Sermon Transcript — April 30, 2005
This, of course, as we have already heard is the last day of the Days of Unleavened Bread. Not a good day to get trapped behind a bread truck on the way to church. This holy day reminds us of one of the greatest miracles recorded in the annals of history. Holy days have been kept for thousands of years to memorialize it. Stories have been re-told and re-told for millennia concerning the events of this miraculous day. Books have been written about it. Plays have been performed in its memory. Movies have been produced about it.
This miracle is recorded in Exodus 14. If you will turn there, we shall read about this great miracle that all of you probably know about. As Mr. Salcedo said, this is his fortieth feast of the Days of Unleavened Bread. My parents are here today; it's their fifty-third Days of Unleavened Bread to celebrate and remember this holy day and its significance and what it means. We find here in Exodus 14 the account of this day in history; how the Israelites were trapped, if you will, in a box canyon, the sea on one side; the mountain ranges on two other sides and the Egyptian army pressing down upon them. I'd like to pick up the story which we probably all know well in verse 13 where Moses, when he saw the advancing Egyptian army, said to his brothers and sisters, the children of the Israelites.
Exodus 14:13 - "...Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see (again) no more forever.
Verse 14 "The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace." This day is about trust and faith in God. This is the message, I believe, of the day of the Last Day of Unleavened Bread. It's one of my favorite feast days because there are so many things a pastor or minister can speak about concerning this special holy day. There's a variety of topics and subjects. You're going to hear Mr. Seiglie this afternoon expound on an aspect of the feast day of the Last Day of Unleavened Bread.
I want to talk about specifically the nation of Israel and then I want to talk about what relevance that has for us. As I said, this day is about faith and trust in God. God said He would found a nation. He promised the patriarchs that He would build from their loins a nation from their family, a nation, a family grown large into an entire nation and this was the day that miracle was about to happen. Let's go to Verse 27.
Verse 27 "And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and when the morning appeared, the sea returned to its full depth, while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea." A dramatic miracle, the parting of the Red Sea; we all know about it. We've heard about it. We've probably seen the movies, read the books, taught it to our children. We know it well, the greatest of all miracles in many respects short of the resurrection of our Savior.
Verse 28 "Then the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained.
Verse 29 - "But the children of Israel had walked on dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." Again, describing the dramatic miracle of a dry place to walk. A dry freeway, if you will in the seabed, and walls on either side, the first giant aquarium the Israelites witnessed.
Verse 30 "So the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore" as those walls of water slapped together and killed the many thousands of Egyptian soldiers.
Verse 31- And "Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt; and (so) the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and His servant Moses," which you might imagine. There was a great deal of faith established and built that day; a great deal of trust. It didn't last long. We all know the story, don't we? Let's go to Deuteronomy 7. We read about the reason as I have referred to before that God took the Israelites out of Egypt. As I said, He was fulfilling His promises to the patriarchs. He was demonstrating His great power so that other nations, including the decimated Egyptians and those who saw this great, perhaps the greatest of all nations at the time, destroyed. He was creating a nation from a family. Deuteronomy 7:6 - God said to these people, this new nation,
Deuteronomy 7:6 "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth." God had chosen these Israelites, twelve sons, a family grown large now into two and a half, three million people. "I have chosen you," He says, "to be a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth."
Verse 7 - "The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples," (they were enslaved.)
Verse 8 " but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, and from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." As I said, it was a dramatic day. God went on, as we find in Deuteronomy 26 , let's turn there, to give them, because they were his special people, He gave them special identities.
Now this is interesting to me because in Los Angeles, in Bakersfield, we've been going through a series called, "Growing Kids God's Way," which is an eighteen-lesson course in childrearing. It's a very good course. It's presented primarily on videotape with moderated discussions before and after, but one of the sessions talks about the importance of family and establishing family identities, and whether we like it or not, each of us has a family identity. It probably begins with our name, our family name. We think about our family name. We ask our children to treat it with honor and respect and to act as though their activities will reflect on that name, don't we? That's one of our family identities, is our name. There are other family identities perhaps that you can think of; that is, events or activities that you do as a family. I know some of us, I know for years our family did, we like to attend the Feast of Tabernacles together, even our extended family. That was one of our family identities every year. We knew we were going to have a reunion at the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a very special family identity.
When our family was growing up we enjoyed living in New England at the time. We enjoyed spending the week of winter break, because all of the schools shut down in the middle of February and took what they called winter break vacation which was basically to save all the school districts the price of oil. They lowered the temperature in all the schoolrooms and all the kids got out of school and our family, we actually joined a ski club in Mt. Snow, Vermont, not far from Boston where we lived and our sons knew and they invited friends and they looked forward to and talked about it all year long, the family vacation. We were going for a week of skiing in the Vermont Mountains and every year we did that all through the years my sons were in junior high school and high school. That was our family identity. It was a family vacation every winter and we could count on it.
This ski club was an interesting place. It was an old house that had several bedrooms and two or three kitchens and it was very inexpensive. That's why we joined. It was easy to go because it only cost us like three dollars a person per night to join this ski club and you reserved, you know your bunk ahead of time and sometimes you had to share it with other people. And sometimes there were as many as fifty or sixty people who came to the ski lodge, the ski club for a weekend at least during that long week. But that was one of our family identities was skiing. My boys today are, even though they're now adults are avid snow boarders because they had that family identity and they talk about that even to today. The good times our family had when we went to those ski weekends in Vermont . It's one of those family identities. As I've been talking here, many of you probably have a family identity or family identities. Those are pillars on which your family is built, family customs and traditions.
Well, think about the nation of Israel as God's family as He promised. Let's read here in -
Deuteronomy 26:18 We read, "Also today the L ord has proclaimed you to be His special people..." the family of God. We know God is about family. He is reproducing His family here on earth. Family is very important to Him. He told Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, "I'm going to expand your family into a nation," and then when He gave them various laws, He gave them identifiers as their family identifiers, didn't He? He gave them His Ten Commandments. They pre-existed the nation of Israel , we know that from reading Genesis, but that was one of the family identifiers. He says, "I want to give you My law." He says, "I want to give you My holy days. I'm going to give you" there were other family identities like circumcision. He said, "I'm going to give you family identities with which you can relate." This is something our family does.
Verse 18 again, "Also today the Lord has proclaimed you to be His special people, just as He promised you, that you should keep all His commandments,
Verse 19 " and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made..." He said, "I'm going to exalt you up," He says in another place as an example nation and people will look at this family grown large and they will say, "You know, these people are very special. They have family identities with which I want to identify. And He said, "They will come to you. They will pour to you. They will be attracted by those family identities and they'll want to be a part of that family." That was God's purpose in establishing Israel as a nation. Notice, there are now four words in verse 19, for which God had planned His family to fill, four purposes.
Verse 19 and " (that) He will set you high above all nations which He has made, in praise, in name, and in honor, and that you may be a holy people to the Lord your God, just as He has spoken." These were the four purposes of that family called Israel . God had given them a very special name, Israel, prince of God and He wanted the members of that family to live up to the name, that's why we find in verse 19, "in name."
"In praise," He wanted those people to reflect and praise God in their actions and in their reaction and their love for each other.
"In honor," He wanted them to honor one another. He gave them a set of laws that are some of the most basic laws of all of the democratic nations today, because it honors and respects life. And the constitutions, as I said, of the western nations today are based upon the Ten Commandments and many of those laws, which came in the book of Exodus that distinguished this family as unique from other nations; and even as the now the new government of Iraq forms and they form a constitution; they are now struggling with this. They want to inculcate some of those, with the guidance, I'm sure, of many diplomats from the United States, some of these characteristics that we got from the, what they called the Christian-Judeo ethic which comes from these family distinctions that were given here.
And finally, the fourth category is " holy. " God wanted his people to be sanctified, or set apart and drawn together, and made sanctified in their sanctified gatherings as a separate people from the rest of the world. Now how does this all relate to us? Well, I think we basically realize that God's church is a family, is it not? Let's go back to Ephesians 3:14. Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus and he said,
Ephesians 3:14 "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Verse 15 " from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named." We are called the Church of God . What does that mean to us? Do we see it as a family name and that what we do reflects honor and praise on His name? Just like I've told my sons many times that they bear the family name, Register, and when they do exemplary things it reflects on our family. It brings honor to our family. A family name is very important.
Verse 15 " from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
Verse 16 " that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man." We've said for many years that God's Spirit is what distinguishes the people of God from those who don't have God's Spirit. That's what makes us the family of God is possessing the spirit of God and if we have God's Spirit, we see from scripture very plainly that we identify with the family traits that characterize the family pillars, the family identities that characterize the family of God, do we not? We identify with the Ten Commandments. We identify with the Sabbaths. We identify with the Holy Days, that's why we're here today, isn't it? We identify with those family identities but there are other family identities with which we identify.
Verse 17 " that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;" what this day is all about, trust and faith. God said that He would establish a nation. God also said He would establish a church, a family, if you will. A more diverse family than the brothers twelve who had joined together to form the nation of ancient Israel, a much more diverse family, which of course makes it much more challenging for us to be a family, doesn't it? It continues on
Verse 17 " that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
Verse 18 " may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width (and) the length and the depth and the height
Verse 19 "to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with (all) the fullness of God." And that, of course, is describing the Spirit, that we may be filled with the Spirit of God. I don't know about you, but I identify very strongly with the Church of God, very strongly.
I remember one man said, "If we are a family, we sure are a dysfunctional family." I think all of us know there's some truth to what he says. I remember encountering a young man in my pastoral experience who no longer wanted to be a part of his family. He didn't identify with his family anymore and I remember his parents called me over; he was about, I think fifteen at the time if memory serves and his parents said, "We're having trouble with our son, help us."
And I sat down with the family and the fifteen-year-old son and the fifteen-year-old son said, "I don't want to be a part of this family anymore." I no longer identify with the pillars of this family. He even talked about changing his name. He said, "I don't identify with this family anymore."
And I said, "Well, don't you love God's law? Don't you want to follow God's law?"
He said, "Nope."
"Don't you want to keep the Sabbath like your family has done for decades?"
He said, "Nope."
"You don't want to keep the holy days anymore?"
"No!"
I said, "Well, with what family do you identify?"
And he said, "Well, I identify with a family down the street," which was the family of his friend. And he says, "My parents have threatened to kick me out."
And I said, "Well, I can understand that because you no longer want to be a part of this family and of course your actions are dictating that."
He says, "Yea, I want to be a member of the family down the street where my friend is." He says, "I identify more with them."
And I said, "Well, what do they do? What do you identify with with that family down the street"?
He said, "Well, they have no rules."
"They have no rules?"
"No," he says. "They have no rules. You don't have to be in at a specific time in the evening. You don't even have to go to school. My friend doesn't have to go to school if he doesn't want to."
I said, "And you identify with that?"
He said, "Yes, I like that! It gives me freedom." He says, "You know that families don't sit down there and eat meals together. That's what my mom and dad want me to do, they want me to eat meals, that's one of our family identities is to eat meals together, not separately and throughout the house or at different times of the day. He said, "I just don't identify with that. I don't want any rules in my life. I want to come and go as I please. I don't want anybody who's getting into my face. I don't want anybody telling me what to do. I identify with that family.
He was describing a family down the street. It was what psychologists call "chaotically independent." All the members are independent and their family atmosphere is chaotic because there's no rules. Now to make a long story short, this young man eventually was asked to leave his home and he moved in with this other family. He became a part of this independent chaotic environment. He identified with that family. Sadly, he dropped out of school, which you might expect. He became involved in drug abuse and eventually ended up in jail. It was a life he had chosen at age fifteen, sixteen. He wanted to be part of an independent, chaotic family.
Individual organized churches today are like families in many ways. And now you might start thinking, "Okay, Mr. Register, now you stopped preaching and started meddling. (Laughter in background) Bear with me please, for a moment. I am often asked how I feel about other fellowships and other individuals in other churches of God. Well, turn with me to John 10.
I don't know if you've visited their homes. I'm sure most of us have. I have visited a lot of people in a lot of homes over the last thirty-three years of being in God's ministry. In most of those homes I have felt very comfortable, I'm welcomed into the home and I find I'm very comfortable in that home. I find similar family identities as I have in my home and I feel very comfortable there. But there's some homes that I have gone into where I felt very uncomfortable. Sometimes it's the surroundings. I remember one family I visited in South Carolina when I was the pastor there. It was the filthiest home I have ever been in, the dirtiest. I sat down on the couch very carefully and on the front edge when I was invited to be seated, and when I got up a chicken bone stuck to my pants leg. That's how dirty this house was. The people invited me to eat with them; I declined gracefully, they offered me a drink; I declined gracefully. I could see into the kitchen and dishes were stacked high in the sink. Roaches were racing across the floor. I felt uncomfortable in that home. Many of you may have too, because I hear some moans and groans from some of you, head nodding.
Conversely I have been in homes, I remember one home I went into, it was an elderly couple, who had no children, never had children and when I came into the home it was sparkling clean, it was pristine. I sat on the plastic covers on the couch. (Audience laughter) I sat in nearly the same position that I sat in the dirty home. I was very careful not to break any of the very special little trinkets that were placed about the house. I was very careful not to wrinkle any of the doilies that had been starched and ironed and placed out. I'll tell you something, I felt uncomfortable in that home. It didn't feel comfortable to me. I like a home that is lived in and is inviting but not nearly as dirty as that house that I saw in South Carolina .
The point I'm trying to make is that families are different, aren't they? And even family members of the same family can be different. Notice what Christ says here in John 10:14.
John 10:14 " I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.
Verse 15 " As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.
Verse 16 " And other sheep I have which are not of this fold." One of the things I really appreciated about the United Church of God when we started in 1995 is that we acknowledged there were other sheep in other folds, even before we incorporated as an organization and we said, "We will keep our doors open to any who would like to attend in peace." I like that. I liked that discussion that we had in Indianapolis because I had recognized decades before that there were people who were not of our organized church who had God's Spirit, who were part of the family because they have the characteristics, the pillars of our family, the church family. But as we know, sometimes things happen and families unfortunately even go to war together.
When you look at the history of ancient Israel, what do you find? You find that for many, many years those brothers and their families all got together and they worked together and then there came a time in the history of ancient Israel where brothers' relationships deteriorated to the point that they literally went to war, north Israel, south Israel. Sad, God wasn't happy with that; He was sad. Reading John 10:16 again
John 10:16 "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd." Eventually, one flock and one shepherd, eventually. I'd like to go to Mark 9 next. I think it's instructive to read the words of Christ concerning the church or the family or those who are bound by the Spirit of God who make up the family of God, Mark 9:38. Remember, this day is about trust and faith in God.
Mark 9:38 "(Now) John answered Him, saying,'Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.'" He's not part of our corporate organization and we got onto him.
Verse 39 - "And (But) Jesus said, 'Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can (soon) come afterward and speak evil of Me.
Verse 40 "'For he who is not against us is on our side.'" When people ask me about other organizations and other personalities I tell them very clearly, "You know, Christ tells me not to make a judgment call on those people," but I also add, "But I don't particularly identify with those particular people. In some case their house may be uncomfortable to me."
In 1995 I was approached by a couple of other organizations. They wanted me to be a part of their organization and I told them right up front, "I'm sorry, but I'm just not comfortable in your family." But that doesn't mean that you're not an extended cousin. I'm willing to take and accept that as Christ admonishes here. Let's go to Matthew 13:24-30 where Christ talked in this parable, where He says,
Matthew 13:24 "...The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field;" You know the story. There's good seed and there's bad seed. And the servant asked the master, "Should we pluck up the bad seed, the tares?"
Verse 29 And "(But) he said, 'No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them.
Verse 30 "Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest (which is the time of the end) I will say to the reapers, 'first gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
We have learned and we have known for decades that there are tares among the wheat in the family of God. There are black sheep in the fold. We know that, don't we?
What I want to talk about very briefly is the identity that we should have with God's church and more importantly, I think, the identity that we have with a particular organization. Unfortunately now, we have what I sometimes call "cafeteria religion," where we kind of walk along the cafeteria line and we pick and choose, "Well I kind of like this, I don't like this, I like this, I don't like that, I ...," and we have people rotating churches cafeteria style and I don't think that benefits the family of God. It does not benefit any of those organized churches who are trying to do a work. I don't think it benefits the individual.
If we can reduce that back down to the family, let's say you have a child and your child says, "You know, we're having roast beef, I'm going to eat here tonight but the neighbors are having tacos tomorrow night and I'm going to eat over there. And the neighbor up the street the day after is having a barbecue and I kind of like that so I'm going to go up the street and have a barbecue on the third day. What kind of family identity does that build?
On a smaller scale, I'd like us to think about the importance today of being family and having strong family identities and having trust and faith in God that eventually all the wheat is going to come together in time. Let's go to Ezekiel 34. There's an interesting prophecy here about scattered sheep.
Ezekiel 34:12 "As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all (the) places where they were scattered on a cloudy and ( a) dark day." And he goes on to describe He will seek those who were lost, He will seek those who were scattered, He will bring his family together.
Verse 19 "And as for My flock, they eat what you have trampled with your feet, and they drink what you have fouled with your feet.
Verse 20 " Therefore thus says the Lord God to them: 'Behold, I Myself will judge between the fat and the lean sheep.' " There's even differences among the sheep, aren't there? In verse 20, God says He will judge between the fat and the lean sheep, the sheep and the goats, if you will.
Verse 21 "'Because you have pushed with side and shoulder, butted all the weak ones with your horns, and scattered them abroad,'" God is not in favor of scattering the sheep of God. That's very clear. Don't let anyone mislead you to assume that just because it's happening. I believe that God wants us to reflect His family name in praise, and in honor, in faith, and what we do reflects His name. I don't think we have to go around making judgment calls on each other.
I think we should be comfortable in that organizational family we choose. I've had people come to me and say, "Mr. Register, you know, I just don't identify with what United Church of God is doing. I identify better with that organization.
And I tell them very clearly, "You know, you'd probably be more comfortable there. Why don't you go there if you're going to be more comfortable?" And I say that in love to people. But I don't know about you, I am comfortable with what United Church of God represents. I have been since 1995 and that's why I choose and have chosen to fellowship here.
United Church of God has become my spiritual family because I identify with the identifiers and the pillars that are here, the checks and balances that we have in place. I identify with the people. The first time I saw that congregated group of elders in Indianapolis I looked around the room and I said, "I know these guys. They're grounded. These guys are the shepherds. These are the men who have reputation for leading God's people in a loving manner. I identify with these men."
I hope those of you who are here today identify with the United Church of God and you identify with the same pillars or characteristics of a family that I identify with and if we do, we don't need to be straying all around, do we? We can support and be loyal to that family with which we identify and we don't have to make judgment calls about other people, "Saying, they're not part of the body of Christ, or he's not, or they're not." Christ said, "Leave them alone. We don't need to make those kind of calls, but we do identify and when we identify with a certain family group that's where I think we should put our efforts.
Let's think of ourselves as the family of God just as Israel was the family of God years ago and that's why He brought them out of Egypt was to form a family and that's why He brought us out of spiritual Egypt was to form a family. Let's go to I Peter 2:9 to conclude today. I'd like to read in verse 9, very similar words, descriptors for the family of God in the latter days.
I Peter 2:9 " But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation," God has taken His spiritual family and He's developing us into a nation if you will. We're a family grown large. "His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
Verse 10 "Who once were not a people but are now the people of God, (the family of God) who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." That describes us. God wants us to be a spiritual family that is not independent and dysfunctional. God wants us to be a functional family.
It's interesting, Gary Ezzo, the man who leads this "Growing Kids God's Way" describes the interdependent family this way. He says, "Picture a family that is holding hands and facing one another and expressing love toward one another in warmth. It is joined together in common goals and common family traditions. He said, "That kind of family attracts others." Others want to be a part of that. He says, "The independent family is loosely held together. Sometimes they're holding hands, sometimes they're not, they're all facing out." So imagine yourselves in a circle, some holding hands, some not, but facing outward. God does not want His family to be an independent family, but He wants His family to be an interdependent family, holding hands, facing inward, expressing that love and warmth, just as He asked Israel to do thousands of years ago.
Our goal should be to be part of an interdependent, healthy, functional family, holding hands and facing inward with love and care for one another. When we are that kind of family it will attract others who want to be a part of our family and God often calls individuals through personal contact and family contacts, over fifty per cent, historically of the church growth is attracted by that love that's shared.
What may we learn today, from this holy day, the Last Day of Unleavened Bread? God wants us to be a functioning, effective and loving family. The challenge is before us just as it was before the Israelites when God took them out of the land of Egypt. Will we meet that challenge?