True Christendom

Well, next week on the last day of 11, Brad and I will be doing something unique in my life, which means a lot to me. It seems sort of strange. I'm going to be giving a split sermon in Smyrna, Asia Minor. Keeping a holy day in Smyrna, Asia Minor is a pretty interesting thing to be doing and speaking. I was working on a sermon specific for that setting, because of the historical setting that we'll be in, and the meaning of it, and the days of 11 bread, and tying that in to just a bigger picture of what God is doing.

What I've decided to do is go ahead and give that sermon today here. Even though it's a last day of 11 bread sermon, it ties in together. I want us to look at a bigger picture of what God is doing. In the days of 11 bread, the Passover are part of that picture.

What happened at the Passover, what happened to ancient Israel, is part of that picture. I want to tie that all together. We're going to go through a lot of history today. Biblical history, a little bit of non-biblical history, and a little bit of prophecy. We're going to look at what God is doing, and how these days, help us understand the beginning of that process. We have to go clear back to the first Passover, and the environment in which that took place, and why God did it. We know that God had made a promise to Abraham, that his descendants were going to go into captivity, and then he was going to bring them out, and bring them to the Promised Land.

He was going to give them that land, and they would become his people. So, hundreds of years after that happened, and after they went into captivity, and after the promise made to Abraham, Moses comes along, and the descendants of Abraham are in slavery. Oppressive slavery that they can't get out of in Egypt. And we have been talking about, I mean, the last two sermons we talked about, of the last two weeks, we've been talking about the different types, of what we learned from the Old Testament Passover, from the Old Testament Days of Love and Bread, and how that's expanded so much in our understanding, and meaning today, and what God is doing in our lives.

When we go back, and we look at those events, and what he did, in order to free them, God destroyed the greatest superpower of the day. Absolutely destroyed it. Through those ten different plagues that he put upon them, he destroyed everything in their society. Actually, he destroyed all of their gods. I mean, the greatest god they worshipped was the sun god, Ra, and he just made it dark, where Ra didn't show up for three days.

That was unbelievable to the Egyptians. And of course, he brought down the god on earth in Pharaoh, and destroyed the armies. He killed all the firstborn, except the Israelites, who had put the blood on the doorpost. He took them out. He would take them through the Red Sea. He saved them, because they were the descendants of Abraham. But why? And that's what I want to start with now. Why? Why did God do all that to bring those people out into a desert, and say, now you've got to cross this desert, because they had no idea what the desert was, how far it was, anything about it, and you're going to cross this, and there I'm going to give you a land that you can't even imagine.

It's so wonderful. But why? What was their purpose? You know, okay, we see the promise to Abraham, but there was a purpose for them. So he leads them. I want to start in Exodus 13. Exodus 13. Because this sets the theme for what we're going to talk about here this afternoon. Exodus 13, verse 21. So they're being led out of Egypt, even before they got to the Red Sea.

They're being led out of Egypt, and here's how they're being led. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, this is verse 21, to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, and he was to go by day and night, and he did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, or the pillar of fire by night from before the people.

This is remarkable in all of history. It says the Lord was in this. This was the very special presence of God. Now we know that God's presence fills the universe, right? We know that. David talks about that. This was the special presence of God that was visible. He was leading them. We know from the New Testament it's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is leading them, and they're seeing something.

They're seeing a pillar that looks like a cloud. It's distinctive. They know what it is. It moves. They follow. And at night, it stops, turns into fire, and they have light. They're out in darkness. Out in the desert. If you've ever been out in the desert, I've been in Big Bend National Park in Texas, and there's no lights for...

there's not a town for 80 miles. And it's dark. What's amazing is how many stars you can see. But it's dark. They're out in the desert. It's dark, but they have light. The special presence of God is with them. And there's a reason why. Because He takes them to Sinai. And before He gives them the Ten Commandments, He tells Moses to tell them something. So let's go to Exodus 19. We've got a long story here today to go through. Exodus 19, verse 3, And Moses went up to God, so He calls him up to the mountain.

And He gave him instructions. The Ten Commandments haven't been given yet. And called him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagle's wings, and brought you to Myself. In other words, I performed all these miracles to bring you here. And this is why I brought you here. He's going to tell them their purpose.

Not just as the descendants of Abraham, but the purpose they have in God's plan. Now therefore, if you indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people, for all of the earth is Mine. He said, all the people on this earth is Mine, but I'm going something special through you.

And they have been led here by Jesus Christ in a visible sense, the very special presence of God. That pillar wasn't any other place. The pillar of fire wasn't showing at night any other place in the world. It was only there, and they could see it.

Verse 6, And you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which ye shall speak to the children of Israel. And he came down and he told them that. God has called you here by covenant, the covenant He made with Abraham, and a covenant He was about to make with them as He gave them laws. He was going to give them laws because you are My kingdom on earth. You will represent Me. You are not like any other people. I am going to rule over you. I'm going to give you laws. I'm going to take care of you. And that's what Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy is from this point on. Here's the laws. Here's what you do. They didn't obey them. He punished them. That generation didn't even make it into the Promised Land. They wandered around for 40 years. They still showed up. He was going to get them in there one way or another because they were supposed to go to this land, promise to Abraham, because this was where He, God, would set up a theocracy. You notice when He first gave them a government, under the Judges, there's no king. There's no president. There's not even a legislature. They were to follow God. It was a God government. A God government over them. And they were going to represent Him to all humanity. And once they got out into that desert, He said, okay, the focal point now of this government, you think, well, okay, He's going to build some big building or something. Eventually it would be. But you want to start it with a tent. It starts with this tabernacle. You're going to create a tabernacle, and it's going to be the middle of all the tribes. All the tribes camped around it. It was right in the center. So they all could go to it, and their God would rule over them as the people, as the nation. He calls them a nation. He says, you're a kingdom. The kingdom where God ruled on earth. The only place, I mean God's every place, He rules over the universe. I mean the only place where He, in His special presence is there. Because His special presence was there, and He was going to rule. When they finished that tabernacle, something interesting happened. Let's go to Exodus 40.

Exodus 40.

Verse 34. They build the tabernacle. They have it set up in all the instructions. There's chapter after chapter in the book of Exodus on how they were to create this. Because this was their government headquarters, if you will. This is where their king ruled from. It was from here.

And he had priests who served him. And in this case, they still had Moses who gave them the laws of the land. The laws of the nation were brought to them. The laws from God.

Verse 34. Then the cloud, the special presence of God, of Jesus Christ specifically, who was leading them, would lead them for 40 years. It was there. And it moved over and settled into the tabernacle. Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meaning, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. This pillar of fire, this pillar of cloud, is the glory of God.

In other words, they were able to see something. I wonder if it made a noise. I don't know. Fire makes a noise. I don't know. It doesn't say. But they physically experienced the glory of God. In some special way, God was there. And now it moved over and settled here. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle, verse 35, of meeting, because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Now, I want you to remember, the name of this is, this cloud, this pillar of fire, is the glory of the Lord. It's an expression of Him, who He is. His power is there. In a very special way. Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys. It rested there. When it moved, all the Levi's boxed everything up and carried it off, following them, and all the people followed the Levi's.

But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was above the tabernacle by day, the fire over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys. The very special presence of God in Jesus Christ, in this glory of God, in this physical expression, or at least it appeared physical to them.

It wasn't literally a fire. It was the glory of God. They saw the glory of God. How amazing is that? In all of history up to this point, there's nothing quite like it. The special presence of God, where millions of people are actually experiencing it. They're actually seeing it. And it moves, they move.

It stops, they stop. And it went on for a long time. And then they got into the Promised Land. And they got into the Promised Land, and they found out that living under a theocracy was not easy. And they kept failing. The entire book of Judges is failure, redemption, failure, redemption, failure, redemption. That's all it is. And God keeps saving them, and they keep failing. So they receive a king. And Solomon says, I want to build a temple.

So it's just not a tent anymore. It's the temple. I want to build a place. And it's interesting because Solomon said, I want to build this place so all people from all over the world can come and worship the true God. Not just Israel. Everybody can come and worship the true God. When he finished the dedication of that temple, something very interesting happened. Second Chronicles 7. Second Chronicles 7. Verse 1. When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

The special presence of God was there. And it showed that God was their God. It showed that they were His nation, His kingdom. And they represented Him on the earth. The glory of the God of God of the Lord was there. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house. They couldn't even go into it.

It was just overwhelming. They couldn't get close to it. When all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good, for His mercy endures forever.

The problem is Israel never truly became a theocracy.

Maybe for a generation they would sort of be a theocracy.

But they never became a place on earth entirely, generation after generation, where God ruled. That God ruled over them. Now there were times that they did, and you'll see where God interacted with them, He saved them, He did all kinds of things for them, and then they would drift away. What happened in Judges happened under the kings. It never stopped. They would sometimes be this theocracy where God was their ruler. And other times they would not.

The northern kingdom got so bad once they split that God allowed the Assyrians to come in and take them captive. He sent them prophet after prophet, saying, Please be my people, be my nation on earth.

This is what you're called to be. This is the covenant I made with you and your forefathers. And they never quite got it. And so finally He just let them take them into captivity. And that part of Israel lost themselves into history.

The Jews and a couple other tribes stayed there. And God sent them prophet after prophet, saying, Just fulfill your covenant. Let me be your special. I made you special in all the people of the earth, not because you're better. He kept telling them that. Not because you're better than anybody else. In fact, you're the smallest. That's why I got you. You're the weakest people. I got you because you can represent me and be my nation. And you can be a kingdom of priests and a kingdom that serves me. And eventually He let the Babylonians come.

And you know what's interesting? The Babylonians burst through those doors in Solomon's Temple.

They went in there and they took all the gold, and they took all the things that were there that they used to worship God. You knew what wasn't there? The glory of God. It was empty. The temple was empty of the glory of God. It wasn't there. Or the Babylonians couldn't have gone in. And they tore it down.

They destroyed it.

A group of people called to be the kingdom on earth in a very minor way, but God would rule over them. And in doing so, they would be His representatives. And it lasted for off and on and off and on for hundreds of years that it never fulfilled what it was supposed to do. Now, part of Israel would do what it was supposed to do and they would be there and bring the Messiah into the world. So that part, He kept doing that to make sure. And that happened. But they never became His nation on earth.

Now I'm going to jump ahead to Smyrna, okay? A strange place to go on the first day of an oven bread, but since I'll be giving it there, I want to cover it here. Because there were some events that happened there in the Middle Ages. They're very interesting. Jerusalem had become, obviously, for Israel, the capital city, right?

We know that Jerusalem was the capital city. We know that it's where the temple was. Today, even today, Judaism's center is in Jerusalem. And that's why they keep wanting to rebuild a temple. Without that temple, they can't fulfill who they are as the people of God representing Him. They can't do that. They have to have that temple. The place where the glory of God can come to, right? It has to come someplace, and it can't be there unless they get there and rebuild it. Well, Europe had gone through a transformation. By the late ten hundreds, most of Europe was no longer rank pagans.

They didn't worship Thor anymore, or the Roman gods, or all the different gods and goddesses. They had become converted to Catholicism. So they were Catholic. And now there's all these different nations, and every once in a while, someone organizes them into an empire, and then it falls apart again. And they organize them into an empire, and then it falls apart again. And Pope Urban decided that he was going to take a doctrine that had been being taught in the Catholic Church and make it real. And the doctrine was that the Church, speaking of the Catholic Church, was Christendom.

It was Christ's kingdom on the earth, and his special presence was in the leaders of the Church, the papacy. And so all the kingdoms of all the different countries in Europe owed an allegiance to the papacy, because he was the leader of Christendom. You'll still hear that word used today. He's the leader of Christendom. But he couldn't get them to stop fighting each other, and a lot of kings would say, well, you're the leader of the Church, but you don't lead my country.

So he did something very interesting. It started in Claremont, France. He got up and gave a sermon, and he said, Christ has commanded us to do something. He's commanded us to go take Jerusalem, because Jesus Christ is coming back. Now, there had been about a hundred years of belief that Jesus Christ was coming back. And so for about a hundred years, he's coming back, he's coming back, he's coming back, and he says, he's coming back.

So what we have to do is we have to go take it, so that he has a place to come to. And he traveled throughout France, and then priests and bishops went all over Europe, and they all preached the same thing. In fact, what he promised them was, if you come fight for Christ, if you die along the way for any reason, your soul goes right to heaven. You don't have to go through purgatory, because all your sins are forgiven, because you're now marching in the army of Christ, the army of Christendom. And all the kings didn't have a lot of choice now, because, well, thousands, and then tens of thousands of people, including soldiers, just left England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain.

No, northern Spain. Southern Spain was still under the control of the Muslims, but northern Spain. What's today? France, Denmark, Germany, Italy. They all started coming. People just walked away from their farms. They brought a man would come with his wife and his children. They didn't even know what they were going to eat. At some point, most historians believe the numbers reached 100,000 people.

Now, remember, Europe wasn't 300 and some million people, like it is today. There's, you know, it's a fraction of that. And all these people start to show up. No one even knows how to feed them. There's no organization. The first group, who's mainly peasants, poor people, they just take off. They gather in France, start a cause of France, come to the first town with Jews and kill all of them. They go through Germany and kill all the Jews they can find in Germany.

They get to the Bosporus and come over to Constantinople, which is the head of the Byzantine Empire, which was considered, by the way, to be the eastern part of the Roman Empire. The eastern part of the Roman Empire still existed. In the Byzantines, they actually had an emperor. Nobody in Europe had an emperor. They were kings. But there was an emperor there because he was the descendant, as far as power, clear back to Constantine. Because Constantine had made Constantinople, that's why it's named Constantinople, he had made it the second capital of the empire.

And they get there, and they don't know what to do with this rabble. Tens of thousands of people. They let him into the city, but they steal everything they can get to eat because they're hungry. And finally, the emperor gives them a bunch of food and says, Dear, go down to Jerusalem. They get about halfway what is now Turkey, across Turkey. And the Turks, which were tribes that had moved into that part of the land that wasn't controlled by the Byzantines, the Turks say, What's this huge horde of people coming through our land?

And they come together, and they slaughter them. The few, mainly the children, were left, and they took them into slaves. They don't know how many tens of thousands of people because virtually nobody came back. So the next group behind them has a lot more trained soldiers in it.

And priests. Not as men, no children. There's women, but eventually they send the women back. And they come across the prosperous, and they stop at Constantinople, and they start about a two and a half year march across what is Turkey and Syria, and into what is Jordan, and down into Israel, modern day Israel. They were Christendom. They were the kingdom of Christ on earth. God had called ancient Israel to be the kingdom of God on earth. They failed. These people now thought this was us. They were the Christians. They were Christ's kingdom, and they were coming. And that story is the most incredible story. They starved. They fought numerous battles with the Turks, and then with the Saracens, who were the Arab Muslims.

They won. They got defeated. Diseases came through. They fought each other sometimes.

And they got all the way to Jerusalem, and they took it. It's just unbelievable that they took it.

And they took Jerusalem back. They slaughtered the Muslims and the Jews that were in there. Now many tens of thousands got out, but they killed a lot of people.

And there they were, covered with blood. I mean, a bloodied army.

And they had ravished all through Jerusalem to take food and so forth because they were starving. And there they were. And you know what was on the Mount of Olives? Because Christ was coming back. Nothing. You know what was in the Temple Mount?

Nothing. It was empty.

They got there, and they really weren't the kingdom of God. They weren't Christendom. Nothing was there.

They were looking for the special presence of God to be there, and it wasn't. It was no different than the Babylonians going into the Temple. There's nothing there.

Now, the people that lived in Ephesus and Smyrna, I mean, we talk about them all the time, right? We read the book of Ephesus, we read about these people all the time. These people did not believe they were God's nation on earth. They never believed that. They did not believe that they were God's nation on earth, like ancient Israel.

They also did not believe that they were Christendom. That term hadn't come up for a long time. They weren't the kingdom of Christ that was supposed to take the sword and conquer all pagans. Okay, that wasn't their belief. They had a different belief. And it goes back to Isaiah's prophecy that the Messiah would come and His name would be God with us. That the Messiah would be the special presence of God on earth. The glory of God would be in the Messiah. Look at what it says here in John 2.

The disciples had no idea what He meant until later.

John 2.13. This is a very simple sermon. We're covering all this history, but when you break it down, we're looking at very simple concepts.

Israel failed. They were supposed to be a theocracy, and they failed because they never could submit to God. Christendom of the Middle Ages failed because it wasn't the kingdom of Christ. It was all based on false premises. They were supposed to slay the pagans with the sword so Jesus could come back. That was their purpose. And of course, the church had become so paganized, they didn't even know what their purpose was. And it failed miserably. They spent hundreds of years fighting over Jerusalem. They're still fighting over Jerusalem, right?

A never-ending nightmare.

1 John 2. Passover season. Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and he found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers doing business. And he made a whip of cords. He drove them out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables.

A little act of violence by the Messiah here. He goes in, and he tears the place up. You can't do this. And he said to those who sold doves, Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of merchandise. Then his disciples remembered that his written zeal for your house has eaten me up.

So the Jews answered and said to him, What sign do you show us since you do these things? What authority do you do this by? You have to show us you have the right to do this. Who do you think you are? You're a rabbi. You do some pretty impressive things. You heal some people. But you've come into the temple. Now this was a remodeled version, because this is Sarababel's temple after Solomon's temple was destroyed.

And Herod remodeled it and made it grand. I mean, this was an amazing place. One of the great wonders of the ancient world. People came from all over the world just to see it. And they're asking him, How can you come into the temple? And what he says next is important because of the word he uses. Okay? Because he could have used a lot of different words. And Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Now they're talking about what? The physical temple. His answer is, You destroy this temple, and I'll raise it up in three days. I'm thinking, Destroy the temple? We're asking you, What right do you have to go drive out these people? Then the Jews said, It has taken 46 years to build this temple. It took Herod a long time to rebuild this temple. And will you raise it up in three days? You think, How could they come to that conclusion? Because he used the word temple, and they're talking about that temple. He's making a point here. But he was speaking, John says, of the temple of his body. He's comparing himself to the temple. Now all of them had to think, What in the world? You know, what is he saying? The disciples didn't know what he meant either. He's going to raise up the temple? He's going to get torn down? He's going to rebuild it? Verse 22, Therefore, when he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this to them, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said. He said, No, the temple was the place of the special presence of God. I am the place. He's literally telling them, I am the place of the special presence of God. This is the temple right here, himself. That temple was destroyed in 70 AD, and there's not going to be another temple built by God. There's going to be another temple, but it's not going to be built by God until after Jesus Christ returns. And yet there is a temple. There is a temple today. The Bible talks about it. And Jesus says, this temple, I'm the presence of God here with you. And they didn't get it. How could they understand that? Even his disciples, from ever since this to after he was killed and resurrected, they thought he was talking about the building. Because it says they didn't get it to afterwards. Right? So, Jesus now is dragged before Pilate. And let's look at a question that Pilate asked him. John, chapter 18.

I'm not doing like I do a lot of times, just taking a certain segment of Scripture and tearing it apart. We're putting these pieces together of obvious pieces of the biblical history. And when we do, we see the grandeur of what God is doing. And the first part of this starts with the Days of Unleavened Bread. We just talked about Jesus as doing the Days of Unleavened Bread. What's happening here is during the Passover. John 18, verse 36. Because Pilate doesn't understand why they want to kill Jesus. He might be some crazy lunatic from their religion, but he hasn't broken any Roman laws.

Pilate was a ruthless man, but his sense of Roman justice is, I'm just going to go around killing the natives because they had this crazy religion. The empire is filled with crazy religions. Every little place had their own crazy religion. Besides, he didn't like playing politics with the Sanhedrin. And any time he could poke them in the nose, he was going to. This was a great chance to poke them in the nose.

This guy's no problem. Let him go. And so he's interrogating him. And he asked him, are you a king? And Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. Now it's not from here. Pilate, you don't have to worry. We're not going to overthrow the Roman Empire.

Yet, right now, my kingdom is someplace else. Pilate therefore said to him, you are a king then. Okay, I got him. If you say you're a king, you're going to be in competition with the emperor, I can now take you to court. If you're not, you know, who are you? Are you trying to overthrow the empire? And Jesus answered, you said rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. Yes, I am a king, but my kingdom is not of this world. And Pilate walks out of there in verse 38 and says to him, well, first of all, he says to Jesus, what is truth? We're going to talk about truth. Everybody has their own truth. And when he had said this, he went out and said to the Jews, again to the Jews, and said to them, I find no fault in him at all.

He's just some, you know, aesthetic sort of prophet. Just leave him alone. Israel had, as the people of God, a special representation of the glory of God that they could see because they were supposed to be His nation. He said, you are my nation and you are a kingdom of priests to serve Him, live His way, and you go through the Torah. And he's always telling them that they are to be an example to the lands around them. They were to know that God's different, which they did.

Even the Romans talked about how the God of Israel is different than any other God. The Christendom of the first or of the Middle Ages, which is still the Christendom of today. There's still talk of uniting Christendom all the time. That Christendom had no representation of the power or glory of God in any way. It was based on totally false premises. Jesus comes and says, I'm the temple. You're seeing me. My kingdom is not of here, yet it is coming. What did His followers interpret that to mean? That's important because what those first century followers were led by God to write for us tells us what He means.

I'm the temple. I'm...here is the special presence of God right here, the glory of God, which you and I, two nights ago, we commemorated what? Jesus says the presence of God. He was physically there at that time. Ephesians 2. What Jesus is doing here under the New Covenant is a radically different thing in a very important way. Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus, which is primarily Gentiles. There's very few Jews in this group, and we only know that from what he writes.

It's like Corinth. Everything he writes to them has to do with basically Gentiles becoming Christians and the issues they had. Ephesus probably had some Jews. We do know of some, but it was probably a majority Gentiles, Greek people. Because Asia Minor at the time was a mixture of peoples, but Greek people were there, a lot of them. He says now, and so he's telling them that in chapter 2, that God has now, through Christ, brought all peoples, not just Israelites, all peoples into a new nation, a new group of people. Verse 19, now therefore you are, he's talking to the Gentiles there, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

He says a new nation is being formed. This is a little different to the one coming out of Egypt. Now, God hasn't thrown those people away, because when Jesus Christ comes back, he gathers all the people of Israel together to serve him, the physical descendants. So that's, he's not throwing them away, but he's suddenly radically doing something different. There's no pillar of fire for us today that is the glory of God, but there is the glory of God in the temple. And he tells them, everybody that comes into this new nation, they're all citizens, equal citizens.

Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. He says you want to know what the cornerstone that holds this building together is, the spiritual building?

It's the special presence of Jesus Christ.

Just what he said when he said, you can destroy this temple, and he gets resurrected in three days. I rebuild the whole thing.

The spiritual temple is being created, and he's part of the spiritual temple. The very special presence of God is in this temple.

It's called the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ lives through that Holy Spirit in us. So does the Father, but specifically mentions him because he's the first stone, if you will, in the new temple.

In whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into what?

A holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

It's in the Spirit.

There's a spiritual temple for the spiritual nation of God.

We have no sword like we are the true Christendom.

We're not to conquer the world with a sword. That's not our purpose. Our purpose isn't to have a land and be in that land, and everybody say, well, you go there and they have a temple, and that's where the special presence of their God is.

The special presence of God is in us. It's in us.

It's called the Holy Spirit.

That's what he's doing now. It's not just like we're vessels, although Paul uses that.

Other places, both he and Peter, call us stones.

We're building blocks in this thing he's doing. They're trying to come up with a physical explanation, you know, so we can visualize what he's doing.

And this is what he's doing. The nation of God is a spiritual nation.

We don't even know who all they are or where they all are.

And they don't know about us.

But there are people God's bringing together all over the world to become his nation on this earth for a very specific reason.

Because Jesus Christ said he was coming back.

But this time his kingdom will be visible.

When he told Pilate, it's in heaven, you just can't see it.

And he said, you're a crazy man. So I'll let you go. You're no trouble.

No, he's coming back, and he's coming back, and the whole world will see the special presence of God in Christ coming to earth.

They'll see it. It says they'll see him.

They will see the very special presence of God coming to earth.

Not a pillar fire, not a pillar cloud, but they will actually see the king who is coming to establish a theocracy in which the whole world will worship God.

God will be the king, and he will be the sovereign.

When you look at those early churches in Ephesus and Smyrna, Philadelphia, Laodicea, they had no concept that they were a physical nation.

And they had no concept that they were Christendom with a sword in their hand.

None!

We look at the writings they had, and what they believed was that they were a spiritual nation waiting for the very physical revelation of the very special presence of God in Christ.

And that's what we are. That's what's supposed to motivate us.

That's what's supposed to help us see what we're doing, to get us through the trials and the problems. That's what's supposed to hold us together.

Is that understanding and the power of that spirit that God's very special gift to us is His Spirit.

We went through in the two sermons on the types. He says, I will abide in you. That's either true or it's not true. God is either living in us through His Spirit or He's not. If He's living in us, we've become living stones, as Peter said, in the temple.

The presence of God on earth is in these little tiny ways in us.

Not that we're becoming gods, or not that somehow, you know, there's some Hindu ideas that we're not going there. We're saying that we have received the Holy Spirit and in that God lives in us.

That's true or it's not true. If it's true, then we are the nation of God.

Our only government is Christ as the head of the church and God is our Father.

We don't take taxes. We collect tithes because He tells us to. We don't have an army. We're not supposed to.

We're a nation.

And it culminates in Revelation 19. Revelation 19. Well, in 50 minutes, we've gone through just about 3,500 years of history.

Revelation 19, verse 11.

John says, Thou I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse. And he who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. The kingdom is coming.

Remember, he told Pilate, not now. You have nothing to fear from me.

His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except himself.

We don't even know what to call Jesus yet.

He'll tell us that. We know what to call Him now, but then we're going to call Him by a different name.

He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God, which we know from John is the Lord. The Word of God is the one who became Jesus Christ.

And the armies in heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses.

Those are the resurrected saints. These are those who are going to be in His kingdom, His nation, at that point.

Now, He's going to come back to bring the whole world into His kingdom, but those are the ones who will be resurrected at the first resurrection and now part of His kingdom.

Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, and with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fiercest and wrath of Almighty God.

And He has on His robe and on His name a thigh, a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

And this special presence of God will be in Jerusalem.

And He's going to build a temple. According to Ezekiel, He's going to build a temple. Since we were kicked out of Eden, Satan, of course, has been allowed to be the God of the sage.

But God only let...the plan was that only go on for so long. It seems like a long time to us. It's not to God.

It's just we...our little physical existence is so short. To God, this is not that long of a deal.

We know that God chose Israel to be His nation, and they failed.

When all those physical descendants, whoever they are, whoever they are, gathered throughout the world, because it says they're scattered, are brought together, you know what God's going to tell them to be according to the prophets, especially the minor prophets?

Okay, now you have to be my nation.

You've got to do what I picked you to do from the beginning, and you never could do.

But you'll do it this time, because you won't be going to a temple with a pillar of fire.

You'll be coming to a temple where the literal presence of Jesus Christ is there.

He's right there!

And with Him will be all the saints, all those who followed Him throughout the centuries, who followed Him to become this spiritual nation, to serve Him.

So in this time, and during these Days of the Eleven Bread, all the things we think about as we come to that last day, remember this, you have been called to live in submission and surrender to God as your God, as your King.

He is your God, and He has called you to be part of His Church, which is His spiritual nation on earth.

We have actually become part of the special dwelling place of God on earth.

Because He's not in a temple—well, He's in a spiritual temple. And the spiritual temple is what? Christ and us.

You've been called to be part of a spiritual temple where the special presence of God is, because He gives you a little piece of His Spirit and says, represent me wherever you are. And we have been appointed to the resurrection when Jesus Christ returns, whether we're alive and changed, or whether we die and we're brought back to life.

We have been called to be part of that, to establish for the first time since Adam and Eve sinned a theocracy on earth, where Jesus Christ is going to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords, and begin to solve all these problems that you and I and nobody can fix.

And He's going to begin to do that.

And you have a theocracy.

There's not going to be a need for a lot of the government we have today, because when you have a king, there are certain things you don't need.

There won't be a, there won't be legislatures that make up moral laws, because there is no need to.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of government He sets up.

But the one thing we do know, that's what we've been called to do and be part of, as the spiritual nation of God, to be there as part of the great theocracy when God comes, sends Christ, the very special presence of God on earth.

And of course, God comes later, the Father comes later. We'll talk about that as the Holy Days go on. He comes later.

So that He can have what the whole purpose of creating us was to begin with. That He can have a family.

So I hope all of you have a very wonderful Days of Unleavened Bread. This will be the first time in eight years I've even been here for the Days of Unleavened Bread. Not all of it. Not much of it here. And pray that God protects us on our trip, and that we can learn a lot and bring it back so we can share it with all of you.