Ask, Seek, Knock

One of the most difficult things we have as human beings is how to relate to God, especially when we're in a difficult time. How do we relate to God? We don't think about relating to God sometimes when times are good, which is sad, but we get very serious about relating to God when times are bad. But most of the time when we're having difficulties in life, which we all do – personal crises, health issues, job issues, just looking at the world we live in – when we go through these difficult times, we're trying to get God to relate to us.

Right? I'm that way. When I have some difficulty in my life, I want God to relate to me. I want God to understand. I want God to intervene. Well, it's very interesting that in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives instructions about interacting with God. And they're sort of cryptic because it's like, okay, how do we do this? So let's go to Matthew 7. Matthew 7. He says, "'Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you.'" So, okay.

All we have to do is ask, seek, and knock, and we're going to get the answer we want. God's going to respond to us. There's sort of a problem, though, when you approach that verse that way, which we're going to look at in context.

He actually expands that out. It may not mean exactly what we tend to think it means. All we have to do is ask, seek, and knock, and God gives us the answer we want to happen. Okay, what does it mean to ask? What does it mean to seek? What does it mean to knock? You know, I can remember earlier in my life there were times it was like, oh, I don't know, why even take that to God? He knows it anyways.

Through time, we start to learn that it's a really bad approach because God says, ask, because He wants you to come to Him. Now, when we go to Him to ask, what are we usually doing? We're coming to God to say, this is what I need, this is what I want. And He wants us to do that, by the way.

Ask! He wants us to bring to Him our issues, our questions, our problems, and ask Him. So yes, we're supposed to do that. He wants us to understand He relates to us. If we come and we bring a question, we bring a problem, He understands and relates to us. The second part, though, changes this a little bit. Seek. Okay, I'm asking for you to give me this new job. So I'm seeking now for you to give me this new job. That doesn't make sense. We ask Him and then we seek Him. We seek how He thinks, how He acts, why He does what He does.

In other words, ask, seek, and knock isn't just going to God to receive things. It's not transactional. Ask, seek, and knock is a relationship. I am asking which you're allowed to do and you're supposed to do. He wants us to come ask. And then we are to seek Him. We are to seek His answer. We are to seek His solution. Now we have a relationship. So much of the time we actually have a one-way relationship with God. I come, I ask, I want you to do this for me.

I need your help. Please relate to me. Please relate to me. I'm not saying that's wrong, by the way. That's because before God we're like little children. Is it the way we little children are? Please relate to me. Please relate to me. Please interact with me. Please understand me. Please love me. So God understands that childlike approach we have because He's infinite and all-wise and greater than we can even imagine. And we're very finite and very small. So we come and ask, and it's please relate to me. Seeking says, okay, you're coming to me wanting me to relate to you. And I do.

So you must seek to relate to me. We must seek to relate to God, to try to understand and ask God for understanding of Him and why He will do what He does. We seek because, let's face it, we don't know. We want a certain answer and we're allowed to bring God, I need this, I'm asking you for this. That's okay. We're supposed to pour our hearts out to God.

But after we do that, instead of saying, God, now I expect your answer, we seek Him and why He will answer the way He does. Or we assume times when He just doesn't answer.

Well, He is. But the answer isn't what we don't understand. Why? Why? Why? I get that from my grandkids all the time. Why, why, why? They're seeking, okay, I want this, I ask for this, it's not happening, I need to know why. Now they're seeking me. Why? We seek God to relate to God instead of just having God relate to us.

Now fortunately, God doesn't need us the way we need God. If this was a need-need relationship, we're doomed. It's not a need-need relationship. We need Him. He wants us. And so He allows us to come, ask, pour out your hearts, tell me what's on your mind. I just love sitting down. I don't care whether it's one of the four-year-olds or the eighteen-year-old. I love the conversations where we just sit and they talk and they're picking my brain and they're asking questions and we're just discussing, right? What was it like when you were a kid?

Oh, good. They're actually seeking a relationship instead of just gimme, gimme, gimme. So we ask, we seek, we seek because we don't understand. So we have to realize we're seeking because we don't know God. None of us truly know the depths of God. We can't. We can't. We cannot in our little brain, even with the Spirit of God in us, we only have a limited understanding of God. In fact, the more you just look at creation, the more it's like, why? That's amazing. You ever wonder, see, what is God before He creates time? Okay, this gets where my mind gets blown. Or when God says, you know what? Because I love watching the hummingbirds.

Yesterday, one of them came out and just, I'm sitting there talking to Kim and she said, there's your friend. And I looked at this right at the window, just staring at me. There we are looking at each other, right? I love watching those hummingbirds. How do you say one day, you know what? I'm going to have all these different plants that need pollinated.

I've come up with bees and, you know, but I'm going to make a hummingbird. How does that thought process work? How do you design it? Does he have a drafting board? And he says, how do you do that? How does God do that? But the thing is, you say, well, He had to create it all at the same time. That's exactly right. Creation can't exist. It's too interdependent.

And all had to be done, designed and done at the exact same time. How do you do that?

I don't know. So I seek Him. It's only when we're knocked down enough and humble enough that we say, God, I want to relate to You because I have no idea how and why You do things. I just trust that You know what You're doing. We seek Him because we need Him. And remember, it's one thing to seek God's help. We're supposed to. He tells us to. He wants us to. He wants us to come to Him like that child. I need help. I can't do this. But He also wants us to understand we're not just seeking His help. We are seeking Him. You know, we can have all the knowledge and not have a relationship with God. We can understand all prophecy and not have a relationship with God. Now, is knowledge important? Yes, we have to have knowledge. Is prophecy important? Yes, we have to know about prophecy. But to have that without a relationship with God, all we have is information. God makes that information real. He brings it into context and He changes our lives. The habit of itself isn't the same as being a child of God. Remember, in the Sermon on the Mount, let's go here, Matthew 6. It's earlier in the same passage here. And we read this. Probably this ends up in a sermon or a sermonette at least once a year. So it's one of those passages we know.

But I want to go through it very quickly because I want to zero in on how this has to do with seeking. He says in verse 25, Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body, what you will put on it.

Is not life more than food and body more than clothing? In fact, I touched on this last week. Isn't life more than this? He didn't say, so let's all become hermits and never take a bath and eat nothing but bread. That's not what he says. He says, don't be overly anxious. And you know, some of our brothers and sisters in other places of the world don't know where the next meal is coming from. This is for us simple at times compared to what other people go through. I have to worry about what I'm going to eat tomorrow or what I'm going to have tomorrow. He says, look at the birds. He says, look at creation. Think about – once again, Christ is bringing us to the understanding, look at what God does and you are more important to Him than anything else in His creation. Because verse 30 He says, now if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Now that doesn't mean we get sometimes what we want. It means He says, I will take care of you, but you have to seek Me. Seek who I am and you will understand that. He says, you will understand that I am there with you. He says, verse 33, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. He doesn't promise a health and wealth gospel. He doesn't promise that you and I will never get sick. He doesn't promise that you and I won't have physical problems. He doesn't promise that we'll be wealthy. The health and wealth gospel is a heresy. What He says is, I am there with you and I am taking care of you. I am there with you and I am taking care of you. There are times in life where a loss can be so great, you just feel how can God even be here? How can God? God can't care for me to go through this. He must not love me for me to be going through this. This is more than I can take. And God says, I understand. I relate to you.

I know what you're going through. See, how could you know what grief is? Remember what happened when Jesus died? An earthquake. Darkness. You know what that is? That's the expression of God's grief. And He knew. He just went to sleep. He's waking up again. He didn't suffer eternal death. He knows all that. That's an expression of grief. He knows. So we keep asking, relate to me. And God says, well, okay, ask, bring it to me. And then relate to me a little bit and you'll start to understand. You'll start to understand what I'm doing.

Seek Him. And then it says, knock. Now, so does this mean we just pound on the door?

Okay, God's not listening to me. I'm going to pound on the door until He wakes up. I'm just going to pound on the door until He wakes up or until He gets tired. You know, really, the point here is you keep coming back because at some point you realize there's no other place to go. Now, that sounds like hopelessness, but it's not. If I'm asking God and I'm asking Him to relate to me, I'm seeking God, trying to relate to Him in the little ways that we can relate to God, then I just keep going back. You have to. Where else are you going to go? What other door are you going to go knock on? What other door are you going to go knock on? Where there's any help at all? So you just keep going back. Seeking Him to answer your issues. Seeking Him to answer your suffering. Seeking Him to answer the sins you're trying to overcome. Seeking Him! How He thinks. What He'll do.

Now, this asking is pretty easy for us. Seeking and knocking becomes the difficulty. Seeking and knocking becomes the difficulty, because now we struggle with what we're going through.

I won't ask for a show of hands because it's 100%. We all had these signs of life where we're just struggling with God. I don't get this. I don't understand this. This is too much for me. It's too much for other people. Why is this happening to this person? We struggle.

We struggle. There's a struggle that we know about in the scripture I want to go to. And then we're going to come back to Matthew 7. So let's go someplace we'll come back to this. Let's go to Genesis 32. Oh, we know this story. But I want you to think about where Jacob is. Jacob basically, and it can be argued in the eyes of his brother, stole his brother's birthright. Now this is what God had intended, but He didn't intend Jacob to handle it the way He did. What Jacob did was dishonest. And Jacob now had to run away from his brother who was going to kill him. He had to run away from his mother, his family, his father. He had to run away. And he spent years away from his family. And then he reaches the point where he has wives, he has children, he's become extremely wealthy, and he is a shepherd. Esau, on the other hand, is a leader of men. I mean, Esau is the guy you think God would have chosen because this is a leader of men. In his tribe, he has warriors, and he's looked up to. And Jacob, he's a sheep herder. He's wealthy, but he's a sheep herder.

And so Jacob is headed to meeting his brother. He knows his brother is coming, but he's got to go home. He's been away for years. He's got to go home. He's got to go back to the land what God gave to Abraham and Isaac. And he's headed back. And as Esau and his, basically his tribal army is approaching, little bits and pieces of Jacob's tribe keep showing up, you can imagine they're riding across, and down the road there's some sheep herders.

Who are you with? We're from Jacob. Then there's another group coming by. Who are you with?

Well, we're from Jacob. He sends out pieces of his tribe the whole time, just peaceful people. And Esau keeps riding towards meeting his brother. So it's the night before he's going to meet with Esau. And here's what he does. Verse 22, and he rose that night and took his two wives and two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed over the ford of Jabouk. And he took them and sent them over the brook and sent over what he had.

So now even his wife and children are gone, and he's alone. And he's now going to go have to face his brother and his army by himself. But God, you promised this. God, you did this.

God, you helped me in my life. God, I really tricked my brother. That man's going to want to kill me. He says, then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. So he's alone. You can imagine him sitting under the stars, looking across the river there, thinking, everything I love, everything I have has been sent out piece by piece as a peace offering to my brother. And now I'm going to go face him absolutely alone. And you know he's crying out to God. And someone appears to be in the room, and he's crying and someone appears to him and he knows. He knows this isn't just the man. He knows this is from God. And they start wrestling. Jacob jumps up and must grab him, and they wrestle.

Now you know, I took a wrestling class in college. I thought, oh yeah, that'll be good.

I had to wrestle a kid that was all-state champion in high school. That boy beat that tar out of me three times a week for an entire semester. I learned I'm never going to be a good wrestler. So wrestling all night, that's pretty tough.

I never get the coach saying, you know, you're actually stronger than him. But you don't have that killer instinct he has. Teach it to me, man, because I'm getting beat up three times a week. But you know, he just went on and on. He wrestles all night long.

Now when he saw that he did not prevail against him, now this is interesting, the man. Now this is really important because we know this is the one who became Jesus Christ. It's the word of God. And they're wrestling. Now this isn't an even wrestling match. This is making it even to see how long he will struggle. They see how much he really desires for God not only to interact with him, but for him to interact with God. That there's a relationship.

It's just not all one-sided. And then when he says, okay, he's proven his point, then he doesn't knock him down, beat him up, throw him, put him in a headlock. He touches his hip and destroys the socket so that he will limp the rest of his life. Just to let you know here, this is not really that equal, okay? He touched the socket of his hip and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And he said, let me go for the daybreaks. And he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. He says, no, there's a promise from God for my family and I will not let go of you until that promise is restated. He said, boy, that's pretty vain. No, it's how much do you want the promise?

How much do you want when I'm giving you? Sometimes God is letting us struggle because his question is, how much do you want when I'm giving you my child? How much do you really want to be in my kingdom? How much do you really want to live by what I tell you to do? How much do you really want this? Because he's given us these promises. How much do you want the promises? And Jacob said, I'll hang on until you kill me, basically. And I'm like, because you promised. It is okay to go to God and say, God, you promised. It's okay. You promised what? Now you better find out what he promises. Once again, he doesn't promise to make us all healthy all the time and he doesn't promise to make us wealthy all the time. He does promise to take care of us. And all of us know, probably everyone in this room has time, so God healed you. We've all seen it, but not every time. We've all seen where God has given us physical blessings, but not every time. Just because your child comes and says, I want a toy, I want a toy, I want a toy, there's a point where you say, no, you have enough toys. No, you can't have that. And of course, Memaw says, Gary, it's only a buck. No, it's enough. It's enough. They don't even like what they have. Sometimes God says, no, it's enough. Actually, she's more frugal than I am. I'm using the one.

No, I can't say that. You can't let her loose at a dollar store when she's thinking about the grandkids, you know, because she gets a whole bucket of stuff. They wrestled. What is your name? He said, well, I'm Jacob. You know that, but he's not going to argue. When God asks you a question, just give the answer. And he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob at Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.

You're struggling with your brother, right? And you struggled with Laban and you've now struggled with me. And in that struggle, you've learned. And in that struggle, you've become what I want you to become. And Jacob asks, saying, tell me your name, I pray. And of course he says, why do you ask my name? You know who I am. And he blessed him. And he said, I pray. And so Jacob called the place, the name of the place, Peniel, Peniel, for I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved. I have seen Him face to face. And I lived. And that is not expected. But he walked away understanding God more. He understand He walked away with a relationship. Now let's go back to Matthew 7 where we were at the beginning. A couple of other quick points. Matthew 7, we read verse 7. Now let's go to verse 8. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. We will find God. We will struggle and we will wrestle and we will find Him. And in it we will be changed. Whether we get sometimes what we're asking for or not is immaterial. We will be changed. We will be changed because we now have a relationship with our Creator. For what man is there among you? If his son asks for bread, we'll give him a stone. He says, let's look at this. As a human being, would you treat your children with total contempt? Would you be mean to them? So why would we expect God to be mean to us? But our children don't understand us as parents a lot. Sometimes they think we're being mean. Sometimes they think we're ignoring them. Sometimes we think, you know, we just don't understand. He says, or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a serpent?

If you then being evil, you know, with our corrupted human nature, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him? He says, how much more is God going to do this? But just think of yourself as a parent with a little child. And how sometimes there are struggles, right?

There are struggles between you and the child because the child wants something and you're saying no. You're saying later. You're saying that's actually not good for you. You're saying no, give the toy back. You can't take that from your brother or your sister. But I want it. It doesn't matter if you want it or not. You can't do that. That's wrong. Do you want somebody to take your toy? Well, that's different. No, it's not. If you just understood Me, oh, I understand you. Okay, this is how God is with us. Oh, if you just understood it, God says, oh, I understand. You're missing the point. He says, I understand what you're going through. I understand how you feel. I understand how you think. But you have to start to relate to Me and begin to understand Me. And then things will start to make a little more sense. It's interesting. In Luke's account of this, he says that Jesus said the gift He gives, the good gift, is the Holy Spirit. That's interesting. Probably two different events, but similar story given by Christ. And one, Matthew, just says He said He's going to give good things. And Luke says, yeah, like the Holy Spirit. How much more will He give us of Himself, which I think is really interesting? We're to seek Him.

Well, okay, we ask the importance of asking. It's a command here. Ask, God says. Come bring it. Even if you're asking wrong, we'll work through it, because then you have to seek Me. And you have to keep at it. Because sometimes God gives us the answer and we don't hear it. Sometimes we just don't hear it. Or sometimes we don't want it. So we think we'll just keep asking until we get a different answer. Children will do that. They'll just keep asking, thinking you're eventually going to give them a different answer. My two little granddaughters are here.

Kim takes care of them a day or two a week. They were having a little argument among themselves.

One of them wanted Kim to come up with a different answer, different solution to the problem between them. And I'm up in my office and I'm working and I'm thinking, that child is just not getting it. So I walked downstairs and I said, come here. So we walked into the bedroom. I said, sit down. She sat down. I looked at her and explained it. But no, listen to what I'm saying. Understand me. Listen to me. But no, let me just... After a while, calm down. Of course I always do that. Put your hands together. Take a few deep breaths.

And think about something nice. I'm going to think about cats. Okay, think about cats.

Now that you're not so upset, let's work through this. And eventually it was, would you want her to do this to you? No. Then why do you have the right to do it to her? Oh, we're to the golden rule that Jesus Christ taught with a four-year-old. Okay, off she went.

It took a while, but we had to have a real relationship here, back and forth and back and forth. This is God with us. He does that to me all the time. I still don't get it a lot. I can't say. I always walk away saying, yes, God, I get it. I don't. I just know it's happening and I'm sitting on the bed and He's explaining and I'm walking away thinking, I don't know. I don't get it. I don't understand. His answer is, you will. You'll have to grow up a little. Ask, seek, and knock is a strange phrase until you realize and break down what it means. Let's go to Luke 18 here. I want to cover this. I'm sort of a sideline here, but Luke 18, because this is a misunderstood parable. We have a parable about a judge who, verse 2 says, did not fear God nor regard man. Now, in other words, this is a person who's totally, completely selfish. This person does what they want to do. They have power and they use the power however they want. And he's a judge. So the case is brought before him. You know, probably you could bribe him. Probably if you're his friend, you get what you want. He's unjust. The law or what is right and wrong doesn't mean anything to him.

Now, there was a widow in the city. She came to him saying, get justice for me, for my adversary. The point is, she brings a case to the judge in which, in accordance with the law, she's right. She's the one who's right here. And a just judge would look at it and say, you know what? You've mistreated this woman and you stole from her whatever they did or you cheated her and there's a penalty for this. So that's what a just judge would do. And he would not for a while, in other words, he wouldn't even listen to her, but he would not for a while. But afterward he said within himself, though I do not fear God nor regard man. Yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she wearies me. So what happened was she just kept appearing in court. You know, it's like, oh no. Would you please escort Mrs. Salinsow from the court? I mean, every day she just shows up and it goes on and on until everybody notices. Why are you here for us? They tell you, well, he should rule against you or for you. What that person did was wrong. Well, whatever, you know, a bribe or he doesn't care. Maybe he just doesn't like widows. Maybe he looks at poor people and weak people and says, no, I rule for the people of power. People have money. I don't rule for these kinds of people. These kinds of people don't have real value. No, what happens is he just won't listen to her until he says, I've had enough of this. Just give her what she wants.

So it's a weird parable because what in the world can we learn from that? I mean, if you were there and you heard Jesus gave this parable, you'd think, okay, the next time I have a judge make a bad ruling, I just keep going back or ignores me. I just keep going back.

Well, what if he told me in contempt of court, throws me in jail, which in the Roman court they could do that. They didn't call it contempt of court, but the judge had enormous power.

But now Jesus says, listen to what that judge said, and shall God not avenge His own elect to cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? Now, some will say, well, how can Christ be using an unjust judge as a symbol for God? That's not what He's doing. He's saying if you take an evil person, and sometimes they'll give in just because someone keeps coming back, how much more will a righteous God who loves you as you keep asking be listening to you? He's talking about the knocking part here. How much more will God say, yes, I'm listening. I understand, but now's not the time for the answer. There's a reason here. Okay, I'll be back tomorrow to knock. And God says, good, I'm glad you're not. I'm glad you came. I'm glad we have this time to talk.

But it's not yet. It's not time yet. See, there's a different relationship going on here, but He's making a point. Even evil people who don't love you, you go back long enough, they'll be motivated. God's already motivated. That's the point. How shall God not avenge His own elect? Won't God, who's already motivated to help you, help you? And you understand that, so you just keep going back. You just keep going back. What am I to learn today, Father, from what I'm going through? What is it today you want me to do because of what I'm going through? And when will this be taken care of? Sometimes in life, the answer is, in the resurrection, that disappears. In the resurrection, that disappears. And then oh, that's a little longer answer than what I wanted. I didn't want to have to wait that long for an answer. No, no, no. It's taken care of. At that point, it's taken care of, so don't worry about it. Okay, can I come back tomorrow and knock? You sure can. I want you to come back and ask and seek and knock tomorrow. We continue this relationship. So that to say, to try to say He's comparing, He's not. He's making a contrast. If bad people will do this, how much more greater is God who loves you? So time to God is a different...

it doesn't mean the same thing it means to us. Look what he says in verse 1. I didn't read verse 1. He spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, that we are to always never stop going back. We're to always go ask and seek and knock, to take it back to God, to let Him interact with us. And sometimes, as time goes on, you start to realize that's the greatest gift you can have. You think you're in a certain trial that is too overwhelming, and then in the course of time, maybe there's... God gives you some peace. God gives you an insight. And in that insight and in that peace you say, oh, this is what He wants to give me. And then you start to realize that's the greatest gift you can have. This is what He wants to give me. This isn't the answer I wanted, but I understand now what He's doing in this long-term process of raising children. You don't expect a four-year-old to be like an eight-year-old. You don't expect an eight-year-old to be like a 12-year-old. You don't expect a 12-year-old to be like an 18-year-old, right?

That's the way God is with us. He interacts with us where we are, and He keeps saying, come ask, come seek, come knock, so that we can interact, so that we can have a relationship, not only about me relating to you, God says, but you're relating to me. That's one of the neat things, the great things about the experiences of Jesus Christ. We can't say, you don't know.

Oh yes, I do. You don't know about being mistreated by somebody. Oh yes, I do. You don't know what it is to be betrayed. Yes, I do. You don't know what it is to suffer pain. Yes, I do. You don't know. Yes, I do. Come relate to me a little bit. I'm relating to you, but it's not totally connected to you relate to me. I find it amazing that God doesn't need us, but He wants us to relate to Him. He wants to have a relationship so that we know Him. We re-interact with Him. There's times we say, I know what God wants here, and we do what God wants, even though it's not what you want. And it's no, no, He knows better. My father knows better. My older brother knows better. So I will do that. So we go sit on the bed and listen to Him explain, and we relate to Him until eventually we get exactly what Jesus is doing to us today, and people acquaint You could be with God who isn't Gar- discoveries in the present. You would consider Him and certain things would have been global warming up, hopeful warming up. Hallstops? Cass- because hesn Mass- alive! Of course, theThat little resenters, professional and fair-talk markers go in there I don't know if it is the way we are, but that little tiny light went on.

Isn't that what God does with us all the time?

And we discount the little tiny light because we want the big problem solved.

Which in this case I would have had to take a whole box of toys and put it in the closet so they would stop fighting over them.

I mean, I could have done that solution.

But no, we'll leave the box out and see how you do.

The Transcendent God is outside this finite space and time we live in.

He's not encased in a body that has incredible limitations.

He knows what's happening here.

He knows what's happening in Bangkok, in Beijing, people who aren't his children.

He knows what's happening in their lives right now.

That's way outside anything we can imagine, right?

I'm already starting to think about Peach Cobbler.

I shouldn't have said that because now there won't be any left when I get back there.

And then I'll be upset and I'll have to go relate to God to forgive all of you.

See, we're so finite. He's not.

So we can't entirely relate, but we try.

He sees bigger picture, bigger purpose, and He promises us something that He says that we can't even understand.

What He promises us is beyond our imagination.

In fact, He says, you can't even – one of the writers in the New Testament said, you can't even imagine what He's going to do.

And I have a big imagination.

We're getting ready to go to observe the Feast of Trumpets, the David Tolman Feast of Tabernacles, and that last day, that eighth day, that last great day.

That's a vision that is remarkable.

The return of Jesus Christ, the setting up of God's Kingdom on earth, the reconciling of the children of God to Him by becoming spirit, which the David Tolman is all about.

That millennial period, the releasing of Satan for a while, after He's bound for a thousand years, the great white throne judgment, the cleansing of the earth, all of the universe through fire, a new creation and God bringing the city we talked about last week here to earth.

We keep those days because it focuses us on that reality, which is His reality.

He's created it. It's going to happen.

That city is coming. Christ is coming. Satan is going to be bound. It's all going to happen.

He's promised it. He's planned it. It's right there.

And we have been given this opportunity to know a little bit about God, a little bit about the mind of God, a little bit about how He says, okay, I'll let you be exposed to evil and you're going to have to choose good or evil.

But in the end, for those who choose Him and Christ and good, this is what it's going to be.

This is what I will give you, even though now we struggle, even though now we will struggle to the day we die, because that's the promise.

It's less than two weeks since we've trumped. As we approach those times, we have to strip away all the physical, because there's a great physical time, too. The spring Holy Days are great. The fall Holy Days are great.

Physically, it's just such a wonderful time. And it should be. It's supposed to be.

We're told to have that this is supposed to be a wonderful physical time.

But if that's all it is, we have failed.

Because what these Holy Days do is they bring us into a glimpse.

Ask, seek, knock, a glimpse to who we're dealing with.

A glimpse of who we're dealing with.

Prepare yourself for the feasts of these fall Holy Days.

Think about them. Pray about them.

And ask God to help you understand Him, to see Him in these Holy Days, to see Jesus Christ in these Holy Days, because Christ is instrumental in every Holy Day.

And in the last great day, what does it say He does? He presents the Kingdom to the Father. He's prepared it.

He gives it to Him. He's instrumental in all this so that we can understand both the Father and the Christ.

Because remember, Christ reveals the Father, and the Father reveals Christ.

Those two statements are made.

We must now, as we prepare for this time, remember, in spite of everything we go through every day, what the Almighty God has given to us and what He's called us to, and what these Holy Days mean to us in guiding and directing us to what? Towards God and who He is.