God's Festival

Good morning, everyone. It's good to be with you again. As Mr. Myers was giving the announcements, it was just a realization that we are very close to the Holy Days. Trumpets is this week. So we're at that period of time where we're going to be going to a church a lot with the way things fall. All we need is the weather to cooperate to remind us that it's fall weather and get rid of some of this humidity and this heat.

I think it's going to change next week. Appreciate it. This special music is always good to be reminded of a number of different things whether through Scripture or through song. In Genesis 49, I'd like for you to turn there. There's a scene that is one of those great scenes of the Bible. There's what isn't a great scene in the Bible, I know. But this one is poignant. It's the end of the life of Jacob as he is old, and Jacob is about to die.

But even in death, there can be dignity and beauty and something for us to think about in a lesson. Genesis 49, verse 1, says, Jacob called his sons and said, Gather together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days. Gather together and hear you sons of Jacob and listen to Israel, your father.

So here's Jacob, presumably on a bed, and his sons and his family gather around. And he tells them what's going to happen to them in the last days, which he goes on to do, which is not the point of my sermon today. But he tells them, he's really, as you read through this, he looks at each of his sons and he tells them their future, what's going to befall them and their descendants, from which we know is a prophetic message and a great deal of instruction there.

But it's a beautiful story of a father gathering around his children and telling them what their future is going to be. That's the point that I think is so beautiful, from this final scene of the patriarch with his sons and this great family story, which Genesis is all about. As we are about to keep the fall festivals, trumpets, Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, the eighth day or the last great day, we are going to be gathering before God.

We're coming before God, our Father, in each of these festival occasions. My friend and mentor in the ministry, Vernon Hargrove, once gave a sermon I well remember. And after 50-plus years in the church, if you remember any sermons, you're doing a pretty good job.

I'm doing a pretty good job if I remember what the sermon was last week that's sometimes in life. Vernon Hargrove gave a sermon that he described what is happening when the church gathers on the Holy Days. He put it in a way that I've always remembered. He said it's like a family that gathers around the dinner table with their parents and the Father presiding at the head of the table. Again, kind of like Jacob with his sons here. And he said they gather around the table and they break the bread and they tell the story.

That's essentially what we do when we come together in each of the Holy Days throughout the year. We come before God, our Father, around the table that He has prepared. And we break the bread, not just at the Passover, but we keep a feast of Pentecost and a feast of trumpets. We break the bread in a communal gathering and we tell the story. We tell the story of God. We tell the story of salvation.

We tell the story of each of those Holy Days and how they fit together in God's great plan. That's what happens on the Holy Days. Some of you may have watched the television series that has been on, I think, through three seasons now. It's become the favorite in our house, Debbie, for Debbie and I. It's the one with Tom Selleck called Blue Bloods. It is a story. Tom Selleck plays the police commissioner of New York City and it's an entire Irish Catholic family that he's kind of the head of.

His father is still there, too. And it's the story of a police family in New York City and all the goings on. And there, Tom Selleck plays the police commissioner and two of his sons are policemen. His father was a former cop and also a police commissioner. We saw the stories go on, but every episode, they always have a scene in Blue Bloods where the family is sitting at a Sunday night dinner table.

All the family, four generations of this fictional family. Tom Selleck is sitting at the head of it and they're going through talking about their life. And you don't see that too often today, portrayed in cinema or on television, of a family gathering every week religiously to gather around the table, to break the bread, and to tell the story of their life.

And we always look forward to that. That's what we do when we come to the Feast of Tabernacles. That's what we do when we come to any of the Holy Days. We gather around the table, we break the bread, and we tell the story. And it's told as we do that.

We come on these Holy Days to hear the story of the Kingdom of God. We come to hear about that great time when God chose to move and to establish the earth and His rule and His reign through the righteous rule of Jesus Christ. We come on the Holy Days and through these festivals to find out where we fit in this great story, to be reminded of our purpose in this finite place called earth and our time and our allotted point and portion of this, of where we fit. We rehearse these great events because each of these Holy Days tells us how we find our path through this life and how that path is illuminated.

We find our meaning and our significance through each of these days every year. We find it in the midst of a confused and a crowded world in which we live. We should never ever underestimate the power of the Holy Days, the festivals, to give our lives that meaning, dignity, and purpose. When we observe these days, we come to understand the plan of God.

When we come to understand those festivals and what they mean, we understand where we are in the prophetic timeline of God's plan as well and in this world and where the world is in that plan of God. The Holy Days remind us of that every year, especially the fall Holy Days, with their meanings of the return of Christ, the binding of Satan, and the thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ. These things again point us to those great events but also help us to understand even the times in which we live.

Invariably, every fall, something seems to flare up on the world's scene to remind us of just how precarious the world is and how quickly events could get out of control to completely change the world's picture and the world's structure. I never wanted to not make that connection to the times, the season, and what can be stirred up spiritually within the realms of this world because of the times in which we are and God's people coming before God to be reminded of certain eternal truths that Satan himself would love for us to forget.

As we keep the festivals, we continue to keep our focus upon the work of God that we've been called to do, the work of preaching the gospel, and we are reminded of what is important in that. As we were reminded, in just a few days, we will begin this fall cycle with the Feast of Trumpets this coming Thursday and then Atonement and Tabernacles and all of the events that will follow from that. And they're exciting days. It's an exciting time and a period for the Church.

These festivals are the highlight of the year for us. There are three seasons that they are all divided down through. In Deuteronomy 16, we're reminded of that. If you will, just turn over to Deuteronomy 16. We're going to read verse 16, and I'm not going to ask you to take up an offering, so don't worry about that. There are other reasons to read Deuteronomy 16 in verse 16. Let's look at it just again, just to kind of anchor ourselves in Deuteronomy 16 verse 16.

The Holy Days have been discussed throughout the chapter, but it's summarized in this statement here in verse 16. In three times a year, it says, all your males shall appear before the Lord your God, in the place which He chooses. At the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the spring of Passover, at the Feast of Weeks of Pentecost, and at the Feast of Tabernacles, which is in the fall. The three seasons around which all of the Holy Days and festivals fall. And then, of course, you will not appear before the Lord empty-handed. The emphasis that I want to bring out is that we are commanded to appear before God on these three seasons.

And what they tell us throughout the year, they're kind of markers throughout the season, throughout the year for us. We go through each year with our ups and downs, and each year brings its own unique sets of challenges to us, doesn't it? We go through times of doubt and despair.

We go through times of trial. We go through highs and success. We go through the seasons of life. Our children graduate from high school, from college. Our children get married. Grandchildren are born. Deaths occur. Successes are recognized and noted. And other issues and matters come up through the year as well. And every time we come to a festival, whether it's the Passover in the spring, or trumpets or tabernacles in the fall, it's a time to take note and to reflect on what has happened to us, where our life is at that point in time.

And to be able to put that within the context of the Holy Days is a great blessing as we come before God. God tells us here in this verse that we are to come before Him. Again, like the Father gathering around His children around the table. And we do go up. And we're there. Back in chapter 12 of Deuteronomy, another part of the instruction that is given that we understand about the Holy Days, especially it seems the Feast of Tabernacles, comes out of this part of Deuteronomy, chapter 12. And I want to just go through parts of it here to focus upon it.

In Deuteronomy, chapter 12 and verse 1, it says, these are the statutes and the judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth. You will utterly destroy the places where the nations which you shall dispossess serve their gods on high mountains and hills and under every green tree. You shall destroy their altars. You shall break their sacred pillars. You'll burn down their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place.

You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things. Straightforward instruction that they were to do to wipe out any vestige of pagan worship. They never did. Completely accomplished that. They had their highs and lows and their different points of that. But the essential instruction was to destroy the high places of the pagans, bring them down, grind them to ashes, and have nothing to do with them. Because as it says in verse 5, you will seek the place where the Lord your God chooses out of all of your tribes to put His name for His dwelling place, and there you shall go. They weren't to go to a pagan shrine on a high hill or under a big oak tree.

They were to go to a place where ever God would choose and place His name there. And again, go up before God and appear before Him, not before any of the other pagan deities. This is the essential instruction that you see in Deuteronomy given, and it flows from Exodus 12 and the other references Leviticus 23 to the Holy Days and the festival appearances of coming before God, where He has chosen away from all of the other influences that already have been taken care of.

Verse 6 talks about what to take, burnt offerings and sacrifices, lies and heave offerings and all. But again in verse 7, there you will eat before the Lord your God. The Father calls the children around the table and you eat before God. You break the bread. Everyone gathered there to listen to what God has to say about their future. See, that's what Jacob was telling his sons back in Genesis 49.

This is what your future will be. When God calls us before Him, He's telling us what our future is going to be. He's telling us what we're going to go through. And as we really delve into and dig into the meaning of the Holy Days, that becomes clear each passing year, each passing season of our life.

No matter how many years we've done this, as we continue to focus upon it, do what God says. Come before Him. Here, listen and observe in the commanded fashion spiritually, we learn. We learn more each year from our Father as we break that bread and as the story is told.

You will eat before the Lord your God and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand. You and your households, it's the family gathering in which the Lord your God has blessed you. Very simple, straightforward instruction as to how they were to do it here in ancient Israel. It's interesting when you pick up in the rest of this chapter from about verse 10 on through verse 27, you see a lot of details of how they were to bring the offerings and the food before God in the festivals and the way that they kept it during this ancient society in an agrarian-based community and social structure.

This is where God placed the Holy Days within His people in Israel in a completely different setting than where you and I find ourselves today. And you see how they are to bring these offerings. And you have to understand that in that day and time when they went up with an offering that it was a live offering that was neighing or mooing or bleating as a sheep would, or it was in the form of some grain that they had harvested, those were the types of offerings they were given at other places.

Again, instruction was given, turn it into money if the place is too far, but take that up. But you have to realize that in that society, they were going up to keep it in a completely different way than what we keep it today. We don't take a cow to the feast with us today. We don't take sheep. And I don't think any of you are going to go down here to Meijer or to Kroger and buy a sack of cornmeal and take to Panama City, are you? It doesn't happen that way.

We take our money and our credit cards and we go and we buy it there. But that's why we do it today. And we don't create a sukoth or a temporary structure with leaves over our heads when we go to wherever we're going to keep the feast. We get a condo on the beach with a nice view, which is what I'm going to have in Jamaica this year. So if that's what you've got, I'm not condemning that whatsoever. Or you have a motel.

And we don't do it this way, the way they did it. Now, when I first started going to the feast in 1963, we did stay in a tent. How many of you ever stayed in a tent in the Feast of Tabernacles? How many are still left around fewer and fewer every year? Okay, we've done that. I used to tell the brethren in Fort Wayne when I was a pastor in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I said, you've never kept a feast until you stayed in a tent in Big Sandy.

I don't care where you've been, what you've done, you've never really kept a feast. Nobody ever took me up on that until one family decided to go to Big Sandy one year and camp. But they rented an RV. And I said, that doesn't count. Last year we went to Kenya for the feast. Erin and Whitney Creech went with us, Debbie and I, and we took the grand tour through Kenya, three different sites over the eight-day period. And I was reminded when we would pull into these sites, because the way they keep the feasts in Kenya today, and in other parts of the world where some of our brethren gathered too, I'm sure, I was struck.

This is a little closer to what we read about in Deuteronomy, because you pull onto a site and they've got all their tents. They're all staying in tents. And then they've got a big cookhouse or an outdoor fire, wood fire, and they're cooking big pots of maize or corn. And the ladies are out there stirring it. And you see these chickens running around. And when they serve you chicken for lunch, you realize that chicken was just running around that morning. The last site we pulled into, they were butchering a goat.

And the pastor wanted me to see where it was all being done. He took me into the cookhouse, and it was just an old-fashioned type cookhouse with an open fire. And here the ladies were in there butchering the goat. And the meat was hanging from the ceiling, and the slabs of meat were in a wash tub. And out of one wash tub was hanging this hairy little hoof. And the fire was cooking, and that was dinner that night. And we ate goat with them.

Actually, they gave us a sack of goat. We took it back to our room that night. And they had sacks of grain in the back room. Fifty-pound sacks of grain that they brought in. And I thought, this is pretty close to what you read about in the book of Deuteronomy, isn't it? And it was a wonderful experience. Now, we don't do it that way. We have adapted what we read in Deuteronomy for an Old Covenant agrarian ancient world setting. We've adapted it to the modern 20th, 21st century world, haven't we?

We do it different in that sense. We don't butcher and do things like that. We will go out to a nice restaurant. And we have services that perhaps are a little bit different than what they may have had in this particular setting. But you know what? When you look at these verses and all of the instructions regarding the Holy Days, we still are doing the spiritual matters that God wanted them to accomplish in that setting.

In our modern setting, I think we are still getting the point across, and we are still rejoicing before God. In verse 28, if you look at this here in Deuteronomy 12, He concludes all of this, and this is really the whole point of whatever they did then, and it's the whole point of what we do today. Verse 28, observe, do it, and obey all these words, which I command you. We want to honor our Father. We want to do what God tells us, that it may go well with you and your children after you forever.

When you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God. That's why we do it. That's why God wants us to do it. That it might go well with us. That we might have God's grace and His blessing in our life. That we might understand who we are. That we might understand what this world is all about. That we will understand our place in the midst of a world that doesn't always make sense.

And we'll treat us at certain times in ways that we didn't anticipate and perhaps don't deserve. But we live just like everyone else in this world, with God's grace. But we have to meet the challenges that are there of life, of disappointments, of dashed hopes, of trials, of highs and lows. All the good, although not so good, all of it comes our way. We sift through it all. And we look at what it says here and we still recognize that to be a promise. Deuteronomy 12, 28 is a promise from God. Observe, obey what I command you, that it may go well with you and your children after you forever.

That's a promise. That is a promissory note. That we can take to God and we should. I was reviewing the I Have a Dream speech of Martin Luther King this week. Wednesday was the 50th anniversary of that speech. Some of you may have noticed a part of it. One of the lines that Dr.

King said was that they had gone on that particular march that day in Washington with a promissory note that had been drafted by the founding fathers. And they brought that promissory note to Washington to get it cashed of equality and justice.

Dr. King was speaking of it on a far higher scale than it is usually even referred to today. But God has given us a promissory note through all of His gracious promises and blessings. And this is one of them. This is one of them where He lays it out here. So we keep the Holy Days today in a New Covenant setting in a modern world a lot different, probably.

And yet, at the heart of it, we are observing it with the spirit and the intent, drawing upon the spiritual basis that God placed in these days from the very beginning. In Deuteronomy 14, you can quickly turn there in verse 23. One of the other points that He always brings out as we come before Him, Deuteronomy 14, verse 23, it says, You shall eat before the Lord your God, in the place where He chooses, to make His name abide, the tithe of your grain, and your wine and your oil of the firstborn, of your herds and your flocks, that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always, that you may learn to fear, to respect, to reverence, to show respect and reverence for our Father.

That's another reason we do it, as we come before our Father. On these annual occasions, we can say seven times through the seven holy days, we can talk about the three seasons, we can talk each Sabbath, really, the meaning is there too, but we come before our Father, and He has spread a table before us. And as we have built up through our years of tradition around this in the Church today, certainly the Feast of Tabernacles is the high point. As we prepare financially for it, and the preparations that are made, and we travel to these various locations, and we do what we do, even if we stay locally, as some of us do here in Cincinnati, it still becomes a celebration.

It still becomes a major preparation and gathering for us during the entire festival to observe God and to learn to fear Him. You understand the way they did it in the Old Testament with a nation under God, Israel. You have to realize that when they came before God, as He says here, when you come to eat before Him, they did travel as well. And after the nation was established and the temple was erected in Jerusalem, and through the years and the seasons, they would go to Jerusalem, because that's where God had placed His name. And in that setting of the land in Jerusalem and Israel, they went up to Jerusalem.

You read the Scriptures in the Bible about going up to Jerusalem or ascending. That's where they went. They would go. They would ascend to Jerusalem, and it became a pilgrimage, what is called a pilgrimage feast. And through the generations, as this festival grew and even into the time of Christ and the New Testament, the apostles, the gatherings in Jerusalem would just swell the entire city multiple times its size, as people would come in on a great pilgrimage to keep the feast.

We read about where Jesus was with His family. They would go up to keep the feast in Jerusalem. It was a people, and it became a great pilgrim feast. That's what it was. And though we look at it a little differently, again, that's still an element for us today, because we go wherever we go, but spiritually, we climb a summit of anticipation and excitement and observation to what we do as we come together on the Holy Days. One writer that describes the Holy Days, I read about it some time back, described them in a way that I've liked and latched on to.

He said, he described the Holy Days as temples in time, temples in time, a place where we go to observe God and Jesus Christ and the gathered host, if you will, of God, and where we pause before God to consider where we've been and where we need to be. We ascend into God's presence, in a sense, in a spiritual way to the Holy Day, a holy time, and we pause from our own work and labors, and we kind of look upon the work that God is doing in us and in His plan.

We think about where we've been, where we need to go, and what's happening in our lives. And that becomes a time of renewal, and it should be, for each one of us, if we properly prepare and plan appropriately. I can't really imagine myself without these occasions. I have my own personal rituals that I do on the Holy Days that help me to reflect on my own life and what I've learned and what I need to learn as well. I hope that you do as well, so that we get the most from them. As you look at yourself right now, the beginning of this season, what's been your story this past year?

What has happened in this chapter of your story? What have you been through? What have you learned? What has happened to you? What have been the trials that you've had to deal with? And what have you learned through those trials? What has God been teaching you? What's been your triumphs? Your accomplishments? What have you learned about God, about yourself, about what you can do, what you can't do?

I think about that as I get ready to keep the feasts every season, if you will. The fall season provides a number of opportunities with the four holy days and the meanings of each of these holy days and what they point us to. In the book of Psalms, there's a grouping of Psalms that begin in Psalm 120. They call the Psalm of a sense.

Some writers say, you can begin to turn over to Psalm 120, some commentators say that these Psalms were used by pilgrims going up to Jerusalem to keep God's festivals. If you look at the wording of them and the superscriptions over them, Psalm 120 is called a song of a sense, saying it was Psalm 121 all the way through Psalm 134.

About 15 Psalms here that are this grouping of what they call Psalms of a sense. They're very interesting to look at, and I would encourage you maybe to make a study of them through this season of the year. If they were that written and put together in this way and designed to put a pilgrim, one who was going up to Jerusalem to keep the Holy Days, if they were designed to put them into a frame of mind to approach God, then I think there's some benefit for you and I.

If they can help us put our mind on God. If you look just in Psalm 120, very quickly we'll look at this, and he says, In my distress I cried to the Lord, and He heard me. Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue. Does that sound like anything you've been through in the past year? Preserve me from someone that's got lying lips or a world, a society, a situation where I need deliverance from.

What shall be given you or what shall be done to you, you false tongue, sharp arrows of the warrior with coals of the broom tree? Woe is me that I dwell in Meshach and that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. Really what this is saying is, I have to live in Meshach. Kedar. That's just a plaintive cry for saying, I've got to live among all these turkeys. I've got to go to work and deal with all of this, God.

I have to deal with falsehood, lying lips, sin. I've got to deal with this. Get me out of it. I'm on my way to keep your feast. I'm on my way to the Feast of Tabernacles. I'm glad I don't have to be in Kedar for two weeks and dwelling within Meshach, wherever and whatever Meshach was. You put your own title in there. Just put Batavia. That's where I live. I can say that, I guess. Or your situation. Because that's what this pilgrim is saying.

I have to deal with this. I'm for peace in verse 7. He said, verse 6, my soul dwells too long with one who hates peace. I'm for peace, but when I speak, they're for war. It's an idea of a person who's, I'm wanting what you have to offer God.

And it's that first step, if you will, the first ascent up to the presence of God. And this is the way these Psalms begin to build. Look at Psalm 121 in verse 1. I will lift my eyes to the hills from where whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

He'll not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. You put your mind into the frame of one who is a pilgrim, who's moving toward God, always, continually. And even in a specific case, moving toward God's presence on one of His festivals.

And as they even speculate, when they got to the temple in Jerusalem, possibly there were stations of singers on various steps to correspond with each of these Psalms, and they were sung in that way for a pilgrim to finally come into the presence of God in the temple.

Those are some of the ideas that surround these Psalms. But the Song of Ascent, Psalms going up into the presence of God, and they begin to help us frame an idea, if you look at them, of pushing through, continuing forward each year through whatever happens in our life to keep our mind on God, keep us focused, and moving toward God. We're not going up to Jerusalem.

We're going to Panama City. We're going to Oceanside. We're going to Jamaica. We're going to the Holiday Inn Eastgate. We're going to wherever you're going for the Feast of Tabernacles, but we're going before God. And brethren, we must always remember that central to every holy day is God the Father and Jesus Christ. Central to every observance. That's why we're going. That's why we go up to keep the feasts.

We're not going to some temple. There's no holy temple today, but there is a holy time.

It's called a holy day. And when we keep the feasts, we enter into God's presence for a time.

And if we prepare properly, we can view our life from a divine perspective. And that's what our calling is all about when we get to these days. A divine calling, and that God's dealing with us as children and working in our lives. And He's called us around His table, and He's going to break the bread with us. He's going to pass the gravy. He's going to pass the mashed potatoes, and what He has prepared. And we're going to enjoy His presence through whatever has been prepared.

That's really what's happening. And the more we can understand that and enjoy, yes, a beach, a mountain setting, whatever it may be, but beyond that, we see something that is working that is far more eternal for our being there. That's what we must keep in mind. We are spiritual pilgrims. We are moving up to God on these festivals. We're hopefully coming closer to Him spiritually in a relationship through what we do. Hebrews 11 verse 13 says that we are pilgrims, just like those in chapter 11 of Hebrews who died not having received a promise. Hebrews 11 verse 13. They all died in faith, not having received a promise, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. A pilgrim is someone who is always on a journey having never arrived.

That's what a pilgrim is. I give a sermon I have given in the past. Aaron and Whitney Creech heard it three or four times last year about types of people you meet on the way to the kingdom. You meet some who are tourists.

You meet some who are explorers. But if you meet a pilgrim and you're a pilgrim, you've met the right person, you're becoming the right person because that's what God describes us as we are pilgrims. And a pilgrim is one who keeps going one step at a time, putting one foot in the other, and they don't arrive. They're always on a journey. A pilgrim is always traveling. This is what God describes as these people. They hadn't even arrived, even when they died. Abraham, Noah, Sarah, the others. Not having received the promises, but they saw them afar off. They kept moving toward. They were ascending to God.

That's what we're doing. That's pilgrims. I read a quote about pilgrims the other day that I forgot to bring in with me, but it was amazing. This difference, this one writer was contrasting a pilgrim with a monument. You know, monuments are erected to someone who's died to remember who they were, what they did, or whatever. And the monument just basically states where they finished and what they did. But with a pilgrim, all you see are footsteps of where they last stepped because a pilgrim's always moving and has not arrived. There's no monuments to pilgrims.

A pilgrim is always moving. You and I are pilgrims going up spiritually before God.

And where do we go when we come to the feast? Well, look at chapter 12.

Chapter 12 really just carries it on. In verse 1, he says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Lay aside the weight of sin. I don't know how many times I hear throughout the year as I interact with members how challenging it can be. I don't make a lot of church trips, but I've made a couple this past year. And in talking to some of the members just in conversation in some of the areas, a frequent comment is made about how challenging it is to keep moving as a pilgrim.

One individual kind of started to talk to me about that and looking around at the members in the congregation and how hard it is to remain faithful and to keep doing what you're supposed to be doing. But you're there every week and you're there and this person had a kind of a tear in their eyes. They were talking to me as they were reflecting upon their life and that of their fellow members. And they were all still there together, all working together.

And you recognize that, yeah, as the years go by, it sometimes seems to get harder, doesn't always get as easy as we might like it. Challenges spiritually, challenges physically that come up. And that's what Hebrews was written to help us to understand.

That's why in verse 1 it says, lay aside that weight. Lay it aside. Keep moving. We're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses through the examples of these people in chapter 11. And we're even surrounded by our own cloud of witnesses in our own life and time, each other. But most importantly, the writer here, Paul says in verse 2, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. That's the presence we come into on the holy days.

We look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He sat there. When we look at the head of that table, we also see at his right hand our elder brother, Jesus Christ.

He's understood. He has endured, and he's there to help. Paul goes on to talk about kind of, in verse 4, he says, we haven't resisted the bloodshed, striving against sin.

The pilgrim has to keep moving. And then he gets into an interesting section here in chapter 12 down through verse 11. He talks about correction. He said in verse 5, My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him, for whom the Lord loves he chastens, and he scourges every son whom he receives.

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom a father does not chasten. But if you're without chastening, of which you've become foretakers, then you're illegitimate and not sons. This is a classic section on God chastening us, disciplining us in that sense. I want you to pause for a moment and think about your life over the recent months. What have you been dealing with? What have you been grappling with about your own life and your own spiritual condition? What trials have you been faced with?

Anger? Envy? Discouragement? Doubt? What is it that's been thrown your way?

What is it that you are having to work through? Could it not be that what is staring you in your face that you see about yourself that you may not like, but you don't know what to do with, could it not be that that's God disciplining you, chastening you as a loving father, and showing, you better deal with this. You better get a handle on this, because I want you in my kingdom.

I want you to overcome this. I want you to put it behind you. Yeah, it's a wait.

In one sense, God doesn't care where it came from. If you inherited it honestly from your folks, if you have it because of your own mistakes, or if it's been put upon us by circumstance beyond our control. In a sense, God doesn't care, except that He cares enough to give us the help to overcome it. If we turn to Him, and if we finally get it into our heads, that He's chastening us. And it's from God, and He's working with us, and it's something we can overcome. What is it that you've learned about yourself this past year? What is it that you've seen?

And we can laugh off, and we can think, well, that's just the way I am. That's the way my dad was. That's a family trait. Could it be that your loving Father has not put it through circumstance in front of you so that you will finally face it and deal with it, and He's chastening you, and He's disciplining you, just what Hebrews 12 says? Because that, brethren, I think is what is happening at times to us, and we don't know it.

We're on a pilgrimage. We're coming up before God. And as we stay in obedience, and we come before Him, week after week in services, in this life, this calling we call Christianity and salvation, God is working with us in ways far beyond what we are even able to discern ourselves.

But as we keep these days, and as we keep turning our minds and our hearts to Scripture, and to these words, and we know that we are coming before God and Jesus Christ, the more we read them, finally, maybe after 30 years, we finally get it.

I've been reading these verses for 45 years. Hebrews 12-11 was the first model of the very first spokesman's club I was ever a part of.

Now, no chastening seems joyous for the present, but grievous. But nevertheless, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby. KJV, King James Version. Because that's all we had in 1969. Didn't have a new living.

I've been reading that verse ever since I was a teenager, and I'm still understanding it. How about you? How about you? That's what God is telling us on this pilgrimage as we come up before Him. Go on down to verse 12. Therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down in feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may be dislocated, but not dislocated, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Unless we're striving to be a holy people, we're not going to be able to really set in the presence of God for very long. We're holy through God's grace, but we also have to be wanting to be a holy person and seeking to overcome and put away things from us that are unholy. And then He goes down in verse 16, He says, For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire and to blackness and darkness and tempest. It's not an old covenant Mount Sinai, where there was a trumpet and words, and those who heard it begged that they should not be spoken to anymore. They didn't want to hear that. It was a terrifying sight that even Moses feared and trembled over, verse 21 tells us. But verse 22, it says, You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels. That's what we've come to.

We've come up, and we're going up to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God. The pilgrims of old ascended to Jerusalem, and they had those words and those Psalms and those ideas on their lips. If we can put them into our hearts and our minds, then we can come to Mount Zion. We can come to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and this innumerable company of angels in that entire spiritual scene there, to the General Assembly of the Church of the Firstborn, who are registered in heaven to God the Judge of All, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. That's what we go up to. This is the framework for us to be going up before.

God gives us that encouragement and a wonderful scene for us to be going before, in that sense. This forms our framework. And if we can see that and understand that as we get ready for the coming Holy Days, they're going to change our lives. They can renew us and give us courage and encouragement and comfort and vision to go forward. Let me close by giving you three keys to renewal at this time. Three keys to renewal that can help you begin to frame yourself to get the most out of these Holy Days in the Feast of Tabernacles. Number one, put God first.

Put God first during the Feast. And, brethren, let me ask you to pray for inspiration over the ministry, the elders and speakers who will be speaking before the people. Ask God to give each speaker inspiration. Ask God to give each speaker in advance the ability to take the pulse of the body. Put their finger on the pulse of the church and know where it is, and therefore know what to say, what message to give, to speak to the needs of the church. Not necessarily their pet idea, but to be able to speak to the needs of the church. Pray that way. And when you get to wherever feast sites you're going to, and you get your little schedule out there, and you say, who's giving the sermon at, who's giving the sermons, and guess what? You read there's going to be somebody speaking that you don't like. You don't want to hear them. And don't tell me that's never happened. Don't skip out that day. Take that as a challenge and pray for that individual.

Pray for yourself, too. But pray and ask God for inspiration. Learn to listen during the feast.

Listen to what's being spoken. Listen to what God's doing in other people's lives as you get acquainted and you talk to people. Listen. By doing so, you're going to be putting God first during the feast. Secondly, prepare your heart to worship God. Prepare your heart to worship God. In 2 Chronicles 30, it's a wonderful image during the time of Hezekiah. 2 Chronicles 30.

When Hezekiah was reorganizing and renewing and reviving worship of God in Jerusalem, there were some who were not ready to take the Passover. They were not sanctified. They weren't cleaned spiritually beginning in verse 17. There were many in the assembly who had not sanctified themselves. So you had a situation according to the law that they weren't quite ready physically or spiritually. We take that and we have to understand that we have to be really ready spiritually when we come into God's presence. Well, what happened with Hezekiah in verse 18, the multitude of the people, many from Ephraim and Manasseh, the other tribes, they'd not cleanse themselves, yet they ate the Passover contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them.

Hezekiah prayed for them. He didn't chastise them. He didn't rebuke them. He didn't blackwash them. He prayed for them. May the good Lord provide atonement for everyone, he said, for everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. That's a New Covenant prayer, if I've ever heard one, given right there in smack dab in the middle of the Old Testament Israel.

And the Lord listened to Hezekiah and healed the people. He listened and he healed. Hezekiah asked for their hearts to be prepared to seek God. Pray that prayer. Prepare your heart to worship God before these holy days. And the third point, pray for a heart of understanding.

Pray for a heart of understanding to hear what God wants you to hear this year, to hear what God wants you to hear. And not only just through a message, but from a person that you meet, and a story that you hear from someone else's life, or from an experience that you have, and perhaps even someone that you encounter in your hotel, someone who's not even connected to the church, who may be wondering who you are and what all this gathering is about and what's going on back there. And what's this about every year down here in Jekyll Island? That you can hear a life, a story, and you can hear what God wants you to hear, and you can respond appropriately through that in Psalm 25. Psalm 25. And verse 4, "'Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.'" Pray that to God. Show me your ways. Show me what you want me to understand. Show me what I need at this point in time, at this place, as I've come into your presence. Show me what I need to understand. Teach me what I need. Lead me in your truth and teach me. For you are the God of my salvation. On you I wait all the day. Put God first during the feast. Prepare your heart to worship God and pray for a heart of understanding. Brethren, there is no time that the people of God cannot do with a good renewal.

Our lives are challenging. Our lives are exciting. They're fast. Things happen.

They speed up, we think, as we get older. Maybe there's some truth to that. I don't know.

But there's never a time when we don't need to be revived and renewed. And that's why God gives us these Holy Days, these festivals. For all of their deep meaning about God, Christ, and the plan of salvation. For all of their deep meaning about this world and where God is taking it and what God is going to do for all mankind in the future. Those are the essential truths and nuggets of meaning that give our life significance. These gatherings are what our lives are all about.

And we go to hear, and we go to learn, and we go to be renewed, and we go to be revived.

Once again, we're at that point where God is calling us all together around His table to break the bread and to hear the story. The story that God is working out, the story of your life and mine within that story, and all the significance and meaning that He gives us.

So let us prepare our hearts and let us go up to keep the feast.