Help Is on the Way

And that the scriptures from Leviticus 23 that apply to this day were read. And of course, Leviticus 23 is a key chapter that we go to. It starts first with the weekly Sabbath, six days, and then the seventh is the Sabbath of God. And it does say these are the feasts of the Lord right from the outset, and that's always good to remember. And then it begins with Passover, and then it goes to Unleavened Bread.

And at the end of the instructions, it says this is a statute forever throughout all your generations. And of course, with these holy days, we find that when Christ walked the earth, He taught the disciples to keep them. Why would He have taught them to keep them if then when He died they were going to disappear? And we find the early church continuing to observe these days, for instance, Acts chapter 2, they were at one accord in one place on the day of Pentecost, and that's when the miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit took place.

And so, we come to the Feast of Trumpets, and this is the fourth annual Sabbath of the year. Each year we start with the Passover, which is a festival day, and then we have the first day and the seventh day of Unleavened Bread that are annual Sabbaths. And then we go to Pentecost, and then we come to this one. It's the pivotal day. The ones that went before had their start long ago, but it's an ongoing giving of God's Spirit. It's an ongoing calling of people to walk the Unleavened Life, to live by the Unleavened Life, like Paul told Corinth there in 1 Corinthians chapter 5.

And there about verse 7, 8, 9, through there, he said, let us keep the feast. And yet it's not the way we used to. It's with the Unleavened Bread of sincerity and truth. This day is a memorial. Those words were read to you this morning in Leviticus 23 verses 23 through 25. This day is a memorial. We memorialize what this day pictures in the overall plan of God. It also instructed us that it is a memorial of the blowing of trumpets. And some of those topics have been covered and may have been covered this morning, for all I know.

But there were different kinds of trumpets. Somebody brought in a nice long shofar over in the Gadsden this morning. So I don't know, maybe right now they're blowing the shofar. That was the ram's horn, and it was the one that was more the stark warning of impending warfare, of danger. But they also had the silver trumpets. Thank you. My wife realizes that I am the last person in the room who will actually notice what is in front of me.

That's a copper trumpet, right? Beautiful. So thank you to whoever put together all the animals. And anyhow, she's got too many years of knowing that I'm the last person who notices what is on the table or who brings flowers. So just one of my many limitations. The silver trumpets that were blown, they were blown on different occasions.

Whenever a new king was announced into the office, sent it into the office of King, it was a time of more rejoicing. But we memorialize. We remember this day, and we, as the Scripture there told us, we refrain from our normal work today. And we assemble. We come here and we gather with God's people who have the same convictions. And we open God's Word, and we study it. And we gave an offering this morning and all of that. It's a little question that we should consider, I think, on a regular basis with anything we do, anything we believe.

And that is just simply the little question, why? Why do we do what we do today? Why do we believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to this earth? Why do we pray, thy kingdom come? Now, we'll come back to that little question, why in a little bit.

But I'd like to give an example to you. There was a man who was born in Seattle, Washington in 1912. His name, if I'm pronouncing it anywhere close to correctly, was Minoru Yamasaki, Japanese-American, but born here. As he grew up, he studied architecture. Go ahead and laugh back there. Go ahead. He studied architecture, and he turned out to be a premier designer. And the Chicago Exposition in, I'm sorry, Seattle World's Fair, 1964, the American exhibit was something that he had designed. And he had something in Chicago at one of the Expositions there, the old terminal building in St. Louis, Missouri.

He had designed the old building that's apparently long gone now. But his premier work, his trademark work, once upon a time stood in New York City. It stood until 14 years ago the other day. He is the man who was the main, the chief architect of the World Trade Center, which actually was seven buildings, but mainly we think of the Twin Towers. And many of us saw those Twin Towers. Denise and I were on our way to the Jerusalem Dig as college students, and those towers were standing in the early summer of 1973, but the buildings were not complete yet. They weren't open until later that year. And when they were, they were the tallest buildings on earth. Tallest buildings, something like 1,320-some feet. One was six feet taller than the other one, but you'd never know it from down on the street below. And yet then, less than a year later, the Sears Tower in Chicago opened, and it was a hundred and, well, it was like 1,450, so it was a bit taller. So it was only a short time. But it was a unique architecture, and actually, let me think of his name again. What did I say? Yamasaki. I keep wanting to say Kawasaki. So if I say Kawasaki, I mean Yamasaki. They probably were related, but anyhow, Yamasaki actually foresaw in his design a jet flying into the building.

What he did not foresee was a jet that had recently taken off and was full of jet fuel. And you remember the event, the sobering events of that morning 14 years ago, and the jets flew in, the first one, and then the other tower, and they stood. The first one stood for an hour, and the other one more like an hour and almost 45 minutes. But then, with the intense heat and the very I-beams, the very steel structure just melting, and once it began, you know, all that weight, all of it came down. Now, Yamasaki lived until 1986, so he lived quite a few years when the World Trade Centers were there. And, you know, I can only imagine that he was so filled with pride and enjoyment of that. A week ago on the Sabbath, we looked at some of the lessons from the book of Ecclesiastes, and in Ecclesiastes 2, verse 24, that's something that was pointed out, that in this life, so much is just chasing the wind, as Solomon made that case. But he repeatedly said that it is good to just stop and enjoy the fruit of our own work, something we struggle to build, and maybe a house we build, a building we build, and pasture that we put in a fence, and build a barn, and run some livestock. And it's good, it's right, it's fitting to enjoy the fruit of our own labor. And Yamasaki must have enjoyed that, because they were marvelous buildings.

It was sobering for me to fly into Newark six months after the events of that 9-11, fly into Newark and look across over New York City, and see the Empire State Building, and a lot of other tall buildings, but no twin towers, no twin towers. Had Yamasaki lived, how would he have reacted the day that two jetliners flew into those towers?

Of course, we can't know. But we can relate to that anything. Who knows the stories that some of you could tell? Maybe a building, a house with your own hands, and then there's a fire, or there's a tornado, or whatever that destroys it, and you see all the fruit of your labor gone.

I want you to think of that, because we come to a day, and we live in an age, an age that the Apostle Paul said perilous times would come. And we turn on the news, and we feel assaulted by the news. My ears feel like they've been under assault. Attack.

Just simply to listen to what's going on in this world. It's not the America we lived in 20 and 30 years ago. We live in a country that doesn't believe the words that God has in Genesis 2 that defines marriage. We live in a country that does not believe in the words of Leviticus, that says, a man shall not lie down with another man and do things. We won't go further on that.

We live in a different world, and it sobers us, and we grieve. But can you imagine, can we back up and look at it from the point of view of the great, almighty Creator, designer, sustainer of all that is? Can we even imagine the pain that God must feel as he looks down and he sees hundreds of thousands of refugees and mountains of trash left behind as he looks at some of the places that man has destroyed or worked on destroying?

It has to grieve him. Now, let's go back to our question, why? Why is Christ coming back?

Because there are so many places that speak of his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, the scripture we heard in the sermon at, Matthew 25, he will be in that millennial setting in a situation on his throne, dividing the nations to the right and the left. He told his disciples, he was training them that they would rule over the 12 tribes of Israel. And all of that speaks of a kingdom that's going to be right here on the earth. Let's go to Job 38. Job 38.

In our local Bible studies that some of you were able to attend the last one that we had, we looked at these final chapters or final words of the book of Job. It's a long book, and throughout the book Job, through all of his suffering, keeps crying out that he wants that day to stand in court before God and present his own case. He wants to stand and defend himself.

And he asks, why is God hidden? He asks all things about God. But when God finally speaks to him from the whirlwind, suddenly he has nothing to say. Notice in Job 38, notice just some of the questions. God does not address Job's questions. God asks his own questions. Verse 4, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

And Job was silent. Verse 5, Who determined its measurements?

Who stretched the line upon it? Verse 6, To what were its foundations fastened?

Verse 7, When the morning star, speaking of the angelic host, sang together, and the sons of God, shouted for joy. Verse 8, Who shut the sea with doors when it burst forth?

Verse 12, Have you commanded the morning since your days began?

And God continues on, and Job has nothing to say. God turns to the animal world, and Job has nothing to say. How much enjoyment did God in the Word? You know, in John 1 is about the earliest point, chronologically, where the Bible opens up Revelation. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then as it goes on, about verse 3-4, The Word is the one who made everything that has been made.

This very day, Jesus Christ, who was the one who said, back in Genesis 1, let there be light, and the one who later, a few days later, said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.

And let's give them dominion over all the animal world.

That same God has watched for 6,000 years as man has improved. Kind of like bread, we enrich it, we improve it to the point to where we probably shouldn't even eat it, because it's not the same that once was. He looks down at this earth.

I feel so blessed across my life to have been able to visit some of the most unbelievable places on this earth, to stand there at a place called Trailcrest at 13,800 up in the high Sierras, and look out to the west across the John Muir Wilderness area, and you can see this little meandering foot trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, that heads all the way up north, and then another direction, the John Muir Trail, that goes on over toward the Sequoia area.

And to look across where you do not have the fingerprints of Satan and man all over it, you look down at Guitar Lake because, you know, I saw it on a map, but when I stood there, I thought, it's shaped like a guitar, and it was thousands of feet down below, and the Twin Crabtree Lakes, and what a beautiful world it is! Until man comes along, and wherever man is gone, I've also had the opportunity to stand in places where I look and see absolute filth. Absolutely. It just is heart-rending, heartbreaking to see what man has done. Why is Christ coming back, number one, to save the earth?

To save the earth. When Jesus walked the earth at one point during His ministry, He said there in Luke 10 verse 18, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. You see, that was the first war in heaven. He saw when Satan the devil led other formerly righteous angels in their rebellion, and they went up thinking they could knock God off His throne, and He was cast back down and restrained here on this earth. Except as God allows him to leave and appear before Him at His throne.

There will be war in heaven again that we read of in Revelation 7. There will be a time of lifting up once again, and they will lose once again. You go back some time and read, reread Genesis 1. God's story is actually of a re-forming, a re-creating of the earth, because the old earth, the old universe, had been destroyed. We have plenty of evidence, as man has sent probes out through the solar system and beyond, plenty of evidence where we can look up close at planets that have seen the level of destruction beyond anything we can imagine.

And yet the Bible tells us it was not created in the sense of being without form and void. It became that way. Well, God cleaned it up, prepared it for the crowning pinnacle of His creation, which was human beings. Human beings. Let's look at Deuteronomy 11. This is God speaking to Israel through Moses.

Moses' life is going to end soon thereafter. He's not going to go into the promised land with them. He made His mistakes. We don't cast stones. We made our mistakes. But it was a matter that these are His parting words. He's 120, young spring chicken. His eye was not dim. Well, that must be nice. Neither is natural force evaded. Well, that must be nice, too. But He began speaking to them, and He reminded them of all the travels that God had led them.

He reiterated the commandments for them in chapter 5, and He kept repeating to them, Beware lest you forget the Lord your God. He reminded them, when you go in and you dwell in that land, and you drink water from wells that you didn't dig, don't forget God. But notice God's description of that land and how it must have changed.

It's not really that appealing right now, but maybe it's because of all the warfare that's been going on. But once upon a time, God called it a land flowing with milk and honey. Deuteronomy 11, Verse 10, For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot as a vegetable garden.

And that speaks to the Nile and the series of canals, and they would plant and then just open the little earthen dams and let water flow in and then build the dam back to stop the flow of water.

The Holy Land was not going to be like that. It was dramatically different because they were going to have to trust God to give them rain and to give them dew and to take care of their every need. Verse 11, But the land which you cross over to possess is the land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares.

The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year. And somehow, I suspect, God still looks down at this earth that has so many fingerprints of man all over it. So much destruction, and He still looks down. And it can be said, a land for which the Lord your God cares. And He has a plan for this land, but you know, it's going to require the return of Jesus Christ. It's going to bring about... there are so many prophecies that talk about... we could go to the end of... let's see, Amos 9 is where it talks about the plowman overtaking the reaper. And I like to think about that, that the ones coming along trying to prepare the seedbed for planting the seed again are telling those who are still harvesting, move out of the way, we're coming through. Wonderful problem to have. Love to read that. God loves this earth, and Jesus Christ has to come back in order to save it. Romans chapter 8.

There's a beautiful passage here. Romans 8, beginning of verse 18 down through 23, that is just so, so moving, so inspiring.

Talks about the the suffering as we go through now. Won't be able to be compared with the glory that we will inherit. But let's just notice, let's focus on verses 22 and 23. Romans 8 verse 22.

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

Man is making the earth a trash dump. When we visited our daughter and family up in Alaska, one day our son-in-law, there was a man in from the Anchorage region, it was his job to go to some of the remote villages and they monitor the local village trash dump. And they asked if I wanted to go. And so I'm out of here. So we went up river, had to go up the Cuscoa Combe river by boat, and went to the first village, and then the other one. And I was utterly appalled. These villages, but then you go on beyond out. And there's this chain link fence, and it is filled with trash. And I wonder, how did they get that much junk out there? Plastic bottles, and metal cans, and old beat-up snowmobiles, and boat engines. How long will it take to clean that up? You ever wonder why God says the millennium will be a thousand years? The saints will reign, live and reign with Christ a thousand years. I suspect there'll be plenty to do during that time. Verse 23, not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even, we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption and redemption of our body. The creation groans for the time when the feet of Jesus Christ will stand on the Mount of Olives, and it will be delivered from what man has been subjecting it to. And Jesus is coming as King of Kings and as Creator to preserve the earth, to renew, to rebuild that which He and His Father love so dearly. Why is Christ returning? Number two is to save mankind. Humanity. Male and female created He them. They're in the image. They're in the likeness of God, and those two words speak of an eternal purpose. We noticed in Ecclesiastes last week ago, Sabbath, that Ecclesiastes 3 verse 11, it has that key phrase that He, God, has put eternity in their hearts. There is something different about a human being.

Animals have brains, and some brains of animals are larger than human brains, and yet they're programmed, and they function by instinct. And they go through the motions, and a beaver sees a tree, and for some reason it wants to go gnaw on it and cut it down and start building a dam to back up the water, and then build this ratty-looking little lodge out there, and yet inside they can spend the winter there, even if the lake ice is over. God did that. God programmed that within them.

But a human being, there's not only that brain, but there's also the spirit in man that the Bible speaks of a number of places. What man knows the things of man, except the spirit of man in him.

But there's something within human beings that we look at a notion, and we want to know what's on the other side. We look at a mountain range, and we want to know what's beyond. We look at the moon, we want to go there. We look out at the stars, as maybe you did late last night. You look up, and what a wonderful view it is. We don't even know how many there are, how many billions there are.

We measure the universe in light years across, and somewhere along the line, our limited brains go tilt. But God, from the very beginning, formed first flesh and blood, temporary limited human beings. But it was the potential that He gave them. We stop here today from our normal pursuits of a Monday. God commanded us to come and appear before Him to assemble, to consider the meaning of this day. And so we gather here. This day, along with all the other holy days, begin and continue plotting out the plan of salvation, whereby God, as He has written, as He inspired Paul to write, wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. In another place, He wants all to be saved. That is His purpose. And He began with flesh and blood human beings with a mind, and then provided the means through the Passover. The price was paid. The price for sin was paid. We can have ours washed clean. And that was, of course, fulfilled with Christ's well-accomplished with Christ's death. And that began a process that is ongoing. And there was the days of unleavened bread in walking the unleavened path, walking the way Christ walks, putting out the old and putting on the new. And then the Spirit of God was given in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost.

And we continue with this day, and we look to and we anticipate something future, the return of Christ, the time when that wonderful announcement goes forth that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and is Christ, and He'll reign forever and ever. And today, we celebrate the plan of salvation by looking onward. One more step as God seeks to fulfill His spiritual creation in the lives of individuals who will respond to His call and be selected to be a part of the very elect. Let's go to Matthew 24. Matthew 24, of course, is the Olivet Prophecy, and it is a place where the disciples early on had asked Jesus of the time, the signs of His coming. And He answered. He spoke of false religion. He spoke of wars and rumors of wars and famine and pestilence and natural disasters. And He cautioned that the fear of many may wax cold, and you and I live in a day and age where it is possible that the world can infect us. There's been an assault on the sanctity of human life, an all-out assault on the sanctity of life, and we have to guard against that. But as it goes through, let's just focus on verses 21 and 22. Matthew 24, verse 21.

For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time known or ever shall be. Now, that's a sobering statement. Some of you may have been young when World War II took place. Sounded like an awful time. What is coming will pale that one into insignificance. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.

But for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened. We live, we have lived for decades, we, humanity. We have lived at a time when it was deemed somewhere after the Korean War that there was enough nuclear stockpile to exterminate life from the planet. We've lived for a lot of decades since then. And man has just proliferated arms. We have no idea what man has out there.

But he says here that unless time was cut short, no human beings would live. But then he tells us the good news, and that is that it will be cut short. Christ will return.

And this is because there are those called the elect, those who are holding fast and hanging on to the truth that God has given them. God has an express plan and purpose for every human who has ever lived, male or female. Doesn't matter where they're from, doesn't matter what their background is, what their race, their ethnicity is, their gender.

God has a plan. He wants that person in his kingdom. And that's what we've been doing this year as we walk through the Holy Days, one after another. The plan whereby all can be saved.

We can look back at some of the even obscure people in the Bible. Uriah, we don't know that much about Uriah the Hittite. What I read about him, I think, what a marvelous man, a character. He probably died having no earthly idea what his king was doing with his wife.

But then there are people like Queen Jezebel, and God has a plan for her.

And there are people who have walked this earth, Princess Diana.

Michael Jackson. Why don't we throw that name in there?

We've got to believe everyone. A lot of times it depends on how we spawned out and how we got started. A lot of times it goes back to the infancy. Some people never had a chance. We could look at Saddam Hussein. At any rate, Christ is returning to save the human family. Why is Christ returning? Number three is to save Israel. Now, when I say Israel, I don't mean the little country over there today because the name goes way back into the pages of Genesis. And God first began appearing to Abraham. Abraham is mentioned, or Abram. Abram is mentioned at the end of Genesis 11, but he begins speaking to Abram in Genesis 12. He begins to make promises. Genesis 12 verse 1, and the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

And of course, the ultimate part of that promise is the coming of Jesus Christ from the lineage of David of the tribe of Judah, who was one son of Israel or Jacob.

But a part of that is that there would be a people. There would be a physical, a group of physical descendants of Abraham. And then that promise was passed on to Isaac. The promise was expanded at different times. It was promised. It was passed on to Jacob.

And we know the story. We know the story how that the days of Jacob, when he was way up in years, the descendants that were only about 75 in number, they ended up down in Egypt.

That is where they multiplied and became a great people. Two, three million, the estimate is, by the time they came out of captivity, and they were led by one miracle after another, as God used Moses to lead them, and God fed them, and God gave them water.

But we know the story. They hit the ruts of the road. They disbelieved. They spent 40 years wandering. And then under Joshua, they entered the land. They began conquering the land. They did not fully take the land. They never finished that. But then they did give out territory to the different tribes. Each one had its own land. And they had some good years, and then they'd hit the ruts of the road again. A lot of ups and downs. They had some good years under David, but a lot of bloodshed, a lot of war. But then they had the golden age of Israel under Solomon. Forty years they were given peace from their enemies. Forty years. It's a long time.

That's when, in Solomon's Israel, gold was everywhere, and silver was as the stones along the road. It was a marvelous time. That was when they built a temple. And that's when God moved in and lived there. The divine Shekinah was obvious, was evident there at the temple.

And then Solomon began hitting some of the ruts of the road as well. And God told him, for your father David's sake, I'll leave part of the tribes with you, but you know the story. The ten left in short order. The monarchy was divided. It was no longer just the nation of Israel. It became the house of Israel with ten tribes and the house of Judah. Two tribes and basically three, whenever Jeroboam set up his own priests of different tribes, the Levites mainly went back down to Jerusalem and joined in with Judah and Benjamin.

But a lot has happened, and we can't cover all that story. What a marvelous story it was.

Because of sin, there was this blessing that was supposed to be given to the children of Abraham, and it was postponed. There are prophecies that indicate a 2,520-year postponement. And isn't it interesting, if we take 720 BC, 721 to 718 BC, when the house of Israel fell, they were taken off into captivity in Assyria, they basically disappeared from the view of the world. There are so many referred to the lost ten tribes. They don't know where they are. They assumed that, well, they came back later, and they're part of the little country called Israel there. But no, no, they migrated. 2,520 years later, we come to around 1,800 AD, and we have the British Empire coming into its heyday. Literally, you had an empire, a British Empire, upon which the sun never set. And then, as the 1800s came and went, and we got into the 1900s, we began to find there is this one powerful nation, and there's no other people in history that could fulfill some of the promises made that Jacob passed along to the sons of Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh. There's no other option than the United States and the British Commonwealth.

Well, the sad thing is, we live in a country that has and is forgetting God.

We don't want to hear about God. We have currency notes and coins, and I wonder how long will it take until a Supreme Court says, it is unconstitutional to have the words in God we trust.

And when will the time come when they look at our Supreme Court building in D.C., and they have the representations of all of these great lawgivers in history, and up top center is the figure of Moses with two tables of stone, and when will that have to be destroyed?

That's the world we live in. I cannot believe what's happened in this decade, but it's been headed that way for a long time.

And you know, sadly, it's going to get a lot worse.

Ezekiel 6.

Ezekiel 6.

Ezekiel lived at the time when the house of Judah was falling and going into captivity, and that was 150 years after Israel, and yet the way Ezekiel's message is written, he is sent to the children of Israel, not just Judah.

And in Ezekiel 6, verse 2, Son of Man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them, and say, O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God.

Thus says the Lord God to the mountains, to the hills, to the ravines, and to the valleys.

Indeed, I even I will bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places.

Well, the high places in ancient Israel were the places of worship, not worship of God.

They'd go to a high place, cut down all the trees, and leave some upright posts.

The places of pagan worship.

Then your altar shall be desolate, your incense altar shall be broken, I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

I will lay the corpses of the children of Israel before their idols, I will scatter your bones all around your altars. Verse 6, In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste.

That's as far as we need to read. That's an unpleasant thought to focus on, but it's there, and it's written in many places in the prophets. The time comes when America, who has been telling God since at least the 50s, the 60s, that we don't want you in our schools, we don't want prayers to you in any public assembly, the nation that has been telling God to get out will get out for a while and allow them.

You have prophecies that talk about the third dying by the sword, and the third by pestilence, and the third being chased and scattered, and maybe one out of ten of that group come out at the end.

But the good news is there will be a remnant that will survive because God will not allow Israel to be destroyed from the face of the earth. He told Israel long ago that I want you, I'll be your God, you may be my people. I want you to be an example nation to the others.

And that's what God told Abraham back in Genesis 12 where we read that through you all peoples will be blessed. But Israel has never fulfilled that. And in fact, we fought against that and we are running from it. And we're telling God to leave us alone as a country.

But God's coming back to save Israel. Isaiah 27. Isaiah 27.

In verses 12 and 13. Isaiah 27 verse 12.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord will thresh from the tunnel of the river to the brook of Egypt.

And you will be gathered one by one, O you children of Israel.

So it shall be in that day. Now here we find out when this is going to take place.

The Bible speaks, Revelation especially speaks of, and it enumerates these seven trumpet plagues. There are other places in the New Testament and here where it talks about a great trumpet or the seventh trumpet. And that is the time when lots of things break loose and happen. The great trumpet will be blown. They will come who are about to perish in the land of Assyria. And they who are outcasts in the land of Egypt. And shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem. Isaiah 11. Notice beginning in verse 11.

11 verse 11. It shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people who are left. You see, it's happened before.

Isaiah's writing here say around 800 somewhere in 800 to 750 BC range. It was hundreds of years earlier when we had the first Exodus. There's a second one coming. From Assyria in Egypt, from Patheras and Kush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the islands of the sea, he will set up a banner for the nations and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

This day reminds us of God's promise that one more time with the final trumpet, he will bring about the Exodus, the recovery from all over the earth of that remnant of the descendants of Abraham, specifically through Israel. And this is the day when we remind God, remember us. Remember your promise. Remember your people. Remember your church, which takes us to point four. Why is Christ coming back? Number four, to save the church. To save the church, because you see, at the very end, we go into those times when the Scripture says it is a time such as the world has never seen. We have an adversary. We always have had. But there is a time of that war in heaven. And he turns to do battle against the remnant of the seed. The earth actually opens up. Revelation 12 talks about and swallows them, hides them, protects them. And Christ, God returns.

Psalm 83. Psalm 83.

Prophetic Psalm. Fascinating Psalm. You can read some commentaries and they will say, well, here is a gathering. Here is a confederacy of people that has never come together in history.

And that alone should tell us it's for a future time.

Psalm 83. Verse 2.

For behold, your enemies make a tumult. Well, it's addressing God in verse 1.

We need to remember, we see a lot of times we look and we see human beings doing things.

But there are wicked spirits in high places.

And they want to destroy the very plan of God. They want to destroy the family of God.

And their hatred is against God. Your enemies make a tumult. Those who hate you have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against your people, which I believe is a reference to the end-time descendants of Israel, Abraham's seed, and consulted together against your sheltered ones.

Which, again, my belief is that ties in with Revelation 12 about the time when the earth opens up and hides those who are gods. The people who have the testimony of Jesus Christ, who keep the commandments of God. To save the church, God will intervene to save His people.

We live at a day and age where it seems we pay a terrible price.

Look around this congregation. Think of other brethren, you know, in the body of Christ.

We have so many with heart issues, blood pressure, we have so much diabetes, we have joint problems, we have all kinds of illnesses. We pay a horrific price, but you know, Paul's the one that reminded them that it is through much tribulation we're going to enter the kingdom of God. And there are times when God does allow us to suffer because sometimes we have to hurt for those little lights to come on in our mind that we can understand. Sometimes we have to hurt a lot before we see Job had to go through a lot in a long time. And then finally, as he said, now my eye sees you. So we do hurt. And sometimes there's a diagnosis of a lump somewhere and all lumps are not created equally. Lumps in our oatmeal, we don't mind so much, do we? But then there are those other lumps that are serious. They get our attention. We pay a terrible price.

Let's go to Matthew 24 again. Matthew 24, and this time let's read verses 30 and 31. Because this day reminds us that God has not forgotten about us.

We are the halt, the lame, the sick, the injured, the ailing, the aging. We face many trials, we will face many more. But in the process, God tests the metal of His people. He wants to know, will we go His way and His way only? And it takes time to know that. It takes all kinds of situations where the heat is turned up so He can see how we are going to come out the other end.

Matthew 24, verse 30. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven. And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with the great sound of a trumpet. And they will gather together His elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. Yes, the time is coming when God will gather the saints and bring them together. We add a little bit more from the resurrection chapter, 1 Corinthians 15. The Apostle Paul writing at this time firmly believed that He would live to the time of Christ's return. Well, he had to revise that later on. His last book, the second letter to Timothy, he said, I fought a good fight. I've got a crown of glory waiting for me. And I hope we can get to that point. Because, you know, tomorrow is not promised to any one of us. It really is not. It doesn't matter what age we are, how healthy we may be.

Things can happen, and tomorrow is not promised to us. In 1 Corinthians 15, though Paul was writing, let's just notice verses 51 and 52, he writes a great deal about the resurrection. Verse 51, Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, and sleep is a beautiful biblical metaphor for death, that we sleep the sleep of death. And we don't know if a hundred years or twenty-five hundred years passes or three days. We are asleep, and we have no recognition of the passing of time. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Again, his wording was, he felt it was going to happen in his lifetime, but we know that it didn't. We may think it's going to happen in our lifetime, but we really don't know. We do not know the day or the hour. Let's add a little bit more from 1 Thessalonians 4. 1 Thessalonians 4. And we will begin in verse 13. Verse 13.

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep. So Paul writes those at Thessalonica, and he wants them to know if someone dies, here is what happens.

And he's writing to a group of the brethren of the body of Christ. He's writing the church.

He wants them to know if one of you dies, or you know some who have, here's what is happening.

Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope, because death is an enemy. We hate death.

It's the last enemy that's ultimately going to be destroyed.

We will sorrow, but we should not sorrow as those who don't have a clue as to what God is doing.

And the Holy Days teaches step by step by step exactly precisely what God is doing.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and if we don't, why are we here? Even so, God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself would ascend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And that in Christ goes all the way back, I suppose, to Abel, because Jesus walked the earth, and he referred to from the blood of righteous Abel. And all the way across, we might be surprised how many are a part of that august body called the dead in Christ. They rise first. Of course, there are those who will proof text, and they will say, aha, see, they're going off to heaven. But that's not what it just said. We have to follow through with other scriptures. Where is Christ going?

Well, Zachariah 14. His feet will stand in that day on the Mount of Olives.

And the parable there, Matthew 24, he will be seated at the nations, dividing them to the right and the left. He's coming here to the earth. Revelation says that we'll be kings and priests, and reign on the earth. So the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. And where's the Lord going? He's going to go stand on the Mount of Olives, and again taking control of this earth once again. To save the planet, to save Israel, to save the church. This day tells us, help is on the way. Let us close in Revelation 11.

I don't think we can read these words enough, and perhaps they have been read already today.

Revelation 11, and let's read verses 15 through 19.

We are taught to pray, thy kingdom come.

And this is where it heads. Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. And then it mentions the 24 elders who sat there. They were mentioned in chapter 4, some of the angelic hosts, perhaps the counselors of God, but they're there.

And they sing, they fall on their faces, they worship God, and they say, We give you thanks, O God, Lord God Almighty, the one who is, who was, and is to come, because you have taken your great power and reigned. The nations were angry, and your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that you should reward your servants, the prophets, and the saints, and those who fear your name small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth.

Then the temple of God was open in heaven. You see, what we had here on the earth was based on the pattern of what is in heaven. The reality is there, and it was a physical pattern here.

And the Ark of His covenant was seen in His temple, and there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail. The Ark of the Covenant.

Think of that. What did Moses, what was he told to do with the Ark of the Covenant?

Take the tablets of stone and place them in the Ark.

And the last holy day we kept, Pentecost, pictured a time when the Spirit of God is given, and it writes the law of God on our hearts as a part of the covenant relationship we enter with God. And also, with that Ark, in, or some of it was on the outside, but you had Aaron's rod that budded.

There was a time of rebellion, and God had all the leaders of the twelve tribes come, and they all brought this piece of dead stick that they'd carried around for a long time, called a staff or a rod, and He said that I will show you where duly constituted authority lies. And the next day, this dead stick that was Aaron's, representing the tribe of Levi, had sprouted forth with new life, and it was kept.

And then there was a golden pot, and Moses was told, fill that with manna, and keep it there.

That which normally the next day would stink and would have bred worms, and as a never-ending, ongoing miracle, God told him, keep it there, and it tells Israel, and it tells us that God is the one who said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

God is the one performing a perpetual, ongoing, never-ending miracle in living in our lives.

We today, we look to, we yearn for, we pray for that time when the King of Kings will return, but we already have a King who lives in our life, who reigns in our lives, and we need to continue to look to Him. He watches over us. He'll never leave us.

So, as we conclude this day, let us anticipate the climax of the day that represents the return of Jesus Christ. Help truly is on the way.