Questions, Questions, Questions

Questions, questions, questions. We all have questions. My grandson has about a thousand questions a day. And his parents have all the answers to give to him. Jesus Christ was also good at asking questions of those who were around him and those with whom he came in contact. To his disciples one time, he asked, who do you say that I am? To the Apostle Peter, after he was resurrected three times, he said, do you love me? They're in the last chapter of John. At the marriage in Cana, when his mother was concerned that they would run out of wine at the marriage feast, she came to him as if it were his problem. He said, woman, what does your concern have to do with me? Now you can go through the Gospels and you can find a number of other questions that Christ would ask. Every time he asked a question, there was a point to it. There was a reason. They weren't just rhetorical questions thrown out there to fill the gaps. He had a point for the listener to ponder, and to think deeply about. He asked questions to sometimes teach, but always he wanted an answer. And he expected an answer to come, and in time it always did. But he did expect an answer. As you and I prepare ourselves for the Passover, you know, there are some questions that I would expect God still wants answered from us. And by those questions, I think we can discern from Scripture, and we can ask ourselves as we examine ourselves to determine where we are at this time of year, where we are exactly in our journey toward the Kingdom of God. Every Passover is a waystation, kind of a place of inspection for you and I to pull over in the process in our journey toward the Kingdom of God. We're told to examine ourselves, and through that examination, questions have a good way of helping us to clarify where we are, who we are, and what's going on. And I have this afternoon five questions that I would think God wants to know the answer to. And I will give you those five questions, and let's think about them, and then you and I offer up an answer to God in our own time and way. Here's question number one. Will we leave Him? Will we leave Him? In John chapter 6, Jesus gave some very strong teaching that people found hard to accept. John chapter 6, He begins chapter 6 by feeding 5,000 people, walks on the sea. He kind of gets away from the multitudes in verse 22, but they find Him. They come to Him. He feeds thousands of people, and in a crowd of that many people, on a hot day, anybody would be fatigued, and He left. But then they kept following Him. And among them were some who had become His disciples beyond the 12, as well as just some of the Jews, and obviously some of the scholars and others there were a part of the crowd. That began to question Him as He had fed them with bread and fish. And He began to talk about the bread from Heaven and how He is the true bread, the living bread in verse 51. He said, I'm the living bread that came down from Heaven. If you eat of this bread, you'll live forever.

That was some very, very strong teaching, a little bit different. He had just fed them, but He wanted them to understand that He was there for more than just a potluck supper and to put on a spread and a feed for them on the slopes of the Sea of Galilee. He was there to give them spiritual words of eternal life. And He goes on to talk about that.

Verse 52, we see the Jews, therefore, quarreled among themselves, saying, how can this man give His flesh to eat? So some of the Jews were there, and they started raising doubt, raising questions, concerns about things that were going on and what He was saying. They were questioning His teaching, and He gave answers for them. And down to verse 60, Therefore, as many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, this is a hard say.

Who can understand it? Hard say. Truth can be hard sometimes. Hard to accept. Hard to live by. Hard to maintain. Year after year, decade after decade. But here at the initial outset of some of these truths, they found it hard to accept. Verse 61, Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, and He said to them, does this offend you?

Can you imagine the teaching of Jesus offending people? Well, it did. He began to hear a murmuring and a grumbling out there in the crowd, and Christ was very good at discerning murmuring and grumblings among people. And He said, as He turned to some of His closer disciples, that He heard complaining, does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?

It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were, who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to Him by My Father.

From that time, many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. They left. It was too much. They were along for a good meal. A little bit of fellowship didn't hurt either. They thought this man was a notable individual to follow, but they were not able to deal with the message that He had. From that time, many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Jesus said to the twelve, Do you also want to go away?

These were the closest ones to Him. He had twelve, and then He had a group of disciples who were others that were numbered at seventy at one point. Kind of a second tier of disciples. But then when He turns to the twelve, whom He had handpicked, He asks the same question, Do you also want to go away? Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

And Jesus answered, Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the Son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve. So here was a mixture of disciples and Jews. The Jews stirred doubt within the crowd. And it served to weed out the disciples who were shallow, who were looking for something other than Christ. And keep in mind, Christ was pointing to Him and He was saying, I am the true bread.

Now, you know, some of them could have said, well, you know, He's putting too much emphasis on Christ. He's ignoring the Father. I don't know about this Christ business. Sounds a little Protestant to me. They could have said. But see, the Jews, they had problems with His teaching. At this point, He put it squarely on Himself and told them who He was. Kind of self-centered, if you look at it from a secular, physical point of view.

But Christ knew exactly what He was saying. And it was hard and they couldn't deal with it. They couldn't live up to it. They couldn't live up to it. Why did they leave? Why did they leave Christ? Some were fair-wither followers. That's why. They were there only for a good time. A meal, a free meal, fellowship, and the good times that go with it. That's all they thought that they were signing on for.

And even by this time, perhaps they'd go after even a few days or who knows, a few weeks. They'd grown tired. Maybe some of them had been with Him for more than a year or so at this point. And they'd just grown tired. You know, the test of an army, they say, in the field in battle, it comes when it is tired. It comes when it's tired. How many of you have seen Band of Brothers? The HBO movie. The 82nd Airborne, Easy Company.

There's a scene when they were going into Bastogne in December of 1944 and relieving the troops that are marching away from Bastogne, where the Germans had made this major push, and pinned down Allied forces, and men were being relieved. And in comes the Easy Company, 82nd Airborne, and they had them go to the front line. They did not even have ammunition. And they were picking rounds of ammunition and guns and rifles off the men coming back off the line. The men of Easy Company were tired, but they had to go forward. And the guys that were coming off the line said, you know, be careful, guys.

We were surrounded by the enemy up there. And one of the paratroopers said, man, we're paratroopers. We're always surrounded by the enemy, because a paratrooper dropped in behind enemy lines. They started surrounded by the enemy. And they were tired, but they had to go to the front line, and they held their position. The test of an army is when it's tired.

These people, for some of them, they were fair-weather followers, and they were tired. It was too much for them. They turned from the challenge of Jesus and God. They were not willing, really, to give their lives. No, there's always a cost in following Christ. Sometimes it's not until we figure out that there is a cost that we find out what we're made of, and whether or not we have enough to finish it all out. That is a test for every Christian. You look at Peter's answer here, he had to look Christ in the eye. Because Christ turned to him when he said to the Twelve, and Peter must have been fairly close by, as he always was, do you want to go away?

And Peter answered, looked Christ in the eye. Didn't send him an email. He looked him in the eye. And he said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Do you have the words of eternal life? We've come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God. Peter's answer showed determination. What he was showing was a personal loyalty to Jesus Christ. He didn't understand everything at the moment that he was going to have to go through.

He didn't even understand that he would later betray Christ three times. He didn't understand that. But at this point in time, he was showing a personal loyalty to Christ. Not to anybody else in the crowd. Not to any of the other eleven disciples. Not to some of the other disciples whom he must have known, counted as friends, who now turned away and walked away from Jesus Christ and no longer followed with them. Peter was showing a personal loyalty to Christ. He was not committed to any person in the crowd or anywhere else. Sometimes, ultimately, at the right time, you and I will have to determine whether our personal loyalty is to some other human being or to Christ and to the Father.

God will know that. He will come to know that. Are we here because of a friend? A family member? Why are we here? Why are you here? Why do you follow Christ? No matter where we are, we're going to have to follow Christ. He will know this, and we will have to look Him in the eye and answer, will you turn away? Will you also leave? He will know that. He will know that. It's interesting that He mentions Judas. Why would He mention Judas in this context? I don't know exactly. You can think about it, but... Judas had been chosen by Christ. He was hand-picked.

Was He chosen to succeed or to fail? Was He predestined to betray Christ? One thing about it, this is my personal belief, I think Christ did see value in Judas. And I think Judas had a choice, just like everybody else had a choice of those 12. Maybe it could have been one of the others. Just as much as it could have been Judas. We don't know a whole lot about Judas until we get to the final night. We find Him questioning the expense used in some of the items of the work.

He seemed to be the purse carrier. But it's too easy to read too much into that. Christ did choose Him. Did He choose Him to fail or to succeed? I think there's one lesson that we can draw from Judas, as mentioned here. Because this comes toward the end of Christ's ministry. The years can be cruel. Faith can take its toll.

Obedience and living God's way at times can, in life itself. I look around and we all know each other here. We know what we've been through over the years. Some of the ups and downs of our lives. Trials and experiences can take its toll.

No matter what has happened and what we've been through, we're still here. We're still in the faith. When we look back over the years, do we see a life that has grown large in spite of the trials? Along with the challenges and along with the blessings?

Has it been a good, large life, or has it been small and diminished? At some point with Judas, his thinking changed. Because I don't think in the first days and weeks, and perhaps months of his time with Jesus and the other men, that he was plotting what he was going to do on that final night three years later. I don't think that's what he set out to do.

Somewhere along the line, his thinking changed. His face and demeanor and attitude were completely different. It's thrown in here at a time when people were leaving Christ. He wants to know whether we will leave him or whether we will stay with him. Question number two. What would keep you from the kingdom of God? Question number two of what I think God wants some answers to.

What might keep you from the kingdom of God? I've always liked to use the idea, the metaphor, that we're on a journey to the kingdom of God. Sometimes I've told people, you know, it's not all the yellow brick road. We're not skipping down the yellow brick road, are we? And more and more recent times I've found opportunity to turn to somebody and say, we're not in Kansas anymore either.

There's dangers along that road. There's things waiting for us around the corner and challenges. Paul said that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness and Ephesians. We have to be constantly vigilant to that. When you look at the example of Moses, there's something in his life that can offer us perhaps a little bit to think about in formulating this answer to God. Turn back, if you will, to Numbers 20. Moses spent 40 years leading Israel to the Promised Land. And you know that those were not all easy years. We know the grumbling and the complaining and the problems, the idolatry, the difficulties of leading Israel, bringing them out of Egypt and the challenges that he had there.

What's interesting about Moses is that he had a complete identification with his people even from the days before the Exodus. He was out there making mud bricks with them. He got into an argument with an Egyptian and killed him, and they had to flee. And then when he came back, he even at one point said to God because of their sins, he said, look, take me.

If it will cause the people to be spared, I offer you my life. He had a complete identification with Israel and the prospects and the goals of the people. The four decades in the wilderness leading them through this took its toll. In Numbers 20, we find them coming. This is right at the end of the period of wandering.

The children of Israel, it says in verse 1, the whole congregation came into the wilderness of Zinn. In the first month, and the people stayed in Kaddish, Miriam died there and was buried there, his sister. Now there was no water for the congregation, so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron. In a desert situation when you don't have water, very quickly things get out of control.

So another gathering against Moses and Aaron. The people contended with Moses and they spoke saying, if only we had died, and our brethren died before the Lord. Which one? Several times. They died before the Lord. In other words, we should have died with them back there instead of staying with you, coming up to this point. Why have you brought up the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness that we and our animals should die here? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt? So they even went back. And keep in mind, this was a grouping of people that were made up mostly of the new generation. Because this is at the end of the wandering and the majority of those that came out of Egypt who were denied entrance into the land, they were mostly gone. Those that remained were probably pretty long into tooth. And so we find even the newer generation, the ones that were going to take the land, they were gone all the way back to the stories and to the memories of Egypt. Why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? That's an interesting statement. This evil place. You know, there's really no place that of and by itself is evil. Just like there's no place that of and by itself is holy. The holy land is not holy. A holy place is only holy if God's there. And so an evil place is only evil if something evil is there. And in this case, the evil was in their spirit, their heart, their attitudes. They were in a foul frame of mind. Satan was there stirring up bitterness and complaint and doubt and challenge against Moses and Aaron at this time. Satan was there in spirit, stirring strife among the people, just like all the earlier episodes that we read about in the Book of Numbers with Korah, with Dathan, with others.

Same spirit was there. That's why this place was evil because of their attitudes. And so it goes on. Moses and Aaron, verse 6, went from the presence of the assembly to the door of the tabernacle of beating, and they fell on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Take the rod. You and your brother Aaron, gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, some huge outcropping, and it will yield its water. Thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock and give drink to the congregation and their animals. So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, Here now you rebels, must we bring water for you out of this rock? You rebels. I'd say Moses was kind of ticked. They were getting to him. Forty years, one more time, was one too far. You rebels. So he lifted his hand, and he struck the rock twice with his rod.

Water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. Now that would be the end of the story, but verse 12 tells us something else. God spoke to Moses and Aaron, because you did not believe me. What? What do you mean? We struck the rock. They struck it twice.

And he only needed to strike it once, and he was angry. He was angry. His anger got the best of him. Because you did not believe me to hollow me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I've given them. For that action, Moses was not allowed to take the children of Israel into the Promised Land.

Moses' unbelief at that moment, shown in his anger, dishonored God. And in that moment, before all of the people, God's sacredness was diminished, in front of all of them. It was one thing for them to get angry and to mutter and complain, but for Moses to get angry was different. For this, God would not let him cross Jordan and take the people into the land. Now, this was a man who, we're told in Deuteronomy 34, knew God face to face. Spoke to him face to face, and yet God disciplined him for his disobedience. And he would not let him go into the Promised Land. Joshua did it. Moses was able to go up on Mount Nebo, look out over that land in that last chapter of Deuteronomy, and look, but he couldn't go. One of the most poignant scenes in the Bible. And it's a beautiful scene from there. You stand on Mount Nebo and you look out over what is the state of Israel today, and you can see a long way on a clear day. Moses must have been able to see it all, as it says. And then he knew he couldn't go in. He'd worked hard, but in a moment where the anger had got the best of him, he lost that opportunity. Now, he didn't lose out on eternal life. He didn't lose out on salvation. Moses will be in God's kingdom. But he lost out on the Promised Land. And there's a lesson for you and I. We can lose out on the kingdom if we let something get in the way of our relationship with God. In this case, with Moses, it was his anger. Anger can be an insidious disease that can cause us to lose our inheritance. And this warning, through the example of Moses, is even more important to us because that stake in our lives is God's kingdom. We don't want to get to the point after years and decades of being in the church and let something that gets beyond our control, like anger or envy or bitterness, cause us to dishonor God and come to a point where, as he said here to Moses in verse 12, because you did not believe me to hallow me in the eyes of the children of Israel. Our attitude, our conduct as a Christian, hallows God, represents God. And if we let ourselves slip, we're showing unbelief and it can cause us to miss out. God can correct us. Sometimes correction doesn't always come the way we think it should. It very often comes through some type of a relationship with another person. And that's where you and I get angry or bitter, resentful, embarrassed, can't take it, won't take it, when God may correct us because we're not humble, because we are not willing to allow someone else to show and point out a problem and admit it. It's harder, but it's necessary to turn to God with an openness and a sincerity, to turn to Him with the spirit of Psalm 51 and desire to do better and desire to learn.

We all have to, if we're going to be in the Kingdom. So what would cause us to be kept from the Kingdom of God, from crossing over? It's a question God has. Here's a third question. Are you in the faith? Notice I didn't say, are you in the church? I said, are you in the faith? In Romans 8, Paul describes exactly those who should be in the faith. Romans 8 and verse 12, he says, Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if you live by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. We saw that Moses didn't hallow God. Do we strive for holiness? Do you strive for a holy life as a lifestyle? Not just holiness on the Sabbath, not just holiness when you come into the Passover service and you take the symbols and you feel good after that. Not just a holiness that's momentary in one sense, but as a lifestyle. You don't see magazines at the supermarket talking about holiness as a lifestyle, do you? You can see Martha Stewart style. You can see outdoor style, fashion style, or all kinds of magazines that talk about a lifestyle. Really, that's what magazine business is all about. That's why there are so many of them. They aim for a particular target audience of people who are either into fashion, into food, into outdoors, into motorcycles, cars, whatever their lifestyle is. There's a magazine for it. Do you see any magazines called holiness that burns a noble? I haven't yet. I keep going in there and looking for it. I was in there the other day and didn't see one. But holiness as a lifestyle. I'm not talking about walking around trying to be a saint, trying to look down on people in some spiritual sounding language, or the way we dress, or whatever. That's not it at all. It's being led by God's Spirit, which is what Paul is talking about here in Romans 8. Not walking solely dominated by physical pursuits. Physical material matters. But being led by the Spirit of God, as verse 14 says, as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Being led by that Spirit yielded to it, for you did not receive the Spirit of bondage. Again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children errs, errors of God, enjoin errors with Christ. If indeed we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together. We're led by God's Holy Spirit, then we are His. God's Spirit is holy. It is His essence.

We've received that Spirit. It's joined to our human spirit. And by that, we enter into a style of life that should reflect a measure of holiness in the way we talk, act, think, and grow into. And that's one of the things every year at the Passover we should ask ourselves.

Is that Spirit leading us to a more reverent approach to life? To God?

You know, is holiness a lifestyle for us?

In Ephesians 5 and verse 26, there's a verse that I've always wondered about, and I think I understand it a little better this year. Let me tell you why. Let's first read it. Ephesians 5 and verse 26.

Paul is talking about the church, marriage, and the analogy of marriage and the body of Christ, and how husbands should treat their wives in the sections. Section beginning in verse 22. Wives submit to your husbands. Husbands love your wives. And it comes down to verse 26. Let's read verse 25. Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word. Now that's the phrase that I've read right over and not really fully comprehending it. The washing, he sanctified and cleansed her with the washing of water by the Word.

Washing of water, when the water of baptism, certainly, that's an application. When we're baptized, we all go down into an immersion and our sins are washed clean. We're put into the body of Christ. So there's a meaning, there's an application there, no doubt. We wash each other's feet at the Passover service, which is a tradition of humility service.

That's washing in that sense that can perhaps apply, you could draw meaning from it, but still the washing of water by the Word. Well, the Word of God, the Bible, Christ is the Word. What is he talking about? That he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having a spot or wrinkle.

Or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

Again, I ask, do we strive for holiness? I'm not in a Pentecostal holiness, raising the hands and outward show. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not going there.

A holy living, a clean living, where God's Word washes us on a regular basis. We bathe ourselves every day. Sometimes people bathe two or three times a day. They have cleansing fetishes.

Sometimes people don't wash well. Well, not enough.

But we know how clean we feel once we've taken a shower, taken a bath. We step out of that, and there is that application there. But I think I understand this a little bit fuller this year.

Recently, I did a two-week stint teaching at Ambassador Bible Center, going through ten of the basic doctrines of the church. For two hours, roughly every morning, I was going through all kinds of scriptures.

Showing the scriptures that show the Sabbath, the holy days, the nature of God. Dozens and dozens, hundreds of scriptures, probably. I covered either my reading or referencing or putting out in a handout to the students that support and back up our basic doctrinal understanding of our basic doctrines. And then, when I got done, another instructor would come in and go through the epistles of Paul.

And they're going through the epistles line by line, reading through the epistles of Paul.

And then there's a class on the Pentateuch. And then there's a class on the prophets.

Every day, at that location, the Word of God is being read.

Studied.

Taught.

On the other side of the wall of the room where the ABC students have their classes is the mailing room.

Where all the literature is mailed out.

As the requests come in upstairs, processed, labels printed, everything, magazines, booklets. They've got it all there.

They pull the booklets and they package them up.

If it's time for the good news to go out or world news and prophecy, well, they don't mail the good news there except certain international editions to countries.

But world news and prophecy, United News, booklets, other things, you'll see them stacked up on the pallets waiting for the truck to come in and cart it off to the post office box.

Or to the express station.

And just always going out every day.

And you see that.

And there's a meeting here. There's a discussion about the web.

Once a month we come in and we do Beyond Today.

And there's always somebody working in their office on some part of the work.

And there are meetings being held.

And as I described to you in certain other meetings, men are kneeling on the floor in prayer and asking God to come in.

And God to bless discussions and decisions.

And it struck me, and one of the other council members as we were talking about it, that every day the Word of God is being read.

Every day the work is being done.

Every day God, in some form or fashion, in the work of God, is being discussed.

And plans are being made.

Now that's not the only spot where that's being done. I don't mean to imply that.

But it does make for a unique experience.

And sometimes I go through that building all the time and I learn just to stop and to watch for a few minutes and to observe and to just know what's taking place.

God's Word, God's Holy Work, is being done by imperfect human beings. Well-intentioned, but it's being done.

God's Word is washing through people and their lives, the works being done.

It's what draws people to want to be a part of the work.

Some of the people we've hired in recent months have made considerable sacrifices to become an employee of the United Church of God.

I'm talking about financial sacrifices. And I've changed career tracks to come into the ministry where elders were doing this. Now they're working in the work and have answered a summons and a call to go and serve God's people full-time.

When they were making a whole lot more money doing something else.

Students take a year out of their lives and they go and they sit for nine months and they study the Bible.

Young people decide that this is the career track they want to move into.

And they come to work for the church.

And God's work gets done.

And you and I, we get up in our daily rituals and hopefully read the Bible, spend some time reading the Word of God, letting it wash through us.

Wash us.

And remove some of the other thoughts and cares and challenges and attitudes that crowd in there.

And maybe after 10, 15, 20, maybe 30 or 40 years, we begin to hunger a little bit more for God's Word and a little bit less for everything else that we feed on.

Several years ago I came to realize that I needed to really read books that fed me for a long time.

By that I mean a good, solid book that had good values to it, that pointed me to an aspect of higher nobility and a higher aspiration of life that fed me.

Some books we can read and just read them overnight and they're kind of popcorn, cotton candy type books.

We all know what kind of books those are.

And you know, there's a time and a place maybe for those.

But a few years ago I came to think, you know, there are certain books I really would like to wade through and I began to go through, began to pull those down and look at them.

But this is the one book that feeds us even longer than any other work that we could pick up.

And if we don't read this, if we don't study it, we will not believe it. We won't know what it can do for us.

We won't know how it can pull us out of discourager and doubt, how it can get us through a stretch of desert.

If we don't read it, then we will blame other people, then we will blame other things, then we will blame God.

This book can feed us because words in it are spirit and they are life.

And Christ says that we are washed by the water of the Word.

It's time for all of us to think about that because the question is, are we in the faith?

Are we in the faith?

We need to put more prayer and study and thought of God's Word into each day.

And even if you've got a house full of kids and you're in that stage of life, you can't...

There are going to obviously be demands on one's time that will crowd out the day real quick. I know that.

That doesn't mean any of us are without excuse to not do these other disciplines to stay close to God because if we don't, we will stray.

Holiness is a lifestyle.

Letting God's Word wash over us and putting more of that into our minds by whatever means and way we can, and thinking on those noble things is better.

What did Paul mean when he said, the instant in prayer?

That doesn't mean you drop on your knees every hour on the hour, five times a day, but that we can offer up a prayer to God at a moment.

Then we get on our knees and we pour out ourselves in a longer prayer at the appropriate times as well, but that we don't pause.

Or when we hear a siren, we pray to God that wherever they're going, they're able to give some help.

Or when we hear of a prayer request, we offer up a prayer there, or if we are about to eat a meal and we don't have to bow on our knees in the middle of a restaurant or whatever, but we at least acknowledge privately.

To be instant in prayer is a part of a holiness lifestyle, if you will.

It can help us to answer the question and let God know whether or not we are in the faith.

Question number four, that God, I think, wants to know.

Do you love God with all your heart?

Matthew 10.

Matthew 10.

Verse 32. Christ came to a point where He said, Therefore, whoever confesses Me before Him, I will also confess before My Father, who is in heaven.

But whoever denies Me before Him, I will also deny before My Father, who is in heaven.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. Wow! I thought the Nativity scene was all about peace on earth and good will toward men.

Don't think I came to bring peace on earth.

I did not come to bring peace but a sword.

Now, that's a very strong and a very hard statement that you have to be very careful with from Christ.

Certainly, He did talk about, blessed are the peacemakers in the Sermon on the Mount.

We don't go walking around always wielding a sword. That's not what He's saying.

He said, I did not come to bring peace but a sword.

But I have come to set a man against his father. This really gets harder.

A daughter against her mother.

And a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

And a man's enemies will be those of his own household.

Wow! Is this what Christ brought? That's what He says.

It is a part of the package. It is a reality.

And He said, then, he who loves father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.

And that he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

Now, that doesn't mean we disrespect our parents and we do not show proper honor and love.

Plenty of other commands and instructions show us to do that.

It means love not love less by comparison.

In other words, there will be times where we will have to choose between Christ, God, and another person.

Even those of our own blood relation, He says.

We will have to decide whether we will walk with God in spite of what another person is or does.

And there's plenty of us in this room who have been to that crossroads and have had to make that choice.

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.

And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

And he who does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

Very, very strong section of teaching. A very, very hard section to understand and even to live through if it comes to us.

There's no question about it.

I take from this that God will know our heart before He gives us eternal life.

He will know what's in our heart because He does expect a personal loyalty to Him alone, not man.

That's why He said to Peter, or to the Twelve, will you also go away?

And Peter showed his loyalty to Christ.

One of the things I take from this Scripture is that God will know whether our loyalty is to Him and Him alone, through whatever before He gives us eternal life.

It gives new meaning to the Scripture of Revelation 3, Let no man take your crown.

Let no man take your crown. God will know.

I didn't understand that until recent times, but He will know.

He will know me, you, and He will know our heart. What is there?

Before He gives us eternal life.

Question number five that God wants to know. Are you spiritually stable?

Are you spiritually stable? In Ephesians 4, verse 14, Let's read verse 13, Let's read verse 13, Here Paul describes spiritual instability.

A condition brought on because we're not close enough to God because we allow deceit and tricks, craftiness, and influences because we're children. He wants us to eventually grow up to the measure of the stature of Christ so that we are no longer children.

It is sad to see when people are children spiritually, tossed to and fro, moving from organization to organization, never able to put down roots, always leaving, always leaving, and can never stay.

Tossed to and fro. Certainly there's always enough opportunity in the Church of God for people to make decisions.

There's too much opportunity, but there's plenty of it.

And it gets into trickery and deceit. And there's that word, men, again. There's that word, man.

We were talking about the critical essence or the results of the study we went through over a year ago with a company where we hired them to kind of study us and from their perspective define the essence of our message.

They came back with the term meaningful relationships.

It's what the United Church of God is all about.

What they call the critical essence of the United Church of God, its message. Meaningful relationships.

When I heard that about a year ago, my jaw dropped on the floor.

And I thought to myself, that's interesting.

We're headed into a cyclone of relationships problems.

And this is an outside entity coming in and looking at us, and they see that this is what we're all about.

And as I've chewed on it over the years, over the months, last year, I realized that they did hit on something.

I'm still not settled as to what they've told us, as they interviewed us, looked at our material, our literature, and studied us, and everything else.

Meaningful relationships. Inherent in any relationship, as David was bringing out in his sermon, that relationship with God, ultimately.

That's what's going to be the stability of our relationships.

And I was thinking the other day, you know, people walk in and out of the church and have in recent days, because of relationships with the minister.

And they followed the minister because he resigned and he went here. And some went, some didn't.

And then, in some cases, the minister didn't resign, stayed right in his church, but people still left because other people left.

And they had a meaningful relationship, but it was with another person. And then I realized that some people stay right where they are because they have a meaningful relationship with someone else, or even with the minister.

And we wouldn't say necessarily that there's a problem with that, right?

But then I thought, where's our most meaningful relationship with God?

And if we don't base our decisions now, 15 years ago, 15 years from now, or 5 years from now, if we don't base our decisions about godliness, holiness, loyalty, faith, if we don't base them on a relationship with God, we're missing something.

And we'll make our decisions. And all of us have got to understand why we are where we are.

I knew exactly why I made the decision that I did 16 years ago now.

No question in my mind why I decided what I did. I've had no reason to make a different decision. That was hard enough. It was hard enough.

Our most meaningful relationship has got to be with God. That's what will anchor us. That's what will keep us stable.

That's what will make us mature. And no longer children tossed to and fro because people trick us.

Whether it's craftiness, or we allow ourselves to be deceived.

I recognize that we all know that in the current climate there have been very challenging and disturbing situations.

We'll all make our decisions that will make us stable and keep us in God's kingdom if we have a solid relationship with God.

Every one of us needs to understand why we've made the decisions that we've made all along in our whole journey of faith with God.

People are important. There's no question about that. Don't go out and disrespect your parents. Don't go trampling on your relationships.

Don't go disrespecting a minister either. One way or the other. Keep them in a proper perspective.

Make sure that God is at the center of it because God will know our heart.

And there will be plenty of opportunities for us to be tested in that way.

Emotional spiritual maturity is the ultimate key that we need. So are you spiritually stable?

Do you love God with all of your heart? Are you in the faith?

What would keep you from the kingdom of God? And will you leave Him?

Five questions that I think God wants an answer to.

God is looking at each one of us and He's asking these questions. He wants to know what our answer will be.

And He's waiting on our response.