Countdown to the Day of Atonement

Well, I am sure that you have begun to notice that the seasons are beginning to change. Just imperceptibly right at this particular point, but I was noticing the soybean fields driving up the interstate this morning. They haven't yet begun to turn. They will in a few weeks, I guess. At least some of the ones I saw seem to even be a little bit behind. They were probably planted late because of the spring flooding that we had. But I look around my yard and I see some of my flowers beginning to turn. Rusty. Some of my perennials. And it reminds me that the seasons are beginning to change along with a little bit of a break in the weather this week, which may or may not last. And we may have another hot spell. Who knows? I also look out my front door, and as I do every morning when I want to get my newspaper, and I see when the sun comes up, because my front door faces east, see the sun's moved down. I have a little kind of a little dial out my front door as I watch the sun. Because my house sets on just to the north side of my house. The easement is actually Main Street in Greenwood, Indiana. Main Street runs on an east-west axis through Greenwood. And were it to continue, it would take my house out. But the easement for the Main Street out of Greenwood, Indiana runs right straight through my neighborhood and between the house to my north and myself. And so the reason I know that is, of course, looking at the plats on my deed. But also there's something else that's interesting that I've noted over the years, that when the sun comes to its peak in the summer, in terms of its progression into the north, it lines up with Main Street. And when I go out my door, I see it in the morning and the sun's right there. And I know what season of the year it is. And as we move through August and September, October, the sun starts to move to the south as it does. And it moves across the tree and then the water tower. And I watch it go across right there in front of my neighborhood. And so it's beginning to go more, instead of being right, like this, as it would be in the middle of the end of June at the time of the solstice, it's now moving like this. Which, of course, indicates we're moving toward fall and you see the light begin to change as a result of all of that. And then just a few days ago, we turned into September. September is a month that always kind of signifies the fall school used to begin right after Labor Day. And when I was a kid, but now it begins about the 1st of July these days, that things have changed. But September is always kind of termed as the fall and you're moving in toward winter. I bought an album of Frank Sinatra songs a few years ago that he recorded in the 1950s, September song.

And it's all about growing older. Kind of a downer, I know, in terms of an idea. But there was a hit back then and there's still some pretty good songs on there. You ever heard of a May-September wedding or relationship? Know what a May-September relationship is? Someone who's young, May, and someone who's older or more mature is the September individual. So if you see people with a distinct difference in their ages, that's called a May-September relationship or marriage. So September has that connotation. And it's a time of maturity and our lives should reflect growth and maturity. If we understand the seasons, their connection to God's holy days, and the connection to what God is doing with us, there's a reason for the cycle of the seasons and their connection to God's holy days.

Last Sabbath, I wrote in my letter a week ago, last Sabbath actually marked the beginning of a period of time that leads up to the day of atonement. It began a 40-day period that leads up to the day of atonement. And the reason I would even note that or know about it is because a few years ago I was reading in a book, which was called Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days, written by a couple of Jewish teachers.

And the title caught my attention, and I picked it up and bought it, and it really is not... It's talking about trumpets and atonement, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, as they refer to it. But more importantly, it's talking about this 40-day period that I didn't realize the Jews have that leads up to the day of atonement. Atonement is the 40th day of a period that spans the time between summer and winter, this period of the fall, the early fall, that they call Alul Tishri, the two months Alul and Tishri, which Tishri begins on the day of trumpets.

And they mark this period of 40 days that ends at atonement, and it actually began this past Sabbath. Now, I know today we're seven days into it, so in a sense, 33 days from today will be on the eve of the day of atonement, if you want to mark...

use that to mark and to understand. But as it began last week, we're looking at a 40-day period of time. And in the Jewish tradition, they use that as a time to reflect, to go through a self-examination, reflect on their spiritual condition, where they've been, where they need to be, to prepare their heart, as that book indicated, for the holy days.

In the Jewish tradition, the day of atonement among the Jews is a very, very important day. It is kind of like Easter or Christmas, where, you know, for Christians, not us, but others who, you know, you know what I'm talking about. And that's when people... people who don't go to church on, you know, any other Sunday, they'll go to church on either Christmas or Easter, and that's the only time they darken the door of a church.

For a lot of Jews, they may not go to the synagogue through the Sabbath, but they'll go on the day of Yom Kippur. That is a very, very important day for them, within their tradition. They don't understand the Christology and the meaning of Jesus Christ as the scapegoat and all of that.

They don't accept that. But in terms of their tradition and how they have layered over the truth of God over the years, they at least looked at that as a very, very... the most significant day on their holy calendar. So that's why they end it there. Now, Jews will keep the Feast of Tabernacles in their own way, but it's not held with the same reverence as atonement and even Rosh Hashanah, the day of trumpets. But in looking at that period of reading that book and coming to look at that period of 40 days, it caught my attention a couple of years ago when I first began to read about that.

And in the connection to the Holy Days, and especially the spring and the fall seasons where we have the Holy Days kind of bunched up within God's calendar, we also understand the meaning of the Holy Days as we go through each one of them from Passover in an oven bread all the way through to the last great day. We reflect. We examine ourselves. We look forward to them. We anticipate and keep them with joy. We prepare ourselves. We look upon and understand that the Holy Days are a time of joy and of beauty and of grace and freedom and deep meaning and purpose of God's plan and what he is accomplishing when he is in the world.

And that's what he is accomplishing with mankind. And as I looked at that 40-day period, I thought, well, that's interesting. And I, a couple of years ago, even kind of noted it in my own calendar and the way I look at things and noted that 40-day period of time, kind of just noted it. I didn't, you know, don't hesitate to use the term observe because I don't want to create a new theology and I'm not trying to do that.

But I do want to talk about it this morning in terms of 40 and an idea because regardless of how the Jewish community might keep it, we understand the Holy Days and the fullness of the Holy Days. But there's also something to the period of examination and reflection and preparation and the idea of preparing our hearts for God's Holy Days and to meet God and to come before him on the Holy Days.

Obviously, as a part of our understanding as well as we prepare in the spring for the Passover service in the days of Unleavened Bread through sermons and our own self-reflection as we prepare to take the Passover. But we also can prepare in a direct way in the fall leading up for the fall Holy Days. And to look at this 40-day period that the Jews have set aside in their tradition is rather interesting. If you look at the examples in the Bible, I think we all recognize that the designation of a period of 40 in the Bible is used quite often.

You have 40 days and you have 40-year periods throughout the Scriptures. In looking and studying into it some of the Bible dictionaries and articles that I've had on this, you can get into numbers. We know 7 completion or perfection. You can look at 12 in terms of an organizational beginning. Those of you that remember Gerald Waterhouse sermons will remember numbers and the way they have been used. And there's some interesting things to note from them. But the article that I was reading mentioned that 40 and 4, and then 40 being a multiple of 4, throughout the Scriptures seems to be the most significant number.

This was out of the interpreters Bible dictionary, I believe it was, that I have on my shelf. And it made an interesting point through this long article about that, especially looking at the number of 40. And again, you have to keep a balance when you look at numbers and not to read too much into it. But 40 does keep coming back and signifying some very interesting periods of time. Typically, it's been associated with a time of testing, or time of trial, time of examination, even a time of preparation.

Jesus Christ, remember, fasted for how many days before he met Satan? 40 days. He fasted 40 days in the wilderness. We're told there in the Gospel accounts. And then he went to meet Satan and that great temptation that we read about. So there's a 40-day period right there. Probably the most significant... If you go back to the story of Noah, you will find 40 days that the rains came upon the earth in that particular period.

And then there were the 40 days as they took for the waters to leave the earth. So that figures prominently in the story of Noah and the Flood. In various other ways, you look at the rains of three righteous kings of Judah, and really the number one and two kings of Judah. David and Solomon reigned 40 years each. King Joash and Judah also reigned 40 years. And they were all three righteous rains, good rains, periods of time for Judah. So those are parts of it. But probably the most well-known period of 40 is that of the Israelites, when they wandered through the desert after leaving Egypt and the Exodus, there was the 40-year period where they wandered before they took their place within the Promised Land after the death of Moses under the time of Joshua.

And I want to spend a few minutes in looking at that, because I think there are some lessons for us to learn, because sometimes we think of the number 40 as a time of testing or trial, and it does and would have that application. But that doesn't tell the whole story. And again, keeping in mind, what we can learn as we look at a time as we lead up to the Holy Days, this particular fall year, it's helpful for us to understand, I think, exactly how God uses that period of time and how we can use our own period of 40, now 33, days in leading up to the high Holy Days of trumpets, atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the last great day, and so that our hearts, most importantly, are right before God and properly prepared through this.

I gave this sermon last week in Indianapolis, and a lady came up to me and told me that in her family, they periodically have gone, some of her relatives had gone through a program, some type of a spiritual discipline set up by someone that, where they went through a period of 40 days of fasting and prayer and reflection in their own way.

Just randomly chosen 40-day period of time. Now, they didn't fast for the full 40 days, but they periodically would fast through that period of time. And it is a well-recognized period of time from the scriptures that even a lot of people who are seeking a deeper spiritual relationships employ to get close to God, to get right with their God, or to just be spiritual as they approach their own life. So, this lady was mentioning that to me, some of her relatives do that. And so, it's a well-known principle from the scriptures.

But to look at what we find, I think, is very instructive. Turn over to Exodus 16. And let's look at what is said here in Exodus 16 regarding the manna, the bread that God gave to Israel, the Israelites, during that period of time. Obviously, inserted here after the fact during the final compilations of the book of Exodus. But in Exodus 16, verse 34, it says, The Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the testimony to be kept.

This is some of the bread that they had. And the children of Israel, verse 35, ate manna forty years. Until they came to an inhabited land, they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. So, here's, in the midst of the recipe and the actual beginning to be given to the Israelites, is the insertion that during that whole time, they were provided bread. Of course, it's called manna, but some type of a bread substance. And the closest thing we can come to today to understand it would be a type of a nourishing bread that must have been really fortified and packed with all kinds of vitamins and additional nourishment that we just would be hard-pressed to find in our bread products today.

If they could get this recipe, you would, I'd love to have that recipe in the franchise on it. You and I could retire in good form if we had that today because it was probably pretty nutritious. But God provided that for them during this entire period of time.

And every day, they had to learn the lesson that Christ later brought out, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God, to give us this day our daily bread, and to rely on God and to look to God for daily strength and sustenance. That's the major lesson that they had to learn. Israel, you know the story, would not go into the land. The generation that came out of Egypt would not go into the land and take it because of the lack of faith.

They doubted God. They had directed a golden calf. They murmured. They had all their problems. We'll read about that in numbers. And God said, as a compromise to killing them all on the spot because of Moses' intercession, God said, all right, you're going to run around in circles out here for 38, 39 years, total 40 from the time they left Egypt, until this generation dies off.

And 40 is a pretty basic indicator of the length of a generation. But during that period of time, Israel wrote an interesting record. We read only a part of it in the book of Numbers. And people had to grow old, learn their lessons, think of what they were going to miss, and a generation dying off. Their children grew to adulthood. In turn, many of them, no doubt, became grandparents and took their families then into the land and inherited it under Joshua.

And it was quite an experience. The record of numbers in Deuteronomy gives us only the bare details, but it's always instructive, I think, to put flesh on those stories and to realize what they went through and what was taking place during that period of time.

You turn to the book of Deuteronomy, and let's look beginning in chapter 2, because there are several references through Deuteronomy to the period of time. And we can learn certain things as we look through what we are told here.

In Deuteronomy chapter 2, in verse 7, as keep in mind, Deuteronomy is a record of what was given in their final months at the end of that period of 40 years before they went into the land, just as Moses was about to pass from the scene.

So it's a recapitulation. It's a reviewing of what they went through. The law is given a second time in chapter 5 and a lot of other basic instruction. But through this, we will find interspersed references to this whole period of time. In verse 7, it says, These 40 years, the Lord your God has been with you, you have lacked nothing. We just read from Exodus 16 that they had bread every day during that 40-year period. So they didn't go hungry.

They may not have had all the leeks and onions and garlics of Egypt and all the other finer foods and delicacies that they would have wanted to have, but they had their needs met. Okay? They didn't starve. They didn't just shrivel up to skin and bones. It says here that you lacked nothing.

And we're also told, it says that God has been with you. He was with them. That is a positive. You know how, you and I both know how we feel at times when we feel God is just very far away. We may not feel like praying, and we don't feel like, you know, even when we do force ourselves that we're not really talking to God, we're just going through a motion.

We may be discouraged. We may be discerning depression. We've all had those fears from time to time where we don't feel that God is with us. Now, that's us. That's you and I. That's how we get because of whatever's going on in our life.

Sometimes it may be chemical-based. Sometimes it may be spiritually-based. Sometimes it just may be because the sun hasn't shone for about 10 days, and we just get dark and gloomy as it gets around here in January and February. But God, that doesn't mean God isn't there.

And that is what they're told right here. God has been with you during this period of time. They didn't know that. And he says, beginning of verse 7, he says, He blessed you in all the work of your hand. He knows you're trudging. That pretty well, about as well as anything, describes some of our efforts. Trudging. You ever trudge through the snow?

You ever trudge through the storm or whatever? Sometimes we trudge through life. We just barely get one foot in front of the other. And we make our mistakes. We have to get out of our difficulties, and we're trudging. But again, the emphasis on this verse during this period of 40 years as it is being summarized is that God was with us.

He was with Israel. And He was with you when you didn't even know or think that He was with you. When you thought He wasn't, He was. He's just not being accessed quite as accurately, as well as we think that we should be doing. In chapter 8 of Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 2, again, we're just reading kind of parenthetical thoughts in the midst of other instruction that are being given here. But He says, verse 2, You shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness.

Not halfway, not part-time. He led you all the way during this period of time to humble you and test you. So there is, again, to the concept of a 40-year or 40-day period, there is a connotation of testing, and to come to a point of humility, to come to a point where we do acknowledge a need for God, and we recognize that by ourselves we can't do anything.

There is a process that should bring us to a level of humility as we are being tested, because He says to humble and to test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. God wants to know what's in our heart. He wants to know what it is that we're made of. I don't know if any of you listened to Senator McCain's acceptance speech on Thursday night. I listened to most of the acceptance speeches. I missed Joe Biden's. I didn't watch that one. But I heard the other three, and especially the two this week. I had heard the story of John McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi as a POW in Vietnam many times.

But I noted when he gave a speech here Thursday night that he dwelt on a different dimension of it that I hadn't heard about. And some of the other commentators brought that out as well. When he was shot down, he described himself as a cocky, top-gun fighter pilot, thinking only of himself. And for months, while he would be tortured and interrogated, he had this swagger and cockiness about him that enabled him to come back down the hallway past his fellow prisoners with his smiling and giving a thumbs up and enduring it.

And then when they realized he was not going to take the early release they offered him as an admiral's son, they ratcheted up the torture. And as he said, they broke him. I think what he was saying without saying it was he said some things that kind of broke their coat of honor. And he came back and realized how could he look at his fellow prisoners in the eye again. But as he said, they broke him.

And he had to then come back. And he learned to love his country and he learned to he had a different view of himself. So it was an interesting self-revelation for Senator McCain in that speech that showed that what he went through did change him and is still with him to this day in many ways.

And not saying he's perfect, he would not say he's a saint either. But I think that came out in one of his other lines during his speech there. But he was humbled in his own way through that experience. And what, just to count here, in verse 2 of chapter 8 is saying is that during a time of testing that we might have, in a period even we might put on ourselves to even examine ourselves, we might test ourselves to come to a point of humility.

And all the while, letting God know what is in our heart. God wants to know what's in our hearts. And he is guiding us. In chapter 9, verse 9, Moses here is talking about himself. And when he went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. Now that's a major big time fast.

I cannot even imagine going through a fast like that today myself. I don't think I would live through it. I don't recommend it for anyone. What you do is up to you and your choice, but that's quite a stringent fast. Verse 11, he says, it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. And of course, we know from Jeremiah and the book of Hebrews that God's law written on these two tablets really are to be written on our hearts.

That under the new covenant, God is by His Spirit writing His law on our hearts. And that's what's important. That's ultimately what is most important and what God wants to know about our lives and our relationship with Him. Over in verse 18, Moses goes on in his story and says, I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and forty nights, I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin, which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to anger.

This is after he came down the first time and he went through another period of forty days. And then in verse 25, I prostrated myself before the Lord forty days and forty nights. I kept prostrating myself because the Lord had said He would destroy you. So again, you see the concept of forty coming into the whole experience with Moses and the children of Israel and whether it's forty days within context of forty years.

But again, in this case, as Moses did it, it was not just to receive the tablets of stone, but it was also to make intercession for the Israelites. And again, as I mentioned earlier, that's really what catapulted them into their wonderings because, as you know, God was going to kill them all.

Which is another explanation and a story in itself as to how we can, in our minds, think of God wanting to essentially commit genocide on a whole generation of Israelites. We'll save that for another time to explain the background and even wrap our heads around that. But the net effect of Moses' intercession for forty days was, again, God said, alright, we'll just wonder until that generation dies off and we'll continue with the plan and pick up where we left off.

But they were dealt with. Just to note in chapter 10 of Deuteronomy in verse 10, He says, As at the first time I stayed in the mountain forty days and forty nights, and the Lord also heard me at that time, and the Lord chose not to destroy you. So Moses had to go through two periods of forty days, including the fasting and all and the prayers and the communion with God, to get Israel's sentence reduced from the death penalty to, well, another death penalty for the generation, but at least to save the seed there.

But through it all, God's mercy was demonstrated. In chapter 29 of Deuteronomy, we'll zoom toward the end of the book, chapter 29, verse 5. We have another reference to the forty-year period, but again, I want to note what we are told in that reference, Deuteronomy 29, verse 5.

He says, I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn out on your feet. You've not drunk, not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or similar drink, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. So again, during this period of time, God kept them, even to the point of their clothes not wearing out and their sandals not wearing out. It's a remarkable story in itself, but again, it points to the fact that God led them, God kept them. He provided for their needs, not always there once.

They didn't get a new wardrobe every year. They had to maybe even set up their own in-house goodwill system to share things back and forth as they recycled it through. You could well imagine that. But God, He tells them He did another miracle and that their clothes did not wear out. It's hard to imagine again, but it took place. In the book of Joshua, Chapter 5, just a few pages forward, as Joshua once again recounts in their mind, you realize that Moses and Joshua both knew one of the main fundamentals of teaching, which is repetition is the best form of emphasis.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Don't assume they got it the first time. Don't assume they're going to remember it after the seventh time. Go back over it. That's what Deuteronomy means, I think we're calling my Septuagint Greek here, but it's a second giving. It's a repetition is why you see so much repetition there. Joshua carried along the same tradition here. In verse 6 of Joshua 5, so it says, And so a generation had to pass from the scene to clear out unbelief, lack of faith, problems.

God had all the time in the world. If one generation couldn't be used, he uses another. You and I don't know how many more generations there will be until Christ's coming. I don't know. And you don't either. We always think that it's going to happen in our lifetime, in our generation. And there are many scriptural reasons, as a recent article in The Good News brought out, to indicate that there's much reason to believe that it will come in this generation.

But we don't have that guarantee, and we can't be that dogmatic about it in many ways. We can understand we are certainly in the time of the end. But how many generations within that time of the end, only God knows. Which should be a lesson for you and I to realize, to be humble, that God doesn't always... Not for us to think that God needs us, and that we are the greatest generation spiritually in the plan of God, because we're not.

It might be that our generation will die off, and God will use another generation. I don't know that, but I don't completely remove it from my thinking, in part just to keep a humility in my own mind that I am not the one... And you are not the one, and we are not always the one that may be upon which God's plan depends. God's plan depends upon God and upon Jesus Christ. It doesn't depend on you and me. It doesn't mean we don't have a role to play. It doesn't mean we don't have a part to accomplish. Sometimes when we look at especially this story of generations between where God allowed one to die off, He couldn't use them.

He had to use another one to actually inaugurate the land of promise. It should be a lesson to us in terms of our own belief and faith to be close to God and not... and to be humbled and not to think that we are the answer completely in every way. Whether we would use a way to use this particular period of time as we lead up to the Holy Days, and whether it's the fall or whether it's the spring, always it seems that the basis of that is what we gain from this brief study, is to examine with great clarity and to ask ourselves where God's hand is in our life.

I encourage you to do that. Ask God to help you to see with greater clarity where His hand is in your life, where He's guiding you, where He's leading, to make sure that it indeed is He that is leading, and not you, not your will, not just your desire. We are all susceptible to imposing and overlaying our will on God's and thinking that it is God's will. It happens all the time. And the lesson of Israel's wonderings, as we've seen in these verses, is that God led them. God did it to test them, to try them, and they were supposed to see that. Remember, God led them by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud by day. So it was pretty easy to see at least at which direction, north, northwest, east, or south, they were to go. And when to stop and when to pick up and go by the way that cloud and fire rose. If you and I had something like that staring us outside of our doorstep every day when we went out, we could be pretty confident that we're walking where God wants us to walk, right? Or if we had the fleece wet after some prayer, or whatever other little thing we might imagine that tells us, you know, this is God's will. I don't belittle any of those. I just say we have to be very careful, because pride can let us think that we've got the inside track on this particular decision and that it is indeed God's will. It's important that our hearts be right. When we look at this period of a generation, 40 years, one passing and another coming on, it's again a good reflection of a time. 40 years is a time of a generation, not only a passage of time, but a period to measure and to examine what's been done, what's been learned. There's a time to learn and reflect from mistakes and triumphs. Over 40 years, at least, certain chapters are completed, and you can look back and learn certain lessons. Let me just look. This is 2008. Go back 40 years. It was 1968. 1968 was a very tumultuous year in American political and social history. It was a summer of love. Remember? Hippies and Haight Ashbury. When the Democrats met in Chicago, they were rioting in the street, protesting another war, the Vietnam War. You had Mary Richard Daley shaking his fist into the cameras, if you remember some of those images. Well, that was a generation ago. Those, you know, I was a teenager. You were younger as well. And we look back at what has happened in 40 years. To us personally, we've raised our families, our grandparents.

We've retired. Some of you have. Lots happened in the church. Lots happened in our country and in our world. It is a different time. 40 years gives you a perspective to measure what you've learned, where you've come from, what was good, what was bad, what you've had to discard.

There's something to that span of time, even as we look at our own lives today. When we bring this down into our own life and the spiritual lessons that we are to learn, hopefully we gain a mature perspective about ourselves and our relationship to God. When we connect it to the cycle of the seasons and to the holy days that are associated with them, we're compelled, I think, to stop and to consider ourselves, our life, God, the church, the work of the church, all that is happening around us. Even to bring in the social milieu and the political world in which we observe and live and walk as well and what is taking place. I see so many parallels politically and socially in our country, especially in the recent current political system. I always see parallels to things that we need to learn and focus on within the church as well. There's uncanny parallels. I am not personally immune to the fact that the church doesn't exist in a vacuum.

God's plan is not something that, and as He's working through His people, is not something that is totally completely divorced from the world around us. There is a struggle that is going on. Satan is still the God of this world. Satan runs His things. God runs His as well. God is in ultimate control. But God in His creation, in the way He has placed His plan through the Holy Days and the Holy Days as we see their connection even to the cycle of the seasons, I think it compels us to really stop and to consider and to look around. Get up on the hilltop and kind of look around. Get up out of the valleys of our own lives, the valleys of our own needs and wants, and find that nearest hilltop we can get up on and kind of look around, see what's going on. Get our bearings. Find out where we're going. Look at the sun and the moon and the stars. Look at the seasons, in a sense, and look and see what's happening around us and to notice the world's changing seasonally. That happens every few months. And there are connections. There are things that God wants us to learn. That's why the Holy Days are connected to the seasons in the northern hemisphere, at least as we live it, that teaches things. And we are to examine where we are. Are we growing? Are we changing? Are we maturing as the seasons mature into September and October? Are we maturing as well, spiritually and growing? Every year at this time, I personally am drawn to the reality of what God tells us through the cycles of the seasons and the Holy Days. I try to tune into that. We are, at this period of time, the September-October season is fall, we're drawn to a time of harvest. The season's growth in the fields is coming to fruition. If you're a farmer, you're more attuned to that. At least we can watch a lot of it as we live here in the Midwest. Our backyard gardens are still putting on, somewhat, although they're beginning to die off as well. Mine is. I don't know about yours. Whatever you've got growing in your plot out back, I still have a few tomatoes there. Squash your dead, at least in my garden. But I'm attuned to this. The fall is a magnificent period of time. Over the next few weeks, as we watch the fields mature to the harvest and the bounty that this land has and what God has provided, we naturally can tie them into the meaning of the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles. God knew exactly what He was doing when He designed this. We have a cluster of these Holy Days coming this fall that are very, very instructive. The Feast of Trumpets comes on the first day of the seventh month. On the Jewish calendar, it's called Tishri, the first of Tishri. That's Rosh Ushana. Rosh means the head of the year. On the Jewish calendar, it is their new year. The ancient kings of Israel's reigns were always figured from the Feast of Trumpets, from the first day of the seventh month, even though they may have become a king two months earlier or three months later, they're figured from the nearest day of trumpets.

So it was the beginning of a new year. And again, as I mentioned with the Jewish tradition of Ayle Tishri in this 40-day period, it's a time to reflect and to examine and to consider just through the meaning of the days. And we do this again in the spring, and that's appropriate and fine too as we prepare for the Passover and the spring Holy Days. When you stop and think about it, God, through the festivals and His system of doing things, gives us two new years, two new years, the spring and the fall. So I guess it gives us two opportunities to make resolutions that we can try to accomplish and hopefully make some progress on. But there are seasons to reflect and to think, and this is one of those times. And again, at this time of year, I tend to look at scriptures that urge me to endure to the end, to finish the harvest, to keep my hand to the plow, to grow in grace and in knowledge, because we have a work to do until the job is done. And that job is not done, at least in our time and in our generation. We have explicit commands from God to be about our Father's business, to be about the work of preaching the gospel. We can't let the weeds grow in our garden to choke out the fruit. We've got to keep growing, keep moving, because that's what God wants us to do. He wants us to bear fruit. In Luke 13, Luke 13, we see this in the parable of the barren fig tree.

He spoke this parable. A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, Look, for three years I've come, seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down.

Why does it use up the ground? But he answered, and he said to him, Sir, let it alone this year, also until I dig around it and fertilize it, and if it bears fruit well, but if not, then you can cut it down. Lot's packed into this very short parable. Christ is saying that he, as the certain man, expects us to bear fruit, that there will be a day of judgment, that if we don't begin to bear fruit, we'll be cut down. We are to be fruit-bearing organisms within God's church, within God's plan. And there's an intercessor for us who will fertilize us, dig and dung it, as we say, to see if one more opportunity, one more chance, grace, if you will, will provide an opportunity to wake up and to get the weeds out and to grow.

How many times have you looked at a tree in your yard and realized it's time for that tree to go? I've got an ornamental plum tree in my backyard that slowly over the years has died back, and there's one part of it that's still alive, and it doesn't even put out any type of fruit anymore. And we've resisted cutting it out, and I think it's come to its end. No digging around, it's going to save this particular tree. There comes a time when certain organs, certain trees and other things, they just have to be cut out and something new planted. It's a pretty strong lesson even in this parable of the fig tree, but the point is God wants us to bear fruit.

He's very patient with us. The fruit we have must be something that can be seen. In Luke chapter 14, Christ addresses indifference in the parable of the Great Supper beginning in verse 15. Luke 14 verse 15. Those who sat at the table with him heard these things, and he said to him, blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. Then he said to him, A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, Come, for all things are now ready. A certain man is the father, preparing a great supper and inviting, and he sent his supper to gather those in.

But people began in verse 18 to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and reported these things to his master. And the master of the house, being angry, said to a servant, Go quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind.

Those perhaps weren't on the A invitation list. These were second stringers. And the servant said, Master, it's done as you commanded, and still there's room. The master said to the servant, Go to the highways and the hedges, and compel them to come, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper. When the supper is ready at the time of the end, those invited are distracted by the cares of life.

This fits in with the parable of the sower and the seed in Matthew 13, where the seed that is sown among some who even bear fruit have it snatched away by the cares of life. This is an adjunct to that same parable there. But indifference and distractions cause people to not know that their time, their place, and their invitation. The focus here is at the time of the end when the work is nearing its completion.

So again, I say it's time for you and I to look around and to understand why we see the rhythm of the seasons. The rhythm of the seasons are put there to coincide with the rhythm of the holy days and to prepare our hearts and our minds for it. The changes of the sun, the moon, the light, the colors, and the leaves of this time of year. It's why we see the leaves turn.

It's why we see the flowers die off and the land to prepare for the sleep of winter. That's a rhythm that teaches us deeper things than just the fact that it's getting cold outside or the days are getting shorter or the woolly worms are kind of beefing up with more wool. But it's not really wool, is it? We have to connect that to God's plan, to God's work, to God's working with us, to our walk with God, to our journey through the spiritual wilderness of this world.

We don't know how many years we might have remaining. We don't know how many seasons. But we should look at the fields of harvest around us and learn many lessons. Christ said, look upon the fields of harvest and pray that God would provide laborers for the harvest. In Luke 10, verse 2, He said that the harvest is great, but the laborers are few. And this parable in Luke 14 brings that out because of indifference, because of the cares of life and the things we get caught up in.

And they're enjoyable, and they are pleasurable, but they're also seductive. In that if we allow, through overuse or through lack of priorities, they will distract us from being able to discern the times and the seasons. This idea of the harvest is throughout the Scriptures. If you go into the book of Revelation, chapter 14, I won't turn there, but you find some very powerful imagery at a time when God begins to pour out the final plagues upon the earth. He is pictured sitting on a cloud with a sickle in his hand and going in to reap the harvest at that time.

So this concept of the harvest will play out in the fullness of times in terms of the events leading up to Christ coming being portrayed by that as well. But we look today, and all of us should be instructed. I encourage you to use this particular period of time. There's only 33 days left going up to a tomb, but you know, you can extend it on into the Feast of Tabernacles.

And you can pick any 40-day period of time that you want. Again, I'm not setting a new doctrine. I'm not trying to set a new teaching tradition at all within the Church. I'm just looking at what people do and what we see from the Scriptures and connecting it, I think, in an appropriate way to help us to tune in and prepare our hearts to keep God's holy days and to keep our eye on the gold and to not be distracted.

Let's turn back to Matthew 13. And I referred to this, but let's at least note it. Matthew 13, verse 22. In this parable of the sower, Matthew 13, 22, He who received a seed among the thorns is he who hears the word. And the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

You know, when we sit around as we do it in the ministry and our media efforts, we think about how are we going to reach this world and why isn't God calling? And, you know, why aren't we seeing the growth we'd like to see? And we come to all kinds of conclusions, and sometimes we reach a point where we begin to really beat ourselves up too much in thinking that the job in this day, in this age, with Internet, with cable television, with, you know, 500 channels and nothing on, and Internet and diversions and pleasures and all.

And we think that this is not a time when we can expect to reach people with the message of the gospel. We can talk ourselves into futility, which is a trap that we always have to be watchful for. I know where have I speak? We've been there. And a lot of other factors can get us to that point. But, you know, I always come back to the fact that that has always been the case.

When Jesus spoke here of people in his day and age being distracted by the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, look, a Jew or a Roman in the first century, they may not have had a 52-inch high-definition television, 13 cars in the driveway in their big palatial mansion and shopping malls to go to, but they had their own version of globalization and affluence and luxury, and it accomplished the same thing that ours do today, which is the deceitfulness, deceiving ourselves and a generation I'm talking about, and the cares of life.

They had 17-year-old daughters back then getting pregnant out of marriage. They had abortion to contend with then. They had spiritual deception that makes ours look like candy land. They had the same things then, and they had the same things to contend with, and it was in that world that God planted the original seeds of the church.

So it's been in every generation, and so we can't talk ourselves out of the work that has to be done. Every generation of people are susceptible to what is talked about here, and you and I have to contend with that. Let me turn to one final verse, one final reference to 40 that you might not have thought about as we went through these examples from the Bible. Turn over to Acts. Turn to the book of Acts, if you will.

Do you know which chapter? Any guesses? Acts 1. Very good. Turn to Acts 1. And look at the opening prologue, where Luke talks to this Theophilus to whom the book is addressed, where he talks about the things of Jesus that he began to both do and teach until the day he was taken up through the Holy Spirit, and had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs being seen of them during 40 days.

So here was their own 40-day period after the resurrection before he was finally ascended. I would take then that the day of his ascension marked the 40th day. But notice how Luke says Christ used that 40-day period. This is the point I want to make. For all of us to think is, if you use the remaining 33 days of this 40-day, or you choose any 40-day period for just your own personal period of reflection, preparation, and examination, Jesus used this one to speak of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

Remember John had said at the end of his book that he spoke and did things that if it were written down, the books couldn't contain all the things that he did and said. So he did a lot of things during that 40-day period that we don't have recorded, but we know that they were pertaining to the kingdom of God. So use this time to prepare your hearts for the holy days. And especially in this fall period of holy days, these days picture the kingdom of God on this earth, and it's in corporation through the reign of Jesus Christ.

And let's prepare our hearts for that period of time and to learn of Jesus Christ in the process.