. | 44:35 | |
A man intensely nationalistic. | 44:38 | |
And in that war, | 44:42 | |
after he had fought to the best of his ability, | 44:43 | |
he was honorably defeated. | 44:47 | |
Now because of his Christian background, | 44:50 | |
because of the tradition of Christianity | 44:54 | |
that had gotten into his life, | 44:57 | |
he stopped after this defeat | 45:01 | |
to ask himself what it meant for South Africa. | 45:04 | |
And he decided that it meant | 45:08 | |
that if South Africa were to have any place | 45:11 | |
in the life of the world, | 45:14 | |
South Africa had to develop a nationalism | 45:16 | |
that was more inclusive. | 45:20 | |
So Jan Christian Smuts joined the British empire | 45:23 | |
because he could not defeat it | 45:26 | |
and because he saw something good in it. | 45:28 | |
And he became a prime minister within the British empire, | 45:31 | |
expressing his fierce nationalism in a larger loyal. | 45:38 | |
And then at the close of the First World War, | 45:44 | |
again, he had fought honorably. | 45:47 | |
This time, he had been on the winning side, | 45:50 | |
and he looked at the defeated nations, | 45:54 | |
especially he looked at Germany. | 45:56 | |
Germany who had been the enemy of his people. | 45:59 | |
And he stood within the committees | 46:02 | |
that were seeking to fashion a League of Nations, | 46:05 | |
and he fought for some sort of redemptive relationship | 46:08 | |
with Germany within the League of Nations. | 46:12 | |
And he saw again that if his nation | 46:16 | |
wants to achieve greatness within the community of nations, | 46:21 | |
he had to have a loyalty and active goodwill | 46:25 | |
that would include even his enemies. | 46:30 | |
And then after the failure of the League of Nations, | 46:35 | |
Jan Christian Smuts, as an old man, | 46:37 | |
fought through the Second World War, | 46:40 | |
and then came to this country | 46:43 | |
and went out to San Francisco | 46:45 | |
to serve as the architect for the United Nations, | 46:47 | |
without dissolution, | 46:52 | |
realistically appraising the life of the world, | 46:54 | |
taking the highest ideals | 46:58 | |
that had possessed his soul, | 47:00 | |
and seeking to work those ideals out | 47:02 | |
in civic responsibility. | 47:04 | |
I think Jan Christian Smuts gave up | 47:07 | |
somewhere along the road the city of man, | 47:09 | |
and he found coming back to him the city of God. | 47:12 | |
Where are you living? | 47:21 | |
Are you living out in the Proverbs? | 47:25 | |
Are you seeking to use your religious experience | 47:29 | |
as a thing to support the exclusiveness of your affection? | 47:32 | |
Have you set up these dear, dear idols | 47:38 | |
and worship before them, the home and the church and state? | 47:40 | |
If you are living out in the Proverbs, | 47:48 | |
you must move downtown in the kingdom. | 47:49 | |
And there at the very crossroad of time and eternity, | 47:55 | |
you must take upon yourself the yoke of the kingdom. | 48:02 | |
And because of what God is, you must be perfect. | 48:07 | |
And true and active goodwill that is all-inclusive. | 48:15 | |
We can't find in our relationships, the family of God, | 48:21 | |
the church of God, and the city of God. | 48:27 | |
You must be perfect. | 48:34 | |
Understand? | 48:41 | |
(mumbled speech) | 48:42 | |
The grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, | 48:49 | |
the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy spirit | 48:53 | |
be with us all now and forever. | 48:57 | |
("Amen") | 49:09 | |
(church bells ringing) | 50:37 | |
(church organ playing) | 50:52 |