The Final Countdown

Ron Weinland

Last Day of Unleavened Bread – April 13, 2012

Last Sabbath, on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, we had a sermon entitled ‘The Ultimate Jubilee’.  To me it was deeply inspiring as we went through the meaning in Revelation of what the Jubilee year was all about, what it foreshadowed in God’s great plan that’s revealed to us in the meaning of the Holy Days that God has given us to observe.  It’s always inspiring to see how that God just continues to give us a little more, a little more, ever learning, every growing – and that’s an inspiring thing, especially when you add to the overall purpose of things when you think about the Holy Days and their incredible meaning.

Anyway, the Jubilee simply strengthens the depth of the meaning contained in how God reveals the purpose of the Holy Days to us, and on this past Sabbath we entered the final countdown to the ultimate Jubilee that we focused upon last Sabbath.

Sunday was the time for remembrance of what the wave sheaf means to us and that’s an awesome thing when you think about the timing of that as well, the wave sheaf that followed last Sabbath there on Sunday that normally would be waved before God picturing Jesus Christ and eventually then His return which we’re counting down to.

So again, we looked at the Jubilee and those things that were contained in that particular sermon and also then the meaning of the countdown for Pentecost – seven times seven days with each weekly Sabbath being the completion of each seven days until we have counted down that period of time, of its equivalent to and what is revealed in the Jubilee as well.  Looking forward to that, after the seven times the seven days, the fiftieth day being the ultimate Jubilee.

So today we’re in a final countdown to deliverance which makes a great sermon title, The Final Countdown.  Very simple.  We’re going to go back and look at some things contained in the meaning of the Holy Days and look at this final countdown.

If you want to go back to Leviticus 23 we’ll spend some time back there, a lot of time actually, going through the meaning of the Holy Days and things that God wants us to focus upon each year and their great meaning to us. So, we’re going to go right back to Leviticus 23 where all the Holy Days are listed.  And I think it means more to all of you as well, it’s very inspiring to me when I think of these things and recognize what God has been leading us to, especially from the Feast forward, a time of deliverance, a time of deliverance and especially now being in the Days of Unleavened Bread because it’s talking about deliverance, it’s talking about those things that God did in leading the children of Israel out of Egypt which we understand the ‘types’ that are involved there, leading us out of sin, leading us out of Egypt.  And now we’re at a time where the whole world has that opportunity of being led out of spiritual Egypt.

Let’s begin the story here. Things that the world doesn’t understand.  They don’t grasp the incredible meaning contained in what is stated here, and frankly, the Church that was scattered doesn’t have that opportunity to grasp some of the things that are stated here either.  But in Leviticus 23:1 - And the Eternal spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, Concerning the feasts, again here, an incredible word.  It isn’t the word for ‘Feasts’.  It doesn’t mean ‘Feasts’ as it does later on.  It’s a word that means ‘appointed time’ or ‘appointing meetings’...concerning the appointed meetings.  It’s like those things that God set up from the very beginning of time that man was to keep year by year by year, appointments that we’re to keep with God, commanded appointments that we’re to keep with God.

And so again here, Moses was being told to tell the children of Israel, these are My appointed times that you’re to come before Me... concerning the appointed times of the Eternal, they come from God.  It shows where they come from.  ...which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, they’re commanded assemblies.  We’re to come together as God’s people before God, at least to convene before God.  ...even these are My... same word, appointed times.  He says, “I gave them to you, they’re Mine to you.”

It’s an awesome thing.  You know, when we look at the world, the world wants to say that the law has been done away with, that the Sabbath especially had been ‘nailed to the cross’, because that’s the one they don’t like. All the rest of the commandments?  Well, those aren’t really ‘nailed to the cross’ I guess, kind of a double-speak there, but the Sabbath, that was ‘nailed to the cross’, that was done away with.  And yet you look at them and what they do to teach about their beliefs...it’s on a Sunday.  And then on holidays they teach about their beliefs.  And it’s a counterfeit of what God did from the very beginning, what God commanded mankind, to come before Him every Sabbath - because that’s the time God uses to teach us about Himself, about His purpose and about His plan.  That’s why they’re ‘holy’ convocations, holy because God’s in it.

Verse 3 - Six days shall work be done: so it starts out with the most basic of thing that all people are to understand; that which God did from the very beginning of creation on this earth when He put man on the earth, when He put life on the earth once again.  Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, we’re not to go about our normal routine, we’re to set it aside.  It’s an awesome thing, it’s a beautiful thing.  If we weren’t told to do that what happens?  Some people just work seven days a week, just keep going, just keep going, and you don’t stop and you don’t rest –  even physically those things that mankind needs, let alone from God that which is spiritual.

...but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, an holy convocation, a commanded assembly to come before God, to convene before God, to be taught.  Because God’s in it – holy. That’s the only thing that makes anything holy.  That’s why I remark so often about travelling to Jerusalem, people talk about going to Israel or going to Jerusalem, “It’s the holy land.”  There’s nothing holy about it!  God’s not in it.  The only thing that makes something holy is if God is in it and He’s not there.

...you shall do no work therein: it is the Sabbath of the Eternal, it’s God’s, given to man; in all your dwellings. These are the, same word, appointed times; so now it’s getting ready to talk about this.  These are the appointed times of the Eternal, even holy convocations which you shall proclaim in their...they didn’t quote the same word now, they don’t use the same word ‘Feasts’, they use the word now saying seasons.  It’s that same word ‘appointed times’...which you shall proclaim in their appointed times.

So that’s why we’re going through this today.  That’s why on the Holy Days we speak about what they mean.  On the High Days that God has given to us year by year, when we come to Pentecost we don’t talk about Trumpets, we don’t talk about something that has nothing to do with that period of time, we talk about Pentecost.  When we get to Trumpets we talk about the meaning of Trumpets.  Atonement, and so forth, the Feast of Tabernacles...and that’s very wide because it has so much to do with God’s great plan and the things that are contained therein.  But those are the things we speak upon and that’s what we’re doing today, we’re going through and talking about the Days of Unleavened Bread, the Passover period and the countdown we’re in, a final countdown.

That’s an incredible thing, to know where we are in time, to know we’re in a final countdown.  Of course when we get up to the last twenty days that’s the final countdown but as far as what God has said we’re to focus upon, this is it, because it’s about the countdown for Pentecost.  It’s what we started last Sunday, started counting, seven times seven until we get to forty-nine, and then the following day, or at the end of that day is the very day Jesus Christ begins His return to this earth as King of kings. Something that mankind has been told about and many have looked forward to for a long, long time though they be dead as a whole, through time.

So these are the appointed times of the Eternal, even holy convocations which you shall proclaim in their appointed times.

Verse 5 - In the fourteenth day of the first month at even, so again, it’s that very unique word.  Going back through this I think about all the things God has given to us since the apostasy...this is one of those things, the meaning of what this word is that’s used here.  The fourteenth day of the first month, which is Abib/Nisan that begins in the spring.  On the fourteenth day is the Passover, but it uses a unique word here.  It says, In the fourteenth day of the first month at even; we know what ‘even’ is; just like for the Sabbath when we talk about at ‘even’, when we begin to observe God’s Sabbath, we know what ‘even’ it is, what ‘evening’ if you will.  It’s the sundown for Friday and the beginning of a new day.

This is a unique word because it’s the word ‘bane ha erebyim’ which means ‘between the evenings’.  So you have two evenings, and what’s incredible is, those of you who maybe are new and don’t understand, but in the beginning in so much of what we were given because of God leading the Church out of Egypt and because of the things that were lost during Sardis there wasn’t much truth left by that time.  By the time Mr. Armstrong came along in the era of Philadelphia, there wasn’t much truth left, and so God used Mr. Armstrong to give truth back to the Church, to re-establish the Church, to make the Church strong again, to prepare the Church for the end-time, and to prepare the final people that were to be a part of the 144,000 and the work that was to be done there.  And so God began to work with him, but didn’t give everything, because some has been reserved to this point in time.

And so God chooses when He’s going to reveal things, just like Pentecost – Church went on for a long time keeping Pentecost year after year on a Monday, and yet we learned in 1974, Mr. Armstrong gave it to the Church at that point in time, that it was to be observed on the Sunday.  Now, before that we would look at the scriptures – anyone in the Church could look at the scriptures, go through the story here and say it’s so clear it’s to be observed on Monday. And then after He gave this you kind of hit yourself on the forehead and say, “How on earth did we ever believe it was on Monday?  It’s so clear it’s the Sunday!”  But until God gives it to you that which is in the Church, you can’t see those things, you can’t understand those things on a spiritual plane.  God has to give them.

So again, we thought it was on a Monday, then it was a matter it was on a Sunday.  And so much has been that way.  You have experienced those things in your life where you thought things were a certain way.  That’s why I love the scripture that talks about ‘the present truth’, because before 1974, when I came in the Church in 1969, the present truth, the truth that was present at that time, was to understand in obedience to God, that you didn’t observe it on any other day and you were judged according to what you had at that point in time.  So, if somebody came along and tried to keep it on the Sunday because they thought they understood the scriptures and it wasn’t given through the Church through God’s government to the Church, on a spiritual plane they would have been sinning.  Something to think about.  Until God gives it, until it comes from God and the way God works...because some tried to do that and they left the Church, no longer a part of the Church because they were presumptuous in what they did.

Incredible lessons that God taught during Philadelphia.  And I see some looks out there like, “What are you saying?!”  Those are things we’ll learn through time and understand more deeply.   A lot of us who lived through that period of time, we know deeply what it means on a spiritual plane – government and how God works and how God’s spirit works and how God’s spirit works to the Church.  It’s a powerful thing, it truly is.

And so this here as well.  For a long time it was believed, mostly because of Judaism, that there’s this period of time at sunset to some really dark point at night that consisted of this term ‘bane ha erebyim’, between the evenings.  It was like there was this evening that starts when the sun begins to go down or it goes down and it’s still fairly light, you can still get around fairly well, until it’s really dark – whatever that is.  What is that period?  I don’t know.  But that’s some of the thinking, and so you’re to start, to begin some of the observance here of Passover at that time and how you’d keep it and so forth.  Well, that’s not the term at all.  We keep every Holy Day between the two evenings, between two evenings.  We keep every Sabbath between two evenings.  We keep everything we observe from God between two evenings, from the beginning to the end.  That’s why, when you go through and see the instruction for keeping the Day of Atonement it gets very specific because it speaks of two specific evenings, at the ninth and the tenth, and so God shows even in there the meaning of the two evenings for keeping a High Day which we understand and it’s so clear when we do see it, when it’s given to us. But when you believe something else for a long time and you make a change, because that was the present truth, it can put you to the test like so many things that God has given to us.

I can’t help but think of the 50th Truth that was given to God’s Church; it was almost a stumbling block before we got that, to that point in time.  And that’s the way a lot of things happen in the Church because it tries us, it tests us to see where we are on a spiritual plane, what our spirit is, what our attitude is and whether we have to address certain things in our attitude.  Because a lot of times when you go through trials and tests it’s like the gold that’s refined, you heat it up and the impurities come to the surface, and some of these things bring impurities to the surface in ourselves that we really can’t see until we’re at that point, like the Last Great Day – it brings some things to the surface and we begin to think – well, in some cases, we just shut off because we can’t think.  That happened!  Sometimes some just shut off because all of a sudden it was like, “Oh, if He doesn’t return May 27th I’ve extended... my family, I’ve said things.  I have certain bills that I’ve arranged and thought about in how I’m spending money...” and all these... almost like horror to us all of a sudden enters in the mind and it’s like the mind just collapses and can’t deal with reality.

That happened from Feast site to Feast site to Feast site; I’ve heard the stories.  People have acknowledged those stories to me because it put us to the test, it brought something to the surface you hadn’t yet dealt with in your life, you hadn’t yet addressed in your life that God wanted you to address.  Where is His Church?  How deeply convicted are you of that truth – no matter what happens?  I tell those to people, “I don’t care what takes place! I believe it’s going to happen with all my being and everything I do and my wife does and so many others..” and I know you’re doing it as well, “...is geared to that day  and our belief, living by faith that it’s going to happen on May 27th, that Jesus Christ returns.”  But even if it didn’t, this world is changing rapidly.  What’s happening in Europe, what’s happening with the United States, what’s happening with the reserve currency of the world is shifting rapidly, and people don’t even know it – they’re on a sinking ship.

I read an article the other day that I thought was very well put.  It went something like we’re like ten minutes after the striking of the Titanic by the iceberg – that’s what they were relating the economy of the United States and of the world to.  We’re already ten minutes... its denial – it can’t happen!  It can’t happen, this ship could sink!  We’ve been struck by an iceberg but we can’t sink!  And it’s that mindset, it can’t happen; it’s the farthest thing that could possibly happen as far as the mind is concerned.  And I thought that was well put because that’s how people in the United States are living today.  It’s like, “This can’t happen.”  People in government, the world, the reserve currency... who cares if China buys up tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of gold – who cares if all of a sudden they could actually back their currency - and that’s their goal – to back their currency with gold.  Who cares!  Well, they should care.  Time goes on long enough - and that shows you what will happen with the rest of the worlds currency’s – it would be China’s currency that would be the strongest in the world, backed by a novel idea, something worth something besides just printing paper and what you say and your government and you have the right to do it as much as you want and you can have quantitative easing as often as you want and spit out another trillion.  How many trillions are out there?

It’s insanity out there.  What’s happening with Iran?  They’re going to get a nuclear weapon; given time they’re going to have a nuclear weapon, they’re going to have a lot of them, if they don’t already have them now which some believe they already have them now.  Are they ever going to use it?  Are they ever going to use it someplace?  Well, the rest of the Arab world, the Saudi’s, Bahrain, some of those nations, they believe very firmly they are, that’s why they’re giving help.  Just like right now, they have all these jets shooting across that gulf there, and Iran’s stirred up and threatening, sort of.  A lot of talk.  But anyway, there’s a lot of cooperation now, and why?  Because they don’t like... they’re not in agreement.  Some are Sunni’s and some are Shia and there’s a giant difference in the two, in the thinking, and they do not get along real well.

Think this world is in a heap of trouble?  Think Europe’s in a heap of trouble?  Think things aren’t coming down the pike?  Well, God has a way, always has, of moulding and fashioning things when He has a purpose, throughout history if you want to go back, to bring things together in His timing to the day and to the hour.  That’s why I marvel when it talks about the children of Israel came out of Egypt to the day.  It was 430 years to the day because God had a plan; God had a schedule that He was keeping.  Incredible, the power of Almighty God to mould and fashion things His way.  This last nearly 3½ years now, not quite, God has moulded and fashioned and brought things about – not in the way we had previously thought that it might happen or the timing or the events taking place.  They will take place in God’s timing and we learn from that.  And the greatest thing I’ve learned, which I hope you have learned?  Mercy!  Mercy.  How to work with people...  How to deal with people... How to deal with suffering...suffering which the world is going to have.  Should it have to suffer for a full 3½ years...or are there things people can learn in how God has dealt with them in a time that they (that we all) deserve to suffer because of our sins, or because of the mercy in God and how He chose to bring more, to help more when it’s all said and done.  It’s a beautiful thing!  God Almighty – powerful, awesome, filled with mercy in how He deals with us.

And so the word ‘bane ha erebyim’ and what a beautiful expression, between the two evenings.  So at the beginning of the fourteenth to the end of the fourteenth.  As soon as sun sets on the fourteenth you observe Passover.  And the Church in times past had a difficult time understanding things about Passover, not understanding what was fulfilled in the daylight portion; it didn’t seem to fit.  It all fits.  The things that Jesus Christ went through from the beginning to the point in time that He was placed upon a stake, hands above His head suffocating until a point in time that they just came around and ran a spear into His side and killed Him, a soldier did.  That’s how He died.  Water and blood, it says, came out.  And the others, they had to break their legs so they couldn’t hold themselves up any longer, so that they could die quickly, suffocating.  Jesus Christ was not to suffocate, He was to have His blood spilled out, spilled to the earth for every one of us, for the forgiveness of sin.

And so all the meaning of those things that are done throughout the Passover day, but when the time the sun sets the beginning of the fourteenth to the end of the fourteenth, a lot of things happened that Jesus Christ fulfilled in the meaning of Passover, to the very moment He was put in a grave.

In the fourteenth day of the first month at even, ‘bane ha erebyim’ – between the two evenings, is the Eternal’s Passover. It’s what He gave to us.  Willing to give His Son for all of us. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast, this is a Feast, it is the word for Feast finally; is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which we’re observing today, unto the Eternal: seven days you must eat unleavened bread. Not a choice as some had thought at one point in time in the Church, that well, if you don’t feel like eating bread on that day you don’t.  Every day you’re to eat some unleavened bread to learn the lessons that God wants us to learn.  It’s a very physical thing but it’s to learn something which is very spiritual and is to point us to those lessons over and over and over again in our life.

In the first day you shall have an holy convocation: so in the first of those seven days you’re to have a holy convocation and you shall do no servile work therein. But you shall offer an offering made by fire; always such incredible meaning in all these things, ‘made by fire’, knowing what we go through when we begin the process of... we receive the Passover into our life, we accept Jesus Christ as the Passover, and we have a great desire that indeed because of what He did, that our sins are able to be forgiven.  So, it starts with baptism but year by year we remember that occasion by the observance of Passover, always focusing upon our Passover, that we’re able to go before God because of our Passover.  The only reason you have audience with God Almighty is because of your Passover, Jesus Christ, of what He fulfilled.  And so you begin a process then of coming out of sin, the Days of Unleavened Bread, coming out of sin, coming out of leaven, that which is leavened.  All these things that have such incredible meaning!

In the first day you shall have an holy convocation; you shall do no servile work therein. But you shall offer an offering made by fire, again, when we start that process we understand, we learn quickly on, you’re going to go through trials, fire – trials - hardship.  It’s not meant to be easy.  Coming out of sin is not easy, going a different way than the rest of this world is not easy, and you’re tried in the fire, it refines you.  That’s why these examples are here, ‘by fire’, we understand that we’re going to have trials.  It’s not going to be easy, you’re going to have to look deep into your life – God is going to help you look deep into your life and to see the things that you need to change, because human nature is always seeing what others need to change.  What you need to change – I can see what you need to change in order to make my life better, and if you will change that then my life will be better.  It starts in the home, husbands and wives, they start learning that, it’s not how life is.  And children, parents, all the relationships of life, and then it branches out from there in congregations, or in the community, or in the extended family, whatever we have in life.  And life isn’t made better because other people will change to make you happy! Your happiness depends upon your changing of your mind by the power of God’s spirit in how you’re able to change your mind and your thinking and how you deal with all circumstances and situations in life and whether you’re right with God.

But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Eternal seven days: seven, over and over again here, seven, seven – complete, it’s complete.  Seven times seven – beautiful, spiritually complete.  We come to what?  144,000 like we talked about last Sabbath (guess it was the Sabbath as well as a High Day).

...in the seventh day is a holy convocation: you shall do no servile work therein. So again here, incredible things that God gives us over and over again.

Let’s pause here a moment and go over to Romans 7.  God has given to us the ability to grasp the importance of coming out of Egypt, spiritually, of the physical things, the analogy of those things that were there, of the ‘types’ of those things there that stick with us, that have such incredible meaning of coming out of sin, of getting rid of leavening.  We’re to get rid of leaven; leaven, it says, puffs up.  We learn that sin comes from where?  Where does sin originate?  Your sin, where does it come from?  The mind.  The mind that gets puffed up; it has to do with pride and being puffed up and ourselves choosing and deciding what is right and wrong.  It’s the basic trait of human nature, of our deciding for ourselves what’s good and evil rather than God showing us and then yielding to that authority and power in life because He knows right and wrong that’s meant for us in how we’re to live our lives, what will make us rich and full in the sense of fullness of life by living His way of life.

So we learn those things about coming out of Egypt, coming out of spiritual Egypt, coming out of sin, of becoming unleavened, of going through that process of getting rid of the leaven in our life – always working on that because you can never come fully out of it until you’re changed; until you die or till your changed.  All a process of being delivered from bondage, because sin is bondage.  I marvel sometimes thinking about human beings and how they think and people think they’re free in many places in the world.  And they’re not free, they’re in bondage, they’re in bondage in their own minds.  They’re not free, they don’t understand the truth.  The truth is what sets you free, living God’s way of life is what sets you free.  People aren’t in control of their lives.  They think they are.  They’re not in control of their lives; they’re in bondage to sin until God calls them.

Romans 7, and then we’ll come back to this flow in Leviticus 23.  But again, this process of what God was doing, delivering them out of Egypt, what we’re to learn from that process of being delivered out of bondage.  Romans 7:24 – as Paul was speaking here, it says – O, wretched man that I am! I love this verse!  O, wretched man that I am!  Only used in one other place in scripture, this same word, this same Greek word, when God speaks to the Church of Laodicea, and their condemnation is because they become lukewarm, spiritually lukewarm, not hot and not cold.  Cold is very obvious because they’re not living this way and it’s not a part of their life, not hot because they’re not zealous for this way of life and desiring with all their being, and so there’s kind of this middle ground that’s kind of something that God doesn’t accept, lukewarm.  We either are convicted and want His way of life...  And so in Revelation there it says their failure is to recognize this, that they’re wretched.  Apart from God that’s the way we are as human beings, wretched, blind, miserable, poor, without God; without God’s life within us that’s the way we are as human beings.  And so it’s good to acknowledge, “That’s the way I am!”  I’ve known of people who have left God’s Church because they got tired... of saying, “I’m tired of hearing how bad I am.”  What do you say to that?  “What are you?  Good?!  You live a ‘good’ life?  You live right toward other people?  You are fully obedient to God and God’s way of life and how you think toward others and talk about others?” ... “Well, no.”

Anyway, that’s the beginning of growth; that we have to see what we’re like, that this is what we’re fighting.  We’re fighting our nature.  We’re fighting a nature filled with pride, stubbornness, that which resists God, that’s not yielded to God fully.  And so we want to yield to God and so there’s a battle in that because our carnal nature resists that.  And so that’s what Paul talks about.

So this is just a matter of great wisdom, this is a matter of spiritual growth and soundness of mind; O, wretched man that I am, Who shall deliver me, see, deliver out of bondage, deliver out of Egypt.  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Why is it saying that?  Why is he saying, ‘Who’s going to deliver me from the body of this death?’  Because he understands and he is teaching here that sin requires death.  Jesus Christ paid for that...if we’ll repent of our sins, if we’ll acknowledge our sins.  We have to take the responsibility for our own sins – not finding the sins in others – but seeing the sin in ourselves and repenting of it, accepting that responsibility that we have.

O, wretched man that I am, Who shall deliver Me from the body of this death? I thank God; Thank God He’s shown us how we can escape, how we can leave, how we can be delivered out of bondage.  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Because that’s how it’s accomplished.  Jesus Christ died, yes, so that we can be forgiven of sin, but the greater thing beyond that is so that God the Father and Jesus Christ can dwell in us.  God will not dwell in sin so we have to be forgiven of sin so that they can change us, so they can work in us, so that that power can work in us to help change the way we think, to help us to live a right life.

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; by choice, this is what we want.  That’s what I want.  That’s what you want.  That’s why you’re here – you want to obey God.  By choice you desire to serve God, to live this way of life.  ...but with the flesh the law of sin.  In other words, ‘serve’, the word that’s used here, ‘as a servant’ the law of sin.  So there’s this battle...to be able to see there’s this battle going on inside of us is a matter of wisdom, it’s a matter of help from God’s spirit to be able to address that reality, otherwise how can we ever change, if we can’t address that reality and see the need to become something different?  ...to repent of sins?

So again, mankind is held captive because of sin, disobedience to the law of God.  And again, we’re delivered by Jesus Christ dwelling in us, living in us.

Let’s notice 1 Corinthians 15, what it says along these lines; a little bit of what we talked about last Sabbath, about the Jubilee and the matter of inheritance, and the possession was a matter of inheritance.

1 Corinthians 15:50 - Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; and so we understand that’s a part of what it’s talking about when it talks about the Jubilee.  It’s talking about this inheritance.  It’s not a physical one that God’s concerned with, it’s this one here that was given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that they’re going to be able to receive, that we’re going to be able to receive.

...flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; something has to happen, we have to change, and the change begins when we’re baptized and the mind begins to change until God can change the body as well... and neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; mystery because the only way you can understand it is by God’s spirit.  The world, of and by itself, cannot grasp this, they don’t understand these things of God because it requires God’s spirit in the mind to see it. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and so he is addressing the Church in preparing for the first great work of God, in preparing 144,000 who are going to be resurrected first.  So that’s why it’s stated in this manner, talking about what happens at the last Trump: for the Trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Now this... you’re in a period of transition of time, from 6,000 years, getting ready to go into a millennial period of the next thousand years of a next phase of God’s work in preparing multiple millions if not billions to be a part of God’s Family by the end of that thousand years.  But this here is being addressed to those that has to do with this Trumpet.  When this Trumpet sounds at the return of Jesus Christ there are going to be those who are resurrected.  So that’s why it’s in this context.  This is the first great phase of God’s plan.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. To become a part of the God Family, given spirit bodies, spirit life, eternal life, life into eternity; or life everlasting, is a better way of expressing it.  To me eternity is going back in time with God having only existed and then into the future, but lasting forever from that point forward is how our lives will be – ever living from that point forward, in that respect immortality, never dying, no end of life, always living from that point forward.  Incredible!

You know, the world, they don’t... again, what incredible freedom we’re given to understand things about death.  Death is a hard and a difficult thing to deal with but it’s so much easier, so much better when you know the truth.  When people don’t know the truth and they don’t know if ‘so and so’ is going ‘down there’ and wherever down there is and whatever that means...because we know more about down there now than we used to, or we think we do anyway as far as science is concerned, because it’s pretty hard to believe there is this little place in the middle of the earth where it’s just real hot and these beings are running around with pitch forks and jabbing you all the time and making your life miserable, and life is just hot, just hot-hot-hot. But otherwise you’re up there floating around somewhere and that’s the hope.  People have this hope that at least  you’re up there and everything’s okay and your eternal life from then on is just looking on God and fishing for eternity, whatever it is you like to do, bowling forever.  Sad.

Sad not to understand that God has a plan, that God has a plan of bringing us into a Family, being spirit beings and having differences.  We’re all different and different experiences that made us what we are, but being of the same mind in the sense of a way of life, of unity and how we live toward each other – never sin, never jealousy, never envious of someone else in the Body.  What an awesome thing to understand that kind of peace and that kind of life that God has planned, and everything that He’s created and done is for His Family.  Things we don’t even begin to comprehend.  As we get a little bit closer I think about some of these things and realize I don’t know anything.  I’m going to be changed.  What does that mean?  What can I do?  What can I not do?  How...?  Can I pop down on people...?  Anyway....  Can I pop in on people at times?  No, I know, there’s going to have to be some limitations of things you can and can’t do, but what an incredible thing, to think you’re never going to be hungry, you’re never going to be thirsty, but yet you can manifest yourself as ...  and enjoy those things as Jesus Christ revealed, spoke of, as God has shown through time.  Things we don’t understand.

I don’t know what it’s like to be up in the atmosphere and looking down...and what a weird thing!  Jumped off the tower in Auckland two or three times. It’s exciting being up there that high, a little scary being up there that high, and I can’t comprehend these things, what it’s going to be like.  All of a sudden people changed, all of a sudden people resurrected from the dead and on a sea of glass, whatever that is in appearance that we can see on a spiritual plane that God manifests on a physical plane so the earth can see His return.  We realize we don’t know anything about those things as a whole.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. No more death.  No more death, no more dying – and that’s God’s plan in time, to save everyone from that, to save everyone from death - to give life, life everlasting.

O death, where is your sting? A lot of wisdom here.  O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin; that’s the enemy.  Egypt - spiritual Egypt – sin; because sin requires a penalty, that’s why Jesus Christ had to die, so we could be saved from that penalty, so we can change and be saved from that penalty.

...and the strength of sin is the law. God shows us there’s a way of life to live and we have to make choices as to whether or not we’re going to yield ourselves to that, to be of one mind with God, that we agree with God. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, our Passover, that we can be forgiven of sin. So again, it’s sin that gives death its sting or power.  It is sin that gives Satan his power over mankind, to keep people in bondage – that’s where he likes us – separate from God, without a relationship with God, blind to the ways of God, ignorant of the ways of God (which he’s done a great job of in that respect), all because of sin.  There’s a great deal of power that he has then because he is more powerful than human beings...far more powerful because he’s a spirit being, because he can communicate by spirit in the mind, and the weaker human beings are because of sin the more power he has to manipulate, to deceive, to distort, to tempt, to lead, to mould and fashion in perverted and distorted ways.

That’s why I love the scripture in 1 John that talks about ‘Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world’. That’s our strength, God, obviously, in us.  And so Satan has power over mankind to keep people in bondage.  And thank God that’s where we are in time, that God’s going to remove him, because that’s a part of the process of delivering mankind.  It’s like Pharaoh; Pharaoh had power over Egypt, he ruled Egypt.  Satan rules mankind, in a sense.  He’s referred to by Paul in 2 Corinthians as the god of this world.  Doesn’t refer to God Almighty being the God of this world, Satan is because of mankind and because of sin, and God is delivering mankind from that, but He has a plan in how He’s doing it.  In 6,000 years He’s been working with, has worked with, 144,000 and now adding to that because of those of you who have the opportunity of living into a new age.

So God’s delivering mankind from the power of sin and from the power of the spiritual Pharaoh, if you will, of sin.  I love that!  I truly love what’s going to happen to him; because he will not change, has not changed, cannot change.  His mind became perverted when he chose to go against God and led a third of the angelic realm with him who became demons, who are on this earth.  What an awesome thing when mankind is just freed from him and those beings.  They have tremendous power to hurt mankind.  They’ve had tremendous power even to fight against you, but God is greater than him – that’s what that scripture in John is all about, ‘Greater is He that’s in you...’ that’s your deliverance, otherwise we’re no match for that being.  You can’t fight and resist that being on your own without God’s help.

So, what a beautiful phase of God’s work, to remove him for a thousand years...for a thousand years, and then after the thousand years he’s released at some point in time to do a work, a final work before he’s finally destroyed forever.  To me that’s great news!  That’s a part of the gospel, that’s a part of the good news, what’s going to happen to him and what’s going to happen to those beings.  But it was a necessary thing for mankind, if you remember the sermons given in times past, especially at the Feast.  God has created good and evil, the potential for evil.  It’s our choice.  It was his choice, it was the choice of a third of the angelic realm.  It was their choice.  They’re responsible for their choices just as you are, but we can change.  Our minds can be changed because they’re not spirit and set yet, they’re in a physical body and there is that spirit essence then that’s a part of our thinking and a part of our mind that God can work with and we can change.  And that’s what’s so beautiful about repentance and about how God moulds and fashions the mind.  That’s why Romans 12 is such a beautiful scripture when it talks about the mind can be transformed, by the renewing of the mind, ‘metamorphoo’, just like a cocoon, a butterfly in the physical world and things you see, by changes that take place like that.  It uses the same Greek word and shows this is a process that’s taking place in us, this transformation of the mind, of our thinking.  I’ll just read it right quick...right now I can’t remember it word for word, how it’s stated here.

Romans 12:1 - I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living/lively sacrifice, that’s what God desires, our life is His, and again, those things that we are willing to address and change in our life, to get rid of, a sacrifice.  Because as a whole we don’t like to sacrifice self and yet that’s what it boils down to so often, our will.  We have to learn to sacrifice our will and realize that works against God.  We want to be filled with His will, with His spirit, with His mind – not with our mind of selfishness.  We want to get rid of that, we want to repent of that.

...your bodies a lively sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable/your logical service. That’s the only thing that’s reasonable and logical when it comes to God’s truth and God’s way of life, that we do this and we seek to do this. And be not conformed, in other words a Greek word that means ‘to blend into’, ‘to be a part of’ this world: but to be different!  If we blend into this world, if everywhere we go and people we come in contact with, and the way we treat them is just like everyone else then we’re not different!  We don’t want to blend in with the world, we’re to be different from the world!  We’re to set a standard and a way of life that’s to be lived in everything we do in our conduct.

...but be you transformed, there’s that word, ‘metamorphoo’.  ...but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind, it’s an awesome miracle that takes place by the power of God’s spirit, that this mind can change...and God works with it for a long time.  That’s why I marvel when I look at the creation out there, and I think about everything that’s out there in all the universe, the galaxies that are there and the things that come back in Hubble, and you look at those and I’m in awe of those things!  And when you read about them, some of the single stars that are out there, that you can line up way over...  there’s this one (name slips my mind too on that one there), but this one star that you can put a hundred of our suns through from one end to another, the diameter of it. A hundred of our star [sun] all the way through it to get from one side to the other – this star – you think what is the purpose, so much that we don’t understand about what God’s created out there – awesome things and the beauty of it all, and every bit of it different.  None of it’s the same!  All of its unique!

Just like in God’s Family, we’re all different, the variety of life, the beauty of life, everything is a little bit... you can travel around this world; you see a lot of different things.  It’s beautiful that God’s made life like that, and His Family is like that.  But to think that God can work with this mind but He can’t create it instantly like He did out there, because none of that out there resisted Him.  He brought it into being and nothing resisted God.  When He put life on this earth none of it resisted Him...but all of our lives while we’re in this human flesh we resist God because of our carnal, human nature, ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ is always there in a carnal physical human being.  You can’t help it; that’s what Paul talked about that we read earlier, that there’s this battle inside of him, there’s this war that goes on inside of him.  Awesome to understand this!  ...that God can change us through time and work in order to mould and fashion this mind so that one day He can say, “Now I know you.”  He’s finished His job in the sense of what He’s  made, in the sense of the mind so that you can be given eternal life in a spirit body – no longer in that portion of bondage that we’re still coming out of in this physical body.  Because we’re not delivered until we’re out of this –we’re still coming out of Egypt, but we’ve been blessed to start the process.

...by the renewing of your mind... that you be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.  That’s what we do in our lives.  We’re learning, we’re proving.  It’s like Christ giving the example of proving the oxen.  It’s like the farmer who receives a new tractor and a combine, or whatever, and I understand that in ways because I grew up that way and I know what it’s like to get a new machine that’s different from the one you’ve been working with, that can do more, and the excitement of that to go out and prove it, to try it.  That’s what it means – to try it, to see what it will do, to see its performance, to put it to the test.  And that’s what God gives to us, to put His way of life to the test, to prove it, that there is no other way.  And that’s what we do through our lives once we come into the Church.

Going back here to Romans 8 now – we interrupted that flow there of what Paul was saying in chapter 7 talking about this battle, talking about this process we go through of change when He said, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me, the need to be delivered, just like out of Egypt, that’s what it’s referring to because it’s talking about sin.  And now going back to Romans 8:1 - There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus; if you’re in Him and He’s in you.  That’s something you grow in through time. I have been so blessed that when I was called in the ministry that I began to grow in this area alone, of what it meant in John 14 of what Jesus Christ was saying.  He told the disciples, ‘Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?  If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father.’  It’s spiritual!  It’s nothing physical! And they didn’t understand yet until they received the holy spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

And then He went on to tell the story of what He was getting ready to fulfill in His life, of sending the holy spirit and why He must go away, so that the holy spirit can come so that He and His Father can dwell in us and we in Him.  It’s the most awesome, most inspiring, most exciting thing that God has ever revealed to mankind and Jesus Christ did it on that last night of His life.  God saved that truth for that night, His Son’s last night on earth, to teach one of the most beautiful, one of the most awesome things that human beings could ever come to know and understand, that God Almighty can dwell in human flesh to change the way we are, and we can dwell in Him.  And as a matter of fact, if we don’t dwell in Him and He in us we cannot change.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.  So that means we’re going through a lifetime of fighting against this, human flesh, ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life’, we recognize those things, we’re repenting of those things day by day and we’re seeking, indeed, because of repentance, seeking that God dwell in us.  But after the flesh, we walk after... as it says here, not after the flesh, but after the spirit. So this is what we’re walking in, this is what we want, this is what we desire; and so our whole life revolves around that, this.  That’s why we pray, that’s why we come together on the Sabbath, that’s why we strive to change, that’s why we repent.

For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, there is a law that works here, there is life that works here, because of His life in us, and a part of that law is that when we sin you’d better repent or He will not dwell in you.  The moment you sin you’d better repent, you better seek repentance or you will not continue to dwell, and you can’t deceive yourself into thinking you’re still in the Body or the Body is in you until you repent.  God will not dwell in sin!  You have to get rid of it, and the only way you can do that is to ask for forgiveness...and that puts a prod on you to make right your relationships, like we talked about on Passover.  Everything is about relationships because God’s Family is the ultimate relationship, and how we live life within that Family.  And we learn it; we begin to learn it in this Family, in the Church, in the Body.  It’s awesome to understand that!  And so we learn that when our relationships aren’t right we’d better repent, we’d better make it right!  To deceive ourselves that somehow think we’re in the Church or that God’s in us while we’re in sin is an absolute damnable lie and a perversion of what is true, a disgusting thing that we do as human beings that I have seen in God’s Church through times past...of people having wrong relationships with one another, toward each another, thinking wrongly toward each other, speaking wrongly toward each other, finding fault in each other... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... just looking for the opportunity to spread things about other people.  I hate those things that happen in the Body, in the Church in times past, in the ministry who would be on each other chipping away.  Even within God’s ministry!  You’d think, “How can this be in God’s Church?!”  Well, the reality of it was it can’t be, because at that time if you’re doing that you’re not in it.  You better repent so you can be in it, so that God can be in you.

So not living God’s way of life...whenever we don’t we need to repent quickly, to be right with God so He’ll continue in us.  And it’s a constant battle of life - you can’t ever quit it, you can’t ever give up on it, you have to keep fighting this, self; it’s always there.  Now through time and the longer you’re in God’s Church the better you can become at those things and fighting the battle and seeing those things and seeing self.  And even there sometimes there’s a danger in some of that because you know what?  You begin to see human nature in a magnified way, not only in yourself but as you grow you can begin to see in others.  And so you’ve got to be careful then about your relationships because....  that’s the way God is with us but how is God toward us?  He’s sees us inside and out but He loves us, He wants us to be in His Family; and that’s what we should want for one another.

For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Free!  Leaving Egypt, made free through the truth.  For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, in other words the flesh, man is weak.  It’s not that there was a problem with the law, it’s because of man, it’s because of us.  The law can’t change you because nobody could live by the law.  That’s what the Israelites proved when they came up to Mount Sinai and God gave them the 10 Commandments.  The proof of Israel was you can’t live this way of life without the next Pentecost when the holy spirit was poured out.  You have to have God’s spirit to live the law, to live God’s way of life.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.  So again, this continuing theme here of what we’re able to receive because of a choice and what we strive for and what we want in our lives in a relationship with God and with one another.

For they who are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; the world becomes more important than the Church.  I can take a journey in my mind in that respect, going back in remembrance of the way the Church was at different times in the 70’s, and as it got farther into the 70’s people began to get more bogged down in the world and Mr. Armstrong was ill and sickly and people took advantage of that, because evangelists and ministers took advantage of that and struggles and power struggles that began to take place.  And then finally Mr. Armstrong came to a point in time where he nearly died, came back to a point in time where he started regaining strength and had a desire to focus more on getting the Church right, and talked about from that point on to the time he died of getting the Church back on the right track.  But so much had already happened within the Church, was happening in the Church, and things that people had done, the wars, the spiritual battles, the things that took place.

We were talking the other day here about how sometimes it’s difficult for people to grasp and understand how an apostasy could have taken place in the Church.  And I understand that.  If you didn’t live it it is difficult to understand, but believe the truth – it happened to everyone, and if you’d been living at that time you would not be different.  Understand that about your nature.  Understand that about your mind.  Everyone who lived at that time, and if you had lived at that time, you would have done exactly the same thing, you would have fallen asleep spiritually; you had no power, you would not have had the power to resist.  It would have happened to you if you’d gone through the same timeframe in what happened to God’s Church.  You would have been among those who had been spewed out of God’s mouth.

That’s a matter of wisdom and understanding something on a spiritual plane about self, about our own human nature.  Because sometimes we don’t see our nature and we don’t grasp what we’re capable of doing as human beings.  It’s a matter of believing what God says about what we’re capable of doing as human beings.  So it depends on what is your focus, and if we become weak the world becomes our focus, the Church becomes less of our focus, we begin to put more importance, maybe, even on physical family than we do on a spiritual Family.  And there is a balance in there and there’s a soundness in there - that God comes first!  This comes first in our life!  It’s a matter of priorities on a spiritual plane.  As a matter of fact, the more we learn that the better we’re going to be able to treat and be toward others who aren’t a part or are in the world or whatever.  It depends on our mind.

Verse 5 - For they who are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; Why? Because of sin! ...but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. That’s where it leads.  And that’s where God’s leading us when He leads us out of Egypt – to peace.  That’s why I love the word ‘Jerusalem’ - teaching, if you will, giving the way of peace, bringing us to the way of peace.  Life goes with that – eternal, or into time, into everlasting life.

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: this is a matter of wisdom, this is a matter of great growth, this is a matter of spiritual perception to be received with open arms on a spiritual plane, candidly, because without this we can’t change.  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: so if we’re not close to God or if we begin to stray away from or if we tolerate or allow sin to be in our life, or, as an example, in wrong relationships and we’re not working to change those things in ourselves – not to change others, because that’s what we want to do sometimes, we want to change the other person.  But to change yourself and how you think and how you are; Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; it’s the way we were before we were called; it’s what Paul tells us over and over again, God tells us that, the carnal mind is enmity...it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, until God begins to draw us.

But the carnal mind is enmity, meaning ‘an enemy’ because it fights and resists God, for it’s not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be; So they who are in the flesh, in other words not in the spirit, not dwelling in Christ, not dwelling in God, being cut off because of sin...  So they who are in the flesh cannot please God.  And just because we go to Sabbath services, and just because we go to the Feast, and just because we do those things and go through the motions as the Body that was scattered has done since the apostasy, is not in the Church, is not in God and God is not in them.  They’re asleep spiritually waiting to be awakened, whenever God chooses to awaken them.

So they who are in the flesh cannot please God.  It’s only when you’re dwelling in God, forgiven of sin, and He can dwell in you to change you, to mould and fashion you, that’s what pleases God, because you’re living that sacrifice, a lively, living sacrifice.  You’re fighting the fight, you’re fighting against self, you’re yielding yourself to His purpose, His will in your life.

But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man/any person does not have the spirit of Christ, he is none of His. They are none of His.  We must have that spirit dwelling within us.  We can’t deceive ourselves into thinking we can get by with certain things in relationships and not make things right and not be able to go to someone and say, “I’m sorry, I did that in a wrong way.  I shouldn’t have said that.  I shouldn’t have spoken to you in that manner.  I was wrong for doing it.”  It’s not a matter of just going and telling God, “Well, God please forgive me for doing that.” You’ve got to make things right in relationships, you’ve got to work at it.  Just going off and having this special relationship with God doesn’t mean anything if you don’t put it into practice in your relationships.

And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; it starts at baptism doesn’t it; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. It starts at baptism, we put the old self in the watery grave.  That’s what it pictures, just gives that example of death and dying and going down under the water, burying self; and it says when you come up you’re a new person, you’re to be a new person walking in newness of life – this way of life.

But if the spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken/make alive your mortal bodies by His spirit that dwells in you. Beautiful picture all the way through; God’s plan, God’s purpose, taking us out of Egypt, taking us out of spiritual Egypt, delivering us from sin, delivering us from the bondage of sin.  We still have that which we’re in bondage to – all of us – we have something, things we’re still fighting in our life.  You’re not free from everything yet, you’re still in that process of coming out of Egypt, and you do that your entire life.

Verse 12 - Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if we live after the flesh, it says, you shall die: You’ve got to fight it!  You’ve got to fight that carnal mind, you’ve got to fight the pulls of the flesh, you’ve got to fight the things that are wrong in life that don’t agree with God.  ...but if you through the spirit, by crying out to God, by seeking His life to live in you, by repenting, do mortify, in other words, ‘put to death’ the deeds of the body you shall live. For as many as are led by the spirit of God, you know, the children of Israel, when they left Egypt God led them out, e showed them the way.  It’s a beautiful picture of what God did, bringing them to the Red Sea.  God had to lead them out and show them the way.  All those things that were done on a physical plane and a ‘type’ of something that He does to us on a spiritual plane to drive the point home of what’s happening in our life.

But as many are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God, the children of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the spirit of sonship, that’s what the word is in the Greek language, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.  It’s not a matter of gender here spiritually; it’s a term that’s being used here to drive the point home about adoption.

The spirit, in other words, God’s spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: That we’re begotten.  That’s why it’s such an awesome thing, that if you’re able to see the truth and you’re able to know the truth that there are things in you that you grasp and comprehend, you can only grasp it and comprehend it one way, because God is leading you and working with you and been merciful to you and continues to be merciful to each and every one of us to bring us out of sin.

And if children, then heirs; awesome thing about the Jubilee and understanding it.  If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; In other words, what He received God says we can receive – to one day become a part of the Family.  He is the first of the firstfruits.  ...heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, in other word’s we’re going to receive along with Him what He received, speaking of that life; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be glorified together.

Verse 18 - For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. In other words, it’s a long journey; it’s a fight all the way.  But all of the struggles you go through in life, all the difficulty, all the pain...because when you change there are going to be things that are painful.  When self has to change and that battle takes place you experience a lot of those things in the mind, in the sense of the battle that takes place, the pain, the suffering that goes on.

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time, are the things that change and mould us.  I think of all the things, the hardest things I’ve gone through, the things that have run me through the heart...it’s like spiritually someone taking and stabbing you in the back over and over again – I’ve learned the greatest of lessons from those things, because of that suffering, of things that helped me to change and become different.  The changes you make in life, the big changes, are not always pleasant, obviously, they don’t come easy.

I reckon 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, and it’s the word ‘creation’; it’s about the creation of what God’s doing in us.  In the Old King James it says, ‘creature’, but it’s referring to the creation of God, and the creation of God it’s speaking about is us.  All of God’s creation from the beginning of time is about us, is about His Family, those of us who are begotten, who in time will become a part of His Family.  That’s what it’s all about; it’s about what God’s doing in creating His Family, Elohim.

For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. Because this is what it’s all about. For the creation was made subject to vanity, in the beginning, carnal human flesh – as soon as you’re born we start learning because of how we’re made physical and selfishness begins to develop.  It’s there, and because we’re physical it’s just there.  A baby that cries, a baby that wants to be fed, and we just become big babies...

For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected the same in hope; Because the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, from Egypt, into the glorious liberty, freedom, of the children of God. That’s what it’s all about.  That’s what these days are all about.  That’s what the Feast of Unleavened Bread is about, becoming unleavened, being delivered from the bondage, as it says here, of corruption into the glorious liberty, or the Greek word literally meaning, ‘the freedom’ that comes to the children of God.

Let’s go back to Leviticus 23 and continue where we left off concerning the instruction of the Days, or the Feast, if you will, of Unleavened Bread.  Leviticus 23: 9 – it goes on to say - And the Eternal spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When you have come into the land which I give you, you shall reap the harvest thereof, it says then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits, so I spoke of this earlier here, the sheaf of the firstfruits; and again here, noting that the firstfruits here...because, unless you’ve gone through some of these things, sometime we can read things that have been written but we don’t know what the Church went through to come to times when we could understand some of these things and what it was all about and how that sometimes God has been taking us out of false things that have been a part of traditional Christianity that came from the Catholic church primarily, or things that came out of Judaism that went astray long before Jesus Christ came along.  Because Jesus Christ condemned every bit of teaching of Judaism as a whole; all the teachers, all that was being taught, it wasn’t of God, it wasn’t from God.  It was a matter of that which was going to be a part of the Church that God was going to give through Jesus Christ.  But again, Judaism had already gone astray and Jesus Christ condemned them.  The Zealots, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the main ones at that time; and sadly, but a part of life, is that some of the things we’ve had have come from some different ideas that were still a part of Judaism until God freed us from those things and just gave us the truth of what is right.

And so a part of this here when it talks about the sheaf of the firstfruits, the word here has nothing to do with ‘fruit’.  It’s a word that simply means ‘the beginning’ or ‘the first of’.  And you think, well, why is that important?  It has a lot to do with what’s important when you understand what Judaism teaches and how this messes everything up when you start counting for Pentecost and whether or not when they came into the Promised Land this was the fulfillment of those things that God said you’re to do in a certain way, that even shows you how to count Pentecost...but we’re not going there today.

But you shall bring a sheaf of the beginning of the harvest, that’s what Jesus Christ is, He’s the beginning of a harvest.  He is the first, the first human being, the firstborn from mankind of a woman, God was the Father, Jesus Christ His Son.  What an incredible thing that took place, born from among mankind going all the way back to even Rahab.  What an incredible thing that God has done through time, the mercy, the things He teaches.

And so it says here, speaking of this sheaf, Jesus Christ being, if you will, the first of the firstfruits 2,000 years ahead of the rest of the Family or the first great phase of the Family, if you will; 3,000 years before even a larger portion of the Family, and 3,100 years before the rest.  And so this sheaf that was to be offered up, waved before God as it was, the timing for last Sunday because of how we count, this is when it began, that pictures Jesus Christ.  That’s why it’s a beautiful story when you go through the story and you realize that when Jesus Christ met up with some of the ones that came to Him, and He told them not to touch Him.  At the beginning He said “Don’t touch me because I have not ascended to My Father, your Father.”  He had not yet ascended to God the Father.

And a part of this is because of this here – He was to be received of God the Father for all of mankind and it had to be done with this wave sheaf that was waved before God because God had to accept it.  And then when He came back later then He told them, like Thomas, doubting, He said, “Now thrust your hand in My side.”  Now they could touch Him because He had been received of the Father.  He was fulfilling the roll of the wave sheaf at that particular time.

All the things that God does, so meticulously so, to teach us, things we can learn from, and it’s all there in scripture.  Beautiful story from beginning to end!  Nothing more beautifully written!  If people like poetry this here puts all to shame!  This is so powerful, so beautiful, how God has written everything that’s in this book, the things that put together, the things that so inspire sometimes when we come to see something we haven’t seen before and it’s always been there but we couldn’t see it, and all of a sudden it makes it come alive more.  It makes other things come alive in the book we haven’t seen before.  Just like for me in going through (and I hope for you too), reading and studying about a Jubilee, something they never kept through time, and yet we’re coming to that which is the ultimate of what God was teaching for mankind.  All these things that just continue to add to the story that make it richer and more inspiring.

It says, you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits/beginning of your harvest; so they began harvest.  When do you begin harvest?  When things are ready to be harvested.  Because there was a teaching in Judaism and so forth that you can’t begin the harvest and there’s certain things you can’t have until this takes place and then you can begin and you can begin to partake of it afterwards...and anyway.  So this just says you’re to save back a portion; you’re to save this sheaf back and on a particular day you’re to wave it up before God, the priest’s were.  That’s what it was about.

So a literal translation of that out of the Interlinear Bible say, When you come into the land which I am giving you and have reaped it’s harvest and have brought in a sheaf of the beginning of your harvest to the priest.  It’s very clear what it’s saying in Hebrew, but hasn’t always been clear to the Church because we’re still coming out of Egypt.  There are things we’re ever learning as we’re coming out of Egypt; God just makes it clearer and clearer.  There are going to be things...as soon as Jesus Christ returns He’s going to reveal to us of things we haven’t understood or we haven’t understood correctly because still, right now, what we’re judged by is by the ‘present truth’, what God has given us to this point in time.  That’s the way it’s always been in God’s Church and that’s the way it is now.  We’re far from perfect, we’re far from having perfect knowledge, but we’re quantum leaps ahead of the world, obviously.  There’s no comparison.  And quantum leaps ahead of the Church that was scattered back in 1994, such changes that have taken place.

Verse 11 – And he shall wave the sheaf before the Eternal to be accepted for you; So Jesus Christ after His death had to be accepted of the Father for all of us.  That’s what He pictured on that particular day.  He met some of them first, talked to them first, but they couldn’t touch Him because He hadn’t been received yet.  ...to be accepted for you on the morrow, or in other words, the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.  So again, we need to recognize that the wave sheaf is a vital part of the Days of Unleavened Bread, of coming out of sin.  It’s a part of the process here and always had to be within the Days of Unleavened Bread.  It has no meaning if it’s waved on the outside of it.

Verse 12 - And you shall offer that day when you wave the sheaf a male lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Eternal. Over and over again, everything that God had in this process here teaching us.  Again, making it clear who this is about – a male lamb without blemish, without sin.

Verse 14 – And you shall eat neither bread nor parched corn nor green ears until the safe same day that you have brought an offering unto your God.  It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.  And again, all this is written up in some of the meaning of some of these things and some things that aren’t fully understood here too or even in the translations in literature we have.

Verse 15 - And you shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering;  and so it’s talking about the weekly Sabbath and the morrow after that, the day after that within the Days of Unleavened Bread; seven Sabbaths shall be complete: Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall you number fifty days; to me that’s just such a beautiful thing because sometimes in times past we wondered why did God give fifty days between the wave sheaf and Pentecost.  Why are there fifty days in this important thing of counting seven times seven?  And it should be so incredibly clear now, just because of what we’ve gone through in talking about a Jubilee – seven times seven, spiritual completeness, that which is spiritually complete as a part of God’s plan because it leads right up to that fiftieth, the Jubilee, the time of Jesus Christ’s return, the time of the first great resurrection, the firstfruits that are going to be resurrected in God’s plan.  It’s incredible, beautiful.  Even on the morrow after the seventh Sabbath you shall number fifty days; and you shall offer a new meat offering unto the Eternal.

Verse 17 - You shall bring out of your habitations, now we’re up to this point in time of Pentecost or the Feast of Firstfruits or the Feast of Weeks as it’s referred to in different places in the Old Testament.  And you shall bring out of your habitation two wave loaves of two tenth deals: and they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; again, all this symbolic of the firstfruits, those who are saved because of a Passover, because of Christ, that lived even before Christ in the first four thousand years that God worked with, those of the other loaf that came afterwards, the next 2,000 years and that which was a part of the Church.  But both pictured in that part, two wave loaves, both – what does it say here – baked with leaven.  We have leaven in our life.  Jesus Christ was unleavened, we’re leavened; they are the firstfruits unto the Eternal.  Again, I hope you’re inspired when you read these things because as I preach them year by year by year I am always inspired, always excited to see these things so clear and so powerful.  They are beautiful, these words are beautiful and they should move us, they truly should.

Verse 20 - And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before the Eternal, with the two lambs: interesting if you read the whole story here; they shall be holy to the Eternal for the priest.  So again, counting from the wave sheaf to the wave loaves again, ties the two together; and again, our wave sheaf makes it possible that we can be accepted by God.

Verse 21 - And you shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be a holy convocation unto you: you shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a statute forever in your dwellings throughout your generations. And to be reading this now at a time when this is what we’re counting down to, the final countdown.  This is it.  This is the phase of something that we’re living in a very powerful way because this is the last one that leads into this being fulfilled.  This is the final time of counting for Pentecost until this phase is fulfilled.

I think of the time the children of Israel came up to Mount Sinai – that was the first Pentecost in a great way where God gave them the law, and they couldn’t receive it because they didn’t have what was missing that was going to be given later on in Pentecost, on the Day of Pentecost 31 AD when God poured out His holy spirit.  So to live God’s law...and how beautiful that is, to be able to have it, to live it – you have to have His holy spirit.  Man can’t keep the law on his own ability, by his own willpower, no matter how much he wants to, because he can’t even understand the spiritual intent of it until God gives His holy spirit to them or begins to draw them to see those things.

The simple things that Jesus Christ revealed, if you have wrong thoughts, wrong feelings in your heart toward someone else...hatred - even that word there and how it’s used, to understand what it is.  It’s not a matter of saying, “Since I don’t hate anyone I’m not guilty of murder.”  Any wrong relationships with people, anything that isn’t according to love, God’s love; if it’s not a matter of God’s love it is what Jesus Christ was showing.  If we mistreat someone, if we treat them in a wrong way, if we are wrong toward them in any fashion or form Jesus Christ said that’s murder.  It’s murder!  It’s in the heart, it’s in the mind, it’s not of God’s love so we have to be different in our thinking – and that’s what He showed us.  To lust after a person, man toward a woman, woman toward a man, says you’ve committed adultery already in your heart.  It’s in the mind!  It’s how we think!  And that’s where He shows us, everything starts in the mind in how we think and whether we’re really in control or whether it controls us – sin – see, because of Egypt, Pharaoh.  Be careful.

So this is the seventh, the Last Day of Unleavened Bread.  We are in our final countdown, a countdown to Pentecost, to the time God has looked forward to and the first great phase of His Family is fully redeemed from among mankind over the past 6,000 years, and we only receive a little bit of that inspiration from God; because what God has and His feeling toward this period of time we cannot begin to contain in ourselves – can’t begin to – can only strive to, desire to, and thank God for what He does give to us and cry out for more of that, because this is awesomely, awesomely exciting for God Almighty and His Son who’s been waiting a long time as well to bring this to fruition.

So, we’re counting down to the great Jubilee of God when the 144,000 including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who are going to receive the inheritance, as we read about last Sabbath, long ago promised to them.

Let’s turn over to Luke 4.  Again, to think about the deliverance, even of Satan and the demonic realm - is put into bondage finally – finally – finally!  What a beautiful picture.  God’s taking the bondage away from mankind so that all mankind will have the ability, the capacity to see the truth, to know the truth and the beings who want to keep people in bondage are themselves finally put in bondage for a full thousand years; imprisoned, if you will, for a full thousand years.  It’s an awesome thing!  It’s an exciting thing!  ...and it’s an incredibly just thing that they should see what God does during that thousand years with mankind.

And I look forward to next Sabbath’s sermon of some things that God is giving that stirs this being up even more, and makes him more angry, more indignant, more frustrated.  The scripture when God says, “You mock Me, I’ll mock you.”  That’s what’s been happening, it’s what God’s been given to the Church in the last period of time here, things that were given about Satan and what’s going to happen to him and what’s going to happen to the demons God has reserved to the end to make it very clear to Satan.  There’s a battle still going on out there and it’ll go on to the very end.  But there is one that he has lost miserably so and doesn’t even acknowledge it, he just continues to fight.  He loathes God, he loathes God’s plan, he loathes the Son of God, he loathes every one of us – sick, perverted mind.  And I’m very thankful I’ve been given the opportunity to speak some of the things I do from time to time and I look forward to next Sabbath’s sermon up in Brisbane, probably going to be a series.  Because everything he’s been trying to do and striving to do turns around on him again.  Incredible!

That being who’s always been around, always harassing, always fighting against God and God’s purpose, has never understood he’s but a pawn, less than a pawn.

Luke 4:13 - And when the devil had ended his tempting, this is speaking of the time when he came at Jesus Christ; he departed from Him for a season.  Because he kept coming back, trying to thwart God’s plan, probably thought he had some kind of victory when he finally succeeded in moving various Jews to go before the leaders of that time to have him killed, to persuade Judas Iscariot.  What did Christ tell him?  Had to do with Satan; Satan was there on the scene.  Satan worked with Judas; he was the one who stirred things up.  He was the one that motivated and moved a man to betray Christ.  He did it again later on, didn’t he, to the Church – he was there.  Sometimes we don’t recognize that being who is always there.  That’s why it’s so important to stay close to God, ‘Greater is He that’s in you than he who’s in the world.’ ...to rely on God, to look to God for safety, for protection, for help, to not give way to sin.

And Jesus returned in the power of the spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of Him throughout all the region round about. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified, the word means in essence here in the Greek, ‘to be receiving praise, approval’, ‘was esteemed’ in other words by those who heard and saw various things taking place, of all...and this word ‘of’ here meaning in the Greek, ‘being under’ or in a term used today, ‘from among’ all.  It doesn’t mean all did this.  It doesn’t mean everyone that came in contact did this!  Some hated Him!  Some loathed what He was teaching that He came in contact with.  But from among all those areas that He went there was always going to be those – God saw to it – that this was a part of what took place.

And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And there was given unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written...

Verse 18 - The spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and again, the Greek for ‘deliverance’ here is a word that He used that carried the meaning of ‘remission of sins’. That’s why it’s so unique here, the reaction of the people that were there...and I never really thought about this until preparing some of this and always kind of wondered, just because He read this, why did they have such a response to Him?  It’s because of the words He used.  Because you see, what’s stated in Hebrews is a specific area of what He read, but again here, the things that God inspired to be written and the context of some of those thing He said or gave to them said it a little bit stronger way, in a more powerful way.  And so He was saying here, to preach deliverance to the captive, again, a word that carries the meaning in the Greek, the word ‘deliverance’, ‘the remission of sins’ or ‘forgiveness’.  Powerful!

...and recovering of sight to the blind, to set/to send, as it is, at liberty, same word again, ‘deliverance’.  ...to set or to send what?  ...forgiveness/remission of sin to those who are bruised, a word that means ‘oppressed’, ‘broken’.  That’s what sin does.  It’s about deliverance.  But here He’s giving that which is on a spiritual plane, the meaning of it, of something that was only understood on a physical plane in the book of Isaiah.  And so many, even as we have read those things in times past, we have taken so much of that to be on a physical plane when indeed the physical is only a ‘type’ of what it teaches on a spiritual plane because it has to do with the mind, it has to do with what God is doing with us in bringing us out of sin and the deliverance He’s given to us which is accomplished through forgiveness.  That’s what He came for, that’s what He came to preach and to teach, that’s why He came as our Passover, that’s what He’s telling them – ‘That’s why I’m here!  I have come here to fulfill these things!’  They didn’t understand that but that’s what His purpose was, and that’s what He’s revealing to the Church and all whom God would call through time.

To preach the acceptable, in other words, to be accepted or be received year of the Lord. Incredible!

Verse 20 – And it says, And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them who were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.  That’s why He was there.  Incredible!  Powerful – powerful ...And all bore Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words, meaning ‘words of grace’ - forgiveness of sin?  ...remission of sin?  A word here again, ‘gracious’ – ‘words of grace’ or ‘of kindness’ because it went above and beyond what was simply recorded in Isaiah, which proceeded out of His mouth. And they said, Isn’t this Joseph's son? It’s always that thing in the mind, “How could this be?”  When somebody knows you... and they know you and “You think you’re what?  You’re who?  You’re doing what?  You’re a part of what?  ...and how big are you?”  That’s why they know you’re nuts –stark raving mad - because God doesn’t work that way, in their mind.  Large organizations in the millions, yes, billions, maybe, multiple millions, hundreds of thousands, but you’re how large?  And they can’t comprehend.  People have never been able to comprehend what God is doing.  Man can’t.

I want you to notice how this word is translated above, this word ‘deliverance’ or ‘liberty’ that we just read.

Matthew 26:28 -  just listen to how it’s used – For this is My blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the, same word, remission of sins.  That’s the word He used up there; that’s why they were in awe at what He had to say, ‘the gracious words’.  Incredible!

Ephesians 1:7 – In whom we have redemption through His blood, the same word, forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.

Acts 26:18 - To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness, same word, of sins; that word ‘liberty’ and that word ‘deliverance’, because He put together that which showed the purpose of it all, ‘deliverance to the captives’.  And so what’s quoted in English is all that could be understood, basically, of something that was in the Old Testament and for whatever purposes God just let it be this way because...and the word ‘liberty’ later on, trying to just quote more directly from the Hebrew rather than really what was being said in the Greek that was given here later on.  And I don’t want to go back into talking about how everything was translated basically in Aramaic and everything else, but anyway, these are the words that God inspired to be used.

And so again, that Acts 26:18, the rest of it says ...that they may receive forgiveness of sins, so that word there, deliverance, liberty, and inheritance among them who are sanctified by faith that is in Me. So again, going back and He’s telling the story here.  The story is being told about what Christ taught and so forth.

Let’s go back now all the way to the Old Testament here in Exodus 13, to the time that God was bringing them out of Egypt.  So indeed, these Days of Unleavened Bread picture deliverance that God gives to mankind from bondage, from captivity, from slavery in Egypt, from slavery to sin and Satan.  Because Satan is symbolically here of what happened to Pharaoh, and as we draw closer to the end of this sermon on this Last Day of Unleavened Bread in this age of mankind, again, to look here at a physical ‘type’ of what God did in the beginning with the children of Israel, of delivering them out of Egypt on this day, on the seventh day.

Exodus 13:17 - And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them through the way of the Philistines, although that way was near; you know, ‘the way’ here is like a highway, the term we use for highway or express way, to be understood as far as a way out of Egypt into this other part of the world that God was taking them.  And so it says they could have gone by the way of the Philistines.  There’s also another way they called ‘the way of Shur’, but anyway, it says specifically here that when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, and the word here that has been used in the English... I hate some of these things that are not translated very well – ‘lest peradventure’ that’s really not a part, that’s not even in the word in the Hebrew, but it’s basically saying, For God said, that the people repent, the people can change their mind when they see war, in other words, that’s what God said, it wasn’t a matter of perhaps or that’s what’s going to take place, but God is just saying this is what will take place, this is what they’re like, this is what would happen when they see these things in front of them, when they see the war, in other words, when they’re confronted with battle that they just return to Egypt: God wasn’t going to let them return to Egypt.  You know, they weren’t very long across the Red Sea and it was like, “Oh, woe is us...and it was better when we were back there with the flesh pots and we had plenty of food...”  And you think... anyway, memory is not real good sometimes.

And so it says here God knew exactly what they were going to do, and that’s what’s stated here, not as  just in case they were to do this.  God knew exactly what they were going to do, what their spirit was and what their attitude was. Verse 18 - But God led the people about, a word here meaning ‘to turn them aside’; in other words, took them in a specific direction here, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea: and there was no way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, there was no way to travel through there; and the children of Israel went up harnessed/in order out of the land of Egypt.

That’s why I love the story, because it talks about a way, the way of Shur or the way of the Philistines and then it says He led them, basically, the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, and there was no way there.  We learn lessons from that, that when we come into God’s Church, the way that God leads us, the things that are going to take place in our life, the things that happen in our life as He moulds and fashions us, God has to show us.  Our desire to live His way of life, our desire to do the right things – we so often come up to a point in time where we just let God know that.  That’s why I talk about in sermons so often, just tell God, “I’m at the Red Sea, You have to show Me the way.  I don’t know what to give; it’s You; it’s what You have to give, it’s what You give.”  And so then He gives it.  But it’s good for us, for our learning, that we understand these things deeply, spiritually, that everything has to come from God.  God has to show us the way all the way.  We continually have to look to Him for guidance and direction in our lives.  We don’t have the answers, He does.  He wants to show us.

And so going on into Exodus 14:1 - And the Eternal spoke unto Moses, saying, Tell the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baalzephon: for before it you shall encamp by the sea. And so they went down into this little area here.

It goes to say, For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled/confused, the word means, ‘perplexed’ in the land, in other words, they’ve entrapped themselves.  He thinks the same thing today about us, until next Sabbath.  That’s what he thinks.  He thinks we’re perplexed, he thinks he’s got one on the Church, he thinks he has led us into a corner and he can have the victory - and he can’t.  He can’t.  It’s incredible how God works and the ‘types’ of things sometimes that God does.

For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, just as Satan, his mind, his spirit, they are entangled/confused/perplexed in the land and the wilderness has shut them in.

And it goes on to say, And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he will follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, please understand, very powerfully so, God is doing the exact same sort of thing on a far greater plane spiritually against Satan.  That was only a small ‘type’ of something very physical having to do with Pharaoh that all the way to the end here God is doing with Satan, the same sort of thing.  That’s why it says all the things it does about Satan, that people are going to look upon him and say, “He was the one?  He did all this?”  They’re going to be in amazement.  “That being?”  It’s like in disbelief...and God is doing this as it says here, and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, of what God does in bringing down Satan and bringing down a demonic world and showing His great power.  That’s what it means by being honoured.

We will honour, the world will honour God, glorify God for His great power, for what He does, for how He gives deliverance to His people.  It’s a beautiful thing!  ...and upon his host; Pharaoh and his host; Satan and his host... so that the Egyptians may know that I am the Eternal. And they did so.  So, all are going to know, God’s going to make it clear.  Everything is done by His great power.  Everything He does in His deliverance and His great plan, everything He fulfills and accomplishes is going to be made known.

And so again here, this was about entrapping Pharaoh and Egypt in order to magnify God’s purpose.  It wasn’t the other way around.  It was about entrapping Pharaoh and the power of Egypt to destroy them, to bring them to an end, and to give deliverance to Israel.  And as we go forward here in the things that God does to the very end here, these things should not escape you, of how God is working to deliver His people, to deliver His Church, to bring us up to the 144,000...all the way up to that very specific day.

But again, it’s about magnifying God’s greatness because this was not about the Israelites being entrapped at all and God led them here for a purpose - for the Israelites and for what He was going to do to them.  So much less being entangled, confused, or perplexed, this is very much about what God is doing at this end-time with His own Church and how Satan and the demons have been pursuing it, seeking to entrap and entangle.  That’s what they’ve always done.

Verse 5 - And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him: And he took six hundred chariots, chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them. And the Eternal hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and again, there’s this thing of going back and forth.  It’s not that He made his heart this way, it’s a matter that this was Pharaoh’s heart, but by taking certain things away, as the plagues when He took them away, then Pharaoh just went right back in His ole hardened heart and He got worse and worse through time.  And that’s what happened here when it finally hit him, when finally some of this had passed and the Israelites were gone and all this began to hit him, what this really meant for Egypt, his heart became the worst that it had at any point in time and he went after them.

It says, and the Eternal hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with a high hand. Victory!  And that’s where we are in time – finally 144,000 and the Church is delivered – finally!  You’re not going to have the same kind of battles in the future, those of you who are newer, you’re not going to have some of the same kind of pressures that you’ve had in the past.  And as the world slowly, but quickly also, begins to change as it responds to Jesus Christ who lives here, who dwells here on the earth now, and 144,000 with Him, that people will be able to see at different times and know of, or hear of what they’re doing on the earth, and those who begin to respond, it’s going to be a total transformation of the earth and people on it...and you’re not going to have the same kind of pressures that you sometimes experience because of what demons and Satan do on this earth to stir up things, the same kind of battles.  You still have your human nature but they magnify it, they seek to stir it up and make it worse, they seek to entrap you in it and hold you in it, and that makes the battle much harder to fight.  It’s hard enough to fight against human nature without having to fight that spirit that just works on us in our weaknesses.

That’s why it’s such a beautiful deliverance that God is giving out of Egypt and out from that power and that influence that’s all around us all the time in society.

Verse 9 - But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pihahiroth, before Baalzephon. And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the Eternal. There’s a wisdom in understanding that being is there, but not to fear; but a wisdom and understanding that they’re there, to cry out to God for His protection, for His help and for His deliverance.  And we’re almost there!  It’s a beautiful picture.

And they said to Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore have you dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?  It’s amazing how we are sometimes as human beings, and that’s why God has been preparing us to understand various things as we go up right to the end here, at whatever time it is, whatever it is, we’re more prepared now than ever before, and to not have the carnal reaction like they had where otherwise there could be far more battles that we fight – that God has helped us to fight in segments along the way already, to prepare us for where we are now, to be able to live by a stronger faith now than what we were able to a year ago, or two years ago.  You’ve been made stronger – God has been doing that.  It’s an awesome thing to understand.

Verse 12 - Is not this the word that we did tell you in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness. And Moses said to the people, Do not fear, stand still and see the salvation of the Eternal, which He will show you today: for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you’ll see them again no more forever. That’s a great thing to comprehend, what this is picturing too on a spiritual plane when you think about Satan and the demons.  I can’t give to you how exciting and how inspiring – it’s something we all feel on different levels and so forth – of what this means that this being is no longer around to harass and to hurt mankind, neither his host, the demonic world.

The Eternal shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. To understand above everything else that takes place, we yield ourselves to God but God is doing this.  Everything that takes place in our deliverance, God and His Son, they’re the ones doing this; they’re the ones delivering us.  We’re blessed to be a part of it, we’re blessed to serve, we’re blessed to be there as it’s taking place but God is doing it by His power.

Verse 15 - And the Eternal said to Moses, Wherefore do you cry unto Me? Speak to the children of Israel that they should go forward: spiritually that’s what we do, you just continue to go forward, God will do exactly what God has given to us, what He says.  And how do you do that when you’re at the Red Sea?  How do you do that sometimes when you don’t know, you have an outline of various things but you don’t see it yet.  That’s what faith is all about; you don’t see it yet.  God will do it in His way and in His time.  The Red Sea was going to open up.  Who knew?!  Incredible!  Maybe God’s going to do something to them, stand still and see the salvation of God, see what God’s going to do to them... did it in an incredible way – He delivered them and then destroyed the Egyptians and Pharaoh as well.

Verse 16 - But lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it: God says some thing’s some times and you think... “...lift up the rod and divide the sea?!”  That had to be an incredible thing that’s going to take place, and you just obey, you just do what God says, as impossible as it seems, as impossible as the human mind accepts some things that God....that’s before us.  As you look around the world today and you don’t see everything, that you think, “Well, how can this happen so quickly, there is so much that has to take place yet...10 nations, there has to be this and this and it hasn’t happened yet so how can it happen?”  It’ll happen God’s way in God’s timing and it will be done, and then you’ll be in awe just as they were to see the Red Sea part.

We have an outline of things, but to know it all we don’t know it yet, but one day on your TV or whatever it is all of a sudden it’s going to be there and I’m going to tell you right now your heart is going to drop.  We think we know?  We think we understand?  But all of a sudden you’re there and it happens and it’s happening before you.  You think you’re prepared?  It’s just going to drop! You’re going to be in awe, and dumbfounded, and you’re going to know above and beyond, because when it’s in front of you it’s no longer a matter of faith, it’s there.

Think about the children of Israel.  Can you imagine what an incredible thing it would be to see all these behind you and you still don’t know what’s going to happen, because you look down in there and you see them coming at you still. “Pharaoh! He’s coming across too!” ...right up to the end.  Incredible!

...divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get Me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Eternal, when I have gotten Me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon the chariots, and upon his horsemen.

Please understand that all the way to the end there is still so much that’s about Pharaoh, spiritually. There is so much that’s still about Satan until he’s been put away, and so much about the demonic world until that’s taken care of.  And that’s a part of the story of deliverance out of Egypt, isn’t it?

~~~end