The Holy Days and the Gospel

Quite a few showed up. I thought there'd be probably a lot less, just because even though it's only the...we're just barely into the feast, a lot of people are dragging a little bit. I think it's because of the altitude, for one thing. It's got people tired, especially little kids, but I'm glad you all made it tonight, and hopefully God will inspire all of us here to come to a little deeper understanding of why we're doing these Holy Days. If you all will stand, we'll just ask for God's blessing.

Father, we humbly come before You, and as a group of people who just want to go where You want us to go, we just want to do what You want us to do, and here we are keeping Holy Days, which most Christians would think have no meaning at all, and yet we realize these are very, very important times. We're here because You want us to be here because You're teaching us about what You're doing in salvation, the plan that You have, and the future You have for humanity, and we just thank You. We ask You to help us tonight to come to a deep understanding of what You are doing. We also pray, Father, for the people of Panama City Beach with this tropical storm that is hitting south of them, but could spin off. We don't know exactly where it's going. It's supposed to be a Category 1 hurricane by the time it does landfall, so we pray that You protect Your people and all Your fescites, wherever they may be, across the south of the United States. So we praise You, and we ask all things in Christ Jesus' name. Amen.

Yeah, the tropical storm date is supposed to hit Panama City, but you never know what's going to happen with that. There are even other churches of God with fescites all through the south, and you just don't know what's going to happen with that storm. So please pray that God will protect everyone, and that no one will get injured and no sight will be hurt by that.

I got some really good news and some really bad news. Which you want first? Okay. Bad news.

The bad news is you're really messed up.

The good news is God's got a way out of this mess. That's what the gospel is. We talk about the gospel all the time. It's the news that you and I are really messed up, and how we got messed up. And it's the good news about how God's got a way out of it.

I mentioned Sabbath that Satan didn't sneak into the Garden of Eden. God said, oh no, what are we going to do? He let him in. And this plan was put in motion the moment he let him in there. Sooner or later, the problem with free will is, once one human being chose to go wrong, we were all going to be messed up. One person influences another, influences another.

There's no way to stop the process once you start it. And we all became a mixture of good and evil. I made it interesting that many people look at human nature and say, it's totally evil. So you have sometimes very religious Christians saying, it's totally evil. And you have the secular humanist saying, oh no, it's basically good.

And of course, the truth is, it's a mixture. And some people are totally evil. Some people are just totally evil. Most people are a mixture. It's why someone can do something terrible one day. It's something wonderful and loving for the next day. And it's because people are a mixture. You and I weren't designed to live as a mixture of good and evil. We weren't. That's why we have killed us. Being who we are will kill us. We were designed to do this. We were designed to experience good. That's it. We were designed to experience good.

So it messes us up. It makes us sick. It destroys our minds. It destroys our emotions. And this is the world we live in. So how do we get out of this? And that's what the Gospel is. Now, when we talk about the Gospel, to break it down, we have to see that the Gospel has a past component. The Gospel is mentioned throughout the Bible.

The first little mention of the Gospel is Genesis 3.15. Because Satan had deceived Adam and Eve, and God said, I'm going to send someone, and he's going to conquer Satan. Right there. There's good news here. I'm going to fix this. And that's the very first little germ, little seed of the Gospel planted there. There's a past message about the Gospel throughout the Bible. There's a present message about the Gospel that is just why we're here, why we live the way we do.

What is our relationship with God? And then there's a future message about the Gospel. That's why you can't talk about the Gospel and not talk about Adam and Eve, Abraham, David, the New Testament.

You can't talk about the Gospel without talking about that. You can't talk about the Gospel without talking about Christ's first coming. Because if he didn't come the first time, and we have no understanding why he came, then you know why he comes the second time? To judge humanity. And if that's all there is to his coming, we should all be very afraid. He's only coming to judge. So the Gospel has to be about the past, how humanity got messed up, God's working through humanity while allowing Satan to be the God of this world.

It's about what he's doing right now. That past message for us includes the message about the first coming of Jesus Christ. You and I have a unique opportunity. We live between the first and second coming of Christ. We understand the Gospel message, like the people of the Old Testament, only got bits and pieces of it. We also understand there's a future to the Gospel message. Now, here we are keeping the Holy Days.

Now, if you would have kept the Holy Days, as I mentioned in the sermon, as an Israelite at the time of, say, Moses or David, at the time of Jesus, you would have had a very narrow viewpoint of these days. Now, they did understand there was importance to them in the future. They understood that the Feast of Trumpets had to do with the judgment of God. They understood that David Tobin had to do with God reconciling human beings to him.

They had this information. They didn't understand how he was doing it, except through the ceremonies that they did. So, once again, the view was very narrow. The Israelite view of these Holy Days, where it was entirely wrapped up in the Temple of the priesthood. That's why Judaism today, there's such an aching to rebuild the Temple. They can't worship God the way they're commanded to worship God, because they reject the New Testament without a Temple and without a High Priest.

It's a command to do it that way. They can't do it. There's a frustration with it. We want to worship God, and we can't in the way that we're supposed to, because these Holy Days are tied into a Temple in Jerusalem, a very specific place, a very specific building, and a very specific group of priests, the Levitical priesthood. Now, you and I understand, I mean, in the opening message, it was about how the tabernacle, the utensils, and the building, and everything in there represented the work of Christ.

We understand that. They do not. So, when we look at the Gospel, past, present, and future, we also understand that the Holy Days tell us about the Gospel. The entire Gospel message, past, present, and future, is outlined in the Holy Days. Completely outlined. What God has done in the past, what he's doing right now, and what he's going to do in the future.

In that context, I want to go to Colossians 2. Colossians 2, 16 and 17, is considered the sort of nail in the coffin. You read these two verses, and it proves you don't have to keep the Holy Days. I remember years ago, a person telling me, he said, what if I picked up the Bible, and I could prove to you you don't have to keep the Holy Days? Okay. I said, I don't believe that, but what if you could?

What if you could pick up the Bible and prove I don't have to keep the Holy Days? He says, what would you do? I said, I still keep the Holy Days. He said, but you don't have to. I said, that's not the point. I said, I say the Holy Days is a gift. It's something from God that he's given to us to understand what he's doing. It unlocks so much understanding of the Bible. So why would I give that up? We didn't have a further discussion.

Why go into proving to me that I didn't have to do it. I was going to do it if I didn't have to do it anyways.

Logs 2, 16, and 17. I'm not going to go through showing that this doesn't prove, because it doesn't prove that we don't have to keep the Holy Days if you go through the whole context. But there's a statement in here I want to zero in on. So let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. See? There's shadows of things to come. Jesus came, fulfilled all those things. When Paul wrote, Jesus has already come, died, and been resurrected, and he said they are a shadow of things to come. Everything that the Holy Days teach us, that God wants to teach us in the Holy Days hasn't been fulfilled. Christ's first coming, is a fulfillment of some of what the Holy Days teach, but all of it hasn't been fulfilled.

So we need to look at the Holy Days in context of past, present, and future of the Gospel.

We think of the Gospel sometimes and don't... All these things come together. We separate doctrines, which we have to. We separate sanctification, justification, and Gospel, and salvation. We set into the Holy Days and the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, and we separate all these and we teach them, but they actually create a whole. God expects us to put all these together, and when they all come together, we understand Him. We understand Christ. It is clear what He is doing and how we are supposed to respond, how we're supposed to live. You can't separate baptism from the Gospel. In fact, you can't separate any foundational doctrine from the Gospel. There are all aspects of it. Let's talk about the good news in the Holy Days. I'm not going to teach you anything new today, by the way. You came thinking, oh good, I'm going to go to the Bible study and get something new. I don't have anything new to give you. What I have and what you have is you can put the pieces of the puzzle together. The pieces of the puzzle together. So let's start with the Passover. We're going to go through each of the Holy Days, and we're going to look at these, and we're going to say, okay, how does this fit into the next one? And how does this fit into the next one? And in the end, in the end, in the end, what is it God's telling us? Well, we start with the Passover. You have to have, to understand the Passover, you have to have a premise you've already accepted. The premise you've already accepted is, I messed up. The Passover has no meaning, unless you start with that. You come into this saying, I need God, and there's something wrong with me. And of course, that issue then brings us into sin.

Let's see. The Passover. I'm going to look at the Passover, past, present, and future. Well, we look at the past, and unfortunately for many people, this is how they see the Passover. Oh, the Passover is when Charlton Heston led to Israelites out of Egypt, right?

And they look at the Old Testament, and that's it. That was something those people did. It had meaning. It's something Jews may do today. And Jews today keep the Passover as a commemoration of their past, of what God did in their past, and that's true. But there's also a present part of the Passover. And I'm going to talk in huge generalities tonight, assuming that all of us have a great deal of understanding, so that we know we're putting these pieces together, because you've already put them together. I just want to rehearse it.

You and I come to God because we realize, when we get into this book, we realize that there's something wrong with us, and we come to this realization. I can't fix myself, and I can't save myself. I am lost, and I can't save myself. I need God to save me.

And then you discover sin. Then you discover all. Why am I all messed up? Because I'm breaking all the teachings and laws of God. It is a whole lot more than the Ten Commandments. We're breaking all these teachings and laws. We're not living by what Jesus Christ taught. We're not living by what the New Testament apostles taught. We're just breaking all these laws. And therefore, I deserve to die. Now, I've met many people over the years that come into the knowledge of the truth, but they have a hard time accepting. And by the way, for you second and third and fourth generation Christians, you've been around this a long time, it's like, well, I don't really deserve to die, do I? I mean, I've done this all my life. All I know, I can remember when I was 10 years old, I stole something, or I did this, or I did that. Let's go back to when Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden. Every one of us since then, because we've lived in Satan's world, had become a mixture of good and evil. You and I, even if we have some good in us, are not, according to God, allowed to live forever as a mixture of good and evil. He doesn't accept us that way. We can't bring evil into eternity. He won't allow it. There's two things here we have to understand about the present part of the Passover. God's wall demands penalty for sin. You know, if someone broke into your house, and raped your wife, beat up your kids, shot your dog, and stole everything you had, would you go to the police and say, it's okay? No! We all understand that evil, evil, demands a penalty. The moment you recognize that, you have to recognize that the law of God demands a penalty upon every one of us. And you can say, but I never did anything that bad. Well, let me ask you this. If I have a cake here, two cakes, and I say, I put an entire cup of cyanide in this cake. You eat this piece of this cake, and you'll die in 30 seconds, and I only put an ounce of cyanide in this cake. It'll take you about five minutes to die. Now, enjoy yourself. Have a piece of cake.

See, just because this has less cyanide in it doesn't mean it doesn't kill you. You have a little better life. I mean, people who are more good than evil live better lives, but it still kills them because the law of God demands it. And God isn't going to change His law because it would mean He has to change Himself. Thou shalt not murder is part of the very character, the core of how God is. It is what He is. Thou shalt not steal is part of who He is. So to change and say it's okay to steal would mean that He has to change Himself, and God's not going to change Himself. You and I are then, we discover the law, we say, oh, this is really neat. We have the law of God. The more you study the law of God, the more you think and realize, oh my, I'm under the law, the penalty of the law. Now, God is also a perfect love. So God says, this is what you deserve, but this isn't what I'm going to do to you. But because of who He is, and this is beyond my comprehension, it's such genius, but it's such the hard way. But it tells us about Him. I will have someone, the one who is at my right hand, who has been with me forever, my son, who is the one who is with me forever. And realize, it's not like the word who became Christ. It's not like the word said, oh no, I don't want to do that, because the word hates evil, the same as the Father. And the word loves us the same as the Father. So He heeded our sins just as much as the Father does. He came to fulfill that and be our Passover. You and I have this relationship with God because of our Passover, just like we all know. We know the teachings about Him, the Passover lambs, and God passed over the Israelites and killed the Egyptian Firstborn, but that was a play. That was the past. The present is, you and I have a relationship with God because of that Passover, because we accept that Passover, because we've asked God, apply that for me, take His suffering and let that be my suffering.

And that's our present. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 5, 7. And every year at the Passover time, either during the days of 11 bread or before the days of 11 bread, or even during the Passover service, you're going to have this Scripture read, or you're going to read it yourself.

1 Corinthians 5, 7.

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are a leaven, for indeed Christ our Passover will sacrifice for us. And all through the New Testament, He's called the Lamb of God. That's what John the Baptist called Him. He's called the Lamb of God numerous times in the book of Revelation. This is the beginning of the Gospel. You're messed up, and I can get you out of it. This is how the message starts. And that's the first holy day. Well, the Passover itself isn't a holy day, but it's part of the holy day season, because it's connected, of course, to the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

It's interesting that in Romans 5, Paul writes about how we are reconciled to God through His death. And then he says, this is Romans 5. Well, let's get started. Romans 5.

And I'll save time and quote it, but you know, it's not the same as reading it, is it?

Romans 5. Verse 6. For when we were still without strength, and due time Christ died for the ungodly, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for him. You ever read stories about a man in combat jumps on a hand grenade to save his friends? Okay. Jesus Christ jumped on the hand grenade to save the people who were killing him. Think about that. While we were yet sinners, we were His enemies. He jumped on the hand grenade for us. That's the point of the Passover. Much more than having now been justified by His blood. Justification is a remarkable doctrine. It has to do with how we come into a relationship with God, how we are allowed to come before Him, because we're not allowed to come before Him dragging all of our sins. But when we understand what's happened in this forgiveness, what He's done for us, and we accept that, then we go to Him and we say, please forgive me. He says, now come, let's talk.

Christ says, this child is yours, Father. Apply my blood to this child. And God says, come, let's talk. This is justification. This is what we've received through the Passover.

He says, have it been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For when we were enemies, we're back to, we were enemies when He died for us. He didn't die for us because we were good. While we were enemies, that's how God, by the way, that's how God saw you. That's how God saw me. You're my enemy. So I'm going to have to die for you so we can become friends. So we can become family. This is the love of God. This is how He thinks. I will do anything to make you stop being my enemy and become my child. For when we were His enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Much more, much more, haven't been reconciled. We shall be saved, what? By His life.

Everything about the Passover hasn't been fulfilled. The Passover won't be fulfilled until there's no longer a sinful human left to be reconciled. The reconciliation process isn't over. God's not done yet. So we understand the past. We understand the present. It is a shame to say, oh, well, that Passover, that's just that old stuff, you know. No! Look at Isaiah, verse 42, a famous Messianic prophecy, Isaiah 42.

So we get into the future.

We know the Scripture. Behold my servant, verse 1, whom I uphold. All the Jews and Christians all agree this is a Messianic prophecy. This isn't some hidden message. This is about the Messiah that God is going to send to save humanity. Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my elect one, and whom my soul delights. I put my spirit upon him, and he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. The Scripture, like so many of the Old Testament Scriptures, just isn't, well, you know, the Messiah is coming for Israel. No, He's not. He's coming for everybody. This is for the world. This is why the Passover work isn't done yet. It's still a shadow of things to come.

He will not cry out and raise his voice. A bruised reed he will not break. In other words, he's going to come and he's going to gather people in gentleness. He will not fail, verse 4, nor be discouraged, till he is established justice of the earth, and a coastland shall wait for his law. It goes on and talks about how he's going to gather all people to him. These first seven verses are very encouraging verses about what is going to happen when the Messiah comes. The work of Jesus as Passover is not done yet. He's going to come to reconcile all people to God. And the only way anybody can be reconciled to God is through accepting Jesus Christ's death in their stead. God's perfect justice and judgment, God's perfect concept of what's right and wrong, and God's perfect love that says, and I know you've done wrong, and I will have to fix that for you because I won't change who I am. And so here we have, we see, the Passover, the past, the present. There's still a future. Passover work. There's lots of Passover work to do yet. So let's go to the next Holy Day. The days of an leavened bread.

Well, let me get there.

Oh, I think I froze up.

Well, we're going to go there whether this goes there or not. Yep, it froze up. Well, let's go there. We'll do it without the poor. You know, the poor guys that work sound and audio visual and all this, we never know they're working until something goes wrong. And then we blame it on them. It's probably me.

Well, he's working on that. Okay, the days of an leavened bread. The ancient Israelites observed seven days of eating a leavened bread. There we go. How did you do that? He's pushing the same buttons I pushed. I don't know how he did that.

It's like on the television crew. They always remind me when I try to help do something, no, you're the talent. You're not part of the crew. Except if it's doing what they call the grip work. I get to carry things, but they won't let me touch equipment. It's like, no, no, don't, don't, no, no, you're the talent. You're not supposed to. And I'm realizing they're being very condescending when they do this. No, no, no. So they... Yeah. But they will let me carry things. At least I feel like I do something. In the past, the ancient Israelites observed the seven days of 11 bread to commemorate what God did for them when he brought them out of Egypt. You and I know that when we keep the days of 11 bread, it isn't just to commemorate what God did with ancient Israel. Our whole focus is what God is doing with us in the present. By taking us out of sin, Christ died for us so we could be forgiven. He didn't die so we could stay in sin. He didn't die for us so we could continue to be the enemies of God. Reconciliation doesn't mean, I love you and I accept you just the way you are so you don't have to do anything. You ever hear that message? The popular message of Jesus loves you just the way you are and you don't have to do anything. Well, we have to submit to what he's doing because we are saved, remember we just read it by his life. So if he's alive, now we have this understanding through the days of 11 bread that he is taking sin out of us. It's not just a matter of forgiveness.

He literally wants to take it out of us and put something in. Now I just read a little bit ago from 1 Corinthians 5. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 5. Remember, we read verse 7, Therefore purge out the 11. Now 1 Corinthians only makes sense if you keep the Passover and days of the 11 bread. And he's writing to a Gentile church. So there's no way to get around that Paul writes to a Gentile church in the 50s years after Jesus died and he doesn't understand that these are done away with because he's telling a Gentile, not a Jewish church, a Gentile church. Here's how you do this. He gives instructions on how to keep the Passover. He gives instructions here about the real meaning of the days of the 11 bread. I mean, if you don't know about unleavened bread, this would make no sense to you, right? You have to have learned about the meaning of leaven and unleavened bread and the feast of unleavened bread for this passage to make sense. So these Gentiles, these Greeks, had to be taught the days of unleavened bread. He says, therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. How are we unleavened? For did Christ your Passover was sacrificed for us? Then I read that, but now let's read the rest of the sentence or passage. Therefore, let us keep the feast. So let us observe the feast. But they weren't going to do it in any shape or form the way the Jews were. When he wrote this, the Jews still kept the Passover and days of unleavened bread in Jerusalem. The Temple still stood. They still took sacrifices. There were ceremonies. There were prayers. There was liturgy given. There were sermons given, all during this time period. And yet, the New Testament Church was keeping these days in a different way. The past was moving into the present. Christ is the Passover. The Passover is a person. And then he says, therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Suddenly, leavening and, you know, and has more than a meaning of, well, you just got to get all this leaven out because you left Egypt in a hurry. That's what the Jewish people would have taught. That's what had been taught in the Temple. He says, no, spiritually something's happening. Because of Christ the Passover, we are being de-leavened. Your life, and this is the whole, this is the doctrine of sanctification. We are being de-leavened.

God is taking out of us what should not be there. And putting into us what should be there. And it's hard. We sort of like sometimes what shouldn't be there. It's part of who we are.

It's part of who we are. Oh, I meant, you're changing me. Well, God says, yeah, there's some things about you that has to be changed unless you want to stay my enemy.

Do we want to stay the enemies of God? After the price paid for us? So the days of heaven, bread, teach us every year. Wait a minute. We have to be in this process of sanctification, of discipleship. Another doctrine that's caught up in the Gospel. And how this is being taken out of us. It's something else is being put in us. Christ will return to teach all nations how to be delavened. You know, I just read an Isaiah where it says, what, the coastlands, and it's Septuagint. It actually says, the people, the Gentiles will wait for your will. The coastlands, the meaning was the whole world. Every place you go, that's good Isaiah too. This is always read during this time of year, so I'm just going to touch on it. But Isaiah too, what does Isaiah two have to do with the days of 11 bread? It has everything to do with the days of 11 bread, because it has everything to do with the Gospel.

Verse 2, Now it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain, or the government, of the Lord's house shall be established on top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it. And many people, all the peoples, and once again, this isn't about Israelites, it's about the world. Many people will come and say, come and let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Boy, the days of 11 bread, they haven't even begun to be fulfilled. If He's reconciling the people to God, Christ is, and in that process, in that process, He is then teaching them how to be unleavened, removing from them the leavening of their minds, of their hearts, and putting in what's supposed to be there, which is the unleavened truth, if that's happening, guess what He's going to be doing in the millennium? With the world.

Oh, the whole teaching of the days of 11 bread, haven't been... those shadows aren't God! Because I go, well, yeah, Christ came, and, you know, eating 11 bread doesn't mean anything anymore. Well, it doesn't mean the same as in the past. The past is just an example of the greater future.

There's a past, present, you and I live in the present aspect of the days of 11 bread. There's a future aspect. Christ is going to teach everybody how to be spiritually unleavened, and then remove leavening from their lives. Okay, then we go to Pentecost. Pentecost, called the Feast of the... or they had the first fruits, in ancient Israel. You know what Pentecost was? It was a first-fruits harvest. It was a celebration of how God was involved in their lives by feeding them. The spiritual applications were sort of foggy, but they had very meaningful physical applications of these days. And so they would keep Pentecost as the celebration of the first fruits.

In the Old Testament, very few people received God's Holy Spirit. There's a great example of that at the time of Moses when he went to God. God says, you know, you can't rule over these people by yourself. What I'm going to do is, you pick 70 elders. People who are truly dedicated to following God, to living His way, to be what they should be. And He said, you bring them to Me, and I'm going to give them the same Spirit I've given you. So they brought these 70 elders, and they all received God's Spirit. But two of them weren't able to get to the meeting fast enough. They're still out in the camp. And they start prophesying. They start preaching. They start telling people God's way.

And Joshua runs to Moses and says, should I go shut those guys up? He says, oh, no, Joshua. I just wish everybody, all Israelites, could receive God's Spirit. He was trying to lead a group of people. Well, now, at least there was a few more. You know, maybe there was him and Joshua. Now, maybe there's some of the others. And He knew no one else had God's Spirit the way He did. God was leading them, but He wasn't in them. And throughout the Old Testament, you will see that Israel failed over and over again because God's Spirit was not in them.

And so you see it in the whole history of Israel, and in the entire Old Testament, God's Spirit only given in very small measure. But in the New Testament, when Jesus says, I've come to build my Ecclesia, my assembly of called out ones. And that word in Greek is so rich. So it comes from the Athens, where every citizen was required to meet.

It was part of their duty as a citizen. They were required to meet, and they were called the Ecclesia. That's where the word comes from. The meeting of the citizens, the called out ones, slaves and non-Athodians, because it was Athens. Non-Athodians couldn't come in. Slaves couldn't come in. Women couldn't come in. Only the males who were citizens could come to that meeting. And that's what's amazing when we realize, who are we? Or the Ecclesians. Or the group called out to assemble as the citizens of the kingdom of God. That's why to ignore Sabbath-keeping, or coming to Sabbath services, is not understanding your calling. The Sabbath isn't the issue. When you break it all down, it's my citizenship that's the issue. Who I am is the issue. Who am I before God? Who is my God? That is the issue. Papadagost, the Holy Spirit was now poured out on a group of people. Hundreds, and then thousands. Three thousand in one day. And the whole New Testament is about God just giving his Spirit. Giving his Spirit. Why? Why?

James, chapter 1, verse 18. You see, Christ can die for us, and Christ then can come along and teach us how to remove leavening, spiritual leavening, and put in spiritual unleavened bread. But all that teaching and his death of itself doesn't complete us. It doesn't return us to what we're supposed to be. We're still a mixture of good and evil. We can't break out of what we are. His death doesn't break us out of what we are. It brings us justification. It brings us in a reconciled relationship with God. Being taught that his ways, and this is wrong, this is sin, this is good. Okay, this is part of what's happening, the days of the leavened bread. But for us to truly then be restored to what we were supposed to be, the images of God, we're supposed to be the images of God. To be restored to that, we can't get there even with the death of Jesus Christ. We can only get there once this reconciliation has taken place, and then God gives us part of himself. I mean, that's what the Spirit of God is. It's his mind.

It was his power. It's more than his power. It's his mind. It's his power. It's his love.

It's part of himself. And now we have this connection directly to God, an intimate connection with God. And in that intimate connection, we move beyond celebrating a harvest of firstfruits, in physical sense, to James 1.18.

Of his own, we're breaking in the middle of a thought here, but this sentence really says it all, of his own will. This is the will of God. He brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. It's talking to the church. How do we become firstfruits? We have to receive the Spirit of God. We have to receive it.

And it has to become part of us. This is the present part of Pentecost. When we observe Pentecost, we're not saying, well, I mean, we're talking about how they used to have the barley, the first fruit, the barley harvest, and all those things. But I don't know, does anyone here grow heart a barley for the feast, you know? We're not keeping it the way they kept it. We're not doing the sacrifices on that day the way they kept it. Every one of those sacrifices pictures Jesus Christ.

We talk about the wave sheaf. The wave sheaf offering pictures Jesus Christ when he was accepted by God. This is all part of that. We talk about that. We connect it in, and we're looking at the present application of those past things they did. And when they did the wave sheaf before the Holy of Holies in that tabernacle, well, they didn't actually go into it, but I mean, in the tabernacle, or they did the wave sheaf offering. When they did that, they did not know they were representing the Messiah. We know they were representing the Messiah. We know it. We don't have to weigh that because why? Christ already did that. Well, that means we don't have to keep Pentecost anymore, right? See, Christ was the wave sheaf offering. The Holy Spirit's been poured out, so we don't have to do it anymore. You know, the pouring out of God's Spirit is a whole lot more than us. It's pretty arrogant to think, oh yeah, we're all God's doing. We're it.

We're just a very... I don't even know what a word privilege because the grace of God that led us to be part of this is... explain that. I can't. I can't explain why God says, hey, are you in this room? Come on. I'm going to let you be part of what I'm doing right now, and I'm going to pour out my Spirit upon you. That doesn't mean He's ignoring the rest of the world. It's not like why I hate everybody else. You people are just so special, I'm going to take you and let everybody else go to hell. There's people actually believe that. Not, I mean, in our fellowship. But this is so much greater. We're part of it. We're part of a present part that is prophesied.

When the Holy Spirit was being poured out on Pentecost, Peter said, wow, a prophecy from the book of Joel is beginning to be fulfilled. Well, let's go look at that prophecy in the book of Joel. Joel 2 verse 28. By the way, can you read this in the back?

So we're to, yeah, I forgot it was going to be such a big room. And when I made this, I probably didn't make the type quite big enough, but sorry about that. Joel chapter 2 verse 28. This is what Peter quotes in the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost. He says, And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. Also, on my manservants and on my maidservants, I will pour out my spirit in those days. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. And the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon and to blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

Now, this isn't a context, these verses.

Now, everything in these verses hasn't been fulfilled, has it? Yes. What Peter saw was the beginning of this. It's the present work of the day of Pentecost. You and I are participants in it. He says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Even there are many Jewish commentators who say, you know what? That has to be more than Jews. It has to be more than Jews. It's all flesh.

God says, I'm going to pour out my spirit on everyone. And the entire promise of the New Covenant, which is promised throughout the New Testament, is the promise of, I will give you my spirit. Pentecost hasn't been totally fulfilled yet.

The spirit of God hasn't been poured out on all flesh. So it's interesting that Peter said, look, and he quotes this. He doesn't quote that whole passage. He quotes part of it. Because the passage goes on and talks about, and all people will come to me, and Zion will be saved. You know, that hasn't happened yet. This prophecy hasn't happened, but part of it started. And Peter saw that because he was inspired by God's spirit to see it. There is still a shadow, if you will, of Pentecost. There are still parts of Pentecost that have not been fulfilled. The church is the present work of God's spirit. The future work is when the Messiah comes, and God's spirit is poured out on all flesh. All you have to do is read what Peter quotes in Acts, and they go back and read the whole context. Oh, all that hasn't happened yet. So we see the Pentecost has a past, a present, and a future fulfillment.

It isn't done yet. Then we have the Feast of Trumpets.

Feast of Trumpets, ancient Israel kept the Feast of Trumpets as a day to consider God's judgment. It's very interesting. In the Jewish world today, the 10 days between trumpets and atonement is an important period of fasting and prayer and asking God to forgive them because they recognize that trumpets is about judgment and atonement is about mercy, and they want to escape the judgment and receive God's mercy. So they have a very deep understanding in some ways of the meaning of those two days. We understand that this is how Israel always looked at this, at least from what we know, not specifically maybe from the scripture, but we do know from Jewish tradition that this was a time of judgment. They knew that. Presently, we understand what that judgment is. We understand that God is the God of history and the God of prophecy. And we take all the prophecies of the day of the Lord in His return, and we take those and we apply them to the New Testament, the Olivet Prophecy of Jesus, the Book of Revelation, and we understand, ah, there is a future judgment and there is a future mercy. Presently, that should be very important to us because we want to be part of the future mercy. We want to be part of the atonement, the reconciliation with God. So the future, David's atonement hasn't been fulfilled yet. I mean, I'm sorry, the future trumpets.

We go through the Book of Revelation. We look at the seven last trumpets. We look at 1 Corinthians. We look at 1 Thessalonians and the resurrection that happens at the sound of the trumpet. Matthew talks about, Matthew 24, about Christ coming at the sound of the trumpet. The Feast of Trumpets, there was more than one because there's more than one trumpet, hasn't been fulfilled yet. There's a past fulfillment that people understood. This is, we come to God because He judges us. There's a present that we understand, past, present, future. It motivates what we do today, and we look forward to that future.

It hasn't been done away with because it hasn't been fulfilled. Just parts of it have been fulfilled. We move now to the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement is actually the most complicated of all the Holy Days. There are more ceremonies on this day than any other of the Holy Days. There are ceremonies on this day that are unlike any of the other. There are plenty of blood sacrifices because you cannot be reconciled to God without blood. And they had to bring a substitute, and the substitute were goats and bulls and lambs, which as it says in the book of Hebrews, none of that could really save them. It was just showing them that this is what God requires. Either your blood or a substitute. You and I can't go before the righteous God.

Without some payment for who we are. Not just what we've done, but of who we are, so that we can be changed. We know in the present that this is very, very important, and we get this from the book of Hebrews. There's more information about how to observe the Day of Atonement in Hebrews than there is in Leviticus. There's actually more information in Hebrews than there is in Leviticus.

Because what we know about this day is this day, there's two things that are very specific to this day. One is your reconciliation to God takes blood, so it ties into the Passover. You can't separate the Passover in the Day of Atonement. But there has to be a high priest who does this. There has to be a high priest who does this. As if people say, see, there is no high priest anymore. The Levitical priesthood has been done away with, therefore we don't have to keep these holy days. Well, Hebrews 9. Once again, I know you know this, but I'm giving you the entire gospel in an hour and 15 minutes. We get the whole gospel an hour and 15 minutes. Hebrews 9.6.

Now, when these things had been thus prepared, he's talking about the Holy of Holies, he's talking about the temple, and he's talking about the Day of Atonement. The priest always went into the first part of the tabernacle performing the services. But into the second part, the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people since committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holy of all, the Holy of only, the throne of God, was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to conscience. All those sacrifices could not change the nature of the people doing them. It didn't change the nature of the Israelites. It brought them into a relationship with God. But understand, a person can have a relationship with God, and that is not the same as being converted. I've done lots of people have a relationship with God and aren't converted. Conversion has God changing your conscience through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, from being unleavened and then have unleavened bread put into you. I mean, there's two things there. We deal with unleavened bread and it has to do with receiving God's Holy Spirit. It has to do with understanding God's judgment, and it has to do with this atonement, and it has to do with the high priest. A physical high priest can't bring us salvation. A physical high priest can only teach us. A minister, ordained minister, I can't give you salvation. I can only teach it. I can't give myself salvation. How in the world would I do that? I can only teach it. And he says here, so human beings can only teach it, they can't make it happen. Verse 11, but Christ came as high priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, a knot of this creation. And he goes on and talks about, I won't read it all, but this whole chapter talks about how Jesus Christ is now the high priest. And I think we miss this a lot. We miss that Jesus Christ is now the high priest. As I mentioned earlier, that's why when you go before God, every time we go before God and we say, oh God won't listen to me, I really, you know, I haven't even prayed for days. I've been far from Him. I've been doing stupid things. I've got myself in trouble here. He's not going to listen to me. And we forget Jesus Christ is the Passover and Jesus Christ is the high priest. And Jesus Christ says, Father, accept my sacrifice. Because when it says in Hebrews, He sacrificed Himself. The high priest sacrificed Himself and then said, after He's resurrected, take my sacrifice and apply it to this child. And we forget He's the high priest. He works real hard to keep bringing us to God. That's the role of a high priest. The high priest works to bring people to God. And Jesus Christ works every day, real hard, to bring you to God. He's a high priest. David Tomit tells us that. That's why our sins can be covered, atone.

Because He is bringing us there and He is working that.

We also know that there's a ceremony where Satan will be removed.

Two goats. I'm not going to go into that, but we know that. That Satan is going to be removed. The Azazel goat. One goat represents Christ. One represents Satan.

If Jesus Christ is the high priest now, that means the whole meaning of a day of atonement still exists. When Jesus Christ returns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He establishes, according to Scripture, a temple in Jerusalem where He serves as high priest.

And what are you going to do? Reconcile all humanity to God.

He's still got that job to do. He hasn't stopped just because He came the first time. He is now high priest. We're filling that job, and that's what He's going to do when He comes.

But we will serve Him, and Satan will be removed.

You know what? How can we ever stop keeping the day of atonement until Satan is removed?

That's why when the person asks me, what if I could prove to you, I'd still do it. Why? Because it's not all done yet. Yes, Jesus Christ is now the high priest. Yes, He's atoning for me. I understand that, but Satan hasn't been removed yet. He decides he hasn't done it for the whole world yet. The focus isn't just on us, it's on the world. It's what God wants to do in this greater context. And then we have, of course, the Feast of Tabernacles. Ancient Israel observed the Feast of Tabernacles as a reminder that they had been sojourners in Egypt. I talked about on that first Holy Day, we're here to be reminded that we are sojourners in the world. We're sojourners in the world. And He is, Christ is coming back to the world. And we're here to restore that kingdom so that we're no longer sojourners.

How could we stop doing this as long as we're sojourners?

Of course, they're going to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. We know that. It says it in one of the Minor Prophets. We're going to be keeping the Feast of Tabernacles in the Millennium. Because God's going to remind everybody for a thousand years, your forefathers were served sojourners. The Israelites were sojourners in Egypt, but your forefathers, the world, humanity's forefathers, were sojourners, those who were called by Him, in Satan's world. They will celebrate what God is doing with us. They're sojourners, and they will celebrate that. And they will be reminded of that. And that will draw them to God. And then we come to the last Great Day, the Eighth Day, the ultimate judgment on all humanity.

I just briefly want to go through here the past of this. What's the past application of the Eighth Day? I mean, ancient Israel kept the Eighth Day as just part of the harvest nest. Well, they knew it had some extra meanings, and the rabbis have all these different explanations, and some of them are pretty good. But if we went to the Scripture, where would we find the past application of the Eighth Day? Let's look to Romans chapter 5. And I will touch on this on my sermon on the last day. Romans chapter 5.

Let's start a verse.

Let's see, where do I want to go here?

Boy, this is so dense. What I may do is wait and cover this on that last day, because it's going to take some time to do this. What I want to explain is, he says here, just to sum it up, that before the law was given, before humanity knew the law of God, talking specifically about Mount Sinai. People died.

They died because of the law, but it was not put to their account.

That is an incredible statement. In other words, the mass of humanity that never had known God have not been eternally judged yet. It was not put to their account. It's a remarkable statement, and that's why I want to wait to cover it there, because I really want to tear it apart, take some time. It wasn't put to their account. They received their temporary judgment, which was misery and death, but they are resurrected to learn about God. Then their decision is put on their account. It is put on their account. What we learn, one thing from this, the present application, the past application is, oh, God hasn't judged humanity yet. No, He's judged some, but not the mass of humanity. The other application is, there are different days of judgment. One of the important aspects of the eighth day that you and I forget is the present application. It is now our day of salvation. You and I don't get a second chance on this. The world didn't get this privilege, so they haven't had their chance. It hasn't been put to their account. You and I don't get a second chance on this. They don't get a second chance either. They just never had a chance. They live in Satan's world. You and I now are called for salvation, and this is our day. And when we get to that last day, we'll talk about the great white throne judgment, because that's then the future application when the world is given its opportunity to be called by God. You know what? In all of the understanding of the Holy Days, you can find a Protestant understanding in different Protestant groups of almost every one of the Holy Days. It's very similar to us. They don't have the whole package, but they have parts of it. But you know what you can't find? I have never found it any place in except a few Sabbath-keeping groups. The understanding of the eighth day. That understanding that we have is unique. The understanding that there are different days of salvation, and that God hasn't put on their account yet. Their books are still open on them.

You and I, our books are being written today.

As you can see, the Holy Days, to say they're done away with is to not understand their meaning. Anyone who understands their meaning, we're going to do them. I mean, because this is God's Word to us. This is God's way to us.

Back years ago, when the World Wide Church of God fell apart, I resigned. I just devastated. I had no idea what I was going to do. My wife and I were looking into buying a little business and taking care of whatever was left of our church. We didn't understand that most of the people would leave. We didn't know what was going to happen. I went to the local church of a seventh-day church that has been around since the 1600s. I'd been to their church there before because they had a little library of books about Sabbath keeping. It was very interesting to walk through the shelves and pull down a book and realize, oh, this one was published in 1830. It was an amazing collection.

I was talking to the historian of their church, who happened to be their librarian, and I told him I'd resigned to the World Wide Church of God because they'd given up the Sabbath. It was anything he would understand. He said, oh, that's horrible. He said, come here, I want you to talk to somebody. He took me to the pastor. The pastor said, you've resigned? I said, yeah. I told him why. I said, because they'd given up the Sabbath. They were changing very fundamental things like we're pre-millennialist. I knew they were pre-millennialists. I just picked things that they would agree with us on. I said, they're changing all those things. He said, that's horrible. Then he said, what are you going to do? I said, well, there's a few of us meeting. We're going to see if God wants us to create a new organization, a new group. We're going to meet and decide what God wants us to do. Then he asked me the strangest question. I don't know where he says, why do you keep the Holy Days? Because this group doesn't keep the Holy Days.

There was a second of, boy, I better be careful I answer this, or he won't understand what I'm talking about. So in three minutes, maybe four minutes, I mean a very short period of time, I went through every one of the Holy Days and said, the Passover, I mean, he's the picture of Jesus Christ. He's the Passover, lay him. Days of 11, bread, pictures. I just went through all these scriptures, you know, 1 Corinthians and Pentecost, I said, you keep Pentecost? He said, well, yeah. I said, what pictures are the pouring out of God's spirit? He said, well, that's right. I went through every one of the Holy Days and how they pictured what God is doing through Jesus Christ. And see, the Holy Days of the Gospel. I got up to leave. This animal found effectively. He said, can I pray with you? Sure, I take all the prayers I can get. And he got up from behind his desk, he walked over and he laid his hands on my shoulders. And he said, God, you give all of us little pieces of light.

Help these men to have the courage to hold on to the pieces you gave them.

It was the comfort I needed at that time.

A man I don't even know, in an organization that's given up most of the truth. They had it in the 1600s. They've lost most of it now.

And it was, don't let them get like all of this. He could see it. It was right there, he could see it. I don't think he ever started keeping it. But he could see it.

This is what God has given to us. He's given to us the explanation of the gospel. This makes the pagan customs of Christmas and Easter look meaningless. You realize that?

So, let you keep these holy days. Remember that. God has given you just little pieces of light. That's all any of us get. Just little pieces.

Don't ever give up the little pieces of light he has given you.