The first chapter, and look at something that
we rather passed over when we were going
through before.
Verses eight and nine.
But unto the Son, God saith, thy throne,
O God, is forever and ever.
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of
thy kingdom.
Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee
with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
One version makes it read like this, Thou
hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee
with the oil of gladness.
That's one of those versions that some of
the Brethren say are modernistic.
But I find in that translation greater emphasis
on the Deity of Christ than in this
King James version.
Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
Therefore, O God, meaning Jesus, thy God hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above
thy fellows.
This chapter sets forth the glory of the
Eternal Son.
In fact, the whole book of Hebrews sets
forth the glory of the Eternal Son.
It shows the Deity of the Son and
his position and his offices and his character.
If I got the words correctly there this
morning, the song said, My song is concerning
my Savior.
Well, the book of Hebrews is concerning our
Savior.
And every sermon should concern the Savior, and
all our lives should concern the Savior.
But when we use the word Savior, we
should know what we mean.
We should allow it to have all the
full, rich meaning that it does have.
We should realize that the one we call
the Savior is very God, very God.
You know, theology is dry, and a lot
of people don't like it.
I would venture to say that there wouldn't
be one Christian in one hundred that really
would care much for theology.
And yet, you must go to theology to
find out some things.
And in the amazing and solemnly beautiful and
highly complex and profound doctrine of the Incarnation,
we know that the Bible says that Jesus
Christ, our Lord, is man.
We know that it says also that he
is God.
But how he can be God and man
and not be two, but one, is something
that the human mind has to solve, if
it can solve it.
I don't think we can solve it.
I think that we can only find words
that help us to rest.
If our faith believes, then we can find
words to help us to understand, though I'm
not sure that we can understand.
But I'm not worried about that at all.
I don't understand much of anything.
I can't understand the simplest facts of life.
How can I understand the profoundest facts of
theology?
But what I've been trying to get at
here in that long roundabout statement is that
the theology calls this the hypostatic union.
That means this, that there is in man
what they call the hypostasis, that is, the
essence, that which makes you, you.
The humanhood, that thing that is human nature.
And there is in God that which makes
God, God, the essence, the hypostasis, that which
lies underneath the eternal substance which is God.
Now, these two substances were united, and they
call that the hypostatic union.
I don't know whether that helps any.
At least it gives you some words to
say to admit you don't know.
That's about what it is.
Because it's too profound, it's too deep, it's
too wonderful for you and me.
But this one we call Jesus is both
God and man.
So whether we think of him as man
or think of him as God, we're thinking
correctly.
And when we think of him as God
and man, we think of him correctly, because
the fact that he is God and man
doesn't mean that he is two.
Because he is both God and man doesn't
mean that he is God and man, that
is, God plus man, which would be two
persons.
Even though he is God and man, yet
is he not two but one Christ.
And this is the Christ we adore, and
this is he concerning whom the book of
Hebrews is written.
Now it says here that God, thou O
God, referring to Jesus, thy God, which is
Jehovah, his Father, for our God and Father
is the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, he hath anointed thee with the
oil of gladness above thy fellows.
Now here is the humanity of the Son.
He is called fellow, a fellow of the
Lord Jesus.
You know a fellow means an equal, and
Jesus Christ had persons who were his fellows.
We are all the fellows of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
And he is one with us in that
he is human, that he has the same
substance, the same stuff of which we are
made.
I heard a preacher say that he was
not a man, he was man, but he
was both a man and man.
Jesus Christ was man in that he had
the essence, the substance, the hypostasis that is
the essence of mankind.
But he is also a man in that
he was born of a woman, a man,
and is like other men.
He has the lineaments and the form of
a man.
I do not think we make enough of
this.
I think that we have failed to emphasize
it as we should, and because we failed
to emphasize it, we are not enjoying it
as much as we should.
To realize that Jesus is a man, that
he is like other men in his humanhood,
and that he is now at the right
hand of God a man, and that if
you were to go to the right hand
of the Father, you might see God, and
if you could see the Spirit, which is
God, and you might see archangels and seraphim
and cherubim and creatures, strange creatures out of
the fire, you might see them all surrounding
the throne.
And then to your delight and amazement, you
would see a man there, a man who
is about the size of you and who
looked like you and who had a face
and hands and head and hair and body
and was like you and me, in that
he was a human being, and there wouldn't
be any other human being visible there.
That would be the one visible man.
The others are not in the exact presence
of God by the throne, because they are
not yet prepared for that.
They are in heaven, but they are not
on the presence of the throne.
When a Christian dies, Paul said, to be
with Christ is far better.
But we Christians, when we die, do not
go to the throne of God.
There is only one man who has been
allowed at that throne yet, and that is
the man Christ Jesus himself, who is also
God, and who won over death and was
raised from the dead and exalted to the
right hand of the Father.
His children, his brethren, are waiting in safe
keeping in God's safe heaven, but they have
not yet been brought before the throne with
exceeding joy.
That is to be when our Lord returns,
then they will come before the throne with
exceeding joy, glorified as he is glorified.
Now, the life of the Son of Man
on earth was the life of a Son
of Man.
You will notice that he did not call
himself the Son of God, but he did
call himself the Son of Man.
He said he was God.
He said he was equal with the Father
and all that.
He certainly testified boldly that he was God,
but he did not use the expression, the
Son of God.
Over and over he used the expression, the
Son of Man.
I don't want to say it like this
quite, but it seems that one almost has
to say it, that he was proud of
the fact that he was a man, that
he was the Son of Man.
He had in him a holy, sinless delight
that he was man and referred to himself
as the Son of Man.
Here is what is usually not known, and
I don't know how many people I could
get to agree with me among the big
waves of the pulpits here and there, but
nevertheless I hold that this is true, that
Jesus, when he was on earth, did not
do his deeds of power in the strength
of his deity.
He did them in the strength of his
Spirit-anointed humanity.
If Jesus Christ had come to the earth
and raised the dead and stilled the water
and healed the sick and opened the eyes
of the blind and unstopped the deaf ears
and commanded the winds and driven out the
demons by the power of his deity, it
would have been a simple matter.
Nobody could have thought anything of that.
God can do anything he wants to, and
if he had been doing it as God,
it would not have been a remarkable thing.
But he veiled his deity and did it
as a man.
But you will notice that he did not
do it until he had been anointed with
the Holy Ghost and power.
He is saying to us that Jesus Christ,
in the power of the Holy Spirit-anointed
humanity, stilled the waves and quieted the wind
and raised the dead and healed the sick
and made the blind to see and had
power over the demons and did anything he
wanted to do.
Not as God, which I say would not
have been remarkable at all, but as man,
which was remarkable in that he was a
man anointed by the Holy Ghost.
He said, when I go to heaven and
send the Holy Spirit down, you will do
greater things than these because I go unto
the Father.
That, my brethren, takes away from us forever
all excuse.
For while we are not God and we
could not do what God can do, we
are human and we can do what Christ
could do in the same Holy Ghost, because
it was the anointing of the Holy Spirit
that enabled him to do these things.
It is written in Acts 38 that Jesus
Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit and
power and went about doing good, healing all
that were oppressed of the devil.
And he did that in the power of
his God-anointed humanity.
Now, it says that this anointing that God
put upon him was an anointing above his
fellows.
He was anointed above his fellows, not because
God chose to anoint him above his fellows,
but because he could be anointed.
I'll explain that now in a minute.
He could be anointed above his fellows.
First, this anointing.
What was this anointing?
Well, this anointing, of course, was the anointing
of the Holy Spirit.
One of the figures of speech used in
the Old Testament for the Holy Spirit is
oil.
We use it still, we sing about it
and preach and pray about it down to
this hour, but it had its origin back
in the Old Testament Levitical economy.
Back there they had a certain oil that
was called a holy oil.
It's been sneered at by the unbelievers and
called hair oil and a few other things.
But it was the holy oil of God,
and it had common olive oil for its
base.
And then into this olive oil there were
beaten four highly fragrant and aromatic herbs.
There was myrrh.
His garment shall smell of myrrh, it's written
out of the ivory palaces.
And then another huge smile at this, maybe,
living in when we do way down here
and living in the western part of the
world, but cinnamon was one of the ingredients
of this holy oil.
And you know how very pungent cinnamon is.
And calamus was another, and cashew another.
So their olive oil had beaten into it
myrrh and cinnamon and calamus and cashew.
And of course you had a very pungent,
aromatic and sweetly fragrant oil.
Now, this oil wasn't to be used except
upon priests and kings and prophets and certain
ones and priests.
Certain ones who were anointed of God, they
received it.
And the scripture says, it shall not touch
flesh, it shall not come upon the flesh.
There had to be blood before there could
be this anointing oil.
And it was put down upon consecrated men,
not upon carnal flesh.
And the Holy Ghost, when he came, fulfilled
this.
My brethren, a man might have an anointing
oil, this anointing oil of myrrh and cinnamon
and calamus and cashew, and have it on
his head and in his hair and down
over his shoulders and down onto the skirts
of his garment.
And somebody came in and said, I smell
an anointed man.
And somebody might have said, there's no anointed
man in here.
The answer would be, we know better, we
smell him.
We smell myrrh and aloes and cinnamon and
cashew, and we know that anointed man is
here.
You can't be anointed with the Holy Ghost
and keep it secret.
One man told me about trying it.
He tried it.
He was filled with the Holy Ghost and
then he went home and he said, Lord,
I'll not tell a soul about this, I'll
keep it quiet.
He went to his house, back to his
home, and he tried for three days.
At the end of three days, his wife
came to him and said, Everett, what has
happened to you?
Then he said, out it came.
The Holy Ghost had come on him and
he had been anointed.
This fragrance shows itself, just as it showed
itself in my friend Everett Rowe.
His wife knew it.
She smelled it.
The myrrh and calamus and cashew couldn't be
hidden.
Now, this Holy Spirit, this oil, was the
Spirit of the mighty God, and it came
with glad power.
Notice, it's the oil of gladness, not with
the oil of gloom.
I have met some Christians who claim high
things for themselves, but the only proper description
of them is, thou hast been anointed with
the oil of gloom.
And while they are holy people and good
people, there is a gloominess about them, a
solemnity that refuses ever to crack as much
as one tentative experimental smile.
They are solemnly holy, and that's it.
But this scripture says that he was anointed
with the oil of gladness.
This was glad power.
I'm happy to tell everybody that the power
of the Spirit is glad power.
It's money much else than that, but it's
glad power.
It's the oil of gladness.
And in the strength of this oil of
gladness, he lived his beautiful, holy life, and
he did his saving deeds of power.
And the reason God blessed him supremely, now,
God blessed him above his fellows.
That is, there was more of the holy
oil on his head than on mine and
yours, or on anybody else that has lived,
probably.
But why?
Is it that the Lord God in heaven
was that he was in any wise holding
back from some?
No.
But the Holy Spirit can only anoint in
proportion as we prepare.
And notice here that God has anointed thee
with the oil of gladness, because thou hast
loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
The Lord doesn't anoint mice.
The Lord never fills kittens with the Holy
Ghost.
He never fills rabbits with the Spirit.
The Lord wants men and women with personality
and something in them that can love and
hate.
Jesus Christ was not the meek, characterless, personality
-less, tame man that he's made out to
be in the pictures.
He was himself a man that could love
with an intensity of love that burnt him
up, and could hate with an intensity of
hatred.
But some will say, How can it be
that the Lord can hate?
Isn't it a sin to hate?
And the answer is, No, but it's a
sin not to hate.
It's a sin not to hate that which
ought to be hated.
Jesus Christ loved righteousness, but he hated iniquity.
And the same emotion, the same mighty attraction
and devotion that we call love, of all
that is good, becomes revulsion and renunciation of
that which is evil.
I cannot love honesty without hating dishonesty.
I cannot love purity without hating impurity.
I cannot love truth without hating lying.
I must hate evil, and Jesus Christ did.
I didn't write this book of Hebrews, as
you probably have guessed, but I didn't put
this here.
It's written, Thou hast loved righteousness and hated
iniquity.
And the ability of Jesus Christ to hate
that which was against God and love that
which was for God was what made him
able to receive the anointing oil, the oil
of gladness, in complete measure.
It's our imperfection in loving the good and
hating the evil that prevents us from receiving
the Holy Ghost in complete measure.
It's possible, I believe, to be what we
call filled with the Holy Ghost and still
have God withhold some of the Holy Ghost
from us.
It's possible to have him withhold because we
are not in position to do it.
It was the character of Jesus, his great
love of that which was good.
He loved goodness with a great poured-out
devotion.
You say, did the Lord Jesus hate sinners?
The answer is, you know better.
He did not hate sinners, but he hated
the dirty sin that was in them.
He did not hate the Pharisee, but he
hated the Pharisee's self-righteousness.
He did not hate the hollat, but he
hated the hollatry that made her what she
was.
He did not hate the proud man, but
he hated the pride that made him the
proud man that he was.
He hated the devil and he hated those
evil spirits that he drove out, and he
never showed any mercy for them.
He hated them.
He had a pure and a holy hatred
for that which was evil.
The Lord's people have been brainwashed by a
lot of soft, pussycat preachers who have taught
them that to be good Christians, they have
to be soft, purring fellows with soft fuzz.
And they couldn't harm anything, and they couldn't
speak up.
They had to all get up and talk
sweetly and softly and solemnly, and so you
don't know whether they are men or women.
No wonder the French say there are three
sexes, men, women, and preachers, because a lot
of preachers imagine that this is the way
a preacher ought to be, soft and gentle,
with the sunshine falling on his gentle head.
You remember in Goldsmith's deserted village, the sun
would have a time on some of our
golden heads, all right, and the reflection would
be tremendous.
But the fact is that a Christian should
be full of zeal.
A Christian should have convictions.
A Christian should be one of the toughest
and hardest to move, and surest.
While deeply humbled before God, he should be
certain of himself before men.
And he should love righteousness with a great,
overwhelming love.
And he should hate its opposite, iniquity, with
a revulsion.
And he should renounce it and put it
from him.
If the people of the Lord were to
stand up and renounce sin, you would find
they would not be very popular very long.
But the churches get along in the world
without much persecution, because they compromise with the
world.
And while they won't do the things the
world does, they won't in any wise dare
to stand up and condemn the things the
world does.
Or maybe dope.
Maybe they'll say, Don't take dope and bet
on horses.
But then that's relatively safe.
There wouldn't be many people who would crucify
them for saying that.
We all agree on that, even the cops.
But the Lord's people should love righteousness, and
love it until it became to them an
overwhelming passion.
And they should hate its opposite in everything
that is evil.
And if we did that, it wouldn't be
very long until two things would happen.
We'd be anointed with the oil of gladness
above our fellows, and the world would turn
on us and say, Who do you think
you are?
And we would get a little bit of
wholesome persecution.
You know what's the matter with you people?
You're too nice.
You're the nicest bunch anywhere short of somewhere
else.
And you're just too nice.
Have you been persecuted, anybody here been persecuted
recently?
I doubt it, because you're living right.
You want to be a good Christian, but
you're so nice and easy to get along
with, and so tolerant.
If I could stir somebody up around here
to get to loving God and hating sin
to a point where he'd become a bit
of a blessed nuisance, I'd be happy about
it.
No doubt he'd call me up and say,
Can I see you, Pastor?
I'd say, Yes.
He'd come down to the church at 10
.30. That's when I usually meet people.
And he'd come in and say, I'm being
persecuted.
I'd say, Thank God you're being persecuted, because
you dared to come out and stand for
something.
Vance Hefner says, The trouble in the United
States is that so many men are running
for something when they ought to be standing
for something.
And it's true.
There are so many running and so few
standing.
God's people should stand.
Notice some of the sins that Jesus hated.
I'll merely mention them.
There's no clock before me, so I can
talk on at my leisure.
There was pride, I mentioned already, and self
-love and boasting, and then that oily, smiling
self-confidence.
The lightning of Jesus' invective struck it.
He didn't hesitate at all to send the
lightning to strike this terrible kind of thing.
And he loved the opposite.
He loved humility, and he loved that lowliness
that wouldn't boast.
He loved that.
And self-righteousness, that arrogance before God and
scorn of others.
I heard on the radio last night after
I went to bed, I listened to a
little program called Snobbery.
I didn't know we still had snobs left
in the world, but after hearing the Brother,
I think we do.
People who look down their blessed noses at
other people, not only because of their skin
color, but because they are on the other
side of a borderline or the other side
of a river, or they didn't have as
much education or something else.
I don't think God can love snobbery.
There was a place in Akron, Ohio, they
called Snob's House.
It was a high place where a lot
of fine homes were, and the snobs lived
there.
You can have the snob.
The Lord hated snobbery, and in order to
prove that he hated it and show that
he hated it, he was born in a
manger of a little unheard-of woman and
grew up in a carpenter shop, working in
a carpenter shop as a simple peasant among
the simplest people that there were.
So he hated self-righteousness, but he loved
righteousness and humility, and he hated all worldliness,
that which was of the world and against
God, and all that which was for God
he loved.
And he hated personal uncleanness of every sort
in word or thought or deed.
We have been brainwashed in our day until
Christians are afraid to speak out against uncleanness
in any form.
Preachers are afraid to speak out against it
for fear they'll get a reputation for being
publicity seekers, or for fear somebody will quit
the Church and stop giving.
But the Lord hated all of it, and
he loved purity.
I wonder if one reason Jesus took babies
in his arms and blessed them wasn't their
utter purity, the purity of a baby.
Now, they haven't had time to sin.
That's the reason they're pure.
It isn't that they're little angels, because give
them time and they'll prove they're not.
But they're just pure and innocent, and they
look up at you with purity in their
eyes.
They don't try to fool you.
They're not sneaky.
There's nothing deceitful about them.
When they begin to get deceitful and sneaky,
they're not babies anymore.
And the Lord loved babies because they were
pure.
And he sought out the Virgin, the Holy
Ghost did, the angel did, and said, The
Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and the
power of the highest shall overshadow you, and
that which holy thing which shall be born
of you shall be called the Son of
God.
And the Lord loved all that was good
and hated all that was evil.
He hated cruelty, and he hated lying, and
he hated malice, and he hated dishonesty, and
he loved gentleness, and he loved truth, and
he loved love, and he loved honesty.
Now, why is it that the oil, the
glad oil, doesn't flow upon the Church members
in our day?
Well, there are two kinds of Church members
in every city.
One, the liberals, who would laugh at all
this that I'm preaching about now.
And we'd just laugh right back, because we
know the voice we heard, and we know
the sight we saw, and we know the
truth we know, and we know the Lord
we know, and we're not being in any
way affected by anybody laughing at us.
That's one class.
And put them over on the left.
Over on the right we put another class.
They are the evangelicals, the fundamentalists, the full
gospel people.
I don't expect the oil to flow on
the liberal, because he doesn't believe in the
oil, doesn't believe in it.
I'm sure the Lord isn't going to sneak
up on a man and anoint him with
an oil the man doesn't believe in.
So we'll say the liberal, the modernist, the
Unitarian, the person who doesn't believe all this,
but who believes in decency and goes to
Church, he's not going to receive the oil,
he doesn't believe in it.
And if he received it, he'd send it
back.
So we're not expecting the liberal to be
anointed with oil.
But we who are of the persuasion of
the New Testament truth, we who believe the
scriptures, we who believe that holy men wrote
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,
and that Jesus Christ is very God of
very Gods begotten, not created, that he was
born of the Virgin Mary to suffer and
upon his pilot to rise again from the
dead the third day and to be seated
at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, and who from his exalted position sent
down and shed forth this, said Peter, which
you have now seen here, we who believe
this.
Why is it the oil of gladness doesn't
flow very much around us?
We have the truth, why doesn't it flow?
Because of our ignoble tolerance of evil, that's
why.
Because theoretically we don't believe in it, but
practically we tolerate it.
We allow what God hates because we want
to be agreeable.
If you insist upon being an agreeable Christian,
agreeable before the world, you will be a
weak Christian all your life.
We tolerate that which God hates because we
hate to be thought narrow.
They say he's narrow-minded.
It's all right.
They say he's intolerant.
If a man stands up and says he
doesn't believe in the Pope, somebody will hold
his hands to high heaven and say, A
such example of tolerance in a day like
this.
All right, I don't believe in the Pope.
Example or no example.
Hate that which Jesus Christ hated, regardless of
whether they think you're narrow or not.
Or we tolerate that which God hates because
we secretly love the evil thing itself.
Now, what's the way to power?
The way to power is to put away
the weak compromise and put away that evil
which may cling to you as the smell
of smoke.
Put it away from you and set your
heart on what is right and begin to
love righteousness.
And love it to a point where you
will only live for it and live that
kind of life where you'll have nothing to
do with its opposite.
Christians are powerless because they tolerate wrongdoing.
So we must turn away from the thing
God hates.
Even if your wife loves it, turn away
from it.
Even if it is in your social class
and where you travel, even if it is
accepted as being all right, turn away from
it.
I remember once going into a home where
they had a Ouija board.
Back in the days when Ouija boards were—some
of you don't even know what a Ouija
board is.
Some of you only know because you read
about it in a book.
But a few of you have seen them,
I've seen them.
I went in here and a lot of
people were gathered around and they were minking
with a Ouija board.
They were asking Ouija board questions.
How dumb can you get?
Sit around and ask a Ouija board question.
There it was.
They'd say, Will it rain the day after
tomorrow?
And the thing would spin around and point,
Yes.
Or else point, No.
And I smelled something when I went in
that house.
I smelled it.
My spirit smelled it.
When I saw it, I walked straight over
and said, Take that thing out of here!
It wasn't my home.
Take it out of here!
They took it out.
Nobody stopped them.
They said, You don't belong here.
They took it out.
I haven't seen it since.
That woman, I've known her all over the
years since and she doesn't like me.
I think that may be one reason why.
I'm getting along all right in spite of
some other people like me.
She doesn't.
I still think it may be because I
jumped on her Ouija board.
Dr. A.
B.
Simpson said he was in a home with
a gathering of people once and there was
music.
He said it was nice music and it
was more or less in the background and
he was hearing it but talking as we
do.
We shouldn't, but we do.
Music ought to be listened to, not talked
over, but we do talk while we listen
and he was.
He said suddenly he felt a shadow come
over his heart.
He said a strange thing.
He said the Holy Ghost was reproving me.
He said I wondered what I had done
or what I had said or left unsaid.
Then he said I focused my attention on
the music.
He said the music was worshipping a woman.
And he said I knew what it was.
The Holy Ghost in me was aggrieved that
they were worshipping a woman.
They got to learn to stand up and
be counted on things like this and they'll
say holier than thou.
They'll call you a religious fanatic.
You can't pay the price.
Go join the masons or somebody.
They'll take you to heaven for nothing.
But if you can't stand to have somebody
oppose you, if you can't stand to stand
by yourself before God and before the people
and hate iniquity, I don't see how you
can hope to be a Christian in any
sense of the proper sense of the word.
Jesus Christ, our Lord, loved righteousness and hated
iniquity.
Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with
the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
And in the power of that oil of
gladness he went around doing good, healing all
that were oppressed of the devil.
You've only got a little time, fellow Christians.
For very long we won't be around here.
Better do some good while you can, because
you're not going to be here long.
Better see to it that you do some
good that lasts.
Giving to the community chest isn't enough.
Do that, but that isn't enough.
You ought to do something that's permanent that'll
be there when the worlds are on fire.
There'll be gold and silver and precious stones
in the day when the fire of God
determines the quality of every man's work.
You can only do it in the power
of the Holy Ghost.
And you can only have the power of
the Holy Ghost if you hate sin and
love righteousness until those two opposite emotions control
your life, as they did Jesus.
Now bless thou the word this morning, O
Lord.
We pray thee, help us to take these
seriously.
We feel that we're not taking Christianity seriously.
We feel, Lord, that there's too much casualness.
We notice it all about us here.
People are too casual.
O God, if it's true that there's a
hell and a heaven and a judgment and
it's possible to be lost forever, and if
Jesus is the Son of God indeed, and
if sin is a canter on the world,
then this is serious business.
O God, we pray thee, deliver us from
the casualness that we sense, and may we
wake up and come to life and begin
to see that unless we do something about
sin, sin will do something about us.
O, we apologize before thee, blessed Spirit of
God, that we have made our vessels so
uncertain that thou canst not pour in all
the oil that thou dost want to pour
in.
Help us to cleanse our vessels, to put
away every evil inside and outside, and then
to bring our empty earthen vessels clean through
Jesus' precious blood and receive the glad oil
of anointing.
We ask it in Christ's name.
Amen.