Be Prepared

Well, brethren, you might remember—I'm sure you've heard the term camp heritage many times, and there's some here who have been there. We always called the camp program we did there, camp heritage, and sometimes overlooked it. We were renting from the Boy Scouts one part of what they call heritage reservation. And that will come into play in a moment, but I'll mention I spent many years there, and I had fond memories of being in that dining hall. Nice open dining hall, and they had the most beautiful fireplace at one end, with a huge stone hearth—herth hearth—stone. It was nice, and over top of the mantel, there was a wooden plaque, which had an interesting quote about education. It said, there is no teaching to compare with example. And then the initials, B.P. Now, as nice as the quote is—and I think it's very true—it intrigued me for years, those initials, because there was room they could have put the full name, which I never knew until—it turned out we had an Englishman on the staff who told us those initials, B.P., stand for Baden-Powell. Now, that's not first name, last name. It's a hyphenated last name, as in Robert Baden-Powell—first Baron Baden-Powell, actually. Formerly, Lieutenant General of the British Army. General Baden-Powell served from 1876 until 1910. Unless you're doing a history lesson, you probably don't want to take notes on this. He left the Army after a distinguished career for a new career. Now, while he was in the Army, he had published a number of books on reconnaissance and scouting. They were becoming very popular, and in 1970, held in 1907, he hosted several adolescent young men for a camp, teaching them about scouting techniques, leading to the following year when he published a book titled, Scouting for Boys. Now, you might be starting to put the things together there. Very soon afterward, the Boy Scout movement began. Boy Scouts—which, until I'd been there and learned who BP was, I didn't realize that Boy Scouts actually started in Britain and then came to America. Not long after the Boy Scouts were formed in Britain in 1908, Girl Scouts followed, and in 1910, Boy Scouts of America. Ah-ha! Now it makes perfect sense why, on a Boy Scout reservation, there was a—what it turns out is a fairly famous quote from the founder of Boy Scouts.

But I still had the question, why not just put the name Baden-Powell? Or, you know, General Baden-Powell, founder. Why just the enigmatic BP?

Unless you know a little bit about scouting and are familiar with their motto.

Which, it's interesting, when I said this morning, I saw several people mouthing it. BP can stand not only for Baden-Powell, but for Be Prepared. You might not know the Boy Scout prayer. You might not know they're the Boy Scout oath. But almost everybody knows, Be Prepared.

It stands on its own, regardless of where it came from. It's a simple concept, but it's a commendable concept. And I would venture forth to say that it's a Christian concept. It's something that God expects of us. Being prepared, well, preparing is something we should do. Being prepared is something we should be.

I'm going to go through at least a glass of water, so I'll get set up.

There are numerous examples in Scripture about being prepared. And I'm going to look at some of those today and then turn to some things that we need to do to prepare.

And especially considering we've got some pretty important events coming up in our near future that we want to prepare for. I don't want to get distracted in thinking those things yet, but you might say, really? All that from Be Prepared? So let's look at some of the examples that we can look to. And I think we can show that being prepared, as I said, is certainly a biblical concept. So, first example, I was going to say, there are some examples we can look to that are lighthearted, some fairly trivial, some very serious. So I'm going to look at three or four, depending on how fast I seem to be talking at the time. First one, we're going to go to 1 Kings 13. But I'm going to set the stage so that I don't have to read too much of it. And this is a story that I've always, I've often wanted to talk about in a sermon, but haven't had many reasons to turn to it. Let me call it the story of the lying prophet. The lying prophet, because as we'll see, he told a pretty big lie. But there's an interesting example of getting prepared here. Let me set the stage. This is after King Solomon had died, and then the Kingdom of Israel split. As we know, his son, Rehoboam, made some bad choices about taxation and how he would treat the people.

Solomon's former servant, Jeroboam, led the northern ten tribes into rebellion, and he became their king. And of course, the southern tribes, or the southern kingdom, which became known as Judah, continued following the sons of David. But Jeroboam was worried. He realized the Holy Day season is coming around. If these people travel down to Jerusalem to worship, they'll say, Oh yeah, we, you know, look at these blessings from God. We should be loyal to the king that God set up. So instead, he instituted a false set of worship, and he set up different Holy Days, counterfeit days. He set up a big feast in the eighth month of the year instead of the seventh, and said, No, you don't go to Jerusalem. Here we'll set up a place where you can worship here, and a couple other places. God didn't care for this, so he sent a prophet, a man of God, to warn Jeroboam, apparently a fairly young man. So we'll start here in 1 Kings 13.

Behold, a man of God went from Judah to Bethel. I was trying to say Bethel. It was one of the places, and I couldn't think of the name. By the word of the Eternal, Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. And this man of God, he said, he cried out against the altar by the word of the Eternal. He said, Oh, altar, altar! Thus says the Eternal. Behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David.

And on you that is on the altar, he'll sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you. Men's bone shall be burned on you. And he gave a sign that same day saying, this is the sign which the Eternal has spoken.

Surely the altar will be split apart, and the ashes on it will be poured forth. So God plans a pretty severe punishment for this false religion, although, as we'll see later, it wasn't so immediate. That sign would be immediate. But King Jeroboam doesn't like hearing this. He doesn't like having this upstart show up and say, you can't do this and you're going to suffer. So in verse 4 we see, it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God who cried out against the altar.

He stretched out his hand from the altar saying, arrest him! And his hand suddenly withered. He couldn't pull it back. And the altar then was split apart just as the man had said, and the ashes poured forth according to the sign which God had given. So the king, now in a very different attitude, says, please, entreat the favor of the eternal your God and pray for me. His hand is still out here.

He can't pull it back. Pray for me that my hand may be restored to me. The man of God being, I guess, a gracious sort, did entreat God and treated the eternal and the king's hand was restored. It became as before. That's a relief. Then the king said to the man, come home with me. Refresh yourself. I'll give you a reward. But the man of God said to the king, if you were to give me half your house, I wouldn't go with you.

Nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place. For so it was commanded me by the word of the eternal, saying, You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return, by the same way you came. And so he left by a different way, leaving Bethel. Now, all this is kind of unusual. But then again, a lot of interesting things happened with prophets in that period, where there would be interesting signs and unusual behavior. But now we're going to meet a new character. This is where we meet the man I call the lying prophet.

And I'm not just calling him a liar. He did lie, but he was a prophet, as we'll see. In verse 11, an old prophet dwelt in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the works of the man of God that they had done that day in Bethel.

They also told their father the words which he had spoken to the king. And their father said, Which way did he go? For his sons had seen the way the man of God went, who came from Judah. And he said to his sons, Saddle the donkey for me. I'm used to reading the original King James. I think it says, Saddle me the donkey.

Or does it use the other word that we... There's nothing wrong with that other word, but, you know, I don't want to teach it to the three-year-olds in the audience. So he said, Saddle me the donkey, and they saddled it for him, and he rode on it. Then he went after the man of God, and he found him sitting under an oak tree.

And he said, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said, I am. So I'm going to skip ahead in the story, but I'm going to summarize by saying, the prophet finds the man, and he offers to bring him back to his house, and he says, No. He tells him the same thing he told the king.

I was told, Don't eat or drink there. Don't go back by the same way. And then, in verse 18, he says, I too am a prophet. Hey, what do you know? You're a prophet? I'm a prophet. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the eternal, saying, Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.

And then in parentheses it says, He was lying to him. Now, I've never figured out exactly why he decided to do this, but we don't have to wonder, was he really telling the truth that an angel didn't come to him? He made this up. He went and lied to the guy. And unfortunately, the young man did believe him. And I'm guessing he's a young man. I don't know his age, but he strikes me as he was probably younger. And he went back, and they're having a meal, and he's probably relieved. You know what it's like when you're fasting.

You'd be eager to have an angel show up and say, It's okay, you can eat and drink now. Have you ever wondered if halfway through atonement, we got a message saying, God's changed his plan, you don't have to fast this day anymore. Now, hopefully you'd be suspicious, but you're probably wanting that water so much, you're going, Ahhh!

Mmm! But imagine if what happened then would be what happened to this young man. Suddenly, as I said, this fellow might have been lying, but he was a prophet, and now suddenly God inspires him to say something. Yeah, I was trying to remember if I wanted to read all of that. I'm not going to read it, but basically, he suddenly, God inspires the prophet, and says, Look, you were told not to eat or drink here, now because you did, you're going to suffer punishment. You will not be buried in the tomb of your fathers. And you wonder then, talk about awkward.

What do you say? Oh, so you're lying to me? Does he then say, well, do you want to stay and have dessert? Or does he say, I'm getting out of here? I don't know, but he does leave. He heads out, and it turns out the punishment that the prophet was inspired to pronounce on him came through sooner than expected. A lion met him on the way, and overpowered him and killed him.

Now, something unusual happens. The normal lion would kill its prey and drag it back to its den, and basically rip it up and eat it. Usually the prey isn't people. But in this case, the lion just stood there. Doesn't mutilate the body, leaves the donkey standing there, and word spreads around. And so the fella hears this, and so...

Oh, there we go. I did something unusual. I printed my notes on both sides. I lost track of where I was going. Here we go. The word gets back to the lying prophet of what's going on, and he realizes what happened. So he has words to his son. Now let's go to verse 27.

And to bury him. And he laid the corpse in his own tomb, and mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother. You know, it was his brother, and this indicates perhaps he was feeling guilty. He got him killed, and we still don't know exactly the motivation. But I'm going to stop here, and some of you might be a little angry. Well, I hope not angry, but wondering, you know, should this guy really be up here preaching? Because I want to say I went through a lot of this admittedly kind of bizarre story, because I wanted to get to those two times where the Bible goes out of its way to say, He called his sons and said, Saddle the donkey for me.

And they saddled the donkey for him. And I thought, there's a lot of lessons in the Bible. Did they have to spend the ink and the paper to say that? You know, how many other stories in the Bible did that happen, but nobody bothered to write it down? You know, it's like every time someone goes somewhere, a lot of times they did saddle a donkey. It doesn't say they put on their sandals. It goes out of his way to tell us that. Did God inspire it to be included here for a particular lesson?

Now, the fact that he said, Saddle me the donkey, and they saddled it, does illustrate a few things. It illustrates sons serving their father. You know, how many of us would like to be, Son, go do this for me. And he does it. No backtalk, no problem. And indicates the importance of delegating to others. I'm going to revisit that. And, of course, one of the main things I wanted to get to, the importance of preparation. Before you can ride the donkey, someone's got to do the preparation of saddling the donkey. So, if you have a task, you have to get ready. Now, I was considering, as I was preparing my notes, is it really worth telling this big, long story?

To get down to saying, you have to get ready before you can do something? But, if you consider the story itself, there is a dual level of preparation. There is the very basic, simple part. Let's move ahead and see where this ends. We're going to see that the lying prophet thought about preparation in a whole different way. Let's look at verse 31. So it was, after he'd buried him, he spoke to his son, saying, When I'm dead, bury me in the tomb where the man of God is laid. Lay my bones next to his bones. That's kind of unusual. He buried him in his own tomb, but you might have thought he was going to go get another tomb for himself.

But he said, no, I want to be buried right next to that guy that he never met before that day. And he says, So this guy was a man of God, and the things he said are going to come to pass.

So let's move ahead in the story. How far ahead? Approximately 350 to 400 years. We'll have to go to the next book, 2 Kings 23. Now, as I said, this is moving ahead by several hundred years. So this is after the Assyrians came and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. Almost conquered Judah, but remember when Hezekiah was there, God sent an angel and killed a large part of the army of the Assyrians, and they left. And Judah would stay until later.

The Babylonians would conquer them. So the dynasty of David continues. And we'll see a king whose name should sound familiar to us. 2 Kings 23 and verse 3. Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the eternal to follow the eternal, and keep his commandments and his testimonies and statutes with all his heart and all his soul to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And all the peoples took a stand for the covenant.

And it doesn't include his name there. But this is basically King Josiah, who had been prophesied to come and do the things that had happened. And he took a stand that he was going to stand for the way of God, and he did it in a way no king had done before with zeal and enthusiasm.

He talks about other kings who try to serve God, but it often says, but they left the high places in place. They did the right thing, but they didn't enforce it on the rest of the kingdom. Not Josiah. He went out and knocked down those high places. He destroyed the altars, tore up the groves. He was going to abolish false worship. And he even went forward into an area that had been part of the kingdom of Israel.

But of course, it wasn't anymore because Israel had been taken captive. And he goes to Bethel. Let's go to verse 15. So now he goes to Bethel and he starts destroying those high places. This was the center of the false worship that Jeroboam had established. And it says, Moreover the altar that was at Bethel and at the high place, which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who had made Israel to sin, both that altar and the high place, he broke down.

That is Josiah. He burned the high place, crushed it to powder, and burned the wooden image. And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs that were on the mountain. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar and defiled it. Okay, that's a desecration to an altar to take human bones and burn them there.

They're supposed to only be animals that are appropriate for sacrifice. So he's making this unfit for any type of worship. And this fits with the word of the Eternal, which was the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. And the man of God who proclaimed them, I'm just talking too fast, the words aren't coming out, was the man of God whose story we just read.

The man of God whom the lying prophet had lied to and got him killed, but his prophecy comes true. And then, Josiah, in verse 17, he says, What's this gravestone I see? There's a gravestone with elaborate writing. We're not sure how much of the story it tells, but apparently there's a fair bit of the story of what happened. So the men of the city told him, It's the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things, which you have done against the altar of Bethel.

That's interesting. What's this? Oh, this...it sounds like he did it just a couple of years ago. Oh, this is a man of God came up from Judah and proclaimed this. It's easy to forget. It was 350 years ago, at least, maybe 400. That's like if you happen to be in the Boston area and you saw something and said, What's this? Oh, this is something that... Now my mind just went blank. William Bradford did when he got off of...when he came here and established Boston. Oh, no, that's cool. When did he do that? Oh, in 1607. Wait, that was Jamestown.

1629 was Boston. They kept track of that. Hundreds of years later, that story was well known. So what Josiah did, he said, Okay, let him alone. Let no one move his bones. So he burned all the other bones and desecrated the altar, but when he heard this story, he said, Well, leave that guy alone. He was a man of God. So he left his bones alone with the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria. The lying prophet had his bones left alone.

That sounds...I didn't realize it had a rhyme built in there.

But I think, wow, this prophet of Samaria, the lying prophet, he could think in terms of short-term preparation, like, I've got to go talk to this guy, so saddle the donkey for me, and they saddle it, and long-term preparation. These prophecies are going to come true. I'm going to get my bones buried in the right place because I don't want them burned on the altar. I'm going to stop planning ahead. That's preparation. Getting ready for what was going to happen 400 years later.

That makes me think, when you know something's coming, it's a good idea to get ready.

That applies in our life, too, doesn't it? We've got things to get ready for, some of which we don't know how far they're coming. But we need to get ready. Get ready for the return of Jesus Christ? And in the next year or two, in our lifetime, 400 years from now, either way, we'd better get ready. But I want to move ahead. That was my light and trivial story, believe it or not. It started off that way, talking about saddling donkeys, but it ends up getting a little heavier than I thought. Let's look at another example, and I'm going to cover my other examples a little more quickly. If you'll turn to Luke 22.

Luke 22 will begin in verse 7. This is a story that we're all pretty familiar with, so I can go over it with less detail.

Luke 22 and verse 7 says, Then came the day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed. Now, in the original Greek day, the word day doesn't appear. It could have been translated season. The time of unleavened bread when the Passover would be killed. Because we know Passover comes then officially the days of unleavened bread, but that's not exactly my point. But he, that is Jesus Christ, sent Peter and John saying, Go prepare the Passover for us that we may eat. It's interesting that word prepare comes up a couple of times. So they said to him, Where do you want us to prepare? He said, Well, behold, when you've entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house which he enters. And he'll say to the master of the house, Well, the teacher said, Where's the guest room where I can eat the Passover with my disciples? He'll show you a large furnished upper room. There, make ready. So we've heard a couple times saying, Where do you want us to prepare? Go prepare. And he says, There's where you make ready. So preparation is important for something as important. I didn't mean to say important twice, but the Passover is very important. It needs to be prepared for. It shows that Jesus Christ doesn't have a problem with delegation. Now, he's delegating something much more important than saddling his donkey. But it made me wonder, how much preparation had he done? How did he know if there was going to be a guy carrying a water jug that had the right room? Now, of course, there's divine intervention. He was God. He could know things. But I wondered if he'd scouted it out ahead of time. Did he know the room he wanted and he knew it would be ready? The story doesn't provide those details, but we know they did do elaborate preparation. A meal had to be prepared. There had to be seating for the right number of people. And, of course, they had the Passover that we've read about so many times. In modern times, we prepare meticulously for the Passover. And, matter of fact, until I became a deacon, I had no idea. But that's when deacons really show their worth. There's a lot of things that have to be done, and we want them done just right for the Passover. The hall has to be ready. And one thing I learned when I came here is, like, not every congregation is the same. I've got three congregations I serve, and each of them have different arrangements, but they all have to have the arrangements done. So I said, the seating done, a plan made, who's going to carry the trays, who's going to be where. You have to have the right unleavened bread, either purchase matzos, in some cases people make it. The wine has to be poured. And I learned that's not as easy as it looks with those tiny little cups. It has to be done and prepared. The people have to know, do you need to bring your own basin for foot washing? Are they already there? Bring your towel. Preparation. Now, I might have puzzled over that phrase, you know, saddle me the donkey. Is it that important? But the phrase, make ready the Passover, there are no puzzling over that. We know it's important. It doesn't need a lot of analysis, but when you think because the weight of its importance is so well known, the need for proper preparation becomes very clear and evident. But even so, Jesus didn't hesitate to delegate preparation. Some things we can delegate for our preparation, there always be some things we want to make sure we do ourselves.

Let me turn to another example. I want to go back to ancient Israel for this one. As I said, I want to look through a series of examples that show different aspects of preparation and then talk about some preparation we'll be doing. For this one, we're going to go to 2 Samuel 16. Now, this is a case of someone making preparations that would never benefit himself, but selflessly thinking of others. Now, I'm going to jump partway into the story of Absalom's rebellion against David. Because I want to look at one small aspect of it that usually we don't even notice, but it's been brought to my attention a couple of times. Now, we know I'm not even going to focus on Absalom's preparation, although he did. Absalom decided he wanted to become king after his father David, and he wasn't going to become king unless he made himself king.

So he went through a lot of work winning over the hearts of the children of Israel, as we know. He worked to develop political support, and then he launched a coup, which was going quite successfully. But somehow news got out to David a little earlier than Absalom wanted. David got an alarm that Absalom is ruling and he's coming, so David quickly gathered up what he could with some of his supporters, and he escaped Jerusalem.

He left some supporters behind as spies. That's important to the story. Now, there's one person who was supporting Absalom who was not a spy. He might have been one of the wisest people in the kingdom. His name was Ahithophel. Ahithophel had defected to Absalom's rebellion. So he was a defector. He supported Absalom. And we'll see something about him in verse 23.

2 Samuel 16, verse 23, says, The advice of Ahithophel, which he gave in those days, was as if one had inquired at the oracle of God, or that could be interpreted the word of God. So was all the advice of Ahithophel, both with David and then with Absalom. So this Ahithophel guy, he was sharp. He could figure things out in advance, and if he told you something, it was almost as good as if God had told you. Now, assuming it was the right. Now, Ahithophel had a moral problem because he turned against his master. And I'm going to summarize here because we could spend a lot of time reading this, but when they came into Jerusalem, Absalom's thinking, okay, what do we do next? David is still out there, and he's got some supporters. He's going to build support to launch a counterattack and take back control of the kingdom. What do we do? Ahithophel gives him good advice. Basically, he says, let me take a small number of people. We'll catch David while he's worn out and isolated. All we've got to do is kill him and bring him back, and all the kingdom will be fine. This was good advice. And later on, we'll see Scripture says it was good advice. I think it would have worked. But now we turn to one of the spies David had left behind, a fellow by the name of Hushai, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Hushai the Archite was David's friend, and he was an older fella, and he was going to go with David. David said, no, you're kind of old and infirm. You'll be a burden. You stay behind, and maybe, he says, maybe you can defeat the advice of Ahithophel. And Hushai does exactly that. He gives a counter-advice, and although it's not really the best thing, he plays on Absalom's ego. And on the fears of all the men there, he says, you've got to remember who this is you're going after. This is David and his mighty men. Boy, they're upset. They're like bears who have had their cubs taken away, and he's not going to be foolish enough to lodge in the camp. He'll be hiding out in some pit. Whenever I read this account, I think of Rambo. If you ever saw the original movie, he's hanging upside down from a tree, coated in mud, and he can kill off an entire army. You know, Hushai's portraying David like that. And he said, you go to try to take him. There'll be a slaughter on our side, and it'll discourage everybody. He said, no, no. What you've got to do is get all the kingdom together, and you, Absalom, lead them in person. This is playing on Absalom's ego. Yeah, I'm going to lead the whole nation, and we'll fall on them like the dew of heaven, and everything will be fine.

And let's read in verse 14. He gives that advice. So Absalom and the men of Israel said, the advice of Hushai the Archite is better than the advice of Ahithophel. Four, it says, the Eternal. Now, they're not saying this. This is a side note. The Eternal had purpose to defeat the good advice of Ahithophel. So Ahithophel's advice was good. Hushai's was just a load of, you know, stuff. And so the Eternal had purpose to defeat the good advice of Ahithophel to the intent that the Eternal might bring disaster on Absalom.

God wasn't behind what Absalom was doing, so God worked it out. Now, what's interesting is Ahithophel was smart enough to know it. When he heard them saying, oh yeah, Hushai's advice is good, he's like, oh no. He could look ahead and say, this is going to bring disaster. You know, if they do what Hushai is saying, they're going to be defeated. David is going to be reestablished. You know what that's going to mean for Ahithophel? I'm going to get hung as a traitor. I don't know if they did hanging, but he realized right then and there he was going to die.

There's no way. I know how this is going to work out. He could figure it out. So he does something interesting. Let's read to verse 23. Now, when Ahithophel saw that his advice was not followed, he saddled a donkey. Apparently he did this one himself. Saddled me the donkey. And he rode home to his house, to his city. He didn't have a house in Jerusalem. He traveled to another city and he put his household in order and he hanged himself.

And when he died and he was buried in his father's tomb. Now, I'm not citing this story to advocate suicide. We don't believe that's the proper thing to do. If our life is in God's hands, he'll decide when our life should end. But I wanted to cite the fact that he saw his death coming. Whether at his own hand or because he was a traitor and would be executed when David came back to Jerusalem. Knowing his death was coming, he said, I gotta prepare.

I'm gonna get ready. Now, there's a lesson for all of us. Now, I don't want to go too far down that road because you can make a whole sermon on that. Now, as Christians, we always want to be ready for the end of our life because it could happen at any time. That common saying, live each day as though it's your last. We always want to be close to God.

We want to be ready for the first resurrection no matter what. But if you know, physically, you see your end coming, there's also that aspect of physical preparation. Get your affairs in order, not for your own sake. It's not going to matter to you because you'll be gone, but for your family's sake. It's a great act of love to those who do that. Now, I'll mention, I've known examples of this. I've seen this story cited in other cases, and I saw it happen just recently with Naomi Ruggles. We had her funeral earlier this week, and some of you might have been disappointed that it was only a graveside ceremony and fairly brief, but that was her plan.

You know, after Red had died, she decided she liked the funeral. She saw the value of it. So she went down and met with the funeral director and planned out her whole funeral and paid for it and had it set up. You know, she didn't think she'd live that long, so she signed the title of her car over to one of her boys and deeded her house over and got all of her, you know, everything physical arranged to be ready. She set her house in order. As I said, I don't want to go into that, but just to show that when you know what's coming, it's good to get ready.

Good to get ready with all the physical things. I want to shift gears with one more example that will be fairly brief, but this is an example of spiritual preparation. Spiritual preparation for when you know something big is coming, and we'll see this in the story of Esther. So we can turn to the book of Esther. I'm certainly not going to go through and read the whole story because there won't be time. I debated whether cutting some of these stories out, but I ended up, well, I wasn't planning on talking fast, but it's worked out that way a little bit. But most of us are fairly familiar with the story of Esther.

We know that she was a Jewess in Persia where her family had been taken captive, and by a bizarre train of events, she becomes queen of the empire without her husband even knowing that she's Jewish. They didn't go through premarital counseling back then in the same way we do now, getting to know each other.

But she's there in the palace, and things are going fine, but then evil Haman comes along. And you know there's something about you when your name always has an adjective attached to it, especially if that adjective is evil.

Evil Haman gets upset at Mordecai and decides, I'm going to not only get this guy, I'm going to kill everybody that's like him. So there's this plan to kill off all Jews throughout the empire. That's pretty bad. What can we do? I mean, Haman's up there right next to the emperor. Wait a minute. We've got somebody that's also close to the emperor. Maybe we can get Esther to go talk to him. And of course, Mordecai sends a message letting Esther know that that's what she needs him to do. But there's an obstacle. It's not as easy for her to go talk to the king as we thought. And Esther 4, we'll start in verse 15, she sends a message back to Mordecai to let him know what she's facing. Because it's not as easy as while they're having breakfast in the morning, oh hey honey, by the way, maybe you shouldn't kill all the Jews. You know, it doesn't work that way in his household.

We're in Esther, oh I'm sorry, I wanted to start in verse 11. Esther 4, verse 11, she says, All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court of the king, who has not been called, he has one law, put all to death, except for the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter that he may live. And I myself haven't been called to go into the king these thirty days. So there's a rule, you go in there and he hasn't called you, boom, you're dead.

And he has some big strong well-armed guards to do it. The only exception is if the king holds out the scepter, I'll let that one live. And I wonder, you know, what we call him, a haciyurus or a zerksis, he went to a lot of trouble to get Esther, but he wasn't all that devoted. She hadn't called her for thirty days and she figured no prospect of coming in any sooner. But what's she going to do? You know, I don't want to die.

But Mordecai sends back a message letting her know that, hey, we need you to step up one way or the other. Let's read verse 13. Mordecai told them, answer Esther this, do not think in your heart that you'll escape the king's palace, or escape in the king's palace, any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place.

That's an example of Mordecai's faith and confidence. God's going to deliver us one way or another, but you and your father's house will perish. Interesting. Mordecai was part of her father's house. They were relatives. He said, yet who knows whether you've come to the kingdom for such a time as this? This is, I think, one of my favorite scriptures in the whole Bible. I cited it in the sermon I gave before camp reminding us that we need you.

Who knows what you're here for a time like this? I don't want to develop that a whole lot now. But it does go to show that, while I'm talking the importance of us preparing, God also prepares. God was preparing for this very event, and he arranged it to have Esther there at the right time and place. But Esther had to get ready to do something that could well take her life.

And she said, okay, she resolved that she would do it, but she wanted to prepare first. Not prepare as physically like getting the donkey saddled, but prepare her mind, prepare spiritually. And so we read of what she decides to do in verse 15.

Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, Go gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me. Neither eat or drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. She didn't say, you all fast, and I'm going to have a cheeseburger. I'm going to fast two, and three days and three nights.

And so I will go to the king, which is against the law. If I perish, I perish. I like to emphasize that phrase when she said, and so. You could say that means and so or in that condition. And the condition of having been fasting for three days, I'm going to go to the king knowing that he could, you know, I could be killed before I have a chance to say a word.

But she wanted to prepare. She wanted to draw close to God, humble herself. Think about what she would say if she had the opportunity. This isn't the physical preparation, although apparently she did some physical preparation as well. You read on in the story, we know that she invited the king and Haman to a banquet. She probably had this plan in mind, and she must have had the banquet, you know, all the preparations done for that. But she wanted to make sure her attitude was right and that she was trusting in God. She prepared by fasting.

Of course, there's another example of that happening, and I could have read that. We know that Jesus Christ similarly prepared himself for the greatest challenge in his physical life, that of facing Satan. He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. And that's, you know, talk about being prepared. But I always find it interesting, the Scripture sort of said, oh, he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. After that, he was hungry, and it goes on with the story.

So it doesn't give quite the impact that we do with Esther, where she, you know, really, you saw she didn't want to do it. She was afraid, but she determined to do this preparation. So we want to be prepared, and we can see different aspects. Short-term preparation, long-term preparation, physical things that have to be arranged, spiritual, you know, self-preparation. Now, we could go on. I could spend the rest of the time here going through some of the other examples. But I want to turn to the more practical aspect. The relevance, what do we have to prepare for? And actually, we could go on. There's a lot of things we could prepare for.

There are many events in life that require preparation. Some are one-time events. Others come up on a regular basis. It occurs to me we've got this big open gulf here in our seating, because all the shoemakers are attending a wedding tomorrow, and a lot of preparation went into that. Of course, most of us have been involved in preparation for weddings at one time or another. You know, you plan on it being a one-time event, and it takes a lot of getting ready. But then again, we prepare for all the holy days, and we prepare for the weekly Sabbath. I'm sure many of you remember when it was common in the church to refer to Friday as the Preparation Day.

We don't call it that. I think it's partly because modern technology has made it so easy to prepare. We don't bake our own bread or things like that, but we do prepare each week. And, of course, we're getting ready for the fall holy days, and we want to prepare.

Matter of fact, I guess I could admit here, about halfway through my sermon, one of the main reasons, or maybe THE main reason I wanted to talk about this was, I wanted to talk about getting ready for the feast. Because that's a fun topic. We like to think about getting ready for the feast. But I want to distress the fact that it's not just something that's fun, and maybe we should do it, but it's part of our Christian life is preparing.

And we need to think about the big things and the little things and the spiritual things. We need to prepare. If we don't have proper and timely preparation for the feast, we won't enjoy it as much. We won't benefit from it as much spiritually as God intends. So let's look at some of what's required of us for the feast. What are we told we have to do so that we'll know what we have to prepare for?

To do that, let's turn back to Leviticus 23. I want to look at the two main passages of Scripture that tell us about what we have to do to keep this feast. Leviticus 23, and we'll begin in verse 33.

Then the Eternal spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of the seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. Do no customary work on it. And for seven days you'll offer an offering made by fire to the Eternal. On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation, and you'll offer an offering made by fire to the Eternal.

It's a sacred assembly. Do no customary work on it. This tells us a couple things. One, of course, that it's a seven-day festival, and the first day is a holy day, but then there's also a separate festival, the eighth day. And we did some study actually, you know, we traditionally call it the last great day, even though every time God talks about it, He calls it just the eighth day.

That's why you might have noticed in some of our literature we've usually officially referred to it now as the eighth day, because that's what God calls it. But there's nothing wrong with calling it the last great day, and I'll say it the rest of the sermon probably out of habit. There's nothing wrong with that.

But we see that, you know, it's about worshipping God. Now, we don't worship by sacrificing animals, as is described here, but we do go to God and we worship, and we make an offering. Let's look at some of what's required further, starting in verse 39. Moses is going to come back and give us more instruction. Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you've gathered in the fruit of the land, in an agricultural economy, you've finished most of your harvest by that time.

You'll keep a feast of the eternal for seven days. The first day shall be a Sabbath rest, eighth day a Sabbath rest. And you'll take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, willows of the brook, and you'll rejoice before the eternal your God. But I always thought if you stop there, it would sound like, get some branches and just jump around and rejoice. And it says, fruit, get some apples and pears. But no, he's talking about doing something a little further, so let's keep reading. In verse 42, it says, you shall dwell in booths for seven days.

Oh, that's what he wanted those leafy branches for. Dwell in booths, all who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generation may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. Now, the Hebrew word for booth is sukkot, or some translation sukkoth. It means tabernacle, which we see translated. It can be interpreted as tent. It means a temporary dwelling. And that's what I'm going to say. The meaning of the word is broad enough.

It can be something made out of branches of leafy trees. But the word can mean a hut. It could mean a shack. And I don't believe it's too much of a stretch to say it could mean a hotel room. But it has to be a temporary dwelling. It's interesting. Years ago, a fellow I knew in Texas showed me the scripture.

He said, why don't we do that? And I explained what I just said. Well, the Hebrew means temporary dwelling. And they didn't have hotels back then, but we do. He said, I'm not so sure. He said, maybe I'll get me some leafy branches and build me one of these in my hotel room with the feast. And I said, well, I don't think God would be upset if you did that.

But I've always wondered if he did, what would the hotel maid think? Can you imagine? Room? Housekeeping? What in the world is that? So I don't think we need to do that, but we do see the requirement. We're to stay in temporary dwellings. And one of the reasons we say it doesn't have to be branches and leaves, although that can work, the spiritual meaning, which I'm not going to go into in great detail today, because we've got the feast coming up where we'll learn about it a lot.

But the spiritual meaning tells us temporary dwellings. And what that means is going to help us. But let's look at some other requirements. Let's go over to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 14.

I went right by it.

I didn't plan to talk about the story of the hotel room and the sukoth in there, so I got myself sidetracked. But we'll see some other requirements and instructions here. Deuteronomy 14 and verse 22. And this is a lot of people's, one of their favorite sections of the Bible, and it is mine too, because when it tells you, do this and you're going to rejoice and have fun, you say, yeah, thanks, God, I like that.

It says, You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year, and you shall eat before the eternal your God and the place where he chooses to make his name abide, the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your wile, the firstborn of your herds and flocks, that you may learn to fear the eternal your God always. But if the journey's too long for you, so you can't carry the tithe, or if the place where the Lord your God chooses to put his name is too far from you, you don't say if it's too much or too far, just blow it off and don't go.

No, he says, exchange it into money. Turn your tithe into money and go to the place where the eternal your God chooses and spend that money for whatever your heart desires, for oxen, for sheep, you'd say for steak or lamb chops, for sheep or wine or similar drink, whatever your heart desires.

Eat there before the eternal your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household. As I said, that sounds pretty good. Now, we regularly review the teaching on tithing. I won't go into it in detail, but we know in other places, we're commanded to take a tenth of our increase and give it to God. And of course, we don't send a check address to God and put it in the mail, but in the old days, he said, I'm giving this to the Levites to support the work of God, which at that time was a temple and animal sacrifice.

Now, because we have a spiritual priesthood, the tithe goes to the church to support doing the work of God. But knowing that, the only way we could at the same time take a tithe and spend it on ourselves at the feast is if it's actually a different tithe. And we call it routinely the second tithe, or festival tithe, a tenth of our income for the purpose of rejoicing and learning to fear God.

There are some aspects of being prepared that God didn't leave us up to our own devices to figure out, and this is one of them. He told us this is how to prepare. Plan a tenth of your income and use it for this. So, in a sense, all year long, if we're setting aside a tithe and saving it, we're preparing long-term. He also didn't leave us totally up to us as to where to keep the feast. He said, go to the place where I put my name.

Now, at first, that was in Shiloh, where the tabernacle was set up and stayed for a long time. Later, God moved his name to Jerusalem, which is one way we know that God could set his name up in a different place at different times.

He didn't have to stay in Shiloh, and later, you read in Jeremiah 7, it wasn't going to stay in Jerusalem. He was going to knock down that temple. And of course he did. Now, we understand that the church is a spiritual temple. And so, understanding that God delegated to the church the ability to bind and to lose, to make binding decisions, we trust the leadership of the church to choose places to hold the Feast of Tabernacles.

And so, we don't get to choose where God places his name, but we do get a choice of which of those places we'll go to, which can be kind of fun at times. It's interesting, I say locations, because in this time in our development, we have more than one place. And as it occurred to you, it occurred to me while I was preparing this, you know, there used to be a time when in the church we all went to one— I say we—those who were in the church then before I was born all went to one place, starting with Belknap Springs, then later Big Sandy, Texas, and the church just got to be too big for it to be practical.

You know, as far as the United Church of God goes, we could all fit in one feast site now. You know, we could all go camp in the piney woods in Big Sandy. But I don't think we're going to go to that. For one thing, you know, the demographics have changed.

A lot of us are older, we're infirm, it's not easy to travel to Texas, and a lot of us wouldn't enjoy camping there, although a lot of us would. So I don't think we'll go back to one big site. But we—as I said, we have to choose one of those places and go to it and prepare.

I'm dilly-dallying, I'm running out of time faster than I thought. But I want to look at some of the physical things we need to do to prepare. One, we do need to prepare financially. I've touched on that. As I said, we'll be preparing for the feast all year if we're setting aside our second tithe. There's different ways to do that. When I had a paper route, I had a jar with my second tithe in it.

Some people open up a separate bank account and make sure that money's there. I don't have a separate account, but when we put the money in our savings, I have a separate accounting, and I've got a tally sheet of how much money in my savings account is second tithe. And I like doing that because I can look at it and say, it's not my money. If you know me very long, you know I don't like to part with my money very easily. But I don't have any problem spending God's money when he says, no, this money's for that.

Okay, it's not my money anyways. Have a nice steak or whatever. So there's different ways we need to prepare, but we do need to do it. Now, some of us don't have enough titheable income to prepare in that way, and I think my in-laws fit that category. Once you retire, you don't have an increase. So if you're going to keep the feast, you have to plan, okay, am I going to use my savings? How much can I use? It takes a bit more planning and preparation, perhaps, than just setting aside 10%.

Sometimes you draw on your savings. You might receive help from friends, family, the church. When I moved into the paid ministry, I learned that there's a procedure for requesting help from the church. It's not a bad thing. The money's there, but you have to prepare. Fill out the right form, get the paperwork done, and that's the way it works. Other aspects of preparing financially come into play.

I mentioned an offering. That's not something we want to give an offering of second tithe, because, as I said, that's God's money. So think about your own money, what you want to give as an offering. But then again, if you're taking God's money with you to the feast, do you need to exchange currency? Or, I was going to say, get traveler's checks.

Does anybody do that anymore? I don't know of anybody. But it's not a bad idea to call Vizo or MasterCard and say, by the way, I'm going to Florida for a week. Please don't put a security hold on my credit card, because I need to use it while I'm there. The last thing you want to do is be in a nice restaurant and have them say, oh, your credit card's been rejected.

I'm nowhere near my limit. Well, they thought somebody stole it or something. Anyways, also, what about back home? Do you need to pay some bills in advance? Are there financial arrangements you need to do? And who knows how many other things there are. But I want to turn to the other big thing as far as physical arrangement, and that's preparing to travel. Now, we don't have to construct booths out of branches, but we do have to go stay in temporary dwellings. I'm curious, how many of you in the past have camped for the feast?

I haven't, but in the old days, sometimes that meant preparing that set up your tent in the backyard to air it out and look for leaks. Or you clean up the RV, make sure it's packed, get the cooking apparatus. Usually, if you're camping, you've got to get in a supply of food, and there's all of that. Matter of fact, I haven't done enough to know the preparation, but I know it takes preparation. If you're like most of us, staying in a hotel, you've got to often get online or go through the book. You've got to decide where you want to make reservations. You've got to call. You've got to deal with cranky hotel clerks and reservation people that might not speak English very well because they're in Mumbai.

Sometimes deposits need to be made. And one thing, here's a, probably a lot of you have learned this, but it's always good, about a week or two before, call them again and confirm those reservations. Because you hate to get where you're going and have the desk clerk look at you blankly and say, well, we don't have a reservation in that name. Write it down. Take your confirmation number. And, of course, while you're in a temporary dwelling, your more permanent dwelling is still there. Did you set up and prepare for it to be empty for a week? I've got some electric timers that always plug some of our lights in so that certain time of night, lights come on and they go back off.

We shut off the water to make sure our washing machine doesn't flood the house. Make sure the stove is turned off, iron unplugged. If you have cats, get out a couple extra litter boxes. I'm going to say, because if you have dogs, you've got to make reservations at the kennel or get a sitter to come in. But a lot of preparation has to be done. And then there's getting to the feast. Travel is a big part of it. Now, sometimes it's further than others. You might be making airline reservations, and that's another call that's worth doing to confirm. And then think, how am I getting to the airport?

Don't wait until the day before, assuming that your brother was going to take you, and then find out that he's gone somewhere. And I say that laughingly, and most of us have never done something like that. But you want to think about that. Do you need to reserve a rental car in advance? Or if you're driving to the feast, ask yourself, when's the last time I changed those filters in oil?

When's the last time I checked the air pressure in my tires? Is my car going to get me there? Even if you're only going to Cincinnati. That's a long enough trip. You don't want to be stopping at Mount Orib with your smoke coming out from under your hood. I should say, I don't want that. I'm going to be checking those things on my car. All of it takes preparation. And it might sound kind of mundane, but one of my points is, if you have all those preparations done, you'll be able to focus on the more important things.

You'll get more spiritually out of the feast if you take care of the physical things in advance. One other thing, of course, about traveling. Most of us don't bring our closet and our dresser with us. We've got a pack. What are you going to take? It's a challenge. You're going to dress for church services eight days in a row. So you're going to take all the dress clothes you own. Oh, do you have to dry clean? Think about those things. And, of course, part of the fun is, do you need something new? Yeah, it's nice to get a new dress.

I say that vicariously. I've never bought a new dress. But I often think, okay, I like to get my suits dry cleaned, or it'd be nice to get a new suit. And then decide, do you need to buy it in advance? Is there a special sale going on? I say that soon. I visited Kohl's earlier this week. I bought a new white dress shirt. So I'll have it for the feast.

But some things it's fun to say, no, I'm not going to do that now, because shopping at the feast can be part of my enjoyment. It doesn't have to be only oxen or sheep or whatever. You can buy some things at the feast. Plan for that. I remember when I bought my kilt. That was fun. I couldn't go to Kohl's and get one of those. We were in Scotland for the feast. We were shopping. It says, spend it on whatever your heart desires.

So I said, I'm going to wear this to services tomorrow. For those of you who are going to Cincinnati in the feast, I'll tell you the longer version of the story during my sermon there.

It's fun. There's a different version of that. Say, I want to get a new tie. You see a tie and you think, wow, that's nice. I would normally never spend $30 on a tie, but it's the feast. I'm going to wear it to church tomorrow. And everybody will look and say, wow, what a nice tie. Or they won't, but I'll think it's a nice tie. Anyways, but deciding whether to shop ahead of time or not is part of that preparing to enjoy the feast. And one of the things I want to point out, while I was going to mention this, one of the ways I like to pack is long-term.

I never say, I'm packing now. I'll take this, this, this, this. I do this for camp as well as the feast. I like to start laying things out in advance. I'll do it over the course of a couple weeks. I'll set things out. It was easier when I was a bachelor, so nobody would complain about me laying my things out. But you know, I'll look and say, I don't need to take that. I'll put that, oh, I forgot this. But as I'm doing that, I'm thinking about the feast. What am I going to wear? What am I going to do? And my mind goes to the feast.

And so while I'm doing physical things, I start verging over into thinking of the spiritual things. The physical preparation, a lot of times it doesn't take that much brain power. So while we're doing those things, we can start thinking of the spiritual. To draw a parallel, I do that whenever I'm getting ready for unleavened bread.

When I'm vacuuming the car, I don't have to think that much about vacuuming, so I start thinking about getting sin out of my life. Preparing for the feast, I can start thinking about preparing not only for the feast, but for what the feast pictures. If you're still in Deuteronomy, I want to reread Deuteronomy 14, 22, and 23. You'll tithe of all the increase of the grain that your field produces. You'll eat before the eternal your God, and the place where he chooses to make his name abide.

The tithe of your grain, your new wine, and your oil, the firstborn of your herds and flocks, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. Now, I could talk about fear, what it means to fear God, but I want to talk about learning. We're going to go to the feast and learn. All this physical preparation is largely for that. So that spiritual aspect, that learning, that's the more important part. Now, what can we do now to prepare for that?

Well, for one thing, what we're doing now. The sermons in advance of the feast, often we start gearing our mind up, and we start thinking of those things. And not only the sermons here, but during the other feast days. I'll touch on that in a moment. But also, don't rely on the ministry to cover something that you need to hear.

Think about your personal Bible study. It's not a bad idea to read certain things in advance of the feast to get your mind going there. It's become somewhat of a tradition for me to read the book of Isaiah before the feast. Because, you know, it has so many millennial prophecies, and they're so beautiful and poetic.

Let's look at some of them. Let's go to Isaiah 2. I'll read just a couple of the best known, and just remind us of these things. Isaiah 2, and I'm in Isaiah 1. Verse 4, He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore.

As I said, when you're reading the book of Isaiah, now there are stuff about, you know, the prophecies against the burden of Moab and Edom and things like that. And they're worth reading. But, boy, I love you get an extended version of what's happening, or what's going to happen and think of. Let's go to chapter 11. Isaiah 11 and verse 6. And by the way, you know these so well that you can just finish them for me.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, and the young one shall lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like an ox. The nursing child will play by the cobra's hole, and the ween child shall put his hand in the viper's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Now, we could go on. There are several of those. And I don't want you to worry that I'm going to take away the specialness of getting into the sermons that go into this at the feast. We could read this every day, and it wouldn't be too much. It's great to focus on God's plan, what He's going to work out.

While we're doing those physical things, if you're talking to a cranky hotel reservation clerk, think about this in the back of your mind. It's a hassle to get ready for the time when the wolf and the calf will lie down together, the wolf and the lamb. I knew I'd get the right pairing. All those animals together. I need to get jelly here to sing the song.

And there's other things to think about, spiritual preparation. Serving at the feast is important. But the best way to serve sometimes requires preparation. You can volunteer. If you're going to sing in the choir, it takes preparation to learn those songs. I know many of you send cards to those who are left behind, who stay behind because they can't travel.

You have to prepare. You have to have the addresses or phone numbers of people you're going to call. Do that preparation.

And there's another important part of spiritual preparation that God didn't leave to chance. And that's fasting. We cited the example of Esther and how she had to get her mind right, so to speak. I think it's interesting that the one day of the year when God requires us to fast is the day of atonement, only a few days before the Feast of Tabernacles.

Now, I want to be careful because the day of atonement is rich in its own meaning, and fasting on that day is rich in its own meaning. It's not just preparing for the Feast of Tabernacles. But we do also know that all the Holy Days represent a continuous plan, and one step follows another, and they build on each other. So that fasting and that thinking about what atonement means does prepare us much more for the Feast of Tabernacles. And that's good for us to remember, and it's interesting how our conversation turns that way. By the way, of course, looking at the meaning of trumpets also prepares us for Tabernacles. But how many times have you been standing around talking after services on atonement? Because no reason to rush home unless you've got one of those blinding headaches. But the conversation, aside from what you're going to eat that night, often turns to, where are you going for the feast? What preparations? When are you leaving? And boy, we're ready for it in a way we haven't been before, because we're spiritually focused more than we had been, perhaps. And what's very important is for us to keep in mind that all of this, living our lives, is actually preparing us for the Kingdom of God.

When we're preparing...the Feast of Tabernacles pictures the Millennium and the Rule of Christ on Earth, so our preparing for the feast mirrors our life, preparing us to be in God's Kingdom. We were born to be part of God's family. So what we're doing now, living our life, isn't just preparing to keep the feast, it's preparing for what the feast represents. We're preparing continually to be born into God's family. No wonder the idea of preparation is so important. Let's turn to Revelation 19.

Revelation 19, verse 6.

Revelation 19 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, because it's the one where it talks about the sky parting and Christ comes. There's all this buildup, and now He's on a white horse. He's got many crowns on His head. He's King of kings and Lord of lords, and you see Him. But we'll see just before that happens, there's an announcement. Revelation 19, verse 6.

We, the Church of God, are to be the Bride of Christ, so we need to make ourselves ready. Talk about the importance of be prepared. As I said, if the feast pictures the Millennial Rule of Christ on earth, then our preparing for the feast, in some ways pictures our life being a preparation to become the Bride of Christ.

Now, we could spend a lot of time talking about, well, what are we going to do once that happens? What's it going to be like at the feast? I'm not going to discuss that, partly because I'm out of time.

But also because we're going to have eight days at the feast of exploring that and then preparing messages to help us learn about that.

I want to say, talk about preparing. Just a couple of days ago, we had an online conference call, a sort of quasi-computer, and several men phoning in. But all the men that are speaking at the feast in Cincinnati got on together, talking about our messages we're preparing to make sure we complement each other and that three of us don't cover the exact same topic. And, of course, it's amazing. I've been in those meetings a few times, and it's always in advance set up the way it should be. I think that's God's inspiration.

But with all that, what more is there to say?

We know that the principle of preparation for important events is well illustrated throughout Scripture. And, as I said, we can look all the way from the lying prophet saying, saddle me the donkey, to Christ sending the apostles saying, prepare for us to pass over, to Esther fasting. There are many other examples. There's different ways. We need to prepare long-term and short-term. This time of year, we're preparing for the Feast of Tabernacles.

And we need to prepare some things long-term and get our finances in order, make our travel arrangements. Some things will be shorter, like packing up and leaving the house.

And all of that, we need to remember that we're preparing spiritually.

And, real, remember that all our life is a preparation. A preparation for being in God's family. The fabulous future that God has for us.

And, remember that God is preparing for us. He has been and He is. I want to read one last scripture, 2 Corinthians 2.

We often read this when we're talking about God's Holy Spirit and how it helps us to understand and overlook this particular phrase.

2 Corinthians 2 and verse 9.

As it's written, eye is not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered the hearts of men. It's so great you couldn't even imagine it.

The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

And, of course, it goes on to say, by His Spirit, He's revealed them. But just think, it's so great we can't even imagine, but God is preparing it for us. So, knowing that God is a God who prepares, lets all of us prepare for the feast and prepare to be in God's family.