On the Journey with Matt and Ken, Ep. 43: The Real Presence - Eucharistic Typology

and you know jesus talks about being the shepherd and the gate and all these other things but he never goes through and says things like no i really am a gate like i'm a door um i have an actual knob and yet he does that essentially here [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to another pedagogical episode of on the journey with matt and ken i'm matt swaim he's ken hensley we together are bringing our various backgrounds and experiences to bear he was baptist that was a nazarene a free methodist a few other things we both ended up catholic and some of you are already wondering why why why well that's the whole purpose of this show we do on the journey and if you like what you're watching please come visit us at chnetwork.org for more episodes and more stories of other people like us i swear we are not the only two people who have ever done this there are actually many many more you can find their stories at chnetwork.org and please connect with us and check out our episodes and our shows and resources page in our online community community.chnetwork.org ken are you ready again yes pedagogy yes we're ready for some pedagogy uh you know when you hear like a piece of classical music um you know or even a pop song you hear a few themes come up you know something in the verse and then you of course your son is a musician and i was a musician as well and then you know by the time you get to the end like all the things are playing in together and that's somewhat what we're doing today taking a bunch of pieces from a bunch of different conversations we've had so far and talking about how they all fit together yeah we um we summarized the eucharist as sacrifice a couple of weeks ago and then i wanted to summarize the real presence and there was too much material so we did a bunch last week and now we're doing a bunch this week and there's some overlap in some repetition but i'm pulling together a lot of threads here well pedagogically to quote from the white stripes while we're on the music theme you've said it once before but it bears repeating so yes it does okay so let's repeat it all right well listen backing up just a bit um early on in this series i made the comment that my conversion to the catholic faith it wasn't a matter of someone coming along and dropping some massively inescapable mathematical proof into my lab or something like that it wasn't that it was definitely an accumulation of evidences over time and this is certainly the case with respect to the doctrine of the real presence of christ it was an accumulation of evidences because there is no passage of scripture there is no new testament text that says quote jesus is present in the eucharist body blood soul and divinity you know unquote there's nothing like that it was an accumulation of evidences from history from scripture echoes fulfillments of typology and whatnot from a lot of sources really that led me over time to embrace the catholic teaching on this particular issue well we began last week as i said summing up the evidences some of these evidences on the real presence of christ and what i want to try to do today is complete that summary if possible yeah well we're going to let you try at least okay so some slight quick overlap in which i will just i will reign myself in and not go off into explanations in detail and all that okay that's what we have the whole episode our archive for so you can go back and look at some of those threads if you want more detail we're not leaving things out on purpose we're just trying to get to the get to the meat yeah okay and so first of all there was the evidence from early church history which was very powerful in my life and in yours as well we covered this last week so here i simply want to repeat that reading deeply into the writings of the early church fathers and beyond i became personally convinced that this that is the doctrine of the real presence of christ in the eucharist had been the faith of the church just that became convinced that this had been the faith of the church from the beginning in both east and west and so i i encourage our viewers our listeners who want to hear more of the evidence for this check out previous episodes of this series especially parts one and part parts one and eight okay although we touch on history and just about all of them in one way or another okay secondly there were a couple of statements in first corinthians 10 and 11 that seemed to point in the direction of the lord's supper being something more than a merely symbolic meal of remembrance the first of the the first was saint paul's implicit identification of the lord's supper with the supernatural food and drink that god gave the israelites to sustain them on their journey through the wilderness to the promised land and we'll come back to this in a bit i just want to state it with his implicit identification of the lord's supper with the manna and with the water that sprang from the rock we'll come back to that the second was saint paul's really unnerving is the word that comes to my mind description of what it means to receive the lord's supper unworthily this is in chapter 11 of first corinthians to receive unworthily paul says is to i'm quoting now profane the body and blood of the lord to receive unworthily is i'm again quoting him now is to drink judgment on oneself because of this paul goes on to say some have become weak that is because they have been receiving unworthily some have become ill some he says have even died and i remember thinking that if paul conceived of the lord's supper as a simple time to remember and to proclaim doesn't his language seem a bit extreme in fact doesn't it seem awfully extreme on the other hand maybe not so extreme if he believed that in the lord's supper a miracle was taking place in which christ's body and blood were present and being given as food so there was that and we covered those in kind of the more detail last week point three is this so there was the evidence of history there were these items in first corinthians 10 11 and then there was the evidence from the old from old testament typology which we're going to look at from a couple of different angles it was the evidence from old testament typology beginning with the miracle of the manna which seemed to have its new covenant fulfillment in the eucharist okay so just sort of catching us up quickly then in the old testament god gave the israelites bread from heaven to sustain them on their journey through the desert in the new covenant god gives us the true bread from heaven to sustain us on our journey through the desert of this world and remember our discussion of the lord's prayer some four or five weeks back where jesus said give us this day our epi useon our our super substantial our supernatural bread okay in the old testament he gave them bread from heaven in the new testament he gives us the true bread from heaven and here's the thing when it comes to biblical typology the new covenant fulfillment is always greater much greater than the old testament type it's never less than the old testament type and so if the manna was great a miracle bread falling from heaven every day how much greater is its fulfillment in the eucharist going to be okay on this one we looked at two passages and feel free matt if you have anything to say to jump in you're sit you're very thoughtful you're sitting there and listening as i'm just stroking my lenten beard which is growing bigger with each episode and and just kind of letting it all soak soak in you know the the i think the clearest example of the new covenant fulfillment being you know greater than the old one i mean remember john the baptist had one kind of baptism and immediately you know jesus comes on the scene and says well john's baptism was good but yeah yeah i have something i have something extra for yeah this is the thing though i mean this is it's the pattern throughout scripture this is the thing with especially in the new testament the relationship of the old covenant to the new covenant the relationship of typology to fulfillment the old covenant the law is written on tables of stone paul says in second corinthians 3 and the new covenant is written on the tables of human hearts and he says you are our letter you know written on by the spirit so yeah it's this yeah your ancestors ate that bread was great but they all died yeah they all died here's the bread i've got it i've got some bread that you know and and which is what you're about to okay on this one when we looked at two passages we looked at john chapter six which i want to summarize in about a third of the space we took last week on this one though john chapter 6 the bread of life discourse this chapter begins you will remember with the feeding of the 5000 the miracle of the loaves and the fishes the very next day the crowds who had witnessed this miracle and maybe more important had had their bellies filled they asked jesus to show them a sign our fathers ate manna in the wilderness they say to jesus what sign do you do that we may see and believe you in other words how about some more food do we have some more loaves we've got some more fish that you can multiply we want to eat again okay jesus responds to them i am the bread of life he who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst so it sounds at first as though jesus is simply saying using metaphorical language simply saying come to me and believe in me this is what you need to do well that would be all good and well ken yeah but aren't the people who are there who were fed the day before hadn't they all come to jesus and believed in him already i mean it seems to me yes they have they'd already fulfilled those criteria yes they have and that's why what jesus goes on to say this becomes more and more intense because jesus continues at this point he says your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and as you mentioned they died this is the bread which comes down from heaven that a man may eat of it and not die and the bread which i shall give for the life of the world is my flesh my response says an evangelical again is alright so far so good all jesus is saying is that he is going to give his flesh for us on the cross and his suffering and death on the cross and that we will then eat his flesh by coming to him and by believing in him again it's all metaphorical but then when the crowds begin to dispute among themselves how can this man give us his flesh to eat in other words if this is metaphorical they're not catching on how can this man give us his flesh deed jesus absolutely scandalizes everyone including the 12 he switches to a greek verb that means not just simply to eat but to gnaw or to chew or to crunch or to munch a very strong greek word and he repeats it four times right in a row really truly truly jesus said i say to you unless you eat that's a normal greek word for for eating unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you he who gnaws on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and i will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is true food my blood is true drink he who gnaws on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and i in him he who chews on me will live because of me he who choose he who gnaws on this bread will live forever in other words he's just pounding it in yeah this scandalizes them on a number of levels just so you know because you know not only is he invoking uh the drinking of blood which is forbidden by the mosaic law but he's also presenting what would seem to his hearers to be a form of cannibalism so he's just yeah you know messing with their heads in in a whole bunch of different ways uh furthermore there are a whole bunch of uh different references in the old testament to the idea of uh god saying these people you know you know you they eat up my people they eat the flesh of my people as a way of you know saying they persecute my people there's there's all kinds of strange images going here and you know jesus talks about being the shepherd and the gate and all these other things but he never goes through and says things like no i really am a gate like i'm a door um i have an actual knob and yet he does that essentially here yeah this is why by the way the the thing you just bring up about the cannibalism and the the prohibition of of eating meat with the blood in it which we're going to come back to next week actually in a little more detail but this is part of i mean he's speaking to a jewish crowd this is a a good man to a good measure this is why they respond to his words by saying this is a hard saying who can listen to it i mean we can't even listen to this and then we read after this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him in other words to get back to what you mentioned earlier many of those not not just a few but you remember we have crowds there but we have many disciples many of those who had already come to jesus many of those who had already believed in him john tells us they walked away and they they drew back and they no longer went about with jesus they left him and here's the thing if jesus was saying with all of this eat my flesh and drink my blood language if he was speaking metaphorically and all he was really saying to them was that they should come to him and they should believe in him i mean if there was ever a time surely this would be the time in which jesus would explain at least to the 12 at at minimum that he would explain i'm only speaking metaphorically this is just a figure of speech i'm just calling you to come to me and to believe in me instead after this jesus looks at the 12 and he says will you also go away not a word of explanation not a word will you also go away simon peter answered him lord to whom shall we go you have the words of eternal life and we have believed and we have come to know you are the holy one of god it sounds as though if they had said yeah we're going to go away jesus would have let them go away as well because he just asked are you gonna leave as well so you know again though looking at this as an evangelical as a baptist i would have to say there's no verse here in chapter six there's no verse where jesus just says hey look i'm talking about the eucharist the eucharist in the eucharist my body and my blood are going to be given to you as food and drink this is what i'm talking about there's no verse that says that at the same time i could see that whatever which jesus was saying here he wasn't merely saying come to me and believe in me he certainly wasn't yeah and that's uh i think that that key insight really helps show show forth that point because it doesn't say because of this many pharisees and tax collectors and prostitutes who were just kind of curious and wanted to see what all the fuss was about decided that it wasn't really for them it's not what the verse says in john it says many of his disciples even turned away and you know at this point you know jesus you know the gnostic version of jesus you know as the gnostics envisioned him might have turned to the you know because you see stuff like this kind of in the gospel of thomas right which is you know rejected by the church you know at this point the gnostic jesus might say something like yeah i just said something crazy to see if they'd stick around you know um i'm just trying to scare off the pretenders because you guys you guys are the secret group that really knows what's going on no instead he says well yeah what do you think i've just laid it all out are you gonna stick around are you gonna go and which is i mean no wonder peter says i mean he doesn't say yes jesus we believe exactly what you said uh you know about eating your flesh and drinking your blood no he says well honestly we trust you to this point on everything else so i have no idea what you're talking about but i trust you yeah i mean that's essentially the color of people you're reminding me of those times when jesus spoke in parables or whatnot and he would he would purposely allow the hard-hearted jewish leadership the pharisees scribes who were obviously not there to be these disciples who had not come to him and not believe him he would allow them very different crowds to allow them to remain blind and non-comprehending but here you have disciples walking away and not following him anymore and jesus lets him go and then you have him saying to the twelve how about you are you gonna stay so this is something different this is something different and what i could see while still an evangelical was that whatever he's saying here he's not simply saying come to me and believe in me that is not a a an explanation that does justice to the details and the flow of this passage in some way shape or form jesus was teaching his disciples that the father would provide for them his body and blood as the new covenant fulfillment of the manna as true food and true drink again in some way shape or form to sustain them on their journey through the wilderness of this world okay that that's the first passage on the manna but then the second one was first corinthians 10 1-6 that we've looked at a couple of times and i'll just give the shortest version here the apostle paul he reminds the believers in corinth that even though the old testament people of god had been baptized into moses even though they and i'm quoting him even though they all ate the same supernatural food and all this and all drank the same supernatural drink most of them failed to persevere in faith most of them didn't make it to the promised land and in verse 6 paul says these things are warnings for us okay and here here's the thing that occurred to me in reading this again paul didn't focus on the israelites baptism and on their and on the supernatural food and drink that god gave them he didn't focus on these two items for no reason in other words he wasn't just looking into the history of israel and just pulling two facts out of a hat you know i'll just i'll just pull out the baptism and i'll pull out the supernatural food and drink that god gave them in the desert no jesus i mean paul was clearly saying to the believers in corinth hey you may have been baptized into jesus christ and you may have the eucharist but none of this guarantees that you will make it to the promised land and it struck me all at once paul thinks of the eucharist as the new covenant version of the miracle of the manna and the water springing from the rock that i think it's interesting that he that he elaborates and says the rock that followed them was christ too you know that that he's basically saying it's implicit but paul is basically saying to the corinthian believers you may have been baptized in jesus christ and you may have your own form of supernatural food and drink that is the eucharist but that doesn't guarantee that you're going to make it to the end the thing i think of it like this the baptism of the israelites was a type as you said about the baptism of john the new covenant fulfillment of that type is the baptism of jesus christ by which we really are born anew and given the holy spirit and changed given hearts of flesh well the food and drink that god gave the israelites in the wilderness it was miraculous it was a miracle and yet it was a type it was a shadow it was a mere shadow of what was to come and so the question comes what does this imply about the new covenant fulfillment in the eucharist again i like to kind of try and go back and think about where my head was on these questions before i began to see what what you're talking about beginning to see and i uh i heard that passage from first corinthians preached on a number of times i bible quizzed on first corinthians as i've mentioned before because you know i don't have anything real to brag about uh but when you hear about you know your ancestors they had they were they were saved through the red sea and they were given manna in the desert that was sort of code for your ancestors you know saw the power of god and yet they did not obey god as a general way of saying you too have seen god's power will you also you know forget what you've seen and forget god's providence but again you know paul could have used any number of things he said you know you saw how god struck the firstborn dead you know or you saw how god made like a hailstorm and you know rained toads around egypt and did all kinds of weird gross things with boils and you know all the examples that could have been used from the history of the people of israel i mean you saw how god helped you defeat the canaanites you saw how david was given power to defeat i mean all kinds of things that are throughout salvation history that paul could have pointed to but he says baptism and supernatural food and drink which again you know fast forwarding to the church fathers baptism and supernatural food and drink are like all over the place in the writings of the early church it's clear what they thought this meant yes whether or not i agreed with them it's clear what the earliest christians thought this yeah and again if the manna if the old covenant version was the type then does it make sense that the new covenant fulfillment is going to be a simple symbolic memorial does it make sense that the second person of the trinity through whom all things were created as john says in the first chapter of his gospel would become incarnate in order to make a relationship with him a purely spiritual kind of gnostic reality no it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense he he brings about the redemption of uh of the material world by his own incarnation so there's more going on here than just you know it's just all right so let's move forward because we have a lot to cover okay so there's the typology of the manna but there was also the typology of the bread of the presence which we looked at the bread of presence another old testament type another old testament shadow that seemed to have its fulfillment in the new testament in the eucharist okay let me back up then slightly we saw a couple of weeks back the bread of the presents in the tabernacle and then later in the temple there was this beautiful golden table upon which fresh loaves of bread were prepared every sabbath and placed along with bowls for wine and they were to be kept perpetually okay this bread of the presence it was prepared to serve we learned from leviticus 24 chapter 24 to serve as a memorial of the covenant it was a memorial of the covenant that god had made with his people at sinai but also leviticus 24 verse 9 tells us that a portion of it was to be eaten by the priests in a holy place so it's a memorial of the covenant but it's also a sacred meal to be eaten in a holy place which makes me think and um i don't think i have to bet too much to say it makes you think as well it makes me think that the bread of the presence was designed in particular not just to serve as a memorial of the covenant in general but to serve as a memorial of the sacred meal that moses and aaron and the other elders of israel had shared in god's presence on the mountain to seal the covenant we read about this in exodus 24 verses 8 through 11 to remind those listening that maybe didn't see that episode moses took the blood and he threw it upon the people and he said behold the blood of the covenant which the lord has made with you in accordance with all these words then moses and aaron nadav and abihu and 70 elders of israel went up and they saw the god of israel here's the god of hear the bread of the presence they saw the god of israel and he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of israel they beheld god and they ate and drank with god thus the bread of god's presence okay it was to remind them of that time when god was present with them and they ate and drank with god now scroll forward to the last supper jesus takes the cup and he repeats almost verbatim the words of moses when he says this cup is the new covenant in my blood remember moses had sprinkled the blood and said here is the blood of the covenant jesus says this cup is the new covenant in my blood and then do this as a memorial of me he repeats the very words of moses and he institutes the eucharist which seems to be the new covenant fulfillment then of this bread of the presence and so again i ask the question if the type which symbolized god's presence with his people was great how much greater should the fulfillment be yeah there's a lot in there and this whole question of the bread of the presents and the bowls of wine you know all the way up through actually the time of christ uh and i'm not gonna get into it because first of all it's a very deep rabbit hole and second of all i'm going to do a terrible job of representing all that there is to know about it but the essene community uh which we have reason to believe john the baptist was associated with at the time of jesus you know they were having daily memorial meals of bread and wine in their sort of essen community and i don't want to go into too much of that but to give you an idea that this was something that was a real part of of jewish worship i if you want to really dig into it i'm i'm showing and telling dr john bergson's book jesus and the dead sea scrolls where he goes into you know how the essenes used bread and wine as part of like a sacred meal and these were the guys who again were you know one of the jewish sex that was that was active very active in the world as we mentioned when we had the entire episode on the bread of the presence here you have melchizedek the priest king and the old testament who comes with bread and wine that he's offered up to god most high and shares it with abraham then you have the essenes as you said there the bread and the wine you have the bread and they're using the melchizedek thing as their uh as their reasons yes you have the bread of the presence and again just that title think about it and the word the hebrew word for presence is the same word that you would translate face so the bread was to remind them of the face of god when he met with moses aaron and the rest and they shared this meal together well if the bread as a type as a symbol the old covenant shadow presents is about the presence of god then what does that say about the real presence of christ in the fulfillment in the new covenant fulfillment the eucharist okay and then there's there are more old covenant types of the eucharist though not just the manna not just the bread of the presence but i came to see that there was a pattern really a miraculous meals running throughout the pages of the old testament usually involving a small amount of food that is somehow miraculously multiplied to feed a number of people this is a pattern and these also seemed to culminate in the last supper and the eucharist so let me run through the pattern again just quickly so that doesn't sound just like words first kings chapter 17 elijah takes a small amount of meal and oil and he multiplies it to feed a poor widow and her son throughout the time of drought and here's what elijah said for thus says the lord the god of israel the jar of meal shall not be spent and the crews of oil shall not fail until the day that the lord sends rain upon the earth so here you have this miracle of multiplication scroll forward to second kings chapter four and the prophet elisha performs a similar miracle he meets a woman again a widow her husband has died her two children in fact are about to be sold into slavery to pay off debts that she can't pay all she has is one little jar of oil quote unquote elisha says to her go outside borrow vessels from all your neighbors empty vessels and not a few so she does this she runs around to all of her neighbors she gathers every pot every vessel every jug every cup that she can find and the prophet miraculously multiplies the oil that she had in her one little jar to fill every one of these vessels to overflowing in fact in the end he says bring me some more i mean she says to her son bring me some more and the sun says that's it and that's when the oil stopped okay so another miracle of multiplication later in that same chapter second kings chapter four elisha does it again he miraculously multiplies a few barley loaves to feed a hundred of his disciples now i had never really noticed this before it's sort of like the water and spirit deal when we were talking about baptism i'd re i had never really noticed this before but the closer i looked at it matt the more the old testament seemed to be filled with stories involving miraculous meals that this was an actual pattern in the old testament and then lo and behold we move into the new testament and what we find jesus doing we find him transforming water into wine a miracle meal not a complete meal but wine and then in an episode that's recorded in all four gospels very important we find jesus taking five loaves and two fish blessing them breaking them and multiplying them miraculously to feed a crowd of thousands of men women and children in fact then there's another episode in which four thousand so this is like one of the central miracles that is repeated in all the gospels and has made it very very clear and what is all this pointing toward is the question that came to me and that i present now it's all pointing toward the last supper where the gospel writers consciously pattern their description of our lord's actions after the multiplication of the loaves and fish okay remember how jesus had everyone in the miracle of the loaves and fish remember how he had everybody sit down on the grass recline on the grass and then we read that he took the loaves and fish that he blessed them that he broke them and then he gave them okay he took the loaves he blessed he broke he gave and they gave to the people well at the last supper and i know we've said this in a couple episodes but it's worth repeating we read that while the disciples were reclining at the table just like the people sitting down on the grass jesus took same verbs took the bread blessed it broke it and gave it to his disciples and then he says do this as a memorial of me repeat this in other words the last supper is depicted by all of the gospel writers matthew mark luke and john the last supper is depicted as the culmination of this biblical pattern of miraculous meals it's presented as a repetition of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish and the eucharist is presented as the repetition of the last supper yeah you missed one by the way you missed one from luke chapter 24 after the resurrection of jesus when he's traveling anonymously with those disciples on the road to emmaus and uh they say you know boy it's been crazy and he says well what's been crazy uh tell me what's been going on and they're like why are you the only person who doesn't know what's happening of course jesus is the only one who does know what's happening what they walk and he explains salvation history to them and then it says that uh you know he's gonna walk on and this is starting around verse 30 it says when he was at the table with them they invited him to stay he said he took bread blessed and broke it and gave it gave it to them and then their eyes were open and they recognized him and then he vanished from their sight i mean it gets about i mean it gives you chills they and they go back and this is what's the crazy part they go back and they talk to the other disciples and they say how jesus had been known no that is a break that is a mysterious wonderful you know i didn't include it because it after the resurrection and i was building up this pattern toward the last supper and the in the eucharist but that's a magical and a mysterious passage that um a lot of specula you know i don't know you know it's very interesting though that they didn't recognize him until he takes he blesses and he breaks and then they know it's him and and and the fact that he vanishes i know some commentators have said this is like the eucharist where where christ is present but he vanishes and and he appears under the form of bread and wine well we know at least at the very least that in the early church one of the many uh shorthand ways they had to referring uh to the lord's supper the last supper holy communion was the breaking of the bread you know i mean this is this is one of the terms in the early church so a lot of mystery in there but again miraculous meal after miraculous meal after miraculous meal in the scriptures and jesus comes uh you know he's not saying that looked like a you know an interesting thing maybe i'll try that no he's a fulfillment of the things that all those things were pointing to right um and he fulfills it in the last supper and then he announces the eucharist he commands the eucharist as a repetition of that as a repetition of what's happening in the last supper so ty you know tie these all together we've got the manna the bread of the presence all of these miracle meals patterned all the way through scripture and culminating in the in the last supper in the eucharist i could see how all of this biblical typology pointed toward the eucharist and here's the thing if the eucharist was the fulfillment of all these types and shadows it wouldn't make any sense for the eucharist to be nothing more than another type you know as it were for the eucharist to be nothing more than another shadow that is another symbolic meal a merely symbolic meal the new covenant fulfillment is always greater than the old covenant type and we can see this all the way along i mean if the old testament exodus was great the children of israel brought out a bondage in egypt how much greater is the new covenant exodus where jesus leads us out of bondage to sin and to death you know the fulfillment is or the the type is nothing in comparison with the fulfillment if the old covenant where god gave them a pillar or led them by a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night through 40 years all the way to the to the land of promise if that was great how much greater is it when we read in the new covenant that the holy spirit lives within us to guide us you know through the desert through the wilderness of this life into our eternal home and so you go on point by point by point if the eucharist is the fulfillment of all these old covenant types then the eucharist is the true manna it's the true supernatural food and drink it's the true bread of god's presence making god present the real presence of christ it's the true miracle meal you know it's it in which a little bit of bread and wine are transformed multiplied miraculously to feed everyone in the world all of these we didn't even cover all the ways that the early christians saw typology uh fulfilled in the lord's supper in the eucharist i mean there's there's talk in early christian documents about how you know the in the garden of eden you've got the tree of life and you eat that fruit and you live forever whereas jesus uh the cross is the new tree of life he's the fruit on the tree and you know jesus says in john 6 you know eat and live forever you know he's the new fruit on the new tree of life the typology just is is wild when you start digging in it's it's everywhere and again it's like it's like with baptism you and i would you know do a word study you look up in the concordance where does baptism where is it mentioned in the bible well it's mentioned a whole lot of places where the word baptism isn't actually used it's a type and pattern of how god communicates himself to his people well okay to tie this up let me just say this matt also the book of revelation the new heaven the new earth coming down in the trees and fruit for all the nations these images are everywhere in the bible but these are some of these historical then last weekend this week some of the historical and biblical evidences that accumulated to move me in the direction of faith in the real presence and i want to confess it's not easy to have faith in the real presence i mean this is a miracle it's not easy to sit in mass every single day and to look forward and believe that a miracle is taking place right right in front of your eyes and i i i have to confess that every single day in mass when i kneel before you know the tabernacle when i look there i see the little red light shining in the candle up there the prayer just comes naturally to my lips lord the prayer of that man lord i believe help thou my unbelief give me more faith to understand the miracle of what's happening but i got to say on the other hand that i love this is one of the things i love about being catholic i love this truth i love this truth that the christ wants to come to us in our life in a physical real way it it it transforms what i used to view as just a church building which you know you could make a church out of a bowling alley or out of a warehouse or or any kind of thing but it transforms that into a holy sanctuary where that's why people become quiet when they go into a catholic church you know it was very natural at least that's why they should yeah well when people go into a catholic church even non-catholics when they walk in there's a tendency to sit down and kind of just look around um i want to tell one little story as i close and you can close with every you can have the last word but um two christmases back my my grandson and johnny who's ten years old now he was about eight then i think he got a new basketball for christmas and we're at church on sunday morning we're all coming out of mass i'm in the parking lot and we're climbing into the cars and i and i'm looking around i can't see johnny anywhere and i said you know where's johnny all of a sudden i see him running out of the church with his basketball and he runs up to us and he says i wanted to show jesus my new basketball and i i just thought to myself this is this is an image this is a concept that would never ever cross my mind when i was a baptist but somehow this has been in culk i mean this has been taught to johnny to where he actually thought he he thought i'm gonna grab my basketball and i'm gonna run back into the church quickly so i can show jesus my new basketball isn't that amazing yeah and you know the first time you hear a catholic talk like that you're like well i thought jesus was everywhere and well he is yes but he's also uniquely uh you know chose to present himself to us in this sacramental way uh you know in this mysterious way just as god the second person of the trinity everywhere but he chose to reveal himself incarnate uh as a baby you know in bethlehem you know he chooses to reveal himself god is everywhere right but he chooses to reveal himself to us in particular ways but if i was in palestine at the time and one of the disciples would run up to me andrew you know or nathanael said come and meet jesus i certainly wouldn't have said oh god's everywhere i'll just stay here right you know but you know that tends to be our attitude if we you know tend to over spiritualize you know our christian faith you mentioned i get the last word ken and that's because i uh i'm the credits so uh okay i just want to give you credit for that well you don't need to give me too much i'm going to give credit to seth our web designer because he is the one who is in charge of chnetwork.org where you can go to find more episodes of on the journey where you can also find uh stories of other people like ken and i who are just as crazy maybe even crazier and came from other backgrounds assemblies of god seventh-day adventists maybe no faith at all and are catholic now and here are kind of some of their reasons to sort of round out the picture you can also come visit us in our online community community.ch you can find that through the connect button on our website as well the shows and resources page is where ken and i hang out and talk at length with people about these on the journey episodes and we would love to hear from you and talk to you in there in the meantime ken thanks so much we'll talk to you next week next week thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 1,990

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Faith, Religion, Spirituality, Prayer, Bible Study, Old Testament, St. Paul, Apostolic Succession, Real Presence, Lord's Supper, Last Supper, Eucharist, Holy Communion, Mass, Liturgy, Sacraments, Bread of the PResence, Miracles, Loaves and Fishes, John 6, Baptist, Methodist, Becoming Catholic, Baptism, Corinthians, Pastors becoming Catholic, Catholic Converts, EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Journey Home, New Testament, Bible, Scripture

Id: oGX0V4HoSSI

Length: 42min 55sec (2575 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021