A Pilgrim's Feast

Thank you very much, Mary. And good afternoon, everyone. It's good to be here with all of you in Jamaica. I know some of you are asking the most important question that you could ask at this time, since Mr. Zimmerman introduced me as giving the afternoon sermon. It is, how long is this guy going to talk? Because you're already looking at your watches. And I've got mine off, so I can barely see it. My eyes have kind of dimmed in gears, so I really can't see it down there, so it probably doesn't really matter anyway.

I walked out before the film ended, and the clouds were gathering out there, and I thought, well, it's going to rain, so we might as well all just stay in here anyway. And let me dump the whole load on you. No, they do things a little different in Jamaica. They show you the feast on the first, and get a shorter sermon up front, and then they take your money first, too. So, that's all right.

As they say in Jamaica, there's no worries. No worries. No problem. No problem, I remind. I have been here before, as I know many of you have as well. I was here the year of the big hurricane, 04, Hurricane Ivan. The local brethren will remember that one, and so we have returned. But it is good to be with you at the feast here this year. For whatever reason, you and I have come to Jamaica to keep the feast. There's really one point that it all comes down to, one reason, and that is to come before God as He has commanded us to do at a time such as this.

In the Offertory message, it was read from Deuteronomy 16 about the three times in a year. And we come before God as He has commanded us. I think all of us who have been keeping the feasts for a number of years know that and we understand that. But we come because of God's command. There is a scene from the Bible that I've latched onto in recent weeks and thinking about the Feast of Tabernacles beginning to prepare my mind about it and to even give a couple of pre-feast messages back in Cincinnati in regard to that.

And that is a scene we're all familiar with back in the book of Genesis. If you will, please turn back to Genesis 49. And let's look at a scene that is really a wonderful scene of a family. Genesis 49. It is the scene where the patriarch Jacob called all of his family together and to give them some last words. Genesis 49 and verse 1 is what we'll look at here. It says, Jacob called his sons and said, Gather together that I may tell you, what shall befall you in the last days. And it's a scene where you can imagine Jacob old, perhaps laying on what would be his deathbed, with days perhaps only to live.

And he gathered all of his sons and his family and they're ringing the bed around him. And they're themselves, they're old men. They have children and grandchildren, probably great-grandchildren. And this revered figure, Jacob, is now going to tell them what will befall them in the last days. And it's a great scene because it's a family scene. And any time a family can gather in a home around a table, around a backyard picnic table, or on an occasion like we do here during the Feast of Tabernacles, many of us gather with our own families and get everyone together.

We're here with part of our family for the first time in a number of years to keep a feast together, as are many of you. And we do these things through the years, maybe at Thanksgiving and other occasions, anniversaries and this and that. And there are always good times because any time you get your family together, it's a good thing. And the older we get, the more we realize that it's really all about family.

We come back to certain things that we may have forgotten in our younger years, but that's what it's all about. And Jacob, with all that his children had put him through, and he kind of records some of that. You had Judah, who had had some personal problems, as well as Reuben and Semenon Levi were a couple of hotheads who had created a massacre on one occasion, and then they'd all conspired to sell Joseph off into slavery.

So there were a lot of stories around that bed on that day. But Jacob told his sons what will befall them in the last days. In the last days. And as we would go through this, if we would in another message, we can pick out certain things that do tell us telltale signs about Jacob or Israel's children in the last days. But think about it for a moment.

It is a man telling his children, because he knew them well, and as God, I think, led him even to go beyond their own lifetimes to their own progeny and talk about what would happen. But it is a remarkable statement of a man looking into the eyes of his sons and being able to tell them what's going to happen to them.

Do you think you may have ever, as a father or mother, looked into the eyes of your child, your grandchildren, or your great-grandchildren? Because you saw certain characteristics, or you saw a glint or a gleam, or just a look, and you begin to think, this is going to be an interesting person. And you have dreams and hopes for them, and you kind of project ahead. Jacob did that, I think. What I like about this scene is we've all come before God on the Feast of Tabernacles, is that this is what God is doing with you and I today, and during this festival.

He has called us around His table, and He is going to tell us our future. He's going to tell us what lies ahead for each of us. And He's going to talk to us in a very direct and a personal way. Now, I hope that none of you go out of here looking for some vision on the beach tonight, or to hear something in your room, and you know, a still small voice.

That's not what I'm angling toward. But God works in different ways. As we study His Word, He speaks to us through His Word. He inspires certain messages at times, the sermon and offering, whatever it may be. He tells us, and He does, I think, speak to us there. I think also God can even speak to us and work with us through our relationships that we develop, and fellowship.

And as we talk in the aisles, and as we over the meals during an occasion like this, I think that we can learn as well. And if we are tuned into God, as we should be, we can hear what He might be telling us.

So, I ask us to consider for a few minutes what it is that we have come here to learn at the Feast of Tabernacles, 2013. I hope that what we learn is what God wants us to learn, and what God is going to tell us about ourselves, you and I, through all the experience that we have here at this period. And I know that if we have come to keep a sacred feast, to keep a feast that allows us to fear God, because we know that this is His appointed time. And as we looked out last night, bingo! There was that big full moon, and I didn't have to worry about anything else.

Nobody else telling me how to calculate it. That's all I needed to know.

I also have a little white card I keep in my wallet. It tells me when to assemble. I learned how to do that. Third-year Bible, Ambassador College took the test, passed it. Folks, that's all I needed to know. I put the book away and got my little white card. You don't have a little white card. Get you one. Then you'll know when to assemble as God commands us to. You don't have to worry about what somebody else thinks. And we are here to learn and to hear what God wants us to understand regarding our future. And as we look at the Scriptures, as we look at what the Scriptures tell us about our future and the world's future through the meaning of these feast of tabernacles, it is a wonderful future. Oh, there's going to be some bumps along the way.

And there's going to be something called a great tribulation in the day of the Lord.

But beyond that, and we've already talked about those events in the day of trumpets, there is that point in time that Revelation 20 tells us. Let's go ahead and turn over there. In verse 4, as John saw it, thrones, those that sat on them, and judgment was committed to them.

And in the story flow of Revelation 20, this brings us right to this point of this period of the Feast of Tabernacles. And in John's vision, he saw souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the Word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years. A thousand years. And blessed and holy in verse 6 is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years. And those two verses, a capstone prophetic teaching here at this point in the story, tell us the length of time of this event that has come to be known as the Millennium, of a thousand-year period of Christ's ruling on this earth and the saints assisting him as joint heirs. That's our future. This is what God is telling us, is going to happen and is going to come. As we do the things that verse 4 talks about, as we don't worship a beast and the power behind that beast, the satanic powers that will rise in one final effort at the end of the age to thwart the plan of God and do not receive his mark and we remain faithful. That's what God is telling us as we sit around his table during this period of time. This is our future. That's why we come. That's why we make plans immediately after going home of each feast to plan for the next feast. They're all the means that are available to us because this is what God wants us to do and to keep a sacred festival. We have come to keep the feast in this way. And our actions, by coming here, foreshadow what the nations of the world are going to do in the future. I always think it's important that we recognize, brethren, that what you've done in getting here is good. And I want to thank you and give you a compliment and encouragement for getting here to the feast this year. It's always a challenge and always has its struggles and things happen as we plan and the days that finally then lead up to the feast. There's always a glitch in somebody's life and situation with a school, with job, and with family or other matters that perhaps threaten us not being able to get to the feast. And we have to make all those arrangements and then we have to travel. When you go to an international site, like many of us have come as done as we come down to Jamaica, we recognize that the travel can be just absolutely grueling, going through airports. This year, my wife and I took on the task of carrying, bringing our two grandchildren along with us. We were immediately transported back 30 years.

And we realized why we stopped at two kids. But we got here. We got here.

And it takes time. So thank you for coming. You made the right choice. You should understand that you made the right choice to come to God's Feast of Tabernacles. It's always the right choice.

It's never wrong. And thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. And thank you for being a part of the Church of God and for supporting His people and for being faithful in that way. What we are doing as we are here is a foreshadowing of what the nations are going to do in the future. In Isaiah chapter 2, the beautiful passage beginning in verse 2, that again talks to what will come to pass in the latter days. That the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow to it. That doesn't happen yet.

The mountain of the Lord's house has not been established on the top of all the other nations.

Revelation 11, verse 12, has to occur first when the nations of this world, the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. When that happens, then the mechanism will be in place for the nations to come to Zion in this way. Verse 3, it says, Many people shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. That is in the future, too. Not just for us, but for all the nations who are at that time and in that period beyond the return of Christ. And He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. War among the nations will be at an end. There will be another final battle at the end of the thousand years, but it will be of a different nature than all that have gone up to the beginning of the millennium. They will not learn it, at least. They will not learn it from that government. There will not be a military college. There will not be a command staff. There will not be an armaments industry. They will not learn war anymore. They will begin, then, to learn the way of peace. Jeremiah chapter 50 tells us another part of this scene. Jeremiah chapter 50 and verses 4 and 5. In those days, and in that time, says the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they of the children of Judah, together.

With continual weeping, they shall come and seek the Lord their God.

Israel and Judah were divided at a point in the ancient story they had yet to be reunited. Genesis 37 tells us there will be a time in the future when they will be yet reunited.

But they will come and they will seek God. They shall ask away to Zion, with their faces thwarted, saying, Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that will not be forgotten. This is the future. This is what God has called us to come together and to be reminded of.

And I'm sure that there will be many other scriptures turned to in the course of this week that will tell us that as well, as we come to keep God's Feast of Tabernacles and we are here.

You know, there's a time in the Feast that, as we observe the Feast, that we come and we finally get settled in and we have so much available to us to do. And in a site like this, there is natural beauty. There's a man-made beauty in one sense in terms of just the luxury of a hotel and a facility like this that allows us to eat a little bit more than we would eat during the rest of the year and do a number of different things. We can lay on the beach. We can go to the pool. We can go scuba diving. We can take a tour. We can run a zipline.

We can get on a horse and go out into the middle of the water, if that's what you want to do.

You need to ask yourself, all of us at any time, why have we come? Why are we here? Which was asked last night, and that is the question that's been asked ever since I began coming to the Feast myself many, many years ago. Why are we here? And it's always a good question to ask because there are many reasons why we might come. As I said, this is our second time as a family to come back to Jamaica, and it's always good to see the Jamaican brethren and to see many of you who were at a state in the church and have been for a number of years where we tend to travel in packs. I don't know if you've noticed that. You go to one feast site, and a few years later you go to another international feast site. You see many of the same people who travel together and have families, and we've kind of got this pack mentality in these ways that we approach this. And that is all good. It is good to see old faces and friends and renew acquaintances.

But always we need to ask ourselves, why we came? Why did you come to Jamaica?

Was it for the beach? Was it for the nice pool, nice facility? Was it for this Feast of Tabernacles? For the service? All of those are good. God tells us to come and to rejoice.

And He tells us to come and enjoy what we have saved through the year to allow ourselves to be at a place like this and to be together as friends and family, and to just have some time to certainly back away from our normal routine and fellowship, come to church, study, think about these questions, think about these matters. And these are all so important. Ask yourself, what has brought you here? All of those have brought me here. There's one other thing that's brought me here. There's one other individual that's brought me to Jamaica. Solomon Gundy.

When I came nine years ago, I met Solomon Gundy. Some of you know what Solomon Gundy is.

You'll have to meet Solomon Gundy. Solomon Gundy is a food.

Had the Jamaican bobsled team eaten Solomon Gundy, they would have won a gold medal.

I am convinced that before every 100-meter race, Usain Bolt eats Solomon Gundy. If you have not had an experience Solomon Gundy, understand that it is fermented fish paste and some of the hottest peppers you could ever imagine all ground together in a little bitty jar. And it's good.

So I'm looking forward to some Solomon Gundy. I can't find it in the States. Where I live, they have the world's biggest international food market, a place called Jungle Jims.

When I first went there, I went to the Jamaican section. I was looking for Solomon Gundy.

They didn't have any Solomon Gundy. I went to the management and I got down on my knees.

I said, please, stock some Solomon Gundy. And they said they wouldn't. They haven't done it to this day, so I had to come back to Jamaica to get some Solomon Gundy. I speak with a little bit of jest, but I hope to find that. But there are any number of reasons.

And after we go through them all, the physical, the spiritual, I hope that at the top of our list, and I trust that it will be, is a spiritual reason for us to be here. And that that will prevail, so that we will be able to understand and hear what it is that our Father has called us here to understand and to know about, not only our future, but also our present.

You know, we read these Millennial scriptures and they inspire and they encourage. They give us hope that God is a God of history. He is a righteous judge, and that He will turn the tables. Satan will be bound, and man time will be able to learn peace and no longer learn war. And those scriptures encourage us, and they paint a vision that keep us moving toward the Kingdom of God. But God also has messages that help us to understand not just our future, but our present.

Because we will go back from the feast, and what we take in our notebooks, what we take in our hearts, has the need to propel us into the coming months and to keep us focused upon the goal of the Kingdom.

And so, there is a need for us to understand, in a sense, our past and our present.

And I think God tells us that too, in Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2.

God weaves through the apostle Paul in this message.

A reminder of our past and of our present. Chapter 2 and verse 19, Paul writes that, Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God. We're not strangers, we're not foreigners to God. We've been reconciled through the blood of Christ to a relationship that is with God through Christ.

And it also binds us together because we're not strangers among ourselves.

We are part of the together as members and as saints of the household of God.

You see, again, in Paul's language, in a sense, what was written by Moses back in Genesis 49, where a father gathered around his bedside his sons to tell them about their future.

And there's always the concept of the family and a household woven in and around the story that God has for us.

In verse 20, he said, Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built, together for a dwelling place of God and the Spirit.

That's our present out of our past. We're no longer strangers and foreigners. We are now being put together into a dwelling place of God by the Spirit. And God dwells in us if we have His Spirit. He lives His life in us through His Spirit. That's our present reality. That, because it's working in us, brings us back to God on a regular basis and on the Sabbath and on the annual Holy Days.

Going on, skipping over to chapter 3 and verse 14, Paul writes this as if you could pick up the thought from the previous verse I just read where Paul says, For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.

God is putting together a family. That is one very important thing he wants all of us collectively to understand as we come around his table at the Feast of Tabernacles. He is putting together a family. That's why it is about family. It's all about family. The physical families into which we are born and we learn and we grow through and quarrel with and love and come in and out of through the years and the cycles of our lives, but at the very end of the time, in a sense, we all want to have our family gather around us and to be able to die looking into their eyes and have that peace.

God is telling us that the whole family in heaven and earth is named after him. He is our Father and he has called us to learn and to be taught. And that is what this goes on to say.

That he would grant you in verse 16, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly and above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

This is our present. There's one other passage of Scripture that we can turn to that can help us also focus on our presence that I think God gives us. It's in the book of Hebrews, chapter 12.

Hebrews chapter 12.

The book of Hebrews was written to encourage God's people through the ages to hang on, to endure, to keep their eyes focused upon Christ as the high priest. All that the book of Hebrews builds to is to encourage.

Chapter 11 talks about the examples of faith and people who, like Abraham, Noah, Sarah, and others who went before us as examples and of witnesses whose example we follow in our lives.

And it all comes down in one sense for our understanding, I think, here today in verse 22 of chapter 12, where Paul writes, But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels.

I'd like for you to stop and think about that for a few minutes. This is what we have come to.

Any time we kneel in prayer, we come to this through Christ as our high priest in a sense.

This is a vision. It's painted in many different ways. Revelation chapter 1 and chapter 4 give us some more astounding visions about the throne of God and what is taking place there.

At this point, just look at this, we are come to the city of the living God, before Him the heavenly Jerusalem and a company of angels, to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, who are registered in heaven, to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. This is part of a larger description throughout the Scriptures of what we've come before, as God has called us to His table. And that we should understand. And He goes on to speak about the things that cannot be shaken, and this cannot be shaken. And He brings it down to verse 28, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. Did you get that? Let's read it again. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, the kingdom is to come yet in its fullness. The Paul writes that we are receiving a kingdom. One of the first things I ever heard in my years in the church, 12 years old, we are here. Why are we here? The answer was always this. We are here to get a foretaste of the world tomorrow. That's what I was taught when I was 12 years old in Big Sandy, Texas, about the Feast of Tabernacles. Why are we here? We are here to get a foretaste of the kingdom of God. That's what the Feast is about. It helps shape and define me. But that carries on throughout the year, too, because as Paul writes, we are receiving a kingdom. To the degree we understand that and live God's kingdom in our life by living its laws, by striving for peaceful relationships among ourselves, and to let Christ's life in us reflect all of that and more, in a sense, in that very real way, we receive the kingdom. We continue to get a foretaste for it. That means when we come together during the Feast of Tabernacles, it is all that richer and more important for us to focus upon that. We are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. It cannot be shaken. It is sure, just as sure as these scriptures that we've read in the New Testament and the Old Testament and compile dozens and dozens more upon it to explain it. It cannot be shaken. Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. We're receiving that kingdom in our lives as we obey God, as we strive and work and struggle and live and endure. So let me bring you back to the table with God as our Father sitting at the head of the table. I've shown you very quickly, just as Jacob did in a sense, and God shows us really, He shows us our future. And He shows us our presence. And hopefully we can build on that through all the other messages through the week. But those are pretty big matters, aren't they? Let me ask you this question. What is it you think as our Father looks at you and me, but you? As you've come to this year's feast, as you've prepared your financial physical lodgings, and hopefully above all your spiritual heart, to keep the feast, what is it that God will tell you and teach you during this feast? What do you think it will be?

Now, at this point in the sermon, I could give you three points. But you know what? I don't have time.

Because you're already looking at your watches.

And you want that non-alcoholic strawberry piña colada back there.

Or I could give you five points. I certainly wouldn't try to give you six.

You stretch it, and maybe I give you seven and try to be complete and perfect.

But I don't have time. So let me leave you with one point.

And you make it. You make the point. You fill in the blank.

You fill in the blank as to what it is that you think you need to hear from your father at this year's feast of Tabernacles. It might be that you need a bit more courage. It might be that you need a bit more help with overcoming some particular aspect of your envy, your anger, malice toward others. You need help overcoming some of your fears about life. I don't know. Because I don't know most of you. I know what I need to hear and listen for.

And that's between me and God, just as it's between you and God as well.

It may be that you just need a little bit more mojo going.

You need to get it going. You need to get your mojo going again.

If you understand spiritually what is going on and what we are before, as Hebrews tells us here, of an innumerable company, a heavenly Jerusalem and a Mount Zion, all of that which we've come to now, in advance of the time when the nations are going to go up to Mount Zion, we've come to our own. The reality. We have come to the reality right now. And so, what is it that God is going to look into your eye and teach you about? My final scripture, Isaiah chapter 25.

The words everyone loves to hear. My final scripture.

Isaiah chapter 25.

We'll read verses 6 through 8. And I'm going to read it from the New Living Translation. I think it really puts it very well as it describes, again, the future and the setting of the nations coming before God. Isaiah 25 verse 6 in Jerusalem. The Lord of Heaven's armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world.

It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat. All the things that we kind of look forward to at the feast. There He will remove the cloud of gloom, the shadow of death that hangs over the earth. He will swallow up death forever, and the sovereign Lord will wipe away all tears. He will remove forever all insults and mockery against His land and people. The Lord has spoken. This is what God will spread before the world when this day becomes a reality. He has spread it before us in a spiritual sense, and in a slight foretaste as we assemble in our various locations to keep the Feast of Tabernacles wherever they may be. We have the opportunity to experience it on a very, very small scale compared to the larger. So I ask you one more time. As God has called us together around His table to tell us our future, to tell us our present, what is it that He will be telling you? I hope that by the end of the entire festival and the eighth-day period, you will know.