What is God's Attitude?

Good afternoon to all of you. Mr. Reeves came up to me and said there was one announcement that hadn't been given, and I chuckled. I said, today people didn't know whether to give them to you or give them to me. So I said, I probably got as many as you do, which I will cover very, very briefly. Actually, I only have three. Attention Sabbath school students. All Sabbath school classes have earned their class and individual rewards and should meet with Mrs. Alles by the picnic table after church. Great job for remembering not to run in the building and for listening to adults this last month.

Everyone succeeded, which is always good to see. There will be a memorial today at 4 p.m. for Helen Griffin. So scheduled for some time has been a memorial that will be held after services at 4 p.m. for Helen Griffin. Following the memorial, there will be a potluck downstairs. So those of you who are planning to stay, you can mark 4 as the time we will begin the memorial, and then we'll proceed downstairs for a potluck following that.

Also, we're just a little scary. Everything's early this year, and we're, what, 10 days away from trumpets. So we're on the countdown. Dona sent me an e-mail and said contributions are very thin for shut-in baskets so far. And obviously, this is one of those annual things that we have done to honor in spirit the admonitions of God that when we bind up in our hands our money that we not forget certain classes of people who are less capable of celebrating.

And one of those classes is always those who are shut-ins and cannot come to the feast. So if you are able to contribute, Abby Volk will be taking contributions after services so you can scope out where Abby is and give your donations to her. And just by way of thinking aloud with sufficient donations, that will mean there will need to be an assembly time for those baskets. And looking at the calendar, I expect, just to give a heads up to those who annually participate or like to participate, that the only realistic time to do that is probably going to be a week from tomorrow.

So if you are one who helps with that, you may need to at least put a mental memory item back there and say, stay tuned for next week or the church website, whichever the communication vehicle will be, because assembly of those baskets for shut-ins would have to be next Sunday or somewhere during the week, and obviously Sunday works better than all the rest. I caught Burke downstairs as we came in, and he said, asked me how long I'd been home, and I hit a brick wall.

I thought, you know, it seems like I've had a lot of delightful days to do things this week, but I wasn't here last Sabbath. And the council meeting ends on Thursday, and I was going around and around, and I looked at Burke and I said, you know, I'm going to have to ask my wife where on the earth I've been. And then I realized I got home Thursday night a week ago, dumped a suitcase, packed it. Diane and I got on the plane, headed to Spokane. We were there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning.

I had been asked, oh, my clear back in June or so by Mr. Moody, if I would free up either last Sabbath or the Sabbath before. And I said, well, I can't do the earlier one because I'm in Cincinnati for the council meeting. And that's my travel Sunday. I'm in Texas, actually. But anyway, he understood. I said, I'm happy to do it the following one.

His wife, Darla, I'm assuming the announcements were made that Darla was announced with endometrial cancer. She went through surgery. The doctor's statement was they had gotten everything and there will be no need for any follow-up treatment. But because of that, Paul canceled his trip to Nigeria. And he wrote and said, well, I'm not going to be gone. And I said, well, that's too bad. And I said, I've already paid for plane tickets. And you got me, whether you want me or not. So we had a delightful time with the elders in Spokane last Friday evening and Sabbath evening and then flew back on Sunday.

So I finally got my calendar all straightened out and elaborated that to Burke and life goes on. I have a question for you with no context and you know how those go. You always wonder, well, why is he asking the question? And if you'd tell me a little bit more, I'd have a better way of knowing how to answer it.

But you'll have to bear with me. Let me ask it just the same, even though I haven't given you any context. The question is, what is God's attitude? Now, again, like I said, I didn't give you any context to work with, so bear with me. Let's make it slightly easier by asking, what is God's attitude toward mankind? At least you have a direction now.

I ask this in part because we're ten days away from the first fall Holy Day, Feast of Trumpets. All of us know, we have been commemorating these days for decades, that the Day of Trumpets commemorates a time period that we look at as the Day of the Lord, which culminates in the return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the saints. In addition to all of this, because trumpets commemorates that specifically, but in addition to this, when we look at end-time events, there's another major event in prophecy that comes before the Day of the Lord, which we don't celebrate. God did not deem that this was a part of the things to commemorate, and we refer to it as the Great Tribulation. Together, these two, the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord, form a period of time which God describes in scriptures as a time unlike anything that has ever happened before, nor will ever happen again. So it's a climactic time unlike anything in world history, and it will never be repeated again. You know, people who read prophecy see this as an expression of the wrath of God, a God who has always been portrayed in this particular light. You know, as early as the first century, Christ was dead, buried, not that many decades, if any, had gone by before Gnosticism began to infiltrate the edges of the church, and Gnostics were people who painted God in a very dark light. They saw God as vengeful, a God of wrath. Christianity has not done a whole lot better. They also have seen God through the same lens. The God of the Old Testament, as He is portrayed, demanding, vengeful, angry, even wrathful, contrasted with the Jesus Christ of the New Testament, who was loving, kind, forgiving, and self-sacrificing. And so, in essence, brethren, whether we realize it or not, the world from the days of the Gnostics in the first century all the way down to modern-day Christianity has assigned God an attitude. But have they assigned it fairly? You know, man doesn't wait around to ask God questions. Man is presumptuous. And as I said, as a result, man assigned God an attitude within years after Christ was buried and resurrected. And that attitude has been reinforced by later ages and by different bodies. But as I ask, have they assigned it fairly? What is God's attitude? And if you wish to add the parenthetical that I gave you earlier toward mankind? If I may speak for God, not on my own, but by the facts that He has inspired to be recorded. So I would not be presumptuous enough to say, here is my opinion. But if I may speak on His behalf from the record, from what is there in book, chapter, and verse, and then I will say, I am not a Christian. I am a Christian. I am not a Christian. But if I may speak on His behalf from the record, from what is there in book, chapter, and verse, here is what I would say on behalf of what all of you are capable of reading and commenting on. Speaking in the first person, I gave Adam and Eve paradise, and I gave them paradise with only one stipulation. In the middle of all of this paradise that is yours to do with, all I ask of you was to tend it and care for it. My only stipulation was, there is one tree in the middle of the garden, leave it alone. I gave them freedom at the highest level, and I gave them abundance beyond measure. And I gave them abundance beyond measure.

And they wouldn't even obey the simplest request. I watched man retrogress to the place where every thought and imagination of his mind was corrupt from the time he got up in the morning until the time he fell asleep at night, and world conditions became intolerable. I found one man and his family that would walk righteously. And I asked this man to plead with the world around him for a hundred years, offering an opportunity to anyone and everyone who would listen to him not to have to go through what was pending. No one could be more than a man who would listen to him. In the days of my friend Abraham, two cities in all the metropolitan area around them, their suburbs, had devolved to the place they were akin to the days of Noah. They would keep track of strangers coming within their city and demand that they be put out in the streets for all forms of abuse. I saw what was going on, and I found it really repugnant. My friend Abraham came to me and pleaded on their behalf. And I listened patiently as he pleaded, bringing the numbers down incrementally to the place where it had reached almost an absurd number. And I agreed with Abraham that if he could find ten individuals in these two combined cities and all the suburbs around them that were not this way, I'd spare all of them. I'd spare every single solitary, depraved individual in that entire area on behalf of ten decent human beings. I took Abraham's children. Since I had promised him that I would take care of them, I would bless them. And I brought them out of Egypt with the greatest display of miracles that had ever happened in the history of humanity. Upon leaving that area, I gave them riches beyond most people's imagination. I said, I'm going to pay you wages for the last century or better of labor. And they left rich. I fed them every day. I gave them clothing that would not wear out for the entire time they were in transit. I gave them water. I gave them shelter. And I gave them protection from their enemies. And in return, they whined and complained and eventually said, why don't we go back to Egypt and become slaves again? And I put up with all of this. And I said, I'm going to pay you wages for the last century.

I not only put up with all of this, but I put up with the continuation of that same attitude in their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren and their great-great-grandchildren and their great-great-great-grandchildren for the next 700 years before I said, I've had enough. And I said, that's only half of them. The other half that had given me an opportunity and an occasional period of mediocre respect, I gave them another hundred years before they reached the place that they were really no different than their sister tribe before I removed my protection. Finally, after warnings issued, I gave them a warning that I was issued now by my own son, Jesus Christ, without being heard, listened to, or respected. I ended what had been another 500-year reprieve for the House of Judah by simply removing my protection and letting the Romans come in, destroy the city and the people, and eventually ban all of the children of Abraham from so much as setting foot even on the real estate on pain of death. You all have the same historical account that I do of what I've just said in this book. This is God's view of the story. Man has passed through the last two thousand years. This is His view of the story.

But as I said, I took the liberty to speak for God from the historical record. I'd like to notch it up a notch, and I'd like to read what God says Himself, or what He has commissioned and dictated to His servants the prophets to say on His behalf.

From the time they left Egypt, Israel never fully committed to God for any appreciable length of time. From the time He took them out of Egypt, they never committed to His view for any appreciable length of time. He reminded them of that fact periodically through the servants that He called and commissioned to that task. There is a nonending list of reminders of that reality that began as early as the book of Deuteronomy and go all the way to the closing pages of the Old Testament.

Israel is not yet an established nation in the book of Deuteronomy. Due to the attitude I've described, their attitude, they wandered around in circles for forty years until the generation that had totally and completely—if I can use a term of our modern era—so totally, completely dissed God, that He said, alright, if you love the desert that much, then you can die here. And I'll take your children, the ones that you used as a lame excuse that they'd all die if we went into the Promised Land. I'll take them and I'll give them what you turned your back on. Book of Deuteronomy is written just as they're ready to walk in. Moses' life is about to end. These are his last words, his last will and testament, in a sense. And following the book of Deuteronomy, they then march into the land and begin for the first time to establish themselves as a nation. In Deuteronomy 9, this is what Moses says on God's behalf about their attitude. Deuteronomy 9, verse 1, Here, O Israel, you are to cross over the Jordan today and go into dispossessed nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven. A people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you heard, it said, Who can stand before the descendants of Anak? Therefore understand today that the Lord your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you, so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has sent to you. Do not think in your heart after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying, Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.

He said, Don't even stop there. He said, It is because of the wickedness of these things that the Lord is driving them out before you. You know, it's not much of a compliment for God to say, The reason I'm driving them out is because they're more rotten than you are.

It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess this land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, that He may fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a rebellious people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness from the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place. You have been rebellious against the Lord. He said, you only have one identifying characteristic from the day you walked through the Red Sea to today as you're looking across the Jordan River into the land you're going to possess. You are rebels. Attitude? From God's perspective, He said, you need to understand that it is no compliment to you to receive this inheritance. It's a compliment to your Father because I made Him a promise. But the only reason you're crossing this river and going into the land is that the people that live there now are more debauched and depraved than you are.

That comment is a stage setter so that you can see the real story. It continues—I'm not going to read it—but what I've been reading to you continues for the entire rest of the chapter. I just took a breath. Moses goes on and spends the entire chapter elaborating. Joshua took them across the river. In due course of time, Joshua became an old man at the end of the book that carries his name. He made an eloquent speech, an eloquent speech that he phrased the way he did because of an implied message. He said to the house of Israel, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You have to choose who you will serve. You know, Joshua couldn't stand up and speak on their behalf because they were not all on his page. So he simply said, The only one I can speak for authoritatively is me and my household. We will serve the eternal. You have to make a choice. The sad chronology account is that these people remained basically on the track that they had been on as they followed Joshua only as long as Joshua was alive or those who were his closest circle of fellow leaders. And when that generation died, so did any elite allegiance to God. We all know the summation of the book of Judges. It's repeated twice.

During that entire period of time, everyone did his own thing. Or everyone did what was right in his own eyes. They didn't ask God what is right. You know, it's God, don't intrude in my life. I will define right and wrong for me. And you can simply stay out of my affairs. The last of the great prophets was Samuel. And in 1 Samuel 8, we find another one of those historical markers that tells us, you know, it's a trail marker. It's like going across from the plains to the west coast and following those historic signs that tell you these mark the Oregon Trail. Well, these are verbal trail markers. 1 Samuel 8, and it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second, Abijah, and they were judges in Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice. And then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel and Rama and said to him, Look, you're old. Your sons do not walk in your ways. Make us a king to judge us like all the nations. It wasn't a case of saying, Look, Samuel, let's sit and have a talk. Your kids are rotten. We need somebody else who will judge us honorably and equitably. That would have been the reasonable conversation.

They abandoned that conversation and simply said, We've looked at all the nations around us and we want a king like they've got. The thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. So Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Listen to them. Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

He said, Samuel, it's not about you. It is about me. They have put up with me because they couldn't see an alternative and now they see an opportunity to go sideways, ask for an option. And he said, Samuel, let's understand something between the two of us as God and God's prophet. It isn't about you. They don't want me ruling over them. God continued to put up with disregard, disrespect, even defiance from a segment of these people who were the most rebellious.

That was the house of Israel. And he put up with that for longer than we have been a nation. In fact, you know, when we celebrate the earliest colonies, we go back to Plymouth Rock, we go back to the Lost Colony in Roanoke, we go back to the English Settlement in Jamestown, we go back to the very, very beginning of our people's putting down roots. That's like ancient, ancient American history. You know, most Americans, they're happy going back to 1776. Well, this is another 170 years before that. God put up with Israel's attitude for comparably the same amount of time as people of Europe have occupied this country.

And, in fact, the most prominent continent gave them periodic encouragement, periodic warnings, urged them to obey Him, reminded them of the blessings that He wanted to give them. But they were all Frank Sinatra fans. They all sang, I did it my way. And that was the world. God at least wanted to on the record, as the era was closing, that He'd worked with an impossible body. So as the whole thing began to wind down, Israel had gone into captivity. That sobered the house of Judah.

But the house of Judah lived in this fairy tale world that said, as long as the temple is in the middle of us, nobody can ever destroy us. And, in fact, the temple was in the middle of us. They had the same pagan attitude that if we have the shrine of the God, then the God will protect His shrine. And it really blew their minds when that didn't work. But they didn't know it didn't work until it was all over. God sent prophets all during that time period. Jeremiah, Jeremiah, and John, and John, and John, and Jeremiah spanned the whole time that Judah was cycling down to the very end.

Jeremiah had known and respected the last truly great king in Judah, King Josiah, and he prophesied during that entire period. Within that, Ezekiel was like the meat in the sandwich. He was in the middle of it. Nebuchadnezzar brought down Judah and Jerusalem incrementally. In his first raid, he took off Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and others like them.

The second time he came in, he took out Ezekiel, and Ezekiel then became an inhabitant of the shores of the river of Kebar in Babylon. And the third time around, no man was left standing except Jeremiah, who, because of his faithfulness, the king of Babylon said, You can stay here, you don't need to go captive. I will see that you have a home. I will make sure that you have a stipend to live on. Live in peace. The men who were assigned to give the final warnings, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, had these things to say.

Or we could put it in another way as we look at Ezekiel 2. This is what God said to Ezekiel, which he then took down as a secretary for the record. In Ezekiel 2, verse 1, and he said to me, Son of Man, stand on your feet and I will speak to you. And the Spirit entered me, and when He spoke to me and set me up on my feet, and I heard Him who spoke these things, and He said to me, Son of Man, I am sending you to the children of Israel to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day.

For they are impudent and stubborn children. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God, and ask for them whether they hear or whether they refuse, for they are a rebellious house, yet they will know that a prophet has been among them. He said, You know, it doesn't matter whether they listen or not, they will at least have it on record that a prophet officially spoke to them. But He said they are impudent, and they are rebellious, and they are stubborn.

You know, it's hard to put up with any one of the three of those attitudes. If you had someone to oversee who had all three of them, how do you handle it? God put up with it for 800 years by the time we get to Babylon, and then took people who were for a moment in time transformed and gave them another 500 years.

Ezekiel 20 and 23 are full chapter descriptions of what Israel did and the attitude they had.

I'm not going to read them because, as I said, they are full chapter from verse 1 to the last verse. The entirety are historical chronicles of the attitude of the Israelites. I can't read Ezekiel 23 in mixed company because God takes Ezekiel 23, and He puts it in the context of a husband and a wife and a wife who has been anything but a wife. And He is quite graphic. And He says, this is how you've treated me. Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 7 had these things to say. You know, there are times in the Bible where it's actually recorded a dialogue between God and the people, and the people say, but you're not fair, you're not fair, you're not fair. And God then says, let's sit down and talk about it and show me where I have not been fair. To this very day, the same attitude exists. There was probably about a three-quarter-page article in the Columbian, which was a massive survey of the people who were in America by the Pew Institute. Very, very, very, very interesting and very revealing.

One of the things across categories, and they broke down the groups into seven different categories by their attitude about religion. So it was an attitudinal study. What was it like? What is your approach? How do you think about it? And it broke it down. But it was remarked in multiple categories. And these categories are not irreligious categories.

These categories are being defined as categories who saw themselves as spiritual and, at least to one degree, religious, reoccurring throughout it a declining, unaddicted, unaddicted, unaddicted belief, even in the existence—not just the attitude and character, but a declining belief and even the existence of the biblical God. So it's gone beyond stubborn or rebellious to the place of we don't even care to believe that He exists. Jeremiah 7, Jeremiah 7, says, beginning in verse 1, The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah, who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Do not trust in these lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. So you understand what is being said here, as what I alluded to earlier.

He said, If you amend your ways, I'll allow you to continue to live here. Don't go back and take the position that because the temple is here, I'm safe. The temple is here, nothing is going to happen to me. Because the house of God is in the town I live in, nobody can touch me. He said, You're wrong. He goes on in verse 5, For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you... And I'll stop right here before I go any further. Because part of the assignment of attitude to God by society is rooted in the sense that God is arrogant, demanding, wants only His way, and cares about nothing but total allegiance and fidelity to Him, which is utter, total, complete nonsense. And I stopped where I did, because here God tells them what He wants their allegiance to, and it is the whole package. For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, He said, Part of my beef with you is the lack of justice in your judicial system. Treat people fairly. If you do not oppress your people, you will treat people fairly. If you do not oppress the stranger, that if you dismiss the attitude that if He is of the same nationality, the same color, and the same language of Me, He is inferior to Me. If you stop oppressing the fatherless and the widows, if you stop you have half a heart that says when somebody has no parents or a woman has no husband, and therefore they cannot support themselves at the level that you can support yourself.

And do not shed innocent blood in this place. So what is God asking for? What is His problem with their attitude? It's not this narrow little telescopic view of I'm on my throne, unless you bow to Me. It's a whole lot more than that. You know, it goes back to the days of Christ when they said, what is the summarization of the law that you love, that you love, that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your might, all your soul, and you love. And the second is like unto it, that you love your neighbor as yourself. This is God's attitude.

So He says, if you'll stop doing all of these things that are social injustices, then I will cause you to dwell in this place in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.

Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know? So is it all about the worship of God? No, it isn't. The last two were when He said, I do not want any of their gods before Me. It is repulsive to compete with Baal.

But He said, that's not the whole picture. Your thieves, your murderers, your adulterers, and your liars. And on top of that, you worship other gods. He says, if you'll get rid of the whole package, verse 10, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations? This is God's attitude.

Verses 25 through 27.

He reminds them of the timeline. Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt, until this day, I have even sent to you all My servants and prophets, daily rising up early and sending them.

Yet they did not obey Me or incline their ears, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. Therefore you shall speak all these words to them. What I've been reading you right now, verses 25 to 27, are God's comments to Ezekiel personally. So He says to Ezekiel in verse 27, Therefore you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not obey you. You shall also call to them, but they won't answer you. God says, From the day of Moses onward, I have repeatedly sent them guidance. I have repeatedly pleaded with them. I have repeatedly given them the same message that I just read to you between verses 1 and 10. I said, They don't want it. They're not interested in it. They are not interested in listening or doing.

Jeremiah 25.

I'll repeat what I just read to you a second time, now a little less than 20 chapters later. But it's a way of understanding that when God says things over and over repeatedly, that it's His way of making it plain that this is a serious problem. Jeremiah 25, verse 1, He spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, From the thirteenth year of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, even to this day, this is the twenty-third year in which the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, but you will not listen. I have been continually, for twenty-three years, personally, coming to you and pleading with you.

And you'll never take your fingers out of your ears. He said, this is just my personal story because I know it firsthand, and I've got a calendar, so I can tell you how long I've been coming. But the Lord has sent to you all His servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, but you've not listened or inclined your ear to hear them either. They said, repent, now every one of His evil ways and His evil doings, and dwell in the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers forever and ever.

Do not go after other gods to serve them and worship them, and do not provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, and I will not harm you. Yet you have not listened to me, says the Lord, that you may provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.

You know, when you look at the Ten Commandments, we all know that half of them deal with reverence toward God as a being. We know the other half are the greatest simple description of what constitutes a sound, sane, civil, and decent society that has ever been published.

I remember in earlier days of the broadcast a comment that was made where the whole thing was reversed. You know, when you say to people, you need to keep the commandments, you get the same stiff-necked stubbornness today that Israel gave back then. But once in a while the broadcast would turn things around reverse and say, you know what's interesting is that there's not a human being alive that does not wish that everyone else would keep the Ten Commandments.

And it's true.

I don't want anybody lying about me.

I don't want anybody stealing my possessions. I certainly don't want to be murdered by someone.

I want a lifelong marriage. I don't want people tampering with it. That's what God says.

He says they won't listen to any of it.

I'll give you something to do between now and Day of Trumpets or Feast of Tabernacles, if you'd like to do so. And that is to read Nehemiah chapter 8 and 9. I don't need to read it today. It is a repeat of everything I've been reading so far. But the setting is beautiful. And it'll blow your mind, because in Nehemiah 8 they gather as they come out of captivity to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. And it says there in Nehemiah that this has not been done since the days of Joshua.

And it shows an attitude of a people for a period of time who were a repentant, tender-hearted, pliable, malleable people. And those two chapters, chapter 8 and chapter 9, take place between the Day of Trumpets. It starts with the first day of the seventh month. It walks through the Feast of Tabernacles. And when we arrive at the subject that we're talking about right now, they are three days after the last great day, and they are fasting. And they are walking through all of the sins that has brought Judah to the place where what they've got is the wreckage of a once beautiful city, the absolute destroyed remnant of an awesome temple, and recounting why it got to that place.

So, in the spirit of this message and the Holy Days coming up, I think you'll find Nehemiah chapter 8 and 9 a very profitable and interesting read. So, here's the record of the God of the Old Testament. It isn't the picture that Christianity as a whole has of God, the harsh, stern, unrelenting, demanding God of the Old Testament. Definitely not the picture that Gnosticism painted very early on in New Testament history.

Ironically, as the Christian world decided to shut the door on the Old Testament and revel solely in the New, and I might stop a moment here because there was a custom when I was a young boy that over time seemed to disappear. It might not have. I may simply be unaware that it continued on. But in the period of the late 1940s, the early 1950s, when religion was still very, very firmly embedded in American culture, if you went to a Sunday school and they were going to give you a gift or a present, maybe you were in a scripture memorization B or something else, the standard gift was this tall, this wide, and on the front it said, New Testament and Psalms.

For some reason, the only thing safe that you could pull out of the Old Testament was the book of Psalms. And so children of my generation were flooded with little, nice, handy, pocket-sized New Testament and Psalms. The rest of it? Don't need it. Don't want it. We've replaced it with Jesus Christ. Ironically, in Matthew 21, they didn't consider the attitude of their replacement.

Christ is on the countdown, and he knows that the clock is ticking, and he will not be alive much longer. In fact, he's not going to be alive very long at all by the time we arrive at Matthew 21.

And so he utters a parable, as he knows that the words that he says at this point in time and onward are merely a signing of his own death warrant. And in verse 33, he says, Here, another parable. There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower, and he leased it to a vinedresser and went into a far country. Now when the vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the wine-dresser that they might receive its fruit. And the wine-dresser took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants more than the first, and they did likewise to them. Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, They will respect my son.

But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the error. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance. And they caught him, cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of this vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?

Ezekiel and Jeremiah said, God has sent prophets. They have pleaded with you daily. Jeremiah said, I've done it personally 23 years. So along comes a kind, gentle, loving, self-sacrificing Christ. And you know what he says? He says, everything they said back there is true. The only thing that's not done yet is, you're going to add me to the list. I will be the last of your casualties at this level.

Christ's view was the same as that expressed by God. Moses, Samuel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and on we would go with names. So as I ask at the beginning, what is the attitude of God? I've taken history. I've let it speak for God. I've gone now through the Bible and let the Bible speak on behalf of God, both Old Testament and Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The God that they didn't want to credit with the attitude that he truly had is a God who spoke to their fathers from Mount Sinai and said the following. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

God names things, places, and people what they are. And so it says, He proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.

Our world has taken the coin and flipped it upside down and painted him with every antonym that you can come up with as opposites of what he said of himself. This is the name of God. I bring all of this up since we are on the threshold of celebrating the fall Holy Days. Pictures a time when man will have an opportunity to once more charge God with a bad attitude. We read in Revelation and some of the other prophets where there will be people with their fist clenched, defiant, simply to the day they die shaking their fist in God's face.

Our people are going to charge him with a bad attitude when the great tribulation comes. The world in general is going to charge him with an even worse attitude when the day of the Lord arrives. What they will never stop to consider for the most part, because some will consider, and they will put two and two together, and they will come up with four. But for the most part, what they will never consider is that attitude is what they have displayed from the day of Adam onward. You know, God knew from the beginning that what we refer to as the great tribulation was eventually an unavoidable event. And God knew that one day there would be a great tribulation, unavoidable for one reason, our attitude. Tribulation is intended to be an attitude adjustment period. The majority of people will not allow it. You know when it says impudence, stubbornness, and rebellion? When those are the defining factors, prophecy tells us the majority simply will plant their feet, and they will take the attitude that I will do what I want to do the way I want to do if it kills me. And it will. But God knew that when the millennium started, if he was going to have a millennial kingdom that would truly work, there wouldn't have to come a great tribulation. Let's go back to the last things that Moses said to Israel before he said, I'm done, I'm finished. I have to go up to a mountain where God said this would be the place where I would die. Joshua will take over. You will cross the Jordan River under his command. These are the last things that I have to say to you. Deuteronomy 30. End of the book. We're down to the place where he's just in his wrapping up comments in chapters 30 through 34. And this is what he says to them. Now it shall come to pass, verse 1 of Deuteronomy 30, when all these things come upon you, the blessings and the curse which I have set before you. And you shall call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you. Notice the interesting way that verse is written. It will come to pass when all these things come upon you, the blessings and the curses.

And you'll think about them in the lands where I drive you.

How long have we been living with the blessings? A year ago in May, I came home from a trip that my younger son and I made to Peru. And I sat on my front porch for, I don't know, how many days in the morning. And I looked down the street in front of me at one, two, three, four, five houses, and then sideways at the house beside me. And I sat there and shook my head. And I said, I just came back from the developing world, and where I live, the way I live, could not exist in the country I just left.

I am not in a wealthy subdivision. I am not in the upper echelon of the houses, the communities in the Clark County area. But the level at which I live would require walls, barbed wire, and armed guards.

And I would be safe walking within this subdivision, within the walls with the embedded glass and the barbed wire, and the armed guards at the gate. And I would take my life into my hands to go through the gate and walk outside of it.

So I'd sit there and remind myself that I can walk two miles down to the Fred Myers, walk out the subdivision, walk by three schools, walk down to Fred Myers if I want to, buy something, walk back. Never look over my shoulder. Never look at a car coming and wonder what it's going to do. Never a second thought.

I stayed one night in a vineyard. We drove along a wall that was 12 feet tall with barbed wire laced on the top, and we got to probably a 14-foot Spanish gate to this vineyard.

The driver stopped. The person at the gate put his hand out, so he stopped. The gate opened, and through it came a pickup truck and in the back, on bench seats, were five or six men, all with either shotguns or automatic rifles, leaving. When we sat down at dinner on a patio that evening, my son was facing a certain direction, and he said, you know, the light out there is annoying. And out a couple hundred yards was the light, and I chuckled at him. I said, that's a searchlight. That's a guard tower. The men that we saw coming out the gate were the changing of the guard. There are guards at every one of those lights all the way around. This vineyard was over a thousand acres. Can you imagine the cost of a 12-foot wall around a thousand-acre vineyard? Arm guards at towers within searchlight range of each other to protect what? Grapes.

It shall come to pass when all these things come upon you, the blessings and the curse which I have set before you. You shall call them to mind among the nations where the Lord your God will drive you. And you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you and from there he will bring you. Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live. Also the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you.

You know, within the beginning of the millennium are those people that say, Come, let us go up against the land of unwalled villages. They have no arms. They have no protection. They are phenomenally prosperous. They are ripe for the picking. There is your literal millennial illustration of, I will put the curses that have been upon you upon them. And you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments, which I command you this day. The Lord your God will make you abound in all your work of your hands, in the fruit of your body and in the increase of your livestock and in the produce of your land for good. For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, as He rejoiced over your fathers, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep His commandments and His statutes, which are written in the book of the law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

That's what's necessary to start the millennium. That kind of people.

And God says, I'll give you more than you can even wrap your mind around.

Ezekiel 20.

The other end of the bookend, so to speak.

You know, it's something, when you read the very end of Deuteronomy, and God has revealed to Moses, I'm sure not the time, or I say I'm sure, I haven't read, I'm not sure of anything. I don't know whether Moses knew the time or not. I doubt it. That's the best I can say for accuracy's sake. But he knew that there was going to be a scattering of all of the people of Israel, not just a trip to Babylon in back, or a trip for some of them to Babylon in back and the rest of them stay in Babylon. But he said, you're going to be scattered to the farthest, most parts of this entire globe, and I'm going to get every single solitary one of you, no matter where you are, and I'm going to bring you back.

In Ezekiel 20, in Ezekiel 20 there's a caveat. I think you've understood it by implication all through this message, but here it is spelled out, and spelled out in great clarity. Ezekiel 20, verse 33, God cannot swear by anything greater than his own life, and so when he says, as I live, this is a guarantee that is stronger than any guarantee in the universe. As I live, says the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, I will rule over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, and I'm going to do this with a mighty hand, and I'll do it with an outstretched arm and with fury poured out. Now, this particular point in time, the fury is not on them, the fury is on those who have taken them captive.

He says, I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead my case with you face to face. You know, before our people arrive at the Promised Land, once Christ returns to Jerusalem, God says, we're going to stop in the wilderness, and we're going to set the record straight. I am going to plead my case with you face to face. I have carried a reputation that I do not own, I do not deserve, and is fallacious from the time of your fathers, and before we start the millennium, we are going to straighten it out. I'll bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead my case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded my case with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will plead my case with you, says the Lord God. I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. I'm not going to turn there. You can all go to Jeremiah 31, 31. There is the covenant. I'll give you a new heart. I'll write my laws on your mind, on your heart. There will come a new covenant, not like the old one. This one will be here and here. So he says, I will make you pass under the rod, and I'll bring you into the bond of the covenant.

You know what, brethren? When the kingdom of God comes to this earth, and Jesus Christ descends on the Mount of Olives, and we as saints join Him and begin His kingdom, there will be no returning Israelites with a bad attitude.

He says in verse 38, I will purge the rebels from among you. And those who transgress against me, I will bring them out of the country where they sojourn, but they shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord. The Tribulation is a sorting and a winnowing time. It is a time for God to find out who will obey.

You know, brethren, it doesn't matter where this nation is. It doesn't matter where it goes, and it doesn't matter what your assessment is of the nation. Every single person in this room, I believe, can close their eyes and see what they can do. And they can see someone within the world of their experience, either the neighborhood they live in, family members, friends, schoolmates, who are decent people.

People who still understand decency, honor, still understand kindness, generosity. God is simply picking.

We read of the time when the Tribulation ends, before the day of the Lord starts, and it talks about a time where God will seal so many of each of the tribes of Israel and an innumerable multitude. You just simply say, okay, you've gone through the sorting process. You don't need to go through what's ahead. You don't need to go through Trumpet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

But when God says what He does here in Ezekiel, He says, we're going to have a day where we're going to sit down and have a talk once and for all. And I'm going to plead my case. You've assigned to me an attitude because of your attitude.

And we need to correct this once and for all.

And when we've corrected it, I will take you into a land and give you things that you can't even imagine. But I will not tolerate any longer a rebel. They are not coming in.

So what's the conclusion of the matter? I ask the question, what is God's attitude? I think in the course of the sermon we have shown that God has tried in every possible way to give us the best of the best, and we repay Him with the worst of the worst. That will be corrected before the millennium, and then He will pour out the best of the best all over again, but this time beautifully upon a people unlike any people He's ever worked with before. People who will actually appreciate it, respect it, honor it, and thank Him for it.

Absolutely phenomenal. I'd like to conclude with a scripture that is very, very popular currently in the evangelical world. It fits the time of the return from captivity simply because the principle will be repeated. But it is speaking to the Jews who are in captivity, anticipating coming back from captivity and once more occupying the land. So it is a historical comment, but just as equally applicable to what is yet ahead. And that very popular scripture is back in Jeremiah 29.

I've seen it on placards, I've seen it in religious bookstores, I've seen it in people's homes. My reading will be a little bit longer than what they have because they have taken just the middle of it. Jeremiah 29, verse 10, After seventy years are completed in Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good works toward you and cause you to return to this place. So he said, you know what? I have taken you captive, but I am so tender-hearted toward you, I'm going to tell you up front. It's going to last seventy years, and then I personally am going to bring you back to this land.

And then comes the verse, as I said, that is very popular today. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. And then you will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

This is the attitude of God. Very, very different.

Thank you.