Thy Kingdom Come

One of the central questions of human beings, no matter what culture they come from, what their financial status, there's a point in life where you ask a question. You might word it differently, but the question asked is basically, why am I here? Is there a purpose for me? Is there a meaning in my life? And sometimes people don't ask that question until very late in life.

I know some people that just go through life just partying, and at some point they stop and say, wait a minute, is this all there is to this? Why am I here? Other people ask that question very early. I think a lot of it depends on just your personality. It depends on how much suffering you have in your life. People who suffer a lot tend to ask that question a lot. Why am I here? Why is God allowing this to happen? So I want to just touch on three questions this afternoon.

Why do I exist? Why does God allow evil and suffering? And does God have a plan to get us out of this mess? So I'm just sort of picking up on where we left off this morning, talking about the Gospel, its past, present, and future stages, and what God is doing.

So let's go back to Genesis 1. Read something that we mentioned this morning. Genesis 1 and verse 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female. He created them. Now that's a very important statement, not just the fact that we're created in the image of God, but that male and female.

No, we're always fascinated by the differences between male and female in the way that we think. A man and a woman have the exact same intelligence, but give them certain information, and they will process it differently. How can that be? How can you have the same intelligence and come from the same culture, and yet will process certain information differently? It's because there's a slight difference between the male and female brain designed by God. Now there's a reason for that. There are certain male traits, or what we would consider male traits, and there are certain female traits that actually exemplify God's traits. So he put them in both of us, which is great.

It's one of the things that helps us be able to relate to each other. They have relationships. So both male and female are created in the image of God. Verse 28 says, then God blessed them and said, Be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth. And he talks about how the purpose he gave to humanity then was to be over the earth that he had created.

Verse 31, that God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. Now Adam and Eve at this point were very good. Now we talked about this morning how they became a mixture of good and evil, but at this point there was no animosity. There was no stress between them. They had no stress between them and God. Their lives were perfect. Now let's look at just five ways in which Adam and Eve were created to be like God, and that you and I are created to be like God in these ways also.

One is, they had the ability to reason. Now they were self-conscious. You and I are self-conscious. You know, you look at a cow out eating in the field, and there's not a lot of self-consciousness there.

They just eat, right? There's not a lot of calculus going on. There's not a lot of problem-solving. Now it's true that other, what they call higher forms of animals, do have a certain problem-solving capability. If you put a group of monkeys in a room, and you hang some bananas from the ceiling, and you put enough tools around, one of them will figure out, oh yeah, if I move this here, and I put the chair on top of that, and I take this broom, I can knock down the bananas.

But that's a huge jump between that and building a skyscraper. When it comes to reasoning, when it comes to being able to actually think through things, the ability to communicate with each other, the ability that we have to be self-conscious, to think about ourselves, it's just unique. And that way, we are like God. Now, obviously, in a very limited way, a second way is in our emotional makeup. We experience emotions, even though they are chemically, sometimes they produce chemicals. Now, if you feel angry, or you feel fear, your body is going to produce adrenaline.

You know, if you feel happy, it's because your body just gave you a shot of dopamine or some of the other chemicals that go through your brain. That's why women like chocolate so much. It produces a real chemical jolt. But our emotions are more than our chemicals. That's why we're different. God has emotions. And His emotions are not chemically produced, or they don't produce a chemical reaction, which is very good for us because when God gets angry, there's no adrenaline rush, which is very good for us.

So, you and I have emotions that are different. We have the ability for absolute joy. One unique emotion that we have is the ability to have empathy. You can be with a human being that's suffering, and you can sit and cry with that person because you feel what they're feeling. Or somebody can be happy, and you can be very happy with that person.

It's one way that we're like God in this very limited way. We experience grief, sympathy. There's all kinds of emotions we have that are like God's emotions. We also have imagination and creativity. And this is one way that you can really understand how human beings are different than animals. You can get a beautiful songbird to sing the same few notes from generation after generation after generation.

You'll never get a group of birds together to write a symphony. We have this amazing creativity. And look what we do with technology. Art, music, literature. There's nothing in the animal world that produces anything like that. Our imagination allows us to think in terms of time, future, past. You believe that Abraham Lincoln lived, and yet nobody here ever met him.

Yet if somebody denied that he lived, we think that person's a little bit crazy, wouldn't we?

We have the ability and our imagination and creativity that is unique because it's like God.

We have volition or will. You and I literally get to make decisions. We have the ability to make decisions. And when we base those decisions on the knowledge of good and evil, instead of following God, well, we end up with what we have. The fifth way that we are like God is we are created to have relationships. You know, most of the joy that we have in life, and if you really get down to it, most of the struggles you and I have in life is about relationships.

It's about how we relate to God. It's about how we relate to our neighbor. It's how we relate to our mom and dad. It's how we relate to our children. It's how we relate to our husband and wife.

It's how we relate to each other in a congregation. It's how we relate to people at work.

It's in these relationships is where most of our joy and most of our sorrow comes in life because of the conflict. You were designed to have a relationship with God. In fact, at the very core of who you are, you are designed to feel a hunger in your relationship with God. When that relationship is not fulfilled, you and I will do almost anything to fill that.

We will drink. People will go out and have all kinds of sexual relationships. People will get addicted to television. People will play video games for 10 hours a day.

Almost all of our very destructive behavior when you get down to it is because we're searching to fill something in ourself. A lot of times at the core, what we're looking for is how to fulfill a relationship we're supposed to have with God. In fact, many times our problems we have in our own marriages or between us and our boss. A lot of times that's not really the issue.

The real issue is what is our relationship right with God? Fix the relationship with God or let God help you fix that. It's amazing how many other relationships get fixed. It's just amazing. It's amazing how somebody who gets on your nerves suddenly will say, ah, that's okay. It's no big deal. Or somebody will say, well, I can just never trust my boss again because he yelled at me one time. It's amazing to get right with God and all of a sudden, ah, I can trust him. Even if he yells at me, I can live with that. I'm big enough. Why? Because God's with me. So we designed to have relationships and that one with God has to be first. It has to be our first relationship.

Now let's look at these five things in the way that we are like God. Let's look at how once Satan entered into this world and became the God of this world by God's permission and this part of God's kingdom became occupied by Satan.

Let's look at how we became corrupted. We're made of the image of God. We don't look much like what we're supposed to look like. When we look at our reason, look at Isaiah 55.

See what the prophet says here. Isaiah 55.

You see, we now have a flawed reasoning process. Every one of us has a flawed reasoning process.

We think through the issues of life in a totally wrong way.

We automatically assume that our own thoughts are taking us in the right direction.

Verse 6 of Isaiah 55. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

Let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy on him, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. Verse 8. God says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my way, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I'm working on a sermon that I'm going to be giving here sometime in the next month or two about this very subject. How much of our lives do we damage because of what we say to ourselves? I mean, we all talk to ourselves. You don't like to admit it, but we all talk to ourselves. So you find out you're going to lose your job.

You experience worry and anxiety. That would be normal. There's nothing wrong with that.

But think what happens is you sit around and you worry about, how am I going to pay my bills? How is this going to happen? What am I going to do with, oh, I just bought a new car?

You know, I'm at a certain age. It may be harder for me to get a job. I may have to move. Oh, how am I going to tell my wife? And you worry, and you worry, and you worry. Two hours later, you find yourself in a bar sitting there just drinking beer because you're just, you've just worried yourself into an absolute stupor.

Now, think about how that changes if your thought process begins with a god-thought. What I mean by a god-thought is something out of here. What if it begins with, do not have anxious thought about what you will eat or what you will wear. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. What if that's how you started the process?

Now, you would still have anxiety. You would still worry, right? But you would end up in a totally different place than sitting in that bar sipping beer. You'd end up in a different place because you started with a different thought process.

Our reasoning is so messed up, we take ourselves down dark alleys all the time.

Secondly is our emotions.

You and I cannot trust our emotions. You know, when I hear people say, well, you just have to trust your heart. No, we shouldn't. You trust the way God says the heart should work, and then you have Him train your heart. We can't always trust our own emotions. You can't always trust your own heart. So why do you say that? Well, listen, what the prophet says, Jeremiah 17. Jeremiah 17. Verse 9. I'm sorry. Verse 9. Verse 9. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Yeah, it sure is. All those people in the world, their hearts are... Well, it's true that God is changing our hearts. But God can only change our hearts when we first learn to distrust our own hearts. We have to learn at some point to distrust our own initial emotional reactions. Now, sometimes your gut reaction is right.

I'm not saying you're always wrong. I'm saying that we have to remember how we were created in the image of God. We have all these various emotions, and how we have to be careful, because those emotions have all been tainted. They've been twisted.

How many times have we seen people ruin their lives because they're following their heart?

It makes perfect sense at the time. Actually, the feeling is good.

Now, how many times have we watched two 17-year-olds run off and get married, but we love each other? And those feelings are so strong in their minds it can't be wrong.

And a year later, they divorce. Right? We see it happen all the time. And you're trying to argue against feelings that feel right. I mean, how many country songs that feel so right? How can it be wrong? I mean, I don't even listen to country music much, and I know that half of every country song, every written, every written, has that line in it someplace. And that's because that's the way we feel. We forget that our emotions are tainted. They're twisted. We're made in the image of God, but that image has all been marred. Look what he says in verse 10. I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to every man, according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. So we can't even, we can't trust our own thoughts, because we're told to think all kinds of things that aren't true. We can't trust our own emotions. They've been manipulated. How about imagination and creativity? You know, human beings can split the atom. Would you realize what amazing feat that is to split the atom, and in doing so, can create energy that'll create enough electricity for a million people? Or we can split the atom, and we can blow up a city that kills a million people.

We're capable of taking anything we do and making good or evil. Everything. So we can produce music that inspires us to do something good, or we can produce music that inspires us to go kill somebody.

We can produce video games that does good, teaches people things. We can produce video games that actually can make people addicted to them.

We can take anything and turn it for good or evil. So our own creativity, our own imagination that was given to us by God, that make us in the image of God, has been corrupted. How about our free will or volition? All we do is make bad decisions. We can't sort through what's the difference between a good and a bad decision. I mean, if we could, everything would be perfect, right? And then relationships. We continue a behavioral pattern as far as human beings, what we do. We continue to destroy relationships over and over and over again. So much so that I want you to think about when they come to Jesus and they say, what are the most important commandments? He says they're simple. Of the 613 commandments in the Old Testament, the two that are the most important is, love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. God has to command us to love Him because we won't naturally do it in the state that we're in. Now, hopefully we grow into the point where we want to love God, but at the beginning of our relationship with God, we have to be commanded to love Him. And then He has to say, and love your neighbor as yourself, He has to command us to do it. God did not have to command Adam and Eve to love Him, and He did not have to command Adam and Eve to love each other until after Satan came into the picture. And then He had to command them. See how this is all messed up? Every aspect of this, our nature that makes us like God, has been manipulated and skewed until you and I are the marred images of God. In addition, we have some very interesting—I don't want to get to a lot of time in this—but we need to at least approach the psychological reasons we do things deep inside ourselves. Now, I want you to think about three things about us, all of us. The three things I'm going to mention, every person in this room—I don't care whether you're 13 or 80. I don't care if they're a man or woman. I don't care whether you're what your race is. We're all the same at this. So, every one of us here shared this.

Every one of us at the core of our being was created to have a relationship with God as our Father. We need it. It's a hunger. It's a thirst. It nags at us. It gives us anxiety. It brings us pain. God put that in there. Adam and Eve never experienced that pain until they were kicked out of Eden. Well, they didn't experience it until they sinned. Remember what happened the moment they sinned? They went and hid themselves from God. And that hunger, that anxiety was there.

You and I experience that all the time. Oh, we like to hide it.

But it's there inside of all of us because every one of us was made to be a child of God. Every one of us is a child of God. So, inside of us, we all have that. Now, every one of us in this room has another trait that's become part of us because the God of this world is convinced us to live. Every one of us will do almost anything we can to exert our own self-desires. So, every one of us has this hunger, this pain for God, and every one of us will do whatever we want or will drive ourselves to do and get out of life what we want.

And three, we will do almost anything to avoid pain, emotional pain, physical pain too, but that's not what I'm talking about, emotional pain, and we will do almost anything to have good feelings.

Now, I want you to think about how messed up we are to have all three of those things going on at the same time. I have this need, this hunger for God. I have this desire to do it my way, and I have this absolute need that I'm not going to feel bad and I'm going to feel good.

So, I have this need and hunger for God, but I'm not going to go to God and all that religious stuff on my own person. I'll do what I want to. So, now I'm going to self-determine what I do.

But because this makes me feel bad, I'm going to go get drunk so I don't have to feel bad anymore.

So, much of our behavior, if you really sit down and look at it, starts with, I need God. Secondly, I'm my own person. Nobody can tell me what to do. I'm going to do it my way. And third, now I'm going to put into a plan something that will make me feel good and not feel bad. So, you'll destroy all your relationships. You'll destroy your health.

You won't do well at work.

And we'll say, well, then we'll look for somebody else to blame.

This is the heart and core of who you are and who I am at this level. I don't care what your intelligence is. I don't care what your background is. I don't care what your education is. I don't care what your job is. So, we always divide each other. I always like to get down to where we're all the same. At this level, we're all exactly the same. We all need God. We all decide we're going to do it our way. The wall will do almost anything not to feel bad and to feel good.

Well, welcome to the human race. That's who we are. And we're really messed up because that's all in conflict, just those things alone. So, you look at the five ways that we're like God and how that's all corrupted. Then you look at these driving forces within our nature. We're doomed.

All human endeavors are eventually doomed to fail. They will self-destruct.

God wants them to reconcile us. I talked about that this morning. God says, okay, you are my enemies. I want to reconcile you. I want to heal you. Part of salvation isn't just a matter of, okay, I've got to learn a set of commandments and a set of doctrines. Well, there's commandments and doctrines we all learn. It's more than that. God has to heal us of the damaged people we are. We have to go ask for that healing. Or what we do is we simply make religion another feel-good exercise. I mean, there's lots of people that have religion as their drug. They really haven't dealt with their relationship with God. They're doing it their way, and religion is the way of feeling good. And they're no closer to God than they were before they got religion, because they're not dealing with those three internal motivations that drive them.

So what happens? What has to happen to us for this change to take place?

I talked about repentance and baptism. Baptism is the command.

But also there, when Peter talked to that crowd in Acts 2, he said, you will receive the Holy Spirit. You and I can't be healed unless God takes his mind and puts inside of us. It's one of the great fallacies of the New Age movement. You have to discover the God that was within you. What we actually have to discover is, I am not God.

See, we all actually think we're gods. I will determine how I will live my life, and I will do whatever makes me feel good and avoids emotional pain. And usually what we do is the opposite. Whatever we do creates more emotional pain. At some point, we say, I'm not God. God, I am a mess. You're God. Will you show me how you designed life? See, I didn't design life. You didn't design life. Right? I mean, if we were all designed life, every one of us would be billionaires. If you didn't design life, right, it'd be different.

We didn't design this life. Only the designer of life knows how it works. So he has to do something with us. Let's go to 1 Corinthians.

Because the Apostle Paul... This is an interesting passage because there's no other place in the Old or New Testament where this is explained the way Paul explains us here. So it's really a unique passage. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9. He starts by actually quoting an Old Testament passage and then explains something incredibly profound.

But as it is written, eye is not seen nor ear heard, nor have energy to the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. So he goes back and he quotes from the Old Testament. It's actually from Isaiah. He says, you can't even make up in your mind what God can give us and what God wants to give us. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, just the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him, even so no one knows the things of God except by the Spirit of God? You and I are different than animals. You know, anything that gets life, well, there's a spirit that's given to it. There's a life. There's something that animates it. God gives that. You know, it talks about animal spirits, too. But the animal, what the quality between what is given to an animal has given to us is totally different. And that's why we're made in the image of God. He says, why are you different than an animal? Because what happens inside us is more than our brains. God has given us something that is more than just the chemical makeup of a brain. The spirit that He has given us animates us to a life and brings us to a level which we are in this very limited way in the image of God. Now notice what He says, verse 12.

Now we have received not the spirit of a world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been given freely to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to Him, nor can He know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

You and I can sit and all agree on mathematics. You and I can agree on the facts of physics or whatever. I mean, we can sit down and we can agree on the things that we know because we are human beings, and we share as human beings. We know the things of a human being because we are human beings. Now when we start talking about the real spiritual things in the Bible to the natural person, these things are foolish. I have sat down with, I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people over the years. And you open the Bible and you say, this is what God says your solution is.

It's amazing how many people say that's foolishness. Oh, they don't say exactly that's foolishness, but that's their reaction. No, no, no, that's not the way it's done. Let me tell you how it's done. Well, let's see. You have a deep need for God. You have just determined that you're going to do it your way. The next step is, I will do whatever makes me feel good and avoids pain.

It's going to be a mess. I think I'm going to say, how do you know that? Because I've been near. That's how I know that. See, at that level, we're all the same. I've denied my need for God, done it my way, and made a decision based on I'm going to feel good and have no pain. And every time it's wrong. Because once you start with denying God, your need for God, you end up wrong.

It's that simple.

So Paul says, verse 15, But he who is spiritual judges all things, that he himself is rightly judged by no one. Now notice verse 16, But who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ. You know what the Holy Spirit is? It's God's mind.

So, God takes some of himself, and he puts it inside your mind so that he can communicate to you and repair the breach between you and him. This is what reconciliation is. You're reconciled. He can repair this breach, and you can now have the relationship you're supposed to have with him.

The problem is, we don't change overnight, so it's a process. It's a day-by-day process.

And as you go through that process, there are times when you say, No, I'm not going to do it that way, my way. Okay, you just denied your need for God. Or, I'm not going to do it his way. I'm now going to do it my way. Well, you've just taken the second step, you're going to do it your way. And I'm going to do this. And what you're going to do is avoid pain, and you're going to try to feel good. And you're going to end up in trouble. You're going to end up with pain.

We're going to, at those three deepest levels, once you make the first leap, you will continue down that slippery path.

But if we have the mind of Christ in us, then what that means is, God is going to help us not go there.

I mean, if we truly have the mind of Christ, there are going to be times we're going to be saying to God, you know, God, I don't want to do it that way. And you know what you're going to feel?

Not think first, but feel first. That deep need for God.

You're going to be just like Christ in the garden, saying, Father, is there any other way we can do this? No, there's not.

What was Jesus Christ experiencing at that moment?

His deep need to be in relationship with His Father. He didn't have to go through the other steps. It was answered to Him in His mind. Yes, this relationship is so important that there is no other consideration but the path that we have chosen.

You and I have to understand that when we receive God's Spirit, this is through baptism, through the laying out of hands, the laying out of hands. It's almost ignored in Christianity today. Even the churches that baptize don't lay hands up. Very few. And it's not because somehow the ministers have magic hands. It has to do with the fact that we're showing our submissions to the head of the church who is Jesus Christ.

And He says to do it that way. Now, people are baptized, and their sins are symbolically washed away, and they come up forgiven by God, and they receive God's Spirit.

You now have the mind of Christ. The problem is, at that point, you have two natures at war with each other. You thought you were messed up before.

Now God puts another nature inside of you. What Peter calls the divine nature, right? It's the mind of God, and you're struggling with the mind of God all the time. That's a good place to be. That's Christian. Christianity isn't, oh good, God loves me. I can sit back and just, you know, drink tea and have a wonderful time the rest of my life. It's having the mind of Christ put inside a corrupted nature and battling it out until what happens. You end up with the mind of Christ. You end up with the mind of Christ. Why is he doing this? I said that there's a point that God's reaching. The gospel actually goes beyond the return of Jesus Christ, because it's the whole purpose that God made us, and the whole purpose of the recreation. That's what salvation is. It's a recreation. We have to be brought back into what we were supposed to be.

It's not easy for those participating in that. You have to give up parts of yourself. You have to give up your sin. You have to give up the part of your nature that's against God. You have to be changed. You have to literally become a child of God. We want what God offers us without having to make the change. We want what God offers us without having to make the change.

What is it that he promises us? 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. Just over a few more chapters here.

1 Corinthians 15, 51. Paul says, Behold, I show you a mystery, or I tell you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet—this is the seventh trumpet, that sounds.

When we get to the book of Revelation, we know that there are seven trumpets.

Christ returns at the seventh trumpet, which is the last one. In the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible.

We shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. We must be given what we do not have, but we must be prepared for that.

Why would God give immortality to a person who hated his way, who hated him, who did not love him? Why would he give immortality to someone who did not love his son?

Why would he give immortality to someone who hated his law, or hated his fellow man?

Why would God give immortality to somebody like that? Does God want to live forever with his children hating each other? So how do we make that change? Because the mind of Christ must be put into us. God's Spirit must be given to us, and then we must submit to that direction. And God's Spirit is given to us when we repent and we are baptized and we have hands laid on us.

Do a personal study on the laying on of hands in the New Testament.

You'd be surprised how much is there. You'd be surprised how much is there.

When you look at this 1 Corinthians 15, what's really fascinating here is Paul's dealing with a problem. Somebody had written him a letter, or they had written him the Corinthian church, and written him a list of questions. And one of the questions they asked had to do with what kind of body do you have when you're resurrected? They knew that you're resurrected when Christ comes back, but what's it mean to have a body? I mean, you're going to be physical like this, and he says no. He goes on and says, in the resurrection, it's like the difference between the moon and the sun. And he uses all these analogies. He says, well, there's the moon.

You know, we know today all the moon is a big rock. We know the sun generates its own energy.

But he just said, look at the moon at night, look at the sun, and you'll know the difference between the two. When Christ comes back and this change takes place for those who listen to the calling now, respond to that calling, who believe the past of the gospel, live the present of the gospel, and look forward to the future of the gospel, then the mind of Christ will be developed in them. And when Jesus Christ returns, He will have people. We know there will be people prepared. Our only question is, do we want to be part of those people or not?

There's going to be people prepared for Jesus Christ. We just get to choose whether we're part of those or not. And these people will be prepared, and they will be resurrected, and they will receive these incredible bodies. And a healed mind, a mind that doesn't struggle with the things you and I struggle with every day.

Just all the things, all the sin, all the badness ever happened to you, all the abuses ever happened to you, it's gone. You don't care. It's gone. You need to think about it.

You will now be with God and with Christ, and you'll be with Christ right there when He comes to the Mount of Olives at that seventh trumpet and establishes God's kingdom on this earth.

You get to help change everything. As an ambassador for Jesus Christ, that's an incredible future.

We ask why, though? Why do I exist? I asked that at the very beginning. What is my purpose? Why is God doing all this? It seems like there would be a lot easier way to do this. I mean, He obviously exposed human beings to sin. And when He exposed this to us, Adam and Eve chose sin. We've chosen it ever since. Was there an easier way than sending His Son to die? Was there an easier way to do all this? Well, if you understand His purpose, then you understand that there wasn't.

God could have created us as just a higher form of animals, and He could have taught us tricks.

Right? He could have taught us, do not steal, and we would not steal because they were tricks. We learned. But that's not what He did, because that's not what He wants. We have volition because we have to choose, because we have to choose to love Him. We have to. That's why Jesus Christ said, when you ask the Father in My name, He will answer you. Not Me. He said He will answer you, and He will answer you because you love Me. We have to love the Son, just like we love the Father. We have to love each other. We even have to learn to love our enemies. Why? Revelation. Let's go to the back of the book. Okay? Let's go clear to the end, where the plan is finally being shown to us. It's, it's, I say, we start to understand the plan. When we get to this point, it's like, whoa, this is so big. It's bigger than we can imagine. Revelation 21. Revelation 21. This is what John saw after the resurrection. After, if you look at Revelation 20, you see that there's actually more than one resurrection. There's the millennium. This is a great white throne judgment. What happens after that? Revelation 21, verse 1. John says he saw a new heaven and a new earth, but the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adored for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain for the former things that passed away.

And he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he says to John, Write, For these words are true and faithful. And he says to John, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He talks about that thirst. I will give the fountain of life freely to all of you who open yourself up and say, I need God. I can't do this. I'm not righteous.

I was made in the image of God, and I'm a corrupted image of God. And my thoughts and my emotions and my creativity and my volition and my relationships aren't right. Make me what I should be.

Create me into what you want me to be. And then, in the next verse, he tells you what he wants you to be. He who overcomes shall inherit all things. Now, what does that mean by all things?

All things. There doesn't seem to be anything left out of this. So, everything that God has, he's going to give to people who have been changed. Everything he has.

Why? And I will be his God, and he shall be my son. You see, the reason God made you a being is he wanted children made in his image. God knows the difference between good and evil.

God chooses good. The one thing you know, you can know beyond the shadow doubt, God always chooses good. Always chooses good. Even I may not understand it sometimes.

But if you can see things from his level, he always chooses good because he is good.

He didn't want a higher form of animal. He wanted children.

God created a family. That's what this is. This mess you and I live in, this mess you and I live in, is the family going bad. This is a real dysfunctional family.

It's not dysfunctional by accident. Remember, God let Satan into the garden.

God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden. God said, I'll save you if you want it, but you have to choose. You have to choose to love God with all your heart and all your might and all your soul. You have to choose to love your neighbor as yourself. You have to choose it because he doesn't want animals, he wants children.

I don't want my children to love me because they fear me only. I don't want my children to love me only because they get a reward. I want my children to love me because they love me.

I'm going to love my children. I don't want to make my children have to feel like they have to perform for me all the time to earn my love. My children can never be good enough to earn Dad's love. I don't want to never feel that way. Why? Because we're family. Now, that doesn't mean they don't do some wrong things sometimes. When they were little, they got corrected for it.

God will correct you what you do when you're wrong.

But he'll do it because he's a father, and that's a totally different correction than if he's your judge. And if you don't repent, God is your judge. And I am scared to death to appear before the Almighty God as judge. I'm scared to appear before Him that way.

I fear that. Appearing before God as Father is a different experience.

That's all. Even if you're wrong, it's a different experience.

You're here because God wants a family. You're here because He wants you as His child.

He knows you by name. He knows who you are. He knows all your strengths and all your weaknesses, and He knows your sins, so there's no use hiding them. He knows your flaws. He knows inside you need Him. He knows you will do almost anything to exert yourself, and He also knows you'll do almost anything to not feel pain and to feel good. He knows that. So, I know He's hiding it from Him. We have to lay that out and ask Him to do that. God allows evil and suffering on this earth because He's not the God of this world right now, but He said it's only for a period of time.

You know, one of the first things Christ does when He comes back is He binds Satan in Revelation 20.

He says, I'm going to take away the God of this world, so humanity has a chance to meet the real God.

He says, I'll do that. Hopefully we'll have learned our lesson by then.

Does God have a plan for your life? You know, we only think in God's sometimes of the macro.

He has a plan for humanity. No, He has a plan for you. You're part of this. You're just as much a child of God as anybody. The question is, how much do you want to be? How much do you want to be His son? How much do you want to be His daughter? And have Him relate to you as a son or a daughter?

How much are you willing to obey? How much are you willing to trust?

This is the last of a series of seminars. Next year, as I mentioned, we will be beginning some new ones. We'll let you know some of the good news or beyond today's program. Or if you signed up for any of these seminars, we'll let you know through some emails. If you missed any of the seminars, you can go online to SanAntonioUCG.org. I think it is. And you can actually listen to the past seminars that we've done. And in 2013, as I said, we will begin a new series.

The Kingdom of God seminars have been sponsored by the United Church of God. And I am the local pastor here. We haven't talked much about the Church of God. We wanted to do this just to help people. I will make a few comments. We are a people. We are an imperfect people. We are an imperfect people that are trying to discover what the New Testament Church really was.

That's what we're trying to do. But in doing so, we find that we have to strip ourselves of so much what has become cultural Christianity and not biblical Christianity. There's a difference.

There is a difference between cultural Christianity and biblical Christianity.

I mentioned the Ten Commandments. That's one of them. There were some people who left here who probably didn't come back for the second half because they were offended by the idea that we have to keep the Ten Commandments. That's because our culture says you don't have to.

When we go and try to find genuine biblical Christianity, we understand who God is. We understand who Jesus Christ is as the Eternal Son of God. We also understand that we have to strip ourselves of our idols and we have to strip ourselves of the things that are cultural. We do believe that Jesus Christ is coming to this earth, and He's going to change the culture. We want to be prepared for that. When you get down to it, though, it's every individual relationship with God. But in our relationship, individual relationship with God, we have the opportunity to become a part of a congregation. There's no way to overemphasize the importance of congregations in the New Testament, and there's reasons. If I'm an independent Christian by myself, I don't have to learn to be part of a family. I can be by myself.

If God's creating a family, guess what that means? I have to go interact with other people, and sometimes they're going to get on my nerves, and sometimes they're going to say mean things to me, and I'm going to actually see other people's sins and say, how can Christians sin? And pretend that we don't. And pretend that we don't.

A congregation is where God brings people to learn how to be a family.

If you, through your reading of the Scripture, if you, through your study of God's Word, and if you go onto our website and you say, okay, this information connects with God's Word.

If you, through reading the Good News, if watching beyond today, start saying, this is God's way, then pray about it. Because if God is leading you here, we are our congregation for you.

You have to go ask God where He's leading you. I can't tell you where God's leading you. I learned a long time ago to stop figuring out exactly what God's doing in every little situation, and let God deal with each individual as He deals with each individual.

But if you are looking for a congregation of imperfect people trying to be prepared for the Kingdom of God, then maybe this is where God will bring you.

Pray that God will fulfill the promise that He made to take care of us, to lead us, to make us into His children, and pray what Jesus told that we should say in the Sermon of the Mount that we should pray all the time. And that is, thy kingdom come.