The Journey to the Kingdom

Mr. Mazz was talking about bear encounters. I've been to the Smokies over the last 30 years, probably six, seven times. I always have a bear encounter. But my favorite one, and I'm just so sorry that my son-in-law isn't here to hear it, we kept telling him, well, they have six children now. I think they had three or four at the time, so it wasn't quite as many. But we kept telling him, don't leave the door of your van open. And one morning, I opened the door of the house, and I looked out, and I said, there's a bear in your van.

And he started to laugh, and I said, no, there's two bears in here. And by the time he got over it, I said, actually, there's three bears.

And there were three cubs in there, and at that time, I mean, you couldn't time this, you couldn't make it up, one of them sat on the front seat and put his paws up on the steering wheel. And I just looked at him and laughed. I couldn't help it, you know, I just like, yeah, there's three bears in your van, what are you gonna do about it? And the mama came around, and she was circling around the van, sort of like, yeah, what are you gonna do about it?

Right? Finally, my son came up and went out and yelled at the mama. And of course, she just looked at him like, who do you think you are? And then walked off, and all three of them came out and followed her. But that's my favorite bear story, and I wish he was here so I could make fun of him. God has called us to the Feast of Tabernacles to focus our attention on the return of Jesus Christ. And you're gonna hear about that over and over.

We heard it last night, and you're gonna hear about that this entire time. Our focus on this place where we're going, that God has invited us to. Now, Christ is on this earth, and everything changes. You know, when ancient Israel was given instructions to observe this day, that's not what they were told. Let's go to Leviticus 23. Leviticus 23. Because there's something about this day that we need to remember that sometimes we forget.

Leviticus 23 and verse 39. God tells the ancient Israelites, And on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered the fruit of your land, you shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days. On the first day there shall be a Sabbath rest, and on the eighth day a Sabbath rest. It was a harvest festival. When you get to the promised land, you will then receive all these great blessings from God. Remember when he told them this, they were just starting their journey. They weren't there. When you get there, I am going to bless you. He says in verse 40, You shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm, and boughs of the leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.

And you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year, and it shall be a statute in your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month. Verse 42. And you shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, temporary places. So you're supposed to celebrate all these blessings when you get to the promised land, that you are, you know, the blessings of being there.

But you're also to build temporary blessing or temporary dwellings and live in those dwellings. And people would travel to Jerusalem once they got there. Later on, and when Jerusalem became the capital city, they would travel there. But people many times would actually build temporary dwellings if they couldn't get there in their yards or on top of their houses, just like some Jews today do, all of Israel did at that time. They had to stay in these temporary dwellings, and there was a reason. Verse 43. That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.

I am the Lord your God. They were to be reminded at this time that their forefathers had been slaves in Egypt, and they were to be reminded that God took them out of that environment and then took them to this promised land. Beginning to the promised land wasn't a one-day event. It was a journey. We all know the story of their journey.

It was tough. There were good times. There were miracles. There were wonderful things where God actually came and talked to them on Mount Sinai. And there were times they thought they were going to starve to death, and there were times they were attacked by other tribes around. There were times they thought they were never going to make the promised land. He said, I want you to remember the journey when you get to the promised land. Remember your forefathers and their journey, and therefore you shall stay in temporary booths. We're staying in temporary booths, but we never think of, you know, living in tents crossing the Sinai, right? That's not worth thinking about. You know, we're worried about, oh no, the hot water went out.

Maybe a little different concerns than they had. When we keep this Feast of Tabernacles and the eighth day, because they're so connected, we observe this time to remember the past, what God did through ancient Israel, their harvest festival, and the future when there's a spiritual harvest. And we understand the spiritual implications of the past and the future. And we're here celebrating both, and both will be talked about. The Old Testament will be read, the New Testament will be read, Old Testament prophecies will be read, New Testament prophecies will be read about the second coming of Jesus Christ. But there's also a present lesson to this day, a present lesson that will be carried on into the future when Christ returns. Let's go to 1 Peter. 1 Peter 2.

1 Peter's talking to the church. When the Israelites went to Mount Sinai, God told Moses, you tell them I will make a covenant with them, and they'll be my nation, my holy nation, a kingdom of priests. They were called to represent God on earth, to represent God's kingdom, while the earth was under the reign of Satan.

When we get to the New Testament, we know that the church is called to represent God and Christ on earth. We're to represent them. Look what Peter wrote to a church that was a lot more than Jews and a lot more than Gentiles, by this time when he writes, the church is filled with peoples from all over the Roman Empire, all different backgrounds, all different nationalities, all different ethnic groups. The church was now what the prophecies had said it would become. All kinds of people. And he says to them in verse 9, but you are a chosen generation. This is what God had told ancient Israel, and he's writing it to the church. A royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who were once not a people. One of the hardest things that non-Jews had coming into the church was the feeling that they were second-class citizens. The book of Ephesians and Colossians and Romans deals with that. No, Paul says it's your time to come in to the people of God. It's your time to become part of this new chosen nation. That doesn't mean God was done with the Jews or the ancient Israelites. He says things for them, too. But this is what the church is. This is who we are.

We weren't once a people, weren't a people, but we are becoming a people. I mean, what we watched last night was music sung by children from all over the world.

Becoming the people. And then he says, beloved, verse 11, I beg you, so here Peter's being very, you know, sort of emotional when he says here, I beg you, as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the nations, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation. So he talks about who they are now. You are the nation, the holy nation, called to represent God and His ways and His kingdom under Satan's dominion. And he said, you are sojourners. That's who we are. And he says, in the day of visitation, all people will know, hey, you were the sojourners. When we look at, take this time, and we're supposed to look back at ancient Israel as sojourners, there's something more important here. They were taken to a physical promised land. We must understand that we are sojourners. We're sojourners on this land, waiting for the kingdom to come.

Everything we do about in life is around that, that truth. A number of years ago, when our children were young, Kim and I took them on a trip across the United States, and we traveled part of what was the Oregon Trail. We even got a booklet, a guidebook from the National Park Service. It's called the Oregon Trail. And we read from different diaries that people had written while on that journey. Many years ago, I took that experience, and I created a fee sermon out of it. And when I was working on this fee sermon, I kept thinking about how many difficulties people were going through in the church.

I mean, there's a lot of suffering, although there's always been suffering in the church. We've always been sojourners. The more we forget that, the more difficult our suffering becomes. We're always pilgrims. We will never quite belong. We will always be out of step, because that's who we are. That's what we've been called to be. And that calling and that journey, I started thinking about it, so I thought, I'm going to take little bits and pieces of that old sermon and cover it again. So if you've heard it before, you go to sleep. Because as we traveled that trail, you start to realize that over about a 40-year period, hundreds of thousands of people from New England and up and down the eastern sea coast, from Tennessee, from the Midwest, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, decided there was a better place to go. They had no idea what the cost of that would be. They had no idea. But they knew it was there. This is very important. They knew it was there. And so they decided to go.

They literally had to sell everything they had, and then hire out into a wagon train from Independence, Missouri, and cross a continent that they had no idea how big it was. They really had no idea how long it would take. All they knew was it was out there. And they were going there. And you know, at first, it was exciting. It was exciting to pack up everything, say goodbye to your neighbors, take the money you made from selling your little scratch piece of land and buying a wagon and getting some mules or some oxen, which are even better, and you haul everything in there and you take off. And then that first night when you meet up with some people traveling along and you're on the same journey, you stay up half the night talking about where you're going. Some of you have had that experience, haven't you? When you first came along and it was exciting and it was wonderful. And when you found people with the same vision, you couldn't talk about it enough.

So the journey started. There's four points we're going to learn today for what they learned on their journey. And the first one is, because I'm going to use some instances of that journey, for that physical journey for those people, but I'm really going to talk about our spiritual journey. So four things we learned from this. One, the journey to the kingdom requires a total change in vision and purpose for life. Total.

We think, oh yes, I could be a Christian and I get this down and I'm doing pretty good. I go to Sabbath services and I know the basic doctrines and that's not enough.

To go on this journey that we're celebrating here, to the place that we're celebrating here, takes a life with a total different vision and purpose. I'm going to read a little bit from the guidebook. It was a well-written guidebook. Each journey began at a kitchen table in Wisconsin or Missouri or Illinois, where the family talked around a candle and decided to make the great leap, a great leap into the unknown. Probably they had one of the guidebooks. Some were best sellers. If it was Ware's immigrant guide to California and told them that they would have to toughen their wagons and how to do that and have at least six mules with spare harnesses and parts. Well, for food, they need coffee, beans, bacon, often stored in cornmeal, spices, flour, sugar, and fruit.

The family had to select supplies not just for the journey, but for everything they needed to start a new life. It wasn't just about getting there. They didn't get what they needed, so when they got there, they could have a new life. Schoolbooks, butter churns, farm implements, furniture. And all this was going to be packed in a wagon and dragged across a continent. They said their goodbyes, walked away from individual farms and villages, met other immigrants on the way, and they collected on the edge of the prairie. They believed the guidebooks. You and I have a guidebook. We believe this. It tells us where we're going. If we don't believe that, we won't do this. If we don't believe in where we're going, we won't do it. And when you're a second and third and fourth generation of doing this, you can do it because it's your way of life and you don't really know where you're going. You can't afford that. You can't afford that. God has called you to go someplace. Understand that. Oh, yeah, God called me to come to church and God called me to go to the Feast of Tabernacles and not believe in hell. You know, God's called me to do that. Now, God's actually called you to go someplace. That other is just information that you need to go on the journey.

It is to go someplace. And this guidebook tells us. And what we're going to do for the rest of this sermon is we're going to stay in one chapter. Well, we'll go to the next chapter, just for a little bit at one point, but basically one chapter. Let's go to Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 is where Paul simply gives a collection of stories from the Old Testament. We can include all the New Testament. We can include all those who have been on this journey since the time John finished the book of Revelation to now. We can—there's just thousands of names we don't even know. We can include all those people in this story here. And verse 8, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

We all start this, and we know it's the kingdom of God. But in many ways, we really don't know where we're going. Where you go today, I can tell you this. 60 years ago, when I really started to understand this journey, I believed I would never live to be an old man. And I have. It's still the same journey, but you really don't know. It's a vision of a journey, and your purpose is to go there because you believe in it that much.

Abraham was told to go someplace. He didn't look it up on his GPS. He didn't go on Google and see what it looked like in a land called Canaan. In a land called Canaan. I doubt if he even understood how far it was, or how long it would take to get there. He sold all he had, he packed it up, and he went.

He just went. It became his vision, and it became his purpose in life. And the whole Abrahamic story is centered around a man and his wife who that was their vision and purpose.

But verse 9 says, by faith he dwelled in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. Abraham got to the Promised Land and never owned a piece of it. You know, one of the saddest things in the Bible is when Sarah died, he had to barter with some local chieftain to get a cave to bury her in. He didn't even own the land to bury her in. He got to the Promised Land. God took him there, and God just had him travel all over and say, look, that's going to be where your descendants live, and that's going to be where your descendants live. And then when things got really tough because they had a famine, he had to go to Egypt. Yeah, you have to go away for a while and get some food and come back. He never, ever got it. He never received it. Think about that.

But he never lost the vision or the purpose of what God had called him for.

Because it says in verse 10, for he waited for the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God. He knew that there was a kingdom coming, and he was part of what was happening. He knew his descendants would get that land. He even knew they'd be kicked out of the land, because he told him that in the prophecy, and have to come back to it. But he looked forward to when the kingdom was here. You know, when Jesus Christ comes back, which we're all looking to, and now this we kept the trumpets, picturing when he comes back and atonement, when he starts to bring all the world and reconcile it to God, and now he's reigning, right? That's why we're here. We're celebrating when he reign when he's reigning. But that's not the end of the story. That's just the next step. Abraham was one step in the story. Christ's return is one step in the story. The second resurrection is one step in the story. You at the end of the story is the city comes to earth. That's the end of the story. That's what we live for. It always has to be that. When God comes here and there is no evil, and Satan's gone, and all human beings who have accepted him have become spirit children. That'll be on the last day, right? That eighth day that we'll talk about that. Because all this fits together into what God is doing. And this is the journey we're on. And if you were in ancient Israel, you would have kept this day to commemorate one of the things, your forefathers on the journey to the Promised Land.

Let's look at Daniel, or Daniel, Hebrews 12. I said I'd just leave for just a minute here, then we'll always come back to Hebrews 11.

And chapter 12, and I believe Paul wrote this, there's always some doubt whoever wrote this, I think it was Paul, is Pauline thought.

But he talks about how they came to Mount Sinai, and a covenant was made, and they became a nation. But you and I aren't before Mount Sinai. I mean, we think, wouldn't that be amazing to stand before Mount Sinai, see the thunder, hear the voice, watch Moses come down with tablets of stone written on by the finger of God. Wouldn't that be amazing? You and I are participating in a journey that's greater than that. Because this is the city that we wait for. Verse 22, But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the First-Born who are registered in heaven, okay, the First-Born who are registered in heaven.

That includes those who are God's people on earth today. To God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks things greater than able, greater than the sacrifices done in the temple. Those things were just plays that teach people about what you and I are living, and we are soldiers. And we can ever give up that vision and that purpose that God has given to us.

Because the journey will get hard, and sometimes it doesn't seem like it's murky. Where's this kingdom? Where's this good? Where's this, you know, my life right now isn't so good, you can say. Where is, all I see is prairie, all I see are mountains. Where is the kingdom?

It's in here because God puts it there. I say it's not in here, it's the vision that's there. We see it, and that becomes a motivation for life. That brings us to our second point.

The journey to the kingdom requires that we turn our back on the old life.

As they went across the Oregon Trail, it was flat. It was so flat that people who grew up in West Virginia, Virginia, some of them had nervous breakdowns, and there were things like tornadoes, which many of them had never seen. There were prairie fires. There were all kinds of things they had never seen before, and the prairie had all kinds of rocks and stumps of old trees. When they hit a stump in a broken axle or a wheel, they called it, oh, you just got stumped. Now, I haven't heard that in a long time, but when I was a kid, I remember if somebody couldn't solve a problem, people say, well, you're stumped. Where is that? What do you mean, I'm stumped? It comes from the fact that you have a wagon and you just busted the wheel on a stump. So you're stumped. You've got a problem you have to fix. In fact, everything on the journey was a problem.

Every day could be very exhausting. Water became a problem because sometimes they didn't have any, and it became a problem because sometimes it rained so much it flooded, or they'd come to a river that was so swollen they couldn't get across it. And a crossing in a broken axle across it. And a crossing a river was a real adventure, and some people died crossing rivers.

Because it wasn't easy. There's no bridges. There's no highways. There's no 7-11 to get a slurpee.

We're so used to things. There's no fast food. There's nothing. Sometimes you get some bison. Sometimes you get some deer. Sometimes you eat the old bacon you have. Sometimes food got a little scarce. Catherine Sager wrote in her diary in 1844. Just a little girl. Excuse me. Excuse me.

The hem of my dress caught on an axle handle, participating me under the wheels, both of which passed over me. I'm amazed how they're such good writers. They're use of words. Before a father could stop the oxen, he picked me up. I glanced at my limb dangling in the air, and he ran in a broken voice, exclaimed, My dear child, your leg is broken to pieces. What do you do in a case like that? You cut the little girl's leg off and you go on.

What can you do? You can't go back.

Death became common. You know, when you're a four-and-now five-generation church, people die, don't they? Well, it used to not be a lot of death, it seems like, in the church 50 years ago, 60 years ago. Of course, there is going to be death. And sometimes it's not just older people, is there? Sometimes it's children. On their journey, death became quite often. Journals become—this is according to our guidebook—journals become restrained, cryptic, as though saying anything more might release too much. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of entries like this one. This is the one from Lydia Allen Rudd, 1852. We passed a new grave today. A man from Ohio. That's all it says. No one knows who that man is.

But he was on the way. He was faithfully on the way. We also met a man who was going back. He had buried his wife that morning. She died from the effects of measles. And then the rest of the diary entry simply says, We have come ten miles today, camped on a small stream called Vermillion Creek, and plenty of water and wood. In other words, people are dying, and some people are going back. Going back isn't an option. They couldn't go back then. You couldn't carry enough food or water or save yourself from the wolves, or the cold, or the heat. They had to stay with the group.

Going back really wasn't an option. You can't get back. And when you go back, there's nothing there. There's no farm left in Ohio. You sold that. But the way would get so hard, some people would say, I just have to go back.

What do you and I have to go back to?

What do we have to go back to? Nothing. But in those moments, we can forget that. Well, yeah, if I could go back and do this with my life and that with my life, I'd have a better job, or a better family, or better friends, or whatever you want to fill in. More fun. No, there isn't. But there's an illusion that comes along when you're in the middle of the journey that I can go back. What's a journey back? To what? Because there's nothing there. Hebrews 11 verse 13.

Talking about the people in this chapter who followed God towards that vision for the city to come, it says, these all died in faith, not having received the promises. They all died and didn't receive the promised land. But he never left the journey, so they will be there when the promised land is given. These all died in faith, not having received the promise, but having seen them afar off, they were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. We all want to have roots, don't we? But the truth is, you and I are just as much a pilgrim on earth as Abraham was.

For they who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. They would have tried to return, but he says they didn't, because there's nothing to return to. But now they desire a better that is a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. That statement at the end of that little passage is something I can't quite wrap my mind around. God's saying, I'm not ashamed that those are my people. I'm not ashamed to say that person is mine. That person is my child.

What we read here is, when we have that vision and that purpose and we refuse to go back, God says, that's my child. I'm not ashamed. How many times because of our sins, our shortcomings, our mistakes, our stupidity, we think God must be ashamed of me.

And guys, it's no, just stay on the trip, son. Daughter, just keep doing what you're doing. I'm not ashamed of you.

Just keep going to the promised land. The third point, the journey to the kingdom requires a change of what we value.

It's what we value.

These people had it all figured out. They were going to a place, a better place, and they had everything they needed with them. And you know, after they were into this a few months, they became veterans. They knew what to do. They knew how to fix all kinds of things. They knew how to build a fire out of buffalo dung. They knew how to kill an animal and skid it. They knew how to do all kinds of things. They had become experts at being on the journey, and then a real problem arose.

They got close to the mountains.

And suddenly, they had to decide what do you really value?

Reading from the guidebook again, somewhere pulling through the heavy sand, the realization came on the Oregon Trail that it would demand the full measure. The promise of a new life at the end of the trail demanded payment with the old one. And one cannot simultaneously live in Iowa and Oregon is the problem we have. We're trying to live simultaneously in this world and in the world to come. And we have to, but we're pulled by the values, aren't we? We're on a journey, and we're living in two worlds. When the Israelites left Egypt, they were living in two worlds. And they lost sight of that promise land, and that generation that left lost their privilege to go into the promise land. Their children did.

Because they didn't know how to live in the two worlds.

Many, of course, hoped, continue reading here, that the sacrifice need not be complete. Perhaps just a little of the old life could be taken away in the new. But now the tilt of the land was rising. Animals and men were tired with bone weariness. One night's sleep could not cure, and the wagons were heavy. As we get closer to the time when we see the time of sorrows that Jesus talks about and the great tribulation, I will say this. To be on this journey, we can't be absolutely fixated on that. We have to know what's coming. We have to know about it. We have to study it. But you know what? We're looking at today. Today is a day I continue the journey. Today is a day that God is with me. Today is a day when I can make it.

That's how you do it. Today is a good day. I remember an old man telling me that once. I don't know what he was. He's probably younger than I am. He seemed old to me at the time. I said, how was today? And he said, today is a good day. I could sit up and take nourishment. And then he grinned at me. And I yelled, okay, it is. Sometimes that's a good day, right? God is with me today. And I'm on that journey. And he's not ashamed to call me his son or daughter. It's incomplete and flawed as we are.

But it started as they went up. The wagons got too heavy. This is from a diary that was written in 1849. The abandonment and destruction of property was extraordinary. The prairie before they got to the mountains was acres in all directions of stuff that people had to throw out. True, a great deal of it was heavy and cumbersome. Useless articles. A diving bell with all the apparatuses. I don't know. He thought somehow he would need this diving bell when he got to Oregon. There was also anvils and iron and steel and forges and bellows and lead and provisions. Bacon and great piles, many cords of it, good meat, bags of beans and salt and chest and tools and buckets and stoves and trunks. I even read some place where there would be piano sitting out there.

And a number of the Indian tribes who really resented them going across after a while was like, why attack them? Just wait until they dump everything. And they'd come up and pick it all up and off they'd go. All the things, suddenly the schoolbooks, all the things that they would need, they're only keeping the bare necessities. It was frustrating. There were possessions, tons of possessions scattered and some even neatly stacked along the trail, free from the picking. Everyone knew that they might need some of this later, but they could no longer more drag these things to Oregon than they could the wagon trains that were coming behind them. And instead of collecting things would just add more to the giant collection of junk. And it wasn't junk. It was important stuff.

How much needless spiritual things are you and I trying to drag to the kingdom? Hebrews 1124.

Hebrews 1124. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw that he was a beautiful child and they were not afraid by the king's command. By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of the Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer afflictions with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater, riches than the treasures in Egypt. For he looked for the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing himself who was invisible. He goes on, so by faith he kept the Passover and God destroyed Egypt.

He realized that all that stuff would not get him on the spiritual journey he was on, and he gave up being the son of Pharaoh. What are you dragging to the kingdom? We're all dragging things, right? Past guilt. We just don't believe God will forgive us. Current sins that we keep hiding or trying to pretend that's not there —our addictions, our anger, our hatred— what are you holding on to? The desire to lord over other people, our broken families, our broken marriages. What are we dragging instead of fixing? You know, sometimes I think we're trying to drag the wagon and we've already knocked all the wheels off of it. Why are we not repairing? Dump it. Dump everything you don't need.

Everything you don't need for the kingdom. Dump it. Because you won't need it.

But we get to believe that vision, don't we? We have to believe it's there, and that's where God's taking us, and that's what this is all about. What we do here.

The fourth and last point is being on the journey to the kingdom creates a change in expectations.

We get inspired by this. We see the vision of it. But what do we expect in life? But we have a future expectation, right? We have a future expectation that God is going to give us this time. But what about now? Do we expect anything from God now? Sometimes we actually expect blessings He gives us, and then we're surprised. Sometimes we expect things and they never come, do they? There's things we need that never come in this life. I say, oh wow, this is a downer. No, it's the reality of the journey. We have to embrace the journey. This journey has to be everything to us. Getting out of bed in the morning is being a Christian. It's being step by step on the journey. It's living by the kingdom of God now. Christ reigns in our lives now, not just in the future. God reigns in our lives now. You know, one of the most amazing things in this whole eight-day period is on the eighth day, which pictures the time where it says Jesus gives the kingdom to the Father. I got it. I put it together. Here it is. Paul writes about this. That's the whole purpose. Jesus Christ has this vision, this purpose that let him come and live as a human being and suffer horribly and die because that vision is, I've got to offer the kingdom to the Father. I'm going to have it and I'm going to give it to him. And he's driven by that.

Hebrews 11.36. Well, let's go to verse 30 first because I'm going to look at the positive things. And he's just talking about the Old Testament. We could talk about the New Testament. You and I could share stories with people we've known. I could share stories where I've seen miracles. I've seen God do amazing things. As I always say, I've anointed people and watched a miracle. And I've anointed people and watched them die. And I wasn't involved in either of those decisions. I just did what God said to do. And we have to trust that what God is doing there is for them on their journey. Sometimes we get pretty rough on each other, not knowing what other people are going through with their journey. We can be really tough on people, each other sometimes.

Verse 30. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, and after they were encircled for seven days, and by faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace. And what more shall I say? For the time will fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms and worked righteousness and obtained promises and stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's stop there. Let's not go to the others are tortured, right? The journey is supposed to be wonderful every step of the way, and that's what those people thought when they left Independence, Missouri, and it wasn't.

And neither is this journey, the journey to the kingdom. It says, still others had the trial of mockings and scourging jests and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were solemn in two, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute and afflicted and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise. Not one person, except of course for Jesus Christ, but not one ordinary person, has died in the faith and received the promise. And you know why? Wow! That's right, they're not in heaven, are they? They haven't received the promise. They haven't received the promise land. Here's why, verse 40, God having provided better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us. The plan of God is, when His first fruits come up, they all come up together. Now, I want you to think about that for a minute. When the Apostle Paul comes out of the ground, is when we come out of the ground. When Abraham and Sarah come out of the ground, is when we come out of the ground. We all come up together, the family of God. We all arrive at the kingdom at the same time. We all arrive at the same time. You think God knows what He's doing? Sometimes I think, God, are you paying attention to us, especially me? Are you paying attention to me, God? My little problems?

That's usually the answer I get. Your problems are really small, son.

Get this bigger picture of what I'm doing. And God is preparing each of us to arrive at the kingdom. And we all arrive together. Thousands of years of people all arrive together. How's that for planning?

How's that for a purpose that He has? I just find that amazing. Because surely, none of us—we're not as amazing as Mary the mother of Jesus. We're not as amazing as John or Daniel, right?

But God says, no, no, no, you all come up together. You and I have been called by God to embark on a journey.

It demands that we give all that we are, including ourselves, to become all that God will give us. Do you understand that? Well, we sacrifice everything we have and everything we are so that we become what God—everything that God has to give us. Which, oh, I know He says He's going to give us everything. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. Do we give to give everything?

During this feast, we celebrate the future kingdom. But remember, we're here to celebrate the journey. It's not just about the Israelites going from Egypt to the Promised Land. It's about the people of God going to the Promised Land. We read about Abraham and Sarah. They didn't receive their promise. No, they didn't. We all receive it together. Let me read one last passage here from that book, The Oregon Trail. The textbooks are right. The Oregon Trail was that explosion which leaped frog from the United States to the West Coast in the 1800s and in the end stretched the United States across the continent. But the textbooks missed the one thing that was the most important to the tired, sometimes grumpy, worried, immigrant going driving his oxen across the Platte, which was a river. It was the going. They don't capture that. Okay, they arrived. It was a wonderful place. They had great life. No, no, no. The going. It was the going that's hard to explain in the journey. It was the experience of giving all to gain all. That's what God's asking of us. This journey is the experience of giving everything to gain everything. It was the first time you picked up a buffalo chip or forded a river with frightening water up to your hips or buried a neighbor or crested Flagstaff Hill. It was a hill they came over. They could see just for miles. Those experiences of going to Oregon become secondary to getting to Oregon, yet there's something inspiring about those people who took the journey. I was inspired by those people who took the journey in a physical sense. How much more are we inspired by the people here that took the journey and the people around you who are taking the journey? Do we ever inspire each other?

Do we ever inspire each other? Because we should.

You see, the going to Oregon shaped who they were when they got to Oregon. It was the going that shaped who they were when they got there. They weren't the same people they left when they left Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania or Boston, Mass. They weren't the same people or Memphis, Tennessee. They were different people when they got there. It was the going. When our journey has ended, you and I will be shaped by this journey. You see, when God called us, we weren't qualified to even understand what the kingdom was. The journey is how we're shaped.

It's the first time you open the Bible and you understand something. It's the first time you keep the Sabbath. It's the first time you go to a church and you think, oh, these people are weird, but they get it. It's the first time when you ask, when you go under that water and you're baptized and you receive God's Spirit. We're all shaped by this. We're continuing to be shaped every time we pick this up, every time we make a decision whether to do something dishonest or do what God says. It's every time we make a decision to lose a job because, though, the Sabbath is more important. It's every time we decide to be faithful to our spouse. Those are all part of this journey.

It's every time you come to any holy day, isn't it? You stop keeping the holy days and you'll lose the vision. That's just the way it is. Every time we come to a holy day, every time we come to the Feast of Tabernacles, we are taking a step on this journey and we're getting another part of the vision. It's also every time you bury a neighbor, a friend, a child, a spouse, and you think, God, how can this happen on the journey? This isn't supposed to happen on my journey.

It's part of the journey. It's part of what happens to us as we continue to live in a Satan's world, living by the kingdom of God, waiting for our King to come. We're all monarchists here. I'm sorry, I'm not a big fan of democracy. I'm a monarchist. I'm waiting for my King to come.

It's when you get sick and God heals you, and you see a miracle. It's when you get sick and God doesn't heal you. That's all part of the journey. It's the journey. It's living in a world that you see more and more. You can't fit in anymore. You just can't fit in. It's too evil. It's too bad. Part of that is because it's getting worse, but part of it is because you are changing, because you are becoming more and more fit for the kingdom, more and more prepared for the end of the journey where He's taking you. I want to end by just taking a moment, and let's just, you know, wonder a little bit, okay? Okay. Sometime after the horrible events of the tribulation, sometime after Christ's return. Let me know more wars, no more starving.

People will be learning God's way. The environment will be like the Garden of Eden, but you know, people will still have the guidebook, and they'll be reading Hebrews 11, and they'll be inspired by it. Look what these people had to go through. They'll be reading about Daniel. They'll be reading about all the great, you know, men and women, Esther, Ruth. They'll be reading about all these people saying, look what they had to do on the journey.

And they'll be inspired. Esther wasn't inspired when she said, she said, maybe they'll kill me, but whatever God wants, I'm going to do what's right, right? She didn't know what was going to happen next on her journey.

And maybe, you'll be like I am sometimes. I have one of my eight grandchildren. She's seven, and all the time she's saying, people, tell me about when you were a child. Tell me another story about when you were a child.

And sometimes, somewhere, someone's going to come up to you in that millennium time. And they'll say with expectation, tell us. Tell us. Tell us the story of going to the kingdom.