Your Defining Moment

Well, good afternoon, everyone! It's good to be with you here in—where are we? We're in Cuyahoga Falls, right? But with North Canton, Cleveland, and the Youngstown congregations, I know this neighborhood in a general sense. I've been here a number of times over the years. It's good to be with you this last day of Unleavened Bread. I was here last in Thanksgiving weekend and kind of an in-transition period of time, at least with those of you in North Canton.

And my wife Debbie and I were in the process of moving to the home office area in Cincinnati, and since then we have done that. And vacated Indiana and moved over to Cincinnati and a new opportunity and in some ways a new life and new things. And it's been an adjustment for me and for my wife, but one we've been glad to make and have enjoyed working in the home office of the church there. And since I don't have a congregation that I have to be in every week, it leaves me with the ability to travel a little bit.

And we've been doing some of that and we thought we'd come up here for the last Holy Day and be with the family, the Gabriels. And when I mentioned that to John Miller, he said that would be great and go ahead and speak and gave him an excuse to go see his grandson. So I don't know why he felt he had to do that, but he's got one here. So he decided to take off to Boston and give him a break and a chance to speak and be with the family and be with all of you here.

I did want to make a few comments, just a few bits of information regarding some of the operations of the church at the home office as we are continuing to move forward with the work that God has given us to do. And the operations are all moving forward. We have determined a plan for the next year with a strategic operating plan, and that will be put before the elders at next month's meeting of the General Conference of Elders for their decision.

But we have tweaked our operations and strategic plan to reflect a Christ-centered approach to the church and to the work and to what is before us, also to the realities of our budgetary constraints as we continue to reorganize.

But I will say that God has been very, very gracious and blessed us in a very good way to be able to allow us to continue to fund all of the operations of preaching the gospel, taking care of the congregations and the various programs of the church, the camps, the Ambassador Bible Center and other matters that are being done, the international areas. We are continuing to do that and to work at everything in a very, very meticulous way and certainly to conserve our resources but to make sure that they go as far as we possibly can.

One of the things we are watching very carefully is the expense side of the ledger so that we are very careful with the expenditures and we have made certain decisions in that area to continue to, again, just utilize what we have without dipping into our reserves any more than necessary and to also just keep things funded and moving forward with the work of the church. We did have a very, very fine first day offering and attendance for the United Church of God, at least in the United States.

The figures were coming in just before I left the office on Wednesday and we had a very good increase in the offering on the first Holy Day as compared to a year ago and as well as the attendance. We had about a 5% increase on both sides there and we were very encouraged by that. The attendance on the first Holy Day this year, a week ago, compared to last year was well over 400 additional members that were in attendance in our congregations just in the United States.

That doesn't reflect the international statistics. So I think that is due to a number of factors. I think we've seen the United Church of God stabilize in these recent months. I think we have seen a number of individuals begin to attend services from our past history who have begun to come back to the church and have made their way to the United Church of God. We've also got a...

we're beginning to see the fruits of the broadcast, the Beyond Today program, the Good News magazine, our Kingdom of God Bible seminars. As we are reaching out in an evangelistic effort to the greater world, we're also beginning to see new people come through the doors of the church.

I just... I hear... we're not talking about massive numbers, but we are... as I describe it, it's kind of like a bubbling that takes place on a pot of soup or a liquid that you place on the stove.

You know, you watch it, you watch it beginning to... wondering when it's going to boil and you begin to see those bubbles rise up and here and there in those stages before it really heats up. And I think that that's what is taking place from just the anecdotal reports that I hear of congregations, baptisms of people who have become a part of the church for the very first time in recent months and have become a part as a result of the Beyond Today program.

The Feast last year, the Feast of Tabernacles, I was very encouraged as well as all the other men that are involved with the program. As we were fanned out over various feast sites, we had a number of people come up and express to us that they were attending church as a result of the television program having been the first contact that they had with the church.

And we have... when you see people's excitement, that's encouraging and it makes you realize that what you're doing is beginning to have God's blessing and bearing some fruit there. But people are coming in and again through the kingdom of God Bible seminars, we're also seeing people come through the doors of the church, stay and even be baptized. So that increase in attendance that we're beginning to see is a result of a number of factors there.

And we give God the credit for that and not ourselves, but we certainly know that we must put forth the effort to do the work that God has placed in our hands. So I want to thank you for your prayers and for your support and certainly your financial support as well through your tithes and your offerings for the work of the church.

Those of us that have the opportunity to work at the office are working today in a highly energetic and unified atmosphere. The office is as unified as I've ever seen it and I've been in and out of it over the last 13-14 years since we located in Cincinnati.

And it is a joy really to go into work every morning and to work with the creative staff that we have in the media area, the media operations area, working with them on the publications, the website, and Beyond Today program. We are, I can just kind of give you a little bit of an insight into some of the things that are being done. We have, of course, the Internet is one of our major, major tools of preaching the Gospel and reaching a very wide audience. But that is an area that you have to continually stay on top of because of the developments that are taking place daily in the Internet, changes, new trends that are popping up.

And we have some talented young men who are working in that area. And right now they're in the process of kind of taking the website that we have apart in the back end, what I would call kind of a transmission in the engine aspect of it.

They're kind of taking it apart, laying it all out there to rework it to keep it up to date with the developments that are taking place. And some of the things that they are doing is making the website more user-friendly for smartphones, which is the largest growing segment of the technology, hardware, audit, you know, segment of our world today. Everybody virtually has a smartphone, that's more so than computers, and they can access the Internet there.

And so our sites, with all of our information on it, has got to be able to scale to that size so that when people go on our website off of a smartphone, they can have a very easy user experience and access everything in a way that brings them into it, but also is easy to use. And that's got to be as easily done as something on a pad or on a 20-inch monitor with a full-sized computer screen.

You've got three different operating environments that you're working with today, and so they all have to work together, and so that website has to scale to each one of them. And I'm beginning to realize some of the mechanics of it, not the technical side of it, but when our young technicians come around and start asking me questions about this or about that, more of a philosophical perspective on the church and our message and everything, it's to help them tune it to the specifications and the code that they need to. But I have to explain to them certain philosophical, theological, cultural matters of the church to help them to do their job. So we're really able to work together in that way and I think create a product that we pray will be even far more greater and useful in reaching people in today's world and the internet world that we have. We're beginning to also see an audience filled with Beyond Today on our WGN America site, as well as the Word Network that gives us, through Word, the Word Network, excuse me, that gives us an audience in so many nations around the world on television in Africa and in Asia and the Middle East that we don't have with WGN. So we're beginning to see traffic come in and the comments that come back to us via the internet, as well as television responses, reflect a growing international audience and international presence as well. So things are looking up, things are moving forward in our efforts to preach the gospel, and we're beginning to see some fruits in regard to that. So I counted a pleasure and a privilege to be able to work in that environment myself after 39 years in the field ministry of the church, but in some ways I'm still a field minister or still have that in my DNA and not really move completely out of that as well. So there is the report. Ambassador Bible Center is kind of winding up. We've got a few more weeks after we get back from the break, and this class will be a picture on the wall, and we'll be bringing in a new class in August to start the next year of the Ambassador Bible Center. And I think I haven't seen what the numbers are going to be, but I think we'll have a sizable class that will be there as well. The first week of June we'll be doing a one-week ABC sampler at the home office. If anybody here has ever wanted to attend just a few days of Ambassador Bible Center and kind of sample what is done there, this would be a good opportunity, and we're still taking in applications for that coming up here the first week of June.

So that's about it, and we certainly look forward to seeing you there someday or certainly being back with you here again in the future. Let me take you back to a scene that many are familiar with from its depictions in film, but it's a story that is very close to me personally and one which I've had a number a great deal of interest in over the years, but it's a well-known story from American history in World War II. The scene is France, a section of beach called Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.

The invasion of France by the Allied forces has taken place beginning at dawn on this morning.

Thousands of American troops, British troops, Canadian troops, Australian troops, various Allied other troops were pouring ashore of the various beaches. On Omaha Beach, the section that was very wide and very long, saw the the heaviest fighting and the heaviest amount of casualties in the opening hours of the invasion of Europe on that day.

In fact, it's fair to say that the opening hours on Omaha Beach were a disaster.

German artillery positioned on the bluffs above the beach pinned down the first wave of soldiers on that beach. My father happened to be one of those soldiers. And for a short period of time that morning, the entire invasion of Europe hung in the balance and really the future of the outcome of World War II. For those of you that have seen the opening minutes of the movie Saving Private Ryan, you can picture the scene. And it is generally recognized in that movie to be fairly accurate, minus the smells of death and blood and smoke. But in terms of accuracy depicting the carnage, it seems to have been pretty accurate. There came a moment when all of it could have come unraveled and the invasion called off. General Eisenhower had plans if it failed to call it off and pull everybody back off the beach and recall the boats.

Had that happened, it would have been a tremendous disaster and a setback.

Here's how that moment is described by Cornelius Ryan, who wrote a book called The Longest Day, about that one day, June 6, 1944. And I'll quote a few paragraphs from his book.

From the sea, the beach presented an incredible picture of waste and destruction.

The situation was so critical that at noon, General Omar Bradley, aboard the battleship Augusta, began to contemplate the possible evacuation of his troops and the diversion of follow-up forces to the two other beaches, Utah and Sword and Juneau. But even as Bradley wrestled with the problem, the men on the beach and the chaos were moving. Along the section, a crusty 51-year-old general named Norman Coda strode up and down in the hail of fire, waving a 45 and yelling at men to get off the beach. Along the shingle, behind the seawall, and in the coarse beach grass at the base of the bluffs, men crouched shoulder to shoulder, peering at the general, unwilling to believe that a man could stand upright and live. Lead the way, Rangers, Coda shouted, and men began to rise to their feet. At another point, Colonel Charles Canem moved through the dead and dying and the shocked, waving groups of men forward. They're murdering us here, he said.

Let's move inland and get murdered. Men got up and headed toward the bluffs.

At another point, Commanding Officer Colonel George Taylor yelled, two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die.

Now let's get the blank out of here.

Everywhere, intrepid leaders, privates and generals alike were showing the way, getting men off the beach. Once started, the troops did not stop again. Let me repeat that last line. That's the most critical for us to take away from this scene.

Once started, the troops did not stop again.

General Bradley did not have to call off the invasion, and the war went on, and you know the rest of the story. Nazi Germany was defeated within a few months. Now what happened in those few minutes, perhaps an hour or so, on that beach, on that day, June 6, 1944, are very instructive to us. From that moment, every other event in the war flowed. As I said, Hitler was eventually defeated in just a few months. There came a moment on that beach for leaders and for GIs hunkering down on the sand in whatever position they could find themselves just trying to stay alive. There came a moment that was a defining moment.

They were either going to stay there and die or move inland and seek a better chance to avoid dying. But if they stayed there, they were going to die and it was all going to end in disaster. They had reached a defining moment that morning and they decided to move forward. And along with all the other operations, it made the difference in the coming days and weeks and months as that entire operation moved into France, across France, across Europe, ultimately defeating the German war machine. You know, there are moments in life when you and I come to a time of decision.

And what we decide on that event at that moment sets the course of our life for the long term, for decades or more, for our lifetime. And yes, even for all eternity.

Let's stop for a moment and just kind of get a term in our mind here, what I'm calling a defining moment, your defining moment. What is a defining moment, such as what we have described here in on Omaha Beach? I think we can say that a defining moment is one where you come to know that what you decide on this action at this moment sets the course of your life. Let me repeat it.

A defining moment is one where you come to know that what you decide on that action at that moment will set the course for your life.

It's usually a hard decision, but once made will lead naturally to many other decisions in your life.

And it is a decision from which there is no turning back.

Let me give you a description of Jesus Christ of a defining moment. If you will, turn over to Luke 9.

And let's begin reading in verse 57.

Now it happened, as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to him, Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.

And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

Then he said to another, Follow me.

But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said, Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.

And another also said, Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house. But Jesus said, No one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

A defining moment. You make a decision, you put your hand to the plow, you follow Christ, you go with Him wherever He goes, and there's no turning back.

And this is what Jesus was using here as an illustration of people being willing, people having a good desire, but not understanding the cost, not realizing exactly what they were asking and what they were going for. We all come to moments when we have to decide whether to push forward and live or remain where we are, wither and die. So when we come to that moment that we recognize that whether or not we understand it as a defining moment, at least we understand the importance of the decision we're about to make, and we don't miss the moment of opportunity, and we begin to move forward and we begin to live. Or we can just kind of accept fate, status quo, the road less traveled, easy way out, what's comfortable, no challenge, no sweat, no hard work, no effort, and stay where we are, and begin at that moment the long, slow decline to death. You know, a person can begin dying long before they're ever buried. I've met people like that, and I've seen people who, when they make certain decisions, they begin to die. And they may live another 20, 30 years. They may live to be 40, 50 years from the time that they make a certain decision, but it is not really living, it's existing, it's accepting what is, and it's not really living. One of my favorite movies is the movie that came out about 16, 17 years ago called Shawshank Redemption. And the two prisoners that are sitting in the prison yard one day talking about what could be and what might be and what prison life is all about, and one of them, the lead character, makes one statement. He says, Red, you either get busy living or you get busy dying. I've always remembered that. It's been one of my favorite, favorite lines. You either get busy living or you'll get busy dying.

And that impacts everybody. Every one of us in this room come to that point. I don't think we always recognize these moments at the very moment that they take place. Sometimes, it may take several years when we look back and we understand, but understanding that life will present such moments is really a key to success, especially the spiritual success that we all seek and want. These days of the Passover and Unleavened Bread really do tell us of moments of definition, defining moments. When we look at the death of Jesus Christ, that was a defining moment for all mankind.

Christ's resurrection, when they came on that morning to finally prepare the body and it was empty, that was a defining moment too. Christ's power in us, his life within us, that bread of life that we heard about this morning, that's a defining experience and a defining moment as well.

When we think about it from that point of view, that's what Days of Unleavened Bread is all about.

Back in Exodus 13, we read what it says here about these days.

As we conclude on this day of this last day of the feast, we would do well to go back and just review this verse.

Exodus 13, verses 6 and 7.

I chuckle every year at the forms of unleavened bread that we take.

Richris. Reuben was asking for richris.

That was my first introduction to unleavened bread. Many, many years ago when my mother first began to come into the church and sent me off to school with my lunch one day and instead of Wonder Bread, it was this flat brown looking stuff I'd never heard of called richris. I did say, what's it? What in the world is this stuff? And everybody at my lunch table asked me, what is that? I said, I just said it's richris. I didn't even try to go there without unleavened bread.

Where I grew up, you would not have found a matzo within a hundred miles.

So my first unleavened bread was richris. And then over the years, you learned about all the various forms of matzo and then homemade unleavened bread and various other things you can do during the year. Debbie has put together a whole recipe list of special things that only during unleavened bread are they made and brought out and as do many of you. And we enjoy that and look at it as a unique part of the year and a highlight as well. But you know what God here says, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days. And on the seventh day, there shall be a feast to the Lord, which is why we're here today. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and no leavened bread shall be seen among you. Nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters.

And you shall tell your son, this is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. And it shall be as assigned to you in your hand and in your mouth first with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. And you shall keep therefore this ordinance and its season from year to year. It's a unique thing that we do with unleavened bread, with the bread and wine of the Passover and even the foot washing. These rituals that we have that kind of are concentrated at this time of year. Think about it, in the Church of God, we don't have a lot of rituals.

We have we baptize, we bless children, we anoint, we lay hands on people when we ordain them to an office. And collectively as a body, at this time of year, we wash each other's feet, we take bread and wine, and we eat the symbol of unleavened bread for this period of time.

That's about the sum total of our rituals that we have in our yearly observance of everything in the Church of God. We're not a ritual-laden church compared to other forms of religion.

And yet those rituals that we have at this time of year are so, so important.

And they bring us up face to face with the face of eternity.

Sin, righteousness, these intangible matters that are spiritual in nature are defined for us by certain things that we take. A piece of unleavened bread or a piece of leavening that we put out to represent sin, and a flat piece of bread to represent righteousness.

Unleavened attitudes, and a vial of wine that represents blood, the blood of Jesus Christ. And washing feet to teach us something tangible about humility and service.

And when you look at it, we're trying to push against eternity with these, because they're spiritual concepts that God gives us physical representations to teach us. And they are at the heart and core of our experience and of our life. And so every day during this festival, as we put unleavened bread into our mouths, and we eat a piece of it, we should be thinking truly about the power of the life of Jesus Christ in us. Because that is the real meaning of what we do.

And that's the real purpose that we do it. You know, brethren, if you got all 11 out before the sundown a week ago, do you know what that earns you?

You know what you earned with that? Zero.

If you ate unleavened bread every day this week, and if you didn't eat leavened bread, you know what that earns you? Zero.

And yet we did it, and we do it, and we love to do it, because God tells us to do it. He commands us to do it. But in doing so, we don't earn anything spiritually in our salvation, but we do it to teach us about Jesus Christ and His life within us and the power that is within us. We have to keep all of that in the proper perspective as we observe the days of unleavened bread, because it is that life of Christ within us that we received when we were baptized.

And God forgave us our sins. And we said, yes, we want to live a different way of life, and we renew that covenant every year at baptism. That was a defining moment for us. That has set the course of the rest of our life and all eternity. And when we eat that unleavened bread, it is a symbol of not our righteousness, but the righteousness which is of Christ. That is what drives out and gives us the power and the ability to put sin out and truly, truly overcome. I don't know how many of you have ever made a mistake and found yourself eating leavening during the days of unleavened bread. I'm not going to ask you to embarrass yourself, but I've made that mistake myself. I was halfway through a jelly donut, the second jelly donut.

One time when I realized, oh no, the stays of unleavened bread.

I swallowed what I had in my mouth, and then I put the other half down and wasted one whole jelly donut that day. I was a teenager. I had a habit in my life to get good work at my dad's gas station every day, and there was a donut shop two doors down, and I was winning. I got day-old donuts. By the time I got there in the late afternoon, they were day-old, they were half the price. I just couldn't wait to get that jelly donut down. But I didn't eat any more knowingly during that particular set of days of unleavened bread. And over the years, sometimes members would call me, and they too had the same type of experience, and they'd be so guilt-ridden. And they'd call me and say, Mr. McNeely, what do I do?

I said, well, after I put you out of the church, no, I didn't say anything like that.

I just said, you know, it's an object lesson. We can sin and not know it. And then when we do know it, you just, we repent, we ask God's forgiveness, and we go on. That's what you learn from that. You don't have to be unclean for seven days or go through anything like that.

We understand the importance of the physical act that we do. These days define our spiritual lives for all eternity. Let's look at a few examples in the Bible of defining moments. And in doing so, let's see what we can find as the really keys to knowing the moment in our own life.

Let's quickly go through a few. If you will, turn back to the book of Ruth, chapter 1. We all know the story of Ruth, the Moabite woman who joined herself to her after losing her husband and her mother-in-law's husband dying and all the men in the family dying and Naomi desiring to go back home to the land of Israel from Moab and Ruth decided to go with her. And in chapter 1 of Ruth, let's look at the beginning of verse 14. As Naomi basically tells her two daughters-in-laws, Orpah and Ruth, to stay where they are because she has nothing to offer them where she's going.

And they lifted up their voices, Ruth 1 and verse 14, and they wept again and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law and she turned and went back into the dust of Moab. But Ruth clung to her and she said, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. This is what Naomi said to Ruth. But in verse 16 Ruth said this, and this is the hard core, if you will, and oft quoted from this book, And treat me not to leave you, Ruth says, or turn back from following after you.

For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death part you from me. These two verses, 16 and 17, define a life. This was a defining moment for Ruth. She couldn't go back, she could only go forward. And she decided to go forward with her mother-in-law, Naomi, wherever, to a new land. And they walked down the hills out of Moab and crossed over the plains of Jordan, back into the land of Israel.

Wasn't that far to go, but it was a lifetime in reality.

This is what she did. Ruth already had character. She had a certain beauty within her, an inner beauty. We have no idea what she looked like cowardly. But none of them, none of the qualities of this woman would have found their way to God's service had she not made the decision to stay with Naomi. You know that Ruth then figures into the line of Jesus Christ. But that's not why she made the decision. She had no idea of what that decision would lead to. She just knew that she was going to stay with Naomi, and that there was something about Naomi and her people and whatever stories she'd heard of the God of Israel and that way of life. That's what she wanted to move into. And she made that decision. It was an extraordinary decision because in reality Ruth was really a nobody. I can use that term so in a way we understand it.

These were all widows, women and women who had no husband, no means of support. And the future, the life were widow in the ancient world and this culture did not bode well.

She had nothing to offer. And culturally, she was looked upon in a completely different class. She was a woman in a man's world. She was not a king. She was not even a concubine to a king like another figure Esther is in the story of Esther. Ruth wasn't even in a royal court.

She was on a dusty road, a widow with no means of support and very, very little, if anything, in her purse. And she made a decision and it was not a light decision. And that's how it is so often about the decisions that we have to make that are defining decisions for us. We're not great people. We're not mighty and wealthy. We find ourselves at a point where we have to we recognize perhaps an opportunity or a better way. We see a glimmer of a light and hope and we take it and we go after it and we make a decision. But it's done without any acknowledgement and a claim. We're not patted on the shoulder for it. We just kind of bow our head and do it.

It's a personal inner struggle. And that's the way the most big decisions really are. It's a struggle within and we finally come to a decision and we do it. That's how you would have to look at much of this surrounding Ruth. It was a decision that she finally came to and she moved on. And it defined a life and she ultimately met Boaz, married, and then figured into the whole line of King David, Solomon, Jesus Christ. But she did it because that happened because of a decision that she made at this point in her life. A defining moment.

Let's look at another. Turn, if you will, to 2 Chronicles 34. This is in the life of Josiah, King of Judah. Again, familiar story to us. Josiah, a good king following a bad king in Judah. And he makes certain reforms. He comes to the throne at a very, very early age. Not even an adult, a young child when he becomes king. And he's described as a good king. And then there comes a point where they begin to clear out the temple and they discover certain things written in the law of God. And they're brought to Josiah.

And verse 15, they say, they told Josiah that they had found the book of the law, the house of the Lord. And Okiah gave the book to Shaphan, and Shaphan carried the book to the king, bringing the king the word, saying, all that was committed to us, they are doing the work of cleaning out the temple. They've gathered the money and everything. We found this book.

And then there are certain things that you need to hear, to paraphrase this. And so they read in verse 19 the words of the law to the king. When he heard them, it says that he tore his clothes, which is really telling us that he began to have it in his struggle as he heard these words out of the book of Deuteronomy, about the Holy Days, which is what he was hearing, and about blessings and cursings. And so he makes a decision, and he basically tells that we're going to do what this book says. And Josiah institutes a reform that impacts the entire nation of Judah. And down in verse 27, I'll just jump to that, how God answers him as a result of the actions that he took.

God says, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and against its inhabitants and you humbled yourself before me, you tore your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says the Lord.

God heard Josiah, who went through an inner struggle, came in a sense to a defining moment as he had no idea what he was going to be hearing when they brought this into him and they began to read it to him. And he was struck with the reality that he had to do something.

That's one thing to hear the Word of God, it's one thing to agree that, yeah, that's interesting, maybe we should do that. It's another thing to recognize that I must do something. I have to do something.

I'm amazed so much today at how when I read and listen to a lot of people, how much knowledge sometimes people do have about the way of God, for instance, the Sabbath or the Holy Days, and they recognize their value. You'd be surprised how many in the Protestant evangelical world look at the Holy Days and recognize that they have value in understanding the Jewish roots of Christianity, as they might put it, or in better understanding Christ, as they might put it. But in doing it, in coming to the reality that I have got to do something about this, I cannot ignore it. I can't put it down until I talk to somebody and take the steps to do it. About like a lot of you or your parents or your grandparents or your aunts or your uncles or others that you know that have come into the church through the years, when you read and you hear something, you finally are convicted, I've got to do something. That is a vast gulf of difference between just having knowledge and agreement.

I realize the longer I live and the more I watch it and the more I understand the miracle of conversion, that it takes the Spirit of God to flip that switch in your mind and mind, in your heart and mind, to make us bring us to that decision. No other amount of reasoning, writing, talking, cajoling, argument, knowledge or understanding will do it. People can only come so far and God's calling has to be there. Josiah had this moment where he was convicted and said, I've got to do something about it. And it was a defining moment for himself and for that period for the nation. And that's what we remember. Remember, Josiah had been king for 18 years, but it was this moment when he humbled himself and tore his clothes that defined his entire reign and time as king. That decision is what we remember out of Josiah, and it is what God remembered. This was Josiah's defining moment. He repented and he followed a way of life, which is, again, what many of you had to do when you finally came to a point where you had learned enough, heard enough, studied enough, and you recognized I've got to do something about it.

That was God working, and you made a decision and you accepted that calling and you acted upon it.

And it defined your life, and it made all the difference. There's one other example in the book of Acts, chapter 9. It's the conversion of the Apostle Paul. Another defining moment. Paul was on his way to Damascus with court orders to haul Christians before a magistrate and kill them if necessary, because they were following this way and believed in a resurrected Messiah.

And were seen as a threat to Judaism, as it was. And Paul, being a Pharisee of the Pharisees, very zealous, was at the forefront of this persecution. And in Acts 9, I'm not going to read the entire account, but he was journeying in verse 3, when suddenly a light shone round him from heaven. And he fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? He said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Is it hard for you to kick against the goats?

And so he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what do you want me to do?

And the rest of the story you know. He was blinded for several days, was baptized, he became the apostle to the Gentiles, and he wrote the letters of the epistles that we read from the New Testament that define so much of the truth of God's way, doctrine, and of Christian living. Now, you know, Paul could have had a different reaction at this experience. He could have been puffed up with pride, and he could have resisted. There would have been every reason to think that that's what he would have done, but because of his knowledge, his intellect, his heritage, his Pharisee, a very, very proud order that he was a part of, with a history, with a legacy, with a duty, a lot of pride among the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Pride could have kept Paul from yielding to God. After all, Pharaoh did not yield to God when God even struck down their firstborn. Pride kept the Pharaoh from letting the Israelites go and yielding to the God that Moses represented.

Revelation chapter 9 shows that men will curse God during the Tribulation.

When everything breaks loose, men will curse God. The lesson is pride can keep a person from repentance, but pride didn't keep Paul from repenting. It was gone. It vanished. And he said, what do you want me to do?

And that became a defining moment for the Apostle Paul.

Do you get the point about defining moments? What, as you've been thinking about this, and hopefully you're still awake, I drew the afternoon slot. When I made the schedules out in Indianapolis for the Holy Days, I always scheduled myself for the morning, because I knew what it's like in the afternoon. But I'm the visiting team here. The home team spoke this morning, so I'm the visitor, so I'm speaking last. So I understand. But have you been thinking about your defining moment?

What was it? What decision did you make at a critical moment that has defined everything since then in your life? All the major high points of your life.

I had a few in my early life. As I thought about this in preparation for this sermon, I narrowed it down to one decision that I made one day when I finally decided to put myself fully into this way of life. I was part of the church from age 12 when my mother began attending.

I was barely a teenager when my mother started taking me to the church. And I'll have to say that I was a teenager through those years because of the isolation that we had. My mother was the only member in our town. When I went to school, there were no other church kids. There were no other members of the church. And for several years, we didn't even have a church really to go to. It was convenient. Nothing less than 100 miles away. And in those days, my mother wasn't always able to make that trip to either St. Louis or some other spot. So while she was a member, and we would go to the feast every year, we didn't always have a church. And then we did get a church. And still, she was the only one in our town there. So I listened and I attended. And so, like a lot of other young people have always been through the years in the church, understood, believed it, but had my own life at school. I kind of had a double life. One in the church and one without.

And I never, for a period of time, I didn't want the two to mix. I knew the church was right.

I was smart enough to see that. But I wanted my friends and my social life with my friends at school and what I was able to do there. And it was kind of always a juggling act.

I later got real honest and realized I was a hypocrite.

But it came down to one event. It involved something seemingly benign, but it involved a date that I had arranged with a girl who was not in the church, quote, dating out of the church.

She was a nice girl from a good family. Her father, I knew her father. Her father owned an insurance agency where my dad bought all of his insurance for his business and house.

And it would have been an innocent enough date.

But it came after a period of some very serious introspection on my part about myself and the church. It just came down to where I realized I was at a crossroads. And that if I continued to straddle the fence, I thought I would eventually be so overwhelmed and the church side of my life would have been relegated to a secondary status, one that I did, if at all, when it was only convenient to me. And in time, I realized I would likely not even be a part of the church. And I had this moment of clarity just one night, and I realized you either go ahead with this date and you'll never turn back. I knew I'd never turn back from just kind of drifting off away from the church. And I realized I can't do it. And so I called up the young lady broke the date. And that was it. I never saw her again. I don't know what kind of life she went on to live. I hope she grew fat and had many kids. But I made a decision to obey God. And with all of that and all that I had, and I just made a decision to stay with what I knew in the church and move forward. I began to move forward off the beach, inland, to whatever God had in mind for me. And that, as Mr. Frost said in his poem, has made for me all the difference. From that decision came my baptism, my calling into the ministry, and my marriage to my wife Debbie. And as I look back at it over four decades now, I have to see that that was really a defining moment. No visions, no dramatic presentation of the book of the law, no real agony of physical suffering, just an internal struggle and a little thinking in my mind, realizing, hey buddy, this is it. This is the moment. This is the decision that you make. And somehow I just knew in my heart of hearts that which way I would go depending on how I decided at that particular time. I didn't realize at the time how far reaching necessarily it was, but I look back today and I see it all pretty clearly. Had I not decided to end what was really a double-minded, divided lifestyle, I wouldn't be standing here today in front of you, telling you about this. Somebody else would be standing here, but I wouldn't be. And furthermore, I've come to realize that my wife wouldn't be here. Well, maybe she'd be here. Who knows what her decisions would have been made? She would have married probably somebody. She would have never met me, and who knows where she would be? And from our marriage, come two children and four grandchildren. They wouldn't be either. That's the reality of it. They wouldn't be.

So sometimes you have to stop and think how far reaching your decisions really are, and understand certain ones are defining and how life can be summed up in a moment's decision. It's a wonderful exercise. It's very clarifying. We come in life to defining moments when God leads us to see the future, our future. And in a moment of crystal clarity, we can see we're at a crossroads, and yet God gives us the ability to see around the corner a little bit. And it's going to be better that this is really the way to see beyond the horizon and to see that right now the future will be decided.

The Days of Unleavened Bread gives us the basic tools for seizing such an opportunity.

When we really comprehend the tools of repentance, humility, striving after righteousness, striving against sin, striving to overcome it, to put it out of our life, most of all having the help of God's Holy Spirit, having the life of Christ within us to help push against that boulder of sin that keeps weighing in on our life, and to deal with it, to either move it off in some cases with certain sins that may weigh us down and we eventually achieve a victory over them, or to at least keep it at bay if we are not able to fully deal with it, whatever it might be. But God gives us the grace to deal with the trials of our life and to bear up under them. And he in his wisdom and knowledge, not always removing everything from one's life, does give us the grace and the help in time of need to deal with, to manage, and to endure. And we pray and we beseech God, we ask for his intervention, and we get an answer and we accept that answer. And in the answer we find ourselves closer to God. And at times a healing will occur, and at times a healing won't always occur when we think it's necessary or according to our time schedule. Or a trial is not always removed and we have to go right on through it and deal with the consequences and leave it in God's hands to make it clear to us in time. Whatever your defining moment might be, understand what it is and think very, very clearly about it.

There's one other defining moment that we should note, and it's perhaps the most important one of all, more important than any we've read, certainly more important than mine. It's in Matthew 26. Matthew chapter 26.

Christ had a defining moment if we can define one moment. Maybe this is the one, and I'll take a little bit of license to apply it to this instance, but I do think that certainly it was a moment and it was very important.

Matthew 26. Jesus was before the Jews, and they were trying to find and bring out the reason to kill him and to make their envy and anger stick. They found false witnesses in verse 60.

Verse 59 says, the chief priests and elders counsel, they sought false testimony against Jesus to put him to death. They couldn't find it. Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none, but at last two false witnesses came forward. And they said, this fellow said, I'm able to destroy the temple of God and to bring it in and to build it in three days.

The high priest arose and said to him, to Christ, do you answer nothing?

What is it these men testify against you? And Jesus kept silent. And the high priest answered and said to him, I put you under oath by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. This was the real test. This is where they had him. This is where the and their legalese had maneuvered the conversation and the courtroom drama to this question. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus said to them, it is as you said.

He was the Christ. He was the Son of God. Nevertheless, I say to you hereafter, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven.

The high priest tore his clothes, saying, he has spoken blasphemy. What further proof do we need?

Look, now you have heard his blasphemy. This was the moment. By Jesus saying it is as you have said, he sealed his fate at that moment and the prosecution could go forward leading to his death. He could have said because of the pressure and because he would have recognized what the next two hours were going to bring and he could have folded under that pressure. He could have said, no, I'm not. I never said that. It's not true. Technically, their case would have fallen apart.

And where would he have been? But he said it is as you have said. And when he said that, it sealed the moment and it defined everything from that point. Now, we don't need to get into mental arguments and theological machinations about what if he'd said no and this and that.

He said what he said and what happened, what happened. He said yes and everything went forward.

His sacrifice, his defining moment, then is not just for us.

It is for the whole world. It is for all who've ever lived.

And this is where we are. As we come to the Passover, Basil and Love and Bread and that sacrifice and that event and that life, his resurrection, the fact that the tomb was empty, he appeared to them and he was accepted as the wave-sheaf offering.

And then he began to instruct them and all the events that unfolded from that point on, all as a result of that decision and of that moment. And we are here, we observe this period of time with all of this knowledge and these events swirling around to define the essence of our life and relationship with God as a Christian.

And this defines who we are from this point on. And what is in front of us, then, is a lifetime of fulfilling the destiny God has placed in front of us to prepare to be kings and priests and rulers.

And when we accept that knowledge and we act upon it, then it becomes ours.

That's what these days of Unleavened Bread really are all about in one sense.

This is what is important for us to take from the symbols, the rituals, from the seven-day observance, the eating of the bread every day and thinking about our life and relationship to that perfect bread of life, Jesus Christ, and the need to have that daily within us and to be feeding on that and to be yielding to and using the power of Jesus Christ within us.

That is what's ultimately the most important and the most vital for us to understand.

It is through his life that we are saved and have the hope of salvation because he lives. These days point us to that reality.

And so we look to what is a defining moment for many people in life and many opportunities.

I hope that for all of us here this afternoon we can think deeply about what has happened because it is time for the power of God's Spirit to define us. Christ in us, the hope of our glory, is what it's all about.

And if we can yield ourselves to that power and use it to continue to mold and shape us in God's image, God can use us in his hands as an instrument and in doing his work. For all who will yet be called and believe in Christ, in God, because of what God is able to do through us in taking his word, his gospel, to the world.

What is your defining moment? What has it meant for you? What has it meant for your life?