Hope, Deliverance and a Crown... For Everyone

Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Sabbath. Nice to have a bit of a cooler day, although I guess give it a few more months and we won't be happy about cooler days.

But after last week or so, it's nice to have a bit of a reprieve.

Glad to see everyone here today as we're looking forward to the Holy Days, as we already heard in the sermonette, and also sang about in that last song. If you'll turn with me, I'd like to start with a scripture today out of Romans 8.

We'll start in Romans 8, verse 19.

Scripture that talks about really the position and time that we are in right now as we're hoping for these future events that we think about and that we picture in these Holy Days that are coming up, the conclusion of the plan of God. Romans 8, we'll start in verse 19.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly awaits for the revealing of the sons of God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly because of him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

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

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 the redemption of our body.

That's a scripture that should be describing and explaining the way that we feel, right? The called out of God.

As it describes, the entire creation is waiting for the time when God's plan will be fulfilled, when his children will be revealed, when will be changed from mortal bodies to spirit.

The entire world, the entire creation that God has made, is going to go over into an incredible change when that time happens.

Having that vision as we're moving into the Holy Days in the forefront of our minds is incredibly important.

If you think about it, we reflect on the world today and the drumbeat of what we hear every day as we go along and walk in our everyday lives. What is it about?

We think of sort of the dominant philosophy of today. It's get everything that we can out of life today because either there is no future or we're really not sure what that future is. And as a result of that hopelessness, as a result of that lack of understanding or clarity or faith and something better to come, the world today, the way our society lives today, is really geared at today, isn't it?

Let's figure out everything we can do, everything we can experience, everything we can put into our lives today, because we're not really sure if there's anything else to come. And as we increase our consumption of entertainment, social media, all of the other things that happen right now in terms of how we take things in, the other thing that's happening is that the windows, the doors on the side, are slowly closing in on us. And we operate more and more as individuals today, don't we?

We tend to, if we're consuming entertainment, not go to the movie theater, we'll go to our computer or to our tablet, and instead of being there with a group of people, it starts to shrink down. Perhaps it's us and our family in the living room.

Perhaps it's us sitting upstairs or wherever we like to sit with a tablet and watching something, watching the latest cat video off of YouTube.

But more and more, we tend to focus inward and be less communally organized.

In the past, we as a church have sometimes used a phrase to describe sort of our situation within the world today. We've used the phrase in the past, a world held captive. I think as we sort of move into the message, it's an apt metaphor to think about because, you know, when you look at Romans 8 and what it talks about, we look at other parts of the scripture that we'll look at shortly. It talks about the fact that this world is under the influence of Satan. It's not being run, even though it was created by God.

It is not being run day to day today by the mind of God at work within the people here. In a way, it's held captive by a philosophy and a way of being that's completely different than the purpose it was created for.

Like a prisoner, we live in this world. We have to make our way through this world, continuing to try to think and act and operate differently, despite the drumbeat that we see going on around us.

Now, some of you might have paid attention over the course of, I think it's the last week, maybe, even, when John McCain's funeral was. I think we all know who John McCain was in the experience that he went through with a lot of other American POWs, spending a number of years captive in Vietnam. And he went through. He lived this experience of being held captive, along with those other people that were there. Those POWs created their own culture within the prison camp that they were in. I've read some different accounts and books, not only about John McCain, but a guy named James Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking officer in what they jokingly called the Hanoy Hilton, the prisoner camp that they were held in. And what they did, in order to survive their captivity there, was to create a community that was in resistance to their captors. They even came up with their own language. They weren't allowed to speak with each other. Many of them were held in solitary confinement for months and even years. But they came up with a language that was based off of Morse code, to where they could tap, that talked about them even when they were sweeping, they could sweep in a certain cadence, so that the cadence actually spelled out letters, and they could communicate things to one another, in order to encourage each other, and in order to continue to push each other to make it through the very difficult situation of captivity that they were in. The fact that they were together, even though they were isolated and in solitary confinement, the fact that they communicated, they encouraged each other, they kept one another going, the ones that engaged in that and still had a hope and a vision for the future of where they were going, were the ones that were able to make it through. And when you read some of the accounts, you also see that the ones who gave up hope and withdrew were the ones in the end that lost their courage and lost their ability to go on and eventually died there in captivity.

What I'd like to do today is to go through briefly the overview of the hope that we have in front of us. What it is that these Holy Days that we have picture for us, the fact that we will be able to loose the bonds that we're in today, the bonds of our physical bodies and the corruption that goes with it as we deal with sickness, we deal with illness, we deal with all of those things that come along, and also as we're freed from the world around us.

And the other undertone that I'd like to look at and point out as we go through that is the fact that every bit of that plan has to do with all of us together. Not in isolation, not separately, but coming together to encourage each other and to continue to help each other forward in this plan. So if you'd like a title for the sermon, some people like titles, I've titled it Hope, Deliverance, and a Crown, dot, dot, dot, for the grammatist that's an ellipsis, for everyone.

Hope, Deliverance, and a Crown, for everyone. Let's think first about hope. You know, I talked about the analogy of being held captive, and people who are held captive always look for something that's coming. They don't always know when it's going to come, that they're going to be freed, especially if you're a prisoner of war, you're waiting for a war to end, and wars have a way of dragging out a whole lot longer than anyone ever thinks they will when they start them.

And that hope of something better to come is what sustains people. If you look at 1 Corinthians 13, verse 13, we're not going to turn there, but most of us probably recognize 1 Corinthians 13 as the love chapter. It has an interesting verse right at the end of the entire chapter, and it says, now abide faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. We focus in that chapter the fact that love is the greatest of those three, but we don't always think about the other ingredients.

How often have we thought about hope as one of the top three processes, thoughts, ways of being that we should have in our Christian life, held almost equal to faith and love as the most important viewpoints that we need to have in our Christian lives. When we stop to think about it, though, the understanding of something better than what we have today is what as human beings sustains us to go forward.

You think of different things that people hope for. People work their entire careers saving up money for retirement, and they put their hopes, especially when you talk to people who are getting close to retirement, they'll often say, you know, I've been waiting my entire working life to take this trip to visit here, to be able to do this, to have the time do something.

We live on those hopes that we have of the future, don't we? And like a prisoner, again, who's waiting for the date to be out, we look for that time to come when we'll be able to realize those hopes. Another example or analogy that's used in the Bible is Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11, again, we're not going to turn there right now, but you might recognize that as the faith chapter. And it talks about the stories of all of these people throughout time who have relied on God, and it makes another statement about those people.

It describes them, and by extension describes us, as strangers and pilgrims, people who seek a homeland. It talks about them as strangers seeking a homeland. Now, I find it interesting when we look at struggles that go on throughout history, some of the most enduring struggles that go on through history are struggles over a homeland. So if you had to name a hotspot in the world over the course of our lifetimes collectively, chances are most of us would think about the Middle East.

What's one of the core struggles that's going on in the Middle East? Palestinians, who in 1948, after the Balfour Declaration, are sent out of what was known at that point in time as Palestine, and that land was given to the Jewish people. The Palestinians have been trying to get their homeland back, and there can be plenty of political views about that, and I don't want to espouse any of them, but the fact of it is that the Palestinians want their homeland back, and they haven't stopped fighting in these many years to do that.

Think of other places in the world. The Armenians, for those of you who know anything about other parts of the Middle East, we've seen the Armenians talk about a lot in the context of the Iraq War, in the context of ISIS and things going on in Syria. When the Middle East was divided up after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire fell, the Armenians were a people who had a space of land there, kind of a tribal area, that was not carved into a separate country. And they, as a people, ended up sort of spread out between different countries.

The Kurds are in a similar situation. And these struggles go on and on and on. As there's fighting, there's guerrilla warfare, and people don't want to let go of that identity as a people and of a homeland.

Now, the way that they're doing that in terms of waging war and killing people and all the things that happen is not something any of us want to emulate. But what I want to point out is within that psyche, the human psyche, that idea of a homeland, what we belong to, the culture that we're a part of, burns incredibly strongly within us.

The Bible says that we are given a homeland, but that homeland is not the physical nation that we live in. It's God's family. And as we look forward to the hope that's coming, we're waiting for that homeland to come to us, right? That new Jerusalem that comes when Jesus Christ returns. That's what we yearn for in our hearts, and that's what we look for. And in our own way as Christians, that's what we fight for every day as we live our lives and resist the things going on in the world around us that try to take us away from the ideals of that land that we're waiting for. Let's turn to 1 Thessalonians 4. One of the things about our hope as Christians is that it is extremely clear and specific. We're not hoping for something ethereal. We have a very specific hope. 1 Corinthians 4 lays out what that is. We'll start in verse 13. 1 Corinthians 4, verse 13.

So I want to point out verse 13 in this passage to start. So I want to point out verse 13 in this passage to start with. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13. Talking about not sorrowing as those who have no hope. And the rest of this passage then is pointing out exactly what our hope is. The hope of the resurrection. The hope of a new spiritual life.

The knowledge that what comes at the end of this physical road is not all that there is. The fact that we have something much bigger and much better to hope for. And let's not forget the last line in this passage, either. Comforting one another with these words. As I mentioned at the beginning, we want to underscore all the way throughout, part of God's plan is being together.

Part of God's plan is the interaction that we have with one another. The way that we encourage each other and help each other to remain focused on His way. And to make it through the hardships that inevitably come in our lives. What else do we have as a part of that hope? Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. This is a chapter that we would often refer to as the resurrection chapter, because it's a chapter where Paul talks in great detail about the resurrection, going through quite a bit of it in this very long chapter. One of the things that comes along with this hope is an incorruptible spiritual body that awaits us.

And I don't know about you. I'm not as old as some people in this room, but as every year goes by, we all learn a little bit more about how the body breaks down, don't we? I've got a friend who's about 10 years older than me. He's in his 60s.

And what he likes to tell me, he says, You know, when I was in my 50s, my body would whisper to me. Now that I'm in my 60s, it starts to yell at me.

And we've got people well above their 60s, and you can probably tell us about how the decibels of that yelling and screaming goes up as time goes on. Our bodies weren't meant to last forever. We know that. 1 Corinthians 15, 42. We do know that we're going to be given a body that can and will last forever, not have the limitations that we have physically. We'll start in verse 42. Read 42 through 44. So also is the resurrection of the dead.

The body is sown in corruption. It's raised in incorruption. It's sown in dishonor. It's raised in glory. It's sown in weakness. It's raised in power. It's sown in natural body, but it's raised a spiritual body. Going on to verse 50. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption.

This mortal must put on immortality. Just like the song we just got done singing. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. What an incredible time that will be. What a hope we have in that. We can look forward to a time, despite all of the things that might pull us down, especially our physical beings, the things that we struggle with physically, the things that we can struggle with emotionally as we deal with the different trials and difficulties that come our way.

The promise that we have, the things that we think about as we look forward, in this case, to the Feast of Trumpets, look forward to Jesus Christ's return, is a glorious body, a spirit body, where we won't have to put up with the limitations anymore of the physical that we have today. And this hope that we have is something that we'll think about as we're making ourselves, making our way through just this next couple of days with the Day of Trumpets. Let's let that hope be at the core of the interaction that we have with each other as well, as we encourage one another to stay the course and continue moving forward.

Let's move on to the second part of hope, deliverance, and a crown for everyone, and talk about deliverance.

If we stick to our open example of prisoners in Vietnam, deliverance from captivity is something that brings a complete change in living conditions, isn't it? You know, when you're held captive, you're held in usually very spartan conditions. You might not be eating as well as you should. You're probably given a minimum of food, a minimum of comforts. But deliverance from that means that everything in your environment around you changes. Everything. The way that you live your life, the food that you eat, the things that you see, the places you walk, the limitations you have put upon you are all changed.

While we're living with good physical surroundings, deliverance is not always at the forefront of our minds. And it's easy sometimes to forget when we have good physical surroundings around us, the other things that are bombarding us and trying to take us in the wrong direction, as we're living in this world that in many ways is held captive by Satan's way of life. What are we going to be delivered from? What do we have to look forward to being delivered from?

Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5. We'll read verses 8 and 9. 1 Peter 5 verses 8 and 9. This underscores what it is that's happening in our world today, the things that we have to struggle with and resist. This is what we'll be delivered from. 1 Peter 5 verse 8. Be sober and be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

So here we see the fact that we need to watch out, because Satan is out there. His way of being, his philosophies, his priorities, all of those things are out there. And like a lion, he's seeking who he can devour. I talked with a friend a few weeks ago who's getting ready to plan or go on a safari trip to Tanzania. And he talked about the fact that he's timing this trip to be exactly at the time that the wildebeest are migrating. And he was actually talking about it with a little bit of trepidation, because he said, you know, a lot of people want to go to Africa and see a lion kill. And probably if you go at the time of the migrations, you're likely to see that.

Because what does a lion do? If we've ever watched National Geographic or any of these specials that come on, right, you see the great herd of wildebeest making their way across the plain, and then they zero in on one of the lame ones, or one of the young ones that can't quite keep up and get separated from the mother, right? And they show the lion stalking through the grass, and it's looking for that animal on the edge of the herd, the one that's showing a bit of vulnerability for whatever reason. And that lion springs out to grab it. And usually that's where the lion hunts, and that's where the lion is.

And so as we think about Satan, we think about what he does, and the way that we have to be vigilant, we have to watch. We have to watch that we're not out there at the edge of the herd, limping behind because we haven't strengthened ourselves through God's word. That we're not on the edge and starting to fall away from where God and his people are going, but rather that we're sticking with God, with his people, encouraged by them, and moving forward together in order to be able to help one another, strengthen one another in resisting him.

Turn with me, if you will, to Revelation 20. Revelation 20, again, focusing now on the deliverance, not the situation we're in today. Revelation 20. And we'll read verses 1 through 3. A time that we look forward to with great anticipation when we think about a world that's going to be completely different. This is the key to how that world becomes different. Not only the return of Jesus Christ, but putting away Satan as our adversary. Revelation 20, verse 1.

And so we know we understand that after this thousand year period of the millennium, Satan is, for a short time, released and then bound forever. That's the deliverance, our enemy taken away. The battle that we fight every day, being delivered from that difficulty and those challenges that we have to face. All of those pressures that come, something we can look forward to in a great time of rest. You know, we're given this day, the Sabbath as a rest. We read in Hebrews, it's talked about spiritually as well, figuratively as a rest. Looking forward to a time of deliverance here, where we can rest, not have to fight every moment of our lives and resist the thoughts and all the humanity that comes into us, but can rest just relying on God in His way. What's incredibly wonderful too is that the deliverance that we'll have is not just for people. It permeates the entire creation. Turn with me, if you will, to Isaiah 11. I don't know how often we think about this, but we read in the beginning in Romans 8 how the creation just groans for this time to come. As we look at the earth, I know I've got friends who are professors and scientists, and they tell me straight out when they look at it from a religious perspective, God never created the physical earth to last forever. The universe, and anything physical, slowly devolves, and the universe will do that as well. We look at the earth, the way that things change in the earth, as far as climate patterns, topography, all these other things. The earth is not made to last forever. It's groaning and waiting as well to be renewed. Isaiah 11, let's read verses 6 through 9. And focus on the fact that when deliverance comes through the return of Jesus Christ and the chaining of Satan, all of creation will be different. Verse 6, the wolf will dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze. Their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra's hole. And the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. How incredible is that when we let that sink in for a moment?

For those who have ever flown in an airplane flying overseas, you can spend hours, literally hours, flying over the ocean. And all you see is water. You fly out from the east coast out of New York, and you fly over to Europe, and you'll probably spend five, six hours, and you'll see nothing but vast expanse of blue. You can fly in the other direction from San Francisco and make your way to Shanghai, and you'll be even more hours. And all you're going to see is vast expanses of blue ocean.

God says the knowledge of the Lord is going to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. How incredible is that? And we look at the explanation of the creation and how it's going to be so different at that point in time. Something that, figuratively, the creation is groaning for today. A time when the earth will be completely renewed, and it'll operate completely different than it is today.

It's hard to adequately understand and explain how different life is going to be when we are delivered from the construct of the world that we're in today. Think about the safety aspect of it as well. Talks here about little children playing on the Vipers Den and the Cobras Hole. You know, safety. What would we give simply for physical safety today? What do we give for physical safety?

You know, we think of all of the vast amounts of money that are spent, whether it's for national defense, whether it's for border defense, whether it's for locking up our homes, whether it's for police forces within our communities. Think of all the money and the resources that we expend simply to stay safe, to not be hurt by other people or by other parts of the creation. Vast incredible amounts of money and effort go into that. Now, some of us can probably remember a time or have lived in a place growing up where people didn't lock their doors.

It seems almost crazy to talk about it right now. I've lived in communities like that before, where you leave your car and instead of taking the keys with you into the store, you might just tuck them under a floor mat in the car so you don't lose them. Leave the car door unlocked and go walk around and shop for a little while, come back to the car, and not really even think about, will the car be there when I get back.

Just grab the keys out from under the floor mat, start up the car, and go away. Now, that sounds incredibly naive to us these days, doesn't it, to do that? Or to close your door at night and not bother to lock it? Who in their right mind would do that, right? We take lack of safety for granted in the way that we live our lives. Once we're delivered into a world where we can be completely safe and we won't have to fear, how different will life be at that point in time?

Let me focus on one other area of deliverance if you'll turn with me to Revelation 21. Revelation 21. I had a pretty emotional conversation with a friend about this just a few weeks ago, and I'll explain that in a moment. Revelation 21, verse 1. Another just beautiful passage of scripture that we will hopefully hear read several times in the upcoming days as we make our way through the Holy Days and the Feast.

Revelation 21, verse 1. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them.

They shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, and there shall be no more pain, for the former things are passed away. Now I've read this scripture and heard it many different times, but when I spoke with someone a few weeks ago who'd gone through a pretty catastrophic accident, he was telling me about this scripture because he's a person who lives in chronic pain.

The way he puts it, he became an old man in the blink of an eye when he had an accident at work. And he talked about it and he said to me, you know, you read this passage and you read about death and sorrow and crying, and those are terrible things. They're things that happen to you, but they're events, and as those events get farther away from you, the pain begins to subside. As the memory of those types of things becomes farther in the future, you don't forget them, but the pain associated with them pass away.

But with physical pain, he said, this scripture, he believes the pain is there as the last thing, because as a human being, physical pain, there's only so much you can do to mask it. And when it's there with you, moment by moment, day after day after day, deliverance from that pain is an incredible thing.

And I've not experienced that to any extent, like this person and some of you have. But the promise here of deliverance is deliverance from pain. All of these things that pain us, whether physically or emotionally or psychologically, moment by moment, the struggles that we have day to day, those are not going to be there.

How incredible is that deliverance going to be that we have? This second dominant theme of the Holy Days of deliverance is something we think about at the Day of Atonement, isn't it? Time that we think of being completely one with God, Satan being removed from the picture, and us finally being delivered from this drumbeat of negativity and sin and deceit that comes on us in the world. It's something that will benefit everyone as well. As we saw early on in this passage, this part of it, in talking about Satan going about as a roaring lion, right? That passage talks about the fact that everyone in the world experiences that. This deliverance is not just for us.

It's for all people, and not only for all people, for the creation itself. As the entire world, the physical earth will be a completely different thing. Let's look at the next section, a crown. Now, most of the time when you're released from captivity of some sort, and you're delivered, you go back to whatever semblance of your normal life that you can. It's not usual that you walk out of prison, you walk out of a POW camp, and someone suddenly hands you a crown, is it? If we go back to the place where we started with the POWs who were in Vietnam, these people came out and they had to restart their new lives.

A very small fraction of them, people like John McCain, ended up achieving very great things in terms of political leadership, which you could talk about as a crown. But that's not something that was handed to any of them coming out. As they went back into their lives, they had to work towards those things and develop their careers and other positions that they were going to develop. But it's different in the situation that we look for, the hope that we have as we look forward. One of the big things that's promised to us is a crown when we are raised.

How incredible is that? Not just being delivered from all of these things that we have, but being given a crown. It's in the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 9. Let's read this. 1 Corinthians 9. Paul here uses athletics as an example. Some people think he might have been referring to the Olympic Games and some of these athletic references that he made. 1 Corinthians 9. We'll start in verse 24. Here he writes to the Corinthians, Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things, talking about how people train physically in order to win an athletic competition.

Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. How incredible is that? At the end of the race that we're running, the spiritual life that we're living, not only is there a crown waiting for us, but it's talked about here as an imperishable crown.

We put this together with the hope that we have, receiving spiritual bodies, no longer being physical. The crown that we're given is one that will last forever. We've heard a sermon not too many weeks ago about God and His grace. What have we done to deserve this? How can any of us go up to God and say, You know, God, I ran my race and I ran it great. You owe me a crown. It's not what it's about.

This is the ultimate expression of the gift that God is giving to us. He's called us out for his own reasons. Who knows why? We're certainly happy it's been done. And at the end of that race, he wants to give us that crown of righteousness, that crown that will last forever, the ultimate expression of his love for us. What does that crown mean? Turn with me, if you will, to 2 Timothy 4. Because I'll admit to you, talking about a crown and becoming rulers and becoming kings is not something I'm terribly comfortable talking about.

And maybe it's because, as I was a kid, I've sometimes heard people talk about it in different terms. In terms like, I can't wait until I'm ruling over other people. Because when I'm ruling over other people, I'm going to get back at them for this. And I'm going to help them understand that what they did to me in 4th grade isn't going to work anymore because I'm going to do that. And humorous examples, maybe, but I know people who have thought about it in those ways. I can't wait to have authority over people so I can get back at them and tell them what to do.

That's not the crown that we're going to be given. And in fact, if we have that attitude, we're not going to be given a crown because that attitude does not display the mind of God, does it? Turn to 2 Timothy 4. We'll read verses 6 through 8. Very important phrase that's in here that we have to focus on. For I'm already being poured out as a drink offering, as written here, and the time of my departure is at hand.

This is Paul writing near the end of his life. I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I've kept the faith, and finally there's laid up to me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not to me also, but to all who have loved his appearing. So two things I want to call out first. First, the phrase, the crown of righteousness. A very specific crown that's being given to us.

It's God's crown. It's a crown that has to display his way of life, his attitude, his way of being. This is not just an indiscriminate crown. I'm going to let you rule, and you're going to rule however you want. You know, we look around the world today, we can call out any different type of kingdom or government. Some of them have great reputations, some of them don't.

How does that reputation as a country usually come about from the way that it's ruled? We can probably think of examples of countries out there that 20, 30 years ago were very prosperous nations, and because of rulership that came into place in that country, those countries today can barely feed their people. You know, it's difficult to actually, when you look over the course of human history, to name a lot of great leaders who were good, righteous leaders who helped their country forward.

Who could you think of that you would name? I know in our American context, we would probably name George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as probably two people who stand out head and shoulders above others as great leaders, and that's out of well over 40 presidents that we have.

And we look wide in that lens out to the entire world. We tend, we focus on leaders, to think about the bad ones, and we unfortunately don't have that many great examples of good ones who've done wonderful, incredible things for their country. How rare is a righteous leader? The crown that we're going to be given is a crown of righteousness.

So that means the way that we rule, the things that we do, are going to have to exhibit the very mind of God working inside of us. The intentions and the ways that he has of being and his values. You know, if we think of the motto of rulership that would be there, in the British royal family, the motto of rulership is a two-word model.

It's ichdine, comes from the old German. It means I serve. And that's probably the closest you're going to find to the godly representation in terms of how we're going to be. We won't turn there, but if you want to jot down, Matthew 23, 11, and Luke 22, 26, Matthew 23, verse 11, and Luke 22, verse 26, two passages where Jesus Christ talking with his disciples says, if you want to be the greatest, you need to be the servant. And even in management books today, there's an entire philosophy of management, corporate management.

People will go to seminars on this called servant leadership. And it's all modeled on these passages that we see in Matthew and in Luke, about the very idea that if you want to be a great leader, you have to serve the people that you're working for. That crown of righteousness, it's that mind working within us that God needs to instill with us through his spirit.

That's going to work its way out through our rulership. And when we think of that crown in a slightly different way, it becomes this incredible opportunity. Think of all the things that you wish that you could fix in the world around us today. Think of the injustices that you see, whether it's in your neighborhood, whether it's in a group of people you might identify with, whatever it is.

Think of the things that you see that you wish you could fix. People sitting on the side of the street homeless, hungry for food. People suffering from terrible illnesses. With a crown of righteousness, we will have the power and the ability to make changes like this in the world and other people's lives in a way that we can't possibly think about doing as human beings. How incredible is that?

How great would that opportunity be to be able to have that impact on other people, to help them understand God and to be delivered from the problems that human beings have just as we're going to be delivered ourselves? That's the crown of righteousness. That's that mindset that God wants as we think about accepting a crown that's going to be able to help us make a difference in putting His way forward for everyone who's ever lived.

And that brings us to the last section. Of course, when we think about the crown, we think of the Feast of Tabernacles. That we're going to celebrate, and we'll hear much more about that in the future as we sit through services and so forth at the Feast. So again, the title of this was Hope, Deliverance, and a Crown for Everyone. And that's the last piece I want to dwell on for a few minutes, is for everyone.

So we think about the eighth day, something we historically call the Last Great Day. To me, it's probably the greatest truth that we have in our belief. Why is that? It's because it gives hope for anybody who has ever lived in this world. To me, it embodies the value that every human being that has ever had breath has to God. The fact that not one human life is going to go to waste. Every single person who's ever lived will have the opportunity to know God and to make a deliberate choice of whether or not to follow Him. To me, that is an incredibly comforting belief, especially when I, from time to time, run into people who believe that if someone hasn't heard the name of Jesus Christ, in this human life, they're lost forever.

I can't believe in a God that has that viewpoint towards His creation, and the Scripture doesn't support it. Turn with me, if you will, to Revelation 20. Revelation 20 will read verses 11 through 13. I'm sure we'll hear this Scripture at the feast, perhaps on the 8th day as well. Revelation 20, and we'll read verses 11 through 13.

The death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one according to His works. When we put this together with other Scriptures that we read in the Bible, we understand that this judgment of people who are raised from the dead, from wherever it is that they died, is not going to be a split-second moment in time, but they will have a period of time in which to learn God's way and decide whether to live by it. And they'll be judged based on what they do in that time, just as we're judged by the way that we live our lives today, knowing God. How incredible is that promise? Let's turn to 1 Peter 3, because this points out even more what God's viewpoint is in terms of wanting to give salvation to everyone, everyone who's ever lived, if they will accept Him and live according to His way. 1 Peter 3, verse 9.

1 Peter 3, verse 9, The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but He's long suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It's that viewpoint that God has towards His creation, towards all human beings who ever lived, the same viewpoint that we have to develop in ourselves. It's not that I'm going to receive the crown, I don't want anybody else to have that crown because it's mine and I don't want to share it. God's view is everyone who's ever lived, He wants them to understand Him and to know Him and have this chance for that same reward of eternal life, the destiny that God created all living human beings to have. 1 Timothy 2, verse 4, also points out the same thing, saying that God wants all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. So this day, when we finish up the Feast of Tabernacles, that eighth day, which concludes God's plan for mankind, brings us around to that greatest truth, that God's way of life and the rewards that come with that way of life is for everybody. So that's hope, deliverance, and a crown for everyone. But before I wrap up completely, I want to turn back to where we started, this idea of the POWs imprisoned in Vietnam. We talked about the fact that those who received their hope and deliverance did it through the help of the people who were imprisoned with them, the language that they created so they could communicate with each other even when the guards would brutally discipline them if they tried to talk to one another from cell to cell. And the fact that those who withdrew often were the ones who ended up shutting down and dying in captivity. The story, in that sense, is not that different for us. God deals with us as individuals, but he calls us to a body. We see a lot of references to this in the Bible, and the fact that God calls people to a body. Now, one of the things that I know and I love and appreciate about the United Church of God is we have a very correct understanding that the body of Jesus Christ is not defined by human labels that we put on a church organization. Rather, we as a church organization consider ourselves to be part of the greater body of Christ. It's God's business where he puts his name, and God knows who his children are.

We have an organization so that we can come together, and we spend our time together, and we are part of that body of Christ. And that is our first allegiance, is to Jesus Christ and to his body. The physical groups that we create in order to have people be able to come together, to nourish them, to strengthen them, to own property, to have a hall to meet in, are fantastic things, as long as what they do is put forward our connection to the body of Christ and to Jesus Christ himself.

When we think about the Holy Days that we're about to observe, it's also important to reflect on why they were created. We won't go to Leviticus 23, but I would encourage you to go there and spend a little time in it in the coming week. Leviticus 23 talks about the Sabbath and all of the Holy Days. And what is the one thing that's in common, one of the things in common between all of those days? They're all mentioned as holy convocations, a time that you should come together. And what I find incredibly meaningful is the fact that all of these days that depict God's plan, the Sabbath rest, which is a way to think of the millennium and the deliverance that we'll ultimately have, that we have every week, the Holy Days that we keep throughout the year, we're all set up as convocations, a word we don't really use today.

But it means a time to come together. You set everything down, you stop working, and you come together. You don't sit there in your tent or in your house or wherever you are and look to God if you have a body of believers in God to come together with. That's inherent in all of these worship settings that God set up. And He set that up for a reason, because we need to come together in order to support one another. We see that in 1 Thessalonians, where He looked in the beginning about the hope of the resurrection, as we're to encourage one another with these words.

We're called to a body and a group of people to do those things. I spoke early on about our world today, and the whole reason I wanted to add this element of thinking about how we're in these things together is because one of the dominant directions that our world is going today is more and more individuality and loneliness. As we interact more and more through electronic devices, it's not all wrong. Electronic devices are not all bad, but they don't replace human face-to-face interaction. And it's important, no matter whether we're old or young, to have that person-to-person interaction, in addition to everything else that we might be doing through social media and other things.

And I think as we view the world, when we think about the way the world is going, which we know is not being driven forward according to God's way, but rather under the influence of Satan, one of the poles that's there of the world is to close down, put the cocoon around us. There's just too much input sometimes, isn't there? Too much noise, too much effort going on around us. And the human way to cope with that sometimes is to simply shut down and to say, I need a break, I need everyone to be away from me, and I just need to be alone.

There are good ways to do that, but the time to do that is not the time when it is to come to worship God. God sets those times up as well. Times that we need to be refreshed and renewed by interacting with others of His people, but also to be the one who is interacting with the others to refresh, renew, and encourage them.

So as we go forward now into the Holy Days, I hope that this overview and thought about hope, deliverance, and a crown for everyone will be something that will motivate us again, give us great hope, give us an opportunity to come together with a whole lot of other people of like minds and recharge us, and help us to be recommitted to living another year doing God's way of life.

God's given us a great hope, a promise of deliverance, and a crown of righteousness that at the end of His plan, He's going to extend to everyone. Let's strengthen one another in that hope and vision as we look forward together to the coming marvelous Kingdom of God. Have a great Sabbath.