A Citizen of the Kingdom

We are preparing for the fall Holy Days. And the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement. And all of these Holy Days gear us towards things. They point us towards things that are going to be happening in the future. Not just the future. I mean, what's happening now, they have past importance. The Feast of Tabernacles was a festival harvest for ancient Israel. The Day of Atonement actually pictures the work of Jesus Christ, of which part of it has been accomplished and part of it hasn't.

And like all the Holy Days, they tell us the plan of God. I had a totally different sermon I had planned to give today. I'm going to give it next week because I started thinking about the Holy Days and how we need to start thinking and planning, not just physically for the Holy Days, but spiritually for the Holy Days. In the sermonette, Mr. Pereman talked about, you know, we look at this world and how bad it is.

And all we can do is what's helped somebody immediately in front of us. That's really all you can do, right? That person is the person you can help. Whoever becomes president isn't going to call any of us and ask for advice. There's nothing we can do on the global scene. We can help individuals and how important that is. And these Holy Days are so needed because they help us keep the vision of what God is doing and of the future that is for us.

It's easy to get discouraged about the world you live in or what the future is, and yet we're not supposed to be in despair. We're supposed to be focused on what God is doing. And one of the things that we can do sometimes is when we look at the piece of tabernacles and we look at that millennial period when Christ returns establishes God's kingdom on the earth and we sort of say, well, the millennium of the kingdom are synonyms and they're not.

The kingdom of God has always existed and exists right now because the kingdom of God, I mean, the throne of God is still there. God's still in charge. It's just that for a short period of time, He allowed Satan to take man's dominion. Remember, He gave dominion over the earth to humanity. And when humanity sinned, the first parents of humanity sinned, they got kicked out of Eden and the result was they lost their dominion. Satan was given limited power and it's limited. In fact, the entire Bible is stories about how God intervened in limiting His power throughout time.

So that's the good news. He only goes as far as God lets Him and His influence on humanity. So for this limited time, Satan has a certain amount of power, but God's still in control. And when Christ comes back, it's to reestablish the kingdom on earth by removing Satan's dominion. It's not because the kingdom of God does not exist. When you were called, you were called into a relationship with God the Father and with Jesus Christ. And in Philippians, Paul writes, our citizenship is in heaven.

And there's other places where it is stated in a little different way, but it's interesting. Our citizenship is in heaven. You and I are already citizens of the kingdom of God. We're already participants in the kingdom of God. We're already part of that kingdom, even though over the world, Satan still has dominion. Satan no longer has dominion in your life. God has dominion in our lives. Now, if we fully understand that, there's some things that change dramatically in our lives.

And the Holy Days started with Passover, clear to that last day, that eighth day. All the Holy Days teach us how God's dominion is in our lives now. That's why the Holy Days is actually the gospel. If you really wanted to have a Christian calendar about Jesus Christ, you would keep what people consider the Jewish holidays, because those Holy Days tell us the work of Christ from the Passover until New Jerusalem comes to earth and everything in between.

So you have had the dominion of God. His rule has already happened in your life. You are submitting to God the Father, and you're submitting to Jesus Christ. You're waiting for your King to come, right? So you're living by a whole different viewpoint than the world around you. And Mr. Perriman was sort of introduction. He didn't know that to what I was going to talk about. Because we're watching a deteriorating world that we can't stop from deteriorating.

In fact, if Christ doesn't come back when He does, no one survives. That's how bad it gets. That's where Satan's dominion always leads. Satan's dominion always leads to anger, violence, hatred, and destruction. Because he's evil, and he always leads people to evil. But we're reminded in these holy days how God says, I will solve this, and I will lead humanity to good, away from where they're going.

We're a citizen. Now it's interesting if you look up the meaning of the word citizen. And it has a broad meaning, and usually you can break it down into three concepts. It is someone who lawfully lives in a nation. In other words, they are a lawful citizen. Someone can live in a nation and not be a citizen. Now I visited many countries around the world, and when I'm there, I'm not a citizen. I don't have the rights that everybody else has.

I'm a visitor, right? But lawfully, you live in that country, in that nation. You receive privileges and rights as a person who lives in that nation. That another person living there doesn't receive, or visitor does not receive. And you also have duties that you're expected to perform because you are a loyal citizen. When the United States Constitution was written, it was expected that all men who were citizens, they didn't include women at the time, were supposed to vote, were supposed to serve on jury duty, and supposed to serve in the military.

It was the, because you had this privilege, you also had a duty that you had to fulfill as a citizen. Now you're a citizen of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. Although you live in a nation that is not God's nation. God's blessed this country. As long as we had the Bible, we moved forward in some ways. But you know, it never was God's kingdom. Understand that. This never was God's kingdom. In other words, it eventually would fail no matter what.

Because the goodness that's in it is still going to be corrupted by Satan. I mean, if you go and read the Constitution, there's all kinds of flaws in it. There's moral flaws in the Constitution itself. Why? Well, they had, something's right. But it never was the kingdom of God. And it never can be the kingdom of God. So what happens? You are called to be a citizen, you're called to be a child of God, but He tells us our roles in different ways. We are also called to be citizens.

You are now a citizen of the kingdom of God. And because of that, you have privileges and rights. Because you are a citizen of the kingdom of God, you have the right to go to God and talk to Him. You have the privilege of God interacting in your life in a way He isn't interacting in many people in the world right now who are under the dominion of Satan. You have given privileges, you're given certain rights because you're a citizen. But because of that, you also have duties that you must do as a citizen in performing those duties. If you're now a citizen of the kingdom of God, how does that change your life?

We're going to talk about it a number of ways. And we're only going to go through two passages of Scripture. We're going to go through Hebrews 11, parts of Hebrews 11, and some Scriptures in the Sermon on the Mount. So we're going to look at Hebrews 11 is about the people, or some of the people who have been citizens of the kingdom of God throughout history.

And of course, the Sermon on the Mount is sometimes called the Constitution of the Kingdom. And it really is. It's Christ saying, this is the foundation of what I'm going to build on as far as our lives. The practicality of our lives is really taught as citizens of the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount. So we're going to go back and forth and look at some of the ways we need to be thinking about before these Holy Days that God is involved in your life in doing. The first one, if you are a citizen of the kingdom of God, it changes your loyalties.

Your loyalties. And you really look at what is said and taught in the Bible, and specifically in the Gospels, where Christ talks about as the King, the loyalties, how that changes. We are loyal to our families. We are loyal to our friends. We are loyal to our places of employment. We are loyal to all different things, right? But the loyalty to God and to Christ comes first. Nothing, nothing can come above that loyalty.

We can't let any other thing, any person—you know, sometimes people are just loyal to selfish desires, making money or whatever. We can't let any other loyalty be number one. There's only one loyalty. If we keep the Feast of Trumpets and we say, I want to be there when Christ returns, that only happens if our loyalty is to God and to Christ first. Then you can be there when He returns. If you want to rule with Christ during the millennium, pictured by the Feast of Tabernacles, your loyalty has to be now. That's number one.

And there's a price to that. Let's go to Hebrews 11 and let's look at what this is said here in one of the great chapters of the New Testament. Because it starts with faith. In other words, absolute faith, loyalty. If you have faith in the United States dollar, it will fail.

If you have faith in your company, it can and eventually will fail.

If you have faith in the U.S. government, it will fail. No matter what you have faith in, it will fail. Now we hope the government doesn't come after our religion, right? That's a fear that could happen. But our loyalty has to be God first and Christ as our Savior and as our King. That's the kingdom. That's our citizenship. That's our citizenship. You know, when someone becomes a naturalized citizen in the United States, they have to swear that basically they are totally loyal to the government of the United States of America. Then they receive the privileges of being a citizen. They're now a citizen.

We commit to absolute loyalty to God and to Christ and the rule of God and Christ, the kingdom of God and Christ. And we now become citizens. And that means our citizenship on this earth, in this country now, is way down that list. Now that doesn't mean we can be bad citizens. I mean, even Jesus and Paul both told us we have to pay our taxes. I said, no, that government has the right to tax you. I know people think they don't have the right to tax us. Actually, they do according to Christ and according to Paul. So we pay our taxes. We obey the laws except any law that comes, any law that's against the laws of the kingdom of God, we don't obey.

Because our loyalty is to the kingdom of God and to God the Father and to Jesus Christ.

The loyalties change. When we truly understand what the Holy Days are about, your loyalties change completely. Your set of loyalties, what is important. Hebrews 11.1.

This starts, this is called the faith chapter because it talks about faith and it talks about great people of faith. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That is a remarkable oxymoron type of statement. Faith is evidence that there's something that nobody else can see and it's real. Your faith in the citizenship that you have, your faith in God, in the government of God, in His rulership, in your life. That faith, anybody else would look at and say, well that's nothing. I can't see that. According to this, that's the evidence that God is working with you. Your loyalty to God is the evidence, it's the substance of what nobody else can feel. Nobody else can, I can't get that.

So our faith is the substance, it's the proof that we have changed our loyalties.

And our faith is in God. Verse 3 says, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God and that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. In other words, God created the universe. Before that, there wasn't anything physical. He made it appear.

And we have faith in that because when He created the universe, that's His kingdom.

The entire universe is His kingdom. It belongs to Him. This earth belongs to Him. Every human being on this earth belongs to Him. Everything on this earth belongs to Him. Just because He and His wisdom has let Satan have some dominion, unless us have our limited dominion, and we're all messed up, so we just keep messing things up, hasn't changed His sovereignty.

So we're not just looking forward to the kingdom of God coming to earth, which is going to come when He reestablishes it as King of Kings, Christ does. We are already participants in it in that we have a loyalty to our God. We have a loyalty to the King that's coming. So our political party, as I've said before, is we're monarchists.

We're monarchists. We believe in a king. That'll shut down political decisions or conversations about it as quick as anything. Which party do you belong to? Oh, I'm a monarchist.

I'm waiting for my king to come. Nobody wants to talk to that crazy person.

Our loyalties have changed. Verse 8, by faith, and of course, He gives all these examples. We're going to skip through just a few of these examples here. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. Remember, when God came to Abraham, He lived in Ur on the Tigris Euphrates River, rivers between the two of them. And He said, I want you to go to Canaan. He didn't have a globe to go to to figure out where Canaan was. He probably knew the direction it was, how far it was.

There were roads there, treacherous, primitive roads. He asked to go someplace, and He did. And here He says, it's by faith, I want you to go someplace else. He was a citizen of Ur.

In our spiritual reality, this is what has happened to each one of us.

We were born here, most of us, and we're citizens of the United States of America. And God says, I want you to go someplace else.

Now, we've been very privileged to live here because this has probably been the wealthiest place to live for the average person in the history of humanity.

But this isn't home. It's just the place we're temporarily dwelling in.

I want you to go, He told Abraham. And He did. By faith, He dwelt in the land of promise, in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob. The heirs with Him are the same promise. They were promised a place. They got to the place, and they didn't even get to own it. They were nomads, a nomadic tribe moving through the land that God said they would have, and all the cities were owned by other people. And they had to move along the pathways of other nomadic tribes, drifting all over the place, running into each other every once in a while.

When they had a famine, He had to go to Egypt to get food. He never got to settle down in His own land. The promise was, I'm giving you something. I'm giving you a place. And that place was where, you know, in the Middle East, that place is promised to the descendants of Abraham.

In His lifetime, He never owned a piece of it. In fact, He had to negotiate to buy a cave to bury Sarah in, in His own land, because He didn't even own a cave.

He left where He was to go where He was supposed to go, and it still wasn't the Kingdom of God.

He says, for He waited. Now, this is what's interesting, because the writer of Hebrews understands Abraham knew that property, that piece of land, would go to his descendants. But he was actually looking for something greater. For he waited for the city, which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. He waited for the Kingdom of God. He was a citizen of that Kingdom. As I said, we should be good citizens here in this world, but it's always limited.

It's always, we're always outsiders here. Abraham was always an outsider. Think about that. God made him leave everything, including his citizenship in Ur, and his wealth, because he was a wealthy man. He had to bring his wealth with him, you know, turn his houses into sheep, sell his houses and get sheep. He had to become a totally different lifestyle. Move from the city, move across hundreds and hundreds of miles, get to the place where God says, this is yours. Well, it'll be your children to live here.

And he knew he was actually waiting for something greater.

He was actually waiting for the Kingdom that he was a citizen in. Let's go to Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6, verse 19.

Here's one of the lessons that Abraham had to learn, that we have to learn.

And it's interesting, because he was a wealthy man, but he was always looking ahead. He enjoyed his wealth, but he was always looking ahead to something greater that was more important than whatever he owned. Do not lay up for yourself as part of the Sermon on the Mount. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where leaves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. It's not wrong to own things. It's wrong to trust in them. I remember when my dad died, he had a small box of silver coins that he had saved. They wanted to give to me. So I got that little box of silver coins. So I decided I was going to, over the years, buy silver coins to give to my grandkids. And they kept being more and more grandkids, so I had to buy more and more coins, right? So now I have a big box of silver coins. And it's always interesting to watch the silver price go up and down. Some days it's like, oh wow, I've got a fortune in silver coins.

Three weeks later, oh, I don't have much of anything in silver coins. There's no faith in it, right? And if Christ comes back and I don't get to give him to my grandkids, good, because my grandkids will be better off, right? Because he'll be back. So we have these physical things, and we have to remember this isn't everything life is all about. And you know when you really figure that out when you get really sick? Or you get old enough. Or you lose everything.

And then you realize there is something more important even than this now. And that is where my loyalty is. In fact, he says in verse 24, no one can serve two masters, for either we will hate the one and love the other, or we will be loyal to the one, loyalty, loyal to the one who despises the other. You cannot serve God and money. Now, Jesus wasn't against money. He was famous for going into rich people's houses and eating and was accused of, wow, you just hang out with the rich. Then when he hung out with the prostitutes, they said, oh, you just hang out with the sinners. He couldn't win, right? He went wherever he had to go to tell people about God and the kingdom of God. And that they could be part of that.

That the future was waiting for them. God has a future and is waiting for us to arrive, because we're all part of it. So our loyalty is to God. We enjoy physical things. He doesn't want us to be aesthetics, you know, live in a bed of nails and eat nothing but bread and water. That's not what He expects of us. He created this world for us. Sometimes the greatest joy is to sit out, for me to sit out on the porch anymore, just because I'm getting old, sit out on the porch with a cup of coffee and watch the birds and the squirrels, right? And you realize why when people act goofy, we call them squirrely, because squirrels are goofy, right? And hummingbirds.

I have one hummingbird that the other ones run off. So when they're chasing, I mean, they chase each other and they peck each other. So they don't come over beside me, so all the rest of them leave. It's like they're afraid to get close to me, but it just hangs out like, here I am, come get me. And then you'll go drink from the little, you know, bird feeder we have and feel protected. And just stay there so long, challenging the other birds to come up. Then I go into the house and boom, you know, they swarm him and off he goes. That's, you know, that's silly, isn't it? But, you know, that's actually a gift from God. He gives us things all the time.

He gives us things all the time. We miss them so much of the time.

Our loyalties are different. A second thing, being a citizen of the kingdom of God changes our expectations. All of us should have expectations, right? You say, well, I expect to, my car's breaking down and we have to buy a new car. That's not a wrong expectation. And say, I want to buy the nicest car I can with whatever, you know, money I have. Those kinds of physical expectations aren't wrong in themselves.

You know, the one in a new car, because your car has fallen apart.

But those are small expectations. Our greater expectations change when we're a citizen of the kingdom of God. Hebrews 11, verse 13. Let's go back to Hebrews.

This is what we're supposed to be reminded about. Isn't it interesting that at the face of tabernacles, if you've kept your second tithe, you have more money to spend at any other time during the year. And you can buy, you can go to restaurants that you can never go to the rest of the year.

You get to stay in some temporary dwelling, which is always nice. So, you know, we have this money.

In the Jewish world, there's one book they read during the days of 11 bread. Now, they read parts of other books. They read this entire book. You know what it is? Anybody know? Ecclesiastes.

Where Solomon is the richest guy on earth and ends up saying, it's all meaningless. Without God, it's nothing. And so during the time when they, if they keep it right, and the way we keep it, we have more physical resources than any other time. And Ecclesiastes is a good book to read. If that's all we have, what happens when you go home and you're going to go back to the limit of your budget again? Right? It changes our expectations. Hebrews 11 verse 13. So he goes on and he really talks a lot about Abraham and different people here.

In verse 13, he says, these all died in faith, not having received the promises. You haven't received all the promises God has for you. You've received some promises. God's spirit, His guidance, His help. You've received promises from God. But the greatest promise is when the kingdom actually comes and we are changed and we see Him face to face as His children. That's the great expectation.

That's the expectation that's supposed to motivate us, that we wish to see Him face to face, face to face, and be His children. We wish to see Jesus Christ face to face and thank Him.

We wish to have sin removed and it's gone. We no longer have sin as part of our nature. We can't sin. That's taken out of us. All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them. They believed it and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. The Feast of Tabernacles takes us to temporary dwellings to remind us that we are pilgrims on the earth.

And that's really hard for us in the United States. It's interesting.

I talked to a man once. He was a minister. He'd come from Africa to one of the conferences.

He said, I understand why it is so hard for now, for Americans, to be totally focused on the Kingdom of God and the return of Jesus Christ.

He said, physically, you're already living in the millennium and you don't understand it. In other words, he looked at what we had.

And he says, I understand why you're not on fire for God the way we are in Africa. He says, because you have too much. You have too much.

And I felt a little humbled by the comments.

We forget we're pilgrims.

You know, we'll really be reminded if we ever lose enough.

I mean, if inflation keeps going like this for another five years, we're going to be reminded we're pilgrims.

We will be starving, I mean, at the current rate. But life is going to be a lot harder. I'm not trying to be negative. It may not continue. I don't know what's going to happen.

I'm giving up trying to figure out what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't want to be one of those, what did you call them, prophets, chicken littles, you know.

But I know this has had it in a really bad direction, and prophecy can't be fulfilled very quickly in the direction we're going in. So we need to know that when you talk about it. But we need to be reminded we're just pilgrims in this. We're so journos on this earth.

He says in verse 14, for those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland, you and I are seeking a homeland beyond this one.

We had another minister come from Africa, and he stayed at one of the minister's houses in Cincinnati. And that minister had enough money. He probably sold a number of houses along the way, because sometimes you buy a house and lose everything. So there's lots of retired ministers that didn't, you know, they're living in small apartments right now because that's all they can afford. This minister had bought and sold a couple houses, and he bought a nice house so he could keep two or three couples there. And he did that all the time. His house was constantly full of guests.

He bought a house for guests, and he brought in all these people from Africa, these ministers.

And one of the women was very distraught because she said, so who all lives in here with you? He said, well, just the two of us because we use it for, you know, for guests. How can a person, only two people, own a house this size? How's that possible?

I don't understand. Why would two people have a big house?

She was a very intelligent woman. It was that her environment was that poor.

I mean, the only people who had a house like that probably in her environment were the leaders of the governments that were nothing more than thugs.

This is hard for us.

We have to remember we're pilgrims here. We are strangers in a strange land.

And truly, if they had called a mind, verse 15, that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. That city that he's talking about, we will commemorate, we will look forward to on the eighth day, the last great day of the feast. The city of New Jerusalem that comes down when God comes to dwell on the earth with all his children who have been changed, and the kingdom of God reigns over everything. There's no place where the kingdom of God does not reign.

That city is our destiny. That's what you've been called. That city is the place God says, when do you get there? And then, then God begins to unfold his next plan, which I have no idea what that is. It's beyond any of us.

See, that's God's focal point right now. It's the city of New Jerusalem coming down.

That's our homeland. And whatever we give up here and now is worth it.

For that. So, we realize it gives us a change in expectations.

I won't go there, but in Matthew, it talks about that we must seek first the kingdom of God.

Matthew 6. We must seek first the kingdom of God. What's that mean? I seek first the kingdom of God. Well, that means that is your expectation. That is what you're seeking. That's what getting out of bed every morning is worth getting out of bed for. Not just for work, not just for all the things we get out of bed for. It is because that is there. That is what God is doing in my life. See, that's the substance. Our faith has to be the substance of that is what God is doing in my life. If that's not there, then we're missing the point of Christianity. It is the faith of what He is doing and in what He is doing and in the kingdom that we are now citizens of.

The third point, it changes our values. Go back to Hebrews here. Let's go to verse 24. I'm talking about Moses. By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Moses had it all. He was royalty. He had the wealth of the greatest country in the world at the time and he was part of that wealth. He had power. He had rule over other people. He had everything that human beings think is absolutely important. Choosing, rather, to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. It changes our values.

We're all taught a value system at very early in age. We get it from our families. We get it from society. We get it from the internet. We get it from the schools we go to. We have this value system.

Being a citizen of the kingdom of God changes our values. It changes how we make decisions.

It changes why we do what we do and how we do what we do and how we live life. It's what we value as really important. It changes our morality.

It changes our our honesty. Everything about us is based on the principles of this kingdom, the laws of this kingdom.

And so we are driven by that and it changes our values.

It's very interesting. It says in verse 26, Esteeming, talking about Moses, their approach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he took them to the reward. Or, I mean, looked at the reward. In other words, he looked at what God was going to do. What was God going to do?

Take them to a promised land. Did Moses get to that promised land? No. And Moses understood it was a greater promised land. Israel was going to a promised land, the land promised to Abraham. He was going to be in the greater promised land that Christ returns to establish.

So it says in verse 27, By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who was invisible. He endured because he knew God.

The invisible God was real to him. That was the substance, not Pharaoh. Pharaoh wasn't the substance with always power and always army. No, the invisible God was his substance. That's what faith is. So when we overemphasize, I say overemphasize because I'm not saying to have some of these goals in your life is bad, but when we overemphasize secular education, we should have secular education. We all need to be educated, right? You all need to know science and math and everything, right? Reading. But to overemphasize that as the answers to the world, which is what secular humanism teaches, higher education is the answer to all human problems. No, it's not. It's just part of the problem. So we have to be careful. If we overemphasize being rich, we're missing the values of the kingdom. If we overemphasize position, power, we're missing the point because these are all illusions. They're not the substance.

The substance is God.

I'm going to skip through a couple things here. I'm not going to go back to Matthew. Well, let's go there. Matthew 5. If you all get up and leave, okay, I'll just keep preaching. Matthew 5. Verse 27.

Right in the middle here of the Sermon on the Mount. You have heard that it is said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Now, he brings this into one of his statements that's hyperbole to the point of being ridiculous, which Jesus would do. He used hyperbole. If your right hand causes you to sin, or right eye, pluck it out and cast it from you. For it's more profitable for you that one of your eyes perish, that your whole body be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. For it's more profitable for you than one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. The point here is your value system has to change so much that it's not just about even actions, it's about the motivations for those actions. It's not even, it's not just about what you do, it's about what you think, it's about what you feel. All these things have to be brought into the value system of the kingdom of God. And that's why we have to be converted. That's the why. To truly be part of the kingdom of God, you have to receive God's Spirit. On our own, we can only go so far with this. He has to take us the rest of the way, so that our value system changes, so that we are part of a spiritual kingdom. Point number four, it changes our motivations. Back to Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 verse 30. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell. Now, we read through this. This is really an inspiring part of the Bible, right? We get to see all these times and places where God did something in the lives of people. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. By faith, the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe when she had received the spies with peace. And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and of David and Samuel the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valued in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. And women received their dead, raised to life again.

Good! If I can have that faith, if I have the values, if I have the motivations, if I am really living as a citizen of the kingdom, all this stuff is going to happen in my life. Well, sometimes.

Because you and I still live in the fallen world, right? We still live in a world that's under the limited dominion of Satan. We have to finish what it says here. Others, now others who believed in the kingdom. Remember Hebrews 11 is about those who wait for that city. These are people who actually believe that there is a city coming to earth with God in it, and they're going to be part of it. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. So others had trials of mockings and scourgings, yes, of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. I want to stop right here, okay?

Okay, these are other people. I hope that's never me. I want to be one of the ones that stops the mouth of lions, right? Well, God stops the mouth of lions for him.

But he goes on, he says, they were solved in two. Probably Isaiah was solved in two.

Were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. What? The citizens of the kingdom?

This changes everything. Our motivations are the kingdom first. Well, it's God first.

He's our substance. Christ first. He's our substance. The kingdom that they reign over, that we're now part of, that's our being. That's who we are. This is how we have to determine ourselves. This is who we are. He says, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and in caves of the earth. These are highly motivated people, right?

We are to be motivated the same way they are. We're to be motivated by the belief that God is taking us there and whatever price we have to pay is worth it.

Another one of those messages I don't like to say out loud.

Wow. Everything we adore to get there is worth it. We have to believe that.

We have to believe it. And in what, four weeks or so, we're all headed off with the Feast of Tabernacles and it's fun and we're traveling and we're seeing everybody and we're with 600 people singing and it's so wonderful. It's great, but it's just part of a journey. We're not in the kingdom yet, are we? We're citizens. It's just part of the journey. All this is part of the journey.

Every day is part of the journey.

What happens is all this changes the purpose of our lives.

And there's something said in Hebrews 11 that applies to all the people who lived after the Bible was finished. There's something in Hebrews 11 that applies to you and me if we're seeking that city. If we're seeking that city, it's in verse 39.

It's in verse 39.

And all these, all these people, all these great people of faith who believed in the kingdom, who let God rule in their lives, who believed God knew what was best for them, who followed that, even times at times at great price. Some of them had great lives, so to speak.

But most of them, you read it, it's like they were really hit up and down lives. I mean, Daniel got to live in the palace of Babylon and all the wealth, and it was a wealthy place.

He also tried to kill him about three times, right? Being thrown in a lion's den is not a good thing.

And he didn't know what was going to happen. He just knew if that was the journey, that's what he was going to take. Because he was a citizen of another kingdom.

And being a citizen of Babylon did not matter. Being part of the government, he was a government advisor to Babylon, the Babylonian king. Being part of the government didn't matter. Now, all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, right? He said, well, didn't they go to heaven? Of course they didn't. We know they didn't go to heaven. What's the promise? The resurrection. They went to sleep. Abraham has still not received the kingdom. Mary, the mother of Jesus, still hasn't received the kingdom. Paul still hasn't received the kingdom. None of them have. Why? Verse 40, God, having provided something better for us that we should not be made perfect, or they should not be made perfect, apart from us. In other words, when Christ comes back, all those who during this time of Satan's rule turn to God are resurrected at the same time. Now, that should be humbling. God says, no, they're not resurrected yet. They're waiting. They're waiting till I finish you.

And if all of us in this room die before Christ comes back, we'll be waiting until He finishes the next group. And they'll wait till the next group, or whatever. And there comes a point where Christ comes back and everybody comes up at the same time. Those citizens of His kingdom, and He has a kingdom prepared, and He has a world to change, right? Christ comes back, He has to change this messed up world, and He has a kingdom prepared to change the world.

You know, a lot of times when you're younger, you want to change the world.

And then the reality is somewhere around age 30, you figure you can't. Oh, I can change the world. Yeah, you can't. Now you've been called to change the world.

And to think about that, when you come up, and I come up, when Christ comes back to re-establish God's kingdom on this earth, who are we going to see there? Peter? David?

Think of all the men and women of the Bible. Sarah? Think of all those people we're going to see.

All together.

That's the purpose of this, and that's the purpose of the kingdom.

It's for the next stage. The next stage is those who survive the tribulation, and after that is the great white throat judgment, where every human being has an opportunity to be a citizen of the kingdom of God and a member of his family.

That's still a long time from now. That's much bigger than this. You and I are just, we're part of something small, but we're part of something very important, because we're part of those first roots. That should also humble us. There's no reason why we're better than anybody else. God just, in his wisdom, said, I'm calling you, you, you, and you, and you. Well, we know why, because he says he hasn't called the wise. He hasn't called the strong. He hasn't called the mighty, so that he can prove who he is, so he can show the works of God. You and I are so small, we're the proof of how great God is. Think about that. Oh yeah, well, I can't wait till I'm changed. I'm going to look up my brother, straighten him out.

I didn't call your brother, because you're smaller and you're weaker than your brother. You're called because you're the proof of what God can do. I find that comforting myself, because it's like, ah, I understand my calling. It makes sense.

Now, God, do your work. Do your work so that we can be there to meet Christ when the fall holy days are actually fulfilled, with the trumpets and atonement, feasts, and Trevor and echos, and the day when the city comes.

Remember, it is God's expectation to give you the kingdom. See His expectations, too.

He won't make us take it. We can actually turn against God. We can turn against God and give this up. But it's His expectation that we don't. It's His desire that we don't.

He will do everything but possess us to get us there. If we don't make it, it's because we refuse it. He will do everything to get us there except possess us and make us do it. We have to make the choice. It is His desire you be there. I don't care what your problems are. I don't care how weak you are. We're a problem filled with weak people. That's why we're here. It is His desire for you to be there. That's why I called you. It's His desire for you to overcome. It's His desire that you develop in you Him with His Spirit. He develops in you the values of the Kingdom, the motivations of the Kingdom, the substance of who God is, the substance of Jesus Christ the Savior, the substance of Him coming back. That is what He wants to build in us. And when Christ does come, then the Kingdom does come. You will become a citizen of the Kingdom. You already that, but you will now get the privileges of being with God, of being with Christ as a citizen, and even more importantly, you're part of the family that God has created. So think about this as we come up on these fall-holy days.