Are You a Kingdom Patriot

We had 254 people here last night, which for an opening service is very nice attendance. I know people are traveling and they're tired and you have little kids and some older people. It's just hard to make that opening night service. We have quite a few more here today and we're happy to see everyone. And we had a...last night was a good start to the feast this year. And so we keep praying that God continues to help all of us, inspire all of us to have the singularness of mind of what He is doing in our lives and what this time is all about. You know, most of us every year, the Fourth of July rolls around, Memorial Day rolls around, and we watch as people celebrate patriotism. And there's bands and there's parades and there's flag waving and there's special movies on television as people celebrate patriotism, being a patriot. The word patriot is a very interesting word. It actually comes from Latin and it comes from Patron. Patron, if you go back to ancient Rome, a Patron was a very wealthy man in Rome itself. And what they would do is they would gather all the poor people around them and they would give them help. They would give them money, they would give them food, they would give them things. And then they were loyal to the Patron. So when the Patron needed some kind of backing, when the Patron needed some political help or whatever, he always had a large group of people to help him. The word Patron comes from another Latin word, pater, which means father. Patriot, the word Patriot, and patriotism comes from the concept that you belong to a fatherland. You belong to a fatherland, a country that spawned you, that you are loyal to. And of course, patriotism has a lot to do with loyalty. When you look at the Bible and you see the New Testament, you see that there were zealots. Zealots were the patriots, Jewish patriots of the day. The zealots were people who fought against Rome. They were people who were so loyal to what they considered their loyalty to God and so loyal to Israel itself. They were loyal to their fatherland so much that they would never surrender to the Romans. And they would constantly do acts of terrorism against the Romans and trying to drive them out. That one of the disciples was known as a velet. That was his background when he came in, when Jesus called him. You and I are here celebrating the future time when the Messiah rules on this earth, when Christ is in Jerusalem and the entire world is brought into a fatherland. It is brought under the government of God. We heard last night, just fascinating the concept, hey, that's not going to be easy to set up that government on this earth, and that there's going to be problems throughout the thousand years.

Anytime you have human beings, it's messy. As we all know, because we all live messy lives, and we think everybody else has their lives together, the truth is everybody's life is pretty much messy.

And so, during that thousand years, as we heard last night, there's going to be difficulties and problems that people are going to sin. And even at the very end, a large number of people rebel when Satan is released for that short period of time, actually rebel after a thousand years of a perfect environment. Not everybody, but it'll be a difficult time. And then, of course, we have the Great White Throne Judgment, which we'll deal with when we get to the last day of the feast, or the eighth day, because really it's a separate feast in itself.

I want to ask you a question. As we're here looking forward to that time when God's kingdom was on this earth, are you a kingdom patriot? Are you a kingdom patriot? You know, patriots have fire in themselves. They love their fatherland. They love their country. What do we celebrate on 4th of July? What do we celebrate a Memorial Day in this country? They usually celebrate people who gave their lives either as warriors or in some service to the country, or in politicians or people who helped build society or helped develop the educational system or whatever.

These were the people who helped develop this country. They're considered patriots. Patriotism comes at a great cost because there's a great fire in the person, a great dedication of that person's life to that country. We're here spending all this time celebrating a future time. And as I said last night, we have to be careful, because if we go home from this Feast of Tabernacles and our vision is, wow, I know where the best restaurants in New Brownfields, Texas is.

You know, I had a great time. We had the feast, and boy, it was really nice little condo that we were at. And we had a great time at the family day. If that's all we take back, then we might as well have had a vacation. All those things are important, but that's not why we're here. Those are benefits of why we're here. We're here because the Creator God invited us to come so that we become patriots of His Kingdom, of the Fatherland, of what He's doing and what He's going to do to save humanity.

We're supposed to leave here with a fire. We're supposed to leave here with a fire to be patriots. There's a great danger in being a patriot, by the way. First of all, as a patriot, others who are patriots for different reasons will attack you. You'll be criticized. Many patriots suffer death for their poetry. Persecution, hard times. You know, it's interesting if you study the American Revolution. A large number of people in the colonies did not want to leave England. A large number stayed loyal to England. A large number stayed... they were basically neutral. They didn't care who won.

Just let me run my farm. And then there was another number of people who were actually a minority who said, no, we have to break away. And they had to convince everybody else that we need to break away. And it got to very ugly. People don't realize that some of the greatest atrocities... I don't know if you've seen the movie, the Patriot. In the movie, the Patriots, it showed the British Army in South Carolina, North Carolina, doing all these atrocities against the colonists.

Actually, that never happened. It was colonists who did that to each other. It was a civil war. Because half of the Carolinas stayed loyalty, and half didn't. Basically, the British Army in the Carolinas didn't do those things. It was neighbors doing it to neighbors, both patriotic for different sides. And the name of the movie was, what, the Patriot. It showed this person who was supposed to be a great patriot for the American cause. As the war went on, people began to lose their patriotism.

They became harder and harder for them to be patriots. Casualties mounted. They lost most of the battles. Actually, the colonists lost most of the battles. The British won most of them. In the end, it's just that the colonists won the ones that were important. Because the British decided it wasn't worth the cost for going home. Plus, the French showed up. People don't realize that. It was a huge French army and a French fleet that helped us.

But as the years went on in the American Revolution, it got harder and harder to get people to even want to fight. The patriotism waned. It got eroded away from the hardships of what they were going through.

And people began to think, you know, this cause isn't that important. So what? Let's pay some more taxes. So what? Let's live under British rule. It may be a little harsh at times, but it's better than this.

And it began to be eroded away. Erosion is an interesting concept, because it doesn't happen all at once. It happens over time. A little bit at a time, things erode. A number of years ago, my wife and I went to Cape Cod. She'd always wanted to see New England. So we took some time and just drove through New England. And we went to Cape Cod, and there was this beautiful lighthouse that had been there for decades, many, many decades. It had weathered all kinds of storms, including hurricanes. It had weathered, of course, all that salty air which would make it decay. They had taken care of it. This huge lighthouse was as functional, as beautiful, and as sturdy as it had been when they built it, I believe it was over 100 years ago. But it was facing a great danger, because it sat on a cliff. And those waves had been eroding away that cliff all this time. And there was no way to stop that erosion. And so they had determined, and we went through the lighthouse, and there was a little plaque there that showed that by a certain time, they would reach the point where either they would have to move the lighthouse, or it would simply fall into the ocean, because the ground underneath of it was going to be eroded away. Now, if you had looked at that lighthouse today, you'd say, well, it was many, many yards away from the ocean. And yet, in our lifetime, my lifetime, if I lived to be adorable life expectancy, that is going to fall unless they move it. Erosion is something you don't think about. You don't notice. This lighthouse had weathered everything that could be thrown at it. It could not deal with erosion. Is your kingdom patriotism? Because most of us could look back at a time we started this journey. Most of us could look back at a time when we were so excited just to go to Sabbath services, we were so excited to go to the Feast of Tabernacles, we were so excited about what this represented. And we were so excited about what those prophecies showed us. And it was a real vision. And we were patriots. And sometimes we withstood everything. We withstood some of you withstood over the years, your families turning against you, loss of jobs, loss of careers. Some of you have withstood illnesses, persecution, difficulties in order to be honest, in order to keep the Sabbath, in order to be loyal to your mate. You know, all the things we struggle with. And just like that lighthouse, if we're not careful, we've withstood the storms, but underneath it's been eroding away.

Talk about three ways that we can, this erosion can take place. I'm just briefly going to touch on these. But then I really want to talk about what happens when you truly are a kingdom patriot. What that means, what that fire means to be a patriot. I am the citizen of a fatherland. And the values and the beliefs and what that fatherland stands for is everything I am also.

Because when Christ returns, He will not accept any halfway Christian. There will be no halfway Christian. There will be accepted by Him. There will only be patriots accepted by Him. Those people who do have a fire for the land, I say the land, I mean the physical land, the kingdom that He is bringing and what it represents. Three things that erode away because we don't notice it. Remember, erosions are not noticed. It's not like you're out robbing banks. It's not like you're out committing adultery. It's not that you're lying to everybody or worshiping idols in the letter of the law. And underneath, our spirituality can just be eroding away. Like those waves pounding at the base of that cliff. What is, is that we actually begin to have a desire to imitate cultural norms. We want to fit in so much. We buy in the concepts of what really is fun, or we don't want to stick out. We don't want to look different.

We don't want to be different. This is what's so hard for kids. I understand that. I grew up in this way of life since I was seven years old. I understand what it is, not to want to somehow be different.

Somewhere along the line, it doesn't matter what your age is. You could be eight years old, or eighteen, or twenty-eight, or seventy-eight. It doesn't matter. There is some point where you decide, this is who I want to be, because this is what God, my Creator, my Father, wants me to believe. And I believe in my Fatherland. And you dedicate yourself to it, or you don't do it. You either do it or you don't do it. I've seen children make that decision. We say, well, children can't make that decision. Oh, yes, they can. And some of you sitting here made that decision when you were young. So you know what we're talking about. As a teenager, or as a child, you caught on something in your mind, and you said, this is what I want. This is what I want to be. This is what I want to dream about. This is what I want to grab hold of. This is what I want for my life, because this is what God wants for my life. And you bought into it. And there's people who never buy into it. We see people come to buy into certain aspects of the Sabbath or certain doctoral beliefs, or they like prophecy, but over the years, he roads away. So it's so simple to buy into these norms of culture. And it shows in the way we dress, it shows in the way we talk, it shows in our fact that we will just, you know, okay, I'm not committing adultery, but hey, what's wrong with a little pornography? That's really not committing adultery. That's the way we begin to allow this erosion. And the cliff is just being eaten away. The second, and I want you to think about this for a minute, because I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. It's an over emphasis. And I say over. I'm not saying you shouldn't have some emphasis, but it's an over emphasis on education and career and wealth as the primary measure of success. Now, is wealth wrong? No. Some of the greatest people in the Bible were wealthy. Some were very poor. That's not the measure one way or another of righteousness. Is it wrong to have a good career? No. You should. God expects you to take the talents He's given to you and develop them. Is it wrong to have an education? No.

All three of my children have college degrees. But that can't be the measure of your success. Those are just learning experiences along the way. They can't be the measure of your success. The measure of your success has to be that you have a father, and you have an elder brother, and you have a fatherland. And that, the measurement of that kingdom, of that family, is how you measure success.

If you measure success as fun, you will have lots of fun. And I guarantee, eventually, if it's not coupled with the understanding of God's kingdom, that fun will eventually lead to a lot of bad things in your life, because it's temporary and they have consequences.

So, we have to understand that that can't be our complete emphasis. Look at Luke chapter 12.

Luke chapter 12. I didn't go back to Luke here a little bit. Luke 12.

Let's turn to verse 16. Jesus speaks a parable. He says, Now, I can show you in the book of Proverbs where it says, Work hard. I can show you throughout the Scripture. If also Paul says, if a person doesn't work, if they refuse to eat, then people actually in the church shouldn't take care of them if they refuse to work. He actually says that. Working is important. Setting goals is important. I can show you all through the Scripture where it tells how to set goals. Part of what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. Story up. Solomon said, Go to the ant who stores up for the future. He said, Man, this guy is doing everything right. But he said, this had become his emphasis. I have done this. Now, I'm going to live my life the way I want to. Notice verse 20. But God says to him, Full. You think of all the things God can say about you. The last thing you would want God to say is, You're just a full. Full. This night your soul will be required of you, your life. Then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. Now, Mr. Foster made an interesting point in the arbitrary message. What in the world does an owner of the universe want from us?

You know, if you gave $50 in the offering, if you gave $100, you know, is there some ledger book in heaven where God says, Ooh, they gave $100. They get a special reward. That's not how it works, to quote the commercial. That's not how this works.

God doesn't need us. He loves us. And he doesn't need anything we have to offer. We need him. What is it he wants? How could you be rich towards God? Well, you pay your tithes in your offerings, yes, because that's important to us. Anytime we give something to God, it's important to us that show something about us. But God wants more than that.

You give your life to God by giving your time and your energy and everything you are.

God requires nothing less than everything. The father of the fatherland, the patroon, is going to give you the kingdom. But he says to get it, you have to be a patriot. Well, what does a patriot give? Everything.

A patriot did it for the long haul.

A patriot has a fire that doesn't erode away.

We're always in danger of having that beat down for the trials of life and the troubles. But sometimes we can stand that, and it gets eroded. And we have to fight that erosion.

The third thing I'd like to mention, and I want to go into how being a patriot really what it looks like. What it looks like. A third way that we erode our patriotism for God's kingdom erodes away is that we allow other people to distract us.

Other people outside the church and people in the church. We become offended by people. We find out that nobody's perfect.

We find out that we look around at everybody else and say, why does that person get blessed and not me? Or, hey, why does that person seem to get away with a sin and not me?

Nobody gets away with a sin. That's a really bad view of life.

In fact, I think people justify this. Well, since they get away with it, I can get away with it. Yeah, that's okay. This person's been getting away with their smoking problem. And the minister seems to know about it, and he's not doing anything about it, because they don't know what's going on, the counseling, the working together. So, you know, so what did I get drunk? That is the most... So this person's hurting themselves. That gives me a right to hurt myself. I always tell stories about my son. He's here.

When you get old enough, it's one of the few pleasures you have left, is putting down your kid. He's about, I don't know, eight years old. And he was mad at me about... I think he was mad at his mother about something. And we're driving in the car, and he says, I'm showing you, I didn't put my seat belt on. And I just started to laugh. And I said, how's that going to hurt me when you go through the windshield? Just, I guess I got to pay for the mess. Oh, yeah. So he put his seat belt on.

Now I'll show you... Oh, we do that with God all the time. We let other people bother us. We let other people offend us. We think we are owed something. We think that we should be part of an in-crowd. Or we think we... It's just all these things in our minds. And being a road away...

Just a road away. Luke 14.

Luke 14, 25.

Luke 14, starting verse 25, going through the rest of the chapter, is an important section of Scripture. I'm going to read a couple verses. He says, The great Mollotus went with him, talking about Jesus, and he turned and said to them, If anyone comes to me, does not hate his father, mother, wife, and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Now we know that when hate means there, we've talked about it many times. It means you love less by comparison. Verse 27, Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. A disciple shifts his board and being a student. It's being an absolute follower. It's being an imitator. You imitate the Master. Now it goes on and talks about counting the cost. If you want to be a disciple, you have to love Jesus Christ above all.

Now I find it interesting here. He didn't say the Father because that's a given. That was just expected. But you have to love the Father as your Father. Then Christ said, You have to love me as the one you imitate above all. And then He said, You have to count the cost. Now I'm going to ask you something, because I'm always interested when I do this, ask this question. How many of you had that Scripture read to you, counting the cost, and being a disciple of Jesus Christ when you were baptized? How many of you? Raise your hand.

It's always the same. It's about half.

That sort of used to be standard teaching back years ago in the Church. That was how we would read at baptism. And the rest of you had something similar read to you.

That's what we coveted with God to do. We made a covenant. We told the Creator of the universe, I will love your Son even if it costs me. My children, my parents, my husband, my wife, my house, my car, my boat, the shoes on my feet and my own life. And I promise you that.

You know, I look back when I made that promise, and I think, I really didn't know what that meant.

I do now.

I do now.

That's the promise you and I made.

That's the fire we're supposed to have. That's not an easy promise.

We can't run away from it, because at baptism, we all need a promise.

I find the Apostle Paul such a fascinating person in the Bible. King David is one of my heroes. Apostle Paul is one of my heroes. Paul is fascinating because of the complexity of who he is. David is not near as complex as Paul is a person, but he's very emotional and very expressive.

Paul, on the other hand, you know, sometimes he argues like a Jew. Sometimes he argues like a Greek philosopher, because he was trained that way. But what I find very interesting in so many of his letters is he lets out who he is into the letters.

You find Paul's personality coming out. Paul, in the letter he wrote to the Philippians, the Church of Philippi, lets out an enormous amount of personal expression about himself. And it all has to do with this concept of, I thought I was really somebody. I had the right religion. I kept the Ten Commandments. I worshiped in the temple of God. And I wasn't a kingdom patriot.

My fire was for the wrong things. And yet I thought what I was doing was right.

And something changed me. I came in contact with the real Christ. And when that happened, and now I saw who God really was, and it's interesting, he was still loyal to Israel and his people. But his primary loyalty changed. And he talks about that in Romans. He says, I would die for the Israelites if I could. But he said, this is greater than that. This is humanity that God's working with. And I get to be part of it. I want to go through a few segments in the book of Philippians. And look at Paul's personal expressions. And when we're done, we'll have a description of a kingdom patriot. We'll have a description of what it is to be someone who's totally, completely committed every aspect of life to say, my Patron is God, and my Fatherland is what I live for. My Fatherland is what I die for every day.

Let's go to Philippians. We'll send the rest of the sermon here in the book of Philippians.

We're just going to look at personal statements. I'm not going to go through the whole meaning of the latter heroes of the Philippians, or who the Philippians were, or the issues he's dealing with. You know, we usually look at a book that's what we cover. What I want to look at is his personal expressions, who he had become, because he had changed. Now, he was already a man of fire, right? He worked with the Sanhedrin. He tracked down Christians.

And then he said, whoa, I've got to change. But he came face to face with who Christ really was, who the Messiah really was, because he had a false concept of the Messiah.

Look at chapter 1, verse 21. We'll look at our first point.

For me, the personal, it's a personal expression. He throws his personal expressions in through his letters, but especially to the people of Philippi. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

To live is Christ, but to die is gain. What's he actually saying?

What he's saying is that knowing what I know, it would be easy to die. Because I wake up in the resurrection. You read 1 Corinthians 15. This man knew what the resurrection was. He understood it. He explained it in more detail than any writer in the entire Bible. And he said, you know what? Looking at what is waiting ahead in this vision of what you and I are celebrating now. The Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, the last great day, the eighth day. What this all encompasses. He says, looking towards that, he says, I could die in a heartbeat and wake up in that, just like that. That was fine with him. And I've been, I've sat with numerous people over the years, and literally, I can think of two occasions. What was my dad, and what was an elder that I was very close to. And both of them said to me, you know what? I'm going to die. Gary, I'm getting a better end of this deal. You've got to stay in this mess.

You know, that's exactly what Paul would have said.

Paul said, but I follow Christ. I'm a disciple. I live every day. Now, see, he wasn't depressed. He was through Philippians. He's not depressed at all. He's not, oh, I'm depressed. I'd rather die. That's not what he's saying. He's saying it would be better for me to die than go through some of the things I'm going to, but it doesn't matter, because I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I follow Him. I imitate Him. I think this has been a missing time in our culture over the years. We have not been enough of imitators of Jesus Christ. We know the prophecies. We know the great things. We know what God is doing. We keep the law.

But that's not exactly what all the women promised when we were baptized. We promised to keep the law. We promised to keep God's viewpoint ahead of us. We promised to keep these holy days. We promised to do these things, but we also promised to love Jesus Christ so much that we will give up anything to be His disciple. And whatever we, if you've made that promise, whatever you put in front of Jesus Christ, He eventually will have to require it of you. He must. I've thought about that before. That scares me. I made a promise. I will love you more than anybody, and I will put you first above anybody so I can imitate you, so I will be accepted by my Father. Because I want my Father to accept me, and I made that promise. See, that Scripture was read to me. I've read that to everybody I've ever baptized.

I'm like, wow, if I ever put something between me and God, something between me and Christ, He eventually must require it of me. So be careful what you put between you and God.

Because you made a promise not to do that. So what this shows us, our first point, is what we're going to hear from Paul, is that when Paul became a kingdom patriot, there was a change in his allegiance. He thought he had a strong allegiance to God. He thought he had an allegiance to the temple. He thought he had an allegiance to the law of God. Remember, this man is a practicing Jew who worships the true God. And when he realized what this was really all about, his allegiance changed. It still was the God, but he understood it differently. He understood it differently. His allegiance to God actually became stronger and his allegiance to Christ. And if you're going to be a kingdom patriot, you are going to have to have, at the core of your being, a total allegiance to the Almighty God, and a total allegiance to Jesus Christ to be his disciple. And if we don't do that, then we have lied to God, because we made an agreement. We made a covenant, and God sacrificed his Son.

Jesus Christ was sacrificed for that covenant.

That's the price he paid. And we say, yes, I enter into the covenant. Well, yeah. Sure, I give up everything, but not my job.

Yeah, I'll give up everything, but surely you don't mean this?

He said, why he gave up everything. See, that's why that's David there, when Christ says you have to be my disciple. Yeah, you've got to be loyal to God, or a lead you test to be the God, but it's also to Christ. Why? Because he gave up everything for this agreement to take place.

Now, this is the negative thing. I mean, I don't want greater price than you pay. How much could you love somebody? How much could you want somebody to do what the Father and Christ did for us?

That's an amazing thing, but that's got to change our allegiance. So, a Kington Pager, it has a complete allegiance, not to being a Republican or Democrat, not to all these things we think are important. It's a total allegiance to God and to His Son. Now, look what he says in verse 27 of this same chapter. He says, "...only let your conduct..." So he's talking to those people in Philippi. "...for your actions, the way you act, the way you live your life. Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. So whether I come and see you, or I'm absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel." So he tells these people, you know, whether I'm there or not there should matter. You should be joined together with one mind. We belong to our Father. Christ bought us, and we have a Fatherland.

We have a Fatherland, and we're patriots. Now, notice what he says in verse 28. "...and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that is from God. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw of me, and now here in me." Here's what we want in life. Well, unless you're different than me, okay? And I may be the most carnal here, so I always have to give you confessions and hope that everybody else understands. I tell you what I want in life. I want 100% no suffering.

I want an easy life with lots of good things, and everybody to treat me like, I don't want to be a king, you know, really nice.

Right? We want not to suffer. We want good things. We want everybody to treat us nice. Well, good luck with that.

Christianity actually produces the opposite sometimes, and that's where we see Paul understanding the second point. When you become a kingdom patriot, your life expectations change. What you expect out of life changes. Oh, you're not depressed and pessimistic. We are too pessimistic in the church sometimes, you know.

That's because we're not looking at God. We're not seeing God. We're not seeing what He does. We're not seeing what He does. We have to expect God. Now, He says here that what? But to suffer for His sake. You have to understand, if you're going to truly be a kingdom patriot, if we're not going to play church, if this is real, we will suffer because we are patriots.

That's part of the expectation. That's part of it. And we'll have good times. That's part of it. And the reward is so great that the suffering is worth it. If you don't believe the reward is great enough, you won't suffer. That's one of the hardest things to get teenagers to understand. The reward is great enough that the suffering is worth it because at that stage of life, you tend to see only what's happening right in front of you. You're very short. You have to live long enough to start to understand the expanse of life, you know, past and future. When you're young enough, the future's way out there. Tomorrow is everything. You know, when you talk about the future, that's, well, the weekend. Right? That's all the farther the future goes. You have these nebulous ideas. Oh, yeah, I'm going to go to college today. Oh, yeah, I want this career. You know, whatever. But, you know, I want to get married someday or whatever. But these are nebulous ideas. And that's what's so difficult to understand. The reward at the end and the reward throughout your life is worth what you think is a sacrifice. Some of the hardest things the parents have to teach. If we don't teach them, they will probably give it up. They will give it up because that reward means nothing is too far out there.

Paul said your expectations of life have to change. Look at chapter 3, verse 20. Chapter 3, verse 20. For our citizenship, our Fatherland, you and I are already citizens of the kingdom of God. Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we have also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You notice expectations? Paul's expectation is, I live today for Christ. I live today 100% and nobody lived life with more gusto than the Apostle Paul. I don't think that man could eat without gusto. I don't think he could do anything without energy and enjoying it. I mean, this guy was just driven all the time. He'd award me out. No wonder Mark said, let me go home. If Paul's reaction is, oh, if you're going to give up, get out of here. If I said, you can't treat him that way. Well, you'll get out of here. I'm going. Well, okay, Paul, I'll take him. And you slow down someday.

We realize here when we read through this, he looks at this. He says, my expectation is what God is doing. Who will transform, verse 21, our lowly body, that it may be conformed to his glorious body, according to the working day which he is able even to do all things to himself. You and I have different expectations.

But those expectations motivate us. And if we don't have those expectations, we're just like a lighthouse in Cape Cod. We may be weathering the storm, it appears, but underneath it's just being eaten away. And one day we slide off into the ocean. So, Kingdom Patriots, we have a different allegiance.

I say this often, but it's so I want people to understand. There is nothing politically in this country that will change it.

There's nothing politically in this country that will change. Only God can change it. And they're not going to listen. Also, individuals will listen. The country is not going to listen. A different party gets in charge. It's not going to save this country.

God's spirit will change this country.

Jesus Christ establishing God's Kingdom on this earth will change this country. But nothing is going to make this country righteous until that happens. I don't say that as a negative. I say that because the Bible tells us that.

The way of man fails.

This grand experiment, which is basically the best experiment human beings have ever come up with, but it is a human experiment.

The United States is a human experiment, and it eventually will fail. Why? Why are there elements of God's way in it? As long as those elements were sort of high, it survived. The less elements are in it, the more it will collapse. In human nature, being what it is, eventually all the elements of God's way will be thrown out.

That's why our allegiance can't be here.

We aren't patriots in the sense of a patriot for a certain country. We obey the laws. We're happy to be here. I would rather be anyplace else in the world.

But our allegiance and our expectations have to be the kingdom of God. Look at Philippians 3.3.

I find this interesting, too. Now, Paul is going to make some very interesting remarks here. He says, for we, the circumcision who worshiped, in other words, the Jews, who worshiped God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. He's going to say, let me tell you about my value system.

And this is the third thing that changes. Your value system must change. This is more than saying my allegiance has changed and my expectations have changed. I have seen people turn towards God, and I've seen people buy into the expectation of the kingdom and never truly change their value system.

My dad used to say something to me for years, and I never figured out what he was saying until probably towards the end of his life. He used to say, Gary, what you're going to find is there's lots of people. He says conversion is a process. Well, we all know that. And he says, the Bible talks about conversion of the mind, the conversion of the heart. The conversion of the mind must take place first. We must understand the doctrines. We must begin to understand the Bible. We must begin to understand the Ten Commandments. These are this conversion of the mind must take place. And then he would say, but the problem is, for many of us, it just doesn't move into the conversion of the heart. And you're never totally converted until the conversion takes place in the heart. And the heart is your values and your motivations. So we can buy into the allegiance, and we can buy into the expectations. And so we keep the letter of the law. Well, let's look at a man who obeyed God in the letter of the law. Let's look at this. He says, verse 5, circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel. He says, even when I was a baby not knowing, I was in Israel like the chosen people of God. My lineage goes quarterback to Moses on Mount Sinai and clear back to Abraham.

And he said, even before I knew what I was doing, I was keeping the law because that was circumcised on the eighth day because that's what the law said. On the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he says, I wasn't just an Israelite. I was the best an Israelite could be. And he's not saying this sarcastically. He means it.

He was the best a physical person can become without God's Spirit.

He had reached the heights of what we could do without God's Spirit. I doubt if any of us, maybe some of you did, but I doubt if any of us could make that claim. That before God called us, we'd reach the absolute heights of what human righteousness could bring. I think most of us got out of the gutter. Okay, but this is where Paul was.

And he says, concerning the law of Pharisee, and he meant that to me. I kept the letter of the wall perfectly. I never committed adultery. I never worshiped an idol. I never broke a Sabbath day. He says, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning righteousness, which is in the law, blameless. He's talking about just the letter of the law. And he's not being that sarcastically.

And then he says, but what things were gained to me, I have counted loss for Christ. For Christ. He said, all this personal identity I had became nothing when I was blinded, laying out on a dirt road, and having this voice say to me, Paul, Paul, why do you persecute me? I am Jesus, the one you persecute. And he said, all of a sudden, being a Pharisee, being circumcised on the eighth day, it didn't matter much. I was afraid. I stood before the actual Messiah, the one who will rule on earth for the Father during the millennium. Yes, indeed, or say, they also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them rubbish that I may gain Christ. Oh, what's he saying here? You read through Paul's writings. He's not saying, oh, good, I found Christ now. I don't have to keep the law. He doesn't say that. The rule just blows that ridiculous concept out of the water. What he's saying is, he realized his value system was wrong. His value system was, he was proud that he was a Pharisee. He was proud, thank you, Lord. Remember the parable that Jesus gave? Thank you, Lord, that I'm not his other man, which was the Pharisee.

He was proud of his own righteousness. He was proud of his own knowledge, and he had more knowledge than almost any Israelite. He was at the top of the rung. He knew the Torah inside and out. I'm sure he knew the Torah better than you and I do. He knew the Tanakh, the whole testament, inside and out, probably better than you and I do.

And he said, but I really, when I found out what it was all about, my whole value system had to change. You know what the hardest thing he had to do was say, oh, okay, all these non-Israelites are equal before God. He spent half of his life fighting the Romans to survive. Well, a third of his life fighting the Romans to survive, a third of his life fighting the Jews who were trying to kill him, and a third of his life fighting the church who said, oh, no, we can't let those people in. He had to fight everybody.

That was his calling. And he said, you know what? When I realize what this is really all about, this is for humanity. God loves humanity. God created all human beings for a purpose. And he realized his calling. His value system changed. He still kept the law, but now he had to learn to love his neighbor.

He still kept the law. He never murdered anybody, but now he's learned not to hate, and it was, you know, it's pretty easy for Pharisee to hate.

He had to learn a whole different value system. And he says, you know what? I look back on that life, and it was just rubbish. It was just rubbish.

The next point is in Philippians 2. We'll wrap up the last two points here. This one, Philippians 2, verse 1. This shows something different that changed the body immensely, if you understand Paul the Pharisee. Therefore, if there is any consolation in Christ, verse 1, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection of mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love being of one accord of one mind, and let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in the loneliness of mine let each esteem others better than himself. And let each of you not look out only for his own interest, but also for the interest of others. Wow! This is a long ways from the Pharisee who said, thank you God that I'm not his other man. I mean, that parable would have fit him perfectly. 2, telling people, be like me and give your life in service to others. You know, here at the Feast of Tabernacles, if we come to the Feast and we only make this activity driven and we don't find some way to serve others, then we have a problem. Our motivations haven't changed.

A kingdom patriot has different motivations. They're motivated to love God and they're motivated to love each other. And how did he learn this? See, what's amazing is he didn't learn this in Judaism. He should have. It's in the Bible. I mean, it's in the Old Testament. Love your neighbors yourself. It's there. He missed it. And when his values changed, his allegiance changed, his expectations changed, his values changed. He thought the Messiah was coming back for the Jews, and then he found out the Messiah was coming back for everyone. Boy, his expectations changed. And then to reach the point, his motivations began to change. And you see Paul, the man who persecuted church, to Paul, the man who loved the church. That's a huge change of motivation.

What motivated him changed? Have we dealt with our motivations? As a kingdom patriot, it has to be motivated. And how do we know what our motivation should be? Verse 5, Let this mind be in you, which also is in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men.

He said, what motivates us has to be changed. We have to be real disciples. This is about discipleship, that we have the same motivations as Jesus Christ. We have the same value system as Jesus Christ. Have we become converted in the mind, but not in the heart?

Because to be half converted is only to be half a Christian. Christ will not accept half Christians when He returns. He wants kingdom patriots. The last point. So our motivations change. Our last point is in Philippians 3, 12.

Philippians 3, verse 12. He says, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

His life mission changed. Every day, Paul had one mission in life, and his mission in life was to press and push and move towards where God was taking him. We can't live half-hearted Christianity. We can't live Laodicea Christianity.

You and I have been offered something that God has not offered a majority of people, yet.

And you and I weren't offered this because we were the best and the brightest and the smartest. We were basically what He founded to God. We weren't like Paul. There's no Pauls among us.

And God cleaned us up. And God said, now go, and I will take you where I'm going to take you. This Holy Day season, spend some time asking God to renew your mind towards His Kingdom.

Ask God to help you see the vision. If you don't see it, ask for it. On your knees, ask God to give me the vision. I see people, you know, we have two, three, four generations in the Church, and people sometimes keep the Feast of Tabernacles for the same reasons people keep Christmas and Easter. It's their tradition. And you and I can't do this because it's our tradition. We have to do this because it's what God is doing. Otherwise, we're just hypocrites. We're just hypocrites. Ask God to give you the vision.

Look at your own life and make sure it's not being eroded.

And determine, now this is something you have to think about and you have to determine. You determine to experience this Feast of Tabernacles.

Not when you get home, not having, right now, today, this first day to the eighth day, you determine that you're going to experience this Feast of Tabernacles as a time to renew your commitment to the promise you either made in baptism or for many of you here, you will make it in baptism. The young people, many of you will make it. There's people here sitting here, this is their first or second Feast of Tabernacles. They will make this commitment. For you, we're going to make it, and for you, that already have. You spend time renewing that commitment to be a Kingdom Patriot, understanding that your allegiance, your expectations, your values, your motivations, and your lifelong mission has been determined to you, for you, by your Creator God. And it is His good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.