We're Still Here

Good morning, everyone! It's good to be with you this morning. Welcome to the last day of Unleavened Bread here in... Are we in Newton or Lincolnton? Or where are we here? This is Lincolnton, right? I punched in the wrong city on my GPS this morning to get me here. We came up 16 and we turned right instead of left, wound up in Buffalo Shoals Road on Newton. Had to turn around and come back down to Buffalo Shoals Road in Lincolnton. Not much difference between the two, but... Who found this place? Who? Okay, I don't care. Whatever works, I just... In the many years... I didn't live there many years, but we used to burn up 16 between Hickory and Lenoir and Charlotte. I don't think I ever came down Buffalo Shoals Road. I came down in this direction back in those days. I'm glad to see that 16 is four lanes for many butch of the way. I passed a place called Jones Fish Camp over there. I said, boy, that place was there 42 years ago. It was still there. I think we thought they only served catfish. We never did stop in there at the time. But I'm glad to see they're still in business for the family, the Jones family, and everybody else. I'm happy with you here on the Holy Day. The Days of Love and Bread have gone by very, very quickly. Here we are on the seventh day. My wife and I took a few days' vacation and went down to Charleston, South Carolina, for three or four days and walked the streets and took a tour, saw Fort Sumter, did a little history, and quite a fascinating place. We'd never been to Charleston. We took in as much as we could with the time and the money that we had. Charleston's not a cheap place to visit, but we enjoyed the few days that we were there. We both like history. We made the trip out to Fort Sumter. That was just, I guess, this week. The next few days, the 150th anniversary, of course, of the end of the Civil War, was just on yesterday. That was the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox. And at Fort Sumter, here in a few days, they're going to raise the American flag in the 150th celebration of that going back up after it had come down at the very beginning of the war in 1861. So there's a lot of history there. Then we took in the history of Charleston. Really, I had some kind of, not revelations, but just looking at the history of Charleston and South Carolina, and prior to the Civil War, the settling, the plantations, the issue of slavery, American slavery, and that experience opened up some interesting insights for me and helped me to connect to some recent study that I'd been doing about Europe and just the prophetic teaching of Babylon and Europe and those things in the class that I teach at Ambassador Bible College. And slavery, from the perspective that it describes in Revelation 18 about Babylon at the end time, it trades in the souls of men. And what that means historically and prophetically in terms of Babylon, Europe, and that entire system, what it means at the time of the end, but then to see the flow from Africa to America, back to Europe, of the goods of people and the goods of cotton and indigo and rice and all that this was all about, the connection is in Revelation 18 where it talks about Babylon at the time of the end and really representing that entire system from ancient to end time, Babylon trades in the souls of men, spiritually and physically. And when you understand the history of Babylon, anciently, and that whole system as it spreads through... Quiet your cell phones, please. At Ambassador Bible College, we tell the kids, you take your cell phones to your locker room and you put them in there and that pain of... anyway, let me get on the...

Honey, make sure mine's on the roof.

Anyway, the connection's there. I teach a class of World News and Prophecy. And teaching a group of 18, 19, 20-year-old young people today in the church about things that some of you and I... ...items we cut our eye teeth on in the church is a challenge. Because you've got to basically start at Phase One. Why in the world does this matter? Why does Middle East matter? Why does Europe matter and all these things? And that's why when you are able to connect the dots and show from the Bible, from history, that it does matter to our lives today. There's a reason for it all. And anyway, our trip gave me some insight into some things that I can add into and probably get some articles out of for the future in terms of how American history and our experience, which fits into some of those statements that you find in Scripture. It all comes together. God is a God of history. And He has a purpose and He's a plan and He's bringing it to pass. So it was a profitable trip, as well as a relaxing trip for us. So we're glad to be back with you here for today and for tomorrow for the Sabbath. And then we'll be heading back home first thing on Sunday morning.

There's a story in the Old Testament that we are all familiar with.

The story that surrounds Joshua and Caleb as the two Israelites who had the courage to say, we ought to go up into the land and conquer the land when the children of Israel were brought right to the threshold of the Promised Land after the Exodus.

Just within a very short period of time, a few weeks, a few months, they came to that point of the Promised Land and could have gone in. But the twelve spies that were sent, ten said, oh, it's too much. They're too big. They're giants in the land. We can't do it. But two, Joshua and Caleb said, yes, we can't. Let's go up. But the people's heart got afraid. They didn't go. And as a result, they had to spend eight, thirty-nine years wandering around the wilderness before. By the end of the fortieth year from the Exodus, they then finally did go into and conquer the land. There's an interesting story in Joshua, Chapter 14.

After they began to conquer the land under Joshua, after the time of after Moses' death, Joshua, Chapter 14, there's a very interesting scene where Caleb comes before Joshua, these two men.

The last two from that generation, more or less, certainly of the twelve spies that went into the land, they're the only two. That generation had to die off. That was the penalty for lack of faith and not going in. And the whole reason for the other years of wandering was to kill off, in a sense, that generation. And a new one came to life that didn't go in under Joshua to conquer the Promised Land.

That's the setting. And in Joshua, Chapter 14, we have these two veterans, Joshua and Caleb. Joshua is the leader. Caleb is certainly a very prominent figure among the Israelites at the time. And in verse 6 of Joshua 14, there's a gathering. There's a big town hall-type meeting in Gilgal. The children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal. And Caleb, son of Jafune the Kenazite, who himself wasn't a complete Israelite. He was of mixed extraction. And yet he had attached himself to the God of Israel.

And he, with Joshua, had the courage. And Caleb gives this speech. He says to Joshua, You know the word which the Lord said to Moses, the man of God, concerning you and me, then Caddish Barnia. I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Caddish, Barnia, to spy out the land. And I brought back word to him as it was in my heart.

Nevertheless, my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt. But I wholly followed the Lord my God. Now, Joshua was with him as well when you go back and read the account, but this is his speech. And as he tells it here, he said, He said, The others who gave a false report made the heart of the people melt. Have you ever had your heart melt in fear?

Doubt? Uncertainty? In terms of the big matters of faith and our calling and the life that we live, the truth in the Church of God. Has there been any person whose words, actions, demeanor made your heart melt in fear?

In other words, you lost heart, as we say. You lost courage. You say, Can I go on? Is this worth it? Maybe life is too big. Maybe there are giants out there and God's not big enough to overcome those with me. And maybe I need to kind of slink back to Egypt. To my old life. To the Baptist Church. To the Egypt of the Methodist Church. To the Egypt of Nothing Church. Whatever it was. The good old life that we had. Because somebody's words, someone's actions, something you read, something had happened to you.

Some person caused your heart to melt. Just like what Caleb says here. Think about that. He said they made the others, people, their heart melt. But, verse 8, I wholly follow the Lord my God. He saw something that He said, I'm going for it. And I'm not turning back. What I have back there is not worth going back for. And whatever it takes to go through, to get through to what God has said, I have confidence God can get us there. I wholly follow the Lord my God. So Moses, he said, swore on that day, saying, Surely the land where your foot is trodden shall be your inheritance, and of your children's forever, I wholly follow the Lord my God.

And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive. And he said these 45 years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses. So it was 40 years of wandering and then 5 years of conquering the land before Caleb comes to this point where he comes to make his claim.

45 years. It's a long time of faith. It's a long time to go to church on the Sabbath, to keep the Holy Days, to give offerings, to not eat pig, to eat just flat stuff called matzo or whatever you bake up for 7 days in the spring and kind of act like a Jew. It's a long time to do that. 45 years. When I say act like a Jew, I'm parroting what I've had people say to me, all right?

I'm not slamming, slandering anybody, but I've been called a Jew because I keep the Holy Days. Any of you ever had that happen to you? Sure. Those are the things that can make your heart melt. You can say, do I need this? Is it worth it? Is it worth the strain in the house with an unconverted non-member mate? Is it worth that? Those are all the various things. So I grew up in a home like that.

We came back in the Feast of Tabernacles. We never knew how my dad was going to be. We didn't know what we were going to walk in on. He'd give us the money. He'd give us the car. He'd give us the camper to go off to the Feast every year and wave bye-bye. But after about 10 days of that, we didn't know what we were going to walk back into.

Sometimes it was okay. Sometimes, hmm. Those are the things that can make your heart melt. But you keep doing it. You keep going on. Caleb goes on, he says, for 45 years. I've lived this way. And we wandered in the wilderness, and now here I am this day, 85 years old, in verse 10.

As yet, in verse 11, I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me. Just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. He stood straight, could still pick up a spear, a club, whatever he needed, and do the job. He was strong. You and I are hopefully still strong spiritually, if we might be a little bit older physically.

We're still strong spiritually. Our strength is still there as well, to go to a spiritual war. Now, in verse 12, he says, now therefore give me this mountain, of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard in that day. The Anakin were there, and the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said.

So he had a marker, a claim, a claim check that he was laying on the table. He says, it's time for my inheritance. Now, what is said here in these few verses, by Caleb, can be summed up in three words for my sermon today. Three words can sum up what we just read. We're still here. Caleb is saying, I'm still here after 45 years. You and I can say, we're still here. We're still obeying God. We're just as strong as ever, hopefully, spiritually, even though our eyes might be a little weaker, and our hair grayer.

We're still here. That's what Caleb was saying. I'm still here, Joshua. Of course, Joshua was still there, too, but this was Caleb's speech. I'm still here. We're still here. We didn't let the people that we came across over the years, we didn't let the obstacles cause our heart to melt. We stayed with it. We're still here, which you can see from the announcement bulletin that your pastor gave you as the title of the sermon. If those of you that like titles, I know some people just love titles.

We're still here. That's it. That phrase caught me a couple weeks ago. I can't take credit for coming up with it at this point. It was actually one of the staff. We were having a meeting two weeks ago at the office in Cincinnati. The group that I told you about last week that we've hired to help redesign our church logo, the design firm in Cincinnati, four of their people who are going to be working on our account were in the boardroom of the office.

Victor Cubic and Peter Eddington and I and several of our media staff were talking with them. Basically, the purpose of the meeting was for them to come in and figure out, who are you? Who are you folks? The United Church of God. Because they didn't know us.

They don't know us. What they read on the Internet and knock on the door. Who are you? So we had about a two-hour discussion to explain to them who we are. Here are four people that don't care about the United Church of God, other than as an account.

They don't care about our history because they don't know it. And so we have to explain to them who we are. And they've been on the Internet and they find out a few things from our site. They've probably gone on to a few other sites to find out other things about us and our heritage. And here they are.

And we get into the Sabbath. We get into the Holy Days. Folks, we even got into the Trinity with them. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, we got into the Trinity. Do we really want to dump that bale of hay on them here today? But you've got to go where the conversation leads at times. I mean, after two hours, they took a lot of notes. They had a pretty good understanding. And Peter Eddington at one point was talking about explaining our 20-year history when we started the United Church of God. He said, we moved here to Cincinnati. We had the office and we've had a couple of splits. We were very honest with them. We've had people split off. We mentioned those. He made a statement and he said, we're still here. We're still here in this building, in this room, still in the United Church of God, still doing what we said we were going to do. We're still here. And then he kind of went on. Sometimes you get in a meeting like that and it's just like you're in a meeting here and you're thinking about other things and you hear a few things that you do remember. And I'm thinking, yeah, we are. We're still here. Others went off to do their thing. They didn't like us. They didn't like...they got mad. They were, alright, we'll get mad and we'll start another church. Alright, I'll get mad. I'm just going to go home. I'm going to get mad. I'm going to go to this other group. And we've had that. We're still here.

We're still here, Peter said. We're still keeping our faith. We're still doing what we're doing. And I thought, you know, there's a larger blessing there. We're all still here before God. Just like Caleb said here to Joshua, 45 years later, I'm still here. I didn't let any of the obstacles. I didn't let those people turn me back 45 years ago.

I didn't let any of the other hardships, uncertainties of all the years of wandering, and the other Korah and Dathan and Abiram and all the times when the water got a little bit low. And I sure got tired of that manna. I didn't let any of that turn me back, Joshua. I'm still here. We're still here. Let's go forward.

I'll take my inheritance and we'll keep moving.

We're still here.

I look at you.

We are real blunt. We get real personal. I see two faces here. Mrs. Moore.

And Mrs.

Madeline Taylor. Mrs. Taylor. Two faces from when my wife and I were first here 42 years ago. Robert Carswell, Lacey Mays, to Cor faces.

Mary Carswell, Francis Mays, six faces.

And I'm not talking about anybody else, but I'll tell you, they can tell you the same thing. They can tell you names that nobody knows anything about that have just long since disappeared. Some are in other groups that we might run across, but others, I can mention names, and you wouldn't even know who they were. And they disappeared. Many of them are even dead. Because a lot of years have gone by, nearly 45 years.

And I come back here and I see a few faces that I remember from that time, and others of you have come in from over the years and from various other places. And we're all still here. You've got your story. I've got mine. We all got a story. And it's how we look at where we are today.

We can look at ourselves at the tail end of something and kind of just barely hanging on.

Or we can look at ourselves as still hanging on at a bright future and a big future ahead of us, like Caleb had. Because Caleb and Joshua were leading a new generation into the final promised inheritance that it all began with, 45 years earlier, when they walked out of Egypt that night under Moses, free from slavery with the hope of freedom into a new land.

And now Caleb, with all the fits and starts, stops and starts and everything and all the problems, Caleb is saying it's all still out there.

It's all ahead of us. So I ask you, do you look at yourself at the tail end? Maybe the dregs of what was? Or do you look at yourself as on the cutting edge of the Kingdom of God, still holding on? No one, no situation, no setback, no trial has caused you to have your heart melt and lose heart. You still believe. There's two perspectives you can have. We should have a perspective of Caleb, really. That's what's important, and that's what we need to keep in mind. How do we do that? Well, many of you figured that out. You keep putting one foot of faith in front of the other on a regular basis, obeying God, staying close to His Word, growing in understanding and knowledge, overcoming sin, growing closer to God and to His Son Jesus Christ, growing in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, keeping the Holy Days, doing it, which is very important. It is important that we put the leaven out and that we eat unleavened bread for seven days. As I was saying on the first day, those are tangible things among the few that we have in the Church, but they really are important because, first of all, God says to do them. But God wants us to do everything that He tells us to do. He wants us to do it because there's a deeper spiritual meaning behind it all. And sometimes we do need a few physical reminders, even though we don't have a lot of other physical reminders that are part of our worship. When the disciples were confronted with the moment of Christ's death and then His resurrection, there was a teaching opportunity that Jesus Himself used that offers some lessons for us to consider on this last day of unleavened bread. Turn, if you will, over to John 20. And let's look at a section here that took place during the days of unleavened bread after Christ was resurrected, but still within that period in John 20.

As John's record of those hours on that day, the day after the resurrection, that Sunday period is what we're really dealing with here, and Christ appearing to them offers us some very important lessons to consider as we're still here because the disciples were demoralized. They were shaken by His death, the events of the previous days. And now, when we come to verse 1 of chapter 20, the first day of the week when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, while it was still dark, she saw the stone had been taken away from the tomb, and she went back and got some others and came back, and they went in and they found that the tomb was empty.

And so they were caught up in some big events here. Big events. And they were still sorting it all out. Again, their heart, you know, Peter had already denied Jesus three times on the night of his arrest, and they were scattered all from that moment on.

And it appears that only John was at the foot of the cross whenever he died, when Christ died, along with Mary and a few others there. The others were gone.

So their heart was melting. But they were still together, still trying to figure it out.

And it's a woman, Mary Magdalene, not even Christ's mother, but Mary Magdalene, who, first of all, she's a woman in the first century Jewish society. Her standing wasn't that high, just for being a woman, you have to understand that.

Secondly, you know, whatever her past had been, she had joined herself to Jesus as among some of the women who followed Him. And she found a meaning and purpose in her life by then. And she's the one who goes first to the tomb. They were going to prepare the body. They didn't have time to do that prior to the Holy Day a few days earlier.

So she came in verse 1, early, while it was dark, saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. She ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, which is John, and said to them, They've taken away the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him. She saw an empty tomb.

And she immediately thought somebody stole the body. Keep in mind they had posted Roman guards because Jesus had said He would rise again. And some of the Jews believed that enough to have the Romans post guards there so that the disciples wouldn't come and steal the body away. These are very important events taking place there. Well, even with all those precautions, God's plan and purpose miraculously was not deterred. Verse 3, And so some of the linen clothes almost as if they were there laying, as if the body had evaporated out of that while another piece of cloth was folded by itself.

And so it's a very detailed description of what they saw here. And Peter was the one who, the impetuous one, he went in to see it. Verse 8, Then the other disciple who came to the tomb first went in also, and he saw, and he believed. John here at this point realized that what Christ had said He would do had taken place, that He would die and be resurrected in three days and three nights. John, it seems, as he records his thoughts, he saw and he believed at that moment. Indeed, what had happened had taken place, and that's all he needed. He did not think about anybody stealing the body. He didn't think it was a trick. He believed that it had happened.

Verse 9, then, as yet, they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again to their homes. But Mary stood outside by the tomb, weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. She felt a very close affinity to Jesus. She loved Him in a way that's kind of hard for us to understand today. She had a deep agape type of love for Jesus. It was not a romantic or erotic type of love, as unbelievers try to portray as they write a postscript to this story. Again, it's hard for us to understand that, but her love was very deep. It was based on forgiveness because she had been forgiven a lot. Her life had taken on a meaning and dignity through her association with Jesus. She was deeply moved by what had happened. She was trying to figure it out. She saw in verse 12 two angels in white setting. One at the head and the other at the feet within the tomb where the body of Jesus had laid. Then they said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said, because they've taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him. She didn't quite have it all figured out. When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there and did not know that it was Jesus. Why? It may be that his resurrected body at this moment looked different in appearance. Or it just could be that she was just temporarily bewildered. She was emotionally distraught and not expecting to see Him there. Sometimes if you see somebody out of context in a different place, you don't expect them. You may have to catch yourself. Oh, yeah, hi! How are you? So there are a number of different ways to explain what was going on and why she did not know that it was Jesus. But Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, Sir, if you've carried Him away, tell me where you've laid Him and I will take Him away. Jesus said to her, then, Mary. And He said it in such a way that it got her attention. She turned and said to Him, Rabboni, which is to say, Teacher. At this point, the light came on. Oh, you! Teacher! Master! And Jesus said to her, Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father. But go to My brethren and say to them, I am ascending to My Father and Your Father and to My God and to Your God. She must have made a move toward Him as if she were going to embrace Him. And He stopped her from doing that. As I explained last week, that was because He had not been accepted as the wave-sheaf offering. But later, He was touched by His disciples and that had taken place. But we're not discussing that part of the story this morning. So He tells her to go and tell the others. Verse 18, Mary Magdalene then came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that He had spoken these things to her. And so it is a woman who first discovers the empty tomb, goes and tells Peter and John, they come, they leave, and then she goes back and tells the others.

This very fact that it was a woman who discovered the tomb and that this is the story that is told is a proof of the authenticity of this story, this account. Because, again, if you're going to write a story of the origins of your church or of your movement, as John and the others were doing in these years, in that culture and in that time, you would not tell the story if you're going to make this up. You would not tell the story that a woman went to the tomb first. You would say John or Peter, one of the men and one of the leading men would have done that. And if John was going to write the story and fabricate it, and he was of that mind, he probably would have said, I was the one who found him first. But he said it was a woman, which was true. And again, you have to understand that that is a note of authenticity to John's whole story of this account of the resurrection story. But what you're seeing here, when you look at it, what it tells us for our spiritual teaching is that it's a story of a deep bond that love does create, the love that had been generated between Jesus and his disciples, both the men and the women. And a very filial love and agape love through the short time they'd been together that deepened them to this point. That's what we're seeing come out here in the story. Mary had loved Jesus from the... was the first to go to the tomb to finish the work. John, whom Jesus loved, was the first to understand what had happened, and he believed it says. And so you see this beginning to work that brought these two people to the recognition on this one morning that was the morning of mornings for them to come to find and to see that Jesus indeed was risen. And that was encouraging to them. That began to lift their hearts. Where perhaps even John's heart was melting, it was now beginning to draw courage and strength from this event. They understood that the signs that they had heard would be done and indeed happen. And they realized that they were part of something now that was very, very large. They were, by God's grace, they were partners, players in the greatest story of all. In something so significant that by the hour from this point forward, they were just... they were beginning to be overwhelmed with an understanding of what they were a part of. Call it a first love. Call it a zeal, which many people do have as we learn about the truth of God. And we begin to live it. And we begin to read the Bible from a whole different perspective as God opens our hearts and our minds to understand truths that indeed are veiled from others to hear.

You begin to have that zeal and fervor. And you want to become a part of something and you want to do it, you want to obey God. They had been called by God and they were part of something very large. And they were beginning to understand. They were eyewitnesses of an event that had been planned from before the foundation of the world. Paul would later write about that. If you hold your place here in John 20 and turn over to Ephesians chapter 1, what the Apostle Paul later would explain about Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection in Ephesians chapter 1 fills in what John and Mary and Peter and the other disciples on that day after the resurrection and the subsequent period were beginning to be.

If you go back to Ephesians 1, Paul writes about this here in the few verses we should note. Beginning in verse 3, let's begin. Ephesians 1 verse 3. It says, Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Paul begins to open up this letter by talking about the Father and Jesus Christ.

But it's what God was doing. The emphasis of this passage is on what the Father was doing through Christ.

He says, Blessed be that Father, who through Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. But it's the Father's blessing. It is the work of the Father that was being done through Jesus.

Verse 4, Just as the Father chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy without blame before Him in love.

Before the foundation of the world. This story that was now dramatically unfolding rapidly on that morning after the resurrection, that day that we were reading about, is what had been planned before the foundation of the world, the sacrifice of the Lamb.

And the means by which, as God became flesh, and then lived a perfect life as a sacrificial lamb, was then killed for the sins of the world, and then resurrected back to eternal life.

All of that was in place from the foundation, before the foundation of the world, this present world that we have from the time of Adam.

That's how we understand the foundation of this age, this world we live in and are a part of, from Genesis 1, verse 26 and 27, if you will, when Adam was created, and then, you know, the decision that created this world.

But the plan was in place before then, that there would be a means of adding to the family, the Father and the Word, the Word that was with God.

And became flesh. And the means by which you and I could have that hope. That was in place.

It took God, from leaving eternity, entering into this fleshly world that had been created, and dying, and then going back, then, as the first fruits, for you and I to have any hope, then, of salvation.

We get into these words of redemption, justification, salvation. Salvation is a very important concept in teaching of the Bible.

But the essence of salvation is that God became flesh and died and rose again, and you and I have, then, the opportunity to follow along, because He did that.

Which is what we are, you know, in this period between now and Pentecost, this 50-day period of counting up to that point, is kind of where we are in kind of understanding some of these things.

But Christ, then, the Logos who became Jesus and the Christ went back to eternity, to the glory, as He said in John 17, the glory that I once had with you.

He returned to that.

And this is what is flooding in upon John, Mary, and the others, as we're seeing it back there. Well, going on here, verse 5, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ, to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace by which He made us accepted in the beloved.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself.

But in the dispensation of the fullness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ.

All of this, up to this point still, Paul is describing what the Father's purpose is, to bring the fullness of the times together in all things in Christ.

This is what the Father's purpose to do with the things which are in heaven, which are on earth, in Him, in Christ.

In Him also we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that He who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.

In Him you also trusted, Paul now writes, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and whom also you, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory.

Paul here in a few verses brings together a foundational understanding that is at the heart of what is going on back in that account that we're starting there in John 20.

The love that those married John, the other disciples had for Christ, was growing exponentially to an understanding, much of what is expressed here, that indeed something big has happened.

And we're part of that. And that's what enabled them to cut through the emotions of the moment, to have a strong heart, and to then take the gospel to the world as they did, and to commit their lives for the remainder of their lives to those truths.

That love, based on those promises, based on those experiences, enabled them to cut through all of that.

Just as it enables us, when we are firmly grounded in these basic principles of faith, hope, love, salvation, these truths of salvation, that the Holy Days, taken as a whole, tell us that the weekly Sabbath, that the whole package of God that we holy follow, tells us and wraps us up, it then enables us, when we do these things, to cut through all the arguments that are meant to tear us down and melt our heart and wreck and destroy faith.

And every one of you have your own stories of trials and obstacles that you have overcome to be here this morning.

We'll be back here tomorrow afternoon and continue on, week by week, season by season, year by year, in faith. You all have your stories to tell that you have surmounted to continue to be here.

You need to think about those and why and how you have managed to circumvent all the challenges that Satan, this world, other people, yourself even, throw against us to wreck and to destroy our faith, trying to melt our heart and cause us just to lose heart.

Our world today is designed to do that.

And it's these principles of faith and hope and love and a relationship with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, whom He sent, that is so important to you and I having a stability of confidence and faith to cut through all the intellectual arguments that drown out the faith.

That our around us today meant to drown out faith and the very power of this very event that they were part of, the resurrection and of the life of Jesus Christ now empowering the church to do great things. It's those principles that have kept us here, brought us back of deep faith, hope and love of God and of the truth that enable us to cut through everything. Because there are so many arguments that are meant to shipwreck our faith. You know, for many, it's not... it could be people, it just could be the drain of life, the stress of everyday life, the cares of this world, as the parable talks about.

For others, it could be intellectual arguments. Frankly, folks, we are smack in the middle of the most important story in a sense about faith and our hope of salvation right now with the days of unleavened bread, of the forgiveness of our sins, and of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, by whose life we are saved, Paul would write in Romans.

And it's this very event itself that has been argued about, torn out and debated from the very moment of his resurrection.

Which is why, again, they posted guards there because they didn't want the disciples to steal the body away and claim that he was resurrected, as he said he would be.

And it's been argued about ever since. One of the crippling arguments that destroys people's faith today is the idea that they cannot believe that Jesus was resurrected.

Forget about Easter Sunrise services and all of that pagan myth. Just the pure, higher intellectual challenge for a human mind today to admit, to believe, that a man was killed and that he rose again from the dead.

It's too much for most people in the world today.

The intellectual arguments of a modern scientific world destroy it or weigh against it and drown it out.

You and I have risen above that. Not because we're intellectually superior to anybody else. We've done it by faith and belief.

But it is so important that we let that then be the heart and the anchor of our confidence, just as it had to be for them.

Because it was the one sign that Jesus gave that he was the Messiah, remember?

He said there'd be no other sign given other than that of Jonah.

As Jonah was in the grave in the belly of a whale three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the grave for three days and three nights.

That's the only sign he gave.

And that it happened right on time, right on schedule, as he said it would happen, is important. It does matter.

And that he does live. As Paul would write in 1 Corinthians 15, that if Christ has not risen, our faith is in vain.

We are of all people most miserable.

And it's that confidence, that hope, and that full understanding then that gives us heart to continue on, so that our heart doesn't melt, so that we are still here.

Human knowledge is blind when it comes to the great matters of the plan of God. And it takes a deep love for God to accept the spiritual knowledge and to commit our lives to the Kingdom and to still be here.

It takes a heart to understand the work of Christ in us.

God gives us the Days of Unleavened Bread as a gift to remind us that Christ is working in us daily, as we submit ourselves to Him and through Him.

And through the Holy Spirit, Christ is working in us daily.

As Paul said, the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who is in me.

And we keep seven days of unleavened bread to picture our desire to overcome and to put our lives away from sin, to come out of that.

The deep spiritual meaning is the life of Christ within us as we eat that unleavened bread every day, to be a symbolic lesson to us that we need His life within us to truly overcome sin.

And it's by that grace that we have that ability and that He's working within us and allows us to work the work of the Holy Spirit then to be done.

That's the deep meaning about the days of unleavened bread of Christ's life within us.

Now, if we go back to John 20, let's go back to this account here. Let's pick it up in verse 19.

A little later in that day, at the same day at evening it says, being the first day of the week, there was a Sunday, on that week, Sunday as we call it, as it came to be called, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, notice the scene.

They're gathered together in whatever quarters that they have let, rented, or using.

The doors were shut, which was at that time of year unusual, the doors and the windows would be open. Let a breeze through.

Kind of like North Carolina right now.

I'm not used to this early. This doesn't come to us until about June, up in Ohio.

So 90 degree weather is a little, you know, we're getting adjusted. We enjoy it. Believe me, I do miss the weather of the South at many times.

But they would have had the windows and the doors open, but they were shut in and they were afraid. They were afraid of the Jews, it says.

They didn't know what, you know, are they going to come down and, you know, arrest us because we've stolen the body and then trump up charges against us, just as they did against Jesus.

These are some of the thoughts that could have been going through their mind. And so there's fear. Keep in mind, one of the key points that Jesus told them the night before he was arrested, we read on the Passover night.

Don't be afraid, he said. If they persecuted me, they'll persecute you. But he said, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.

So here, where? What happened? A few days later, they're afraid.

They're human. They're afraid. They shut themselves up and they're kind of in hiding right now in the evening portion.

Well, it says, Jesus came and stood in the midst and he said to them, peace be with you. Just a few nights earlier, he had said, my peace I leave with you. Remember, John, we read that earlier. My peace I leave with you. So now he comes back again, now in a resurrected form. And they appeared and he looked as he did. They recognized him. He had two arms and a head. And he appeared there and he toned down his glory.

He wasn't looking like he would be appearing to John in the first chapter of Revelation. So he's there in kind of a normal mode on the setting.

And he says, peace be to you. When he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Their hearts were melting. And now they begin to pick up a little bit because their leader, their teacher, their master is back with them.

And, you know, he was very charismatic. He inspired confidence. That's why they had been with him these years. When it would have been easy for any of these men and women to have left him as others had done. They'd stayed with him because they were drawn to his message. They were drawn to him personally.

And now, in a moment of fear, he comes and he begins to lift their spirits.

And Jesus is showing them here, you know, Christ is not bound by walls. We can't shut him out. He can, you know, he went through the wall here.

It was a neat trick. It was even better than a Jedi mind trick, for those of you that remember your Star Wars thing. I mean, he wasn't anything. The lesson for us is that Christ is not... He knows our hearts. He knows our thoughts.

And he is in our midst. We pray his presence for our services and other times. We ask that. We must believe that that is. And this very example is to show us in this way, as John writes it, that the doors and the windows being locked doesn't keep him from being in our midst. We must understand that. And it's when you do, then, that we really have the deep peace that he says that we should have. Peace be to you. And Jesus said to them again, peace to you as the Father has sent me. I also send you. Jesus always understood his role in relation to the Father, what the purpose of the Father was, as we just read in Ephesians 1. When he said this, he breathed on them and he said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. And so here he begins to unfold to them their mission, their purpose, even to be able to have as a part of this ministry the ability to forgive and to deal with people in a very, very deep way. The work that was begun by the Father through Christ, Christ now is beginning to extend into his followers in these teachings here. It's going to grow. By the time we get to the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2, we see the miracle of the languages that takes place. And then the church begins to gather and develop and do great works and it begins to grow. You're seeing here in this account in John the extension of the Father through Christ and Christ through his disciples. Because he's telling them what you're going to do. He's saying to those that he had chosen and trained to go and do what he had done. He had forgiven sin. He had done that perfectly in his own ministry. He had preached the gospel of the coming kingdom of God. And that message, when you go back to Mark 1, verses 14 and 15, that message included a clear call to repentance from sin, from people turning from their sins and obeying the laws of the kingdom to come. In a sense, by the church then doing what Jesus did to preach the gospel of the kingdom and preach repentance and people would turn, that's how their sins, in a sense, would be forgiven. It's only God that ultimately forgives sins. But you see, you must understand this statement in the context of Jesus extending the work he's doing now through human instruments, who are part of this spiritual body. And by their preaching repentance and people turning from sin, that's how their sins are forgiven, in a sense, as people turn to the message given by the church. What this passage is beginning to show is that Christ needs his church.

The church is the body of Jesus Christ. His disciples then become his mouth, his hands, and his feet that carry the gospel message. That's how he works. He does work through a church composed of human beings. And it is a unified body, as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians later on.

The hand, and the head, and the feet, all working together, all having a unity. And that is a physical symbol, a representation of a spiritual body, that Christ, which he is the head. This gets rather big, it's rather almost cosmic. We could go back to Ephesians and talk more about it, but we don't have time for this sermon.

But Jesus is beginning to show that he's going to work through the instruments of people that he calls who do the same things that he did. And that's why he said, greater things that I did, you will do. Again, where faith is involved. The church needs Christ as its head. Without Him we have no message, no power.

We have no one to turn to when we meet obstacles, no one to strengthen our arms, no one to strengthen and encourage our heart. So it's a mutual relationship that we have. The church is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

The message of Christ and the Father. Not its own will, not its own message, but it does that as Christ directs it. And even in this moment, it took a few years for the church to break out. They kind of hung around. Certainly Jesus said, you stay in Jerusalem and you'll be imbued with power from on high.

They got that power on the Day of Pentecost later on, a few weeks later. But then, as you read the early chapters of Acts, they kind of stayed around. Jesus said, you're going to be witnesses of me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Read that in the first chapter of Acts. Jesus never intended that the church would just stay in this room that they were now in in Jerusalem. But it took a few years for them to break out of that. And frankly, it was only through persecution when Stephen was martyred that they finally got scattered, where some of them went up to a town called Antioch. You read about that in Acts 11. And then they began to preach in the Gentile city of Antioch. And a church grew there. They had to send Barnabas down there to check out what was going on. And they saw the grace of God. And boom! Along with what had happened in the home of Cornelius, where God had shown that the Gentiles are now part of this body, the spiritual body. It's not just descendants of Abraham. But it took a few years to get them to that point. They were little slow learners. But when they learned, big things happened.

You know, we have to bring this down to our level in 2015, April 10th, and beyond here, and where we are right now, and what we're doing, and the work that we see ourselves to be a part of. You've given some of your dollars as an offering this morning to that end. And you support financially, and with prayers, and with other ways. It's always encouraging to me to see and to hear stories of how so many of you are engaged and see you have a part to do in the work. Putting out magazines, as some of you do in places where people gather, and Good News magazine, soon to be called the Beyond Today magazine, and engage where you can. You have the zeal and the desire to do that. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your example through the years of faith, of loyalty, of love, of dedication to God, and to His Church. Thank you for putting up with all the foibles and frailties of humanity that manifest itself within the Church. Thank you for your faithfulness.

Christ has determined that He is going to work through those that He calls and flawed human beings to handle the precious pearls of the Kingdom of God, the pearls of great price. That's how He is determined to do it.

People, men, women, get in the way that happens, but through it all, there are still people who are there. Faithful, dedicated, trusting, not in men, but in God. If there is one of the founding concepts that the United Church of God started on 20 years ago this month, 20 years ago, it was that we were going to trust in God and not a man. We didn't go to where a man was 20 years ago. We'd had to be real blunt, and I'll speak for myself, I'd had enough of men. Personalities. I could be a personality, and others could be a personality, and this and that, and it's all nothing.

But one of the things we started on was that we were not going to look to a man. We were going to look to the Father, and we were going to look to Jesus Christ. And we were going to endeavor to create an organization of men and women, ministers and members who were banded together, certain fundamental principles, that we were going to look to Jesus Christ as the head of the Church, and not to a human personality.

We had the power by whim to change doctrine, or do whatever. Which is why so many of them, 150, went to Indianapolis, and in a location just a few blocks from where my wife and I were living at the time. We had an organizing meeting to organize the United Church of God in Indianapolis 20 years ago this month. But it was on... that was one of our key principles of what we wanted to do, and that we sought then to enshrine in our documents. And we banded together and worked out, hammered together an agreement, called the United Church of God.

Six months later, we ratified that in another meeting in Cincinnati. And we bound ourselves together in the ministry. I will just tell you this personally and openly for a moment if I can. So you all understand. Because I was there at the beginning of the United Church of God, I've been in recent years with the Council of Elders and involved in some of the issues that... the last five or six years at least, that were very strained within the United.

I was there. It was in every big meeting. The last five years, I was in every important meeting that took place. I know the personalities. I know what was said. I know what happened. Because I was at the table. Twenty years ago, I was at least in the bigger room with everybody else, and I knew what we wanted to do. And we bound ourselves together as men and women in the ministry, as we ratified our documents that we wrote based upon scriptural principles. And we said, this is how we will conduct ourselves in the work that we feel God has given us to do in the United Church of God.

This is how we will conduct ourselves before God and the membership and do the work of preaching the Gospel and caring for the disciples. And we ratified an agreement. Now, you read the Old Testament scriptures and the Old Testament there were... They came together in certain places and they made an agreement. Mount Sinai and other places, and they swore allegiance. They agreed based on their covenant with God to do these things. This is kind of what we did twenty years ago. It's something unique in the Church of God experience that goes back even further than twenty years ago.

And every disruption we've had since then...we've had two major disruptions. Every disruption has been because personalities decided that it wasn't working, wouldn't work, and they broke that covenant that they made it. We all made together. And that's very important because I feel that we did that with fasting and with prayer before God. And there was almost unanimous agreement. And that's an important agreement. To go back on that for me personally is very, very grievous. I've not wanted to do it in twenty years, and I haven't.

Because I made it before God after coming out of the experience that we had in our parent organization. That's why two weeks ago when Peter Eddington was explaining to this group of men and women from an outside agency, we're still here. Others have gone from us in the United Church. We're still here doing what we said we were going to do. So this kind of is a subset of what we read here in John 20.

I realize that because it's what we as human beings have had to do in this whole thing called the Church of God experience that goes back bigger than United, bigger than any other group, goes back even before Herbert Armstrong. We're part of something that's bigger than any personality you want to name. We're part of something that's anchored in these events and these stories of the Father and Jesus Christ. And where we feel convicted, God has placed us to carry out and carry on this work.

And so what we wanted to do in the United Church of God then is to conduct our business with our whole purpose focused on God the Father and Jesus Christ. And that's been very important to us. And so we're still here and you're still here. So you should understand that.

You should understand a little bit of that. That is a little bit of the story as to what has happened. What yet may happen, again, I don't know, but certainly we don't want to foster engender. We have a unity. We have a peace right now. Unity is an ephemeral type of thing. We have a unity in God and in Christ. I'll tell you something. The body of Christ is not divided.

You read Ephesians 4. There's one faith, one baptism, one Spirit, one God, one Father. There's one body. You read the Bible and all the pertinent verses. Christ is not divided, Paul said. And where does that leave you and me? Or anybody else? Well, I'll tell you where it leaves us. Some of us, maybe all of us collectively, just somebody's going to have something to answer for.

Don't ever be a part of an action that seeks to rip and to divide the body of Christ, regardless of the personality, regardless of the issues, regardless. Debbie and I cut our eye teeth in this location 42 years ago, this very month, when division was fomented and 60% of the congregation that then attended in Charlotte walked out the door.

And I get to mention names of things, and you think I'm talking about prehistoric animals, because you don't know them. We cut our eye teeth in the ministry in a moment of division, and I said at that time, I will not be a part of that again, because it melted the hearts of many of us at that time.

And when we started the United Church of God, it was because of doctrinal division and heresy. And we were a bunch of worn-out, scared puppies in those months. What are we going to do? Well, God showed us a way, and here we are. What's happened in the last 20 years, I said, no, we're not going that route. We're not going to be a part of division. If it has to be that, then I'm ready to go back and find a gas station someplace and start pumping gas, which is where I was when I started out about 45 years ago. But I'd be hard-pressed to find a place where I could do that today. I guess I'd have to go back. Maybe I'll go to Walmart and just stand there and say hello when everybody walks in the door.

And that'd be just fine, too, to be honest. But I will not be a part of ripping the body of Jesus Christ over personalities and over lies and trumped-up issues, because that's not biblical. And I lived through the formative years of my ministry, and I just won't have anything to do with it. And I'm not going there. I'm still here. You're still here. We're still here. We should examine ourselves to see that we are here for all the right reasons. Those right reasons are in what we are looking at here, the story that unfolds during the days of Unleavened Bread, and the spiritual teachings and matters that are here. Well, we could go on, but perhaps we should wrap this up at this particular time. Rather, deep faith is based on a love that endures beyond the moment. The moment can bring people issues that cause your heart to melt, as Caleb said. Giants in the land. We can't go up there. We're too weak. We're too little. Whatever it might be. Faith has to endure beyond the moment because it is rooted deeply in a love for God. Mary still loved Jesus. John's love was full to where he saw and believed what he saw. God's Spirit creates a spiritual love that goes beyond the flesh and the ties of the flesh. It goes to being created in the image of God. Love then removes fear. So we don't pull ourselves up in a room someplace and shut the doors and the windows. So God's not bound by that. Love removes that fear. So keep that in mind. Don't let any circumstance, don't let any person, don't let any issue cause your heart to melt.

Remember that story of Caleb who said, 45 years I'm still standing strong before God. Now I want to move forward. We're not at the tail end of anything. We're on the cutting edge of the kingdom of God and of the work that God is continuing to do in this world, in this age, through the body of Jesus Christ, the spiritual body of Jesus Christ. We've kept the Feast of Sincerity and Truth. Let us be encouraged, bolstered by that. We're still here. And let's make sure that next year when the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread roll around again, that you're back here, wherever here may be. Obedient, faithful, loving servants of God.