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In this enlightening episode, we explore the profound impact of the Unicoi Conference, highlighting the dedication and unity witnessed as over 200 individuals gathered to engage in spiritual renewal. Discover how ancient traditions like the Feast of Tabernacles are revived and reinterpreted for a modern audience, offering a powerful reminder of the strength found in community and collective worship.
SPEAKER 01 :
The Unicoi Conference was, I think, a powerful indicator of what people are willing to do, given the training, the encouragement, and the kind of support that they need to do it. We billed the Unicoi Conference as a Christian renewal conference. And the whole idea was that we would be talking about new ways to carry on the work and how we will work in this new environment where the church is scattered and where the world itself intends to be breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces. And we were really, really surprised that we had over 200 people show up, that a couple of people drove all the way down from Canada to be there, that people came from Florida, from Texas, from all over the landscape, as it were, because here was a gathering of people who believed in the work of God, who wanted to participate in the work of God, and were willing to put their hand to it. And so I began to realize, even there, more firmly something that I have known for a long time, A, people will go a long way to study God’s Word, and it will go a long way also to have someone teach them, to train them, to help them develop the gifts that God has given them so that they might be of service. And there is a desire in people far and wide to be of service, to have something useful to do in the church and among God’s people. I know one couple said that they went home from that conference pumped up and ready to work. They had new ideas. Ideas, new approaches, and new brethren, and most of all, they had new hope. Hope that there was still something worthwhile that they could do in God’s work. And I honestly think that some of the most exciting times in the history of the modern church certainly may lie ahead of us now. You know, in the first century, it was a hard time to be a Christian. They were scattered by persecution. We’ve been scattered by other means, but we’re scattered. They were scattered by persecution and went far and wide preaching the gospel wherever they went. And I know that because of the fact they were scattered, there must have been times when they were very discouraged and felt very alone. And yet, can you imagine a more exciting time to be a Christian than in, say, 60 A.D.? ? When the spiritual gifts were there, when the gospel was beginning to spread throughout the known world, when you could actually speak to the men who had seen the risen Christ, you could talk to them, when there were miracles taking place, when you could walk in and speak to people about the gospel, and they would listen and they would hear, and the responses would be of two very strong kinds, one very strong toward the gospel, one very strong against the gospel, and you could only conclude that miracles were taking place in people’s minds as God opened it up. It was an exciting time to be a Christian. I think we may be heading into another very exciting time to be a Christian. Exciting in the sense that there will be greater challenges. I think there can be results that we have not even dreamed of in terms of the effect of God’s people once all of us begin to work instead of a few of us working at these things. When God established the Feast of Tabernacles, what do you suppose he had in mind? What did he do this for? Now, I think many people who would go back and read the Old Testament accounts of the Feast of Tabernacles, and I’ll let you turn back with me if you’d like to, Leviticus 23, and we will take a look at it today. When he did this, what did he do it for? Now, the commandment of the Feast of Tabernacles is speak to the children of Israel. This is Leviticus 23, verse 34, saying the 15th day of the seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the Lord. The first day will be a holy convocation. The eighth day will be a holy convocation. And so they keep a feast all these seven days. Later, he says in verse 40, you shall take on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, willows of the brook, and you rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. You shall keep in a feast to the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths or tabernacles for seven days. All that are Israelite-borns may dwell in booths. that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Now, a lot of people, I think, will look at that and say, it’s kind of like a Fourth of July for Israel. You know, it’s a kind of a liberation thing. It’s a reminder. We go out and pop fireworks. They go out and live in tents for eight days. It is a simple national commemoration. Okay. But, you know, the little reminder could be a one-day thing. It wouldn’t have to be eight days. Why eight days? And why is it, and you will find this in other commandments in the Old Testament, why is it that they had to leave home, go to another place, camp out there together with all kinds of other people, and apparently the camps around Jerusalem at some of the festivals were just staggering in their scope. Why was that necessary, and why did God command them to do that? Merely because… To remind them that they came out of Egypt and dwelt in tabernacles in the wilderness for seven years? I’m sorry, that for the 40 years and do it in seven days? Is that all? I don’t really think so. I think he had something else in mind. Now, if you remember your Old Testament history, there was a man named Jeroboam. After the death of Solomon, the kingdom split in two. Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, decided he was going to be even tougher than his father in terms of taxation and the burdens he placed upon the people. Jeroboam said, I’m sorry, we’ve had enough of that. To your tents, O Israel. And so we have a big civil war almost developing and the split that takes place in the nation between the ten northern tribes and Judah and Benjamin in the south. And so this pivotal point in history takes place. One of the first things Jeroboam did was to move the Feast of Tabernacles from the seventh month to the eighth month and at the same time to change the location of the Feast of Tabernacles into Bethel and Dan and said to the people, it’s too much for you to go down Jerusalem. And if you look at your map and check the mileage, you’ll find it’s really not all that much further from Bethel to Jerusalem. It’s too much for you. We’re going to keep the feast up here, and we’ll move it out of this awkward seventh month which gets in the way of the harvest sometimes, and we’ll have it up in the eighth month when it won’t get in anybody’s way. So the changes that he made. Now, why did he do that? Well, the Bible tells us he did it for a very simple reason. He sat and he thought within himself that as autumn came on and the weather began to change, all the nostalgia that had been built up for years of festival observance would begin rolling back on people again. You know how you feel as autumn comes on. We call it feast fever. You know, Buddy Brown starts turning up with his button on that tells us how many days there are left of the feast in every Sabbath service. And so many of us start talking about where are you going to the feast? Where are you going to celebrate the feast this year? And the fever begins to get in the air. And so it’s a wonderful time for us. It’s a time where we go to be together with friends and we fellowship. And we are inspired by the messages and the opportunities at the feast. And so it’s very much a unifying thing for us, more than unifying. Unifying doesn’t say enough. It’s a bonding experience in many ways for us. Jeroboam knew that. And he realized that what’s going to happen here is, as the weather gets a little crisp, and as everybody says, look, it’s time to go to the Feast of Tabernacles, and they load up their burdens on their animals, gather their wives and their children together, and set off on the road to Jerusalem. He said they’re going to get down to Jerusalem, and their heart is going to return to the house of David. And they’re going to become all reunited again. They’re going to realize who they are and where they came from, and they’ll kill me. And the whole kingdom will be reunited under Jeroboam. Jeroboam saw the Feast of Tabernacles as the single most powerful unifying force virtually in all of the tradition and the custom of Israel. That’s what Jeroboam knew. And he realized, I’ve got to do something about this. And so he made this terrible change in the calendar and the time observance of Feast observance. And, of course, also move the people away. Now, coming down to our age today and looking at the situation, we now know that the Feast of Tabernacles is not just for the Jews. It’s something that we finally have, I think, clearly come to see in ways that maybe we didn’t even see before, although we have long looked at Zechariah, the 14th chapter. If you’d like to turn back there, I’ll remind you of what it says. Zechariah, the second to the last book in your Old Testament, in the last chapter of Zechariah. This is a chapter about the return of Christ, about the day of the Lord. In verse 14 it says, The day of the Lord comes, and your spoil shall be divided in the midst of you. I’ll gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle. The city shall be taken, the houses rifled, the women ravished. Half of the city shall go forth into captivity. The residue of the people shall not be cut off. Later he says in verse 8, It shall be in that day that living waters shall go forth from Jerusalem, half toward the former sea, half toward the hinder sea. In summer and winter it shall be. And the Lord shall be king over all the earth in that day. There shall be one Lord and his name one. Now, do you have any problem figuring out when this is? No. It’s easy, isn’t it? Now, it’s about the return of Christ and Christ coming and standing on the Mount of Olives and restoring his kingdom. Now, notice in verse 16. Who? All the nations. And it shall be that whoever will not come up of all the families of the earth to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, upon them there shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up and come not up that have no rain, there shall the plague be wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. So the Egyptians who did not dwell in booths all those years of wilderness wanderings, they were at home. will keep the Feast of Tabernacles in the kingdom of God along with every other nation on the face of the earth. They’ll all be required in their turns to come up to Jerusalem to do obeisance to the King, the Lord of hosts, to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. Why? For the same reason that God told Israel of old, I’m sorry, you can’t stay home. Get up. you and your wife and your children, and you go to the place where I shall choose to place my name there. There’s another error that people make. They assume that it is Jerusalem. No, it is not. Jerusalem was where God placed his name for a while. But Jerusalem was, the order for the feast was not to Jerusalem, but to the place where God shall choose to set his name there. Do you understand why that is? Because at the time the commandment was given, Jerusalem was an insignificant city. It may not have even existed in the way that we know Jerusalem now. And for many years, the ark of God dwelt not in Jerusalem, but in Shiloh. So people went to Shiloh, not to Jerusalem. Now here we are, generations later, and oftentimes the question comes up of, well, you know, where do we go to keep the Feast of Tabernacles? Where has God placed his name? In the past, we usually resolved that problem by church authority. You know, the church government decides, well, God has placed his name here, or he’s placed his name here, here, here, here, here, and we selected all kinds of locations, but church government decided where God would be for the Feast of Tabernacles. But bear in mind that this is not an Old Testament law that we are keeping when we keep the Feast of Tabernacles. It is an eternal law given to us by God that will be observed down through all the remaining ages of the earth and that it will pose certain problems about getting people around, certain logistical problems. But there’s another aspect of this you need to understand. In the fourth chapter of John, Jesus has tarried at a well in Samaria while the disciples went away to get some stuff. And while he is there, he meets a woman. He asks her to draw some water for him from the well. And she, being a rather sassy type person, really wanted to know, well, how come you’re a Jew who normally won’t talk to us Samaritans, but when you want some water, you want me to draw you out. Right, you want me to draw water for you from the well. And they conversed back and forth until Jesus finally got her attention. And finally, in verse 19, the woman said this. She said, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. He brought up right off the bat this question of where are we supposed to go to worship God. And Jesus said, Woman, believe me, the hour comes when you shall neither worship in this mountain nor at Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you don’t know. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour comes and now is when the true worshiper shall worship the father in spirit and in truth for the father seeketh such to worship him. He said the time is going to come when it will not be a matter of place. It will be a matter of heart. So from that standpoint, and especially when you realize that Jesus said, wherever two or three of you are gathered together, there I am in the midst of you. that the fact that we come together means that God has met with us, and therefore the time or the place are not as important as they might have been in olden times, but they are, not that they are to be ignored, they are still important, but not like they were then. But the fact is that when we come together on a Sabbath day to meet together, Christ also comes with us and is in our midst, and therefore we have come into his presence by coming into the presence of one another. And when we go to the Feast of Tabernacles and the group of us get together and we sit with all of one accord and one mind and one spirit and we are there to do obeisance to God, to worship Him, to honor Him by our presence, He comes also in our midst. And we love Him and we honor Him and we get from this festival that thing which God created the festival for in the first place, the bonding that takes place between brethren. As they eat together, play together, drink together, work together, study together, learn together, grow together, and pray together. We grow to know one another and to love one another so that we can work in ways we might not otherwise be able to work. Why the Feast of Tabernacles then getting together in a location? Well, because I would assume, at least in our New Testament sense, if God wants us to do this, one of the reasons why he wants us to get together at the Feast of Tabernacles is because he does not want each of our little local churches to work alone. Independently? Sure. Alone? No. Because we will find, and those of you who are on the tape program listening to this will know it is true, that 50 miles down the road from you or 100 miles down the road from you or maybe 25 miles over the other way, there is another fellowship of believers who get together. There may conceivably be some hard feelings between you and some of them, some hard feelings that need some way, somehow, some way to go by the board that need to be overcome. It doesn’t mean you have to start meeting together again when you’re not meeting together anymore. That isn’t what I’m talking about. What I mean is that you talk to one another, that you call one another, that you plan events together, that you can share a church picnic, that you can get together on Holy Days, that you can work for advancing the gospel in your community. We have a fascinating little situation that exists in one of the areas where we have a broadcast that we make available for local churches to place, and the local church in Detroit couldn’t afford the station that was available to them. But right across the border in Canada was Windsor, and they were willing to pitch in and help. And so we down here thought, well, we’ll pitch in and help. And so I think we went thirds with them, didn’t we, on that one? And so the three of us together support that radio broadcast, which is turning out to be a very effective broadcast in the Detroit-Windsor area up there and really beginning to get quite an audience in the area, I’m told. So, you know, there are things that we need to do together while we all need to work in our own communities. The local church is so badly needed. It’s a very important tool of ministry. I’m a little bit concerned, and I will digress slightly to talk to you about this today because I think it’s important, that because of the fact that we all now have sort of declared ourselves as independent, we have tended to kind of pull up all of our anchors and go drifting along with the tides wherever the tides might take us, and that there is no anchor point, there is no place really that we would call home It’s a curious phenomenon. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but it’s happened all over the country. I was talking to John Garnett last night and he said, oh yeah, it’s the same way here. That people will visit this church this weekend, that church another weekend, this church another weekend. They are, and the term that’s been coined for these people is floaters. They just float about. And, you know, I don’t have any particular problem with that. I certainly have no problem with visiting other churches. I have no problem whatsoever with inviting in guest speakers. I have no problem with any of this at all. But the reason I bring it up is to tell you this, that unless in all of this you have a home church that you come back to and that you support, You can’t be a part of the community work of a community church. that in order for a community church to be strong, to accomplish, to grow, and to do, it’s got to have some consistency in its people, some constancy, some steadiness. In other words, some commitment that, yeah, this is not my church to the exclusion of all others, but this is my church. This is where I work. These are people that I love. These are people that I help. And together we’re working in our community and we’re trying to touch people in the community. So by all means, visit other churches. But find yourself a home and go to work. That’s the message. And we’ll come together at the feast this year and we’ll be talking a great deal there about… how to work in your community and what can be done in your community and how churches can begin to grow and develop and do the things that churches are supposed to exist for. But I really feel that it’s important that we begin to find ourselves the local church identity, that we settle down and that we make a church our home and we stay there and we work there. And when we visit other churches, it is because it is a visit, not because it is a habit. And again, I don’t mean this to criticize anybody, because I fully understand, I think I understand the feelings and the motives and the desires that cause people to drift about from church to church and to visit this church and to visit the other church and so forth. But if all of us did that, would there be a place anywhere to visit? If everybody did it. The reason there is a place for you to go and to visit is because there are people there who are committed to what they are doing. It is their home church. They do work there. They do love one another and serve one another. So we are not tied to Jerusalem. But the idea still of leaving home and assembling together is still in the Bible so that we then can return home when all is said and done. What is God after in this? Well, I can tell you what the feast actually does, and maybe that will give us a clue as to what God’s after. I mean, to some degree, you already know, I think, don’t you, what the feast does? It encourages you. It helps you to realize that you are not alone, that there are other people out there doing the same things that you’re trying to do, suffering the same problems, enduring the same frustrations, and going through all the difficulties that you do. I think one thing in the past that we have never really had opportunity to do is for people to get together and to discuss church problems. In other words, to know that the kind of thing you struggle with here in Tyler, a church out in Georgia is struggling with the same problem. And it may well be that the problems that you and the church in Georgia are struggling with, the church up in Tennessee has found a solution to. And they may have something to suggest to you that you can take and make something of and go forward with it. Well, one of the things that has to happen is that there has to be a place where we come together. There needs to be somebody to facilitate that kind of communication, a moderator, as it were. And this is the kind of role that CEM hopes to begin to play with the relationships that local church have. Because I would really much enjoy having a good workshop at the Feast of Tabernacles among the different people who try to provide leadership for local churches to talk about your problems. You know, what’s happening there? How are you dealing with the problems? Are your problems the same as anybody else’s? Or are you struggling with some that are really unique to your church? I really think that the Feast of Tabernacles provides us with a beautiful opportunity to get people together to study things exactly like that. So the Feast encourages us. Also, the Feast bonds us. Now, I would dare say that all of you here who attend the feast and have done so for some time have got a lot of good friends that you have met and know and have maintained relationships with at the feast. I know that that one week or that eight-day period of time has oftentimes been a very great bonding experience for many of the youth of the church, the teenagers who get together, are able to do activities together, hang out together, and have classes together, that it’s a bonding experience for them. They create friendships at the Feast of Tabernacles, which they look forward to getting back to these friends every year at the feast. It’s why they want to go back again and again and again to the same place, because their friends are there. that we make these friends and then we cultivate these friends by letters and by phone calls and by ongoing communication over time, that it actually bonds us together. People who work, play, and learn together are better equipped to work together. And I think that that’s something we really need to learn. But even then, we can’t stay together. We have to go home and go to work. And that concept of the home church is one that I hope that we will never forget and that we will commit to our church and that we will work for our church and that we will show up because your presence in the church is important. It helps us to have the size of an institution, the critical mass, as it were, to be able to do something in the community. I know the question arises as to why we cannot all together be all together again at Feast of Tabernacles. Of course, we haven’t been together anyway for a long time. We’ve had multiple feast sites. I mean, ask me. I know about it. Every year I have to spend most of the feast on airplanes, it feels like, going from feast site to feast site to speak different places. Well, I’ve got news for everyone. I’m staying in one feast site all year this year. I will be in, God willing, in Kissimmee and that feast site for the full eight days. In fact, I’m going to be down there from atonement on. Eat your heart out. I will be down there ahead of time, and I’m not going anywhere. I will stay right there, and I hope to work hard for you throughout that festival down there. We haven’t been together for a long time. We’ve had multiple feast sites, multiple organizations, and what I think you don’t necessarily understand is that they weren’t all together in the first century either. It’s some kind of an ideal out there that we think about that hasn’t been realized in who knows when. The last time I can think of when what we would have called the Church of God was all together at the Feast of Tabernacles would have been in Big Sandy in what was the last year there, 1958? Everybody was in Big Sandy or 59. Squaw Valley started in 59, didn’t it, or 68? Leo’s the only guy here that’s really old enough to know all this stuff. So anyway, we go back to that time since our tradition was all in one place and one time. But we haven’t been together. But the first century church wasn’t either. You know, in Acts, the eighth chapter, you have this interesting little episode. I’ve often referred to it and found it interesting. It’s right at the death of Stephen, when Stephen is stoned to death. In verse 1 it says, “…and Saul was consenting to his death. And at that time there was great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout all the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.” And this is amazing to me. I still to this day have a hard time figuring out how the apostles were the ones that got to stay behind and everybody else had to go. In the normal course of events, I would have expected them to all gone, right? This is one of the reasons, I think, God’s hand was in it. I think he got to the place, if I may use this expression of God, that he was tired of the church of some 3,000 to 5,000 people in Jerusalem sitting around expecting seven men to do all the work. That is the work of preaching the gospel and of spreading the word. So he allowed persecution. Now, there’s something I want you to think about very carefully here. You will oftentimes read in letters from this or that religious organization how Satan is striking at this work. And they may well be right. But at the same time, you do need to understand something very important. That Satan cannot touch God’s church without God allowing it specifically. Read the book of Job. The lesson should be clear for anyone. That when you are a person that God has taken interest in, you’re one of his special children, when you belong to him, Satan cannot touch you unless God allows it. So, merely to say that Satan has scattered the church, that’s not particularly edifying. What you need to understand is that God has scattered the church. If Satan was his instrument, that’s neither here nor there because he was his instrument in dealing with Job. But God accepted the responsibility for what he did to Job. God accepts responsibility for what he allows Satan to do. And Satan often functions as a dupe, really, in God’s hands. I think God set it up so the apostles would stay in Jerusalem and everybody else had to go. All you folks sitting out here week after week had to go. And you found yourself, let’s see, what do you have here today, 50-something people? In probably about 50 different locations. And wherever you were, you knew what you knew, you believed what you believed, and you had the responsibility, in fact, couldn’t get away from the responsibility of telling people why you were there, how you got to be there, that it was for the faith of Jesus Christ. And everywhere you went, you preached the gospel. Devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house and hailing men and women and committed them to prison. Therefore, they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Now, do you think that they yearned to return to Jerusalem? Yeah. Oh, yeah. They lay awake in the night and said, boy, I wish we could all be back together again. I wish we could all go back to Jerusalem. Remember how it was down there when there were 3,000 baptized in one day and another 5,000 baptized later, and you went out and sold that property and brought all the money in and gave it to the apostles, and people who came to Jerusalem from all the way down in Ethiopia didn’t even go home. They stayed there because we were all so excited. Remember what it was like when there were so many of us and we were all in one place and how good it was? Oh, yeah, I remember it well. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could go back to that again? Well, I’ll tell you this. I have looked hard at what is happening in the church today. I believe that God’s hand is in it. And I believe that if we spend our time trying to find some way to get us all back together again, That we’re swimming against the tide. We are swimming against God’s tide. And we are neglecting work that needs to be done while we are thrashing around about our relationship with other brethren whom God has sent that way while he sent us this way. And that what we need to do is to go to work. Just go to work. Get something done. As I said in an earlier sermon, make some mortar. Put another brick on the wall. And stop worrying about what somebody else is doing. We spend so much time, it seems to me, interacting with one another and creating friction between one another. I don’t mean to pick on anybody, but criticizing one another and looking over our shoulders and what’s somebody else doing? I can’t help but recall what happened on that evening when Jesus was really putting the heat on Peter. You know, do you love me? Oh, Lord, you know I love you. Man, do you really love me? Well, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. He’s really, you know, got the Bunsen burner turned up and Peter is sweating. And they’re walking along the seashore, and John is a few paces behind them. And Peter looked around and said, well, Lord, after he just said to Peter, he said, you know, when you were young, you put your clothes on, you girded yourself, you went where you wanted to go, you lived your life the way you wanted to do it. I’m telling you, when you’re old, it’s not going to be that way. Somebody else is going to gird you, and somebody’s going to take you where you don’t want to go. And Peter looked over his shoulder and said, well, Lord, what about him? And Jesus said, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to you? You follow me. Now, that’s so important to me. That is such a habit that we have, though, of looking around and saying, well, Lord, what about him? What about him? We learn when we’re children to point the finger at somebody else to take the heat off, don’t we? That’s something that we, I don’t know, it may be innate in human beings, you know, that by pointing the finger at somebody else, a little misdirection, we can get a little of the heat off of ours. Well, you know, Bobby did it. It wasn’t me, Dad. But there comes a place in time where each of us has got to face up to the work that God gave us to do, put our shoulder to it, apply ourselves to it, and start doing it. And while we are doing What shall I say? Negotiating around trying to get us all back together again and stewing around about doctrinal questions and how we’re going to find a compromised doctrinal statement that we can all agree on. How we can sort out this doctrinal agreement, this prophetic question, this administrative problem, and somebody who says, I’m sorry, I mean, this guy’s a fine man, but I ain’t working for him anymore. You know, when you got that to deal with, you’re just stuck. You’re just, bam, where are you going to go with that? Well, I know where you go with it. You leave them alone and go get some work done. Because the fact is that all this work of trying to get us all back together again is not the work of God. Actually, in a way, it is the work of God. For he that scattered us is the only one that can bring us back together again. So we’re out there trying to do his job for him while we neglect his job for us that we’re supposed to be doing. And I don’t need to tell you today what that is. I think all of us know that. I believe getting us all together is a work for the one who scattered us. Meanwhile, there is work to do and we mustn’t waste time. I believe that yearning for the good old days can do nothing but hinder the work. And I think that the great change that has come upon the churches may be a harbinger of much more serious things to come. Therefore, a little more time on our knees, a little more time with our Bible open in front of us on our knees before God, communing with him, learning from him, growing in him, may set us in very good stead in the times that lie ahead of us. In Paul’s letter to his very friendly church in Philippi, the one that I think they seem to be in a way Paul’s favorite, in the third chapter he wrote some words to them that I think are very good for all of us. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to me, I’m sorry, to you, to me indeed is not grievous. For you, it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision who worship God in spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. I mean, what… What organization you’re a part of, what church you go to, these are not in themselves the important things. The important thing is God and His service. Though I might have confidence in the flesh, if any man thinks he has something to trust in the flesh, Paul says, I’ve probably got more. Circumcised the eighth day, the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as touching the law, a Pharisee. Concerning zeal, you want to know about zeal? I persecuted the church. Touching the righteousness of the law, blameless. What things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. And so I could stand up here, Paul says, and I could recite all my accomplishments, my degrees, and my education, and my learning, and I could give you all this stuff. but I count it all as loss. Yea, doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. It’s kind of a rude speech he makes here, using scatological references. But he said, you know, all of the things that I have that I might boast of, All of the degrees, all the accomplishments, all the associations that I’ve had in the past, all of these things that I might have, I count them as a pile of fertilizer composting in the sun. That’s all they are to me, said Paul. I count them as dung that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness. Paul was very, very painfully aware of his humanity and of his weakness and of his failings. He looked at himself and said, I do not understand how God could use a man like me because I was hurtful. I was an enemy of Christ. I persecuted the church. I drug men and women who were faithful servants of God into prison and gave my voice at the death sentence that some of those people had. I’m not fit, he said, to be an apostle of Christ. I have no business here, except by the grace of God, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead.” not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ. Now, brethren, I don’t count myself to have apprehended. I’m not there. I don’t have it made. This is Paul speaking. But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to the things that are before me, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I don’t know of anything that is harder to do than what Paul here said he did. Forgetting the things that are behind. One of the reasons it’s hard is because people won’t let you. That’s all they want to talk about are the things that are behind. They want to talk about the hurtful things, the tragic things, the dirty things, the rotten things. And I’m reminded of one scripture that I think some of us may have forgotten, that it is a shame, Paul says, to even speak of the things that are done by them, the evil ones, in secret. To recite the sins of others, to recite the things that people have done, is evil and hurtful, and God does not approve of it. And it’s one of those things when he says, forgetting the things which are behind. And when people won’t let you forget it, I think it’s time to rebuke them for not letting you forget it. And say, I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s put that behind and look toward the work that’s in front. Because, folks, there is so much work out there. There are so many things to do. So many places to go. So many people to talk to. So much to accomplish. And we don’t have time for the past anymore. We’ve learned those lessons. They are burned into our consciousness. Let’s don’t make those mistakes anymore. I don’t think we will. But let’s not live in the past anymore either. I think the Feast of Tabernacles this year is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s a pivotal feast. It’s a time when we can pull together with a group of like-minded people and we can begin to work and to try to find ways whereby each one of us as a part of the body of Christ can make our contribution and that the churches of God can grow as they have not grown in our memory. I really shocked some people when I told them that I thought electronic mass media were a relatively inefficient means of preaching the gospel. Not that they don’t work. Not that they aren’t, quote, effective, end quote. But they are relatively inefficient. They take a lot of money and they produce modest results. Whereas in actual fact, the power of God working through every part of the church, the power of God upon a little old lady who goes to her prayer closet and prays and makes things happen somewhere else because she takes them before God, that’s power. of people who care enough about one another that they will sit down and write letters to people and tell them, I missed you in church, and we want you here. And it’s helpful to the church for you to be here. People who will go to the effort to visit someone in the hospital who is discouraged and downhearted and pick them up and say, look, you’re one of our own. We look after our own. How can I help you? What can I do for you? That kind of bonding that takes place among us puts us in a strong position to reach out into our community and to help who knows how many people who are weak, who are hurting, who are alone, who are discouraged, and who need Jesus Christ in their life. Now, I don’t know if you understand this or not, but when you, in whom dwells the Spirit of God, walk into a hospital room with a basket of fruit for someone, Jesus Christ in you has visited that person in the hospital. Yes, he has. And that person’s life can be changed, touched, turned around by Christ in you. And so, when all of us together, in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells, come together, we ourselves form, you know, a representation of Christ in the world, in our community, with all of our weaknesses and all of our failings. But I will tell you this, That if we can come to believe, if we can come to expect the working of Christ, if we can come to expect the power of the Holy Spirit, there is no limit to what he can do through us. Let us, therefore, Paul concluded, as many as be perfect be thus minded. And if in any way you are otherwise minded, well, God will reveal even this to you. We’ll see you at the feast.
