Life More Abundantly

Our focus during these autumn festivals is on the future. And oftentimes we can focus on the future so much that we begin to think that there's nothing much about this life, nothing much to this life. This is something we need to get by, get past, get beyond. You know, swing low, sweet chariot. You know, oh my trials, Lord, you know, soon we'll be over. We look forward to something in the future. And as we come here on this festival, we might just be so focused on the future that we forget that we live in the present and we are actually modeling the life that we will be mentoring to those in the future. When we think of the millennial reign of Jesus Christ and the bride, those are individuals who have triumphed in this evil age, the ones who have had victory, the ones who have had a life, the ones who have received a full realm of God's blessings because of their obedience and because of their doing what God says. And that is really what we bring to other civilizations in the future that these festivals portray.

Now is the bride's time. This is our time to live and for our young people to live and have full lives and joyful lives, to have lives full of meaning, fulfillment. How well are you modeling that life that we are here celebrating that others will have in the future? It's important that we are getting that right as individuals. It's important that we are able to live it, know it, in order to teach it in the future. You are created in God's image and likeness. Let's just come to the present for a moment and think about you and your body. When God created you in His image and likeness, that is something really special. Consider that being in the image and likeness of God is not just sort of having a carcass, as we might say, that walks around. No, this is the super-premium deluxe LXI model of a body that is greater than anything else God made on the face of the earth. In Genesis chapter 5, let's notice the first three verses of Genesis chapter 5 because here, speaking of creation, God mentions our frame, our state.

It says, this is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. So Adam was the first human created in the likeness of God, and he created them, verse 2, male and female, and blessed them and called them mankind in the day they were created. So we have a blessing of God just by being created in His image, in His likeness. And then in verse 3, Adam lived 130 years, and he begot a son in his own likeness. After his image, and he named him Seth. So we have the opportunity to pass along our image and our likeness to our children, to our grandchildren, so that everybody can have an existence, as it were, or a body that has a life. Now, when we think of our bodies, we often take them for granted. I hear people complaining about their body or putting it down. But we take for granted certain things like the automated systems that we have. How many times have you made yourself take a breath at the feast? You probably didn't realize you were breathing. You know, what about that whole respiratory system of bringing in air to your lungs and all the little the linings of the lungs that exchange that into oxygen, and then put in carbon dioxide and you push that back out? We don't even think of that. It's an automated system. What about our circulatory system? How many of you have been having your heart beat? You know, wow, come on, I need to beat my heart. No, we don't think about it. It's just they're automated at whatever level we need it to be. And it's taking some oxygen from the lungs, and it's sending it around the body, and it's picking up impurities and bringing them back to other places and re-energizing the muscles and the tissues from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet. All automated. What about our digestive system? The feast we like to eat, but do we ever really consider that God made the world full of flavors and tastes and various compositions that are just endless? And we put them in our mouth, and everything's automated from there. It just takes care of us, and it it nourishes us. And there are things in our system that we don't want to know about, and there are things growing down inside there that we think are nasty and awful that provide us with vitamins and various hormones and things that are all automated. When we think of the rejuvenatory system that we have, if I injure myself, oh, what do I need to do? Well, I kind of need to sleep, because sometime in the night the body goes in and fixes things and repairs things. And this is a wonderful thing that God has made. We have these auto-cognitive responses. They're auto-cognitive. If we see a bear up close, or you know, a vehicle, or something dangerous, a cliff, we have adrenaline that kicks in, and we have an automatic, let's say, proper type of fear or respect for danger. We have various other type of auto-reflexes like love, laughter, joy. These things are what God has given to us. We have auto-eye function, which is just incredible. It adjusts for light and darkness, distance. It is the full spectrum of color. You can see half of everything in front of you. It is so detailed that, you know, you hear about pixels and the high quality of pixels and super high resolution. They haven't made one yet that comes close to what the eye can see.

You and I have this wonderful, high-definition, super three-dimensional eyesight. It is so complex in order to have that and process that in real time with no delay, like you sometimes see on a webcast, a little delay, so that we're not running into things and then seeing them a second or two later, that it requires your entire brain, all the synapses of your brain, actually participate just in processing eyesight. That's the quality of eyesight we have. And then we come to the audio, the hearing, you know, complete surround sound with definition that is so high that humans have never made a microphone or a speaker or an amplifier that comes close or that matches what the human body is. We have infinite taste and smell centers that just are infinite. They just go on and on. And then God gave us a brain, a mind with unlimited imagination, abilities, creativities, compositions. And this is what we call being alive. And this is what we take for granted as human beings, being alive. And we're liable to say, well, I don't know if I'm having a very good life or something like that. But we are created in God's image. And so here we are as alive. And humans have been alive for millennia, a lot of humans, maybe 60 billion, maybe 100 billion humans. But how many of those have had a life, as we would say? You know, not many people who have ever lived, who have ever existed, designed and created in the image of God, ready to really have an exuberant life, have ever gotten to. They have come under the sway of a wicked one and gone down a path that has not brought them what the Bible would call us, would call a life for us. Why is that? Well, if we look in Genesis 6 and verse 5, the next chapter over, we see that the individuals God created in His image, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously. Now, we know this scripture, we know this propensity for humans, but that takes them down a course, a journey, towards something that is not life, and those who are on that journey don't have what the Bible calls a life.

You'll be familiar with Proverbs 14 and verse 12, which says, there is a way that seems right to a man. Let's pause here and think about this. The term way here is referring to, in the Hebrew, a road, a journey, or a manner. It's not just a little word, it's kind of an adjective or something. It is a noun. It is something here that is a road. It's a journey. So we could say, there is a journey that seems right to a man. It could be a road, a path, an avenue, but a trail. We use those things on a journey. So let's just say, there is a journey that seems right to a man, but its end is the journey of death. It doesn't say the end is death. This isn't a proverb about the end, you're going to die. It's about the journey. It's about the type of life you will have. The journey that seems right, its end is the journey of death. So think of that as a lifetime, say, course that an individual is on, and you begin to see how humanity has never had the type of life that God intends for us to have in this wonderful creation that He's given us. It's kind of like forced slavery, 24-7, if you think about it. Imagine a slave on a Roman ship, a whole bunch of white guys down below decks where it's dark, chained to the floor, and holding an oar. And their whole job in the darkness is where they hear the bump, you pull. You hear another bump, you pull. And this ship will go and sail in the sun, and it'll see things, but they will never see anything. All they'll get if they are not seen pulling hard enough is a whip on the back. And so their whole life is pull and misery, and the threat of getting rammed by another ship. And if this ship goes down, guess what? I've got chains on my legs, and I'm going to the bottom with this ship. So yes, the end certainly is death, but the whole journey is it's not living. It's kind of bad. Paul talks about being slaves of sin in Romans 6. You know, there's a concept called zombies, and I really don't want to go there, but I do want to touch on the origin of that concept. Zombies began among African slaves in Haiti back in the 17th and 18th centuries. From the journal The Atlantic, it said, zombie first appeared in French Haiti in the 17th and 18th centuries. Africans were hauled there to be slaves working sugar plantations. Slavery in Haiti was extremely brutal. Half of the slaves brought in from Africa were worked to death within a few years, which led only to the capture and import of more. Slaves in Haiti were so miserable that they wanted to commit suicide and dreamed of returning home.

However, their masters, aware of this tendency, told them that those who commit suicide would remain there working as slaves forever, even though they were dead, and thus the morbid concept of zombies, sort of the living dead that were stuck in slavery forever. Now, the Bible repeatedly speaks of modern society as being walking dead people. You can see the little correlation there, not exactly the same, but these autumn festivals celebrate opportunities for people to actually have a life finally, to come out of slavery, to come out of oppression, to come out of the evils that will encapsulate this age and continually work it down worse and worse until finally the very worst of times, Jesus said, will come, and men would finally annihilate themselves if he did not intervene. And so, when we are here, we are celebrating a dramatic contrast to being alive and having a life, to simply, as the Bible would call it, being dead or walking dead.

The title of this sermon is Life More Abundantly, and that's really what we're celebrating. That's what you and I should be living, and that's what we should be mentoring our children, our grandchildren, and new converts to be doing. It's the highlight of the year to picture a coming world tomorrow under the rule of Jesus Christ. That will stand in stark contract to this present evil age. It's as different as light and darkness, as different as death and light. Now, where did the metaphor for the walking dead originate? Well, it actually came from Jesus Christ Himself. Let's find it in Luke 9 and verse 59. Luke 9 and verse 59. Then He said to another, Follow me. But that individual didn't want to go on that journey. Didn't want to take that course with Jesus. Jesus was told, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. In verse 60 of Luke 9, Jesus said to him, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and announce the rule of God.

You go and preach or announce the rule. The kingdom primarily means the rule of God.

Live God's way. Obey God's commandments. Let Him rule and reign in your life. So here we're living people, but Jesus uses the descriptor of them being dead as a metaphor.

Now, as we relish this concept at the festival of the wonderful age of life that we celebrate in the future for the millennial reign of Christ and then the resurrection of all who have died and really never had a life, but finally get a life, we find that as we celebrate this, we are celebrating it for those who are dead in that metaphoric sense. Let's look at Peter saying this. Peter was with Jesus Christ, and he says in 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 6 something very similar. 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 6. For this reason, the gospel was preached also to those who are dead. They weren't really dead, but metaphorically, they are on this journey that Proverb speaks of of death. It's a journey that is not life. And so the gospel was preached to those who are dead that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God and the Spirit. So they would come out of what humans are doing, and they're judging, but live to God according to the Spirit. It's Jesus who warns His church that some of us are dead. Let's go to Revelation chapter 3 and verse 1. This is to the true church, the Church of Jesus Christ. This is Jesus talking to His church, and He is giving us seven lessons here about 60 years after His resurrection. And He says in Revelation 3 verse 1, to the angel of the church in Sardis, right, these things says, He who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, I know your works, that you have a name, that you are alive, but you are dead, metaphorically speaking. I didn't intend for my church to be dead. You're to be alive. You're to be lively stones in the temple of God. You're to be alive from the dead, you know, and having a great life, as it were. Jesus Christ, Peter, and also the Apostle Paul use this metaphor of being dead on a journey or on a way, a road. Let's look at Romans chapter 3, beginning in verse 10. Romans chapter 3, As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands, none who seeks after God. Uh-oh. We can see here the journey that humanity is on. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips. In verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. So does this not describe the way or the journey of death?

It's all of those things, and as one happens and the next one happens, the effects compound, and life just gets worse and worse. The way of peace they have not known, verse 17. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

We see here the cause, then. Let's go to Galatians chapter 5 and verse 19. Galatians chapter 5 and verse 19. Now, in Galatians, I don't even want to read these verses. You know they're there, verses 19 through 21. But what they are are the works of the flesh, and if you take one and do one, then you add the next. You begin a progression here of alienation, of offenses, of things coming back to you that really take the enjoyment out of life. And ultimately, in the end, you are just part of society's walking dead.

But in verse 22, the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of living the Spirit, is also incremental. You do one, and then you add the other. Look what happens. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Love for God, love for fellow man, outgoing concern. And the next result of that is joy. And when you have love and joy, then you have peace, or you have harmony, as that Greek word would mean. You have harmonious relationships. Now look where this life is going. It can go almost anywhere, even if there are trials, because long suffering is fine. That's part of loving. There's kindness and goodness. If you add those, what is your life and what are the lives around you beginning to be filled with? And how are those relationships going? Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You know, these are the elements that come from God. None of us are smart enough to know them, but they bring to us a life, a real life. And in this physical body that we have, when we do those things that are of life, of what we call God's way of life, God's journey, that path, and we do those things, it compounds our life with goodness. Now what exactly are we celebrating this week? And why is the Feast of Tabernacles such a joyful observance? Let's look in verse 22.

Galatians 5 verse 22. It's the fruit. It's not just having God's Holy Spirit. It's the fruit. It's what you harvest, what you harvest. It's what your life results in. So a good life, a wonderful life, has these things as the end result. That's what you and I need to be living then. God wants us to be more than just alive. He wants us to have a life, to be blessed. And we are picturing in God's autumn festivals the fulfillment of people having that opportunity. But you cannot speak to what you are not. And again, we have to be lively stones, not dead stones in the Father's house. Now some people confuse life that Christ wants us to live now with happiness. And we'll have a pursuit of happiness as human beings. Those two are in stark contrast to each other. Happiness is only used one time in the Bible, and it is used back in Deuteronomy where when a man takes a wife, he does not go to war for one year so that he can bring her happiness. Happiness is then something that would be given. That's the only time it's used in Scripture. We are here to be filled with joy and fulfillment, and that is not necessarily just simply a pursuit of happiness for the self. So when we think about life, let's not confuse it with, am I happy? If we go to, for instance, James chapter 1 and verse 2, count it all joy, brethren, when you fall into various trials.

This life is about developing godly, righteous character. This life is about having all types of challenges. It's a life of winning, overcoming, having victory over sin and Satan like Jesus did. That's what this life is about. Too often, I think we might shrink back from that and say, oh, I don't know if I'm really happy. We tend to think of happiness as ease. Yesterday, for those of you who know the store, I walked into REI. REI is about anything but ease. It's about how to climb a cliff. It's how to get out in the wilderness and survive. How to paddle or run or sleep in very uncomfortable conditions and make it through. How to get to the top of that mountain or far out into the lake. Humans enjoy challenges. That's what camping is about. Let's go put ourselves in difficult circumstances with things that sting and things that bite in lousy cooking facilities and lousy sleeping facilities. Let's bring a bunch of people with us and be miserable together. It'll be great. What is this thing about, oh, I just want to have a perfect little life in order to be joyful or be fulfilled or have a life? Does opportunity to mentor abundant life in the future contain just, oh, let me tell you how to be soft? Let's go to Deuteronomy 28 in verse 1. Let's see the basis for a good life. I really love Deuteronomy 28. It is something that should remind us to be very, very careful and very motivated in this way, this journey of life that we've been given. God says in Deuteronomy 28.1, now it shall come to pass if there's an if. You've got two paths you can go by in the long run. There's still time to change the road you're on. So if you diligently evade the voice of the Lord your God to carefully observe all His commandments, which I command you today, don't let anybody ever convince you that, oh, just kind of take a light view of God's law. Just hit the high points. Keep the spirit of the law, as they say. Don't worry about the details. You don't want to be some kind of a person earning your own salvation or whatever. No, God says, if you're careful to obey all His commandments, verse 2, all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, blessed in the country, blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, the increase of your herds, and so on and so forth. It goes down. God wants this life that you're living now to be an abundant life, a wonderful life. Drop down to verse 10.

Then all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord. You and I are called sons, daughters of God, the wife of Jesus Christ, the temple of the living God, the body of Christ. In verse 11, the Lord will grant you plenty of goods in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, the produce of your ground, and the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. Abundant life accompanies those who have a close relationship with God—not just talking, but looking at God as our authority. That's what the word Lord means, our supreme authority. And then, as He said, doing what our authority tells us, obeying God, doing what He tells us. In John chapter 6 and verse 63, the source of this life that God wants us to have is Him. And He partners with us. He mentors us. Right now, He is mentoring you with His Holy Spirit in you, even if you're not baptized. God's Spirit is working with you, helping to direct you and guide. It is the Spirit which gives life. The flesh profits nothing. So in this body that you have, if you want a life, that life is going to come from the Spirit side—God, His Word, His Holy Spirit, loving, giving, serving, obeying. Not from the flesh. The flesh will profit you nothing as far as this journey you're on. The words that I speak to you are spirit and our life. So Jesus is teaching. He's mentoring. And He wants us then to have a great life.

The Feast of Tabernacles celebrates freedom from slavery. I'm thinking of those slaves, remember, back in Haiti. What a difficult life they had. Well, just think of them as they dreamed of slavery, and the only way they thought they could get out was to commit suicide, and maybe somehow their spirit would go home to Africa. This feast actually portrays slaves coming home, really coming home. Let's notice this in Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse 14. Jeremiah 29 and verse 14. You know, the nations of Israel that are currently, oh, glorying in their physical states actually were driven out of Israel by God because they disobeyed. And they were scattered into countries around the world, and they have not followed God.

But at the end of this age, here in Jeremiah 29 verse 14, God says, I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity, whatever that is. I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive. Sometimes we get in our minds that, oh, God blessed Israel, and he sent them all over the world, and they have these wonderful countries. We just read there from God's lips.

He drove them out because they were disobedient. Because of the promises to Abraham, they have been blessed, but they're now in a phase where they're totally rejecting any knowledge or appreciation of God, and so they will find themselves captives. And then they will be shown and taught how to make a real journey of life, a life with the destination of life.

That's a wonderful thing about, you know, the end of the journey to death is death. The end of the journey of life, which is a wonderful life, is life. It's eternal life. It's good. In Isaiah chapter 35 in verse 10, we see these people arriving into their land in the millennium. We will get to help with that process. It says, verse 10, And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and shall come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. You know, that's a wonderful thing. But how do they obtain joy? Is it because they're now in the magic kingdom?

Poof! You know, you show up and everything is just perfect. No, we go back again to the cause of life, the journey of life. It's a relationship with God following Him. And finally, humanity will do that. Let's look in Isaiah chapter 30 and verse 19 and see a role that we will get to have with them as mentors.

Isaiah chapter 30 will read verse 19. For the people shall dwell in Zion and Jerusalem, and you shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry, and when he hears it, he will answer you. And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers. You know, the beautiful thing is God doesn't just sort of throw people back on the earth, either in the millennium or the second resurrection.

He has mentors, people who have lived life, people who have loved God's way, His journey to life. And they now mentor and they say, your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, this is the journey, this is the journey of life. Walk in it. Whenever you turn to the right or you turn to the left, whenever you say, oh no, I think this selfish thing works better for me. I think this little temptation or this lust that I have in my brain will work better for me. No, no, no, no, no, that's not going to work.

This is the journey of life. Come, walk in it. You know, you and I will have such a wonderful opportunity of guiding people into having lives. And again, and beyond that, in the second resurrection, people who probably even wouldn't want to come back to life and do it over, you know, be like a man having a second child, you know, we would we would say after the first one, no, no more. That's that's how I would think, you know, no. A life that's that, you know, painful as a slave, I don't want to do that again.

Some people take their own lives. Some people are happy. Some people just want to die. And they're back up, oh no, I've got to do this again. I once died when I was 12. I didn't really die, but I was given minutes to live and I slipped into unconsciousness. And I was screaming in pain for hours. And the next morning I woke up and I was very sad to be alive.

I was holding my breath and counting between the stabbing pains that should be there. And the last thing I wanted to do was be alive again. And yet there I was without the pain. God, it healed me. And so individuals here, they will come back and we will be teaching them a way of life. In John 10 and verse 9, Jesus speaks of His desire for us humans to have a life. John 10 will read verses 9 through 11.

Sometimes we pluck this out, but let's read the context. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. What He's saying is, I'm the door to a journey. You go in and out on a path or a way, a way of life. You're going to find food. You're going to find pasture. He's talking about here a sheep. Now, in contrast, the thief, Satan the devil, who steals humanity made in God's image, he captivates them, he deceives them, he steals them and says, no, I'm your father, you know, the devil. He does not come except to steal. Notice the compounding here of what he brings. Steal, to kill, to destroy. That path we see again, that way, that journey is of Satan. Jesus said, I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.

He wants us to have a journey of life that's abundant. How? Verse 11. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

It's about love beyond the self. In 1 John 3, 16, it says, by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. Therefore, we ought to lay down our lives with the brethren. That's part of having a happy, fulfilled life. See? That's part of what love really is. It can't just be associated with happiness and ease and comfort and thrills and everything the eye can see or the mouth can taste. It's about real living. It's about quality living. It's about fulfillment. It's about engagement. It's about relationships. And Jesus Christ wants us to have the great life that he has. You know the first time rejoice appears in the Bible? Let's go back and find it. The first time rejoice appears is in Leviticus 23. We're going to read verses 39 through 40, so we begin to wrap this up.

Leviticus 23, of course, is the Feast's chapter. And we'll begin in verse 39. Also, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month—that's the Feast of Tabernacles. Here we are. When you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the Feast of the Lord for seven days. On the first day there will be a Sabbath rest, and on the eighth day a Sabbath rest. You shall take for yourselves all these wonderful things. And at the end of verse 40, 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 a year, and it shall be a statute throughout all of your generations. So here we are. In all the generations that have been, here we are keeping the Feast of Tabernacles again. And it pictures abundant life, the good life, because of living God's way. The terms life, living, and live appear in the Bible 947 times. You know how often dying appears? Thirteen. You know, God is about life and living. He wants us to live. You and I, Paul says in Galatians 2 and verse 13, and you being dead in your trespasses, that's where we all were. Every one of us was dead. We were the walking dead in our trespasses, metaphorically. Going on in the verse, he has made alive together with him. We are going to have the opportunity to bring people along that journey as well, of repentance, of becoming alive from the dead of those trespasses.

Paul says in Romans chapter 6, we'll read verses 12 and 13. He's talking here about baptism, about putting to death our members with Christ, and then coming out and walking a new way of life. He says in verse 12, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body. Here we are. We're physical. Don't let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. In verse 13, do not present your members, your fingers, your mouth, your speech, whatever body part you have. Don't present them as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. So as we do this, we develop a certain character and a mindset that we can teach to others. And we've been down the road and we've made the missteps, and God's Spirit is saying, no, no, not that way. Walk this way. And we have developed gradually with God's patience and long suffering and those of friends and family around us, a character that is able finally to teach and mentor others. And God sees this as something very positive and wants to use you and me in that sense.

At the very end of this society's journey to death, which lies ahead the end time, the Great Tribulation, followed by the war and all that goes on, the terrible things that will go on, the very end of this society's journey to death just before it dies, it doesn't. Something unexpected happens. The worst of times suddenly changes to the best of times.

Jesus Christ appears. The bride appears. Satan the devil, the God of death, the way of death, is removed. It says in Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 2, if you want to turn there, that the worst of times changed to the best feast ever, we might say. The millennium begins.

Isaiah 9 verse 2, the people who walked in darkness, that was their path of darkness, have seen a great light. Those who have dwelt in the land of the shadow of death. That's been their journey. Remember the slaves. Remember the difficulties. Their life has been. They have dwelt in the land of the shadow of death. Upon them a light has shined. Verse 3, you have multiplied the nation and increased its joy. They rejoice before you according to the joy of harvest. Here we are at the harvest, the festival of harvest for these individuals, and they will have the joy of harvest.

I'd like to read Revelation chapter 20 and verse 12, because there are three eras, we might say. There is this present evil age. There's the millennial age, and there's the second resurrection. We celebrate all of these by being in this present evil age, looking forward to the millennium, which is the Feast of Tabernacles pictures, and celebrating the second resurrection. The Bible speaks to all three, and Revelation chapter 20 and verse 12 certainly applies to all three. Let's go there real quick. So, life more abundantly applies to all areas, not just ours. Notice here in Revelation 20, verse 12, and I saw the dead. Once again, this is metaphoric because they're standing.

We read or could read, Paul said, we were dead in our trespasses, so we were dead. Jesus talks about the dead. They will come to Jerusalem, small and great, standing before God.

Paul says of us, come boldly before the throne of God. We now stand before the throne of God. The people in the millennium will come to Jerusalem to God's throne. The people in the second resurrection, here we're reading, stand before God's throne, and books were open. The Greek word translated books is biblos. It's what the word Bible means. So the books of understanding are open. Jesus said, blessed are your eyes, for they see your ears, for they hear. So we have the books open to us. In the millennium, we've seen that the eyes of the deaf, the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the deaf will open and be unstopped. They will see. And here in the third or second resurrection, their eyes will see. And another book was opened, which is the book of life. Now, if you're baptized, your name is written in the book of life.

Anyone in the future that God gives his spirit to will have their name written in the book of life, including here, and going on. And the formerly dead, like we were, were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books, like we are being judged now, and like people in the millennium will be judged. So brethren, in conclusion, we observe the feasts of the Lord to proclaim people with lives. That's what these feasts are about, all of them, beginning with a Passover and days of unleavened bread and Pentecost, the first fruits, people with lives, and now people in the millennial period, people with lives, and people in the second resurrection, people with lives. We praise the givers of life, God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. We journey the path of life. I'd like to conclude with a passage that will help us direct our steps and help us guide future generations that we will be mentoring. Let's conclude with Psalm 34 and verse 12. Psalm 34 verse 12, and we'll also read verse 14.

Who is the man who desires life? Do you? Do you? The journey of life contains real life now and eternal life. So, who is the man who desires life? And in this life, he says, and loves many days. He's got a wonderful body. He's got a wonderful opportunity to have a life. Who is the man who desires life and loves many days that he may see good? Verse 14, depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. Verse 15, the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their cry. May God bless and keep you and lead you down the path of abundant life now and forever.