Bible Study - Three Training Grounds Outside Your Employment

Ask yourself, what kind of job should I have? What career should I pursue so that I will be a better help to God in the kingdom? I've had people ask me that a lot. Years and years ago, I knew of him, a pastor. I don't think I ever met him. I knew his name. But I talked to people in his congregation, and it was a rather stressed out congregation that was filled with infighting all the time.

And everybody was jockeying for position and power. They were dividing the church up all the time. And they told me that the way they'd been trained, what their pastor had told them, was your position in the kingdom forever will depend on your position in the church today. And I said, what did he mean by that? It came down to, well, if you want to be somebody important in God's kingdom forever, you better learn to serve.

That means you better learn to go set up chairs. Or you better learn to... What was amazing to me, there wasn't almost anything that women could do except be in the choir. So I guess women were now going to be subjugated for eternity, although I wasn't sure even what he meant by position. You set up chairs and you serve as an usher, you get... Yes, that guaranteed you a higher position. Now, if you become the head usher, you get a better position.

If you become deacon, boy, you're going to be really important. If you become elder, that means you'll be right under one of the apostles. And then he couldn't figure out why his church was nothing but a place of people fighting.

It was spiritually so derelict of an idea, I just can't even imagine someone teaching that. This was many, many years ago. So Jesus Christ comes back. We've been talking a lot about that. He's coming back, and we're the people he's preparing. It's like, oh, good. He comes back, and what's he going to tell us to do? What do we do to prepare for that? What do we do to prepare for that?

A number of years ago, I read a classic book. Every once in a while, I'll go through a classic fiction book. I haven't for probably two years now. I haven't had the time. But I've been trying to catch up on a lot of classics I missed as a kid. And a couple years ago, I read for the first time, The Lord of the Flies, which was absolutely fascinating.

How many of you have read The Lord of the Flies? I also read To Kill a Mockingbird because it's been one of my favorite movies for years. And after I read the book, the movie was even more profound because it's one of the few movies that is just like the book. I mean, the characters are so...

they just capture the whole book. But, you know, The Lord of the Flies... I'd seen the movie when I was a kid, but they actually read the book. And of course, we know what the book was. It's a group of boys, all between the ages of around five or six and twelve. And they're in a plane crash. All the adults are killed, and they're on an island. And they're all civilized.

They come from a boys' school in England. And they have all been trained in the ways of civilization. And at the beginning, they tried to set up sort of an English civilization on the island. And they eventually divide into two groups. One group takes care of the camp, and there's a leader of the group.

And he's sort of their president over the group, and they have voting, and they try to have some kind of democracy. And another boy, he's in charge of the hunters, and they go out and they hunt and they gather. And it doesn't take long before boys being boys, all they want to do is play all the time. So everybody's playing all the time.

The more order they try to bring to it, the more violent it becomes. Before long, they're actually in a primitive tribal situation. And where they slide away from their Christian beliefs into paganism, and they just become violent. At the end of the book, the guy had been their leader is running because the rest of them dressed up in animal skins are chasing into killing because they've already murdered one boy. And they're chasing into killing with their homemade spears, and some adults have showed up looking for them. And what they find are these barbaric tribal people, which six months or a year, whatever the time is, were just fine, civilized English schoolboys.

And of course, the moral of the story, the purpose of the story, is that inside of all of us, the civilization is a thin veneer, and you create the right situation, and that veneer goes away. So that's the world we live in. And that's the world you and I are going to have to deal with, because when Christ comes back, the veneer of civilization won't be there anymore.

It'll be a different place. So what do you do? How do you prepare for that? What do you do in your life to prepare for that? To prepare for a world where the veneer of civilization is gone.

Well, it's interesting how God does this. You know, God does a lot of things that go against the success models of the world. There's a lot of things He does that go against the success models of the world. And we're going to talk about a couple of them. And it's why we are so confused at times, because the world keeps telling us there's something wrong with us. Because His model is so different than what humanity has created under Satan's tutorage, that it doesn't make sense for the carnal mind. Let's go to Philippians 2, or Philippians 3. This isn't going to be a classic Bible study. What I like to do with Bible studies is take a little section of a book or a whole book or a certain subject and just tear it apart. We're going to talk in some pretty broad concepts, but it has to do with the Feast of Tabernacles and what we're here celebrating. But let's go to Philippians 3.

Philippians 3, verse 20.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. Our citizenship is already in that kingdom.

As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we sort of have a dual citizenship. We have the citizenship of the country we live in now, but we also have a citizenship in the kingdom. And this is a very important concept, because that means that citizenship trumps our citizenship.

It's interesting, when we were doing...the first few years we did Beyond Today, we were on public access, and we just made it up as we went along. We had no direction, we had no help, we had nothing. We had no helpless writing scripts, we had no... The camera guys were three guys that were men who were retired men that we sent to the little college, and they learned how to run TV cameras. We really made it up. We were just told, go do TV, and we said, how? We don't care, just go do it. So we did.

We made it up. Over time, we kept saying, you know, we have to learn how to do this, but that's another story. So we slowly learned how to do it. But...I forgot the point I was going to make. No, I won't get it. Come back to me. But our citizenship has to be first in the kingdom of God. What happens when that comes in conflict with the citizenship...oh, now I remember what I was going to say. It was about...okay. And finally we got someone to come in that was a professional to review what we did.

And his...you know, we were sort of surprised. Because we had the fellow ministers review what we did, and they all said, this is horrible. Well, we've got to get feedback from someplace. So we had a professional come in who works at a major marketing and advertising firm. And he said, you know, actually, for having nothing, you guys are doing pretty good. He says, but I do have one thing we thought, what's it going to be?

He said, your message is fairly clear. But he said, you actually come across as some arm of the Republican Party. He said, you got to quote Hillary Clinton once in a while. Come on, guys. You look like you're Republicans. And we started to think about it. We thought, that's sad, but I guess we do. So now I've done some programs where I quote President Obama.

I mean, it's a quote that fits what we're dealing with, and it doesn't always have to be Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. But it was an interesting thing to have to examine ourselves and say, do we reflect the kingdom of God? Are we reflecting the world we live in? And in some ways, it was a hard thing to come to grips with.

We were reflecting the world we lived in. Now, this was while we were still in public access. We were learning how to do it. Do we do that sometimes? Do we reflect some political party of the world? Because I hate to tell you this, but the Republicans will lead us to destruction, just like the Democrats. You know, it's not going to lead us any closer to God's way. It just isn't. They're not going to do that. So that citizenship is very important. Do you see that citizenship every day in your life is more important than the citizenship you have? And if you had to choose between, you always choose the kingdom of God.

I bought a book one time. I'm always finding books, you know, bookstores or different things. I can't remember where I bought this one. And it was a study Bible. And of course, I only have like 40 different translations of the Bible. But I, my study Bible is once in a while because I like charts and graphs and things I can pull ideas out for sermons and Bible studies.

This one had lots of charts and graphs in it. Oh, good. So I pulled it out and I held by, so I bought it. It set on my shelf for years. And one day I picked it up and I opened it up and it was about citizenship in the kingdom of God. And it was very interesting because in this study Bible, it was the word study Bible, which I don't necessarily recommend.

There's not a lot of great stuff in it. But in this one Bible, study Bible, it said, when you become a citizen of the kingdom of God, something changes in your life. And they listed five things that changed. And as I read through it, I thought, wow. This writer of this particular part understood something. And I'm going to tell you what he said changed. I'm going to explain a little bit, I think, in a lot more detail than what he did.

But he said, when you become a citizen of the kingdom of God, even though it's not here yet, the first thing that changes is there's a change in your allegiance. There's a change in your allegiance. And I think some of you have heard me say this before. What political party are we? We're monarchists.

We have a king. And everything we do is an allegiance to that king. And God's sending that king back. There's a change in your allegiance. And that allegiance now is more important than worldly politics, the VFW, the Wolf Lodge, the Elk Lodge, all the things that your allegiance was to all these years. Suddenly those things become very, very unimportant. I mean, I don't mean you give all those things up. I mean, if you're a member of an Elk Lodge, there's nothing wrong. But, you know, I used to be a member of the Quadness Club years ago. But those things become real secondary. You have a primary allegiance to your king. Because that's what citizenship is. It's who is your allegiance? Is your allegiance to?

The second point in this list was a change in your expectations. I counsel people all the time that are all upset because of what's happening in the world. And you think we'll get a new president that will make it better? Well, why would you think that? This is the best system human beings have ever come up with. And it won't last. It was doomed the moment they signed the Constitution. It was doomed at that moment. What amazes me is it lasted as long as it did because it's not God's solution. The expectations change.

We can even be optimistic in the face of what's going on because we know what God's going to do in the future. There's a change in your values. Of course. What is it you value? You want to know what you value in life? How do you spend your time and how do you spend your money? How do you spend your time and how do you spend your money? That'll tell you what you value. And of course, this fundamental change in values, if you really want to understand, the Sermon on the Mount, I think it was John Stott. John Stott was an interesting theologian. He was a major leader in the Anglican Church. He died a few years ago. And he wrote a book on the Sermon on the Mount and said, Hey folks, guess what? We're supposed to keep the Ten Commandments. Which didn't make the Anglican Church happy. But he was so big. I mean, the man was their most famous theologian. They couldn't do anything about it. So then he wrote a book and said, Hey folks, guess what? There's no hell. We don't die and go to heaven. We don't have an immortal soul. So when he finally died, the Anglican Church had this big sigh of relief. But I believe it was him. He said, if you understand the Constitution of the Kingdom of God, read the Sermon on the Mount. It's at least the preamble. It tells us where this is going to go. Our change of value starts with the Ten Commandments. But then, it starts with, Love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and love your neighbor as yourself.

Then it goes to the Ten Commandments. Then it goes to the Sermon on the Mount. That begins to form the basis of your values. Then there's a change in priorities. At least twice already we have heard Matthew 6, Seek you first, right? That's the core of our priorities. Seek you first. Everything else is number two, number three, number four. The Kingdom of God and His righteousness. So suddenly there's a change in priorities. And then the last point that I got, that I thought was just so profound in this book that I've hardly ever used over the years, that to be a citizen in the Kingdom of God now, waiting for it to come, is there's a change in your life's purpose and mission.

The purpose is to be prepared for your King's return, and your mission is to tell other people about it.

Your purpose is to be prepared, and your mission is to tell others. That's an amazing little chart inside this book. And I've used those five points many times, that when you become a citizen of the Kingdom of God, even though it's not here yet, there are major changes. A change in your allegiance, a change in your expectations, a change in your values, a change in your priorities, and a change in your life's purpose and mission. We could spend an hour on each of those.

So we're going to say, okay, what do I do so that I'm prepared for Jesus Christ?

And I've seen people struggle with, well, I only have an eighth grade education, or all my life I've only been, and I always feel sad when someone starts that with, I've only been a janitor. Because I always say, I don't know, one of the best jobs I ever had was being a janitor. At least at the end of the day, everything was cleaned up. It's a minister, and everything's ever cleaned up. It's always a mess. I'm only a housewife. I'm only a... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up, back up. You think God measures you by how many degrees you have? How much money you make? He measures you by how far you got in your company? Well, if that's true, you know, then the board of Google is going to be all the kingdom. The rest of us are going to be nothing. We start with that basic change that we just talked about. God says He doesn't want anybody there that doesn't have those changes first. And then He says, now I'm going to train you. So how is God training you? How is God training you? You know, to train somebody, you have to put them in an environment to be trained. Well, all of life is a training ground. That's true. That's really true. But I want to go through three areas where God specifically says, work here first, and this is going to reach out to everything else. Now, your employment is a training ground, but I'm not even going to talk about that. You know, I've had people say, well, is God going to need engineers in the kingdom? Maybe I should become an engineer. God gives all of us abilities. When people say, what is it I should do in my life? My answer is, go find out what your abilities are and go do it. Don't ask me what, because my abilities are different than your abilities. Now probably ruin your life. Find out what your abilities are and develop them. God expects that of all of us. Oh, well I thought if I was an engineer... Do you have the abilities to be an engineer? No, I'd hate it, but maybe God needs engineers in the kingdom. Well, you know, if I do this job, I love this job. It just fulfills me, and I do this, and I do that, and I do that. But if I get this job, I make $20,000 more a year, and that means I'd give $2,000 more a year to the church in Thai. So that's what God wants to do. And I've looked at people and said, why would you think that? Do you think God needs your $2,000 that much? What did God give you to work with? And what we do is we measure by other people. So we're thinking that now God is going to use us by our abilities. God can develop abilities in you you don't even have.

So that's not it either. So it doesn't matter how much money you make, and it doesn't matter what your job is specifically. It's what you do with what you have. I actually believe there's people... You know what's frustrating to me? Because I get to work real hard to do anything. Wasted talent. That really bugs me, because God never gave me a lot of talent. I always say I have to work twice as hard to be half as good. And you see people have all this talent, and they waste it. It's like, oh my, they have that much talent.

God can multiply our abilities. So just develop your abilities. So you're all good, so what employment should I go into? You're missing the point. So three training grounds outside of our employment. The first is, and the reason I can say this is because I know there's all different kinds of jobs in the kingdom. There's all different kinds of needs. There's all different kinds of things that have to be done. I mean, I really don't think I'm going to be the king over some nation or something. That's not my talent. There'll be something totally different. There'll be something I'll be good at, because I'll be trained for it. Some people say, I want to be a king. Good. I hope you're trained and you get to be the king, so I don't have to be the king.

Because I'd be pretty miserable. I mean, it's administrative work. I don't like administrative work. That's why I used to be a camp director and I quit. I wanted to go play football with the kids. I said, Gary, you've got to come back and be a camp director. I said, no, I don't. You have lots of people who will be camp directors. Who wants to go play football with the kids? Well, nobody. Good. Then let me go play football with the kids. That's where my talents are. Right? Okay, first. The first thing I want you to think about is that God has our families as a model of His family. Our families. So I'm a single person. That's okay. Because we're going to talk about that in a minute. And all of us come from a family. You didn't come out of an egg. Right? Well, technically you did, but that's not what... All of us come from families. I won't ask you to raise your hands because it would be funny, but how many of you came from a functional family? Don't raise your hand. Because the three of you will be embarrassed. Nobody else is game from a functional family. We're all pretty messed up. That's the point. Now, God says, I'm creating a family. And your families are where you learn. And all of us came into our families all messed up. There's an interesting prophecy in Zechariah 8. Zechariah 8. And you'll hear this read many times during the Feast of Chavernacles.

Verse 1. Again the word of the Lord of Hosts came saying, Thus is the Lord of Hosts. I am zealous for Zion with great zeal, with great fervor, I am zealous for her. Thus says the Lord, I will return to Zion. This is a prophecy when the Messiah comes. I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth, the mountain of the Lord of Hosts. The Holy Mountain. The mountain here is a Hebrew symbol. It's a Hebrew poetry meaning kingdom. The kingdom of the Lord of Hosts. The Holy Kingdom. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem. Each one with his staff in his hand because of great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. And that's very interesting. Children playing. If you could visualize that a little bit. Everybody's got a house. Everybody's got their own land around that house. And there's trees. And everything blooms and grows. And everybody has their own garden. And the kids are all playing a game of baseball on the street. And the old people are sitting on the stoops waving at the people walking up and down the... You know, I had something out of Currier Knives. No, it's something out of the kingdom of... No, it's the millennium. Remember that the millennium and the kingdom of God aren't the same thing. The kingdom of God is God's reign. The kingdom of God exists. Every place in the universe. Except this little place where he said, okay, Satan, you can have them for a little bit. And then I'll take it back. He never lost the kingdom. God never lost... He's the king right now, right?

Do you think Satan has total control? If Satan had total control, you think he'd be here? Do you think God gave up his sovereignty, or did Satan somehow have power over God? God let him have it for a while, because he gave dominion to human beings, and human beings gave it to Satan. And God said, okay, I'll take it back. Do you think God couldn't have taken it back right then? But I want you to remember what he said. I'll take it back to a human being. Right? He told Adam and Eve, I will... Someone will take Bruce Satan's head. By what? One of your seat.

You gave it to him. I will produce the perfect human being. I'll take it back. And he did. He did have to create the perfect human being. He had to send God to earth to become the perfect human. And he did. And he said, I gave you family, because I'm creating a family. And at this time, he pictures what it's going to be like. Ephesians 5. We know Ephesians 5, the classic instructions for marriage. We have to get back. I don't care whether they're grandparents. I don't care whether they're parents. I don't care whether you're children. I don't care whether you're a single person. We have to get back to understanding and working on what it is to create families.

Satan is going to destroy the fundamental building block of society. And this country almost is just about there. Christ is going to come back and have to rebuild society. And he's going to do with the basic fundamental building blocks he has that God's created. What's the first thing he gave? The first thing he gave human beings? The Sabbath. What was the second thing he gave human beings? No, the first thing he actually gave them was marriage. Second thing was Sabbath. He gave marriage first. This is how we'll build society. Husband and wife will come together and produce children.

The basic building block. We must rebuild our families. We must get to the place where we stop divorce in the Church of God. We must get to the place where we're producing children who are responding to God. And I'm going to tell you something that has happened in our church. There's a wrong concept, and it has produced bad results.

For two generations, parents have believed their job is to keep their children in the Church. So if we build enough youth programs, we do this, we do this, we'll keep them in the Church. Now I'm saying we've got to have youth programs.

I think anybody who knows me knows I love youth programs. But youth programs and keeping people in the Church misses the purpose. We have to lead our children to God, and God puts them in His Church. We have people that stay in the Church, but if they're not responding to God and becoming converted, why are they here?

We found that in 1995, didn't we? There were a lot of people. Many of them had grown up in the Church, but it really didn't mean anything to them. We kept them in the Church, but we didn't lead them to God. We have to rebuild families that lead people to help lead our children to God.

Now eventually they make their own decisions. We can't make it for them. But that's what our family should be. This is the building block. This is why marriage is so important. This is where we begin to learn where the principles and the laws and the concepts of the Kingdom of God become real. It's in our family. This is the building block for the Kingdom. So, okay, we've learned the Ten Commandments. We've learned the Two Great Commandments.

We're really starting to learn the Sermon on the Mount. Oh, now let me go get a good degree and make $150,000 a year. And God will say, wow, I can use you while I ignore my family. The very building block that we're supposed to build on. See, that's the concept of the world.

It's the concept of the world. Family is what God is doing. In Ephesians 5, we have the classic instructions, the husband and wife. And the important thing in here, He says, your relationship has to reflect, in a way, the relationship between Christ and the Church. Husband and wife. That's not easy. I tell you what, the relationship between Christ and the Church isn't easy either. But it's never our Christ's fault. I have to admit, many of the problems between my husband and wife, or me and my wife, are my fault.

She's not married to Christ. So it's a little different. And our relationship with Christ is never His fault. It really isn't. It's ours. It's always ours. But here we have the beginning to understand this greater picture, and the family is how we do it. To produce righteous offspring. And as I said yesterday, what's unique about our children, they're born in the light. Now the darkness looks like there's something in that darkness that's really good.

I know it. But they're actually born in the light. That's remarkable. Now they don't have to stay there. I know. I came into church at age seven, and I went out in darkness every once in a while. I would come back, and I'd go, you know, what's out there? What's out there? God kept pulling me back. I kept searching, searching, and looking. I finally figured out the light was better. Of course, we all carry scars from that, too, don't we? It's pretty messy out there in the darkness. Now this brings us to our second training ground.

And this is why we have to go back to strong families. We must. If we are citizens of the kingdom of God, we must work hard on our marriages and with our children and with our grandchildren, and be a community for young people. Not just so that we quote-unquote keep them in the church, so that they are drawn towards God. They are drawn towards God. And in that relationship with God, He brings them into the church.

Which brings us to our second point. And that is, the church is a model of society and what God is doing. It took me the longest time to figure this out. When I first came into the ministry, this may sound silly, but, I thought if I had the right notebook and all the right answers to all the problems, and if I could just sit down and reason with people, everything could be fixed.

And everything would run okay. It's herding cats. It's supposed to be herding cats. And when I figured that out, you ever see the commercial, I forget what it is, it shows cowboys herding cats? There was a commercial a while back. It was hilarious. Roping little kitties and stuff. It's because cats don't herd.

They run every which direction. Climb trees. That's what cats do. But I started to realize, I'm trying to do something that's different than God. I'm trying to create an environment that fits my first born belief system, which is, if everybody would just obey me, it'd be okay. You know, God doesn't do that. He says, if you don't obey me, this gets real ugly. So please obey me. Oops, you didn't. It's going to get ugly. You think about how He could have stopped humanity any time He wanted to.

He could have stopped Satan any time He wanted to. But He said, I'm going to let it go this far, and then I'll step in before you kill yourselves. And we learn, and it hurts Him while we learn. And that's an amazing concept. This is where, so I come from a dysfunctional family, and I guess I'll never be able to learn what God wants to teach me. No. I read a book one time on how to create a megachurch.

Now that would be interesting. Everything we do as a group of people is the opposite of the success model for building a megachurch. First of all, you build a megachurch by figuring out who you want to reach. Then you find a neighborhood that needs a church. Then you go in and you build this... What you basically end up with in most megachurches is people of a very similar background.

And you become part of the community. And the money comes in because the people want a nice church in their community. And you serve the needs of that community. God takes a whole bunch of people that not even know each other. We wouldn't even like each other. And He makes us come together and meet in a beer hall as worship service. And He says, now get along.

This isn't how you build a church by man's model. And then He says, I'm going to call the weak. So you're not going to have a lot of really sharp people in this group. And then I'm going to take some of the weak and put them in charge. And they'll really mess up. That's how you build a church? Oh, wait a minute. This is a training ground. And if, yeah, if I were training people for something, then that's how you would build a church. We're being trained to deal with the mess of the world when the veneer of civilization is gone.

That's what we're being trained for. That's what you're being trained for. And we have the building block of basic family unit, but we all come in with a messed up basic family unit. And then He takes this and says, okay, the next thing I'm going to build is a church off of this.

So He's got shaky ground anyways. And He builds a church. And if we all submitted correctly, it actually would work remarkably well. It's us that's the problem. The model works. Because it's going to work for a thousand years. It's going to work for a thousand years. It will be easy, especially at the beginning of it. But it'll work.

Because it fits the way God created everything. And this means, I don't care whether you're 90 years old or 10 years old, you have a place in the church community. It doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter how much money you make. It doesn't matter what your education is. None of those things matter. You are brought into the body of Christ for a singular purpose to serve together and to train each other for the Kingdom. And in this training, we mess up all the time. This is why. One of the reasons that for the last 20 years, the Church of God keeps breaking up and breaking up and breaking up, and there's over 100 groups now, is because we've forgotten its principle.

So we keep coming up with a new model. A new model, and that model will work. A new COG name. We actually run out of names. I don't know what we're going to call each other pretty soon. The Church of God of Outer Space.

I mean, what are we going to do after a while? You know why we all exist like this? Because we figure if we get the right notebook, and the right set of rules, and the exact right people in charge, we will be the model that works. Yeah, but God never set that model up. We're working off a model that's not God's. God's is, I put you together. I'll pick the people in charge.

And we'll herd cats. And you will learn what it takes to rule the world. Pretty interesting, isn't it? You will hurt each other, and you will learn to forgive each other. You will find each other's sins out. You know, when I invite people to church anymore, and there's some in this room that I'll probably remember, I tell them now, if you're looking for the perfect group of people, don't come. We're just a group of people trying to live God's way. And I've actually had people say, Oh, thank you, a church I can go to.

You mean you're not going to come visit with me and ask me all my questions and my sins? No. Well, I'm smoking. Do you need to repent of that? Yes. Okay, let's deal with it. I'll introduce you to some other people that used to smoke, and we'll get you through it. See, this is where God is supposed to be developing those five changes we talked about at the beginning.

That's the core of what has to happen. He can give us the abilities and develop the abilities in this to do anything. But these five changes you and I have to produce by participating in. He initiates it. He causes it. He gives the power. But we have to respond for those things to happen. Because He designed us with free will, which means He could possess us, but He doesn't want to do that. So He gave us free will, which means we must respond.

The very design mechanism, the way He has this design means, okay, you've got to change your allegiance. You've got to change your values. You've got to change these things. And you have to do them. I'll give you all the help, all the power, understanding, but you have to do it. And then I'll give you the environment to do it. And start with your family. Oh, I don't have a family. I'm a single person.

Or my husband died. Or my kids all left me. Or I never had any kids. Okay, that's okay. You're now a unit, part of a bigger unit called the church. Well, that's more dysfunctional than my family.

Yeah. What did you expect? I expected perfect people. Then why did you come? Someone come to me and say, well, I had a fight with someone in the church. I said, well, did you hit him? No? Then it can't be that bad. But we had an argument. Okay. And my wife and I had one two weeks ago. We still love each other. We're still together. We're still members of the church.

I had this problem. I have that problem. We let other people get in the way. We hurt each other. We see each other's sins. We forgive each other. And in this we begin to learn Hasid. How are you going to teach Hasid? How are you going to teach... See, you and I have a covenant with each other.

This is the contract. God's laws tell us how the covenant work. The law says, don't steal. God says, don't steal because you love Him. You see? Understand, the covenant, when we all enter the new covenant, it's with God. And then it expands out as He builds His family. We all share in this. The Israelites entered a covenant through act of birth.

Right? A baby is born. Eight days later, he's circumcised. He and his family are all part of the covenant. Whoever he marries is part of the covenant. As long as they keep circumcising babies, they're part of the covenant. You were not called because of act of birth. You were called and the covenant was made with you because God said, oop, I'll take you. Individually brought into a dysfunctional place, from a dysfunctional world, to say, I will train you how this will work. And then you're going to tell everybody you can. You're going to tell others.

And you're going to interrupt the people and say, I'm all messed up, but I'm getting better and you can get better too. Someone called me. We did the first kingdom of God seminar. Someone called me and said, I'm not sure we want to do this in my church, in this other congregation.

I said, why? What if a homosexual sews up? I said, boy, he needs to hear that message. I said, no, I'm concerned. What if he stays? Well, he will either repent and stay, or he will leave. Or he will be asked to leave. But how can he repent if he doesn't hear the message?

I don't know. Jesus got down with the prostitutes. They weren't playing bridge. He was telling them, ladies, this doesn't work, right? What does he know of the prostitutes? This is really bad, and this will kill you, and it will cut you off from God, and there's a better way. But you have to be real strong to do that. I fear we're not strong enough to deal with the world. We're not strong enough to deal with the world. It's a whole lot messier even than when you came out of it. Are we ready to take those people in? I don't know. God won't send them until we are.

Because this is the place where they come in, and this is a functional place, and we say, welcome, fellow cat. Welcome to the mayhem. But I'm getting better. I always say, someone tell me, the church or God is crazy. I say, of course it is. It was crazy before. We just got invited into the asylum. Now we're crazy people in the asylum getting better. We were just crazy outside the asylum before.

The church is the hospital where God is making people better, and He's training them. So we go from being nuts to being nuts inside the asylum. You've never heard that explanation of the church before, have you? But the reason you're laughing is because, yeah, that's really what it is. You must have been at my motel this afternoon. Of course that's what it is. Let's not hide it. Let's not pretend to be what we're not.

We are people learning God's way, imperfect, inviting other people. Come learn with us because God's taking us someplace. We keep pretending until we're Pharisees. We keep pretending until we're Pharisees. And then I tell you what, it takes a whole lot more energy to be a Pharisee than to follow God. As a Pharisee, you can't afford to ever make a mistake. You can't afford to ever let people see you're wrong. So you have to be right even when you are wrong. And that takes so much energy.

It's a whole lot easier just to give in to God. This church is where you're learning. And it's about as dysfunctional as I've ever seen it. I've been in a long time. My wife and I have been talking a lot about the good old days. Oh, yeah. Remember the time years ago when people came into the church? Some of you remember this. And the minister asked you if you had been divorced. And if you had been divorced, they made you leave your husband or wife. In other words, we dealt with a sin by making the people sin again.

That's pretty dysfunctional. Now we learned not to do that anymore. It's been, you know, the minister told people that your position in the kingdom will be dependent upon your job in the church now. That's pretty dysfunctional. But you know what? In the midst of all that, people got converted. Right now people will be converted. In the midst of all this.

Because that's what God, that's His business. That's what He does. And the concern is, can we be converted enough to let other crazy cats in the asylum? Because we're sure telling millions. We have a fear in the media department. What if God blesses us? I'm serious! What if this actually works? We know we're reaching millions of people.

What if they start responding? What are we going to do with them? Well, that's the job of church administration. Yeah. Then we all go back and put on our pastor hat and say, Oh no, I'm under church administration now. Titus 2. This is fascinating. Titus 2. We could talk for two hours about how the church is our training ground. We have to become genuine. We have to stop trying to pretend that we're Christians, and we have to just start being Christians. And sometimes that means, Yeah, I'm struggling here. But I'm struggling to go in the right direction.

You know, if you've ever had to wade upstream, you might take one step, two steps, and you go back a step, but at least you're struggling to go in the right direction. Titus 2, verse 1. I won't read all of this, but... Paul writes to Titus and tells him, Okay, here's what your job is, and here's how you know you'll be doing it right, because this is what your church will look like.

But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine. Let the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, and love and patience. Okay, older men in the church, you want to know if you're really learning what you're supposed to do in the church? Read that. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm supposed to be a deacon. I know people who measure...somehow, I've met men who measure their spiritual worth by whether they give sermonats or not.

You know, kids come up to me and say, Oh, Mr. Petty, you're the man on television. Can I have your autograph? And I always tell them, Child, they put monkeys on television. It's not that big a deal. That's not the measure... that is not the measure of whether you're converted or not. It's just some ability that God's using, and it's not much ability. The measure is... am I Christ-like? And that's the only thing that counts in the end. I believe there's going to be lots of widows, so if we stand before Jesus Christ, the rest of us are going to have to stand back, and Christ is going to say, Oh, Joan, come here, Mary, come here, and we'll have to stand and wait until he gives them a hug before he'll talk to us.

Because they're Christ-like. That's the only measure in the end. And our families and the church is where we learn it. So, if you measure as a man whether I lead songs or give sermonats, as your value, you have a wrong concept of what it is to be in the church. I can train people to give sermonats. I can't train a man's heart. That happens between him and God. I can train almost any man in a congregation to give a sermonat. I can't train their heart.

So, this is what you notice. He didn't say here, Okay, if you're a carpenter, you're at the top of the list here. And that's not what he said. This is what you are to be in the congregation. Older women, likewise, that they may reverent in behavior, not slanderous. Ooh, that's real important, ladies. Because gossip turns into slander real easy. That's a real important one. Not given to much wine. Teachers are good things. That they admonish the young women to love their husbands and to love their children. And you and I live in a society where it is very difficult sometimes. Because women are told lies by our society that's a wrong model. It's a model that will not work.

I remember one time, one of my daughters said to me, Dad, how come almost everybody in the church has a bigger house than us? He said, Simple. Your mother decided not to have a career and to take care of you. Now that sounds pretty quaint today, doesn't it? My wife missed out on some things because of that. But my kids are remarkable. And it's because of her. My kids are remarkable human beings. And it's not because of me. I was quote-unquote taking care of the church.

Now, I'm not saying that all you women shouldn't work. Okay, that's not my point. We're back to priorities, right? What is your priority? What comes first in the decisions you have to make?

If it's, I can get this position and make $100,000 a year because my career is doing real well, but my children will be raised by other people, then is that a kingdom of God priority? But I ask you men the same thing. If you can get a job making $100,000 a year, but your family is going to be totally neglected, is that a kingdom of God priority? Oh, but if I make that how much money, I will tithe more. I knew of a minister one time. He's not a minister anymore. He had a nervous breakdown. He used to tell people, get the biggest jobs you have so you pay more tithes. No. What is your purpose in life that God wants you to do? This isn't about how much money we make. If you make good money, good! If you have abilities people pay money for, that's great. If you make a half a million dollars a year, great! I'm glad you're blessed. But the half a million dollars a year will not buy you the kingdom of God. It won't buy you the kingdom of God. If you have it, that's wonderful. Invite me over sometime. What are our priorities? What are our kingdom decisions? How do we learn it? We learn it in our families and in our congregations. This is where we learn this. That's why he put us together and said, get along. It will be hard to get along. We keep looking for the manual that will do it, and the system that will do it. If we can just put together the right church governance, it will do it. The truth is, if God's spirit isn't involved, nothing will work. Only God's spirit, and our submission to it, is going to produce what God wants. Now we have to wake up to that. We have to be able to see the world around us and say, I've got to get out of that darkness. The third thing I want to talk about... Here's how the young men should be. Here's how the young women should be. Here's how you should be with your employer. Exhort the bond service. Be obedient to their masters. What? I work for a jerk. When I lived outside the church, I worked for some hard people.

I worked for some hard people in the church. My decisions couldn't be made on whether they were a hard person or not. It had to be made on what is the kingdom priority? What is the Christ-like decision? You say, well, yeah, but this deacon did this to me. And I'm just not coming to church anymore. Okay, what is the Christ-like? What are the instructions? You can find them. There's nothing you face that you can't find the instructions. So I say, well, okay, Peter said, if you are corrected for something you did not do, and you take it patiently, this is commendable to God.

So would you like to be commendable to God? Well, yes. Oh, no, that means I have to take it from this deacon. Well, I didn't make up the rules because I wouldn't have made that one up. I'd have punched him in the nose. That's just, you know, that's my personality. It's what the Bible says to do. It's what the Bible says to do. How do you learn it? You learn it? It's hard to learn it in the world because nobody else is playing by the same rules.

But here, if we all play by the same rules, we learn it. What if you never slandered? What if? You know, there's certain things in the Bible that are very interesting about the law that we never study. Like, a person cannot be judged for a crime they have not committed yet. Think about how many times we judge somebody who hasn't even committed a crime yet. Well, they're going to do this. Well, how do you know? What if they change their mind?

What if they say they're going to do it and don't do it? Or you can't convict somebody without the witnesses confronting them. That's an interesting concept. Or you can't convict somebody on one witness. In the Old Testament, you could watch someone take a sword and stab somebody, and that person could get away with it. And they have two or more witnesses. You think, well, isn't that horrible? Now understand what if this person was lying.

So it took two or more witnesses. You know why? Under God's system, He would rather the evil person gets away than a righteous person be punished. Because He'll deal with the evil person. Okay? Because I'll fix that. You can't run from me. And I ain't was there.

I know what happened. But in the human realm... Now that's a real sort of foreign to us, isn't it? That's what the law of God was. We haven't even really studied the law of God. The kingdom of God. We're going to have to apply the law of God. And I fear we don't even know it. We don't even know it. Oh, we know the Ten Commandments. But we don't know how they apply to every day.

Well, how am I going to learn that? First in your family, secondly in the church. Of course in the world. But you learn it here first, and then you go outward. The last thing I want to talk about. Physical or the training for character for the kingdom of God is sometimes learned through the physical things we have.

The physical things we have. There's an interesting set of verses in Luke 16. It's a very complicated passage, so I'm not going to go through all of it. I had a little longer Bible study than I would, but I'm just going to go through a couple verses. Because there's a whole lot of concepts of what Luke wrote down here. Luke's interesting to me. I always go to Matthew first.

Matthew writes like a Jewish historian. He gathered all the information because he wasn't there. John was there, but what does John write? John writes the theology of Jesus. The Word was God and with God. That's how it begins. In the beginning, let me tell you this big story and how it all fits together. Matthew sits down and says, okay, let me tell you how this worked out in a chronological sense as he pulls all the information together.

Luke's interesting to me because Luke is a Gentile. Luke's gathering the story together to teach other Gentiles. He doesn't always do it in chronological way or he adds things. Sometimes he takes parables, moves them out of chronological order, and puts them together to make a point. Because he's teaching people who have no background. Matthew, on the other hand, let me explain. Everybody understands. He's writing to a Jewish audience. It's just brilliant how God used the personalities of these men to write what He was going to write. But let's look at Luke 16. So this is a pretty complicated passage in some ways, but I'm just going to look at a couple of verses.

Verse 10, He was faithful in what is least is faithful also in much. And he was unjust in what is least is unjust in much.

Now, stop and think what that means about it. He says, if you can't take care of what you have... Now, all of us own different things. People will call me and say, what's your dress code for your church? Well, I'm going to say, if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own? Now, stop and think what that means about it. He says, if you can't take care of what you have... Now, all of us own different things. So, you can call me and say, what's your dress code for your church? My answer is, you're coming for the Almighty God where the very best you have. Well, I'm poor and I don't have a tie where the very best you have. I've seen people go out when they think that through to good will and show up, you know, tattered sports code and a pair of pants that don't match in the tie. But it's like, I'm coming before God and this is the best I have. It's what you do with what you have. You know, I can't remember who it was. He went to Africa and he said, you know what astounded me? They were invited over someone's house and they got there and it was a hut. It was someone in the church. And it had a dirt floor and the woman was sweeping the dirt floor. Everything was nice and perfect in order and she was doing the best she had with what she had. And yet, I've gone into people's houses in the United States where I thought I was going to have to throw my clothes away when I left. And I'm serious. An inch of dog feces and cat feces on the floor, the smell, paint peeling off. And once again, I understand poverty. This wasn't poverty. It was laziness. Those are two different things. Those are two different things. If we live like that, how does God's Spirit interact with us? How does God's Spirit interact with us? He says here, if we can't even take a buck and think about the Kingdom values, what's going to happen if God gives us something a whole lot more important than that? Now, we all have different personalities. A person might be sloppy, or a person might be... I'm not talking about that. Personality is personality. I always tease my wife because she's half German and half Irish. And I think one of these days, she's just going to... I'm going to find her running down the street screaming. Because how can you be both of those things? The German inner wants everything to be perfect. And the Irish says, ah, forget it, give me a beer. And it's just, I don't know, how do you live like that?

I always tell her, oh, what's the matter? Having a hard time? You're not going to invade Poland, are you? No, no, not today. Okay, so... We have to do with what we have. We think certain things aren't important.

But they are. In terms of our overall development, Jesus Christ didn't walk around not taking care of other people's property. You know, the person you worked for, how many times have you said, ah, I work for a big company, they won't miss a box of pens. Come on. Think about that. If you can't be trusted with somebody else's property, how can God trust you with His Kingdom?

Then He tacks on another thought here. So He's saying, okay, you have to take care of what you have. Now, if He didn't say the next statement, what would happen is we could say, oh, good then, the more we have, the better. That's not what He says. Verse 13, no servant can serve two masters, for he either will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money. He says, so what you have in terms of physical things, you must learn to use wisely. You must take care of it. It must be clean. We must not go around filthy. But that doesn't mean the people who have more are necessarily better. Because if you worship things, the Kingdom of God, that's not Kingdom values.

That's not Kingdom expectations. And that's real hard today, I think, for a lot of people in their 30s and their 40s. Because many of you are very successful. And we're very successful early on in life. You know, I know lots of people are 35 and are making more money than I'll ever make in my whole life. You know, per year. And not realizing that that is a measure of success in today's world, and that's a good thing. I'm not saying it's bad, but if that's your measure of Kingdom values, you're going to lose that someday.

Because whatever we put before God will lose. Think about that. If God loves you and you're being trained for the Kingdom and you have something between you and God, you better take it out of there. Or someday you'll lose it. Because God will take it out in order to save you.

And so we have the idea that we realize that even the physical things we have. One last comment on this. How would God judge this if the high priest, they have atonement, going into the Holy of Holies? And before he goes into the Holy of Holies, that day, as he gets ready, he has a big meal, he's sort of sleepy, he drinks a little bit too much wine, he doesn't put on the garments right, sort of halfway does the sacrifice. He says, man, let's get this over with. I need to get home. I've got some entertainment I want to do. And then he goes into the Holy of Holies. What do you think would happen to him?

He wouldn't come out again. Right? Because he's in the Temple of God. Who is the Temple of God today? He's teaching every one of us. That means we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves as the Temple of God. Now, I believe me, I'm one, when people come up for me for health advice, I say, nah, don't ask me. Because I'm not an expert. And what works for one person doesn't work for another, always. I haven't found a magic pill yet, or a magic herb, or a magic drink. I haven't found it yet. But I do know there are lots of principles that apply.

But what applies to one person doesn't the other, because sometimes you don't know. Every doctor I go to, the ones I go to that I like have told me, I don't know, I can just experiment until I find out. Oh, good! You and I don't get along just fine. Because that's an honest answer. I understand that. Because that is an honest answer. But we do have responsibility to take care of ourselves physically, but also really to take care of our minds, what we allow to come into our minds.

I don't know if any of you saw the program. We even discussed whether we should do this program, because I know it would be offensive, and it would be difficult. Steve volunteered to do it. I wasn't going to do it. Dares wasn't going to do it. The program we did, the addiction to pornography. And he talked to a man who has a clinic, he's a doctor in psychology that just deals with men with addictions to pornography. And he said it changes the brain chemistry. It changes the way the brain works.

But so does long-term use of playing video games. So there's a lot of things we do. It changes the way the brain works. So that changing coming out of that is incredibly painful and hard. What are you doing that's changing your brain so that it's not Christ-like? It's not just our spirit. The actual physical brain. I'll give you an example. This happened earlier in our marriage, but it taught me an important lesson.

One Friday night, I am a nervous wreck. I wasn't the minister yet. I didn't know we had any children yet. I am a nervous wreck. The Sabbath has started. I'm walking around. I am just... I'm going nuts! And my wife said, I just watched the most amazing transformation I've ever seen.

What? Okay.

She had just baked this huge plate of incredible chocolate chip cookies. Of course, she thought I would do what she did. We were newly married. She said that and ate a chocolate chip. She's German. One chocolate chip cookie.

I have no idea how many I ate. When that sugar hit me, I would just go into pieces. I'd eat a dozen. These are good! You're a good wife! I'm glad I married you! She said, you've turned into a whole other person. What did I do to myself?

What did I do to myself? Is that what God wants us to do?

If we're the temple of God's Spirit. See, even chemically, food produces a chemical reaction in your body. Anything you eat produces a chemical reaction in your body. What do we do to ourselves chemically? If we are the temple of God's Holy Spirit. So taking care of the mind and the body is the important part of being prepared for the Kingdom of God. You won't need a brain or a body as a spirit being. You will need your mind.

You will need your spirit. But the development of the spirit is affected by the body and the brain.

The development of the spirit, that's why I believe that it's the... Okay, this is a personal opinion. I think that one of the reasons God doesn't call the mass of humanity today is their brains are so messed up and their bodies are so messed up, they couldn't respond. He has to remove Satan, then bring them up in a perfect world where they can be healed physically before he can even work with them. And you know what his proof is to the world? When they're resurrected, the proof that he can do it is he'll say, I did it with these people the weak and the worst times. When Satan was in charge, I took the weak and did it with them. If I did it with them, can I do it with you? And everybody would say, whoa, if he did it with them, he sure can do it with me. Don't ever forget that. We are the proof of what God does. We're the proof of what God does. What a privilege. What an honor. God says, come here, I'm going to use you to prove to other people what I can do. That's why we're here. This is the training ground. It is God's purpose to create children. And he's going to have older children to help teach the younger children. I'm a firstborn, I understand. This concept is clear to me. I mean, when I had two little sisters and when parents said, it's your job to protect those girls because they're your sisters, I understood that. That's my job. God's going to need older children to help the younger children. Does that mean the older children have more value? No, they do have a different job, though. Do my parents love me more than my sisters? Not at all. Did they expect my sisters to protect me? No. I had a different job. We are the older children. We're being prepared to teach them. Who was it that said today in one of the messages, you can't teach something, you do not know. This is the training ground. Every day you have an opportunity. Every day you have an opportunity to be trained for the Kingdom of God. Well, everybody get a good night's sleep tonight and come back. Well, you can sleep in some of the morning, too. Now don't forget...