The Package of Law, Grace, Holy Spirt and Faith

But you know, we're on the eve of Pentecost. The topic I want to talk to you about today concerns Pentecost, something I'd like us all to understand as we go into that annual Sabbath tonight.

Begin with a question. What do you like on your eggs? Do you like salt or pepper or cheese or salsa?

Now, I ask that question in a particular fashion because my next question is even more important. On the Feast of Pentecost, things were given. We believe in the Church that the law was given to Israel on the Feast of Pentecost. And then, some 1,500 years later, we believe that the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost. Now, which do you like in your mind? The law or the Holy Spirit or faith?

Okay, you have your eggs and you have your mind. Which do you like? Which will you choose? These are good questions because as we approach the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of the First Fruits, which is really a celebration of the success of those students, those disciples, those children of God to be, their success, their graduation as it were, and they're moving on to the Kingdom of God, they had to accomplish some things. They had to do some things. And it's all well and good to celebrate the accomplishment. But what is it that they liked on their eggs?

Did they like law? Did they like grace? Did they like faith? Or did they like the Holy Spirit? I asked that question a little bit tongue-in-cheek, and I know I'm preaching to the choir. But before we start celebrating the Feast of Pentecost, what is it that we really stand for? What is it that we really embrace? What is it about the events of the past that took place on that day and that will take place in the future? Do we really wrap our arms around and our minds around? Too many believe that God presented a set of instructions for a while in the Old Testament, the law, and said it was good. But then later, he found it wasn't so good. So he presented another set of instructions, a new law, I give to you, Jesus said, and that was a lot better. And so the first law was done away with. It was inferior. That meant the previous instructions should be scrapped. And therefore, in that little spot in your Bible where there are two blank pages, you can rip the old part away and just hang out with the new part. All too often, we hear Christianity teaching that there's competition between the two, that there's some sort of animosity between the law and grace, between the observance of the commandments and faith, between the meticulous following of God's law and the whole of the following of God's law and the Holy Spirit. So which is it that you want on your eggs, as it were? Which is it that you really embrace? You have to go by law or grace, some say. You have to choose the commandments or Christ, some say. Well, as we look at Pentecost, the law, the Holy Spirit, and grace, I'd like to examine the New Covenant relationship that you and I have with the Word of God, just so that we're clear on it. Maybe a review on it. Maybe you'll pick up a point or two here that you haven't thought of before. But let's examine the New Covenant relationship with the symbols and the events that took place on the Feast of Pentecost. If we go back to 1 John 3, verses 4-7, we are told something by the Apostle John close to the end of his life, close to the end of this book, that begins to instruct us in some of these things. 1 John 3 and 4, whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

It's the breaking of God's law. And some would say, that law was done away, and now we have grace, and therefore, you don't have sin. In verse 5 it says, And you know that he, Jesus Christ, was manifested to take away our sins, and in him there is no sin.

Whoever abides in Christ does not sin. What sounds like that's because he nailed the law to the cross, because he got rid of the law, because we ripped that old covenant away, therefore you can't sin. 1 John 3 and 4, Whoever sinned neither seen him nor known him, little children let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Now what is righteousness? Righteousness is actually the obedience of God's law, and its fullness, and its full intent.

He goes on in verse 10, And this the children of God, and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.

Now we begin to come to the melding of the two concepts. Begin to come to see that there's something here that mainstream Christianity is ignoring. It's found in verse 11. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning.

John now brings the entire Bible together and stitches it together as if he took out a big needle and said, this all goes together. This is the message that you've heard from the very beginning when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, when Cain killed his brother Abel, when Noah was righteous and the world died, when Abraham obeyed God, and so on and so forth, and Israel, and the Exodus, and the kings, and the captivity, and coming down through Jesus Christ and him explaining that the commandments now have a helper that goes along with them, and therefore much more is expected. And he said, this is seamless. This all goes together. This is what you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, loving, caring for others outside of himself. I'd like to note here that one of the things that confuses people is the relationship of law to carnal people as opposed to the relationship of the same law to people with God's Holy Spirit or God living in them.

From some notes that I took from a sermon Mr. Armstrong gave probably 30 years ago, he says, if you read Galatians chapter 3 verses 1 through 3, here you see a book that often confuses people and they don't really realize who it's being written to. Galatians is not written to the Jews. It's not written to commandment keepers. It's written to Gentiles.

And in Galatians chapter 3 in the first three verses he says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth. These Gentiles wanted to go back and break the law or they wanted to go back and somehow be able to claim and work out their own salvation, earn their own salvation. But they did not want to obey the truth.

They didn't want to recognize the truth. And what was that? Just a few words later, the word Jesus Christ is mentioned. See, the Jews of that day did not recognize Jesus Christ. They didn't accept Him as the Messiah. They killed Him. And the Jews kept wanting people to go back into Judaism, back into the Old Covenant, back into sacrifices, and back into the rituals of that way in order to be perfected, approved. But they don't want to recognize Jesus Christ, who was clearly portrayed among them as crucified. This I only want to learn from you. Did you receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the law or the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, and are you now being made perfect by the flesh? In other words, they had begun to come to understand the truth. And the Spirit is that Jesus Christ died for their sins, and through repentance, He will be gracious as you try to keep the law. But now do you want to push all that aside? You want to push the reality of all the sacrificial system aside and go back to the rituals, to the symbols, and try to be saved by that? Mr. Armstrong said, as a nation, Israel needed statutes and judgments. The law of the rituals was a substitute for Jesus Christ.

It was a type. The sacrifices of the animals was a reminder that there would have to be payment, bloodshed, God's bloodshed, for sin. Can you see how silly it is then to set aside God who came and died and the forgiveness of sin and go back and get your animals out and your ceremonies and your rituals and try to be saved that way?

The rituals were physical things to do morning, noon, and night, and the purpose was to teach the habit of obedience, including washings and sacrifices, including circumcisions and various other physical things. It's interesting that the pagan component, counterpart, I should say, in society did not have those things, and so therefore they developed a self-sacrifice. It was called penance, and we still see some of that today, where you figure out a payment equal to your sin, and then you pay that yourself. You go through a penance. You go through some sort of hurting yourself or giving up something that's sort of equal. You go in and tell somebody, I've sinned. Okay, well then based on that sin, you go out and do this to yourself. But the rituals were also a substitute for God's Holy Spirit. They were done rarely to remind a person instead of having God's Holy Spirit in us and prompting us to do what's right, to recognize what's wrong and do what's right. And when the Holy Spirit came, we didn't need the rituals. They didn't need the rituals. And when Jesus Christ died, the animal sacrifices did not need to be done anymore. In verse 10, For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse.

When he's talking about the works of the law, he's not talking about obeying the law here. If you look that up, you'll find that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, that phrase that's translated the works of the law was used. It was a rare thing in the Bible. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was used in a common way. And it was explained to be honoring, as it were, the system, the rituals. Behind me is a case, and in it are some very honorable scrolls.

And one can come each week and take out those scrolls and honor them and parade them and show them. But I don't believe that anybody who normally attends here would argue that what is in those scrolls is not kept. Today is a pretty good work day for those who often meet here.

So there is an honor that's bestowed or a ritualistic honor that's given. And Jesus Christ saw that quite often in those that were against him. They were all about the rituals, the processes, but not about the following through from the heart and the keeping of what was intended by them. And so when he says here, as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, what is the curse? What's the curse that affects all humans, you and me? Death, eternal death.

The soul, the life that sins, it shall die. That is the curse. In other words, just because we have the rituals, we have the types, we have those things that remind us that sin is sin and sin must be atoned for. Just because we have that doesn't mean that we have been forgiven, doesn't mean we have life and therefore we are under the curse. Doesn't mean those things are bad, they're good. They actually are quite good. But if that's all you have, if that's it, you're just carrying around your death sentence. This Bible, I mean, I could walk around with this all day long. And if all I have is the understanding of what sin and death is, and all I have is the realization that I am a sinner, I'm in a sense carrying around my own death certificate, aren't I? I need something that's going to liberate me from that, that's going to intercede to free me from that. I need someone to come along and save me from my curse.

Where it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things which are written in the book of the law to do them. And I'm sorry, but I have not continued in everything that the book of the law, this law of God, has said to do. I've made mistakes. I've slipped along the way. I find myself every day finding things that I'm not doing properly, actually not just slips, but actual sins, self-centeredness, getting involved in selfish pursuits or selfish discourse on the Sabbath. These things come up, and then what do we do? Well, we're cursed.

But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God as evidence, evident for the just, shall live by faith. And faith is a total trust in God and living what God says. It's faith with works. It's faith in action. Yet the law is not of faith, but the man who does them shall live by them. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. Verse 13. How? Having become a curse for us because it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. The wonderful thing that Jesus Christ is for us is a Savior. And if you're young in the church and you've grown up in religion and you hear about Jesus the Savior, you probably hear it like me, and it doesn't mean much. It just means Jesus the Savior is like another name. We don't realize that, you know, here we are hanging off a cliff and we're going to die and we're hanging there and there's no way out of this. We're going to fall off of whatever it is we're hanging on to and we're going to drop 10,000 feet and go splat.

Okay? And so somebody else shinny's out onto that, whatever it is, and says, I'll tell you what, here's a lifeline. It's only good for one person. Here, I'll tie it around you and you can swing back over to the cliff and live and I'll fall 10,000 feet and go splat for you. Now that's a Savior. Okay? That's somebody who came and saved you out of a difficult situation, but somebody in that situation had to die.

It's a wonderful thing what has gone on. And for a person to say, well, no, I don't need, I don't accept Christ, I don't want Christ, they didn't believe in Christ, I want to go back and try to work this out myself, you know, in some other way that's not going to work, that's not going to happen. It would be foolish. It would just be utter foolishness.

The rituals were a substitute. They were written in the book of law. Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 31 and verse 24. Another thing about the Apostle Paul, I guess God inspired him to not define what aspect of the law he was talking about. I don't know that he ever did. If he's talking about the rituals, he calls it the law. If he's talking about the 10 commandments, he calls it the law. If he's talking about loving God and being perfect like Christ, he talks about the law. If he's talking about the ceremonial part of the law, he calls it the law. If he's talking about the sacrifices, he just calls it the law. And it's up to the reader to figure out what he's talking about. And that's why Peter said in Paul's writings, there's things that are very hard to understand because he doesn't differentiate. And I think God had him write it that way to help perpetuate the blindness. Where whenever self comes along and I want to do things my way, not God's way, all I have to do is get into the writings of Paul and I can read them my way and I can get my way and I can go my way and feel like I'm going to be fine. But if I come in with the mind of Christ and I read the writings of Paul, I can find God's will, I can focus on God's will, and with his help I can perform God's will. You can take the same writings with two different mindsets and come to two totally different conclusions. So we don't have to go in and play the games or make the arguments because if you're not of God, you won't even understand the argument. You just won't understand it.

In Deuteronomy chapter 31 and verse 24, once this law was written, the books of the law, the Pentateuch, the first five books, so it was when Moses had completed completed writing the words of this law in a book when they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites who bore the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord saying. Now what was in the Ark of the Covenant? That special Ark that you couldn't touch unless you were a Levite. It was special stuff in there. Remember what was in there? The Ten Commandments, two tablets, the stick that budded, some manna. There's some pretty neat stuff in there. Now notice, when this book of the law, we're talking now about the rituals of the law, the ceremonial, the sacrificial part of the law, when the law was finished, that Moses commanded the Levites who bore the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord saying, take this book of the law and put it beside the Ark of the Covenant, outside, that it may be there as a witness against you, against you.

Mr. Armstrong correlated this with the rituals of the law found back in Galatians 3, verses 9-12.

Galatians 3, verses 9-12.

It says, so then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

For as many as are of the works of the law, these are under a curse, which we read before.

If all you have is those rituals, then you remain outside of salvation. You remain outside of forgiveness. You remain outside of a relationship with God because you don't have your sins forgiven. It's like you and me not having baptism and not having the release that comes from the forgiveness of sin. In verse 19, what purpose then does the law serve? Now again, here's the word law, but what are we talking about? What purpose do the rituals of the law serve? It was added because of transgressions. Notice it was added to the law of God. It was added to love your neighbor. It was added to love the Lord with your heart, soul, and might, which incidentally were all written in the book of the law. Notice these were added till the seed should come, till Jesus Christ would come, to whom the promise was made, and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. In verse 24, therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ. You see how many in Christianity will say the commandments, the laws of love, the direction of God was a tutor to bring us to Christ, and yet what we're talking about, the rituals of the law, the ceremonial sacrificial rituals of the law, those were tutors. They were telling us that sin had to be atoned for. They were telling us that blood of precious lands, innocent lands, had to be shed. They were telling us that Christ would have to come and pay the price. They were teaching. They were a tutor. They were teaching about. The difference between teaching about and participating in. Therefore, the law, not all the law, but this part of the law, the rituals of the law, were tutors to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. We're not justified by the law, we're justified by our trust in God and our living of his laws. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. I think we can see that the law that was given on Sinai and the righteous holy laws of God have never changed. As John said, those laws have been enforced since the first person drew breath and will be enforced until the last person draws breath. Those never change. The faith of Christ comes into us through the Holy Spirit, and it gives us a mind of obedience.

Now, here is the second aspect of the Feast of Pentecost, then. First, you have the laws of God that are revealed, and then you have the means by which to understand, love, and keep them.

So you see, it's not what do you like on your eggs?

Salt, pepper, cheese, or salsa.

You get them all. See, I'd hate to take any of those off my eggs.

It's not law or grace or faith or the Holy Spirit. It's law plus the Holy Spirit and the faith of God and His graciousness to those who are trying to become like Him. That's the process that we want, and that's what God offers us, and that's the great thing that has come to the first fruits. And that is what makes the first fruits successful, to understand the holy righteous law of God, to have not only the understanding of it, but the conviction, the faith of God.

In us, to realize that if we obey that, it's going to be much better for us. And if we obey and really adapt that mind of God, there are promises, and we trust an invisible God with invisible promises that if we sacrifice this life and all our selfish pursuits, we do not maximize our potential that we could have as selfish human beings. But in our one life, we will sacrifice that, and instead, love and serve and give. That faith, then combined with His mind in us, will help us keep the law and be the children of God. And during that process, He will be very gracious, very understanding. He will not hold things against us. We will be in the right place, and the right in the right, the hands of God.

We go back to Revelation 12 and verse 17. Revelation 12 and verse 17.

I'd like to look at a few other scriptures here, other than what Mr. Armstrong was covering.

It says, And the dragon was enraged with the woman. This is the church. At some point in the future, we believe this will take place at the beginning of the tribulation period. And he went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, the rest of the church, the true church's offspring. Notice, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Here's a little more cheese and salsa, if you will. See, there's two things there. They have the commandments, they have the law, and they also have the teaching. They also have the doctrine. They also have the words of Jesus Christ. They have the Old and the New Testament. They have the entire Bible, and they're using it. I think that's an important scripture. The other scriptures cross the page in Revelation 14, 12. Here is the patience or the perseverance of the saints.

What causes somebody to persevere in godliness? To persevere when times are tough. Here's the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. They have both. They have the law, and they have the trust and obedience of the law that comes through Jesus Christ. You know, the Holy Spirit, I think, personally, we sometimes minimize what the Holy Spirit is.

We could talk about this more at another time, but we tend to think of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit as sort of a force field or kind of a connection. You kind of get plugged in. But I believe, personally, my personal feeling, that the Holy Spirit is describing God the Father and Jesus Christ in us, literally, because Jesus said, I am going, I'm going to die, but I will come again to you. And this helper, he said, I will be there, I will come back.

He said, I will be in you, various scriptures that you put together there. And so rather than just think, well, God the Father and Jesus Christ are in heaven, and we have this 50-gillion-gillion-year electrical cord, you know, it's plugged in. It is more that Jesus Christ lives in us if we allow him to, and God the Father lives in us, and that's what the Holy Spirit is.

It's Holy, it's Spirit. Consider this. You also have a Spirit. The Spirit in man or the Spirit that goes with your brain makes you who you are. That is who you are. That's the part of you that returns to God when you die, and he hangs on to that. Your Spirit is who you are. God's Spirit is what he is, or who he is. Those two spirits combined unify. Jesus Christ said, I want to be in you, you in me, and us in them, and them in us. In other words, those spirits commingle. The miracle of your thinking is who you are, and that's called a Spirit.

God is Holy Spirit. My Spirit is not Holy. I'll tell you what, it's just Spirit, and it's a wonderful thing that there's a miracle there, and I can think and be and develop a character. Well, that's who I am. But the Holy Spirit is the Holy essence or mind or being or whatever it is of God. Now, I'm not Spirit, so I can't tell you much more than that. I don't know how that relationship really works.

I know that God can be omnipresent and in many different places, but he said he will be in us, and that Holy Spirit lives in us. In other words, part of him is in us. That came on the Feast of Pentecost, and it changed those disciples. It changed Peter from a very self-seeking brash man into a person with godly depth. In a very short time, the disciples were apostles who had the ability to teach the doctrines that they had heard for years from the heart and understand them. That is having God living in you. God in us, the Bible speaks of. In Revelation chapter 1, in verses 2 and 3, Revelation 1 verse 2, this is John.

He said, "...who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ to all things that he saw." So he would witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. "...blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it." All of this, you see, comes together, doesn't it? Christ, his testimony, his law, those who read it, those who hear it, those who do it, they all swirl together.

They are all of the same spirit because the spirit and man mixes with the Holy Spirit of God.

And then we find firstfruits are the result and a celebration of minds that were changed from carnal to spiritual. I found a letter yesterday from Mr. Armstrong from the Radio Church of God, written December 12, 1958. This is kind of a timeless letter. I'm not sure who it was to, in fact, because it's not addressed to anybody and it's short, but there's some thoughts that came into his mind when he was in Palm Springs on this December day. He doesn't even introduce it with a dear anybody. He just starts writing, I have just noticed in going over letters written in our letter answering department, a tendency which most of us have unconsciously followed.

It is the habit of speaking of salvation only in terms of living out a life of obedience to God. In other words, obeying the law. You know, he could have written this yesterday because we stress the law so much. I know in my sermons I do. And so this is why it really jumped out at me and I want to share this with you.

We seem to have a tendency to speak only and solely of obedience, commandment keeping, exclamation point. We seldom mention that experience of conversion, utter surrender, total repentance, accepting Christ in living faith as personal Savior and receiving the Holy Spirit. See what all goes into Pentecost? It's not just the law, is it? We can't say, well, today we're celebrating the law and if we keep the law, we'll be in the kingdom.

No, there's so much more that goes into that. That's why the Holy Spirit would later come as part of what that day represents. We do not seem to stress sufficiently Christ the Savior faith in Him and then His faith in us, living faith, which is inseparable from obedience.

We must remember that the orthodox, fundamental, worldly churches and evangelists stress almost solely just Christ and faith in Him and accepting Him as personal Savior. Our more or less general omission of this leads many to automatically assume we preach a gospel of earning salvation by works. To a world accustomed to hearing almost all together about Christ and a born-again experience, which of course they do not understand, we put ourselves and God's truth in a wrong light. Instead of speaking about being converted, changed by real repentance, surrender, faith in Christ and receiving God's Holy Spirit, we speak of coming into the truth. The right set of laws, the right set of rules.

A man may come into the truth, that is, let a certain amount of truth come into his mind and still be totally unconverted. We must not lead people to gather that we believe only in commandment keeping, which to them means Saturday keeping, and earning salvation by works. We must stress the whole truth. When you look at the elements of the Feast of Pentecost, that's really what's there. What did Jesus tell the disciples, who were trying to keep the law and doing a pretty good job of it in their own way, their own carnal way, says, you wait here in Jerusalem until the Helper comes, until I come back, until I come in the Spirit into your mind. You wait here, and it took faith for them to do that. Remember, initially they went fishing, but they came back and they waited in Jerusalem 50 days. The Feast of Pentecost was actually probably after Jesus Christ died about 46 days after his death and about probably 43 days after his resurrection, something like that. But they came and they waited in Jerusalem. They had the law, they had faith, they received the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit illuminated them physically, but more spiritually. Jesus spoke to them, spoke through them, I should say, using tongues and foreign languages and showed his power through people that he would begin to use in the work of the church. Mr. Armstrong says, we must stress the whole truth more. Repentance, surrender, Christ as Savior, being changed by God's Spirit, as God's gift, by grace, following our conforming to his conditions of repentance and faith in Christ, the change from carnality to spiritual mindedness, being begotten, and then the overcoming and enduring and growing life of obedience and living faith, which Christ living his life in us. Let's not leave Christ in grace out of our speech and letters with love in Jesus' name, Herbert W. Armstrong. I love how that letter just encapsulates the meaning of a Christian's life and celebrates the result of what happens in that those candidates ultimately become part of the family of God in the festival of the firstfruits.

In John chapter 13 and verse 34, we can see now why Jesus Christ says a new commandment I give you, John 13, 34.

Right after the Passover service, and he had washed their feet, he tells them, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

This commandment he had already said, love your neighbor as yourself, but he's telling them, you can now perform this. You will be able to perform this because of that which I am about to do. Because of the symbols which you have taken, once those symbols become a reality, in his death and body that was stricken, you will be able to love one another as I have loved you.

That was going to be the difference. That's the difference of the commandment, not that people should love one another, but that we should do it as he has loved us, that you also should love one another. And by this we'll all know that you are my disciples. Why? Because Jesus Christ would be in these men and these ladies, and he would think like they did. They would be able to perform things and understand things and eradicate the nature that is so long like humanity, which nobody else could. It's a miracle. It is absolutely impossible for a human to do these things. And therefore, when you see the miracle, others will know that you are my disciples.

Because I'm going to be in you if you have this love for one another. Without Jesus Christ, we can't do that. It's impossible.

In conclusion, let's take a look at a few combinations that are part of our Christian walk. Instead of saying, are you under law or under grace? Do you want cheese or salsa on your legs?

Do you want faith or works?

We have the testimony of Christ and the testimony of commandments that were kept.

We have law and grace, the graciousness of God for those who are keeping the law.

The beautiful thing that comes from what the Feast of Pentecost performed was it gave us the holy law of God, but it gave us the heart to want to obey it, and the ability to obey it. It's not just, okay, you've got this law, you've got this mountain to climb, and you don't really want to do it, but now you have the possibility of doing it. So if you really work at it, you can do it. I don't mean it like that. I mean willing desire, willing desire. After a while, you come to the state where David said, Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day long. In other words, it is so cool. It is so awesome. It is just beyond anything else around. Oh, how love I your law. Submissive obedience and a willing desire. The old commandments and the new commandments. Faith and works. Law and grace. All of these is what God brings to you and me.

It is closed by reading Revelation 2 and verse 26. Revelation 2 and verse 26.

Jesus says, in my Bible here, it is all read letters, he who overcomes, if you love God and you are putting aside all your wrong human nature and with his laws and his faith that he puts in us and the love for others and the graciousness that he brings, if you overcome, which means you win, you champion over the nature of Satan, and you keep my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations.

We are going to reign. That is what the Feast of First Roots is about.

We are going to graduate from this human life and be spiritual teachers, which I hope to talk more about tomorrow. We are going to be leaders of a different way in a different society in the kingdom of God because we have come to embrace the mind of God, the ways of God. And it is through the events that really are portrayed on this Feast of Pentecost that we are able to do those things and that we willingly participate in those things.

As we go into the Feast of Pentecost, let's celebrate all of these and the intermingling and the merging of them in your mind and mine, and how they all work together for good in the minds of those who love God. And then we truly can celebrate the day when we will graduate, and we will be resurrected and ultimately return, or I'm sorry, reign with Jesus Christ when he returns.