Free Will to Choose Eternal Life

I wanted to cover something today, actually, this is similar to what I gave at the feast. So Mr. and Mrs. Parrish, you can take a nap for 45 minutes or so. Anyway, I've changed a little bit, so maybe it won't be quite as boring. But all of us realize that God is a great Creator. He and the Word, the great God and the Word, who have always existed, eventually chose to create other beings.

Now we know that some of those beings are angels. They're in the angelic realm, whether they're an angel or whether they're an archangel. But we see a record in the Bible about how it is that they interacted with God or do interact with God. And even some of the things that they do, whenever I travel up here, I'm always praying that the ministering spirits will protect and watch over me as well as all of you.

And that's certainly a part of what the angelic realm is assigned to do. But we also see, well, that those angels were not forced by God to follow Him. They were not automatons. They were not robots. They were not robotic in the way they are able to function. They had to choose to either follow God or disobey Him. And of course, we know that apart from that angelic creation, He also created mankind.

He created a physical realm, a physical being. And of course, we are different than the physical beings that we see running around in our yards the cats, the dogs, the deer, the possums, the animal kingdom. You know, they have a similar life, similar in that life is in their blood. And yet God has given mankind. A, our life is in the blood too, but He's also given us a breath of life. He's given us a spirit in man.

And all of us, all of us have free will. We have the sermonette on this not too long ago about the fact that we have free will. We've got to be able to make choices in order to show God that we really do support Him. We really do honor and we want what He has to offer. I want us to look in Philippians 2 because it's an important place for us to study.

Of course, this section in Philippians 2 was written by Paul, and he's describing what it was that Jesus was willing to do. What it was that the Word was willing to do to come to the earth and to take on a human form, to take on a role that would require incredible humility, that was a part of His existence being God, and then coming to the earth and becoming the Son of God, He had a remarkable and truly remarkable existence, and yet He was willing to take on the form of a servant and humble himself as we read in verse 6 and 7 and 8.

But I want us to read in verse 9 since He was willing to do that, willing to come to the earth and to be the Redeemer, to be our Savior and our Redeemer. It says in verse 9, therefore God, God also highly has exalted Him and given Him the name that is above every name. See, Jesus Christ and the One who was the Word, the One who is today our High Priest, the One who is at the right hand of God.

See, He's called the Lamb. You actually see that reference in many places in the book of Revelation. The Great God and the Lamb. We can say in the past, you could think of the Great God and the Word, making up God. And today you see the God, the Great God, the Father and the Lamb. As we look into the future here in the book of Revelation, it says, God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee is going to bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

See, what's that describing? That's describing an outcome. It's describing what God is going to achieve. As He offers eternal life to man, He tells us that if we're going to be a part of the family of God, then we will have chosen to obey. We will have chosen to honor. We will have chosen to worship the Father and the Son. And of course, this is referencing Jesus as that individual that we will respect, even as He also shows respect and love toward the Father.

So, when we read about this outcome, we need to realize that since God has given us a capacity, He's given us as He has with the Spirit in man, not just given us a brain. Like we see, you can see in any of the animal kingdom, they have a brain. They don't have the capacity, they don't have the ability. They don't have the capacity to make decisions, to look at all sides of an issue and decide, what should I do? They instinctively do much of what they do. And yet man has been given a choice. And if we're going to be in the family of God, then we have to choose that eternal life that He offers.

See, it's clear, many, many places in the Bible that obviously God is offering eternal life to mankind. But He's not giving that freely. There are some conditions. There are things that we need to do. And clearly understanding how it is that God has created, whether it's angelic beings or mankind. He's given both of those created beings a certain amount of free will. Free will. I guess I shouldn't say a certain amount. I mean free will is free will.

We can decide to refuse to accept what God has to offer. We also can decide to accept. We can decide to receive what God is offering to us. Now we see this written about in connection to the children of Israel back in Deuteronomy 30. Actually, there's more than one spot we could go for this, but one that I'm sure you're familiar with is in Deuteronomy chapter 30, as Moses was writing toward the end of his life, as he was concluding in the book of Deuteronomy before Joshua would be taking the children of Israel on into the Promised Land.

God gave some instruction through Moses, and I want to read part of that here, starting in verse 15, Deuteronomy 30, verse 15. See, I have said before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. And so, and in a sense, God made it very clear. I'm setting before you a choice. If you, in verse 16, obey the commandment of the Lord your God, that I'm commanding you today by loving the Lord your God and walking in His ways and observing His commands, His decrees and ordinances, you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord will bless you in the land that you are about to possess.

But, in verse 17, if your heart turns away, do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, then I declare to you today that you shall perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess. So, in verse 19, again, a verse probably many of us could quote, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.

Therefore, choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God and obeying Him and holding fast to Him. For that means life to you in length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord has sworn to give to you. See, it's very clear that God was offering them a choice. He was offering them either blessings or cursings. This was because of their choices. And so choice, what choice did God want them to make? Well, He wanted them to choose blessing, choose life, choose receiving the benefits of being close to God.

That's what He wanted. Now, when we study the history there, we find out, well, they didn't really have the heart to do that. They often were very quickly drawn away, even as it says, drawn away to serve other gods, do exactly what God said not to do. And so they made bad choices. So, this particular topic is one that I think we should consider, because as Christians we have realized that God has granted us an opportunity. He's granted us a knowledge of the Lord, a knowledge of the glory of the Lord, even to understand a little differently what it is that God is doing.

But He has given us free will. He's not forcing us to do anything. He requires us to do it because we love Him. And free moral agency does carry with it a responsibility. And that responsibility is that we have to choose life. And so you can say, well, that's pretty far-reaching. Yeah, that's hopefully what God is going to give us. Well, no, if we choose life, and if we do that on a day-to-day basis, see this is coming down to all of our choices.

Not just simple things that we have to do every day. What am I going to eat for breakfast? What am I going to wear today? How long is it going to take to get to Fulton? Hopefully I won't have any delays. You have all of us make all kinds of choices every day.

And yet, we want to make choices that will enable us to, in essence, say we want to choose what God is offering us. We want to choose life, which of course is going to involve obedience. And of course, as we already read, God wants us to choose life. He wants us to have eternal life, but He will not force us to obey.

He will not force us to yield. It is our voluntary choice.

And so, in doing so, He is extending to us what we really need, what we want, but then we have to choose eternal life.

In Revelation 21, you see, of course, a description.

This is describing the new heavens and the new earth. And yet, in verse 7 of Revelation 21, it says, to those who overcome, to those who conquer, they will inherit all things.

What are we going to be conquering? Well, we're going to be conquering our human nature.

We're going to be conquering the effects of this world.

We're going to conquer Satan's attitude, his resistance, his rebellion against God.

But in verse 8, it says, those who choose to defy and resist God will not be a part of the family of God.

It just makes it real clear, you know, those who conquer, those who overcome, those who choose to obey and honor God will be given this eternal life. He extends, but those who choose to resist God, well, then the outcome, they're simply consumed as far as mankind is concerned, as far as the humans that are being written about, men, if they would choose to defy God, are simply going to be consumed in the second death.

And so, it's good for us to think about, you know, what we choose every day, what we choose multiple times during the day.

And even to understand what our, you know, what our obstacles are, what our challenges are, and realize that we don't always make the right choice. Sometimes we choose wrong.

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes, you know, we even deliberately make mistakes that we know are wrong. But we look back and say, well, that was terrible. That I need to be forgiven. I need to be repentant. I need to understand the mercy of God and clearly get my heart right with God, where I am choosing life on a consistent basis.

And certainly, you know, that's what God wants for all of us.

As God deals with mankind, so He's dealing with us today.

We understand that to whatever degree. We fully comprehend that God has chosen to deal with us. But as He deals with all humanity, there's been 6,000 years since the time of Adam, and so many people have lived and died, billions of people have.

But as He deals with humanity in the past and those of us today, and even for all of those, He's going to deal with in the future. See, since all of us believe the Kingdom of God is going to come to the earth, we understand there is life beyond the conclusion that's described in Revelation 19, with Jesus coming and being King of kings and Lord of lords. There's going to be a thousand years of rule, of physical existence, and then beyond that, there will be physical existence until God has completely offered to all of mankind a choice. Everybody. Now we can say, oh, well that's going to be a lot easier in the millennium than it is right now.

Well, maybe it will be, maybe it won't. It would appear that it would be.

But there might be other challenges. You know, in a sense, human nature is, I study myself, that's where I learn most about human nature. I'm pretty lazy. I'm pretty weak.

I do things that I wish I didn't do later. And if things are really good, then do I put a lot of pressure on myself? Not as much. Usually it's when things are a little rough or pretty tough, that I see a need for God and for His help and for His encouragement and for His comfort and for His love. I often see that in a less than altogether positive situation. Whenever things are running smoothly, usually kind of just let off the gas a little and not really worry about it too much. But that's not what God wants to see in us. But, you know, He, as He is going to deal with all the humanity, He determines a few things. He determines who He will work with, who and when He calls people. Whenever He provides an invitation. See, this is clearly something that most people in the world do not understand at all. They do not comprehend that God offers an invitation. He calls and draws us to Jesus Christ. We are actually begun on a process of being born from above by the Father. He's the one who does that. He draws us to Jesus Christ and, of course, He opens up a knowledge of the truth to us, a knowledge of the Bible. And how that the Word of God and the Spirit of God is how we can achieve what God shows us He wants us to do. And yet on our own, that's impossible without God drawing us, without God giving us a knowledge of the Bible, of the truth. And, of course, He also, like I said, He offers an invitation. He offers understanding of the Bible. He also gives us a choice. He gives us a choice to obey Him from the heart.

That's what He wants to see from us. And again, back in Revelation 20, at the end of the human project that God is, He has been for 6,000 years and He will for some time here forward. But in Revelation 20, though, a few concluding verses of Revelation 20, you know, they talk about how that there will be a time ultimately when God has dealt with everyone, and the human project will be complete. Verse 14, Then death and Hades, death and hell were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, the lake of fire, and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. So ultimately, there will be a time when everyone has been offered and has either chosen or refused to choose life with God for all eternity.

And not that God is trying to scare us into obeying Him. Having a right fear of God, a right awe of God is required of us. We can read that in numerous places. One of the reasons we go to the Feast of Tabernacles is to learn to fear God, to learn to be in awe of His great plan.

But He does want us to choose to accept His gift of eternal life.

And see, too many times we may not think of it in that kind of simple way. It's relatively simple. I either choose by what I do, by drawing close to God, by praying, by setting aside time to do that, by actually making myself do it. Because there are times when it just kind of slips away and, oh, well, I'll do better tomorrow. That's not helping us choose life.

And, again, like I said, we're in relatively good situations.

All of you drove over here today. You went 20 or 50 or 100 or 175 miles to get here.

You did that without thinking too much about whether or not you think you can get there.

Maybe you had to. Sometimes I have to, oh, I only got eight more miles here in the gas tank. So I have to think about it a little. And, of course, cars usually, at least newer cars, have all kinds of gadgets to tell you, you're running out of gas, you're running out of gas. We all deal with relative comfort, and I seek comfort. However humble our home is, it's more comfortable to me than many of the situations. I go to the library, so they must set up things at the library where they want everybody to be uncomfortable. Because there are many, many chairs and couches and stuff that just do not work. And even in Olathe, there's a new library, brand new library, brilliant planning on this library. Lots of stuff that went into it. It was replacing one that they had a problem with. They had to destroy or couldn't use. So they had to build a new one. They do that a lot of times there in Johnson County. They build stuff everywhere. And this new library is, I cannot figure out the outside front of it. It makes no sense to me. Why would you put this ridiculous-looking, you know, almost looks like we didn't finish it.

Type of, I'm sure it's a decoration, some kind of an art. It looks like it's part of the building, but it just doesn't look too swift to me. But then it's got all kinds of glass, all kinds of light.

And even in the study rooms where I would prefer to go, and actually the chairs there are not too bad, they've got most of these study rooms are at least half glass. So you can't, you're always distracted. And I know, you know, they have to see what's going on in here. They have to know, they can't just have open rooms anymore. And so I'm sure the way they've designed this has some purpose. But I was just thinking about, well, man, there's almost no place to go to just sit down and feel comfortable and be able to read something and be able to just feel comfortable. But like I was saying, most of us have a certain level of comfort. You know, we have clothing available to us. You know, we can go buy it. If we have the money to do that, we can get it at goodwill. I mean, there's lots of stuff there that I've got that I use all the time. I just happen to like it. It's the right price, too. And so, you know, we have many, many advantages.

And we know that God wants us to choose life. Not death, but choose life.

Now, I sent a letter to all of you about a lady who's a member of the church in the Philippines.

I sent that to you before the feast. It's when my brother David and his wife Denise were there in the Philippines. And they go to visit Jed Tsai. That's the lady's name. And she's been there in prison for the last 15 years. Now, she is held there without charges and, you know, seemingly for no reason at all, kind of caught up in some kind of mess her relatives and family were involved in at the time. And she wasn't really the one implicated, but she was the one they caught, and she and her brother are both in prison. And a Philippine prison isn't a very pleasant place. It's not a very comfortable place. And yet, she has been a part of the church for, I would guess, around 20 years. So she was, I believe, a part of the church before that. She now is imprisoned.

And even though God has given her many blessings and has helped her, and she actually gets responsibilities to help others. She's actually quite well known there, having been there quite a long time, and is well, in a sense, received. She never knows what's going to happen tomorrow. She doesn't know. She's hoping that eventually they will have their case reviewed and that they can be dismissed and let out of the prison. She has a, I think it's a 15-year-old daughter, and that daughter can only come and see her occasionally. And so that pulls at her heart to not be able to be around her daughter hardly at all. And she doesn't know what other kind of chaos. I mean, they have water problems. I mean, they've got everything you could imagine that happened there. And yet, she always looks forward to, you know, people coming to visit her, which is pretty limited as far as who could do that. And yet, she tries to maintain an attitude of responsiveness and obedience to God, of remembering what God is doing, maybe not fully understanding why am I still in this mess? Because as we read in the Bible, Paul was imprisoned several times or imprisoned at different times and in different locations. And even on a prison ship going through the Mediterranean and shipwrecked, you know, as a prisoner. And he even told them, you shouldn't go because we're going to be wrecked. They went anyway. They were wrecked. And certainly being in the deep. And, you know, he had some difficulties that most of us, you know, are not facing right now. And yet, I bring this up about Jed, because before the feast, and as again I did send to you, she wrote a nice letter, a very nice letter, a very mature letter, a letter that was fully aware of what God is doing in her life, of how God is going to work it out in the end. She doesn't know exactly if God's going to let her be released or not. She doesn't know the answer to that yet. She hopes that's the case. She and her brother both. He's imprisoned in a male prison, you know, some distance away. And yet he has some of the same problems, although he again is given a certain level of favor. And yet, you know, they don't have the freedom to just come and go and do whatever they happen to feel like, except if they happen to be given permission. Now in her, like I said, very, I think, very mature letter, she wrote this to the brethren. So she wrote this to people who would read it, who are part of the church. And so she wrote it to all of us. And she says, I want to thank everyone of you who never ceased to pray for us. That's a good way to be reminded and remind others.

She says, we may not know or see each other personally, but in spirit, we are connected to each other. I am very grateful to all of you who diligently write me or inspire me and my brother, Zhong, despite your hectic schedule. Say, we have a hectic schedule. We don't have a restricted schedule like she has. We have a hectic schedule. We're trying to go to work. We're trying to go to school. We're trying to chop wood, get ready for the winter. We've got all kinds of things we need to do. But of course, she's saying that, knowing other people have somewhat of a normal life. It's not quite normal here in prison. I want you to know your cards and letters are helping us a lot, though we're not able to reply, but we do welcome so much your kindness.

Now, she had started this letter by quoting a part of Galatians 1, where it says, "'Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.'" She says, and reading out of Galatians, "'Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.'" See, I would imagine her perception of what that says is incredibly enhanced.

It is remarkable. Whenever you talk about the present evil world, you know, we talk about it, and in a sense we can't really get away from it, but, you know, we can control at least things that happen in our sphere, in our home, in our cars, and where we go at our job. We can actually control much of that. She also wrote about my daughter. She is doing well.

She's in grade 11. She plans to follow my course of study, which is accounting, and God willing, can become a CPA eventually. So she's got a plan. She's trying to work towards something. She really wants me and John to go home, and I told her to keep on praying and waiting because there is hope, and in His time we will be together. It's painful as a mother, but I thank God for His comfort, and so I thank you again for your thoughts and for your prayers. See, she's living what you might say is kind of a nightmare, being there imprisoned again for a lengthy period of time without much, not a lot of hope in the system, certainly maybe no hope in the system, but hope in God that someday, you know, He will change the situation. But what I wanted to read is in connection with the topic that I'm covering today about we have free will.

Free will to choose the eternal life that God holds out before us.

She says the book of relations is one of my favorites, and the story of the Apostle Paul has always encouraged me when I encounter the same experiences that he had. So she can identify being imprisoned, and as Paul would write about that, he at times was seemingly able to see people and talk to them and preach to them. At other times, I don't know that he could do that. He was, in many cases, beaten and harmed physically. And yet she said, I can identify with what he's saying sometimes, and I'm encouraged when I encounter the same experiences that he did.

Through the rough and tough times, God's grace abounds so that I can stand in His purpose and be able to share with my fellow believers the hope that we have that we must, by all means, hold fast. This present-able world is unstoppable from the family and the society, and everywhere there is trouble. We can't control what is happening, but still the choice is ours. See, and again, think of her setting. Think of what she is facing, and certainly think about what we face, how we struggle. Now, it's not that we don't have struggles, because we do have struggles. We have difficulties. We have responsibilities. We have difficult issues that we struggle with, but we're not right now in prison. And yet she says, we can't control what's happening, but still the choice is ours. As long as we put Jesus Christ in our Father as the center of our life, the inner being remains steadfast. That's a pretty powerful statement, to be able to fully understand that regardless of whatever physical circumstances we may be facing, we can be very stable. We can be very strong if we put Jesus Christ in our Heavenly Father as the center of our life, then our inner being remains steadfast. Now, she goes on to say, that's easier said than done, but as long as we stay focused, that it is not about us, it's about Him who called us for His purpose, and we can triumph from whatever evil that may come our way.

See, I think that's amazing. That is remarkable to be able to, in that type of setting, think about what really is the choice that we have to choose, not death and not forsaking God or resisting God, but choosing to agree with God and choosing to benefit from a closeness to God that actually causes us to choose life every day. See, how many days do we have before Jesus returns or before we die? We don't know that. We don't know, you know, how many days will I waste between now and then? Or will I spend every day really choosing life, choosing to obey, choosing to worship, choosing to draw close to God in prayer, choosing to study the Bible, choosing to grow. It's too easy to coast. It's too easy to just slide down the hill.

We were watching that in Steamboat at the feast because it was snowing, and some of the kids were brave enough to get out in the snow. It wasn't that terribly cold, just barely 30 or 28 or something. It was not that bad, but they had a big hill behind the hotel, and you could see the kids go out and climb up and climb up and climb up and climb up, finally get to the top and get on the sled that they were dragging. Okay, it's over. Climb up and climb up, you know, spend 10 minutes getting to the top of the hill in 20 seconds getting down, and yet they would repeatedly do that. But see, we don't want to coast. We don't want to just be indifferent in what God has offered us. He has given us free will. He's given us the opportunity and the blessing and the prerogative to choose to obey God, to choose to worship God, to praise God, to choose to be grateful to God, to choose to trust God to know that He gives us hope, because He is faithful.

He's completely reliable. We forget that sometimes, but He says He is faithful. He is reliable. He can always be dependent upon for each and every one of us, and so we want to rely on Him, but because of that, we have hope. We have hope in this life. We have hope in whatever days are in front of us.

We have hope beyond the grave, even, because we know the resurrection is sure.

And so we have an incredible blessing of being able to appreciate what it is that God has granted to all of us. Now, I'd like to just step back a little bit again to what I said earlier.

You know, Lucifer surely made a bad choice, and not only did Lucifer make a bad choice in rebelling and resisting God, he even influenced what we would think to be a third of the angels to follow that bad choice. To choose to defy God and to try to overthrow his throne comes from not realizing, you know, the facts. Lucifer forgot he was a created being.

See, it should be pretty obvious for all of us. We are created beings. We certainly don't have the power. We don't have the ability, the talent, the intellect that Lucifer had been given by God.

But see, Lucifer forgot he was a created being, and he was to be in subjection to God.

He actually deceived himself and chose to rely on himself. That's something that we could also do.

We could deceive ourselves and rely on ourselves and not think that we need to rely on God. See, I think it's sad to see when you read in Peter 2 Peter 2, it talks about the angels who sinned.

See, clearly, you know, they chose opposite of obeying God. They chose to sin as Lucifer had.

It's interesting to me here in 1 Peter chapter 5, nope, wrong one, 1 Timothy chapter 5.

When you look for a verse, and there's not any verses in the chapter, you know that's not right.

But it is in 1 Timothy chapter 5, at least there's enough. Here in verse 21, it says, In the presence of God, and in the presence of Jesus Christ, and of the elect angels.

I warn you to keep these instructions, and without prejudice do nothing on the basis of partiality. This is Paul telling Timothy how it is he was to function in making some of the decisions he made. But he uses a reference there to God, and to Christ, and to the elect angels. See, I think that may be the only place that is referenced. Maybe there are others that I didn't see. But who are the elect angels? Well, those are the angels that you, the same word is used in chosen, the chosen angels. The ones who chose to obey God. Now these are talking about the righteous angels, the ones who are the ministering spirits. See, the elect angels are the ones who have chosen to obey God. And such will be the case for all of mankind. Prior to the flood, people made a lot of bad choices, including Adam and Eve.

They made terrible decisions to defy God, choose to disrespect God, and start the world on a path of destruction. But of course, God reset that at the flood. And, you know, why was God so upset with mankind to the point of wanting to reset the whole world? Well, it says, thoughts of man were evil continually. They resisted yielding to God. And of course, you know, as we understand the present evil world of the last 3,500 years, since the flood of 4,500, I guess it would be, since that time of the flood, we see the time of the Israelites, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the Israelites and their lives all the way up to the time of Jesus only 2,000 years ago.

And now, see, God looks at this and, you know, well, that's been six days.

If a day is like a thousand years to God, well, that's been six days, and there's another day coming that I'm going to continue to deal with men. But see, during this present evil age, you know, God wants us to choose to obey God. He wants us to do that on a day-to-day basis, choose to draw close to God, and that's something that we have to do every day, even as we think about the millennium. We have verses, and we read many of these during the feast, verses that talk about people who live into the millennium. Are they going to immediately start obeying God? Well, it appears from what you read in Zechariah that, well, they're going to have to be taught the truth. They're going to have to be shown that, well, you know, your way doesn't work.

You need to learn to choose to obey God. You need to not only go up to the Feast of Tabernacles, you need to present yourself before God. Now, we understand that by what we do every week and at the Holy Days. See, and it's amazing even at the end of the millennium that the devil will be loosed. Revelation 20, of course, talks about this in verse 7 through 9.

At the conclusion of the millennium, as people are again exposed to the deception of the devil, he's going to have been contained during the thousand years of the reign of Christ on earth.

And yet, when you read that, you see at the end of the thousand years, the devil is again loosed. Maybe we better read it since I can't quote it yet. I need to be able to quote it. But in verse 7, the thousand years are into Satan, loosed from his prison, and you come out to deceive the nations of the four corners of the earth to gather them to battle. You're as numerous as the sand of the sea. They march up on the breadth of the earth and surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city.

Outcome is not so good. Fire comes down and consumes them, and the devil who deceived them was cast in the lake of fire. See, now, the devil is only allowed to do what God permits.

And apparently, he's going to permit people, even after having been taught the truth of God for a thousand years and see the benefits of blessings in obeying God, they have to choose to obey God from the heart. And even the same case thing will be true for the white throne judgment, where billions of people will be resurrected into a never thought of world. For the most of them, they will have concluded our hope is lost. And yet, God is going to provide them, teaching them from the truth or the truth from the Word of God, from the Bible, and offering them the choice to obey God, to write their name in the book of life.

But that's all. See, that's God's dealing with man throughout the ages past and present and future.

See, he wants people to be a part of his divine family, but he will not force us to do it.

We have to do that from the heart. We have to do that because we love God and because we love Jesus Christ and because we are appreciative of what he has extended to us and that we really choose to have eternal life in God's family. See, I mentioned Lucifer. You know, right now, God is teaching us to trust him and to have faith in him. And I mentioned Lucifer having everything going for him, and yet what Lucifer showed at some point in his existence when he rebelled against God was that God cannot trust me. That's what he showed. God cannot trust me.

And so it's a matter of us thinking, well, can God really trust me? Can he trust you with what he's offering, eternal life? I think it's important for us to think about that as we make decisions on a day-to-day basis. And whenever I say we should choose life, then, you know, that's kind of clearly a summary. But it's helpful to me to think about that. I should think about that every day. I should think about that more often. I want us to look here as we conclude in 1 Corinthians 15, because this verse points out how it is that as individuals, human beings, have been worked with by God, and how they have been offered eternal life, and how they have been shown that they are to be a part of God's family, they are to grow in His divine nature.

It says here in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 20, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those who have died. Verse 23, talking about all of mankind.

Each in His own order, Christ the first fruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ, then comes the end, he ends over the kingdom to God the Father, after He has destroyed every ruler, every authority, every power, because He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet, and the last enemy has destroyed His death. So we've already read about that. After the human project is complete, well then, God is going to continue with His family. He's going to continue with the expansion of His family. And in verse 27, For God has put all things in subjection under His feet, but when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under Him, so that God may be all in all. See, ultimately, and certainly even today, we know that Jesus Christ is in subjection to the Father. Voluntarily, He's willing to do that for all of us because there's got to be order. There's got to be, you know, strength in the design that God has created. And as we look at all of humanity, everyone who's going to be a part of God's family at that time is going to be under the Son, who is clearly under the Father as far as authority goes. But He's God, and He should be honored and respected and worshiped in that way. And yet, it's amazing as we think about how God is dealing with mankind, how He has chosen to extend to us the knowledge of the truth today.

He's offered us the big question, you know, will we choose life or will we choose death?

And I think it's good for us to perhaps think about it in those terms because free will allows us to choose. But clearly, God wants us to choose life. And I certainly want to encourage all of us to be reminded of that as we're encouraged over the next months, you know, to not let down, to not give up, to not forget what God has extended to us because, you know, He wants us to be a part of His family, and He certainly wants us. He's not making us do it. He wants us to choose that life with Him for all eternity.