Are You a Citizen of Heaven?

Well, good morning, everyone! So good to see all of you. Music is such an important part of worshipping God, and that really inspired me. I mean, I have a little tear falling down here. I had to kind of wipe it, which is very, very beautiful, very, very wonderful. I give greetings to you from about 550 in Lake Jinaluska, Lake Jinaluska, however it's pronounced both ways. I heard it. It's about the same size group as is here. I believe the number yesterday was something like 515 or so, and that's about what attempted service is every day. The hall was considerably smaller, and there was a balcony, and there wasn't as much room to move around. This hall is huge, huge, you know, a lot of room to talk and fellowship with. But we had a very beautiful location. The lake was gorgeous, and the spirit was marvelous and great. It's good to see friends from going back 50 years, back to Ambassador College days, people that I hadn't seen in a long time. Seeing the parents of ABC students, it was wonderful to meet them. The weather was perfect there as well. Once again, I'd just like to comment about the music, about the work that's done by all the support staff that makes the feast the feast. And also, I appreciate the work of Catherine Roland, who has been directing the choir. They are very good friends of ours. We have worked together for many years. She and her husband have been almost a part of our family. I appreciated the sermon given yesterday and the sermonette also by one of our workers, Milan Bizik. We do appreciate and have a wonderful relationship and wonderful working environment at the home office. I think that everyone that you would talk to there would say the same thing. It's good to be able to spread that cheer elsewhere. Jekyll Island. I have never been to Jekyll Island. In 1966, when I first started attending church services, or 65, 1965, in August, they were just all getting ready to go to the Feast of Tabernacles from Minneapolis-St. Paul, and there were only three feast sites. Jekyll Island had a certain mystique about it. Also, Big Sandy, Texas, and Squaw Valley. Those were the three feast sites of that time. I had never been able to get here, and this year we decided to go to Lake Jodeluska because of the connection for the webcast. You won't see me here, just frozen. I'll be actually moving around and talking to you live.

But it was wonderful to, you know, I don't even know where I'm cutting up what I'm saying here. But this has been a historical and traditional place for the church. The days of going back to the big tent, hurricanes, we used to hear about hurricane things that were headed for this area. I'm also glad to see so many people that I know here.

And I would say, notably, I would like to give special recognition to Bob and Mary Jones. I used to work four. I was, Bob Jones was the direct superior for me. He was the pastor of the Minneapolis-St. Paul, the Twin Cities churches. We had 1,100 people at that time. And there were two of us who were local elders who worked directly. I worked the eastern part of the Twin Cities-St. Paul, namely, and the other elder worked Minneapolis. But with Bob Jones, I had spent a lot of time visiting.

We used to visit many, many people in the Twin Cities area itself, also in Wisconsin and southern Minnesota. I have many, many wonderful memories. I would say that he probably imprinted more on me the ability to roll with the punches, to be calm under crisis conditions. You know, when you have 1,100 people, something's going to go wrong sometime.

And, you know, he was always very philosophical, very thoughtful, very solution-oriented to situations that came up. And I have appreciated that very, very much. Appreciated Family Day yesterday. We were there for a short period of time. And look forward to the hula hoop. Not the hoop. Tonight. That's going to be the big event. We're all set for it with video and everything else. Chris Rolland mentioned yesterday, and by the way, I'm glad that, you know, yesterday, honestly, Chris Rolland was not announced for the sermon, and then he just made mention of the president.

I thought, do I really have to go up there now? I thought, sometimes I miss things, you know, and maybe we had decided to switch, and I was thinking of something else. I thought, what?

Do I have to go up? So I was watching Chris as he walked up there. He was singing in the choir. Okay, so far, so good. He's up there. But then he went back to his seat. I thought, that's not good. Then I saw him reaching for his briefcase. I saw, that's good. And then when he started walking up here, I thought, what a sigh of relief. Although I did have my notes, or as they were at that time, in my briefcase, and I would have been a good soldier and would have walked up here, and maybe you would have known the difference, maybe you wouldn't have. But he did make a comment that I'd like to comment about how we don't build portable dwelling places and temporary dwelling places.

That's not something that we do. But I'd like to comment about that, because I have been to a feast site. And I just wanted to give you a little bit of a glimpse of another part of the world, of how the feast has been kept.

This is in Zambia. I have been to the inner country, into the outback of Zambia, keeping the feast of tabernacles with God's people, who are no different in Holy Spirit than you are. They make 200 times less, a fact of 200 times less, than most of us here. They make $20 a month, if that, in that part of the world. And yet, the spirit is absolutely wonderful. In the interior of the country, there is an area called Mumbai. And there are more than 100 brethren in that area that have gone back a long ways. And if they were here, you would talk the Bible with them no differently than you would with anybody else in this room.

They're very knowledgeable of Scripture. They're very devoted and dedicated. They're just like people and anywhere. But when I went to the Feast of Tabernacles there, which was just out really literally in the sticks, they would come out there nearly four or five days earlier, and they would build their booths. And it wasn't to be cute. It wasn't to be something to say, hey, we're doing it just so perfectly biblically. That's the only way that they could keep the Feast. They put up poles. They had this tall elephant grass that they put around their little homes.

They even built a tabernacle with big posts around it. It had a roof already, but they put elephant grass all around it. The day before services, the women there with mud buckets, with trowels, laying down a floor of mud and concrete, getting it ready for the services.

When they had the offering, they were all rejoicing. That the offering, that first Holy Day, was 40 cents per person per head, and they were all clapping. They were so happy.

It was truly a wonderful experience of being with these people who had huge families. Most people had into the double digits, up to 10 children or more. In fact, one of the women's seminars was, you don't have to have a baby every year.

Also, they ran out of meat about halfway through the Feast. My wife was with me on that particular one, and they said that they had to ask the head men of the village to shoot a waterbuck for them, and they were totally out of money for the Feast. They needed $14 for the Feast. I thought, how much we have and how little they have, and yet they were as joyous as anybody else. Little children were out there playing with sticks and rocks and had games of their own. I thought, these children are laughing and having as much as great a time as somebody with an expensive Xbox or toys or video games over here. It took five hours to get there from the capital city because it had no particular road to this Mumbai area. There was a main road that went towards Angola, but then you had to go off the main road, and the road was however the floods happened that year. The Kafui River spread out over several miles and would basically wash out roads, so they had to wait for the river to recede for the dry season, and then they would figure out how to get to these villages. There were no signs, and you would go for three or four hours with your driver who knew exactly which tree to take a left at or which tree to take a right at. You know, there's no possible way that I could have found my way to that area. The spirit is the same, so they're all wonderfully keeping the feast, except that this year it's at in Lusaka, in the capital. There are three feast sites in Zambia, but the point that I'm making is just how they had to really build the feast site, and they seemed, you know, they had a lot of time. But one comment that the Africans made to us, that you have the watches. Talking to us white men, we have the time. You have the watches, we have the time. Well, my subject today is citizenship. Citizenship. Most of you are American citizens or naturalized American citizens, and probably not given too much thought about the fact that you're a citizen. You probably not had to apply for a passport, never had to prove your citizenship. You are free-born and have automatically become one and have all the entitlements of that.

You have the rights of American citizenship as well as responsibilities. You probably don't even give much thought to the responsibilities and the rights that we have as citizens. We have the freedom to express ourselves, to worship as we wish. We have amazing privileges that are not available anywhere, even in the rest of the free world, to the degree that they are in the United States. We have the right to a prompt, fair trial by jury where we're innocent until proven guilty. We have the right to vote in elections to apply for federal employment, run for elected office, and to have the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There is no country in the world that opens itself up and gives its citizens those privileges. We're told also to support and defend their constitution. We're also as responsibilities, and this is if you look at the responsibilities of citizenship. Look this up in Google. I just did myself. Stay informed on issues relating to your community. Participate in the democratic process. Respect the laws, federal, state, and local. Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others.

Participate in your local community. Pay your taxes. Serve on a jury and defend your country, if you're called upon. These are the responsibilities that are given or explained as part of being an American citizen. There are many people who would just want to be here in the U.S. to achieve this status. People swim, jump, and run to come into the United States to have what we have been born free with. Becoming a naturalized American citizen would be the most noble and the highest of achievements. Now, as I briefly mentioned in my sermon on the Sabbath, my parents and I were DPs, displaced persons, after World War II. My mother was a citizen of the USSR when the Germans took her as a 16-year-old girl to work in a German factory during World War II from 1942 to 45.

My father was a citizen of Poland. It's a part of Poland that has become part of the USSR.

They were teenagers and they worked in the German factories. They were there until the war ended in 1945. But after the war, the chaos of refugees returning back to their homelands was a bad choice. It was a bad choice to return home because they saw how the Russians, the Soviet Union, how they were treating those who had gone over to be workers. And they had no choice. My parents, basically the Germans, came into their towns. They went to the courthouse. They got the names of all the population and said, we want these people at the train station in 48 hours. And then they just forcibly put them into boxcars. My mother remembers being in a boxcar going from Ukraine to Germany over a period of several days. She had no choice in the matter. They told her that it would be only for six months. It was 27 years before she returned back home to see her mother.

The young workers now were treated as collaborators by the Russians who were now occupying Germany.

My parents, of course they were not married at that time, said, we can't go back. We can't be part of this. And they were able to escape. And that's a whole story that I will tell at another time.

And my parents fled from Russian-occupied Germany, the city of Magdeburg, across the Elbe River, across into the British zone to the city of Hanover, where they found a United Nations refugee camp. There they were married in 1945. I was born in that camp in 1947. And they were looking for a country that would accept them. The Americans and the British now were not forcing them to go back because they saw how Stalin was treating his subjects. They were treated very, very badly and very rudely. And they lived in this refugee camp for four years. They were looking for a home in Canada, US, Australia. All doors seemed to be closed.

They came to the point in 1949 to just saying, look, we have to do something after we can't live in the refugee camp much longer. And so they decided that they would go back to the USSR.

My father's father wrote to him and said, don't come back. Do not come back. They'll kill you.

And they'll kill your son. Do not come back. That's what they've done to others who were treated as collaborators with the Germanies. So my parents had no citizenship. They couldn't go back to their country. In a refugee camp, you are a citizen of nothing. You're not a German citizen. You're not a British citizen. You're nothing. You see people in refugee camps, they don't have anything more than just the identity of who they are. But they are a citizen of no country at all.

When we had the Feast of Tabernacles in Thailand, I was sent from an area to hold a special three-day mini-feast with our Karen brethren who were refugees. Because they were not allowed to leave their refugee camp because they were citizens of no country. They weren't allowed to leave their camp or a certain distance from their camp to attend the feast in Chiang Mai, which was about 100 miles or so away from them. And so we held a special little mini-feast for them close to where they lived, the distance that was allowed for them to travel, which was like 10 or 15 miles.

These people lived in those refugee camps for 30-40 years. They had children born, and their children had children. And yet they were citizens of no country, whatever. Very interesting.

My parents finally found a place to settle. That's another story which I don't have time to tell at this point, but they did find a friend from Ukraine who had a cousin in Minnesota who was a doctor of entomology at the University of Minnesota. And he was their sponsor, and he made it possible for them in July of 1949 to come to the United States. And so my parents and myself came over to America, to southern Minnesota, to Faribault, where my dad picked apples.

And my parents were very grateful for that. But as soon as they arrived, they started seeking U.S. citizenship. They became permanent residents at first and received what's called the green card, which was white, and it had written on it, Alien Registration Receipt Card. They were aliens.

We were aliens. My mom and dad and I were aliens. I've given this discussion here, and my son, when he was five years old, and he heard me say that I was an alien.

After services, he said, dad, what planet did you come from? He was serious, you know, watching cartoons. I said, is my face green and contorted? He said, that's just another way that people who are not part of that country, who are non-citizens, are described.

I remember from my earliest years, my parents practicing and preparing to become American citizens. They had to learn English. That was an absolute requirement, and they were diligent in what they were doing. They were speaking American English things to one another. I was just a little kid, three, four, five years old. I just remembered them talking about this thing.

They had to know the political structure of the American government. In fact, where I first learned about the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government was for my parents studying for their citizenship. When I was six years old, I remember them talking about these things. They were talking about people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight Eisenhower. You know, these were the things we were talking about. My parents were drilling each other, and who the congressmen from Minnesota were, who the senators were. I remember my dad telling me, you know, our state picks two people to go to Washington, D.C. I thought, wow, that's interesting. They're called senators. I was just a little kid. I remember all these things that they were telling me about the American government. They drilled and drilled each other, and learning all they could. Then they took the naturalization of the test. They had to pass a speaking test, where they were spoken to, they had to reply, a reading test, a writing test, and a civics test. They were given a list of 100 questions. At first, there were 100 questions that they were pre-programmed to say, these are the 100 questions that may be asked. Then 10 of them were asked, and they had to get six right.

So they were able to pass that test. And then they became naturalized citizens. They had to make one more statement, though, one more statement, which is still on the USCIS website, is that what you have to say as you become an American citizen.

I hereby declare that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom of which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen. Say that I totally reject any other allegiance to any Prime Minister, King, whatever, leader of any other country, of which I had been a citizen. I became a citizen at age seven as a dependent child. Seven or eight, I can't remember right now. There's a time of great celebration. My second grade class had a party for me, and my teacher proudly announced me as a citizen of the United States of America. They had cookies and cake or whatever they did. It was a big, you know, event. In fact, one time, just after that, I had been mean to a little girl in the class. The teacher said, we don't do things like that in America. They do that in Czechoslovakia, but not in America. She got the country wrong and everything else.

But I was no longer an alien. I was an American citizen. I still have my citizenship papers, which I value here, me signing on my photograph at age seven in the courthouse. As I was growing up, I learned a few more lessons about citizenship and being part of a citizen of a country, because the Soviet government does not let go of their subjects. Oh, you can become an American citizen, but you are always a citizen of the USSR. My mother could never go back to visit back home because she knew that they would keep her. She said, oh, well, thanks for visiting. This is back in Stalin, post Stalin and Khrushchev's time, that they just keep you. They said, I don't care about your American citizenship. That means nothing to us. And so my mother waited until 1969 to go back. And that was two years after my dad died. My mom just said, I have to go back and visit my parents and to see them. And she took along my 11-year-old sister, which she kind of held as kind of assurance that she would return, because she wasn't sure what and how the government would treat her there. But they didn't seem to bother her. She was able to spend several months with her family in Ukraine before she was allowed to come back. But the Soviet government still didn't give up their grip on our family. When my mother died in 1984, and I was the executor for our family's estate, I got a letter from a law firm in New York City representing the USSR laying claim to our property. And they said that your mother, you know, Nina Kubik was a citizen of the USSR, and we are laying claim to your property through this law firm in New York City. Well, we just ignored them, but we had heard that there were families that had no heirs in this country, and the Soviet Union indeed did take the proceeds from their estate back to them. But I still remember getting this letter. It was just like a shock, you know, this country, you know, wants to have our family's property. The subject of citizenship is one that is spoken of in the Bible, because we are part of another government. We are celebrating the kingdom of God, which is not a feeling, not some kind of ethereal philosophy. It's a government that's coming to this earth. It's a people. It's a nation. It's a government. And it, too, has its laws and rules and those things that make you citizens of that government. In Philippians chapter three and verse 20. Philippians chapter three and verse 20. The apostle Paul writes to the people in the colony there in Philippi that our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for our Lord the Savior, Jesus Christ. And actually, the New Living Translation really hits the nail on the head much better than the New King James in this case. We are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. We are citizens of that government. What he's telling the people in Philippi is that we are citizens of something else, not in opposition to what's being a Roman citizen, because Paul was a Roman citizen, but that we are primarily citizens of heaven.

The word for citizenship here is from the Greek word polytia. If you want to look it up, it's Strongs 4174. It's a word from which the term politics is taken. And the word means community, citizenship. It means community. And it's a word that was used by Plato and Aristotle in their writings about citizenship. He also writes the apostle Paul to the Ephesians about citizenship.

It's very interesting what he says in Ephesians chapter 2 in verse 11. Therefore, remember that you, Ephesians chapter 2 in verse 11, remember that you once Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision by what is called circumcision made by flesh by hands, that at one time you were without Christ being aliens, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, from the community of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been taught brought near by the blood of Christ. Then later in the chapter in verse 19, Paul says, now therefore you are no longer strangers in foreigners but fellow citizens, fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, of the community of God. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. We're part of this structure. We are citizens of, fellow citizens of this grouping of people.

The apostle Paul tells us that if we are called by God and if we have been elected to respond to that calling with repentance and obedience, that we now have citizenship, that we have this community. We are politically aligned, if you will, that we are no longer aliens, we're no longer foreigners, but we are fellow citizens with the saints.

Paul's words reflect world conditions at a time, what it meant to the people to be a Roman citizens. Again, he wrote to the Philippians who were aware of citizenship. They were technically Roman citizens as well there. And to the Ephesians, Philippi was a little bit far out. It was a colony. Ephesians, Ephesus, though, was really in the heart of the Roman Empire. Big commercial center, big city, hundreds of thousands of people who were living there. And he tells those people what I had just read. And Paul himself describes himself as a freeborn citizen of the Roman Empire, and he used the rights that he had of citizenship of Romans. In fact, he makes a big point of it in the 22nd chapter of the book of Acts. The Apostle Paul was in Jerusalem, he was at the temple, and he was accosted by a mob that was going to kill him. Literally was going to put an end to him. They were just had enough of Paul. They were just angry at his defection, so to speak, from them for being the leader of the Christian movement, the spread of Christianity, and so forth. And in Acts chapter 2, 22, I should say, and verse 25, as he was being tied with a thongs—this is just one of Apostle Paul's many horrendous trials that he had—Paul said to the centurion who came by, the centurion who had been a Roman, is it lawful for you to scourge a man, because he was about to scourge Paul, which meant just whip him and whip him and whip him, who is a Roman and uncondemned? I've not been accused of any crime. I'm just being mobbed, and I'm going to be scourged. And is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman? Whoa! This commander said, you are a citizen of the Roman Empire? Verse 26, and when the centurion heard this, he went and reported this to the chief captain, saying, do you realize what you are about to do? This man has rights of citizenship. For this man is a Roman. And when the chief captain came up to him and said to him, tell me you are a Roman, and he said, yes. Paul said, yes. And the chief captain answered with a great sum of money, I bought this citizenship. He said, I'm a fellow citizen, too, but I paid for it with a sum of money. And Paul says, well, but indeed, I was born free. He was born in the city of Tarsus. And Tarsus was considered a free city. That means anybody born in Tarsus, which is on the southern part of the where Turkey is today, was automatically a Roman citizen. Just like most of you here are American citizens just because you were born here. Didn't fill anything out, didn't have to pay for it, you didn't have to take any kind of an exam, you didn't have to affirm anything. You are an American citizen, and you are protected as an American citizen. And people have died to protect our rights as citizens. And Paul was one of those citizens who was practicing or applying his rightfulness. There were three ways that one could become a citizen. One was to be born free, as Paul did. Another one was to pay a large sum of money, as the commander had done.

You know, you could buy your citizenship. And the third one was to serve in the military. If you served in the military for 25 years, you could become a citizen. And the Romans used that as incentive to make their armies grow by offering citizenship to those who stayed in the army.

We're called to become part of the Commonwealth of Israel.

We're called to become part of a chosen group of people.

The Commonwealth of Israel, which we read in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 12.

Become members, citizens of that community. 22 places in the Bible refer to Israel as being God's chosen people. And in Old Testament Israel is generally referred to the people of God as a community. The point of this is that the Old Testament concept of election, and we're called the elect as well, is not simply a matter of God arbitrarily picking out one nation and a race from the rest. I still think that we labor under that. God says, well, you know something, I'm going to work through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. They're going to grow this nation. And everybody in that nation are my people. And they're my pet people. And people even in Christ's time said, you know something, we are of Abraham. We are God's people. No matter how rotten they were, they said, you know, Abraham is our father. They connected themselves to him. God's intent for the people of Israel was to go into the world, so to speak, into the gentile world, into what is now Palestine, and to be a community of people who would live among the nations to serve his purpose.

Not to be his pet people who would get all the benefits, and everybody else get nothing.

They were to be a people who would show his purpose. They would be his people in that sense.

Not an arbitrary nation that, well, we could pick this one here. Maybe we could choose the Indians or whatever. Make them. Because God is a respecter of no persons. And, you know, to become a Christian, we have to become a spiritual Israelite. We could be black, yellow, Ukrainian. You could be German, whatever. And we become spiritual Israel as part of that commonwealth that was performing a purpose of going into that world and being a light, being the voice of God to that world. In the New Testament, the Greek word translated for church is ekklesia, ekklesia, which also had a similar context of being a community. Church is not a place where you go in and just sing hymns, and it's a building, you know, where you worship and pray. Church is a community. That is the first and primary meaning of the word church, in a sense having similarities to the nation of Israel being a community that was sent to do a particular purpose. At first, it was citizens who were ekklesia called out for the protection of the community. That's what the word meant in the Greek. But it also came to be used to be an assembly of citizens chosen to transact the business of the community. So here's what we have now by combining the Old Testament meaning of this community of these citizens with the New Testament, ekklesia. The people are chosen by God, and the term elect is used in Matthew chapter 24 and verse 22. Matthew 24, 22.

It's important to realize that we have been called and elected, meaning having some specific purpose and point. Matthew 24 and verse 22. This is in reference to the end of the age.

Christ's Olivet prophecy. Unless those days were shortened, Christ says no flesh would be saved, but for the elect's sake, for God's citizens, for God's community, those days will be shortened.

God's community. And just like with Israel, that just because they said that they were Israelites did not mean that they were Israelites of the community as God had intended them to be.

In fact, for the most part, Israel was a total failure as a nation. They were to be a light. They were to show the nation's God's way, and instead they adopted their gods, and for many, many years failed in their responsibilities. We have been called as spiritual Israel to be spiritual community that would go into the world to be shining lights, to be those who set an example, a high bar of the way to live. We were unique. We were to be in the world, as Christ said, but not of the world. In two places, in the book of John, John chapter 15 and verse 18, Jesus Christ refers to his elect, John 15 and verse 18, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, you're elect, you're special.

I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. We're told not to come out of the world and be separate. We're told to be in the world and to show the world God's ways. Again, he says this in John 17 and verse 14, I have given them your word, talking about his disciples, the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world, of the world's ways, the world's philosophy, the world's religions, and so forth. We're to come out of that. We are people who are the ecclesia, the community of God, the citizens of heaven, where Jesus Christ is from. That's who we are. And then we have been called ethically bound by God's laws, God's principles, God's covenants to be those people that show that way. That's just very, very simple as to what our citizenship is comprised of, of being chosen, of being unique in the world, and also to be ethically bound by His laws, and teaching His laws, and demonstrating those laws. We have been assembled as a church to do the business of this unique community, to participate in its government, so to speak, to be a part of God's government, defend and uphold the interests of the church, obey its laws, and serve its citizens.

That's our job as Christians, as citizens of heaven, having very, very stark similarities with being a citizen of the U.S. government and the responsibilities that it portends.

In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1, he's writing to the Ephesians again, which was really a city which totally understood and God understood what citizenship meant. These were Roman citizens.

He tells them that as Christians, they're to become like good Roman citizens. He is made alive, verse 1, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

That's what we came from. But God, who is rich in mercy, verse 4, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when you were dead in trespasses, has made us alive together with Christ.

We've made citizens. We've been made partakers and fellow citizens, one with another, together with Christ, and raised up together and made us to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Our citizenship is of heaven. That in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. That's what we're created for. Not just to be those who learn to be a better person, understand more biblical principles, but to be good citizens, be good servants, good participants. And you know, coming to the Feast of Tabernacle is a sign of great Christian citizenship. We're required to be here. We're here to be to show up, to be called up to be here, to be with one another, to encourage one another, to proclaim God's kingdom, to celebrate it, and to let others know about it. We are his workmanship, created for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We also have responsibilities to our government, just as the Apostle Paul did and made it very, very clear. Romans chapter 13. The analogy does break down is that we don't repudiate the nation that we have come from. In fact, just as Paul upheld his Roman citizenship, I uphold my American citizenship. You know, I am so happy to be an American citizen. Because when I was the first five, seven years of my life, I was a citizen of no country at all. I was not a German citizen just because I was born in Germany, neither was I an American. I was just an alien resident. But now I have citizenship, and I'm grateful for it. I've been able to travel around the world with my blue passport. I've been able to go through lines very, very quickly.

When I see people who are going through immigration, have to go through visitors, and they go through a long process, I think to myself, I am so fortunate. I'm so thankful to be an American citizen. But, you know, I uphold and I look up to my spiritual citizenship in a higher way. But here's what Paul writes in Romans chapter 13 about our responsibility to be an American citizen. He writes in Romans chapter 13 about our responsibility now to our government now. Let every soul, verse 1, Romans 13, be subject to the governing authorities.

For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

We'll be subject to our authorities unless there is a conflict between what the government says as when Peter was shut up or attempted to be shut up from preaching the Gospel, he said, we must obey God rather than man, Acts chapter 5, in verse 29. There are times when we have to obey God rather than man. But frankly, in America, it is not that often. And oftentimes there's a lot of workarounds, and there is more freedom here than anywhere else in the world.

One of our young men in Estonia was told that he had to take certain exams on the Sabbath, or he would not graduate from high school, and if he didn't take those exams from high school, he would fail, and he would be put immediately into the army.

He chose not to take those exams, and the teacher saw that he was very, very forthright, and very devoted to his beliefs, and they worked out where he could take the tests on another time.

There's that whole scenario of how God works with us, with our conflicts in that manner.

Paul further says, back in Romans chapter 13, verse 2, therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God.

God is the originator of authority, even though authorities have gone sour in different spheres. He is still the originator of authority.

And those who resist will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.

Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same.

Doesn't mean we rebel, or picket, or in some way protest, even kneel.

We don't do those things. What we do instead is to do good, and be an example of righteousness, be an example of service. When people look to us as a church, and the community of Jekyll Island, or wherever our festivals are held, they look to people who are different, who do good.

Yes, they may do things differently. They worship on a different day.

Yes, they may have, they don't wear certain religious insignia like everybody else does. But I find that that is not that big a deal in this country, anyway.

Of us not wearing crosses, or whatever. I mean, I work with my Rotary Club, with people who are with Salvation Army, people who've been Unitarians, and so forth. I get along with them because I talk about the things that I do right. I don't focus on things that create arguments. I focus on things that show forth God's ways, and service, and purpose for humanity. Pay your taxes, verse 6.

Verse 7, Render therefore to all there do, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Well, I'm thankful. I'm thankful that I am a citizen of the United States, as Paul valued his Roman citizenship.

I love my country, and I'm very thankful to live here. My son born here, my grandchildren born here, who are naturalized, who are citizens. I'm a naturalized U.S. citizen. But I am even more thankful, and far more thankful, to come out of the world, to be in the world but not of the world, as indeed we were aliens to God in the world. But now we are part of the household of faith.

We are part of the Commonwealth of Israel. We are citizens of heaven, and have found refuge in the kingdom of God.