Why Were We Born

Well, good afternoon, everyone. It's good to be with you here again and in Dayton. My wife and I always enjoy coming up here. When I asked Mr. McCready yesterday, I finally got hold of him. It was like a couple of days to get hold of him on the phone. And I said, is there a potluck today? And he said, no.

You don't do potlucks during the summer. And I started to say, well, don't you know it's after Labor Day? But considering his condition, I just decided to let it go and figure it'll happen next time. We'll maybe be able to come back up for another time and catch one of your world-famous potlucks here in the Dayton congregation. I appreciate Mr. McCready's note and the admonition to suck it up. I've been told to suck it up a lot in my life.

And a few times have told others to do that. But you have to be very judicious when you use that phrase with people. You've got to know him real well to pass that one along. But since we're both from Missouri, I can relate to that one quite a bit. But certainly hope and pray that he can get back on his feet soon. I was shocked. About five weeks ago, we were first day of ABC, and we thought that everything was all covered. And he was going to start teaching Gospels. And 8 o'clock, 8.30 comes, first day of ABC. And the students are sitting there waiting for the Gospels to start. And there's no Frank McCready. So I knew that something must be wrong. We finally got hold of him. And that was when he was in Texas being diagnosed. And there was a mix-up between he thought he was coming in later. And Steve Myers, who sets the schedule, thought that he communicated that he was going to be there the first week. And it didn't happen. So these things all come together according to God's purposes anyway. So it was a shock to be able to see what was taking place there. But we'll certainly keep him in our prayers, as all of you are doing as well.

In the last 10 to 12 days, I've heard two messages that were distinctly different but two messages that have set to frame some of my thinking and approaching a topic, some topics for the upcoming Holy Days. And in essence, kind of summing up where we are in the world today and where we really are at any time in the Church of God. Let me tell you about those two messages. Let me tell you about the first one. About 10 days ago, I was asked, invited actually by Victor Kubik to go with him to attend his weekly Rotary Club meeting. He's a member of the Claremont County Batavia Ohio Rotary Club. And they have a Tuesday morning breakfast meeting every week. And this particular week, a couple weeks ago, they had a guest speaker who was a former president of the Rotary Club, a gentleman who was an attorney and had been the clerk of court there in Claremont County. And about 10 years ago, this gentleman decided to make a big career change and he went from local politics and joined the Foreign Service and as a diplomat for the United States State Department. And he had just returned from northern Iraq. And he was the guest speaker that morning. And he spent about 35-40 minutes telling us about his experience serving in the State Department in northern Iraq in recent weeks in a little place called Urbil. When we hear about Iraq, we usually hear about Baghdad, Mosul in recent times. Mosul, by the way, is the site of ancient Nineveh. You've heard of Nineveh. You've read about that in the Bible. When you hear Mosul, that's Nineveh. Just think about that. But he had been in a little place actually near Mosul, a place called Urbil, where the United States Embassy, they have a mission there. It's not the full embassy, but it's a mission there. And he was an officer there and had been for about a year.

And he started telling us just about his experiences, what it was like there. And when the this militant terrorist group, Islamic terrorist group that goes by ISIL or ISIS or IS or whatever they're called now, that has established this caliphate there in the area of Syria, northern Iraq, when they were rampaging in June through that area, he was there. And they came actually within about 25 miles of where the American mission was, where he was in Urbil. And they had plans to evacuate. They didn't have to had they come that last 25 miles and attacked the city where he was. But they would have evacuated, but things changed at that particular point. But Mr. Carter, the diplomat, was just telling us his impressions of what the Middle East is like from a firsthand experience and being an expert on the Middle East for the State Department. And he said that essentially his one statement was, he said, we have yet to come to realize that we are dealing with people and forces that don't think like us in recent times, even with this particular group that has now arisen. As bad as all of them might be in terms of their tactics, we can see that this one is unafraid to do some drastic things. And just this past week in Australia, they arrested a few other sympathizers with this ISIS group who had planned to kidnap some people in Sydney and Melbourne, I believe, or Brisbane, and do the ritual beheadings on YouTube that they've done with the others there. And they were going to just see some people off the street and do that in Australia. They got wind of it, arrested the individuals who were going to do it, and prevented that. Now, that was a striking message. But here's what was, I found striking. This was a message delivered at a rotary club. These are the businessmen of Claremont County, Batavia, who, you know, prominent businessmen there in that area, as a rotary club is. And they were all transfixed by what he was saying, as so many of us have been, as we've watched these reports on the screen in recent weeks. And it has struck a fear. But these business people were all interested in that. It was one of their own who had been there and was coming back telling them the story. And they were transfixed by it. The second message that I heard was just actually a few days later. And that was the message that was delivered by one of our ministers, Gary Petty, at the Why Were You Born seminar that we conducted just, again, right there at the Holiday Inn, East Gate, a few miles from our home office in Claremont County. And we actually had three members of Mr. Kubik's Rotary Club come and attend that. He had invited his rotary club, made an invitation for them to come, and three of them came out that day that night and were sitting there listening to the message that was given on Why Were You Born by Mr. Petty. Some of you may have watched that on the webcast and seen the tape of it. And I'm sitting in the audience listening to this and watching the reaction of everybody that night. And having known that we had three of these local business people from the rotary listening to this very positive message about Why Were You Born, as Mr. Petty laid it out. Now, he didn't exhaust the entire topic. In fact, he just barely scratched the surface of a very large subject. But it was a message of hope. It was a message about the purpose of our life. And these three individuals who were part of the other new people who attended were hearing a different message than they had heard just two days earlier. Just two days earlier. I got to thinking about the contrast of that message.

That at least three people there, actually five of us, because Mr. Kubik and I were in the audience listening to the American diplomat and then listening to Mr. Petty, and the contrast of these two messages. One of our current world, dire as it is, the other, a message of hope that strikes at the very core of a gospel message and the purpose for our existence, worlds apart. And yet, they are two very important messages. And here were three individuals among 74 others who came that night to hear what we had billed as a why were you born message and what they were hearing. And it's been rolling around in my mind, just in the contrast there, that you can witness that and be a part of it. One of those individuals who had come was an individual, a lady who, a couple of years ago, had lost her husband in a tragic freak accident, walked out the front door of their house two years ago to get the mail out of the road and was struck by a car. Just a freak thing. And this lady was one of the rotarians and she came that night and I'm thinking, I hope she was encouraged by what she heard and the exposure to this message and a sea disowned there that no doubt in a mind of a lady who's still probably struggling with why did this happen to me? Why did my husband have this happen to me?

As we all would think in that regard and seeking an answer in regard to that. We live in a very interesting phase and period of time in our world today and in our own lives. I'd like for you to turn over to Romans 8. Romans 8 is a fantastic chapter of the Bible. Romans 8 figures into my baptismal counseling when I sit down with individuals and walk them through the Scriptures to prepare. I always wind up usually right here in Romans 8 because of so much of what is here in terms of the Spirit of God and our purpose and sons of God and this. Romans 8 is a place we turn to often on the Day of Pentecost because in this chapter talks about the firstfruits. It is a message of hope. It shows God's everlasting love. As Paul winds it down here, Romans 8 comes after seven intense chapters of Paul writing about big things like justification and faith and baptism. You wade through Romans and quite frankly most of us probably have well-thumbed to chapter 8 of Romans but maybe not so much chapters 4, 5, or 6 because they're a bit heavier. Very important but big topics. They're written in such a way at times in Paul's own fashion that one commentator says that you can imagine Paul just pacing up and down a room dictating this letter of Romans and just working out theology, salvation. But then he comes down to chapter 8 and he kind of caps it all off with this very uplifting and encouraging scene of God's Spirit. We're sons of God. We're heirs. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that ends here. It's one of the most encouraging passages Paul ever wrote.

Then he launches off in chapters 9, 10, and 11 into another thick set of stuff that we don't always read. I know how we are about how we read our Bibles. I read it the same way at times. So, Romans 8 is really an interesting place. If you look at chapter 18, I'm going to pick up here. Paul writes, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us for the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. This is again why we read this on Pentecost. It talks about the revealing of the sons of God, the fulfillment of the first fruits, and that the creation eagerly waits. The phrase in verse 18 of the sufferings of this present time, which is what the world in general goes through. We, in our own lives, go through. We're not exempt from the sufferings of this life, even though God has called us. We have His Spirit. We are His children. We know the purpose of life. We have the hope of the Kingdom and of eternal life in God's family, but we are not exempt from the sufferings of this present time as just any more than our next-door neighbor or anyone else. And we must deal with that. And we do. We suck it up and make our way through it all because we understand the glory that will be revealed in us. Again, the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

Indeed, creation, all of creation, is waiting. And Paul says for the revealing of the sons of God. Then he goes on to make another statement about all creation. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Now, Paul wrote this in the first century, and he is talking about all of the creation. Now, Paul did not have a powerful telescope to look out into the heavens, the galaxies, and the observable universe to see just how futile it really is out there.

He just had what he could see on this earth, and he saw enough of that in his perspective from the first century with life as it was then. And he could see that even life on planet earth could be by chance at times, and things, weather, natural catastrophes would create upsets, earthquakes, storms. Chance happenings in life would create futility and situations that were unexplainable in his day. Just as Solomon wrote about it in the book of Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities, all is vanity, Solomon wrote. Paul could see that. Had Paul had access to the knowledge that we see today as our telescopes and probes look out and have been able to look at the measurable observable universe, he too, as we can see, or at least read about, and if we turn on the NOVA or the National Geographic Channel or go to some of these other exhibits, we can see the films and the actual depictions and pictures of what the galaxies look like and what is out there in the cosmos. So far as we know, because no one has ever been able to detect anything else, there's no life out there. In fact, we do know that life is impossible and virtually everywhere every direction we look, life as we know it cannot exist anywhere else. We have no, there's no observable data to say that there is. Now, they look for it, they think, well, they've got SETI and other projects that have tried to make contact with whatever type of life that may be out there and it hasn't happened yet, but with what we see on Mars, even in our own solar system and other places, life can't exist. Only on this pale blue dot called Earth, set in just the right place, the right proximity toward, against our own sun, tilted as it is just in the right way to have a rotation and an orbit that allows for the changing of the seasons and an atmosphere and the conditions for life where they were at.

And this is what Paul describes in this his limited way and he says that it is, it's been subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. This is God's creation. The universe as it is, is the creation of God and it has been set this way not for ultimate futility or extinction, but in hope.

And even the physicists who have been able to map, observe, and study the universe, their projections are that as the universe continues to expand, time goes on in time, a few more billions of years, long before, long after we're all gone, the sun will get bigger and it could burn us up, burn up this planet, or the universe could collapse back on itself. They know these things. They have no hope. We can read that. I've been doing, you can tell, I guess, I've been doing a lot of reading in the last year about the cosmos, the universe, and just wanting to understand a few things and what knowledge is there about our world and our universe.

And those who look strictly on the physical, they don't have much hope because if they don't have, if God is not in their thinking and if the word of God is not there, they project a bleak future. There are some physicists who believe in God and they look at the Bible and they see that there's hope there.

Well, that's exactly what Paul says. It's been subjected into the form that it is in hope. And that hope is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, which Mr. Niece talked about in his sermonette in terms of what our purpose will be beyond the resurrection and the time of the coming of Christ, the establishment of God's kingdom on this earth. And that is the core of this message of hope that we have here.

And in Romans, Paul brings it into a focus that I think we can even understand far more clearly than he did from his first century perspective. Now, I'm not trying to limit that because he was writing under the inspiration of God's Spirit. And I don't, in that sense, that what I write is going to be Scripture. I'm not trying to limit anything that he said, but we can lay over, let's say, our own modern experience and appreciate even more what God wrote here through Paul.

He goes on to verse 23 that he says, Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, for we were saved in this hope. But hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

We do have a hope. And that hope is God's plan that is going to ultimately extend it to the universe. And the sons of God are being prepared now for a future role in place, which brings us back to, again, the question that we have been focusing on in the church in recent weeks through a campaign, and always have been, why were you born?

What is the purpose of life? What is the meaning of this life? And how is it all coming together? The two messages that I talked about, a message, a realistic message from an American diplomat who was on the ground and seeing just how this world is, and then a message from a church, from the United Church of God, and from a minister of the United Church of God, that is outlining a message of hope and the eagerness of people wanting to understand what's all about, what is the purpose.

We should not take for granted what we have been given by God's calling and his revelation within the church today. After Steve Myers and I did our Bible study, a follow-up Bible study this past Wednesday night, there was one of our members locally there in Cincinnati was sitting on the front row, and we just walked through another chapter of the whole story of why we were born is all we did. Nothing dramatically new, and a member said, you know, that brings, it takes me back about 40 years to what I heard at one point.

And that's true. It's not anything that we've invented. We should not take it for granted as to what we have, because it is the hope that overlays our lives and drives us and motivates us in the midst of a very critical period of time in our world, in our lives, as we continue on persevering in the faith and in hope. And as we look at our world, we cannot grow weary in well-doing, in doing the things that God tells us to do that are good things that embody the message of hope that we have.

This taught me listening to these two different messages a few days ago of what we have, what we need to be doing, and how important it is to a world that is looking for hope. Because we're living in some very dramatic and significant times, as this diplomat was telling us. He just focused for a few minutes in his message to us on the Middle East. As you know, there have been other, we're living in some very dramatic and significant times. It's a time of aggression right now. It's a time of aggression. In the last several months, we have seen an event in Europe, in Ukraine, with a Russian invasion and the crossing of a boundary and occupying a portion of a sovereign European country, which was a raw, naked act of aggression by the largest country in Europe.

Sometimes we need to really understand what happened there. Russia is the largest nation in Europe, and they felt threatened by this tiny little Ukraine, and they crossed the border and occupied the Crimea. That has not been done in Europe since 1945, since the end of World War II. That's how long the European continent went before, until a nation crossed the sovereign border of another and took territory.

Hitler was the last one to do that. That's happened in our time. One of the tragic results was a plain load of innocent people were shot down out of the sky as they crossed over that airspace.

Nothing really has been done, because it's also not only a time of aggression, but it's also a time of weakness. A time of weakness, where even the European leaders have not been able to mount an effective response to President Putin in Russia. What are they going to do, some would say? Are they going to go to war with Russia over Ukraine? Unless you're Vic Kubik in this church, you don't know where Ukraine is. He was born in Ukraine. And I admit I have to look it up myself and get familiar with it. Mr. Kubik lives with it. That's his heritage. But American troops aren't going to go over and defend that. Not even European troops are going to.

And so there are threats, there are sanctions, and when you understand the reality of that, most of them are a joke, because they are ineffective. And even the President says, we don't have a strategy. We don't have a strategy for the Middle East and the crisis there.

And there is a fatigue that is setting in, where, as a result of the last 10 years, 11 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans, at least up until recently, have not wanted to commit any more troops there. And you can understand that. How many of you watch Fox News?

Okay. Oh, come on. More of you got to watch Fox News than that.

That's the official television network of the Church of God.

Don't you know? We watch Fox News. But for a month after month, you see on Fox News, the commercials are for wounded warriors. And these tragic stories. That's why, as those have been played every night, that's why people don't want to, they're weary. And understandably so. And so it's a time of weakness as things happen. It's also a time of hatred. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, once again, in Europe. Israel went to war in its nation against Gaza, fighting the group called Hamas there in Gaza during the summer months. And that raised, again, a specter of anti-Israelism, anti-Israel, which is really anti-Semitism, which is really anti-God, which is really anti what you and I believe. You do know that. Anti-Semitism, at its basest, most fundamental part, is anti-God in a hatred of God and His law.

That's why it has been the most virulent disease that has survived from even pre-Christian times. You read the book of Esther, you see at least the first biblical account of anti-Semitism when a man named Haman wanted to kill all the Jews in Persia. And of course, more recently, we've had the Holocaust. And we see and can experience hatred and attacks against synagogues today and a rising specter of that. And that really amounts to what we see over here in Revelation 12.

At the end of Revelation 12, where there is this picture of the woman and the church being taken into a wilderness, the dragon, verse 13, being cast out to the earth. The woman is given two wings of a great eagle in verse 14 and to the wilderness. And verse 15, the serpent, which is Satan, spews water out of his mouth like a flood. The earth helps the woman in verse 16 and protects her. In this poetic language, God shows that His people will be protected at that time. But in verse 17, the dragon was enraged with the woman, which is the church, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Two signs of the people of God at this point in time, just prior to Christ's return, and the dragon going to make war with the remnant of the church. But they are those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. I said that anti-Semitism is really a hatred of God, which is embodied in the Ten Commandments.

And the Jews have borne the brunt of it through history because they, of all the tribes of Israel, have maintained their identity, and they keep the Sabbath and the law and all. But it has been focused upon them for many reasons. But at the heart of it is really a hatred for God, which can expand to any who keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ at a particularly acute period of human history prior to Christ's return, as this prophecy shows.

Which could be you and I, because we keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. And so we don't need to think that anti-Semitism is something we don't need to worry about, or it's just way off in another part of the world. How many of you have ever been called a Jew because you keep the Sabbath, or you go to keep the Feast of Tabernacles? When I was a kid, we went off to keep the Feast. I came back with my little pink slip to take around all my teachers to sign to get back into class. And I put down there, well, I've been gone for 10 days to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. One of my teachers looked at it and looked at me and said, I didn't know you were a Jew. You know, McNeely's not really a Jewish name. But because I was keeping the Feast of Tabernacles, she thought I was a Jew, but she kind of spit that out, which sometimes people do when they say that. Anyway, it has various shades of anti-Semitism, and that too has been on the rise in the world. You know, it's also a time of aggression, of weakness, of hatred.

It's also been a time of breakup or near breakup. If you were following this past few days, the vote that took place in Scotland as to whether or not they would leave the European Union.

That was a fascinating and interesting thing that just actually kind of came on the radar screen about two weeks ago, when there was a poll that came out saying that it looked like they were going to leave the Union. And the vote came out 55 to 45 to stay yesterday, finally. And so that particular issue has come and gone. Most of us probably don't understand why that really matters.

I was telling the ABC class this past week why it matters in a little bit of my five-minute talks I give before class every few times. I was trying to help them understand why Scotland matters. And the best way I could illustrate that was I put a picture up on the board of Mel Gibson in Braveheart with his painted face. You all know what that image is from that 1995 movie Braveheart. William Wallace, the Scots desire to be free of England. And I put there the subtitle, Why Scotland Matters. Well, it does matter. And it looked like they might break up the Union. And if that destroyed the United Kingdom, then it's no longer the United Kingdom, and it's really no longer Great Britain. It's the kingdom formerly known as Great Britain, would have been. And it would have further weakened Britain and their standing in Europe and the world. And that would have also weakened the United States because of the alliance and the position that we've always had with them, which in recent years has been even further eroded. But it would have broken up something that's been intact for 307 years, and a very, very significant part of the English-speaking nation's dominance of the modern world. It didn't happen, and yet it has left in its wake even further complications that will have to be dealt with as part of it. So the point is, these are interesting times in which we live, with all that is taking place. And people are noticing. And fear once again rises up. There was a recent poll that showed that Americans now are... there's an upswing among Americans to do something about the Middle East and to do something about the world situation, whereas six months ago, the majority didn't want to. But because of what has happened there and what has been brought to our attention, now that is beginning to change. And so these things matter. All of them do.

And they should matter in the sense that, again, going back to those two messages, we have a message of hope as we go about our job of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God. In Matthew 24, this well-known Scripture, verse 14, which is one of the signs of Christ's return that He gave to His disciples when they asked Him in verse 1 or verse 3, tell us what will be the signs of Your coming and at the end of the age. Matthew 24 and verse 3. And He began to go through and He listed wars, famine, pestilence, the proverbial four horsemen. But down in verse 14, one of the signs that He gave that would be a sign prior to His coming, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. And so, from Christ's own words, the preaching of the gospel is one of the things that will be done.

And we have our part in that. However small it may be, and there should be no fear or shame, perhaps, in at least admitting as a church, as a body, as a fellowship, we're pretty small. We can use the internet, we can use print, we can use television. The internet is going to give us a broader reach than any of the other two. But we know the mission that we have, and we do it with the best of our ability within the means and nowhere near the size of the budget we did 25 or 30 years ago in the church, but still the same message, still the same passion, and it is a big message. We may be small, and if that's what it is, it is what it is. And God has his purposes in that, which I don't always understand, but if humility is one of them, then we'll need a good dose of humility. But it's still a big message. And God's purpose is going to stand, and we see what we are to do as a church and as a people. And I don't think that it is a blessing God has given us that we can come back and focus on this message of why we were born, the meaning of life, the purpose of life. It's a timeless message, and it's really at the heart and core of the Gospel. When you really want to get to the core of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, you are at the very purpose for our life, to be called to be sons of God. As we read earlier in Romans chapter 8, the whole creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. And in that chapter in Romans 8, where Paul has taken the time to show that we are sons and we are heirs, he was laying out there this very critically important message of why we were born, and that is to be sons of God, to be in the family of God. And that family of God is what the Kingdom of God will be composed of. And we are called now to be a part of that. The rest of the world will have the fullness of understanding that they will have in their time and in their way. And that, again, is by the hope that God has subjected us all to. It might seem futile. It might seem vanity and empty if that's all we focused on.

And we can look at whatever sufferings individually we have to deal with. We can look at the collective corporate sufferings and problems that we have had in the Church of God, and that can seem to be empty. But God's plan continues on, and it is going to be realized. The sons of God will be known. And the creation has been subjected to that in all of us in that hope.

And you can look at the universe and see a futility, as so many scientists and people do, and think that life is just an evolutionary chance. There's no meaning, there's no purpose to it. It just came together after billions and billions of years, and chance brought it together. There was no divine hand at all. That's one point of view. And if that is the point of view, then it is all futile, even though we think about it. But then, when we look at it from God's perspective, we see that there is hope. And that hope is laid out very clearly in the Scriptures that by the calling of God, we can be partakers of the divine nature. When we repent and change and seek God in faith, we can have a relationship with Him. And that makes all the difference. And by that connection of His Spirit within us, which again back in Romans 8, Paul shows that it is by the Spirit of God that we are led by that Spirit, that we are the sons of God. Unless we have that Spirit, we're not His sons. If you do have it, then it makes all the difference. This message of becoming a son of God, it is our franchise message. It is our franchise teaching and doctrine in the Church that we will inherit all things with Christ as a son of God. That is what I like to call our franchise teaching. You know what a franchise player is in professional sports? It's the one person in the team where all the money goes to. It's the Peyton Manning. It's the Michael Jordan.

You fell in the blank of your favorite sports team.

One person who is the franchise player that drives it all. This is our franchise teaching. It's always good to focus on that and to understand that. It's what makes it important to get out of bed every morning and do. To be able to advance the kingdom in some way through our life, and as we obey God, serve God, reflect His way of life to those that we may come in contact with, and as we are a part of all of that. In 2 Peter 1, I said that what Gary Petty gave a few days ago, what Steve Myers and I gave, what any minister can give in any given week in a sermon on this particular subject, is only a part of it. It is so big. We could speak every week on it.

In some degree or some way, shape, or form, we probably should, and many ministers do.

First, 2 Peter 1, 2 Peter writes, Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ.

As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.

By which we have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. We have exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these we can be partakers of the divine nature. That's the operative phrase of this passage. As we have God's Spirit, we have the divine nature within us. We have God's Spirit, God's mind. Paul wrote, Let this mind be in you, which was in Jesus Christ. It is the nature of God, which is spirit, which is godliness and righteousness. It is love. It is joy. It is peace. Those are the qualities of the nature and attributes of the nature of God. But by virtue of repentance and faith in Christ and baptism and the receiving of God's Holy Spirit, beginning this process of becoming a son of God, a child of God, ultimately to be changed in the resurrection into a glorified being as a full member of that divine family, now we have that divine nature within us. And that is what makes all the difference. That's the power we have to tap into every day in our life to be able to realize back in Romans chapter 8 what Paul was really saying and getting to.

In verse 23, where he said, We have the firstfruits of the Spirit.

And Pentecost teaches us exactly how that plan is being brought together and the firstfruits of God's family are being prepared now in this age prior to the appearing of Christ at His second coming. We have the firstfruits of that Spirit. That is the divine nature that is within us by this process. And we eagerly wait for the adoption or the redemption of our body. We are saved in this hope, and it is a hope. And it's a glorious hope.

And it is a power that we must always exercise and tap into and not take for granted, not lose sight of, and be reminded of on a regular basis, which is why in 2 Timothy 1, Paul talks about it the way that he does. 2 Timothy 1, where he writes, Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, by the laying on of the hands of the ministry, that at our baptism we receive that gift of God, which is the Holy Spirit. He goes on to say God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. He says, stir it up, which means that from time to time, from time to time, all of us have to stir up that gift from God of His Spirit, His divine nature within us to exercise it, to overcome, to maintain hope, to have power.

How many of us have been camping at times or just have a fire out in the backyard or a charcoal pit with charcoal briquettes that kind of dim and go down in our fireplace? And you know the heat is still there and there's still fire, but it's dim. It's covered over with ash. And you get a poker stick, which we all love to do, and poke around in there. And you see the red embers? You bring them all together. You stir them up a bit, knock the ash off, pile them together. And if you throw on some ore, fuel, you've got a fire once again. But that's how we stir up heat, stir up a flame of a fire in the embers that perhaps is waning and are not husbanded together, gathered together for a forceful use. We have to stir up, as Paul said, the gift that is within us. And by whatever means, a reminder, a sermon every week, a study, a reading of a passage, a prayer, a time set aside to fast and to get close to God, a renewal, a determination through a season of suffering, trial, experience, where we have our zeal for God's way, for God, for His people, renewed. It's always encouraging to run across someone who has been away from the church for any number of years, and they find their way back to a fellowship among God's people.

And I hear of that a lot, meet people like that, met some here, and I've had people even call me in the office. A few months ago, Steve Myers came in and said, I had a telephone call downstairs. They sent it to me, and somebody wanted to talk to you, but they couldn't find you in the building, and they sent it to me. And I said, well, who was it? He gave me the person's name, and I said, oh, wow, I haven't seen him in 20 years. He got lost 20 years ago, just kind of just got lost, all the confusion and the splitting. And he saw beyond today and saw me and kind of lit up. And so I know him. So he calls the home office. And finally, I had his number, and I called him back, and he's attending church again. And he told me a story, you know, with a long telephone call, and 20 years, things got stirred up. Why and how and when? I don't always know. I know there's a lot of people that need to, that will be stirred up, are getting stirred up in some way, shape, or form. And God knows who are His. I don't have to, you know, try to, I can't do it all myself, nor can you, except to be praying and continuing to do what we're supposed to be doing, because there is a, when people get stirred up, they need to be able, placed into a body of people who believe and are faithful, so that as those coals, we get husbanded together. And so, that divine nature that God has given to us, that is, within each of us, needs to be guarded. It needs to be maintained and fed continually through a relationship with God.

As you know, you're the only one that can do it. I'm the only one that can do it for me.

And we can encourage one another, and we can keep, keep contact with one another as we should. But at the end of the day, we're the only ones that really are responsible before God for doing that, and we have to. We have to put ourselves right here in these verses, to realize that we are the sons of God that are being worked, molded, shaped, and put together, so that in God's time and way, we will be manifested to the world. They don't see us today. And sometimes what they see may not be all that attractive.

You tell you, you know, scrape a little bit of the dirt away or take a second look or get rid of some of the prejudice or some of the hate that might be there.

God, God's doing His work, and the sons of God are going to be made manifest. Paul says to Timothy, you don't have a spirit of fear. We don't need to fear anything.

Tomorrow, next week, or next month, or next year. We don't have to fear what may be taking place in Europe or the Middle East and some of these things, but they're engineered to strike fear into people. But we don't need to fear inordinately. Concern? Yes.

It's just a little bit agitated. Okay. Concerned? But fear? No.

The way we deal with the challenges of our life is right here in verse 7. The way we deal with the challenges of our life is to use that spirit to have a sound mind.

Sound-mindedness is a gift that comes from God's spirit as we exercise it and use it, demonstrate love, seek peace, and recognize it for the power that it is. Brethren, we can have a sound mind to deal with what's going to happen to us in the coming months individually, whatever it might be, and get over the initial shock. Fear, anger, the questions of why me.

Someone said, I forgot who it was recently, and we were talking with someone who's going through a very severe personal trial. I think it was a matter of health, and the individual made the comment to me. Well, you don't have to go through your shock, your denial, your anger, your fear. When you come back to faith, they said, you say, well, why me? And the answer is, why not me?

Why not me? My wife and I had to come to that conclusion in a situation in our own life recently. Why us? Why not us? I could turn to the Scriptures, we don't have time.

We're not exempt, as I said earlier, from the sufferings of this life, and they're going to come, and we will deal with them in hope, not in futility, not in emptiness. But because we have been using God's Spirit and exercising that, God will give us a sound mind that is not driven by fear, that will give us the ability to manage that as we stir up God's Spirit within us and the divine nature that is there as a result of God deciding to make us His children. And because He wants a relationship that will last for eternity with those that He calls. A group of firstfruits in this age and in this time, and then ultimately, as the plan and purpose of God expands out to encompass all who've ever lived, everyone. Those are the thoughts and words that the Holy Days continue to remind us of as we stand here on the verge of the fall Holy Days and the steps of God's plan that each one of the next four Holy Days lay out before us, all of which show us God's purpose and plan and give us that hope. I started this message by talking about two messages that I heard recently. A very realistic message of today's world that, if taken by itself, doesn't leave a lot of hope, can strike fear. But the second message deals with the hope that is embodied in God's purpose for creating human life on this planet at this time and bringing together his sons and his children. Both messages are a part of our life in this world, but as we should all know, it is that second message, which is at the heart of our being. And when we stay focused on that, it can give us the hope that every one of us need and can have to endure this world, this life, ultimately into the family of God. Let's be grateful for what we have. Let's give God that thanks, and let's keep on in the faith.