The Things Your Eyes See

You know, Mr. McNeely gave a very fine sermon yesterday. And for several years we lived in Indianapolis, and I had the opportunity to be an elder up in that area with Mr. McNeely. And many times along the road, we would find that we would come to services with the very, with almost the same message. I remember one holy day on trumpets. I was speaking first, and he was speaking in the afternoon. And I gave my sermon, and I noticed he wasn't going out to lunch. And when he got back, when we got back from lunch, he didn't tell me then, but he told me afterwards that every single scripture I used was exactly the scriptures he was going to use. So we spent the entire lunchtime rewriting or preparing a sermon. I was glad I spoke in the morning. So, but on a few other occasions, we found that we had similar things. And he trumped me a few times along the way as well, but I usually had at least a week to prepare something different. And yesterday, as he was ending his message, he kind of took part of my introduction. So I kind of smiled to myself, and I thought, well, some things never change. But I'm going to go ahead and give my introduction anyway. You'll remember at the end of his message, you mentioned Steve Jobs, who was the CEO and founder of Apple. And Mr. Jobs was quite a unique individual. He seemed to have a vision that few other people in history have had. Some have called him the Thomas Edison of our day, and he just seemed to have a knack and a talent that came from God. I don't know if he ever credited God for the talent that he had, but he was able to see things that no one else could see.

And because of his work in technology, all our lives are different in that area. If it wasn't for him, we probably wouldn't all have, or most of us have, a PC in our house. Even though if it's not an Apple, we still have a PC, and he's credited with being the father of that desktop PC.

I don't own, well, I shouldn't say I don't own. I've bought several since I have kids in college, and they all very much like their iMacs and their iPhones and their iPods. And Dad gets to buy them all for them. So we kind of support Apple in a way. But, you know, those are unique things that I don't know who else would, who else would, would find, or who had thought ever that you would have your own little personal music player that you could, as you're walking or driving in the car, just have your own music, music selection. But he thought of all those things. And yet Steve Jobs died at a relatively young age. And, you know, I, I think his death touched the world. I certainly didn't know the man. I mean, I, you know, read about him a little bit, but I'll have to say, even I was a little sad when, when he died because the world lost a creative genius that we don't see too much of. His eyes saw some things that the rest of ours didn't. And as a result, you know, we may lose some technology down the road that we don't even know about and none of us would ever conceive. And he died leaving a family behind and a wife behind. You know, he had billions, literally billions of dollars. And yet all those billions of dollars couldn't save his life.

All those billions of dollars and the, you know, the best doctors in the world couldn't extend his life. And he died not knowing what the future held. He probably had his own beliefs on what was going to happen next, but he wasn't sure. He didn't know what you and I know. His eyes saw many, many, many things, but his eyes didn't see what our eyes see. Turn with me over to Luke 10.

Luke 10 verse 23.

Christ, in talking to his disciples then and his disciples today, said this, blessed are the eyes which see the things you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see and have not seen it and to hear what you hear and have not heard it. Many people, if they knew what we knew, if their eyes were open to see the things that you see and the things that I see, how great and how rich would their lives be?

Far greater than any number of billions of dollars that you might want to name as your life would be very, very, very good. Far greater than any creative genius where you could come up with the next technological device that would enhance the world or excite the world. What you see, what I see, what God has opened our eyes to see is worth so far much more than what Steve Jobs' eyes see. We can see far, far into the future with a great plan that God has had.

We're here at the Feast of Tabernacles in Jekyll Island. We're picturing a time that not many people in the world can see. Not many people in the world have the vision that you and I have. Not many people have been given the Spirit of God so that their eyes can see what we see. A time when death is put away. A time when ill health is a thing of the past. A time when disunity and the governments of this land that produce that disunity are gone. A time of perfect peace. A time of perfect harmony. A time of plenty and bounty for all mankind, not just a few in some nations around the world, but a time that's great. Your eyes see that. My eyes see that. God has given us that. But people, even the, if we want to use the word, great people of the world, don't see that.

What a blessing it is to have that sight. What a blessing it is to have those eyes. We see those things and a whole lot more. Turn back to Acts 3.

Acts 3 in verse 19.

It's written there, Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all of his holy prophets since the world began. Christ came. He spoke the words of the kingdom. He spoke those words we just read back in Luke 10, and then he went back to heaven after he had sacrificed his life. After he completed his mission and after he had assured the kingdom would come, assured that we would have eternal life, assured that our sins would be forgiven, he went back until things could be restored on this earth.

Now, back when God created the earth in those six days, in the seventh day Sabbath, back in Genesis 1, in Genesis 1.31, he looked around that physical creation and he said everything was very good. Well, it doesn't take 20-20 vision today to look around the world and say, it's not very good. There's a lot of things that aren't very good at all. In fact, a lot of things are very, very, very bad. Now, we live in a broken world, a world where our land needs to be healed, where people need to be healed, where God needs to come back. And a very great promise is given us here in Acts that he will come back and he will restore the world to the creation or to the form that it was at the time he created it.

Your eyes see that. This morning I want to look at what I think is a very exciting chapter in the Bible in Isaiah 35 that talks about the time of restoration. What's going to happen at the time that Christ comes back and the world and this restoration begins? Turn with me back to Isaiah 35. As you turn there, I'll remind you what state the world was in or is in at the time that we begin this chapter. And as we picture the time, the millennium, that these holy days represent, the world is devastated. The world has seen everything that they counted on, everything they relied on destroyed.

They've seen their armies, they've seen their bank accounts, they've seen their stock markets, they've seen everything that they held dear. Their governments, their leaders, totally wiped out. And you have a people that are dazed, a people that are possibly afraid because something has come down and they don't understand it because they don't see what your eyes see. What they don't know is that a great time, the best time for humanity, is about to dawn. And as we begin chapter 35 of Isaiah, God through Isaiah describes for us some of the restoration that will happen during that time.

Isaiah 35 verse 1 says, The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. A tremendous time. Now, I believe a picture is worth a thousand words, so I've got a few pictures for you here today. First one up here is a picture from the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

And you can see how arid and how dry and how desolate that land is there. You see a cow sitting out there looking for something to eat. I don't know why it's out there, but it's not having much success in finding anything to feed on. That desert, when the rains come, as we heard earlier in the feast, in the springtime, comes alive. And the next picture shows what that very serious area looks like when the rains come.

All of a sudden, what's dry and barren and nothing growing on it and nothing to eat becomes lush, becomes fertile, becomes something that is beautiful as opposed to the wasteland that was there. The next picture is of the Judean Desert. You all have heard of the Judean Desert. Christ was out there. John the Baptist was out there. King David fled into what we say in the Bible is the Judean wilderness or what it's talking about. And here's a picture of the Judean Desert that's in southern Israel today.

Again, nothing growing there. I don't think it was quite that desolate back in the old times that we read of in the Bible, but nothing there. But there's a camel looking for something to eat. You know, when the rains come to that land, look what happens to it. You have red flowers that blossom as the rose. And out of a vast wasteland, when God sends his rain down, when he touches that land, it becomes something beautiful. Not something waste, still wasted. Not something desolate, but something beautiful. One more that I thought was very interesting.

This picture is from California, and it meets the definition of a desert. And you can kind of see there's hills around there and not a whole lot going on in that area. A little bit of scrub brush around. But look what happens when the rains come. You know, I first came across this picture. When I was looking, when I was researching this, I figured an artist had done this picture, and I thought that that has to be one of those things that someone has put together. But I researched it, and there's many photographs of it that this happens.

No artist could paint that picture, but God painted it. The variety, the colors, the world coming alive again with so many things happening, so many possibilities. When you look at the vast wasteland that was in those original pictures, then you can see, and you think nothing good can come of it. And we look around the world today, and people, I think, in the world look around today, and they wonder what's going to come of the mess we've made of things.

What's going to come of the mess that's been made in several continents on the earth? Now, we're up with God's Spirit, with Christ returning to earth, with His way coming to the earth, and people are beginning to live by it. Look at all the possibilities.

Look at all the potential that that land has that you just don't see today. And the people in the world don't see that today, but your eyes see it. You know what can be. We're here because God has called us, and He has given us a picture of what can be if we let Him hone our vision, if we let Him feed our minds, if we let Him see in our minds what can happen. Let's go on in verse 2. It says, the desert shall blossom abundantly and rejoice. You can almost hear those deserts singing for joy when those flowers and all that vegetation comes up. You can almost hear them singing when the beauty that they have as their potential begins to develop. And it says in verse 2, even with joy in singing. But there's more than just outward beauty that God's going to restore to this earth. It will become a beautiful place again when He sends the rains, when people begin treating the land correctly. When we see the vast wastelands now and realize what the potential will be, there's a lot more that's going to happen.

Verse 2, it says, the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it. Now, when it talks about the glory of Lebanon in the Bible, it's often referring to a cedar tree. You've read many times in the Bible about the cedar of Lebanon. In fact, 71 times the cedar of Lebanon is mentioned in the Bible. And there's a picture of it. If you've never seen one.

The cedar of Lebanon is beautiful. If you remember back when David was building the temple, or when Solomon was building the temple, he wanted the cedar from Lebanon to be part of that temple. And the cedar of Lebanon has a lot of tremendous features in it. Let me read a few of them.

It says that the cedar of Lebanon was regal. It was strong. It's tenacious.

And in Psalm 92.12, that's written up there. I'm going to turn around and read it to you. It says, the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of the eternal shall flourish in the house of our God. So people at that time will become strong. No longer a vast wasteland of their mind and their spirit. No longer those things that hold them back. It goes on in verse 2 to talk about the excellence of Carmel and Sharon. Areas that were very fertile back in that time that produced fruit and the food of the land. We can see and picture in our minds the physical restoration that God has in mind when we see these pictures and we let God show us what will be. But you know those verses have a spiritual application as well. You can put your marker there in Isaiah 35. But turn with me back to Romans 8.

When I read those verses, I think of these lines that the Apostle Paul wrote back in Romans 8 beginning in verse 19. It says, It's been held back. Just like people have been held back. The world isn't what it was back at the time God created it. And yet after 6,000 years of human abuse, it's still a beautiful place in many areas. Certainly, Jekyll Island is a beautiful place, many other beautiful places, but so much of the world. In fact, the encyclopedias say 20 percent of the land surface is in desert.

Nothing grows. Infertile land. Just waiting for something to happen. And Paul tells us it's waiting, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, waiting for the time that Christ will return to earth and the firstfruits will be resurrected and a new time on earth can begin. A millennial time where God's government, God's way of life, and God's Spirit will cover the earth. And with that, life will be breathed back into a lifeless planet. Life will be breathed back into a humanity that's lost its way. That's held back and repressed by all of the burdens that it has. All of the sins, all of the ideas, all the misguided notions, and all the misguided governments of this world. Mankind doesn't know what its potential is. Your eyes know what God's potential is. My eyes know not because we're any geniuses, but because for some reason God opened our eyes to see what He has planned. So if we go back to Isaiah 35, well, no, let's finish in verse 22 here before you go back there. It says, for we know that the whole creation groans in labors with birth pangs together until now. It's just waiting. That birth is about to begin. The earth is ready to blossom forth. And its physical restoration and the spiritual restoration of man is about to return or about to begin on the earth. And when that time comes, it will be a very great time for man to be alive and for us to see the power of God, eyes of power that we see now.

Because just like that desert that we saw, the Judean desert and the Sonoran desert, this world is a spiritual wasteland, a spiritual desert. There's really no fruit out there for us to eat. We can't go to the world for answers to our problems. They don't have them. The world doesn't have what we need. Just like that cow in that camel that we're searching for something out there on the desert, if we search in the world, we're not going to find anything that satisfies. We'll just pick at a little brush here, pick at a little brush somewhere else, but nothing will ever satisfy us. Turn back to 2 Timothy.

Let's get a picture of the vast wasteland that is the world today.

2 Timothy 3 and verse 1. You can read it along in whatever version of the Bible you have in your lap, the old King James or the new King James. I'm going to read it for you from the New Living Translation just because it puts things in a language that is exactly the same meaning in the first five verses here, but words that you will understand and words that you'll identify with because we live in this world. Paul writes, you should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. People will love only themselves and their money.

They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedience of their parents, and ungrateful.

A vast wasteland. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving. They will slander others and they'll have no self-control. They'll be cruel and hate what is good. They'll betray their friends. They'll be reckless. They'll be puffed up with pride. And they'll love pleasure rather than God. They'll act like they're religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Doesn't that sound like the world we live in today? Doesn't that sound exactly like what we live in today? A vast wasteland with nothing that can produce the pictures that our eyes see. Only God's Spirit can produce a world that can be rejuvenated from the vast wasteland that is the world today. And when Christ returns, that rejuvenation will begin.

Over in 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 13, we have the love chapter. When God's creation or when Christ returns to earth and His Spirit begins to fill the earth, the fruits of the Spirit will begin to blossom, just like those blossoms that you saw in the desert in those pictures. But in 1 Corinthians 13, it gives us a picture of that first fruit that will begin to develop on earth. And again, I'm going to read this out of the new living translation you read along in your Bible. I'm going to begin in verse 4 of 1 Corinthians 13.

Love. You know that's the first fruit of the Spirit? Love is patient and kind. And as we read these verses, think about a world that is marked by these verses as opposed to 2 Timothy 3 that marks the world we live in today. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It doesn't demand its own way. It's not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. What a great world that will be. When people get past any offenses that come by them and don't let them hang around and develop into bitterness. It doesn't rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up. Never loses faith. It's always hopeful, and it endures through every circumstance.

That's the world that will begin to blossom in these days that we picture. That's the world that Christ wants us and looks for us to live in. And in that world, when that fruit, along with the other fruits that we read in Galatians 5, 22, joy, peace, long suffering, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faith, when all those things are blossoming on the earth, your eyes can begin to see what kind of world this can be. They can begin to see how the yokes of this world that hold us all back through the things, the perceived wrongs, the pride, everything that marks this world that we read in 2 Timothy 3 holds us down. It does not allow anything to grow out of it.

In fact, it produces the opposite of growth. But the fruit of God's Spirit will fill the earth, and mankind, at least, will begin to realize the potential God always expected for us to have.

That's what your eyes see, because God has opened them to see that. And that's what your eyes see as we keep this feast. I won't turn to Isaiah 11, verses 6 through 9. You know those verses. It talks about the wolf, the lion will lie down with the calf. A young child will lead them. If you look at the slides that go by every morning, you see a picture of that. And you know, as I read those verses, you realize that in the world tomorrow, all the violent nature will be gone. Nothing will hurt or destroy, God says, in all my holy mountain, in all my holy kingdom.

And you know, we can see the physical picture, and it's a beautiful thing to think about.

But you know, when I think of that picture that we're all so familiar with, I know that there's people that are out there that are like lions, aren't they?

There's people that are out there like the wolves. There are people that are out there that are like snakes. They're not looking to provide or to promote unity. Rather, they're looking to destroy, kill, hold people back through fear, and not allow the freedom that people will be able to begin to produce and see what God had planned for them to be. Your eyes see that. My eyes see that. The world's eyes will see that as they begin to live in a world and see a God and see a Jesus Christ and see leaders who are the first fruits sitting here today that will teach them, guide them, people that they can begin to trust. A government, unlike the government that they trusted in before this time, that led them into all sorts of problems. A government that immediately before this time that we know is a beast power that they put their trust in and thought it would be the thing that would deliver them and that it would be a kingdom that would last forever and ever and ever and they found out, no, it didn't work because the kingdoms of men don't survive. The kingdoms of men don't produce what mankind want because they're not engendered and they're not powered by the Spirit of God. There's power by the Spirit of the one who has the opposite of what God wants in mind. And so we see a world where they don't learn war anymore. Instead, they're fueled by a spirit, the Spirit of God that champions unity more than division. A world that sees and wants God's way to be done rather than our own way, that looks to His word and His leadership to produce what we people in the world want their governments to produce today, but they don't. Turn back to Zachariah 8. It'll be a very pleasant world that people live in, then, unlike the world that we live in today. And there's many verses in the Bible that talk about what life will be like in that age and in that millennium. In Zachariah 8 and verse 4, we get a little bit of picture. Then again, living in the world we live in today, where I don't have young children at home anymore, but we have a couple of young grandchildren that don't live close to us. But I know their parents are very concerned whenever they wander out into a yard, because it doesn't seem like there's too many weeks that pass by that you don't hear about a baby being snatched, children being taken from their homes. And so we watch closely what children are doing. But in that time, under a world governed by Christ and His way, see the picture of what will be. Zachariah 8 verse 4, thus says the eternal of hosts. Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem. They'll be free to go outside. They won't worry about their safety. They won't worry about what's going to happen to them. Each one will have his staff in his hand because of great age. And the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. You don't see that happening too much in the world today. People stay in more than they go out, and for very good reasons in a lot of cases. Verse 20 of Zachariah 8 says, peoples will yet come, inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one city will go to another, saying, let us continue to go and pray before the eternal and seek the eternal of hosts.

Can you imagine that happening in the world today? The people would say, hey, we want to find out what God has to say. We want to understand the truth. We'll go from one city to another seeking that, but in that day, that'll be the norm. Because people will begin to become spiritually alive again. They will begin to see what your eyes see. They'll begin to see the potential. They'll be able to see the energy, the vitality, the zeal, the excitement of being alive at that time.

Verse 22. Yes, many peoples and strong nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. And look at verse 23 in the context of the world mayhem that we have around us today. Thus says the eternal of hosts. In those days, 10 men from every language of the nations will grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, let us go up with you, for we've heard that God is with you. Can you even picture that going on in the world today? Just the opposite happening in the world today. Totally different when God's Spirit is leading. God's Spirit is guiding. And people begin to become alive again, along with the physical creation around them.

Along with the physical creation around them. Can you imagine what it will be like to be in that time when people can flourish, blossom, and grow even more beautifully than the deserts that we saw and the transformation of them when the physical reigns came?

You can see why when God tells us or commands us to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, He commands us to rejoice. Because in that time, rejoicing will be the law or the norm of the land. Not like the norm of the world today. Not like the news we see today that so often depressing, so often creates sadness and a mourning and hopefully a longing for us. Of the world that this world of what these days of the Feast of Tabernacles picture. Let's go back to Isaiah 35. Isaiah 35.

We'll pick it up in verse 3. We see a land that's blossoming. We see a people and a spirit that's beginning to blossom and flourish. We see the spiritual counterpart of people who are becoming strong and fruitful. And in verse 3, God begins to show us some of the things that are going to be tossed out of this world that defines this world today so that that can happen. Verse 3 says, strengthen the weak hands. Make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted be strong. Don't fear. Behold, your God will come with vengeance with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. Don't be afraid. You know, fear has held more people back than anything else in history. How many of the governments of this world have been so repressive and have kept control of people because of fear? You can think back in history and to people like Hitler. He controlled that nation by fear. You can think of people like Stalin at the beginning of the Soviet Union. He controlled those people by fear. How many things in the Middle East today? People controlled by fear.

Those people aren't encouraged to blossom and grow and become what they can become. They're held down so that power can maintain in the hands of those who have it. And they do it by fear. Fear is repressive. Fear holds people back. Fear never produces anything good.

Franklin Delano Rezavel said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, and he was exactly right.

How many times in the Bible do you read where God tells his people, don't be afraid? Don't let that fear hold you back from what he's leading you to. Because fear has been an enemy of progress. Fear has been an enemy of mankind under man's government and under man. And in that day that we picture those days at RIC, fear, the wrong kind of fear, will no longer be there. God will cast it out.

At the beginning of that millennium, people will be fearful. They will see everything that they put their confidence in destroyed. They'll see coming down from heaven Christ in all his glory, and they won't know who he is because they don't know him. They don't know what his plan is. They don't see what your eyes see, and they don't know what you know.

But that fear will have to be cast out. That fear will have to be thrown away and replaced with something else. Turn with me over to Daniel 10.

I think of very encouraging verses in Daniel 10 verses 10 through 12, and a couple after that. For all of God's people who are led by his Spirit, because things will confront us later on in our lives in this world, that could engender fear.

If we don't know what's happening and if we're not close to God, and if we're not being led by his Spirit and have committed ourselves wholly and totally to him, Daniel found himself in the presence of God at this, or in the presence of the, I believe it was Michael who came down to to talk to him. And he had the wrong kind of fear. In verse 10 of Daniel 10, it says, Suddenly a hand touched me, which made me tremble on my knees and on the palms of my hands. And he said to me, Daniel, greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak to you, and stand upright. Get up. Should we have the fear of God? Oh, absolutely.

But the fear of God is something that should empower us. The fear of God and the right fear before our eyes will give us confidence not in the governments of this world, not in our own selves. But it will direct us to God. And as Daniel trembles under this, rightly so, and the same way any of us would do, he's told Daniel, stand up, for I have been sent to you. While he was speaking, this word to me, I stood trembling. In verse 12, it says, and he said to me, Don't fear, Daniel. Don't fear in that way. Fear God, but don't fear and tremble.

Verse 18, then again it says, the one having the likeness of a man touched me.

When he touched me, he strengthened me. Strengthened to me. And he said, O man, greatly beloved, fear not. Peace be to you. Be strong. Yes, be strong. How many leaders of lands today? How many of those leaders we named often, dozens and dozens of others that you could name off to me, that ruled by fear were telling their people, Be strong. And yet God wants us to be strong, like that cedar of Lebanon that was up there. Strong not in the confidence of ourselves, not in the abilities that we think we have, but strong in God. Not looking to men, not looking to ourselves, not looking to anyone except God, because every talent, every ability, everything that will happen will be because of him. Not because of anything that we are, not because of any idea that we have, but we find our strength, we're told, in weakness as we yield to him, as we let his Holy Spirit live and grow in us. Turn with me back to Psalm 146.

146, verse 3. David was a great king. David had power, if you want to use that word, as the world would say he had. But he never thought, or at least in the days after his sins, early in his reign, he never gave credit to himself and he knew where his confidence had to be if he was going to be a great king. Psalm 146, verse 3, he says, don't put your trust in princes, nor in the Son of Man, in whom there is no help. His Spirit departs. Verse 4, he returns to his earth in that very day, his plans perish.

Don't put your trust and your stock in a man. If you do, you will be very, very sorry.

If you do, you will never see the potential that God has for you.

If you do, you will never experience what these days portray to us. If you do, your eyes will begin to lose what they see today, and you will lose what God, the vision that God has given all of us.

Don't put your trust in man. Happy, it says in verse 5, is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the eternal his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever. Not just for five years, ten years, twelve years, who keeps truth forever, and whose will it is that everyone would live to see the potential that this earth has and that man has, the things that your eyes see, and that as you praise to God, pray to God, they will see more clearly. Turn with me back to 1 Corinthians 2.

1 Corinthians 2. Paul is writing, of course, to the Corinthian church in these verses. And notice the tone, as we read through the first five or six verses here, of what he has to say. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 1, says, I, brethren, when I came to you, didn't come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God.

He didn't come with confidence in himself, didn't come thinking he had all the answers of what to give them and that they needed to listen to him because he had the way and that he thought that he had it but that he himself had it. He says, for I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I didn't come, he said, to promote myself.

I came because Christ sent me, and he sent me with a message. He sent me with the words that he wanted you to hear. I was with you, he says, in weakness, in fear, the right kind of fear, and in much trembling, the right trembling because he was doing God's work and because he was walking with the fear of God that produces good and not the wastelands of this earth. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom. They weren't my ideas that I was coming to show you. It wasn't my ideas that I thought you should follow, he says.

They were not of human wisdom, but they were in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. The world around us puts their stock, puts their faith in the words of men. Not only in this country, and we see it with every presidential election, people will listen to words and they want to believe those words. And time after time, after time after time, they're sorely disappointed. Because words of men are just that, they're only words. They don't produce what people hope they produce. Paul said, I didn't come to you with my own power. I didn't come to you with my own words.

I come to you with words of God and with the power of His inspiration.

And as we are all here today, and as we all attend services every Sabbath and the times that God appoints for us to be together, it's His words that you hear. It's His words that inspire. It's His words that touch your mind and hopefully that you are putting in your heart so that your eyes see more clearly. See more clearly the things that God wants us to see.

Fear. The fear of man will be cast out and the confidence in God and the leadership that He puts in place in that time, a leadership and a government that will last forever and ever and ever, will spell the world of the millennium that we picture during this festival, a world where people grow, people flourish. And the vast wastelands physically and spiritually of this world become the fertile and verdant valleys and lands of that time. Let's go back to Isaiah 35.

Fear will be cast out. And in verses 5 and 6, we find something else that holds the world today back that will be cast out as well. Isaiah 35 verse 5, the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb sing. You know, we live in a land that really needs healing, just like the song that the choir sang this morning said. And we have a lot of people that are held back from what they want to do by these very conditions that are talked about in these two verses.

Some of those cases that we hear of people that are blind, deaf, can't speak, or lame, they've had from birth. But we live in a land where there's a lot of diseases out there that lead to those things, don't we? It's very commonplace to hear of someone that has heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease, multiple sclerosis. All those things and all those diseases can lead to these conditions that we read about in verses 5 and 6.

The way we live our lives, the things that we have on this earth today lead to those things. But these verses tell us there's a time of healing, physical healing, for all mankind. All those diseases and all those causes of all those conditions will be thrown out as the world is re-educated and the world begins to live and live off of a land that has been healed and live in a way that produces the health, the vitality, and the energy that God wants us to have. You know, it gets to a point that you wonder sometimes what's going to happen when we eat the things we eat. Wasn't it just in the last few weeks the cantaloupes were producing some kind of could-be-deadly condition. I remember telling my wife, I don't care if it isn't in Florida, don't buy any cantaloupe, don't need that around here. Other times it's been tomatoes, spinach. Those type of things that you think are very healthy. And yet, in some parts of the country and world, those things produce the opposite of what they should be producing. Because we live in a land and we live off of a land that has been abused and misused for 6,000 years. I'm sure that you've read the very many websites that are out there and listened to the very many programs that are out there that talk about how our food just doesn't provide what our bodies need anymore. And the processing of food, strips it of the nutrients that God wanted it to provide for us. And the processes that it goes through and the conditions that it's raised on just don't make it anymore. And yet, we live in a land where most of us, I would guess, can't put our own gardens together. And I have to wonder, when I look at our backyard, if we did put a garden together, what would it produce? Unless I threw tons of fertilizer on it. And that's not good. So we live in a land that we have to eat.

What we can find, paying attention to the food laws of God that He clearly established for people of all time. And that apply to every man, woman, and child today. If we live by those, how many billions of dollars, trillions, trillions of dollars are spent for healthcare in this country? Trillions. You know what? After price returns, those trillions won't have to be spent anymore. Because people will be re-educated. The land will be healed, replenished, and it'll provide the physical necessities of what man needs. Turn with me back to Deuteronomy 7 for just a minute.

This is also mentioned a few times in Exodus. But in Deuteronomy 7, this God is, well, has brought Israel out of Egypt. He makes an interesting comment to them that Moses reminds them of in Deuteronomy. In verse 14 of Deuteronomy 7, it says, You shall be blessed above all peoples. There won't be a male or female barren among you or among all your livestock. Health when you obey God. Health when you live according to His way of life. The way of life that will be restored in the Kingdom, including all of those landsabsts and all those other things that God told His people to do back in that time. And it says, The Eternal will take away from you all sickness and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt, which you have known, but will lay them all on those who hate you.

He'll remove all those diseases. Yes, He was going to heal the people, but as they move forward, they were going to eat in the way God prescribed. They were going to eat the things that He provided, and they were going to live in accordance with laws that He established. And in the millennium, the time our eyes see, men will have an opportunity to live off of the land, a land that will provide the nourishment that we need and physical bodies need. You know, I know that we all pray and ask God's blessing every time we eat a meal. Well, when you read about the diseases and the things that occur as a result of the things that we eat, it makes that prayer a lot more meaningful when we ask Him to bless that food to the nourishment of our bodies, to purify it.

Because naturally, what we have from the world just doesn't do it all the time anymore, and we need God to bless that food and to bless it so that our bodies can assimilate what it needs from what we have on this earth. But apart from the physical restoration that will be there that we hear about or read about in Isaiah 35, there's a spiritual application to those verses as well. Eyes will be opened, ears will be unstopped, has a spiritual application as well as the world is rejuvenated. Let's go back to Isaiah 30.

Isaiah 30 and verse 20.

I think we read these verses earlier in the feast. It says, Though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, Isaiah 30 verse 20, your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore.

Your eyes will see your teachers. They'll be opened. You're going to see who your teachers are.

Verse 21, your ears will hear a word behind you saying, this is the way. Walk in it whenever you turn to the right or whenever you turn to the left. Whenever you get off of that straight and narrow path that leads to eternal life. Eyes will be opened. They'll see what you and I have the opportunity by God's gift today. They'll see what we see. They'll hear what we hear. They'll begin to understand God's way of life and it will excite them and it will motivate them and it will energize them just the way it should do all those things for us. You can just feel the energy that will be on the earth when their eyes begin to see what our eyes see today. When their ears hear what our ears hear today. And when they do, as it said in verse 6 of Isaiah 35, the lame will leap.

They'll walk, but they'll be leaping for joy at what they know. The same way we should be leaping for joy for what God has put in our minds and opened us to see. They'll be leaping for joy. They won't be walking to the world into a government for answers anymore. They'll be walking toward the house of God to be seeing the way to go. We read in Micah 2, I believe, verses 1-4, they'll say, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord. Let's walk up there. Let's walk toward him instead of what the world does today, walking away from him.

And it says, the dumb shall sing. The people who don't have speech, they'll be able to sing. And they'll be singing praises to God. Just like you read in Psalms, over and over and over, David sang praises to God over and over. And in that day, they will sing praises to God for what he has delivered them from. They'll be singing praises to God for what he has allowed them to experience and for being able to see the potential that he has put in mankind and on earth. A time unparalleled in human history, a time that hasn't been seen ever, that was there at the beginning with Adam and Eve, and when they rejected it, it's been hidden from mankind since. All those things that God will begin to allow people to see, and the world will become a place of energy and a place of happiness, a place of joy, when the fruits of God's Spirit replenish or appear on the earth. Let's go back to Isaiah 35 one more time.

Verse 6. In the middle of verse 6, it says, Waters will burst forth through the wilderness and streams in the desert. The parched ground will become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. In the habitation of jackals where each lay, there will be grass with reeds and Russians. Have you ever been to a spring?

Many of you probably have been to Silver Springs. They're in Florida and Ocala. It's a beautiful place, now very much commercialized, but that spring, after all these years and all the time that people have been boating on it and recreating on it, still, is crystal clear. They have the glass ballad on boats that you can see right down to the bottom there, and that spring produces 550,000 gallons of water a day. After all these years, it still produces all that water. And this verse says, there will be springs everywhere springing up like that. When you see that spring and the very many others that are in Florida, what you see all around it is lush vegetation. Tremendously beautiful areas. And it says, in that day, springs will burst forth. The earth will begin to be happy again. The earth will spread forth its blessings again when God and the people that are following His ways populate it.

You can just see in these verses how things begin to come back to life. You can feel the energy. You can feel the vitality. You can feel the promise, and you can see the potential when you see those verses come alive with the eyes that God has given you to see.

A world of possibility and a world of potential that we don't even understand, the potential that man has in our limited physical minds.

And all those dry spaces on earth and all those dry spiritual spaces in people's lives will begin to burst forth as God's Holy Spirit. It says in Joel 2.28, it's spread forth over the land or over all the people. I look out over the ocean in the morning, and I remember the verse that says, you know, in those days, the knowledge of God will cover the world or cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. You know, that's a beautiful thought to think that all of mankind will know and hear what you and I hear, that you, all of mankind, will see what your eyes and my eyes see.

Can't even imagine, but we can, well, we can't imagine with God's Holy Spirit what that time will be like. Verse 7 of Isaiah 35 says, the parched ground will become a pool. Now, we saw parched grounds, or what we would call parched grounds, there in the pictures of the desert. You know, when people, well, sometimes you go back and you review some of the Hebrew words that are translated into some of these verses, and you get a different picture of what the verse means. In verse 7 here, parched grounds come from a Hebrew word, sharab, that really means a glowing, as in glowing, sands. We might more appropriately translate that a mirage.

The mirages, if we say that, will become a pool. And when people live in a land, when people see a mirage, all the hope that's out there with a new president that comes into office or a new law that gets passed, they kind of have a picture in their mind of what should be.

But every single time they turn out to be mirages. When they get there, all the change they're supposed to prove or to provide everything good isn't there. It just sort of vanishes. It just sort of vanishes. When they get to the point, it's just not there anymore.

But the promises of God are absolutely sure. When you read those promises that God makes, you can count on the fact it will happen. It's not an empty promise just to get elected. It's an absolute promise that's been in place as the foundation of the earth.

Just waiting for Christ to return. Just waiting for Him to return and begin the times of refreshing, the times of restoration, the times that when and the earth and the spirit in man can change and produce things that no one in the world sees, they hope for, and they have a mirage of it, but it'll become reality in the millennium. It'll become a reality at that time.

You can count on it. Your eyes see it and your heart believes it.

Keep that belief there. Keep your eyes focused on that. Don't let anything of this world or any man or any other thing lead you astray from that vision that God has given us for everything as He's brought us here. Verse 8 of Isaiah 35 says, a highway will be there and a road, and it'll be called the Highway of Holiness. It'll be a super highway, a place where people, as it says in that verse, not the unclean will travel on it, but the clean who are understanding God's way of life and committed to it begin to travel always in the direction of Him.

Back in Matthew 7, 14, it says, today, straight and narrow is the path that we have. A very narrow path. Only a few can traverse it. Many are called. The few are chosen. Only a few are walking along that path. You, all of us in this room, all of God's people who are keeping the Feast of Tabernacles around the world, are on that straight and narrow path. He's opened our eyes to see things the world doesn't see. They would scoff at what you and I believe. They'd call them empty promises, or they wouldn't even listen at all and think that we've lost our minds to follow this.

But we know. We know what they don't know yet, but they will know in the future.

In that day, it won't be a straight and narrow path with few walking toward God. It will be many. It'll be a superhighway on their way up to hear the Word of the Lord. It'll be a superhighway full of people that are seeking His way because they will see then what we should be seeing in our lives today. Potential. Happiness. Joy. Purpose.

Possibilities. Real possibilities. And all those fruits of the Spirit that make our lives worth living, that get us up in the morning and keep us moving even when the world around us would try to hold us back and make us think that what we believe is impossible. It'll be a super highway going on in verse 8. It says, the unclean won't pass over it. It'll be for others. Whoever walks the road, although a fool, won't go astray. If we walk the road we're on today, if we keep our eyes on Christ, if we live our lives the way that He says to live them, we won't go astray, led by His Holy Spirit. But if we begin to trust in self, if we begin to trust in other men, if we begin to trust in the governments of this world and veer off of that highway, we won't be happy. We won't get where we hope we're going. Our eyes looking forward, our eyes focused on Christ, our eyes focused on Him and following where He leads.

No lion, it says in verse 9, will be there. The lions will be put away. Satan will be gone, no longer able to influence the world. The lions won't be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up on it. It just won't be found there. A world of good and no longer. A world of good and evil as the world is today. Can you imagine a world where there's just good and not good and evil? God will give you eyes to see that, and those eyes and that vision will motivate you.

The redeemed shall walk there. It says in verse 9, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing.

The ransomed of the Lord. Those who He died for. Those who He made possible this way. Those who He made possible the forgiveness of sins so we don't have to pay the eternal penalty that He paid for us. And He opened the way to eternal life and a world that is without compare.

They will come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They will obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

No longer there. No longer those things that we're so accustomed to in this world, gone.

No longer any 11 o'clock news that's just full of tales of crime and murder. We won't need any 11 o'clock news because the whole world will be doing good and we'll be talking about it all the time.

That's the world your eyes see. As we picture and as we are here at the Feast of Tabernacles, I hope your eyes are seeing that time more clearly. I hope your heart is feeling what it will be like to be part of a worldwide family that's led by the Spirit of God, with love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, faith in God, looking to Him and all mankind, looking to Him for that leadership. Can you imagine the energy? Can you imagine the rebuilding? Can you imagine the vitality? Can you imagine the excitement of people? They'll have no choice but to praise God. No choice because they will from their hearts. No, this is something that is absolutely great that they should never want to give up. You and I have it today. God called us to see this today, the things that the rest of the world and the people have lived won't see until the second resurrection. It should motivate us. It should excite us. It should draw us closer to God. And it should help us better keep the first commandment that says, you shall have no other gods besides me. Nothing more valuable to you than God and His way. Nothing more precious than the truth He's given us that you can't put a price tag on.

Over in 1 Corinthians 2, we were there earlier, God has let our eyes see many things. And there's a lot that we have learned.

But as Paul tells the Corinthians and tells us as well, there's a lot more than what we see today.

Let's pick it up in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 7. Paul says, We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, a plan that's been set in motion from the foundation of the world, which none of the rulers of this age knew. None of the rulers, none of the kings, Steve Jobs, or any other of the great men that we might call them, they didn't know of it. Their eyes didn't see these things. None of the rulers of this age knew, for had they known, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. They would never have abandoned Him had they had the vision, had their eyes seen what our eyes see. They would have never gone astray. They would have never taken their eyes off of Christ. They would never have gone apart from the truth and the way of life that He had established for them that was going to lead to all these things that we've talked about and so much more. As it is written, verse 9, I has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it even entered into the hearts of men the things which God has repaired for those who love Him. As much as we see and as much as we've seen today, there's so much more that we can't even imagine.

Those are things that our eyes will see later. When, as it says in verse 10, God reveals them to us through His Spirit. As you continue to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, as you experience the joy that's here, as you work with people and as you're with people in the various activities of people of like mind, catch the vision, pray to God, ask Him to continually open your eyes and open them more, and commit to Him with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your purpose.

Be there. Be there to see the reality of these things that your eyes see today when they happen on this earth and the coming millennium.