Three Questions for Self-Examination

Well, we're three weeks away from Passover. We've been kind of doing a countdown toward Passover. Three weeks away. Today I want to start off by turning back to the end of the Bible and rehearsing for just a minute the meaning of the last holy day of the year. So turn with me back to Revelation 20 and verse 12. At the last great day, when the rest of humanity is resurrected, this is what the scene will be like. I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened.

And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire.

Last great day, the time when all of humanity that didn't know God's truth during this time or have an opportunity to understand it has an opportunity to learn it. And they, like you and I, have their opportunity to choose God at that time or to reject Him at that time.

And then mankind's time on earth is done. This spectacle fascinates a lot of people. The time of the judgment, the time of the end, not many of them call it the white-thrown judgment. Not many of them think of it as the second resurrection. But it is a specter for a lot of humanity and a lot of religions. They fascinate on that time when everyone will stand before God. But that time is for them. Our time is now. Peter says in 1 Peter 4, 17, judgment is now at the house of God. Our day of salvation is now. God has given us the privilege of knowing His truth now, of living His way of life now, of being called now, and having the opportunities and blessings of living this way of life now.

And so we have a standard by which we are to live. That standard is Jesus Christ, absolute perfection. And none of us will achieve that in this physical life. But our job is to try. And each year as we come into the Passover season, as we already heard in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 28, we examine ourselves to see where we are standing in comparison to that bar of perfection that we were called to become like.

It's a daunting task. When you compare yourself to Jesus Christ and how He lived His life and that He was able to resist every sin, live 33 years without committing a single sin, go through all the agony, all the torture, all the jeering that He did, all without sin, that's a mighty high bar to live up to.

And all of us fall far, far, far short. But every Passover, we come to a time where God says, examine yourself. Examine yourself. See where you are in relation to that perfection and to that standard that you should be living up to. And we're in that time right now. You heard Mr.

Harreld say, if we don't take the time now to do that before Passover, it's going to be a hollow time for us. Paul says that we should take it in a worthy manner. And the way we take it in a worthy manner is that we absolutely don't take lightly the meaning of Passover. That we don't take lightly the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That we don't take lightly the ceremony that we'll go through that night. Because it's our chance to stand before God again, to recommit before Him again, that we will follow Him, that we do accept His Son as the Savior, and that we do look to Him for the salvation that He promised, and that we believe that He will do it.

But our part in it is to allow the Holy Spirit to ever grow us closer and closer to the standard that He wants us to be. You know, when I was young, many of you probably had this same experience, we lived in the same house from the time I was almost born until the time I left for college. And every birthday my dad would take us up downstairs and he would put the little ruler on our head and draw a line on the wall. So every year we would be able to go back the next year and see how much we grew that year, how much we grew the following year.

And it's kind of a measure to try to look back on. And you know what? Not one of us ever shrunk in size. We always grew. We always grew each year. And so we do as Christians as well, if we're following God, if we're letting the Holy Spirit be in us.

So sometimes I think we look at this time of examining that we have to beat ourselves up. We have to think about how awful we are. And that's not the case. Yes, as we examine ourselves, we're going to find sins and God's going to reveal those to us that we need to be putting out of our lives. Yes, repentance is a part of this time. And yes, we're going to be sorrowful and remorseful for the things that we find that we still are not doing well.

But it's also a time for us to see that we are growing in grace and knowledge, that we are progressing. We're still committed to God. We're still following the way that He wants us to be. And we learn something about ourselves, each Passover we go through. And that growth and the subsequent repentance helps us to grow so that the next year the line is a little higher than it was before. Because with God's help, we're able to overcome those problems and grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Mr. Harreld said we should put together a JTA for examining ourselves. And I like that concept. You know, every year when I was working, and all of you have experienced performance appraisals at work. And in it, they tell you what areas you've progressed in and what areas that you need to work on in order to achieve the next level or whatever your goals are. And you set objectives for the next year.

Self-examination as a Christian is similar to that. It's a time of reflection. It's a time for us to be aware of who we are and what we need to grow on. It's a time for us to repent and turn from one way and turn to God's way. But it is a time for us to reflect and to know where we're going and to rehearse and remind ourselves where we're going.

There's three questions that I have over the years thought about every Passover time that comes around. And it's from a book that I read on New Age Judaism back, well, several years ago now. And those questions, when I first read them, and I was just reading the book out of Curiosity because it was in the library. And in it, they were talking about Jews in the New Age, how they see themselves standing before God, bound at the time of the judgments, like we read in Revelation. And the tradition there is that they will be asked three questions when they stand before God, and they'll be able to monitor how well they live their lives by how they answer these three questions.

So I thought we would go through these three today, so maybe it can help us examine ourselves as well. Question number one. Were you honest in business? Were you honest in business, they say? Now, out of all the three questions, this is the only one that has anything to do with how we conduct ourselves with other people. The question, according to them, isn't going to be how well did you get along in your family, how long and well did you get along with your coworkers or with your neighbors? But how did you or were you honest in business? Well, business is an interesting phenomenon in America.

When I worked every morning, I got up, I left the house, I was away for several hours, and I came home at night. My wife knew where I was going, or at least she thought she knew where I was going, she knew where I told her I was going, my kids knew where I was going, or at least they believed what I told them I was where I was going, and it was really going there.

But I'm making a point that I could have been going someplace else, because it would be very easy to say I'm going and then show up someplace else. But business in America today is kind of a secret thing, isn't it? What we do away from home, we don't know. We don't know what the person is really doing. You know, Bernie Madoff's family, they tell us that they believed that he, they never understood or never knew that he was doing the Ponzi schemes that he was.

He went away to the office each day, and they had no idea that he was going to be one day known as the, you know, one of the greatest criminals in America, that he was going to have created the greatest Ponzi scheme. They just thought he went away to work every day, and that he was an investor, and he was well-respected among people. He was even on the SEC and was well-respected there. Yet behind the scenes, he wasn't very honest in business, was he? And it came out, and it showed that what he did behind the scenes was far different than the public persona that he wanted to display to people, and very different than what his family would have said that he was up to.

Back when I was working in a hospital in Indianapolis, we had a controller that was there. And he was a good guy. He seemed to do everything well, was quite confident. And one day he announced that he was going to be taking another job, leaving Indianapolis. And in fact, he was moving down to Orlando to work in one of the big hospitals down here, in a chain of hospitals.

And while he was there, we never had any issues with him. But a couple years later, we heard that he had been indicted for Medicare fraud. That somehow, when he got down here, he got in with the people that he worked with, and they had defrauded the government out of quite a bit, as it turns out. So he was indicted. I don't think he ever went to jail.

But I do know that he lost his career. No one would ever have hired him again. And yet, every day, when he went to work, his wife had no idea what he was doing when he got to that hospital. His kids had no idea what he was doing when he went to that hospital. And somewhere along the line, he let something happen, that he decided he would take a different course than he had taken before.

God has a lot to say about how we handle business and our money. Turn with me back to Proverbs 20 for a minute.

Proverbs 20, verse 10, says, Well, back in those days, you could buy five pounds of wheat, five pounds of corn, and you were really at the mercy of whoever was selling it to you, because their weights could show five pounds, but they were really giving you four. We have the same type of things that go on in the world today. A lot of people will sell us something and say how much it's worth, but then we find out that maybe it's not worth that at all. Nothing's different. Maybe the ways are a little bit different.

Down in chat, down in verse 14, says, It's good for nothing, cries the buyer, but when he's gone his way, then he boasts. Hey, I'll talk his down.

I really want that item, but I'll show you that I really don't want it and that it really is useless to try to see if I can get the price down. And it works a lot of times. It works a lot of times. Are you honest in business? That's what they say God will ask. Over in Mark 10, Mark 10, verse 19, Christ is talking to the young man who wants to know what he needs to do to have eternal life. And his first response to him is that you need to do the commandments.

And in verse 19 of Mark 10, he recites those commandments. Don't commit adultery. Don't murder. Don't steal. Don't bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and your mother. All commandments. Except one, do not defraud. Do not defraud. Why would Christ have said, do not defraud in that list? Because he knew what the predisposition of some would be. Because he knew that there were many ways that we could defraud one another. We could sell each other a bill of goods and have it be something far different.

And no one would ever find out about it. Too late. Too late after the sale is complete. Too late after we signed the tax return and mail it in. Too late after all these things that we do every day of our lives.

Don't defraud one another, he said. Don't take someone down the garden path for your own benefit. Be honest in everything you do. Be honest in every single thing. Live to the standard that we're being measured against. Live to the standard of Jesus Christ. Be honest in every single thing. Now many would say, well, I don't work anymore, so that doesn't apply to me. But it does. Every single one of us engages in business probably every single day.

We go to the store to buy things. We go to the gas station to fill our car up. We go to the bank. We do things around the neighborhood. We're all engaged in business all the time. And we all have an opportunity if we want to, to defraud. Not in every single transaction that we have, but there's an opportunity that comes along. One that we know a lot of Americans do take that route in is taxes. Within a month, everyone will fire their tax returns. Very easy to sit down and do a tax return and leave something off that you don't think someone's going to catch.

Very easy to defraud in some way. And no one may ever find out about it. It's quite a tempting thing. But the standard is Jesus Christ. The standard we're supposed to be monitoring or measuring ourselves against is perfection. Some of the Jews think that God will ask, were you honest in business? And then, when people answer, they'll begin to see that maybe their lives didn't measure up the way they should.

Now, I don't think any of us in here do any of the things that I talked about. But as we look at ourselves and as we examine, we can kind of look in those recesses of our minds, as David said. When he says, search my heart and find if there's anything in me, that's apart from you. Any sin that I don't know about. And as we examine ourselves, we can ask God that. Is there anything that I'm doing that I don't even realize? Is there something there that's keeping me and that's holding me back from attaining the perfection that you want me to be marching forward to every single year of my life?

You know, there's a few people in the Bible that were very good examples of this who never took the opportunity to defraud who they worked for. One of them that comes to mind is Joseph. You remember that in Genesis, when he was working for Potiphar? Potiphar was more than willing to entrust everything in his care to Joseph, because he didn't believe for a second that Joseph would do anything out of the way. He knew that Joseph would be honest in his dealings to Joseph's credit, because he was away from home, a young man who could have taken a totally different approach.

But he didn't. Another one was Daniel. Turn with me back to Daniel 6.

Daniel 6 and in verse 1, our politicians in the world think that they get scrutinized when they run for office these days. Well, Daniel was no different. He found himself in a government position, and he had plenty of people scrutinizing what he was done. Daniel 6, verse 1, It pleased Darius, who was the king, to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps to be over the whole kingdom.

And over these three governors, of whom Daniel was one, that the satraps might give account to them so the king would suffer no loss. Set up the things so that he would not lose anything, people that he totally trusted with the belongings of the state. Then this Daniel, verse 3, distinguished himself above the other governors and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him.

And the king gave thought to setting him over the whole kingdom. Good guy! So the governors and satraps sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom. They thought, you know what, this guy can't be as good as what he thinks, as what everyone says he is. There's got to be something that we can find that he does that we can tell the king about just to create a little bit of doubt or to discredit him in some way.

And apparently they searched and they searched and they searched. They couldn't find anything, it says. Verse 5, oh, and it says in verse 4, What a tribute to Daniel!

What a tribute to him! That they analyzed and looked at everything that he was involved in and they couldn't find anything, not even the smallest thing to take back to the king, to try to discredit him, to try to place some doubt over him. And so they used his religion against him, as you know. Daniel was living up to a very high standard. Daniel, who was an exile in Babylon, who didn't have a wife or mom and dad that he was reporting to, but a Gentile king. And in that arena, he adhered to everything he had been taught and everything he stood for. And he did it very well. When he's asked, if he's asked, were you honest in business? Daniel can say yes. Yes, I was. To his credit. To his credit.

As I think about this question each year, I think I understand why the Jews or the New Age Jews or whatever they call themselves put that one there. As far as how you conduct yourself. Were you honest in business is a standard that you can be, for Christ would say, who is faithful and least is also faithful and much. But also what we do in business is apart from our family's eyes, apart from our church's eyes, it's something that we do each week or each day.

But it's something that's really secret to the rest of us. I don't know what you do when you leave the house each day. You don't know what I do. And it's not our business to know. But you know, we used to tell our kids, God knows what you're doing. Be accountable to Him. Turn with me back to Matthew 6. Let's begin in verse 5, the first four verses say basically the same thing. The Christ is talking to His disciples here in the Sermon on the Mount. He says when you pray, you won't be or you shall not be like the hypocrites.

They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of this race that they may be seen by men. Surely I say to you, they have their reward. But you when you pray, go into your room, and when you shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Even the things we do in secret, we need to be aware of.

It makes no difference if your wife finds out. In some cases, it may make a difference. It makes no difference if your children find out. But it really does. What it really matters is God is looking to see what's done in secret. He's the one who's measuring what you're living up to. He's the one that we are examining ourselves before. It's Him who we are seeking to please. And by it, as we please Him, we please each other and become a blessing to each other as well.

As we work in business or anything we do, any endeavor, just because it's done in secret and you can get away with it doesn't matter. It's in those times that the character that you've developed really shows, it's at those times in secret that God knows is His law written on your heart. Is it written on your mind? Is it something that you love with all your might? You don't have to turn there, but in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 31, it says, Everything we do, everything we do, should be the glory of God.

Everything. Whether it's done in church, whether it's done in the family, whether it's done at business, or whether it's done when there is absolutely not another living being around us. Everything we do, we do to the glory of God. That's quite a measure to live up to as you, isn't it? Everything we do, we do to the glory of God.

Second question. Did you establish times to nurture yourself spiritually? Did you establish times to nurture yourself spiritually? By established times, it means did you schedule it? Did you make it part of your daily routine? We have established times to get up in the morning, don't we? There's jobs we have to be at by XX hour, so we get up at XX hour in order that we get there on time.

We eat lunch or dinner at basically the same time every day. We look at the clock, and by the time everyone's home, that's the time that dinner's going to be on the table. And even something as mundane as watching a TV show. We have an established time for that, don't we? I know exactly the shows we watch, and I know exactly the time that they come on.

DVRs make my life a lot easier because I don't have to be in front of that show at that point. But I know what time they come on, and I know that they're there, and they're important enough that I actually take the time to program it in. This question is, did you establish times to nurture yourself spiritually? All those other things are important, but did you do that? Were they as important to you? God gives us some of that. We have a Sabbath day. We're all sitting here today on a Sabbath day. He scheduled this time for us, and so we convene here together. He schedules holy days, so in a few weeks we'll be at Passover, we'll be at Unleavened Bread, and the other holy days of the year.

But there's those other things that we're supposed to be doing personally that help us to grow up or climb up that ladder toward the perfection and the goal that we're supposed to be working toward. You know, we'll never be in the Kingdom if all we ever do is come to church. We'll never be in the Kingdom if all we do is come to the holy days, pay our tithes, do those things. We have to do those. We're commanded to do those. But it's what we do privately that helps us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. We know we have to pray every day to grow. We know we have to study the Bible every day. We know we need to make times to fast. We know we need to take the time to fellowship, like we do each week and even at other times during the week. And we know we have to take the time to meditate. Five things we do in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Things that we have to schedule ourselves. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, at XX hour, until XX hour, you pray each day. If it did, every single one of us would do it every single day. I believe that. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, you fast on XX days of the year. Just one day, God commands us to fast. But if He said, I want you to fast on 6, 8, 12, 15 days a year, every single one of us would do it. Those other fast days are totally at our discretion. Totally what we do. Totally what we schedule. And totally what we make the time to do.

Some of the new age Jews say God's going to ask, did you take the time to do that? Did you make sure that you were using the things and putting into yourself and taking advantage of the opportunities you had to grow spiritually?

We know the things that we need to do. But God wants to see, will we do them? Is there the character there to do the things, even when it may not be convenient to do it?

You know, when I get up in the morning, I try not to turn my computer on until I have time to pray and study. Because I know when that computer goes on, my interest is drawn to what's on there. I can sit and read emails, I can sit and look at news articles, and pretty soon an hour or two can be gone, and then I'm behind schedule on everything else. But I've learned, don't even turn it on until that's done.

Make yourself do the first things first. Sometimes Debbie will get up before me, and she turns it on and I walk by that office, and you know it's all I can do to keep my eyes off of that screen. And I'm going to have to just have it turned off when she's done with it. But no, it's tough. But you know, God wants us to do the things that we do and to make sure we have the character to do it.

It's part of how we grow, part of how we attain what He wants us to attain. You know all that. I want to talk about just one thing today, because this one thing is extremely important, I think, as we examine ourselves. As we look at ourselves now and throughout the year, and that's meditation. Meditation is one of those things that we do totally by ourselves.

You know, there's no, it's hard to even schedule a time to meditate. Sometimes you just find the time to do it and you know that it needs to be done. Sometimes it's in the middle of the night when you wake up at 2 a.m. and there's nothing else, no way you're going back to sleep, but you make yourself focus on the things of God.

And all of a sudden during those hours they become very productive. And you learn things, and there's things that fit together that they never did before. David was a known meditator. He learned about God's law. He was able to appreciate how it all fit together. He got a vision of what God was doing. He did it by doing all those other things that we do to nurture ourselves spiritually.

But meditation is the thing that made it all click for him. Turn with me back to Psalm 1 and verse 2. So it says, This delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. Day and night he's thinking about it. Day and night he's engaging God and asking God to fill his mind with his knowledge, fill his mind with understanding, thinking about how that law is good, thinking about how that law, if everyone was keeping it, if the whole world was living by those standards that we have, what a good place it would be.

What a great place to raise kids. What a great place to do business. What a great place to just be alive because the whole world couldn't help but be happy if everyone was living by God's law. And we all know that day will come. We all know that day is coming when Christ returns to earth and everyone lives by that law.

And we can have that in our lives today. If we develop the character, if we allow ourselves to be nurtured spiritually, if we allow God to put his Spirit in us, and if we allow it to permeate the recesses of our minds, clear out those areas that need clearing out. Show us the areas that need to be removed. Help us to change the way we act, to change the way we react, to choose the things that we're supposed to choose.

All those things can happen. For David, a man after God's own heart, I dare say that if I ask you before I said his name, give me an example of one man who meditated, I'll bet the most of us in this room, David, as you came to mind. And David wrote the Psalms, and in the Psalms we can find peace in the times of adversity, as well as peace in times of the future.

Meditation can help us do it. I think I gave this example before, but I'll give it again, because it's probably been years since I have. But you remember the game, connect the dots. Remember that when you were a kid? Draw lines or draw dots on a paper, someone connects them, and then when you form a square, you get a point? Well, I think meditation is like that. When we pray, there's dots that can put into our mind. You know when you pray, thoughts will come into your mind that God puts there, that you wouldn't think if you weren't praying, and they kind of sit there, and you know where they came from.

And when we read the Bible, and when we read a scripture the first time, third time, tenth time, twentieth time, fiftieth time, something new happens. We learn something every time we read through the Bible. We learn something new every time we read a verse. There's dots put in our mind when we read those things. When we fast, we learn things, and there's dots put on our mind.

You know what connects all those dots together? Meditation.

Excuse me.

Meditation. When we sit and when we lay awake at night, or when we take a walk in the park, when we get away from it all in a quiet place, when we meditate on what we've learned, those dots are connected. We begin to get a vision of what God is working in our lives. We begin to get a vision of His kingdom and what the world will be like.

I don't know that we ever get that if we don't take the time to meditate. If we don't take the time to be alone, if we don't take the time to be with God and just let Him fill our minds with what He wants it to be filled with.

In Psalm 49, verse 3, David says, My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart will give understanding.

When I meditate, I'll get understanding.

Of course, David was also keeping the law and obeying the law, and those that keep the law have a good understanding as well. But he was able to put it all together, or God was able to put it all together for him, when he took the time to nurture himself spiritually in all the ways, including that one.

But it takes some time to be alone. It takes some time for us to meditate. It typically doesn't happen in five minutes or ten minutes.

But you know the great men of the Bible, the men who lived lives that we would aspire to live, like Joseph, like Moses, like Elijah, if you read back through the Scriptures, you find several times in their lives where they were alone for long periods of time.

Joseph, somewhere along the line before he got to Egypt, purposed in his mind he would not give in to the way of Egypt, but that he would live by the law his father taught him.

Young man, 17 years old, he had every reason in the book to throw away what he had learned before, because he was living in a new land where not one of his family members was ever going to see what he did.

And yet he took a stand to live the way he was taught because he knew it was right. Because he knew when he was convicted, that was the way to do it.

And after many years and many trials, God rewarded him.

Moses was for years as a shepherd, where he was out in the field alone, where he had an opportunity to think about what had happened in Egypt, to think about what he had learned.

And also a time for God to prepare him for what he was going to use him for, even though Moses didn't know at the time.

Paul found himself in prison for months.

Commentaries say he was in prison for six or seven years of his life.

And during those times in prison is when he wrote the books that we study and that we read today, and that have so much truth in him. Alone. Alone, but letting God guide him, direct him, connect the dots so that all through his life he kept climbing up in the measurement toward what the standard that God had set for him.

Back in Joshua, Chapter 1, Joshua 1, Verse 8, It says, Why?

That you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.

Learn it, live it, purpose, that you will do what's written in it.

And when we do it, there's a promise.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

You will succeed. You will progress. You will get where God is taking you.

When you build that into your life, along with prayer, along with Bible study, along with fasting and fellowship, won't you take the time to establish a schedule to nurture yourself spiritually?

It takes something to do that. The world is full of distractions, and like I said, I can walk by a computer and forget everything else that I need to do at that point.

And you are the same way. Do you know what this takes?

Turn with me back to 1 Corinthians 9. Something that God wants us to build into our lives, for the times we nurture ourselves spiritually, but all the other times in our lives, too.

1 Corinthians 9, verse 24. Paul's making the analogy of the life we live to a runner.

He says, don't you know that those who run in a race are run, but one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may obtain it.

And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. They do it to obtain a perishable crown.

But we do it for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run this, not with uncertainty. Thus I fight, not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

The key word in there? He disciplined himself. He did what he needed to do, even when no one was telling him to do it.

Excuse me again.

It comes from too much speaking in one day, I guess.

Okay. He disciplined himself. If we're going to establish those times, we have to exercise self-discipline.

God's looking to us to make ourselves do the things that we need to do.

Turn with me to 2 Timothy 1, verse 7. You know the verse well, because the only way we can do these things is with His Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit that we receive after we're baptized or after we repent, after we're baptized, after hands are laid upon us, and God grants that Holy Spirit.

And Timothy describes it this way in verse 7 of 2 Timothy.

1. He has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

We need the power to do what God calls us to do. We need the love because that defines us.

Do you know what the Greek word for sound mind is there? It's saphro-nismos. That means nothing to you.

There, it's translated sound mind. Do you know what Strong's Concordance says? That means self-control and discipline.

2. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control and self-discipline.

What we need to grow, He's given us. We just have to exercise it. We just have to use it.

There's nothing that He asks us to do that we can't do when we use His power. Nothing. With men it's impossible, but with Christ all things are possible.

As we examine ourselves, are we using the Spirit of God for all that He gave it, for all that it can do when He gave it to us?

It can help us do all the things we need to do to keep marching up that ladder so we're progressing each year.

3. Were you waiting for the Messiah?

Were you waiting for the Messiah?

The Jews believe the Messiah hasn't even come yet. Maybe New Age Jews do. I don't know.

Were you waiting for the Messiah?

For us the question would be, were you waiting for His return?

Were you waiting? And were you waiting the way He wants you to wait?

For Jews, this has been a long-standing thing. They've been waiting forever for the first coming of Jesus Christ.

Do you remember Fiddler on the Roof? Remember Tevye when he would talk to God back to the screen all the time? And there's one point in there when the Russians are coming in and taking over their little village and they're having to pack everything up and going away. And Tevye makes the comment something about, Lord, we've waited for You a long time. We don't know when You're going to come, but now would be a good time to do it. Now would be a good time.

But he was saying, we've been waiting for You. When are You going to come?

Many of us have been in the Church 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more. We've been waiting for Christ to come for a long time. A long time.

There was a time in my life I didn't even think I would graduate from high school before he came. And now, I'm far past high school, but we're still waiting. We're still waiting. There was a time when I would look over a congregation in Orlando. I wasn't in Orlando at that time, but in Chicago, they would have several thousand people sitting in it.

They were all waiting for Christ to come. Now I look over a congregation that has 75 or 80 today and here that are waiting for Christ to come.

What happened?

Well, many. If they're asked this question, were you waiting or did you wait for the Messiah, what will be their answer?

Back in Psalm 27.

Verse 11.

People have been waiting on the Messiah for a long time. Psalm 27, verse 11.

David writing, Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me into smooth path because of my enemies. Don't deliver me to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence.

Not a good situation he's in. People surrounding him, not looking out for his well-being but wanting to destroy him.

Verse 13, he says, I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

I would have lost heart. And those words are in italics.

But even if we read it without the words added by the translators in verse 13, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord, with all the trials and all the things that come our way, everything that can take us away from God, every single thing that's there, designed to take us away, he said, unless I believed that I would see the Messiah, he might have gone a different way.

He concludes, wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and heal strength in your heart. Wait, I say. Wait on the Lord. Wait for him.

Back in Job, a book back, Job 19, verse 25.

Job, after he's lost family, home, wealth, friends telling him that he's no good, was able to say this.

Job 19, verse 25. I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth.

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me.

He never gave up hope. He never lost his faith that God was there. He had some things he had to correct, as God showed him, but he never lost sight.

And he never stopped believing. And he waited. And he waited well.

Were you waiting for the Messiah?

Today, we and many others are still waiting for the Messiah.

Back in Matthew 25, we find out that some didn't wait. Some that had the same opportunities that you and I have.

Some that had the same knowledge that you and I have. Some that had the same calling. Some that had the Holy Spirit.

But some grew tired of waiting. They got tired of waiting.

Matthew 25, verse 1, The kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were wise, and five of them were foolish.

Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them.

They looked like they were ready. They were doing all the things that the public would say, you look ready.

But were they nurturing themselves spiritually? Were they putting the oil back in those lamps so that they could ever burn, as God wanted them to, when he lit them in us? Were they doing the things and disciplining themselves to make sure that those lamps would stay lit until the bridegroom came?

Were they honest in business? What they did in secret? Were they waiting for the Lord by the way they lived their lives, by the actions they took?

Verse 3 would tell us, no. Somewhere along the lines, they stopped waiting for God. They stopped living the way of life. That would indicate to him, we're waiting for him and we're waiting for his kingdom to come. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wives took oil in their vessels with their lamps. They kept living, even though it seemed like a long time for the bridegroom to come. They kept living their life in accordance with the standards that were set before them. They kept an eye on the mark that they were supposed to be shooting for, and they kept looking for it and growing toward it. They used the Holy Spirit and the spiritual things of life to help them get there, because without the Holy Spirit, we could never do it.

Verse 5, while the bridegroom was delayed, the body may be changed its mind, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight a cry was heard, Behold, the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him, that all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, Give us some of your oil, light our paths for us, make it be so that we can be the way you are, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answer is saying no, lest there should be not enough for us, and you go out to those who sell and buy for yourselves. We can't buy the oil from someone else. We have to buy the oil, and we have to earn the oil and put that oil in our lamps by ourselves.

By the things that we do, by the choices we make, by the way we live our lives, by every day that we show God, we are waiting for Him, and living by the way that He will have all men live in His kingdom.

While they went to buy, verse 10, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with Him to the wedding, and the door was shut. Afterward, the other virgins came, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But He answered and said, I say to you, I don't know you.

Watch, therefore. He might have said, wait, therefore. Absolutely believe that I am coming. Absolutely keep living your life, always marching up that bar toward perfection and not losing sight of what God wants us to be and wants us to become.

2 Peter 3 Verse 8 Peter knew times would come when people thought that they were living God's way, but maybe He wasn't going to come. And he says, beloved, don't forget this one thing, that what the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.

We might live our whole lives without Christ returning. Many have. We might live seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred years, and He may not come in our lifetime.

To Him, a thousand years is as one day. Just think how inconsequential seventy, eighty, ninety, or a hundred years is to God.

He never forgets us, but He wants us to have the discipline not to forget Him and to wait for Him, even if it's our entire life.

Verse 9, the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some kind of slackness, but His long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

He wants everyone to choose Him. He wants to give everyone eternal life. He wants everyone to experience the joy that He gives us.

So we wait. So we allow Him to keep working with us, and we don't give up hope.

And we have faith, absolute faith and belief in what He's called us to, and we live our lives with that.

Many do, or many have thought, that He was slack concerning His promise.

Many have thought, He's not coming, I'll relax a little bit, I'll let the world back into my life.

And when they do that, things come upon them unexpectedly. We don't want that to happen to any of us.

We don't want to lose the lesson of examining ourselves and recommitting ourselves each year at Passover to living for Him, to living and knowing what He called us to, knowing and believing that He is coming back and that He will give us eternal life.

And many, many more besides us that choose Him and show by the way we wait for Him daily that we are choosing Him.

You know many have. Many have. Back in the book of Hebrews, it's full of examples of people, men and women, who lived their lives and never even saw the first coming of Christ.

Hebrews 11, verse 13. They all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Their vision was always there, and they lived their lives accordingly.

For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland, and truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

We all have an opportunity to return. We can take our eyes off the goal. We can forget and think that God isn't coming back or Christ isn't coming back in a short time.

And we can find ourselves worshipping Manon, worshipping the things of the world in a way of speaking, and forgetting that our job is to worship Him and to bring Him glory in all we do.

But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them and a city for us.

And if you read over in verse 35 to 40, they went through incredibly tough times to get there.

Sawn in two, martyred, lives that we can't even imagine as we read those words. But they waited for the Messiah. They waited and they never lost sight.

We wait. We can never lose sight. Passover, an annual reminder, helps us to keep the sight of what we've been called to. He called us out of this world. He died that our sins may be forgiven. He died that we might have eternal life.

We can never forget that. As we prepare for Passover, as we examine ourselves, looking toward the standard that He wants to give all of us. Don't forget what He's called us to. Don't lose sight of it.

Be honest and live up to His standards in everything you do, in public, at home, and in secret.

Take the time and use the Holy Spirit of power and love and self-control and discipline to do the things that you know you need to do in order to keep marching up that ladder toward what He called us to be. And every day of your life, wait. Wait and live your life, showing God you're waiting for His return.