Be Still and Know God

Well, here we are on the last holy day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For six days, so far, we've been eating unleavened bread, and we've been striving to put out that leaven, that sin of corruption that invades our minds so easily. And now, symbolically, we stand at the edge of the Red Sea, as it were. And now we're in a real paradox. Because we've got the armies of Pharaoh rolling up behind us. We've got an ocean in front of us, and none of us can swim. And you can't swim that far, anyway. It's a real pickle. You know, you and I, in this time, have come up against—we've gone through this life, we're developing righteousness, we're growing as God's children, and now we're coming up to the termination, as it were.

We're a wall. We can't get out of our human bodies. We can't get out of our human state. And pulling right up behind us is the Great Tribulation, the Great Beast Power, that wants to crush and annihilate us, or to deceive us and take us back into sin. This is not a real comfortable position to be in. And many of us say, well, I just hope I die before it happens. I like to get out of here.

Take me in my sleep. Well, that's not a very courageous position to take. I think as we grow and mature, we begin to say, you know, I trust God to, first of all, develop me into that unleavened bread He needs, and then to sustain me, strengthen me, inspire me, and carry on no matter what He wants me to do. You know, at the end time, Jesus said there's going to be all these trials and all this stuff in the tribulation. He says, but it's going to be given to you to be taken before magistrates and taken into difficult places. Don't even think about what you're going to say. I'm going to put the words in your mouth.

I've got some work for you to do. I've got some things for you to say to some important people. You know, we need to have the courage on this last great day to go forward all the way through whatever God wants to take us to and see the armies of Pharaoh finally crushed and buried and annihilated. And this system that enslaved Israel represented the empire of Satan, the religious system that wants to enslave us, that we've been freed from. And there's an end time. There's a swallowing up of the earth of those who come after the church, just like the swallowing up of Pharaoh's armies that came after Israel.

We see very darkly, as it were, unclearly the specifics of prophecy, but we do have a general idea that God is with us, that God will have His work accomplished if we are ones who are genuinely participating in that. If you look at the Old and New Testaments, you can see it in one lens as a history of churches, a history of the church in the wilderness, a history of the church, the New Covenant church, a history of churches. Each of the histories begins with a strong leader. It's followed by sons of some compromise, and then followed by grandchildren of apathy and departure.

Then there's a repeat where these individuals who are departing get conquered, they cry out, they're rescued again. A new period of strength comes in with a first generation, followed by a second generation of somewhat apathetic individuals and a third generation of essentially departure. You can see these generations, for instance, in Abraham, father of the faithful, followed by Isaac, and then Jacob and his sons in Egypt. You can turn to Joshua 24, verses 2-5. Joshua 24, verse 2.

Joshua said to the people, "'Thus says the LORD your God of Israel, your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, they dwelt on the other side of the river in old times, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, I led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants, and gave him Isaac. To Isaac I gave Jacob, and Esau to Esau I gave the mountains of Seir to possess.

But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt.'" And that's where that went. You see those three generations right there. And you saw eventually the Israelites were slaves, they didn't even know God. And then he begins to repeat again. You see Moses and Aaron, a first generation of leaders.

You see Joshua, 40 some years after that, take over from Moses as a second generation of leadership. If you notice in Joshua chapter 4, in the New King James Bible, Joshua chapter 4, notice the header. Well, we won't worry about that. It's not in this Bible. But it says the second generation, okay? The second generation, one of the Bibles that I have.

So let's look just for a moment at the second generation in Joshua chapter 24. If we continue on from where we were in Joshua 24, let's go to Joshua 24 anyway. And his time lies, we'll look at where we... Joshua 24, and we'll start in verse 2. Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord your God. This is what we just read a while ago. So let's drop down into verse 5. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Israel. There's another generation, a first generation. And now we come down to verse 6.

Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and brought you into the land of the Amorites, and so on and so forth. Dropping down in verse 12. Then I sent a hornet before you which drove them out from before you, and these kings and people of the land were sort of driven out. The second generation inherits the land. Then the third generation, we pick it up in the next chapter, which is Judges chapter 1. Now after the death of Joshua, what happens? It came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, you know, shall we do this, shall we do that?

Well, you get down to verse 27. They were supposed to go in and do these things, but verse 27, however, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of the land. This generation tends to be a third generation that doesn't perform. Then it came to pass Ephraimites in verse 29 did not drive out the Canaanites. The Zebulonites did not drive out the inhabitants of Kidron. Verse 31, Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of etc., etc., and you just go on and on. You have a breakdown of the third generation, a failure, and they become essentially the slaves of the Philistines.

And then you start over again. Another cycle. Chapter 1 here in verse 12 of Judges. Well, let's not delve into that right now. Judges chapter 2, let's go to. Judges chapter 2, verse 11, But then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served their bales, and they forsook the Lord the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt.

And that's sort of the end of the third generation. Then another cycle in verse 30 begins of the third chapter. It says, So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land rested for eighty years. Great. So you have a resurgence after they're taken captive, eighty years.

What's that? That's a couple of generations. A couple of generations. And then chapter 4, verse 1, When Ihu was dead, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. Third generation comes along. It's just a cycle over and over and over. Today I'd like to examine the phenomenon of generational drift in the church. It's something that existed from old times. It continues down through the New Testament period. It impacts us today as we bump up against this time of the end.

Something that would do us well to take a look at and be prepared for and address in our minds what we should have as a relationship with God, with His church, and as far as our faith and our dedication to what this Feast of Unleavened Bread is all about, we need to really stop and examine ourselves and see where we are. What will happen to you? We must each ask that. If you're 5 years old, if you're 50 years old, if you're 100 years old, we should each ask the question, what is going to happen with me?

It doesn't have to, but things are prophesied about this church. Five foolish virgins, five wives, five who don't do this, five who don't do that. The lessons of Jesus Christ to the churches in Revelation for those who have ears to hear. They don't have to happen to you and me, but it really comes down to you and me deciding what's going to happen. The title of the sermon today is, Be Still and Know God.

According to corporate observers, there are recognizable phases in the life of an organization. Recognizable phases in the life of an organization. It generally begins with, first generation begins the company. That's the individual with the vision, with the sacrifice to go in and get this thing organized, go through all the difficulty of setting it up, sacrificing time, sacrificing the person, putting in the structure.

That's pretty much the first generation of the company. The second generation, even within the family often that starts the company, you bring in your sons and your daughters and they work at the company. The second generation, they didn't sacrifice.

They don't have the same involvement. They're happy to participate and they feel energetic and somewhat empowered by it. They work there, but they tend to question the organization. Second guess, they don't necessarily understand why things are the way they were and they tend to be critical of that. They're all about why and why not. They're very challenging. The changes that they envision will alter this perspective of the company generally.

They will have reasoning as to why. The very purpose of the company often will get watered down and somewhat diverted. They'll lose their scope. They'll get interested in something else and kind of fragment the vision, as it were. The third generation comes along with more of a beneficiary mentality. They don't really remember or even know the original founder. It might have been a grandfather. They weren't around that individual. They seek. They expect easier methods, better support.

They expect to receive at least as much as the previous ones did or even a greater return for the investment that they put into it. They tend to think the original sacrifice was archaic and maybe dumb. The principles, the ethics, the self-control are things that are, once again, old-fashioned. The mentality is self-employment is so much better because you have so much more free time and money to spend. It's typical in these companies, especially family-begun companies, that there is no fourth generation to the company.

It ends with the third generation. It either collapses or it's bought out by somebody and dissolved. Instead, what happens is a new visionary arises from the ashes and sacrifices and starts again and sets up a framework and a new company gets launched. If you remember, for instance, the kingdom of David. As we were looking at some scriptures a while ago, we came up to the Judges period.

After Samson brought down the walls and after some events happened, God brought in a new first generation under David. David was a man who learned to fear God, a man who developed a passion for God's law. He wrote it out. He began to obey it more and more. He became a leading individual with a heart that ended up much like God's Himself.

Then he had a son, Solomon. You see where this is going, right off the bat. Solomon had more of a flair, more of taking this fine, organized United Kingdom into more of an exciting realm, a lot of spending, a lot of relationships, a lot of taxation, higher tech. It was very showy, etc., etc. In the second generation, he began to also question certain things, certain things that were in the law that he was to write that he didn't abide by, marrying and interrelating and having chariots and horses and a large focus on himself that eventually led him away from God.

Then in the third generation, we had Jeroboam and Reoboam. That was the disillusion of the company, as it were, of the church and the wilderness at that point. You had ten tribes in the north that eventually would immediately fracture off. They would not follow the same values. They would follow different values they thought were better and eventually become the lost ten tribes. Once again, you had a collapse of that situation. It's kind of the same scenario when you look at the first century church. Jesus Christ was the founder, along with the apostles, providing the foundation of the church.

They were individuals who were strong and bold. They sacrificed everything, including their lives. They were resolute, absolute. They were the first generation. We see in Matthew 4, verse 23, an example of that level of buy-in and participation. Matthew 4, verse 23, Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. In verse 25, great multitudes followed him from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. There was the original founder, and the company was flourishing.

We see on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 baptized, and the apostles boldly proclaiming the gospel. Great growth was taking place in the church. We saw individuals, pillars in the church, like Stephen, who would stand up under God's inspiration and give a message that God himself killed. Individuals who would go out and do God's work, irrespective of whether they got put in prison or not. Jesus said in verse 18 of Matthew 4, oh, verse 19, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. You are going to go and raise up another generation. You're going to go out and raise up another generation after you.

I'm going to make you fishers of men. You're going to make disciples. Second generation, in Matthew 28, we saw specifically what that assignment was to be. We know this is his commission to the church. Matthew 28, verse 18 through 20, Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and in earth.

He's the head of the church. He's the founder. But the apostles were also the foundation of this church, in that first generation we might call it. He says, therefore go and make disciples. Disciples are like clones. Go make clones of me and clones of yourselves.

I made disciples of you. Now you go and make disciples of, essentially, of yourselves that follow you like you follow me, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them, notice, to observe all things that I have commanded you. Now that is the objective of our work. It's not the preaching of the Gospel. It's not how many people are in the church, the disciples. The objective from the family of God is disciples who obey those things I command.

That is our real work. Of course, it involves all the process, but the finished product is the precious fruit of the ground that the farmer is waiting for. It's that precious fruit that God wants to harvest, the feast of harvest that's just coming up. That is what God is focused on, and that's the work that we should be about, and all participating in wherever we can.

Now, a third generation was to come. Some 60 years later, we find in Revelation 2, verse 4, Jesus now speaks in about 90 AD. His ministry was in 30 AD. The apostles went out and called up another generation. The apostles talked to that generation through Timothy and Titus at about 60 AD. We come another 30 years, and now we're talking to the third generation in the church. What do we find in Revelation 2 and 3? We could look at some of the things that Jesus says here.

Revelation 2, verse 4, for instance, he says, Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first agape. Oh, remember where we started out with this church? You've got to love agape, God, with all your heart, soul, and might, and they charged out and did that. Then Paul has to encourage Timothy to get back at that, and now we find you have left that. Third generation. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent, and do the first. Or the Greek word protos means the chief or primary agape.

In other words, put agape back primary. Loving God with your heart, soul, and might, and your neighbors yourself, put that back as primary. Because they had slipped. Chapter 3, for instance. Verse 14. Verse 15, I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. This is typical of a third generation. They never saw, these people never saw Jesus Christ in their lifetime. They've heard about him. They learned from the apostles. But this is another generation. In the society around, the new ways of doing things, the new ways of thinking, these things permeate. And so, consequently, he says, I know your works, you're neither cold nor hot.

So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. In other words, you won't be in the body. The business, the company, essentially, as far as your concern, dies. Now, is that what God wants for his church? Is that what he wants for you and me?

We have to look at our lives and see. As we observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, what does that piece of unleavened bread mean to us? As we stand with our toes in the Red Sea, what's going to happen to us? Are we going to be, when Christ returns, have the ocean parted, and we go into the kingdom, into our promised land?

Or have we become something else? Have we shifted? These are important things for me to ask myself. And also to be encouraged by the fact that we're still here. You know, it wasn't that long ago we had 150,000 members. You're here. I am proud of you. And I'm going to keep pushing at you and me until Christ gets back to see if we can't all be wise virgins.

No five. That we can't all be sheep and no goats. That we can't all be wheat and no tares. Because I do not believe that Jesus said in Matthew 25, all three of those parables, because it has to happen. I believe those are parables of opportunity. Given so that we can change, that we can grow, that we can more urgently stir up the Spirit and become that bread like He is the bread.

So I am not at all resolved that those parables, or even what is said there, the seven lessons to the Church are your reality, or my reality. Unless we want them to be. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, am I really in the faith? Do I really want to do what God wants me to do? Let me ask you a question. Why are youth not so prevalent in the Church today? Well, consider. Consider that our youth are a type of a third generation in the Church.

And you youth, whether you're teens or whomever, you youth have decisions to make, important decisions to make, and realizations to make. As far as your mindset, living in the society, coming through the school systems, coming through the television, coming through the news, the impact that those things has on you, that really try to shape your identity. Do you allow that? To what degree do you allow and permit that? If you look at generations in the Church, we could look back at Mr.

Armstrong and the older leaders of the Church, people like Mr. Luecker and others, we could say that's generation one. Passionate, driven, organized, worked very hard. I grew up among that generation of Pasadena as a baby, and then through the years, and I got to see every day of it.

I got to be right there. My father worked for Mr. Armstrong every day, so I had this window into the struggles and the strain of raising up a church organization from a little bit of nothing and a bunch of old buildings into something that was really proclaiming the gospel. Then my generation came along in the 70s and the 80s, so to speak, in the 90s, and we sort of inherited that, as it were.

We weren't in the groundbreaking. We didn't really put our heart and soul into it. We had all the literature published for it. We had all these things, and if you look at the next generation, it kind of said, well, I'm not so trusting. I think maybe those people have made some mistakes.

I'm not sure everything that they did was just right. I'm not sure that the organization is just right. I'm not sure that the religion, the theology is just right. And it was my generation, and those who actually grew up in the church with me, that took most of the church to Protestantism, just took it away, some 90 percent. But there are those of us, again, that are faithful, and we're here, and we're marching on, and we're growing, and we're getting the resolve that our forefathers in the faith had, and God's Holy Spirit is working through us, and that's a good thing. That's really a good thing, and I'm very, very proud of all of you and all the members that are faithful and struggling and trying, and that's a good thing. But we have to understand we also now have the young, and I know how sorry some of us feel for what our youth have to go through in this manipulated sewer of a society that has basically lost all of its moorings, and yet is pushing itself off as the most enlightened society in history. It's really a tragedy.

No absolutes. Everything's pretty much neutral.

The church seems archaic, confining, restricting. This generation, the new generation, does not have loyalty to organizations. You know, our forefathers used to go work for a company, and that was their company. That was their brand, and you stuck with the brand. You started there, and you finished there. Today, workers at Microsoft were found, the very people making the product, were found selling it out the back door themselves to make a little extra money. There's no brand to the company. The loyalty is to me and my career wherever that might be, and there are many opportunities. You know, when you think about this particular age that we're in, there's no common mindset of rules or laws or a company. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm painting with a broad brush, and yet this is the generation of the hackers. This is the generation of individuals where they live in a world that is kind of freewheeling. All of the planet is freewheeling. I'm not talking about just the young adults. I'm talking about the leadership of the world right now is pretty flexible, freewheeling, without loyalty even to one's own country. There's no loyalties of our leadership to this country. The loyalty is more to the wallet, to the opportunities, and it's not just this country, it's all the countries. Look at the Bible. We find that Timothy was probably of the second generation. Second generation wasn't the first generation. Paul was the first generation. We see the apostle Paul riding through all this stuff, dealing with everything. And who's his son and the Lord? Timothy. Let's take a look at Timothy for a minute. 1 Timothy chapter 3.

In the second generation of people that Christ said, you go out and you preach the gospel, and you disciple, and you teach them to observe all things, well, here's Timothy.

And the books of 1 Timothy can be looked at as corrective, trying to get an individual to wake up, to begin to do those things that need to be done and not be sort of a passive or, um, you might say, an individual who knows but doesn't actually get around to doing it. 1 Timothy chapter 3, for instance, in verse 7. Moreover, he says, these individuals must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach in the snare of the devil.

Why didn't Timothy know that? He talks about deacons in verse 8, and so on and so forth.

He just keeps going.

He says, in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 2.

I'm sorry, verse 22. 2 Timothy 2 verse 22.

Flee youthful lust. Why is he telling Timothy to flee youthful lust? He's a young man.

Pursue righteousness. Come on, Timothy. You've got to get going here. Pursue faith and love and peace out of a pure heart.

Avoid foolish and ignorant disputes. Verse 24, a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all. You can see this in one sense of just being, oh, this is what you should do. In another sense, there's challenges here. You go right on down through this. What's going to happen?

In chapter 4 verse 1, I charge you therefore before the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead. This is pretty strong. I'm telling you, I'm charging you. Preach the Word. Evidently, he wasn't preaching the Word. He wasn't being in, instant, in, season, and out, convincing, rebuking, and exhorting. There's issues here, you see. And we all need to take these lessons. It's good for me. And say, hey, how much am I doing the generational thing and watering it a bit, or slacking a bit, or taking it easy a little bit?

When you read Revelations 2 and 3, again, we're talking to the third generation, both then and now. A generation that happens before Christ's return. He said, I'm coming quickly. My reward's with me. And when you look at the books of Peter, James, John, and Jude, all of those are speaking to the third generation, the end of the second and the third generation, of individuals who were departing the faith. They were critical.

In one place, Paul is having to defend himself. Am I not an apostle? Haven't I seen Jesus Christ? Haven't I done this? You have that defense against the second generation.

The third generation, you have people who have started to leave, and others coming in and just taking people out wholesale.

Whatever happens in society always impacts the members of the Church.

We're beginning to have new thinkers in the Church today.

Winds of enlightened people who know the calendar better than anyone blow through and take people away. This is kind of new in the sense that more and more people are finding they don't need structure in organization. Just like they don't believe in company structure, now they don't believe in church structure. They can do it themselves, they can do it at home, they can freewheel, they can all be ministers, I guess. See, these mindsets are of a new model. They're not really new at all. But it's a looser, less strict, accepting people as they are, more tolerant, non-judgmental about sin, coexisting with sin, non-conforming to structure, non-conforming to teachings or even what the Bible calls traditions, compromising with various societal norms that are growing out there. And yet we might say, well, I'm kind of defensive about that. I don't really agree with what he's saying. Well, look in 2 Timothy 3 and verse 1. Here it is from the Bible. But know this, that in the last days, do you feel like you're living in the last days? I feel like we're getting real close, don't you?

Well, in the last days, dangerous times will come. We've got to realize the danger that's there.

We may be growing in God's righteousness, but our feet are up against the end time with Satan the Devil, and we know the beast's power is going to unleash itself against the church and try to take us captive. And much of the church will get decimated. Why is that? Is it because they are not really where they need to be? You know, Jesus said in the book of Luke, he said, these things are going to happen, but you be a person of prayer and watching your spiritual state so that you may be considered worthy to escape these things. And he says in Matthew 24, you pray that your flight will be not on the Sabbath or in the winter. There is a group of the third generation that is so strong, that is so pure, that God considers them to be worthy.

And over in Revelation, if you want to just turn there, over in the book of Revelation chapter 3.

And let's see, it's about verse 12.

No, verse 10, because you have kept my command to persevere, persevere in the society and all this stuff, to persevere in godliness. That's what he's talking about. I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Behold, I'm coming quickly. Hold fast what you have that no man may take your crown. There are individuals that do not succumb to generation 3 or generation 2, but they are just like generation 1 in that sense. So it all depends on you and me as to what we are going to do with our lives, what kind of mindset we're going to develop. And back in 2 Timothy chapter 3, know this and then the last days dangerous times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves. Well, that's true. But are you a lover of yourself? Is that, are you first and foremost a me person?

Is it all about me? Do you think about me and sing about me and worship about me? And it's all about me. And I, this is a song came on this morning. It was just typical of gospel.

And he walks with me. It didn't have words, but it was on an instrumental station. We're just listening. It threw a religious song in there. Mary says, do you hear that? Do you hear that? I said, no, what is it? She says, I knew this back in another church when she was a kid. And she goes, and he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, him and me, no one else has ever known. And that is what religion is today. We ought to see that. If you feel really inspired, watch out. You're probably singing or reading a whole bunch of eyes and knees. That's symbolic of this generation. It's the me generation.

Men are lovers of themselves. And next, lovers of money.

That mindset is not the one who sacrifices, is it? It's not the one who's giving and finding needs and helping. No, it's piling up. And on and on. It goes on down. There's quite a few things there.

Now, verse 10, But you have carefully followed my doctrine. See, you and I, we don't have to be part of the first verses of chapter 3. We can be that different group, and you are that different group. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here today. You have carefully followed my doctrine. My manner of life. This is one generation talking to another generation. First generation talking to second generation.

My purpose, faith, long suffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me. And all of them, the Lord delivered me. You know, this is a day of deliverance.

At the Red Sea, Israelites were delivered. And at the end time, the people who really are focused on God and being godly and developing that agape first mindset, we just read in Revelation 3, are going to go on through. The earth is going to open in that flood of probably an army of who knows what will be swallowed up. And they're taken to a place of safety. This is all about deliverance for those who really, really are the people of God. And I want to be one of those now, not then. I want you to be one of those now. Some of you kids, by the way, really inspire me. Some of our young kids, below teenagers, start getting these values in their head. Grandma and Grandpa, or parents start teaching or whatever, and they embrace them, and they grow up through their teenage years. And just take your breath away. We have teenagers, and I'm not just blowing hot air here. We have teenagers that are some of the finest examples you will find of humans anywhere. And then they get baptized, marry, and become young adults.

And they set such an example, I feel in some ways, small when I'm around them, courageous and strong and telling other people this and that.

I get excited. It's very, very exciting. I get to take one of them with me to Africa next week, and I'm excited for the whole trip. All right? Many in the church are bucking the trend, okay?

Verse 12, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, and they're okay with that. They get it at school. They get it at work. The evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

This isn't going to get easier in the end times, is it? But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. Each generation that's going to be there, that's going to be solid, that's going to be rescued and taken care of by God, will learn from the previous generation. You know, this church isn't built on just Jesus Christ. It's built on the apostles and the prophets as the foundation, with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. And so we all have a part, don't we? And none of us should get where we need to go without each other. He says, verse 15, and that from childhood you have known the holy scriptures. What are you going to do with that knowledge? Who are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, and right. This flies right over any generational issues, any societal issues, any temptations or mental formulations. It flies right over that, and it's part of the body of Christ. Verse 17, that the man or the woman of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. That's the opportunity that we have. You know, it's interesting that the attendance of the United Church of God every holy day goes down from what it was the previous year. That's kind of a broad-brush statement, but I have access to the figures, and I watched every holy day consecutive, one after the other, we have a little bit lower attendance than we did that same holy day the previous year. I'll give you an example. First day of Unleavened Bread, which happened just a few days ago, we had in the United States an attendance that was 4.4% less than last year. I'm proud of you for being here. Okay? That's good. I'm really proud of you. I'm not worried about that figure. I'm not sure how that figure, you know, I'm not sure what that figure means. I won't try to read into that anything, but I'll just tell you that's the reality. Here's another figure. Holy day offerings, every feast, year after year, are higher than the year before.

What does that tell you? Now, I will try to interpret that, because I know who are the bigger wage earners. I know who are the ones that really in the workforce, and it's our young people.

It's the second and more commonly the third generation who are stepping up. There are fewer of them, but they are able to sacrifice and tithe and be more committed to this church than even perhaps the forefathers were. I don't know. But it's an amazing thing to watch.

And once again, I'm very encouraged by that, and I know many people are, not just me.

But I think it says something there. So you and I must choose our course, just like ancient Israel had to do, just like all generations have their internal struggles and their societal issues. It's a daily process, isn't it? It's not something we're thrown into, and you must be this way. Not at all. We may find ourselves at one point somewhere with society, but we've got to come out of this world, and we've got to become like Jesus Christ.

Some will try to have it both ways, be swayed by society, and also be like Christ.

That's impossible. That's self-serving. It rolls in things like lawlessness and hedonism, which masquerades as personal choice and fairness and individuality, freedoms to die for. You know, the freedoms to die for we've been celebrating all week are actually enslavement to die by. We have been freed from slavery to sin, and yet the world sells sin as freedom.

But it's kind of ironic, but we believe the absolute opposite.

How do any of us solve this dilemma of what we're being fed and what society is doing and the temptations and the thoughts that come into our mind? And maybe your lack of a strong, firm foundation up to this point, how do we solve those issues and go forward in strength?

I believe it comes down to one simple thing. Psalm 46.

David focuses us on what is the central core of the matter. Psalm 46. And verse 10.

Be still and know that I am God.

Now, this sermon comes from about four years of contemplation.

Not about four years, exactly four years. It's Don Owens, who was nearing the end of his life, who kept telling me over and over this verse. Don wasn't always as clear an individual and communicating what he meant by it. I would ask him what he meant by it, and I wasn't any clearer when he finished. But he kept telling me, you know, you've got to be still and know that I am God. Be still and know God. He had an opportunity, you see, that I didn't at the time.

He was in a life-ending situation, and he had some time to think about that and expand the concept. Let's look at the whole chapter here. Psalm 46.1, God is our refuge and strength. Ah, see, this really cuts right to the heart of it. A very present help in time of trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. Even though the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling. He talks about the eternal kingdom of God. We can read of in Revelation 21 and 22.

Verse 7, The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Come and behold the works of the Lord, who has made desolations in the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow. He cuts the spear into. He burns the chariot in the fire. All of these things that loom up big, that are coming up behind us as we approach the Red Sea, God will take care of these things. He's going to bring a kingdom. He's going to dissolve all this nastiness. We just need to be people of His. We need to be children of the kingdom, sons of the kingdom. And so He says in verse 10, Be still and know that I am God. And I will be exalted among the nations, and I will be exalted in the earth. When Christ returns and the bride is with Him, God will be fully exalted. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

We need to be still sometimes from all the craziness, especially you third generations people with your apps. I buy into your generation quite a bit. I like the apps. I like all this stuff. I like the tweets and the little. Next thing you know, we're so cluttered. We don't have time to be still, do we? That's one thing that we don't take time to. Always rushing and racing, and there's always more to fill the mind and to fill the day than you can possibly do. Sometimes even when you're doing the work, there's more, believe me, than you can possibly fit into a day. I don't feel I fritter it away, and sometimes apps help things get done a little bit faster.

But at the end of the day, how much time did we really have to be still and know our God and know His Word and to meditate and to know each other and to love each other? How much of the real doing are we doing? Are we just talking about it? In Hebrews 3, verse 12, there's coming a time when we will enter into God's rest in a spiritual permanent sense, a real sense, but in a spirit world, there's a type of that rest that we observe every Sabbath day.

I personally feel that we often do not even be still on the Sabbath day.

We just come up to it and blow right through it almost like any other day, except we don't go to work and maybe we try to have a little bit of special food. But I try to watch and see, does anybody ever notice when the Sabbath starts?

Typically, I do not find a single person that ever knows when the Sabbath starts, when the Sabbath starts, or when it ends. It's just one of those things. You're Friday, and you're kind of winding down, and whatever, the next thing you're eating and talking, and it's time to go to bed. Somewhere in there, the Sabbath starts. The next day, it's off to do here, and church, and then we're talking, and we're eating, and whatever, and it's night, and everybody goes home. At some point in there, God stepped in and made that time holy because He was present in it. It was your special time and my special time to commune with Him. It was like a date. All week, He's been preparing and inspiring messages in us, if we want to be, to get ready for this time and put everything aside so that we can step into this time with Him. And yet, what do we do? Did we even notice He was there? Did we even notice we had a date? Did we even show up, you know, mentally? What do we tell Him each week? If we look in Hebrews chapter 3 and verse 12, and just start here, Hebrews chapter 3 and verse 12, let's notice. Beware, brethren, lest there be in any one of you an heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. It's a beware. It's a warning, because we will tend to do that.

But exhort one another. This is our job. Exhorting one another daily, while it's called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. You know, we are remembering the Exodus, the coming out of Egypt by Israel, verse 15. Today, if you'll hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion.

For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt?

You know, there was that generation. Now, with whom was He angry? Was it not with those who sinned?

Verse 18, to whom did He swear they would not enter His rest?

But to those who did not obey? There's the bottom line. This isn't about some lawless organization now that you don't have to obey, that we've got some Protestant form of grace that took the place of obedience, and therefore we can just be all wishy-washy and we don't have to do what God tells us to do. So we see that they could not enter because of unbelief coupled with a lack of works.

Therefore, chapter 4, verse 1, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.

Now, you and I then have choices to make, don't we? And this is a wonderful feast each year. This is our feast, by the way. It's not the Feast of Tabernacles. That's for the people in the millennium. We're celebrating their time. This is our feast. We've just come through the most meaningful feast as far as what you and I are to be doing. The next feast is about sort of the reward. It's the harvest of the firstfruits. It's the great day of our being redeemed. That'll take care of itself.

The one after that is Jesus Christ returning. The bride joins Him at the seventh trumpet. Then we have the Feast of Atonement, where everything becomes at one because the mindset of all the division is gone. And then we celebrate the time that we will reign with Christ. But the world will finally be able to see what you and I see today. We have great examples of faithful members in the second and third generation in Hebrews 11. Some of them were sawn in two. Some of them were killed by the sword. Some dwelt in caves. Very faithful second and third generation members. Not very many. Most of the brethren that were baptized 3,000 at time didn't endure. Just like historically in this church, many of the brethren, the vast majority, did not endure.

We need to be still and know that I am your God. We live in a world where spying is now fine. You probably don't realize that you are more spied upon and more known by any company or government that wants to know about you than the book of, I believe it was George Orwell's, 1984. It's just the way it's all come together, that that information has been set up and crosses through so many things, be it your finances, your Facebook, your telephone, your social security number, etc., etc., the cameras that exist that can watch you. The government can know exactly where you are at any time. These guys that create these crimes, it only takes the FBI usually two or three days. They always get their guy. They always know where he is. He might be hiding in some hut up in a mountain in a forest, and they know exactly where he is. How does that happen? It's pretty easy. Go to the last time to use an ATM or made a charge in a store, and you get the cameras, and then you start following that down the street and see where he went. It's just all locked in. Now, this culture also is associated with, I should say, the culture. In fact, this generation is the thieves, the hacker generation, to slip in to get things or go across borders and fly little things and do things against the law in other countries. It's just the way it is. It is probably the first generation where you only hear the term marriage if it's in contact with same-sex, where the rules of the game have changed. Totally changed. Now you just wonder if there are rules. Somebody asked me recently about something to do with marriage, and was this right or legal or whatever. I can't even tell you anymore. I can't tell you because I'm not even sure. Well, if there is a law, I'm not sure what it is, because it's changing and changing so fast. It's just amazing. We should not be people of that mindset. We should be unmovable, solid. We should know God. We should know what He stands for, and we should be not distracted by electrons or the lawlessness of this age. I'd like to close, not pointing a finger at anyone, by the way, but knowing that we need the help of God, knowing that we need to be resolute in putting to work those aspects of righteousness that truly go into unleavened bread. It's serious, the society we're in. It's a serious villain that wants us dead. It's a serious church that we're in. It's a serious kingdom and Lord and Master that we are to serve. We are coming up to our Red Sea, and we should not let it become about us. It should always be about Him, about His family. It should always be about His way of life, and nothing should move or shake us from that. It's not about our religion. It's about His religion, and that is laid down right here that we should know, we should understand from our forefathers and from those who have taught us. We are to find those who will teach according to what they've been taught, and we continue on. Not the traditions and not the tweaking of the truth as God's Spirit explains it to us, but not throwing aside that of the old days, like John says, that commandment that you've heard from the beginning. That's what we do.

Let's close by reading 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 26 through 30. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 26. For you see your calling, brethren. Once again, this gets up and above everything else, doesn't it? Now you see your calling. You and I have a calling that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not being noble, are called. We have to understand that I am nobody. I don't see anything better than anybody else. I'd rely solely on God for wisdom, the wisdom that's from above. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world. All right, well, that tells you what I am. And you know what? I believe it, and I'm okay with that, in the sense that I know that's where I was, and with his help, there's progress away from that. To put to shame the wise, and I can't put to shame the wise, but he can, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are. Why? That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him you are in Christ, Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, not my righteousness. I'm doing righteousness, and I want to do more righteousness, but it's his righteousness with his help, his inspiration. Same with you.

And sanctification and redemption, that it is written, Let him who glories, let him glory in the Lord. So, brethren, on this day, as we stand closer and closer to the Red Sea, and the armies of Satan draw up, and the big events want to swallow us and take us, let's be still and know our God.