Going Forward In Faith

Let's turn to Philippians 3, verse 12. This is the actual theme for the Women's Enrichment Weekend.

Philippians 3. And I do appreciate the opportunity to come and be here with you and Barbara as well.

So in Philippians 3, verse 12, Paul writes, Not that I have already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

So Paul certainly felt called, as Mr. Johnson talked about in the Sermon at. We all have a special calling. Paul was called. God had laid hold of him. Christ had laid hold of him.

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. He knew that he didn't know it all. He wasn't complete yet. He says, but one thing I do know, forgetting those things which are behind.

And I think really what he's saying is not dwelling on the things that are behind, but learning from those things and moving ahead in life. And that's basically the theme of this women's enrichment Sabbath. We should learn from the past and move on from there.

So he says, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. We have much ahead of us. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So, brethren, we have all been called. And this is our day of salvation. God has called us, opened our minds to His truth, His way of life. It is a very special and a high calling for each and every one of us. So how do we use our past in the church, looking back, and thinking about what we're doing right now in the present to move forward in faith? We're going to look at two major areas that will allow us to move forward to a greater future. So the first one, the first point I'm going to bring out, is God has given us the Sabbath and the Holy Days to help us envision the amazing future that He has in store for us. His beloved children, there's no mistake why we're here today. This is a wonderful gift that God has given us. His Sabbath day, this assembly, all of us coming together from various places to meet together on God's holy Sabbath day. We are to truly rejoice in God's Sabbath day, and it makes it so much easier when we have so many wonderful friends and we get together like this. We should value and take advantage of this precious gift of God's Sabbath. Perhaps some of you have been attacked by Sabbath as this, or I'm sorry, been attacked by Satan as the Sabbath was about to begin in your homes. I think sometimes Satan does that. I've heard people tell me that they seem to be attacked at times. Things don't go real well right at the beginning, trying to get you off the proper way to observe the Sabbath.

I think Satan certainly would like to do that to us. He wants us to fight negativity on Friday nights.

Satan constantly tries to remind us of what we have lost because of various struggles we may have faced throughout the week. He tries to get us to focus on the painful things in our lives and wants us to mourn on the Sabbath day. But the Sabbath day is just the opposite. The Sabbath is a day of rejoicing. It's not a day to mourn or to think on negative things or all the trials that we have in our lives. It's a time to put that behind us and really concentrate on loving God and loving God's people. The Sabbath is an example of looking back at the positive events in the past and using the present to bridge us into our incredible future. We have a wonderful future ahead of us.

Now, as was also mentioned in the sermon at times are difficult right now. Things are hard, but we have a wonderful future on the other side of all the prophetic events that will take place that we know the Bible tells us about. So we really need to observe faithfully these days that God has given us. The Sabbath commandment in Exodus 20 looks back on creation. It looks back on the time when God created mankind, God created this earth, or recreated it. Let's go back to Exodus 20. Of course, this is one of God's Ten Commandments. Very, very important commandments for all of us. Exodus 20, verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. You got to remember it in order to keep it holy. You got to think about it. You got to dwell upon it. You got to be prepared for it. You've got to use the preparation day for the Sabbath day. Six days you shall labor and do all of your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.

It's the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your cattle nor your stranger, who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and he rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. He made it holy. It's a very, very special day. It says he made this day by resting on this day. Deuteronomy 5 also links us back to another positive focus about the Sabbath, and of course that's deliverance. Deliverance, God gives us the Sabbath day as a sign for His people. His people that He's calling out of this world, that He's delivering from sin, that He's delivering from Satan. Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 5, and we'll read verses 12 through 15. Deuteronomy chapter 5 verses 12 through 15. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord God commanded you. And of course this was given at creation, as we already showed, it's for all people. It's not just for those God is calling right now, but we're the only ones that truly understand it and are doing it. But the Sabbath is a time that all people will come to embrace one day. Now we are privileged to understand the Sabbath, so observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. As the Lord your God commanded you, six days you shall labor and do all of your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. It's God's Sabbath day. It's not the Jew's Sabbath day. It's God's Sabbath day, and it was made for all of mankind. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your ox nor your donkey nor any of your cattle. It's clearly a very special day. Nor your stranger who is within your gates that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. So they weren't to enslave anyone on the Sabbath day. Everyone was to be free to keep the Sabbath day. Even if someone had a servant, they were not to have them work on that day. It was a very special day that all were to be free.

And remember that you were a slave, so you surely don't want to enslave others on the Sabbath day. You were a slave in the land of Egypt. So it looks back to when they were slaves in the land of Egypt.

Undoubtedly, they were not allowed to keep the Sabbath in Egypt. It was not good times for them in Egypt. And remember that you were a slave, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. They came out of that. They began to keep the Sabbath day once again. The manna was brought to show when that Sabbath day was. The Exodus commandment does not mention or focus on the chaos that was in the world before creation. When Satan rebelled, it does not focus on the sin that came soon after creation, the sin of mankind. It is a peaceful rest and reflection back when everything God made was very good. It was all good. He was recreating the earth at the time. He was creating Adam and Eve.

So it's not a reflection on anything evil, either in the past, present, or the future. Likewise, the commandment in Deuteronomy doesn't focus on the years of slavery that went before the Exodus, but it focuses on the deliverance from the years of bondage coming out of that and the suffering that they had to go through. So the Sabbath, again, is very, very special. We cannot overemphasize how important this day is. If God makes it holy, sanctifies it, sets it apart, we are to honor Him. In fact, that leads me to Isaiah 58. Isaiah 58 is a very, very important scripture, and so many people just seem to not understand it's even in the Bible. So let's go to Isaiah chapter 58, because this says a whole lot about what God expects of us on the Sabbath day.

Isaiah chapter 58 verse 13, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, now that what that means to me, He's saying if you stop trampling on the Sabbath, take your foot away from the Sabbath, stop trampling all over the Sabbath, because that's what this world does. It tramples all over the Sabbath. I trampled all over the Sabbath until I was about 19, 18, 19 years old. That's when God called me and showed me that His Sabbath day was holy.

He says, stop trampling all over the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight. This day is to be a delight. It's a wonderful blessing to get together and observe it. It's a commanded assembly. So here we are, and we're doing what God wants us to do.

We're keeping this commandment. Call the Sabbath a delight. The holy day of the Lord, honorable. This is an honorable day, and you shall honor Him on this day, not doing your own ways, not focusing on your own selfish pursuits, not doing your own ways and or finding your own pleasure. No, you don't go out, and I like to play basketball, but I don't do that on the Sabbath. No, this is a special day. I like to do a lot of things. I like to...

well, I don't really like shopping all that much. Some of you women may like that, and some of you men might. Sometimes I really do like shopping. If I have enough money and there's something I really want, then I don't mind. But, you know, this is a very special day. It says, verse 14, then you shall... I don't know if I read the end of 13. It says, not speaking your own words, even.

So we have to be careful what we say. Sometimes we think things we might not ought to say on the Sabbath day, and then we should try to get to where we're not even thinking about those things on the Sabbath. It is a very special day that even governs the way we talk, the things that we discuss. Verse 14, if you'll do this, if you'll honor God, if you'll call it a delight, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord. In other words, God will be pleased with you. He will be delighted in you because you are honoring Him on this special day.

And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your Father, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Tremendous blessings through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and we are enjoying these blessings even today here in this wonderful country of ours. And feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your Father. The mouth of the Eternal has spoken. In other words, God has spoken it. You can believe it. It's the truth. You can count on it. So this is not a day of fearing the future. Even though there may be some gloomy things going on in the world, this is not the day to think about those things.

This is not the day to dwell on those things. This is a special day, again, to come out of the world and not be burdened by this world. Sabbath is a reminder of our bright future ahead. We have a tremendous future ahead of us. Now Hebrews 4 connects the Sabbath rest with the future rest in the Millennium. I'm not going to take the time to go there, but it's important for you to have that connection.

Hebrews 4 says there will be a keeping of the Sabbath for the people of God. All people will one day come to understand that the Sabbath was made for them. The Sabbath is to be a blessing, to be a delight. It will be kept in the Millennium. Isaiah 66 talks about keeping the Sabbath in the Millennium.

Hebrews 4 connects the Sabbath rest with the future rest that we'll all have in the Millennium. So the Sabbath reflects back upon the past with a very, very positive focus. It should remind us of our incredible future.

The Sabbath is a celebration of life, of physical and spiritual life. There are many blessings that God gives us, both physically and spiritually, looking back on creation and being grateful to God for creating us in the way that He did. I mean, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

It's incredible, our design. We don't understand it. You know, doctors who have studied the body and all that, they don't understand it. They just, they understand some of how it works. But they sure can't duplicate it. They can only try to keep us alive at times and do the best they can.

But there's nothing like our Creator God.

So again, this looks back on creation and past deliverance. Deliverance from many things. God has delivered you and me countless times in many, many, many different ways. And we probably don't even realize how often God has delivered us.

So we look back with gratitude. We envision with joyful anticipation our eternal deliverance from slavery and from sin. The Passover season is a wonderful time every year because we reflect on that liberty that comes through our Messiah, Jesus Christ. I gave a sermon recently about rejoicing in the Messiah this Passover season.

Yes, we do analyze ourselves. We examine ourselves. We do our very best to repent of our sins, to come out of our sins. But most importantly, we have a Savior. We have a Passover Lamb. And that should be our main focus, is that we have a Messiah, Jesus Christ, the perfect sacrifice, the one who laid his life down for us, and a Father who loved us so much that he gave his only son for us. It's an incredible blessing that we have in understanding these things. So the Holy Days teach us how to look back in order to leap forward. We do need to look ahead. Looking back at what has been fulfilled by the Spring Holy Days, the sacrifice of Christ, repentance, turning from sin, the Days of Eleven Bread show us that we need to put leaven out of our lives. We put physical leaven out of our homes so that we can understand how important it is that we work on the spiritual leaven, the sin, that so easily besets us, the Scripture says. I don't know about you, but it easily besets me. I don't like it. I don't like to think some of the things that I think sometimes. I don't like to do some of the things that I do sometimes.

It's a thing that easily besets us because we're flesh. The flesh is weak.

The human mind is carnal. It's deceitful above all things. The heart is deceitful above all things. It's desperately wicked. That's what the Scripture says. Hopefully we can see that that's the way we are. Yes, we're to come out of that and we're to grow and we're to overcome, but we have a Messiah because we need a Messiah. That's why we have a Messiah. We need a Messiah. We need to have our sins forgiven because we're all sinners. So, brethren, we need to look back on what God has already done for us and we need to focus and anticipate with faith the joy that He will bring us in the future when this Sabbath day is realized in the millennium when all people will begin to keep it. And what a peaceful, wonderful time to live during the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. And that's only for the few that will survive the cataclysmic events that the Scriptures talk about that will come upon the earth in the very last days. Only a small percentage of people will live through it. Of course, the firstfruits, we will be changed to spirit. Those who have died in Christ will come out of the grave first and then those who are alive will be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. And we shall be changed. And we will have those bodies, spirit bodies, as Christ is now at the right hand of God. He has, we will be like Him. We will see Him as He is. We'll be like Him. What a wonderful, glorious future we all have. So, looking back on what God has already done for us, focusing and anticipating with faith and joy what He's going to do for us in the future, that's the gift of these Holy Days. Thank God we keep a Sabbath every week. I know I need a Sabbath every week. If it only happened once a month, no telling what kind of trouble I'd get into. You know, the Sabbath at least gives me some course correction every week. We need that. We all need that. So, these Holy Days, again, these spring Holy Days are so vital. You know, we've got the Passover, so we rejoice in the Messiah this Passover season. He has risen for us. He's at the right hand of God, as I've mentioned already.

He intercedes for us. He goes to bat for us when we sin. Satan's the accuser of the brethren. He will accuse you before God. First, he'll tempt you. That's the way Satan is. He'll tempt you to sin, and once you've given into him, then he'll accuse you before the throne of God. Thankfully, Christ will intercede on your behalf, and you will be forgiven, because you do come under the blood of Jesus Christ. You have drunk the blood of Jesus Christ in that sense spiritually.

So, these are all wonderful things. Again, Days of Unleavened Bread. We're to become unleavened. We should eat unleavened bread every day, if at all possible, and it's usually possible, eat some unleavened bread and reflect on putting Christ into your life and becoming unleavened. And, of course, Pentecost is a part of the spring holy days, even though it comes 50 days later.

The granting of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit that sanctifies us and sets us apart.

God has given us that wonderful gift.

So, I've often said that if we do not learn the lessons of the spring holy days, if you and I don't learn the lessons of the spring holy days, because we're called out and we're chosen, and we have to learn the lessons of the spring holy days, or we're not going to understand or look forward to the fulfillment of the fall holy days. You know, if you don't really grasp what these spring holy days are about, you won't look forward to the fulfillment of the fall holy days. You won't look forward to the return of Christ, because you're not going to be changed into spirit, for one thing, if you don't have the spirit of God dwelling in you. You're not going to look forward to, you know, all the horrifying events that will take place as these things are brought to pass, as these prophecies are fulfilled. So, it is important that we grasp the meaning of these spring holy days so that we will be able to look forward and be strong during those hard times that are coming. Difficult times are coming, and we need to have faith knowing that there is the rainbow after the hard times. After the hard rains, there's going to be the rainbow, and it's for us as the firstfruits. We are the first born among many. Christ is the first born, and we are the first fruits to follow Christ. So, again, these are important. These holy days are so special, and we should never minimize them. Going to the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall is, rightly, one of the highlights, if not the highlight. I mean, the spring holy days are also highlights, but when we go out and we keep eight days together, that's very special. It pictures, again, the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, and then the eighth-day picture is going on from there. The New Jerusalem, the Last Great Day, New Heavens, New Earth. Wonderful times ahead.

Okay, in Nehemiah chapter 8, it describes one special holy-day season. During the Feast of Trumpets, Ezra was reading the law of God to the Israelites, who had recently returned from captivity.

Hearing God's law read to them caused them to weep and to mourn because they realized that they had sinned against God. They had gotten a long ways away from God. So let's go to Nehemiah chapter 8, and we're going to read a few verses here. Nehemiah chapter 8, if you can find Ezra, it's right after it, Ezra and Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 9, and Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and of course they had come out of Babylon. They had come out of captivity. They built the wall in Jerusalem, and Nehemiah was the governor there. Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites, who taught the people, said to all the people, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn nor weep. I believe this was the Feast of Trumpets. Do not mourn or weep. I think we'll get there. Probably read that. This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn nor weep, for all the people wept. But this was a holy day, and Nehemiah realized and Ezra realized that this was not a day to mourn. Yes, you should be saddened that you have sinned, but now's the time to look forward and rejoice in these holy days. Do not mourn nor weep, for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared.

Help the poor and the needy. That's always been a theme that God has for his servants. Is to take care of the poor and the needy. Send portions to those who need it. For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Verse 11, so the Levites quieted all the people, saying, Be still, for the day is holy. Do not be grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and to drink, to send portions and rejoice greatly, because they understood the words that were declared to them. So they understood that this was a time of joy. Do not sorrow for the joy of the Lord is your strength. That's an important phrase to consider. The joy of the Lord is your strength. The joy of the Lord. You know, when we follow God and obey Him and serve Him, and God is joyful in us, He becomes our strength. We can count on Him. You know, He lives in us. He dwells in us. The joy of the Lord is your strength. It was good that they were mourning over their sins, but the Holy Days were not a season of mourning. The leaders had the nation postpone their mourning, and they fasted after the Holy Days were over. You know, I'm sure they must have kept the Day of Atonement. It says in Nehemiah 9, because they were keeping the Feast of Tabernacles.

Let's read Nehemiah 9, verse 1.

Now on the 24th day of this month, so the first of the month was the Feast of Trumpets, the 10th of the month, the Day of Atonement, then the Feast of Tabernacles started on the 15th.

Now on the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, so this was another time for them to fast, in sackcloth and with dust on their heads. Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all the foreigners and so forth, and they stood, and they confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for one-fourth of the day. So, not sure if that means for six hours they read, or if it was just talking about maybe three hours. You know, a day is 12 hours, the night is 12, so it could have been just three hours. But regardless, it was a significant amount of time. And for another fourth of the day, they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God. They prayed and they worshiped God. They may have sung hymns.

It doesn't really tell us, but certainly they were worshiping on this holy day.

The leaders told the people that the holy days were not created to be days of mourning. Of course, the day of atonement is a day of fasting, but even then it can be a spiritual feast for us, and that's how we should look at the day of atonement when we fast. Again, the joy of the Lord is your strength. When we rejoice in the Sabbath day, we are strengthened. When we honor and praise God on the Sabbath day, we are strengthened.

The joy of the Lord is our strength. So it is important to come to services every Sabbath, to honor God on this day, to keep God's holy days, His annual holy days. It is interesting. It says the people did as they were commanded and shared their abundance with those who had little, and they all ate and drank and rejoiced together. It was not only a time for individual rejoicing, but to make sure that everyone had the opportunity for rejoicing. Being together, sharing, caring, and providing for everyone was a big part of the joy. It was a communal focus, not an individual one. People that think they can just meet in their own homes with very few people, they're missing out on a lot of joy. There's a lot more joy when you get more people together, and we're all observing these days together. This was to be a public celebration, not a private one. The Sabbath and the holy days were not meant to be private celebrations, but public ones celebrating with the body of Christ and making sure that we help those who are suffering physically and spiritually to also rejoice as well. It also gives the reason they rejoiced. It was because they understood the words that were spoken to them. We're here rejoicing today on the Sabbath because we understand, because God's opened our minds. He showed us that this is what He would have us do. There's nothing better you can do on the Sabbath than assemble and honor Him and praise Him and worship Him.

So we should respond to God and embrace His days, the annual holy days, the weekly Sabbath.

And remember, the joy of the Lord is your strength. We are strengthened every Sabbath when we come here.

Have you ever really thought deeply about what that means? What does that have to do with rejoicing on the Sabbath and the holy days? To me, it seems to be saying that when we use God's days to focus on what these days picture and that they are holy days, when we rejoice and celebrate with real gratitude and praise, lifting our voices to God, singing hymns to God, praising Him, praying to Him, then this is what happens. We are strengthened. We are strengthened in the Lord. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Joy is a natural result of being here. That joy gives us strength to go forward into the week to make the best of maybe a hard week. You know, we don't know what's coming tomorrow or the next day. Life does get heavy at times, but focusing on the rich meaning of these days and our bright future is the guiding light that gets us down the sometimes dark and painful path that we have to experience at times. God wants us to try our best to use His days to rejoice no matter what's going on in our lives, again, to try to put that out of our minds and not dwell on it, but come here and truly rejoice. So let's do our best to silence our worries, silence our fears, especially on God's special days of celebration, these holy days. So that's my first point. Now my second point is much shorter, and you'll probably be grateful for that.

It's 11 43, so we're stopping around noon, so we're right on schedule. Beautiful. Second point, brethren, we all need to learn to forgive.

We all need to learn to forgive, and that's not always so easy, learning to forgive.

Now there's a book that I would actually recommend this book. To me, it's one of the best I've ever read on the subject of forgiveness. It's entitled Forgive to Live. Forgive to Live.

It's written by Dick Tibbetts. Dick Tibbetts. It's about 200 pages long. It's easy reading.

I think you would learn a lot from it. I don't have the time to go into much of what the book goes into, or we would be here most of the day, and the women would not be happy.

So we won't do that. But there is a parable that was written in the book, and it tells a story about a fictional town where people could not forgive.

Maybe it's not so fictional. You know, there may be cities like that. Anyway, in the story, all of their hurtful words, you know, the people of the town had a tendency to throw a lot of hurtful words around at one another, but all of their hurtful words turned to rocks. This is a parable.

They turned to rocks. You know, you say something nasty about someone, and it suddenly becomes a big rock that's hurtling at that person. And not only is it a rock, but it's a hot rock.

Okay, so you got these hot rocks coming at you, and I suppose you're hurtling them at others because you're saying things you shouldn't say in the town. Now, instead of letting the rocks drop, the victims of the assault, the unkind words, would pick them up and hold them in their hands until they had the opportunity to throw them back.

If the rocks cooled, they put them into a huge furnace called grievance until they once again were smoldering red-hot. But holding on to these fiery hot rocks also burnt and blistered and scarred their hands, but they weren't too bright.

They hung on to them anyway because they really wanted to throw them at the person who had been unkind to them. The pain they caused themselves was so much worse than the pain caused by the original rock that was thrown at them.

So, rocks continued to fly through the air until there were so many rocks in the land that no plants could grow. It's all rocks, and they're all hot. Not a good place to live.

There were no trees, no flowers, no parks, no beautiful landscape, only hot, smoldering rocks, and ugly people. Finally, a wise man shows up in the town and teaches the townspeople that what they really need is not target practice, but forgiveness. They need to somehow learn to forgive one another. When they stopped picking up the rocks and throwing them back, their hands immediately began to heal. Less rocks were being thrown in the land now because, you know, some listened to this guy. Not everyone did, but some of the people did listen. And there were less rocks, and eventually plants, flowers, and trees began to grow again. Forgiveness restored not only the land, but their hands, and more importantly, the hearts of the people.

It was a much better place to live. All they had to do was learn to drop those rocks.

That's what we need to do also, isn't it? We need to learn to drop the rocks. If somebody throws a rock at us, let's not pick it up and try to throw it back at them. Let's try to understand why maybe they threw the rock in the first place. What was it that caused them to throw the rock? Is there anything we did that might have inspired them to throw the rock? If so, maybe we should own up to that. You know, Christ also talked about dropping rocks. John chapter 8. Now, you know this story, so I'm not going to take the time to spend much time on it. Just one verse. It has to do with the woman that was taken in adultery. She was taken in adultery, and I've always wondered what happened to the man, because, you know, he had to be somewhere. But the woman was taken in adultery, so when they continued asking him, Jesus it is, he raised himself up and said to them, he who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.

Okay, if you don't have any sin, then pick up the stone and you be the first to hurdle it.

So Christ basically said, drop your rocks. Don't throw your rocks. You're all sinners.

Stop throwing the rocks at one another. It'll be a better place.

Let's not focus on the sins of others and hang on to those stones that hurt us.

So this is an important don't in looking back and leaping forward. We can't move forward if we're stuck in the past. If we're stuck in bitterness, blame, resentment, that's unhealthy to us.

It's not a healthy thing to harbor hatred and resentment toward people, even if they have wronged us, and maybe in some cases they really wronged us, because I know that that's not to be taken lightly, of course. And I don't have time to go into it, but in the sermon that I gave on this topic, I went into what forgiveness doesn't mean as well, because there are times when you don't want to continue to put yourself in a bad situation.

That's not what forgiveness is all about. You have to use wisdom. But when it's possible, if you can forgive and seek reconciliation, that's a very, very good thing. It will heal you in so many ways. And this idea of the furnace that's called grievance.

Now, the book by Dick Tibbetts talks about everyone has a grievance story. I've had these.

I've been wronged before. At least I thought I was. I believe I was. I was wronged. And if you dwell on that hurt and that grievance, then it gets worse. It becomes bigger.

And it's difficult to move on in your life. We all need to move on. So we need to forgive, and we need to move on in our lives whenever we possibly can, and not hold the bitterness toward someone else. Yes, maybe they did sin. Maybe they did harm you. Maybe what they did was totally wrong. And yet you're not perfect either, right? There's a scripture. Mark 11. Let's go there and read that for a second. Jesus has some good advice. Mark 11. Let's see. That's verse 24. Mark 11. Verse 24. Mark chapter 11. Verse 24. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone... Let me read that again. If you have anything against anyone, forgive him.

That's pretty all-inclusive, isn't it? If you have anything against anyone, the advice is to forgive and to move on. Ultimately, God is the one that forgives sin. We can't forgive sin. Be sure your sins will find you out. Someone who has sinned against you will surely pay a consequence for that. God will take care of that. You don't have to.

Vengeance is mine, says the Eternal. So you turn that over to God. Let him take care of it.

And that gives you much greater peace of mind. It allows you to go on and rejoice more fully.

So if you have anything against anyone, forgive him that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. So it's vital that we learn to forgive. So when we look back, let's learn from whatever it is that may have hurt us, that may have come about. Let's look back. Let's learn to forgive and let's learn to move on. Dwelling on the hurt and the pain is more hurtful and more painful. So you don't want to dwell on it. You want to move on from it. Move on from there.

Don't get stuck in the past with bitterness, with blame, and with resentment.

So let's all leap forward and get rid of a lot of heavy baggage through forgiveness.

And that's, again, what Passover season is all about, right? God has forgiven us.

We all deserve death. The wages of sin is death. That's what we all deserve. Instead, we have a glorious future ahead of us because God has chosen to forgive us. Because we've repented of our sins, of course, and we are striving to obey God and to do our best. The old cliche about turning lemons into lemonade, there is some truth to that. You know, we need to learn to do that in our lives.

Remember what God has done for you. Look at and look for all the things that are positive. The Scripture says, think on whatsoever things are good. Whatsoever things are pure. Whatsoever things are lovely. Whatsoever things are virtuous. Think on these things. Philippians chapter 4, verse 8, think on these things. Don't dwell on the negative things of life. Think on the positive. So there's so much beauty in the world that God does give us, so let's dwell on these things. Let's be realistic. We know, again, there will be some hard times ahead of us, but when we rejoice in the Sabbath, we'll be given strength, each Sabbath, to face whatever comes. And if we can forgive others, that will also free us. It will make us free. So let's all remember what God told the children of Israel way back when. Back when they were coming out of Egypt. You remember what he told them when they were crossing the Red Sea? It's a very interesting few verses. Exodus chapter 14. So they're about to cross the Red Sea. Pharaoh's army is closing in on them, remember?

Pharaoh's army has caught up with them. Pharaoh has decided he's not going to let them go after all.

And Moses said to the people in verse 13, do not be afraid. Stand still. This is what Moses told him. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians, whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. True words. Moses was a wonderful servant, one of the best. I mean, his example is amazing. The love that he had for the people, he was willing to lay his life down.

Clearly, he's a type of Christ. He was willing to lay his life down for the children of Israel.

And he said, stand still. See the salvation of the Lord. He says in verse 14, the Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace. You don't have to do a thing. And the and the eternal said to Moses, why do you cry to me? Tell the children to move ahead. They have to also do their part.

He said, tell the children of Israel to go forward. Put one foot in front of the other one and get moving. Yes, I'm going to open up the Red Sea for you, but I expect you to go through it.

That's what God wants us to do. He wants to go forward in faith. So this is a great theme for the Women's Enrichment Weekend. I'm sure you ladies will discuss this more and more.

I hope that these two points have been helpful. Again, if we can just rejoice in the Sabbath day and in God's Holy Days, we'll be so much better off. And if we can also learn to forgive each other and stop hurtling those rocks at each other. That way our hands can heal and we can move ahead. It's great being here with all of you, so look forward to going out to the ranch, the farm, spending some time with the guys.