Emmanuel

Ronald Weinland

September 28, 2018

Feast of Tabernacles Sermon – 2018

Today we’re going to look at another name that God has given to Joshua the Christ but it’s more of a prophetic name that was given to him by which he is to be called. By prophetic this means it’s something that is spoken of that he is fulfilling in his life that has long been prophesied, and it carries incredibly great meaning.

This sermon today is entitled Emmanuel.

Let’s read that story again in Matthew where Joseph was told by an angel sent from God to name the Messiah Joshua.

Now, I was struck this morning by the fact that it’s amazing certain kinds of focus that God gives us Feast by Feast, and this one being so much on aspects of this, of the name of Christ, of things about God’s Son, Him sending him to this earth. We’re getting so near to those things that this is God’s focus and He wants to share it with us. We are so blessed to share in this way of life and God wants to share with us everything, to give us as much as He is able to, as we are weak human beings. Small minds, candidly, but with His spirit we’re able to grasp and see certain things on a spiritual plane that are exciting and inspiring.

God is inspired by what He does. God is moved by what He does. God is excited by what He does. God loves His work. He loves us and He wants to share that same kind of thing with us. So if we’re getting that picture there are things we are to see. Some of those things have to do with that which is stern, that which is sobering, about a need for us to look deeply into our own lives, more deeply than ever before, to examine where we are and to ask God’s help that we not deceive ourselves because “the human mind is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” God says. That’s the battle. Even with God’s spirit we’re still that way because we’re carnal human beings. It’s a constant battle. We grow in that through time in the sense of being able to see and understand and fight that battle more successfully as we mature spiritually. It’s a spiritual growth.

I am deeply moved by this, by being able to see these things, this focus on some of the different names and what the message is contained in that that God wants to share with us. As I mentioned the other day here about the very fact of His Son coming, being born the first time here, being born, period, of human flesh and of that process here, but something that God had looked forward to for so, so long. So how could He not be incredibly excited above and beyond anything we could even begin to comprehend? These things are written so that we can share in that kind of excitement God has for His plan as He reveals things about His Son. Because that’s where it all starts. That’s where it begins. If we fail to have any of that kind of excitement in our lives as we go through things like this something is wrong deeply inside of us, really wrong.

So again, Matthew 1:18—Now the birth of Joshua the Christ was on this wise, when as his mother Mary was espoused, in other words, being engaged, to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the holy spirit, God Almighty, the Word, the mind that was going to be given to him, to Joshua.

Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make a public example of her... In other words, they had not been married yet and people knew this, people were familiar with things, so he desired to put her away, to take her to an area, or whatever it was that he did, in that respect, in a private manner, that as she began to develop and so forth that he was protecting her. Someone had asked that question the other day here, what that meant that he was mindful to put her away privately.

But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, you son of David, do not fear to take to yourself Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived or begotten in her is of the holy spirit. So this is what he was thinking, this was his mind, and then God sent the angel to tell him these things to help him address this more effectively in his life.

Verse 21—And she shall bring forth a Son, and you shall call his name Joshua, for he shall save His people. Again, the meaning of the name here, Joshua, “the Eternal is salvation” or “the Eternal’s salvation.” ...he shall save His people from their sins.

Verse 22—Now, all this was done so that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the LORD by the prophet, saying: Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

So at this Feast of Tabernacles God is now revealing more fully that there is more to these verses about the Messiah’s name than that of Joshua as well. It’s about Emmanuel, a name that God gave to him, not something that he was to be addressed by, as Joshua, but it’s a name he would carry as with other names that God gave to him, other titles that God gave to him. As I mentioned, this one is one that is more prophetic in what it means and what it carries in understanding that we’re to learn from that God was going to reveal and fulfill in His Son.

So how is this name Emmanuel prophetic and what is it that Christ is fulfilling that reveals this name in fullness? Well, we’re going to go through that story.

Now, we should know the answer to this but what would you say is one of the first things that comes to mind when considering why God would not, in that respect, be in us? What is it? Well, we understand that very powerfully so. It’s sin. Everything is about sin. It’s about being able to come into a relationship with God, continue in a relationship with God, and again, this begins with His Son. But there is so much more when we begin to think about our minds and the way we are.

In fact, I think of these things written in Isaiah going through this. So if you want to turn over to Isaiah 55, here God begins to show us, wants us to learn the incredible contrast, the incredible difference between us as a creation and Him as God, the difference in the thinking that’s there. We have to come to understand what our thinking is like and to accept that and to want to change that by choice, if we do so desire to change our thinking. Again, the word “repent.”

But Isaiah 55:6 says, Seek the Eternal while He may be found. When is that? When can you seek the Eternal while He may be found? People out here in the world can’t just go out and seek the Eternal to find Him. It doesn’t work that way. People try in their own human way, in their own selfish way as human beings.

There is something that God has created within mankind, that there is this kind of sense of a need for something greater, that we’re here for a purpose. That isn’t just an accident. There is something there. So there is this desire. There are other things that God has created in us in our thinking from beginning that we grow in and that’s just one. There is that thinking. But we can never come to what the answer is.

That’s why you have so many different kinds of religion. There is that need, necessity that so many people have. That’s why there are so many religions in the world, so many things that mankind has made up. Goofy things, crazy thing, most of them centering around things that are very physical that have to do with things that they know are greater than them. You know, even the worshipping of time, the sun; it starts to go away and it’s like, what do you do? Well, you throw this great big solstice. You want it to come back because it has to do with your crops; it has to do with how you’re living. So you recognize the need for it, and so they came up with a sun god. “That’s what makes life. That’s what gives life. That’s what gives us food and so forth.” The crazy things that human beings have done.

There have been a few on the earth, because there are many who have never even begun to understand things about God until times when printing came around, the printing press came around and finally people were able to begin to have things move around the earth in a greater way in the sense of knowledge and so forth, things about God, things about Israel, things about the Old Testament God and later the New Testament God and those things that began to grow as commerce and so forth began to develop more around the world and people travelled.

So what is it? Seek the Eternal while He may be found. It’s not a matter of just deciding for yourself that you’re going to seek out God, some kind of god, whatever it is. But this here is the Eternal God, Yahweh, and the only way you can do that is when God opens your mind. He has to call you. We all know this. Yet I think of, frankly, times in Philadelphia and times especially through Laodicea people forgot about a calling. They didn’t think about a calling. It just was gone! When it was spoken of it was like, “Oh, yeah.” But what did it mean to them personally?

Because we have to have that in our being to know from the moment we begin to see things how that came about! Because if you lose that you’re going to lose everything! If you forget about your calling and how God began to draw you or work with you, or help you to become convicted of this way of life, if you begin to lose some of that and it begins to go by the wayside you’re going to lose a lot. You truly are. You’re going to drift farther and farther and farther away from God because it’s not personal like it should be. This is about a personal relationship that God blesses us that we can have with Him when He begins to draw us to Him. It all depends then upon how much we embrace that and hold on to that with all of our being. Otherwise it’ll slip through our fingers. It’ll slip away. It’ll pass away.

So that’s what the admonition here is. This is not talking to the world! It’s not talking to physical Israel! It’s talking to the Church because they’re the only ones that can understand, or those prophets or different ones who were being worked with by God who could read this and be worked with to see, to know, and to understand what it meant. But nothing to the degree that was given later on when Christ came, nothing to the degree when God began to reveal things to the apostles and they began to teach. All those books after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and even in there, but those that go beyond that as far as a Church is concerned, are things the world never knew, prophets never knew. Those who heard God’s way of life, they never knew those things because God had just revealed them.

So, so much knowledge, so much information, but only for God’s people or those who have received an ability to have a relationship with Him. So He says seek Him while He is near! We have people who are stopping that! They don’t do that anymore! Blows my mind how you wouldn’t continue to seek the Eternal while you have the chance, while you have the opportunity! Grab it! Use it! Don’t get into a norm of life of just going through repetition of certain things to where the spiritual begins to disappear, because that’s happened to thousands and thousands and tens of thousands before you. Think it can’t happen? Think it’s not happening right now? It is!

Seek the Eternal while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. He is near when He calls us. He is near when we’ve repented of sin. He is near because He wants to deliver us from sin! That’s why His Son came. It’s Passover.

Let the wicked forsake his way. People I know have read this from generation to generation in God’s Church, or been told about this in God’s Church, and too often people don’t think, “Well, who is wicked? I’m not wicked!” It’s like so they just read it like a story, “Let the wicked forsake his way.” “Yeah, those Israelites, they came through the Red Sea, they started to complain against God, they started to grumble and murmur.” And we don’t do that? I talked about it yesterday, people murmuring and complaining, complaining about God’s ministry, finding fault with God’s ministry. If you can’t learn from not doing that you’re not going to know how to love the Body. If you can’t be sobered to a point where you don’t realize what it means to honor God in the government He has established in His Church then you  have no idea what it means to love one another and embrace one another because they’re God’s people. You can’t recognize the rest of the Body as being God’s people (because that’s who we all belong to), if we aren’t a little bit sobered by how we might speak about His ministry who are God’s people. I hope that makes sense.

So, Let the wicked forsake his way. We have wickedness in us. Every one of us has wickedness in it and if you don’t acknowledge that, if you don’t admit that, if you don’t see that you don’t know what your battles are. You don’t understand your own human nature. God is making a distinction here about His nature, the way He is, the way He thinks all through scripture, and here, and the way we are. We’ve got problems! That’s why the Messiah had to come and die first, to become our Passover, to give us an opportunity to draw near to God while we are able to when that comes to us.

Let the wicked forsake his way. We have to understand we’re just selfish! I’ve seen a lot of selfishness at this Feast of Tabernacles! I’ve seen a lot! You think, “Was it me? Because we’re selfish human beings. We don’t tend to think about others. We tend to think about self and what we’re doing and we kind of shut out the rest of the world about us. You can’t do that and live God’s way of life. You can’t do that and live God’s way of life because this isn’t just about you. This isn’t just about me. It’s about something much greater. It’s about that which is around us and why it’s there and how we’re to respond to it. God tells us how to respond to it.

So have you had any selfishness during this Feast? Have you done some things that were selfish because you were thinking about yourself and you weren’t thinking about others? If you’re honest with yourself you have! We all have to whatever degree that might be, some more than others. The ones who are more than others it stands out more. That’s just the way it is.

So it’s good to examine ourselves. It’s wicked. Selfishness is just not right. That really needs to change. You can’t just allow that to continue in your life day by day, week by week. You’ve got to address it and fight it. That’s a part of your battle.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. So there are people in God’s Church who have gone through this and read it like a story and read it quickly because it doesn’t apply to them. This is a course in the Old Testament so it’s to the Israelites because the prophets were talking, surely, just to the Israelites or to Judah, or to whatever it might be. So a lot of times these things aren’t taken personally to us as food for thought and spiritual because it’s a story flow about the Israelites. Duh! It wasn’t for them. They couldn’t understand diddly, okay, on a spiritual plane. It’s all written for God’s people, period. This is for God’s people once they have His holy spirit. Before that they don’t get it.

Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. That’s talking to us. Are we righteous? Do you know the only thing whereby God attributes righteousness to us and will continue to abide and dwell in us is if we believe Him and live by what He’s given us the ability to believe. Just like He gives the example of Abraham, gave him different instruction at different times, told him to “get up and leave.” You know, he learned from his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, 9 or ten, I think it was 10, great, great grandfather, Noah.

Then in his early fifties there, God began to determine, make the determination now He’s going to work through an individual to do something so great, through his seed, to create, to bring about a special nation of people. Special because they’re called to be an example of what it’s like to have God’s law and not have the ability to do it because they didn’t have God’s spirit. They weren’t called to be a good example. It could have been any people; they would have done the same sort of thing. They would have disobeyed God. They would have rebelled. They would have complained. They would have murmured because that’s just human nature, but someone was going to be there to do that and God chose Abraham. He told him, He said, “Get up and leave your family, all your relatives, and move to a land that I’ll show to you.” It says he went. He didn’t know where he was going, he just obeyed God. That kind of thing, because we believe what God says, we know, we have a relationship or we’re thinking toward God and we obey Him, so all the way through Abraham’s life reflected that, that he just did what God told him because he believed God, and those things were attributed to him for righteousness. Not that he was! He had problems like every other human being. He was selfish. He had marital problems. You read through scriptures and you think there weren’t some marital problems? When they got older, it’s like, “It’s okay to go to Hagar,” and then once it happens, like, all hell broke loose. (Some people get offended by things like that. Tough cookie! Think about what’s being said and why it’s being said.) Because it did! In a family environment, can you imagine, “Oh, it’s okay to go in unto her.”

I am convicted with all my being that God revealed some time back that the very reason that they’re totally covered in certain religion is because that’s what happened there! Because Sarah was so jealous of what had taken place, so loathed the decision that was finally made. Maybe said, “Okay, that’s the only way we’re going to have any family, whatever,” and you think, “or a lineage,” and God wasn’t in the picture whatsoever at that point. Because how could you think that when you’re that old and you know your body can’t do it anymore? So because of that they had marital problems. But they worked through it. They worked through it. Incredible.

We read some scriptures in the Bible and we think, “Oh, people were so righteous all the time.” No, they weren’t. They were just like you and me. They had problems. They had things they had to address in their life. Everything wasn’t smooth and, you know, hunky dory. They’re carnal human beings and they were all selfish just like you and me. There’s only been one who wasn’t – Joshua – period, exclamation mark!

(We’ll never get through this sermon. We’ll never get out of Isaiah! I have a lot to say!)

So the unrighteous man his thoughts... And let him return unto the Eternal. Why does it say that, “And let him return?” Because as long as we’re in that, as long as we’re practicing wickedness, sin, as long as we are living in an unrighteous manner, in the sense of not seeking to obey God’s way of life – because that goes with it, believing God and seeking to obey the things He’s given us – then that separates us from Him. God has called us to have a relationship with Him and He tells us to return to Him, to fight against those things, to resist those things, to seek His help and His power to conquer and overcome.

And He... If your desire is to be right with God, if your desire is to admit who we are, “Yes, my nature is selfish.” Selfishness stinks! It is wicked because it fights against God! It resists God! It wants to do its own thing! It doesn’t want anybody to come in and say, “No, I want something done differently.”

And He will have mercy. That’s a beautiful verse. God is so incredibly merciful if we’ll just acknowledge who we are, what we are, and say, “You know what? I need help and I want help because that’s the only way I can change. That’s the only way I can be right with God. I need help and I want help.” If you really believe that you’ll be praying like that every day. “I need Your help,” because you know who you are, you realize what your nature is like.

“And He will have mercy on him.” God wants to give us mercy. When He’s called us to have a relationship with us He wants to forgive us. He wants to give us the pathway to be forgiven of sin so that He can have a relationship. What an awesome thing to have that kind of love come from God, and the patience that He has to bring us to that point where He can be merciful if we’ll just listen, if we’ll just receive, if we’ll just acknowledge what we are and then cry out to Him for that help and admit, repent. Repent means to acknowledge what you’ve done wrong, to admit that toward God, to say, “This is what I’ve done.” He already knows it He just wants you to acknowledge it, to be responsible for what you’ve done.

“And He will have mercy upon him.” So the answer for this Feast of Tabernacles? God wants to pour out mercy. He wants to give forgiveness. But there are people listening to this sermon, who will listen to this sermon, who will not do this and they will not receive mercy. Incredible.

And He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, and He will abundantly pardon. Abundantly pardon because He wants to remove the sin from us. He wants us to grow. He wants us to be in His family. Everything is about that! Everything is about our coming into His family – and so many more in time. So again, this begins to lay out the problem and the means to be with God. This lays it all out if we’ll just hear it.

Then He says, He shows this. He says, For My thoughts are not your thoughts. The way God thinks, that God’s mind, that giving? I love the way Mr. Armstrong just simplified it. There are two ways of life: give and get. And it’s that simple! And we don’t give by nature, we get. We’re selfish. We just think selfishly because, “Why, that’s more comfortable when things go my way. I get what I want. I get what I have in my time. I don’t care about your time. I don’t care about what you want. I care about what I want.” That’s just natural! Incredible and disgusting if we can see it spiritually, that that’s the way we are. Because we come first, God doesn’t. See, that’s the problem, God doesn’t come first. Because if God really comes first His family will be first, His Church will be first.

I’ve known of so many people who haven’t put those things first because they think, “Well, God’s first in My life.” Well, do you know how you are going to be tried and tested in that? You know what’s going to prove that one way or another? If the Church is first. That’s your arena of life to live. You can’t just say, “Oh, God is first and I’m doing ‘this’ and I’m doing ‘that,’” because this is what you have to do to prove that, because this is God’s family.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts; Neither are your ways My ways. There is just no comparison. You can’t compare it it’s so vastly different. You can’t compare give and get. They’re both going in opposite directions. There is no medium there whatsoever. You’re either going in one or you’re going in the other. We’re conflicted because we want to go in the one and we find that our nature is pulling us this way, away from it. There’s the battle.

Neither are your ways My ways, says the Eternal. For as the heavens are higher than the earth... So He had to talk to them in physical terms, so as the heavens, not talking about the heavens that we know today out in the universe, even though we could use that example now because we feel that we can see 13.5 billion light years away. I mean, to be able to see that out there means it took 13.5 billion years for that light to reach the earth so we can see it through a telescope and, “Yeah, it’s 13.5 billion years to the edge of the universe.” You think, “You dumb idiot! You’ve got to wait another billion years to see the rest if it was created at that period of time.” I hope we understand what I’m saying. We’re so foolish as human beings. We so limit God.

There is more out there. There is more out there than what we see so far. There is a lot more out there than what we see so far. We think we’re so great; we have the Hubble Telescope out there. “Oh, look at that, it’s plowing through space and we’re able to see things we’ve never seen and we’re discovering things and we know and we’re learning...” and we are, but you think, you so limit God still and we think we’re so great. No, we’re just blessed that God is revealing more to us, He’s given us the technology to do something like that. God gave us the technology but we take it to ourselves. “No, we had people like Einstein,” and whomever, you know, “and we figured these things out on our own.” Ridiculous! I’m sorry.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are My ways your ways, says the Eternal, for as heaven are higher than the earth so are My ways higher than your ways. They are more than 13.5 billion light years away. You know I think that way. ...and My thoughts than your thoughts. Incredible.

So there’s a great separation (that’s the point here) between God and man, the way we are and the way God is. God wants to change that. He wants to help us reverse our direction and be able to go His and live His by choice, by free choice if we want. Sadly, people reject it. I think of what happened up to the Apostasy. There are people who are set, who have no need to be resurrected in the Great White Throne, period because their minds are already set. They were given opportunity in God’s Church to know the truth that God had revealed through Mr. Armstrong and they rejected Mr. Armstrong, they rejected what was revealed to him, they rejected God. They don’t want that. They chose not to have that. They want something different so much so it doesn’t matter what God shows them, their minds are set. They don’t want God. It’s about God. It wasn’t about Mr. Armstrong. It’s about God and the truths that God gave and the way of life that God gave. Think that can’t happen within the Church? If you choose to live evil God will let you.

Isaiah 57:13, let’s turn over there. God says, When you cry... In other words, you want help, you need help, and you haven’t been listening to Me, you haven’t chosen My way, you haven’t returned to me, you haven’t turned to Me, as the word really means here, return or turn, it’s the same, basically.

He says here, When you cry out, let your companies deliver you. What’s that mean? Well, it’s using an example here as a nation or speaking to a king and basically telling him, or to others, that you have a military force here, you have a power here, and so when you’re threatened by other countries, other people around you and they come upon you, and you trust in that to deliver you and that is your trust (and especially for Israel), and you don’t trust in your God then okay, let’s see, let your companies deliver you. This is in history in the Old Testament. “If a force is coming up against you much greater, you haven’t been calling upon Me, you don’t want to include Me in your life, well, let’s see how this goes. Let them deliver you.”

It’s just an example here to teach us something (everyone) that it’s whatever you trust in. Wherever you place your trust, and it’s not God, then when you get in trouble let’s see how well you do. Let’s see if you can get yourself out of that one!” God lets us. He lets us.

There are times I’ve told the ministry, and I do tell them regularly and try to often, you don’t have to intervene in situations in life. If there is a need pass it up the ladder and you’ll be told. As a whole, back away. That’s what God does. He lets us do what we want to do to manifest the result so we can learn from it. It’s not this matter that we used to think that in the Millennium someone would come up and tap you on the shoulder the first time you started getting a wrong thought or started to say something wrong about someone, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This is the way, walk you in it.” That was so Protestant! But we didn’t know that. We didn’t grasp that in some cases, or people didn’t. That’s not what it’s about at all. Incredible.

Those things we have to see, we have to come to understand. That’s like preventing people from being able to sin. Is God trying to prevent people from being able to sin? If He did, if He says, “Oh, stop!” or you started to sin and all of a sudden this huge round thing just encloses you and you’re in darkness – “I can’t sin!” Then, “Don’t do that!” “Oh, okay, I won’t do that,” and then He takes the thing away and all of a sudden we’re able to go again. We’re just robots – no mind, no thinking, no decision, no choices on our own, no development of a mind. We have to choose. Do we want our way or do we want God’s?

I’ve had people get upset at me. I’ve had ministers get upset at me, going all the way back, because, “You didn’t do something about this sooner” or “You didn’t deal with it more strictly,” or whatever it was. Well, I’m doing what I believe God has given me to do and I’m going to listen to that. Who do you think I’m going to listen to? Same sort of thing.

So, sure enough in time individuals do certain things. If we can’t hear from up here, from sermons and from things that are written, if we can’t learn that way, if God put us in an enclosure to stop us from sinning, we’re not going to learn anything. So if we hear and we want to hear and we want God and we want to turn to Him He’ll work with us.

So we pull back. We’re learning that more and more. You can learn from that experience. If they continue to go a certain route they start to bury themselves, they start to destroy themselves. How bad does it have to get before you’re going to cry out? How bad is it before you’re going to repent?

When you cry let your companies deliver you. But the wind shall carry them all away, vanity shall take them. But he who puts his trust in Me... It really struck me this morning going through some of this thinking about this. I think we’ve talked about that, putting our trust in God. He’s prepared us to think this way before the Feast, to be able to drink in more at this time right now in this verse alone about the importance of this, of not putting trust in our ways or ourselves, because that’s just kind of what we do with our own human nature, but to learn how to turn that toward God and to place our trust in Him.

But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land. So what’s it talking about? “Possess the land?” God will bless you. He’ll help you in your growth. He’ll bless you in those things that He has promised to give to us. That which is a promised land, what does that mean? It’s about a way of life. It’s not about a physical piece of property. It’s not about a place around Jerusalem. It’s not what the promised land is. It’s that which we are working toward and desiring.

...shall possess the land and shall inherit My holy mountain. That’s what it’s about. So this is what it’s about. It says, “and shall inherit My holy mountain,” because it’s about the promised land. It’s about something spiritual. It’s about Mount Zion. That’s what God wants to give to us. Incredible. “Inherit My holy mountain.”

I can’t help but think about physical inheritance that people might get from someone who’s died, or whatever, physical, and people fight over those things. Oh, it’s horrible what takes place when something like that happens oftentimes. I’ve seen it even to God’s Church and people turning ugly toward each other because they want more! “I need to have more because I did this and I did that!” It’s like a big mad scramble to “get what I want to get out of this,” that money and that place or that land or that vehicle or whatever it might be. You think, oh, brother, is that what your life is about?

Here God wants to give us something so far greater and we don’t fight for it. But we’ll fight for something physical. We’ll get nasty. Human nature will turn against family, turn against anybody that gets in their way. If we turn that around and use that kind of energy for God’s way of life, to value it? I mean, we value physical things too much. We need to value spiritual things and fight for that, fight against this. That’s what it’s about.

...and shall inherit My holy mountain. And shall say, Cast you up! Cast you up! Prepare the way, take up/take away the stumbling block out of the way of My people. I love this verse here for what it means. It’s like, it’s talking up a path, a road, a highway. That’s what it is, “prepare the way.” It’s a place to walk on. It’s a place to travel. I’ve talked about this many of times. In Kansas when they made roads they didn’t put pavement on it. They dug on the sides and they build that dirt and used it for the road. They’d build that up and then there would be water, so the water could run off and you would have a place to drive. This is what it’s discussing.

It goes on to say here, Take up the stumbling block out of the way of My people. Have you ever been on a path, not necessarily a road? I’ve been on some pretty bad roads. Think about Montana. We used to cut wheat up there. They had boulders coming up through their road. There’d be huge rocks and they’d freeze and more rocks would come up. They had huge problems up there.

Anyway, I think about different kinds of paths or roads sometimes. Have you ever been on a path and somebody hasn’t done a really good job, and because you’re not looking all the time you hit your foot on something or you trip or you fall? Well, we can do that on sidewalks here sometimes in different places, let alone highways, you know, you about lose a whole tire. But it’s the same sort of thing. If you’re walking personally and you mess up a foot or you twist your ankle, like I did the other day... Anyway, it was my own fault. I got off the path. But that’s what it’s talking about. Get rid of the things that cause people to stumble, that might be a stumbling thing for someone, that someone might hit their foot on or injure someone or anything of that nature, to cause someone to trip and fall because you’re thinking about others.

It says “take up the stumbling block,” whatever it is that can cause someone to stumble, “out of the way of My people.” You know, that there teaches a lot. It means we shouldn’t be thinking inward all the time as human beings, and selfish about our time, what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, what “I” want, but about others. There is a real joy in that when you can turn that kind of thinking around and serve, help, think about, consider, respect others. Put them first. What a novel thought! But our nature doesn’t want to do that all the time. By nature it doesn’t do that day by day. But, oh, if we could only do this. So we have to fight, don’t we? That’s what it’s about. It’s about fighting.

So, “take the stumbling block out of the way of My people.” Stumbling block, again, it’s our own nature. It’s not of God. It comes from us, from our selfishness, a wicked, sinful nature.

Verse 15—For thus says the High and the Lofty One who inhabits eternity... Beautiful! Things we can’t even begin to comprehend. ...whose name is Holy. Everything about Him, everything that comes from Him. I dwell in the high and the holy place, with him also who is of a contrite... Now, who is able to be like that? Those whom God has called. Those that have the opportunity to repent. Those, that if they’re given that, while they’ve been given that, desire to be in a relationship with God and they embrace that and they have a certain attitude. ...with him also who is of a contrite heart. That word basically means one who can acknowledge shame, be ashamed, to regret what they’ve done and want to do something about it. In other words, being of a repentant spirit.

Sometimes people can’t. Sometimes people just don’t because they don’t choose to, they don’t want what God is offering them enough, and they don’t take seriously enough what it means that you are cut off from God or can be cut off from God or are when you sin, don’t take it seriously, therefore, can cheat, can lie, can steal even from God.

I mean, that’s the height of it all. We can do physical things on this earth that are disgusting and shameful, but when we do it toward God that just really kind of blows my mind, yet it’s happened A LOT in God’s Church! A LOT! That we think we can rob from God! What does it say in Malachi? That would just scare the “you know what” out of me. Okay? If it doesn’t scare you nothing I can say will change anything, that you could receive by inspiration or shocked to be sobered. You have to want it yourself.

So it starts with this, “I’ll dwell with him who is of a contrite heart,” because God won’t if we don’t. If we aren’t able to be ashamed of things we do wrong, if we can’t be ashamed of times when we become whatever it might be that’s just wrong, jealous, envious, angry, whatever it might be. If we can’t be ashamed of those kinds of things something is wrong with the mind big times.

...and humble spirit. This is who God will dwell with. He won’t dwell with someone who’s filled with pride. If they think they’re something, if they think they deserve more, if they’re better than others in the Body, in the Church and they look down upon others with smugness and distain because they’re better. You think that doesn’t happen a lot? Because it does. Think, “Oh, I’ve never done that. I’ve never had that kind of attitude toward anyone in God’s Church.” I’ll just tell you right now it’s happened a lot and it’s still happening.

You know, I know those things when they happen. I can see them. I’ve been given the ability to see them through experience in serving in God’s Church and through the power of God’s spirit. It’s a spiritual thing. I don’t go around and tap people on the shoulder and say, “Do you know what you’re doing?” No, it’s either we hear when it’s given or we don’t because that’s the only thing that has meaning because that gives us the opportunity for making choices as to how we’re going to respond. It’s individual.

And to revive, or bring to life, the spirit of the humble. You know, if we’ll humble ourselves God will work in us and lift us up. He’ll give us a greater, stronger life, greater inspiration and help and ability to grow on a spiritual plane. He wants that for us. He wants to give us that in our life. His Son died and He gave His Son to die so that we can have that. That’s mind-boggling! Yet we really don’t grasp that. We really don’t grasp that fully. We grasp it in varying measures within the Body but to grasp that in its fullest it’s not that easy.

...to revive, to make alive, to bring to life the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. If we do those things, if we feel ashamed when we’ve done sin, we hate what we’ve done, so much so because we want His way of life, and we cry out to God, He gives us the help we need.

That’s the message in large part that’s going out at this Feast. It’s been correction, been admonishment, been that which should be sobering to people, to all of us, candidly. I love what one person told me yesterday. Someone came up to him and said, “I bet you were thinking about me during that sermon.” He said, “No, I was the only one in the room.” It’s a good answer. You know what that means? “It was for me. I was just hearing what I needed.” If we don’t think that way, every one of us, something is wrong, okay? Incredible.

He went on to say, verse 16—For I will not contend, in other words, with mankind forever. God has a plan: 6,000 years, 1,000 years, and another hundred years and then it is all over with for mankind.

I will not content forever, neither will I always be rough. It’s hard for people to translate things sometimes because sometimes things about anger, wrath, in the Bible, and things that have happened that God has done, you know, thousands killed because they were bitten by snakes. It’s like, “Boy, that’s a mean ole’ God and we’re so thankful Jesus came to free us from that harshness.” Because that’s kind of what they think. And no, don’t you get it? Don’t you know what we deserve as human beings? God’s merciful to us because sin requires one thing – death. We don’t deserve anything else but that if we can grasp it. Every sin we ever have requires payment on our part, and that payment is death. It’s a penalty for sin.

People minimize the seriousness of sin and so we don’t think about that; it isn’t real to us. Because just like Adam and Eve, they got by with certain things (they thought), because God didn’t do it immediately. Because what did Satan tell them? “Oh, you won’t surely die if you do this.” So they didn’t. What did that do? They just sinned more because they knew, “We didn’t die.” But you’re going to. You know, everybody dies because there is more to the plan. It’s about eternal life or eternal death and being dead for eternity because of sin. Incredible.

So this word here is about, the closest in one respect, is provoked to anger because of man’s sins, his defiant ways; provoked in the sense of God has to make a choice, a decision of when He intervenes depending on the situations to chasten, to punish. There is always sin, but there are times then that God has intervened in the life of Judah, especially, the Israelites, or the life of the Jewish people when they had kings. When they would turn away from Him, in order to bring a nation back, they had to suffer. They wouldn’t learn any other way because they’re very carnal. Human beings, we’re very carnal, and so God would allow things to take place, would do things that would hopefully bring them back, because that’s the only way they could hear.

So they had to be shaken to the core of their being so that they would be humbled enough to begin to say, “I need help! We can’t deliver ourselves. We have this oppression of this other government, of this other military, and we want out from underneath that.” And so they’d begin to cry out to God.

So this is a part of what God’s talking about here, and it’s individual in life too within the Church, of how sometimes God will work with us, to allow us to get into a predicament, certain things in life, and He allows those things to fester and to get worse. He doesn’t intervene to change it. He lets us experience things with the desire that we will turn and repent and change and turn back to Him, in that respect, because we’re drifting away. He’s very merciful in that.

This is what it’s talking about basically here when it says certain things that have happened. He says, “I’ll not always work with mankind in that manner,” basically, because of sin. He didn’t destroy all of us because He has a plan so He pulls away, He backs away and He lets us do our own thing and to learn. Just like now, like 6,000 years, we can’t govern ourselves.

How many kingdoms have risen and fallen and we can’t govern ourselves. Eventually someone comes in and just wipes you out because yours isn’t right and theirs is stronger and so they think theirs is great and mighty and that’s the only way of life for people to live. Then after a while someone comes along and conquers them and God allows those things and, frankly, brings some of those things about for the very purpose of helping us to come to acknowledge something that is so hard to do. We can’t govern ourselves! We need God’s government and life to live, to succeed.

He says, “I’ll not always deal with mankind in this way,” in essence, for the spirit should fail Me, and the lives which I have made. God has a plan. He has a desire to bring people into His family. That’s what He’s talking about here.

For the iniquity of his covetousness was I provoked, if you will, had to intervene, had to do certain things, because otherwise, well, the mind can do exactly what happened before the flood, come to a point where it can’t even be saved, come to a point where the mind is so messed up. Just like what happened to Lucifer. He destroyed his own mind. He corrupted, as it says there, his own mind. Human beings have done the same thing because of what path they followed.

For the iniquity of his covetousness was I provoked and punished him. I hid myself, in other words, drew back, pull back, and was provoked, and he went on contrary or defiantly in the way of his heart, showing what we’re like so often.

Now, God does that in the Church. God does that in individual lives. He’ll give words, we have the ability to listen and to hear and to repent, and if we can’t be filled with shame or regret or a desire to turn to God then God pulls back and He lets us go on more defiantly in our way with the hope that we come to a point where we just so fall flat on our face, that we’ll say, “Boy, that was dumb,” or we become weaker to a point where we realize “This isn’t the way it was when I was first called or last year or two years ago, and my life doesn’t have the kind of fullness and richness that it had before,” and hopefully come to a point of repentance. It’s a choice. What do we want? How much do we want God’s way of life?

God’s telling us how He’s worked with us as human beings, and so that’s why it talks about here, in that respect then, that He cuts us off. “I hid Myself.” He cuts us off so we can’t have access to Him. “Let your companies...” Whatever you trust in “let it deliver you. You’re going to fall flat on your face. Your pride, that hot air, you’re going to have to learn the hard way if you can learn at all. What do you want? Do you want My way? If you really want your own way suck it up, have at it, go do it, see what it produces in your life, see the misery and the suffering.” I’ll tell you what, people who leave, wow, there is no hope. The misery, the suffering that goes on in the human mind, you don’t know unless you’ve been there and been drawn back out of that or blessed to repent of that. Then you can be sobered by it even more so.

So, I hid Myself, in other words, withdrew Myself. Even if it’s a whole Church – “Spew it out of My mouth. It can’t be a part of Me. I cannot dwell with it. I cannot be with it,” because it’s against the way God is and against His purpose for us. If we won’t listen then He has to spew us out of His mouth, even an entire Church, to cut it off, to pull away. And can we learn? What happened? It’s a spiritual thing and you can’t wake yourself out of a spiritual sleep because everybody was asleep.

...and was provoked; and he went on contrary, defiantly in the way of his heart, his own way. I think I’m going to continue on here in a moment but I want to read Isaiah 59 because this really goes with this a little bit later.

Isaiah 59:1—Behold the Eternal’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save. See, the problem isn’t with God. The problem isn’t with Him. It’s with us! Neither is ear heavy that He cannot hear. Sometimes people in God’s Church have wondered, “Well, why doesn’t God intervene? Why am I going through this? If I’m in His Church why isn’t He helping me? Why doesn’t He intervene and change this that I’m suffering through?” “Oh, you poor thing! You poor, poor thing. What is it you’re suffering so greatly? Did you suffer like the Messiah who died for you so you can be forgiven of your sins? You going through some hard times? Blame me, get upset at me? Did you ever think to look at yourself? Are you looking at yourself? Are you looking at things you’ve done wrong in your life?” It doesn’t mean that everything that happens to us that’s bad is because of that, but the point being is do we blame God? Do we get upset with God because He doesn’t intervene more quickly in our life?

I’ve seen this happen and I’ve seen it happen of recent time, you know? Boy, that’s a tough thing. That’s a horrible thing to do, to blame God, say something like that, “Why doesn’t God hear me? Look at all the tithes I’ve given.” Oh, that impresses me. I’m sure that impresses God. Look at all the tithes. I’ve given a whole 10% of God letting me have everything that I can have in life and all He says is, “Give me 10% back and save another 10% for yourself so you can come and be enriched that much more in life at the Feast of Tabernacles and at holy days throughout the year. You can use it for that. You can be benefitted.” Because what do you value more? That 10%, to use it for something else or the riches God gives on a spiritual plane? Well, that’s a no-brainer but it certainly isn’t a no-brainer when you’re stealing from God. Something has happened to your brain. There is no brain. Sick! Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick. Sick what human beings will do.

I’ll tell you, those things are to be taken serious because that’s directly toward God. It’s one thing to say something to someone else, to get upset at someone else, to be jealous toward someone else, but I’ll tell you what, you do it directly toward God, of something that He gave and even ensured the Church still had even at the end of Sardis. After Sardis was over, after the pathetic time they went through in the end and lost all the truths they had, they still had that one. God ensured that it was there, tithing. Name of the Church, Church of God, tithing, and the Sabbath – barely hanging on, barely there to start a new era. Incredible.

I’ll tell you what, God is crying out. That is amazing! He wants us to repent; He wants to give us mercy. He wants to give us help. He wants us to make it through this short road, short distance in front of us. It just boggles the mind after 6,000 years and 2,000 years in the Church and at the end of Philadelphia and on into Laodicea and this little patch of time that we’re in now, how that little patch of time can rule people’s lives in a negative way, in a bad way. I just hope there isn’t a little patch of time beyond 2019 because of us...because of us.

The Apostasy happened because of us, because of what we did. You think something can’t be held back for a little while because of us? Oh, yes it can. Oh, yes, it can.

Isaiah 59:1—Behold, the Eternal’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither is the ear heavy that it cannot hear; but your, you’re the problem, your iniquities, your sins have separated between you and your God. That’s why He’s pulled back. That’s why you’re cut off. That’s why you’re on your own. That’s why you’re not about to see things clearly. That’s why you’re in such turmoil and anguish, because you’re not able to place your trust in God and you’re not able to love God. You can’t have peace!

You know, peace comes from God, from thinking right toward God, by obeying God. When that peace is gone what do you have? Drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama. Drama! There is too much drama still in God’s Church. People get all caught up in their own physical lives and their own families and things going on with family members who are not a part of the Body or people that they want to be a part of the Body and they’re not a part of the Body, but they’re going to save them you know, or they’re going to try to influence them or whatever it might be, or we just get caught up with other family members because that’s our life and whatever it is and our minds drift farther and farther away from the Church, farther and farther away from God. We get all caught up in it because that’s what we’re feeding off of. We’re not feeding off a loving God, of being with God’s people. We’re not feeding off of what God gives us Sabbath by Sabbath and striving to make changes in our life and realizing, “I only have power – the only power I have, the only control that I can exercise in life is right here, right here with self! And I can fight that fight.” But you can’t save anyone else – young, old, middle-aged. If you’re trying to save someone else you’re just wasting your time and you’re going to pay a horrible penalty for it because it’s sin.

There are things that must be left in God’s hand in God’s time that you can’t control, you can’t change, you can’t make human beings live a certain way of life. You can’t get caught up in drama whether it be on the job, whether it be in family or whatever it might be. You can’t get caught up in drama and that begin to be the thing that that’s all you can talk about and share with others because that’s our life. The reason you talk about all those things with others is because that’s what your life is all about. It’s not about God. It’s not about the Church. It’s not about overcoming and conquering and being thankful for this way of life. I hope we’re able to hear that. Those who can’t won’t be there.

The sin needs to stop. The living in sin needs to stop. The drama needs to stop. Drama is sin. You’re trusting in something else beside God. You’re focusing on something else beside God. You don’t have peace. If you’re living in drama you don’t have peace. You’re in turmoil. You are all stirred up. You are all bothered by things in the world and not by your own sins and not by your own battle. It should be so simple to see but it’s not because it’s spiritual.

Your iniquities have separated between you and your God; and your sins have hid His face that He will not hear.

Going back to Isaiah 57:18—I have seen his ways, beautiful. That’s what God wants for the Church. He wants to heal us... and will heal him. He’s offering us the ability to be healed in this mind. This mind is sick without God. It has no hope without God. It has no focus, no vision without God. It has no purpose without God. It just exists. It lives day by day. It gets into a routine. We can’t be that way.

I have seen his ways and will heal him; I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him

and to his mourners. That’s the whole purpose of why we’ve been called. God has given us the opportunity for this mind to be healed, to be transformed from the get way to the give, from the selfish to the unselfish, from the uncaring to the caring.

I create the fruit of the lips. We use conversation sometimes. What comes out reflects what’s in here, how we think, how we are. Peace, peace to him who that is afar off and to him that is near. Well, is has to do with God’s calling. This is all about God’s calling. Those who are near is when you have opportunity “while He is near,” “while He may be found.” This is our opportunity. If we don’t use it, maybe the Great White Throne, hopefully the Great White throne. For most it will be because people just do things out of neglect and foolishness.

Peace, peace to him that is afar off and to him that is near. Those who are afar off are those that God will call later within the Church, whether it be the different periods of time within the eras of the Church from when these things were written or whether it be the Millennium or whether it be in the Great White Throne. That’s when God will be near and what’s when they’ll have that opportunity. They’re far off right now. That’s far off.

...says the Eternal, And I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, drama, drama, drama, not at peace. It means void of peace. You don’t have peace because “like the troubled sea,” get shaken back and forth. Somebody else does something, you get shaken back that way and your life, your focus goes there and, “Boo hoo hoo.” I’m sorry; I don’t mean to put all that drama in it.

But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. It’s just can’t be at peace. It can’t rest. It just thrives on drama. It goes from one drama to another. I feel sorry for people who get caught up in drama. It’s a big hole. It’s like a black hole. It just sucks you in and you can’t get out of it unless you deeply repent because that’s what needs to take place, to place your trust in God.

What is there to be upset about? What is there to carry that’s so heavy, to feel so bothered by that we can’t control, that we can’t influence? What is it? That lack of peace that’s there, what is it? That should be so basic and so simple to see, but it isn’t when you get caught up in it. Just to love God, to respond to God with what you’re able to do, with what you’re able to have control of and know that in time God will deal with the rest in His time. Because it’s a matter of choice and if they can’t make the right choices right now you can’t help them. You can’t change anything. You can’t change things. Only self. It’s so simple. When you’re at peace with that there is a greater peace you have.

Things of drama are just the exact opposite of peace. It’s like the troubled sea it talks about here, just being knocked around by one thing to another and something else comes up and flares things up and “so and so did ‘this,’” or “so and so did ‘that,’” and you’re all troubled. Why be troubled by it? What are you going to do about it? What control do you have of it? Why can’t you be at peace? Because it’s about how you think toward God, how your life is. You don’t have to carry it. What do you have to carry? What has God given you to carry?

“I’ll heal him.” Peace, peace to him that is afar off and to him that’s near, Says the Eternal, and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire. That’s what drama is. It’s like reaching down there and the waves just keep coming and tossing you around and more stuff comes to the surface and you’re dealing with that and your life is just engulfed in that. I feel sorry for people caught in that because the worse it is it just gets worse and worse and worse because we fail to recognize our own personal relationship with God. It says, it casts up mire and dirt.

What does God say? What does God say? What is the answer? There is no peace to the wicked. If you’re allowing such things to exist in your life you better find out where the wickedness is. It’s not out there that’s causing the drama. It’s right in your own personal thoughts and thinking; and you’re thinking wrong. When we think wrong God says repent, which means to think differently. Then God can begin to work with us and help to give us peace. It’s a beautiful thing to be at peace.

So God’s purpose in Emmanuel is to change the course of mankind from being separated from Him to that of Him, God, being with us. Emmanuel. That focus is in and through Joshua the Christ. Over and over and over again God brings us back to that which is an emphasis upon repentance, understanding our own needs and our own personal responsibilities so that we can have opportunity to use what God has given us. It is an awesome thing to know that we can repent and be forgiven. As soon as we’ve repented, heartfelt, deep repentance, whatever is there is gone, with a mind that desires with that to change and to live, then, differently, to cease from doing the wrong. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I have seen some before the Feast who have done some beautiful things in my eyes. Repentance to the degree I haven’t seen repentance. God is offering us that. He wants us to have that. If we’ll yield to that process awesome change can take place and we’ll be right back to where we were, going forward more than ever before, better focused, more spiritually in unity and oneness with God. What could be more beautiful than that?

Ephesians 2. So again, incredible here what God reveals through the name of Joshua, indeed, to save people from their sins. We’re brought back to that over and over again because the purpose for that name is for the purpose of the name Emmanuel prophetically, so God can be with us. So God can be in us and we can be in God. That’s what it’s all about.

Ephesians 2:13—But now in Christ Joshua you who were once far off are made near. It’s about a process of being able to have God with us, to be with God when He’s near, when we have that opportunity, to keep it, to hold on to that. So near to God now, God with us, by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace. Every time you read about that, about the blood of Christ, it’s about repentance, our need for repentance. We have to see that over and over again, day by day because you’re selfish every day. I’m selfish every day. There is something we’re going to do that’s selfish because that’s just our nature. Not just one thing you might do selfish, you’re going to have a lot of it. It’s not that hard to find. You can work on that and begin to change that more and more, become less selfish. See, it should be diminishing with time and growth spiritually.

For he is our peace. That’s where it comes from. It comes through the process of being able to repent, to acknowledge, to accept the responsibility for our wrong thinking, for our sins, to repent of them, to want God’s way of life.

...who has made both... Now, this is speaking in the context of speaking to Israel and gentiles. It’s far more than that. It’s about that which is spiritual, that which we didn’t have before and which we’re able to have now through a calling that God gives us, through the power of His spirit and dwelling in us.

For he is our peace who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us. So it’s not just about the gentiles and about the Israelites. It’s about God and us more fully, between mankind and God. ...and having abolished in his flesh the enmity. Again here, there is that which is an enemy to God, that fights against God, that resists God, and the breaking down of that barrier, that wall begins through him, through Joshua.

...having abolished in his flesh...even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in/through himself of two, it’s not the word for “one” here that follows, but into, into, in essence, that which is new. Very poor translation here in the Old King James as far as mankind is concerned here. So just giving us the ability to become something different of God, godlike, characteristics, qualities, to have the virtues of God exist in our life, so being blessed to be molded into a new creation. That’s what it’s about, a new person, something different than what we are as human beings.

...so making peace. Peace comes through that process, of being able to make that kind of change, to have those things take place in our life.

Verse 16—so that he might reconcile both unto God. So again here, indeed about Israelite and gentile, it doesn’t matter, because neither had God’s spirit in them, and God’s showing here His purpose is far greater than working with a carnal physical nation but of that which has to do with His way of life and Him dwelling in us. ...so that he might reconcile both. So in other words, the whole world, that which God worked with as a physical nation, which needs help, and the rest of the world, gentile, which needs help that was without God, that didn’t know about God. So this is what it’s talking about. It all needs to be made right with God because it’s all wrong. That’s the point of it all.

...that he might reconcile, it’s just  another way of saying everyone, all unto God, but they’re talking to a people that have these divisions amongst themselves and they could equate, they could relate to (maybe is a better word) things about gentiles and things about Jews or Judah at that time, Israelite. ...so that he might reconcile both unto God in one body, the Body of Christ, the Church of God. That’s where it happens. That’s where we’re offered the ability to make such transition, by/through the nailing on a pole. It just goes back to this over and over again because we need to be reminded over and over again, we need repentance in our life over and over and over again because this is what it’s about, so that God can be with us. Otherwise He’s not with us and we’re out here on our own.

We can’t experience the name of Emmanuel in our life if we don’t understand the importance of Passover in our life, of what Joshua did.

...having slain the enmity by it/in it as it is, the sin. The means of getting rid of that which resists God, fights God, to be able to be forgiven of sin.

Verse 17—And came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. That peace, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s an incredible thing to have peace of mind, to have peace because you see God in the picture, you judge things by God in the picture. If you see God in the picture in things in your life drama disappears because there are things you just can’t control. God can work with it and God can inspire how it’s worked with. So you have to be careful how you think. This peace comes from God.

For through him we both have access by/through one spirit unto the Father. Emmanuel. Through him, through Christ, through that process we’re able to have a relationship with God. He just tells us these things in different ways at different times and adds a little bit more here and there so that we can grow and be inspired more and excited by God’s kind of love, by God’s mercy upon us.

Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God. And what about you, whoever you are? What God has given to you — to be called, to be fellow citizens, to have an opportunity to share with a few others something that is the richest of things, anything that mankind could hope to have or want to have or desire to have above and beyond what you can even conceive in your mind and to hold on to that and latch on to that with all of your being, to be a part of the household of God, and that will change our thinking then as well toward one another, how we think toward one another, how we act toward one another, to recognize we all belong to God. We are His family. We belong to God.

That’s why we’re tried within the Body so often then in relationships. Sometimes people don’t do well in relationships within the Body and have little scuffles and little rubbing like sandpaper at times and don’t get along in certain things and judge each other and condemn each other and think something should be done a different way, or whatever it might be, and this friction takes place. You think, don’t you get it? We’re all God’s people and there is a way things function; there is a way things work. If we can receive that even when it’s uncomfortable or not pleasant to do, but we accept that, we have a peace of mind then.

Verse 20—and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The reason it says that is because that’s how God has given everything He has to His people. There is a way that He works. There is an order. There is a way He functions. It’s God that gives it. It’s His truth, it’s His mind, it’s His way of life but that’s how He’s revealed it.

...and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Joshua the Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in/through whom all the building is fitly framed together, and grows unto a holy temple in the Lord. So God does the construction. It’s in and through Christ and what they’re doing and the work that they’re doing to fit us into a place. We go through all kinds of experiences and we go through different experiences, not always the same in any fashion or form, sometimes similar, because each one of us is different and God knows how to work with this mind and a place that He already has that He’s working to place you.

It’s not like, “Okay, I’ve worked to put him over here but it’s not going to work. We’re going to have to put him back over here somewhere because he’s just not going to fit in there, so we’ll change everything and start to work maybe putting them someplace else.” No, God orders things. He puts things in order and He calls us to fulfill certain parts of that order. If we don’t do that, you know what He does? He discards that piece and goes on to another. Someone gives up their crown? Goes to another, whatever that might be. We have choices to make. It’s going to be built... It’s going to be built.

Verse 22—in/through whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God through the spirit, something on a spiritual plane that we can’t fully grasp, but it’s about an ordered family. It’s about a functioning family that is so ordered, so meticulously ordered that we with our puny little minds don’t get yet. We can’t see it yet because we’re limited. We’re limited in the fact that we’re physical human beings. Until we’re spirit there are things we just can’t see. He can tell us about them. We can try to relate to certain things, but there are those things we just can’t get.

Hebrews 10:8—Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering, and burnt offerings, and offering for sin You did not want, neither had pleasure in it (which are offered by the law)... So here is the Levitical system, here is a system by which they lived, and yet it just pictured something that was to come later on, and it of itself only kept them together as a physical nation of people. ...then he said, See, I come to do Your will, O God. So something is being addressed, and something is being changed through Joshua that we’re all to get and to understand, that we’re to follow suit. See, I come to do Your will, O God. So what is His will? Obviously a change, to be transformed, to become something different, to yield ourselves to that with all of our being, to hold on with all of our being, to repent, to grow.

...He takes away the first... What does that mean? Took away the sacrificial system, took away going through the motion of these things that just kept a carnal, physical people together somewhat to something which is spiritual. ...He takes away the first that He may establish the second. What is the second? Doing His will. The ability that God gives us to begin to do His will. His will is that we’ve been called to become a part of Elohim. His will is that we repent of our sins. His will is that we cry out for His holy spirit. His will is to give us more power, to give us more help, to give us strength to fight those battles.

That’s what Christ was talking about in John 14 and other places when he said if we’ll pray God will answer. It’s absolute. But pray about what? Well, the whole context of chapters 14, 15, 16, 17 is about God dwelling in us and a desire for the holy spirit to dwell and be in us. It’s not about, as so many have read it in times past, that whatever you pray about God will take care of it, God will answer. No. That’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about what God’s will is for us to become Elohim and the process we live through in order for that to be accomplished.

...that He may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified. So what is that will? That we be able to be sanctified, to be set apart for holy use and purpose. That happens through the ability to be forgiven of sin, first of all, the ability to go under the water, as happened today. Someone baptized, got wet, and repented of sin, and was able to receive an incredible blessing to be able to be forgiven of sin, to come up out of the water, to walk in newness of life and had hands laid upon them to be impregnated with the power of God’s spirit, an impregnation within the mind, a new life beginning on a spiritual plane. Incredible, this process that God has given to each one of us who come into the Body in order to do His will.

By the which will we are sanctified, that’s how we’re set apart, through Christ, through Joshua, through the Passover, through the offering of the body of Joshua the Christ once for all. So it happens in a beginning with baptism and then it just continues on every day from then on, of being transformed, of repenting of this big pile of carnal, human flesh. You thought I was going to say something else.

Verse 11—And every priest stands daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, going through the routine, going through a ritual which was only a physical ritual that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything spiritual or change that could happen in their minds, which can never take away sins. Yet Joshua’s name is about that, the ability to be saved from our sins.

But this Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God. So we’re to think about those things. We’re to think about those things often, of what was given. ...from that time waiting until his enemies are made his footstool. Incredible. God’s plan is so incredibly awesome from beginning to end, or continuation. It’s incredible. It goes beyond human expression and God give us a little bit more as we grow and makes our life richer as a result of those things as we grow. Yet it says, “from that time waiting until his enemies are made his footstool.”

I think of that process and what God has given to His Messiah, to His Son, and that the enemy is anything that resists and fights against God. That’s the enemy, the way mankind has been. All that resistance that’s there because of our own nature is what God seeks to change so that we’re not enemies any longer, yet we have this in our being, in our nature that fights against God. If we yield to that it can become antichrist fully, in full bloom. If you fight it then that’ll never happen. If you fight it you can conquer it through time.

So here, waiting for the time until his enemies are made his footstool. So the point being is here that Christ was going to receive the brunt end as a human being of what people think toward God. They killed him. I think of the different parables that talk about how the different ones were sent along and then finally he sent his own son, that surely, they would treat him properly, and no, what happened? So all these things that reveal things that God has done through time. Awesome!

So it is here that people are able to see a physical human being standing there and they can kill him and justify what they’re doing is wrong. They can treat, mistreat apostles later on that come along and say, “No, this man was healed. You know there was a miracle here,” in essence, and they still hate them because they hate God, they hate God’s way of life, and so the enemies. God’s purpose and plan is to get rid of this that is an enemy, “until all your enemies are your footstool,” they’re below you, they’re destroyed, they’re taken care of.

So we can receive this in our lives as well. That’s what happens to us. It happened to Christ, it happens to everyone whom God calls. So you receive the brunt end in community sometimes, in family, on the job. It shouldn’t be a mystery. It’s the way of the world. That’s what’s going to be taken care of in time, in God’s time.

You know, Judas at one point in time there wouldn’t have thought that he was going to be the enemy, that he would be the one to betray the Son of God. If you’d have asked him at a particular time, but incredible here how the mind can work. We don’t think that we’re going to betray or that we’re going to be an enemy to God, and he didn’t. He wouldn’t have thought that way if you’d asked him and people in the Church don’t think that.

People who are sitting right now who need to repent of certain things that I have been addressing very strongly at the Feast, they don’t consider themselves an enemy to God, but that’s what they are if they don’t repent and change. If they get cut off from God they’re going to remain an enemy, mightily so, and in some ways worse than Judas. I hope you understand what I’m saying. What he did was from carnal human nature. What we do is worse because we have the impregnation of God’s holy spirit. He didn’t. We are without excuse in that regard because of the riches God has poured upon us. He’s made the way possible. How do we treat that? Sometimes like this.

For by one offering he perfected forever those who are sanctified.  Whereof the holy spirit is also witness for us; for after that He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them in those days, says the Eternal. I will put My laws into their hearts... What an incredible thing that in your mind, that there are things that are being embedded in there in our thinking because then that reflects what we are, more of God in time, we think more, we’re more at one with God, our judgments are more at one with God because they become our judgments too, because we’re in oneness with God because that’s just the way we think. The mind is being transformed to become something different. It’s a beautiful thing the more we’re able to grow in that.

And I’ll put My laws in their hearts and in their minds will I write them. And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more, again, through the fulfillment of the process of the name Emmanuel.

Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having, therefore, brethren, boldness, in other words, a freedom, a liberty. What liberty and freedom that we’ve been given is so incredible. ...to enter into the Holiest, God’s very throne, to be heard by God, to have a confidence knowing that this is what God has given to us. You can pray any time and have a confidence, absolute surety, God Almighty hears every word. He wants us to pray. He wants to hear us. He wants us to express ourselves to Him and what we’re going through and what we’re living in life. He knows what it is but there is something that happens on a spiritual plane that He can work with in the mind when we do that and as we do that that we grow from.

...enter into the Holiest by the blood of Joshua; by a new and a living way which he has consecrated, or made new for us, through the veil, and that is to say his flesh. And having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, not a pretentious heart, not one that isn’t genuine, but true with God. You know, if we can’t be true with God in what we say, in what we pray? He knows everything that’s in our mind. Why wouldn’t we be? Why wouldn’t we acknowledge and admit everything? He wants that because then He can work with us and if we don’t do that then He can’t, until we’re willing to address it and accept it and seek to change it.

Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled, our minds, our being, the way we think, sprinkled from an evil conscience... You know what that sprinkling is? The blood of the Messiah. That’s what it pictures in the Old Testament, the sprinkling of the blood, sanctifying, setting apart. That’s the only way. It just keeps going back to repentance, repentance, repentance because this is a way of life for us because of what we are, because of how we think we need it every day.

If we don’t grasp that, that we need it every day we’re missing the mark. I fear sometimes that people don’t see what they really are, that they think they’re better than what they really are. Our nature just stinks. Selfishness stinks. But we can work to change that and grow spiritually. Not meaning you’ll never be selfish, because you’ll always have something to repent of every day of your life. If we don’t see that, that we have something to repent of every day of our life then we’re not fighting the fight, we’re not on guard. We don’t recognize what we’re really like. We don’t see our selfishness. Something is wrong.

...having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith, hold on to it with all of your being as, like a profession that God has given to you as a way of life, a work that you have to do. He says, hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering, for He is faithful who promised. We can rely and trust on what God says. Trust God! And let us consider or think about how to stir up or encourage another (others) in love and good works. That doesn’t mean by preaching to them! That doesn’t mean by correcting them. That doesn’t mean any of them. What it means is exactly the context of things that are here, because of the changes your making because of your life and your yielding to God and how you treat them and they see that light and that example and they are able to be encouraged and strengthened by that themselves, drawn to that to emulate, to change themselves. That’s how it works in the Body, it’s by example, by what we do and what we live. That can grow then within a body.

Let’s turn over to one last section of scripture here. 1 John 1:1—That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life... So he said something here that goes back, literally, before anything was created, that which existed, the Word. The Word was God’s.

See, this is John. John saw and knew these things in a way that other did not. He was able to write about them because of God’s spirit and how God was working with him. The things he wrote about in the book of John and some of those things that are revealed there and what it said in the very beginning there about the Word, the Word was God. The Word was with God because that’s God, the mind of God, the being of God. Then that was given in a being, in His Son, that Word, that thinking, that mind.

It says, so that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which people have heard from prophets and from different ones through time, from things that were taught by Christ himself, that others, then other apostles were given and they were able to teach. ...which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, what it produces in life and the very fact that they saw Christ and the life he lived and the example that was his. They saw the word of life manifest in him. This is what he’s talking about, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life. Now he goes in and showing that not only was that in Christ, but we’ve handled of the Word of life. We’re able to live this way of life, that Word can dwell in us. We can partake of the very mind of God.

These are things that are so incredible. They should be so moving and so inspiring to us, to realize what God has given to us. To have of His mind, His Word dwell in us?

For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life... How did they do it? By what was taught. By their example, as well, as to what they were living. We’re able to show unto you that eternal life. This is what it is, these words. That’s what it is. ...which was with the Father, God’s Word made flesh, and was manifested unto us. Emmanuel. God with us. ...that which we have seen and heard we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us. Beautiful thing. Fellowship that we’re able to have with one another because we belong to God, because we all receive the impregnation of the holy spirit through our Passover, being able to be forgiven of sin, and that impregnation of the holy spirit that we receive from God then that is able to grow in us and we’re able to have a unique fellowship with one another. Believe the same things. Share the same things of a way of life. You can’t share this with others in the world. You can’t share it with family who hasn’t been called fully. Only to a degree. That’s very limited so often. We desire then the time when that will be rich and we’ll be able to even do that. But now this is a spiritual family spoken of here.

...that which we have seen and heard we declare unto you that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship, because of that, because of what we have with one another, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. This is the Church of God. This is the Body of Christ. This is where God’s spirit works. This is where we learn so much about what’s truly inside of us.

...with the Father and with His son Joshua the Christ. These things we write unto you so that your joy may be full. It’s just like the command to rejoice at the Feast. God gives us these things in eight days that we’re able to hear and focus upon and be moved by and inspired by because we’re separated from the world and we can focus more clearly and God can work with us more powerfully on a spiritual plane to feed us more, to inspire, to stir us up, and to help that joy that He wants us to take with us wherever we go back home.

So an ability to rejoice in God and His plan, His purpose being worked out in us is through Joshua the Christ and prophetically through the name Emmanuel.

I’m going to conclude here today by reading Truth #57. To me this is awesome what God gave to us in that respect to see, to grasp more fully that was not understood nor seen fully as this is God’s time. So I’m just going to read it to you.

57 (7) Through the power of the holy spirit, Almighty God will “dwell” IN His Family into everlasting life... It was a beautiful thing revealed, mightily so, given at a Feast. ...and they will always dwell IN Him. What can be more beautiful? See, right now we hurt ourselves through sin. I’ll just read the thing; it’s here.

“This will be accomplished through the power of the holy spirit that emanates from God and it will never cease to be ‘coming into’ the lives of all who are in God’s Family. This will be a perpetual and continuing process into everlasting life.”

“Once begotten of God’s holy spirit, the flow of the holy spirit can be suppressed and completely removed (cut off) from a begotten person’s life.” We’ve read about that in Isaiah today. That’s the problem.

“God dwells (abides, lives) IN the life of a spirit begotten person [Emmanuel – through him] (a person of the holy spirit) and they therefore dwell IN Him. Through the power of the holy spirit, the life (nature, truth, Word, way of life) of God begins to dwell in a begotten person’s life (in the spirit essence given to the human mind), helping to change the very way one thinks and lives, from that of selfishness and pride to that of outgoing concern and love toward others.” Consideration, thinking about others, not focused on self.

“This power however is suppressed and sometimes cut off because of sin, as God will not dwell in sin. Once given spirit life in a resurrection from death (or resurrection from physical life) to spirit life, this process of God dwelling in a ‘born’ person’s life (no longer begotten), and they in Him, will never cease nor be interrupted, but will be perpetual and continuous into everlasting life.”

That is so incredibly awesome, beautiful.

“Each member who is born into God’s Family has independent reasoning and thought, but each is perfectly united in purpose, will, and one way of life through the power of the holy spirit that will forever abide in them (which continuously emanates from God—who is the source). It is God ‘forever dwelling’ in each member that makes the Family of God a reality in ‘one’ perfectly united way.”

So again, what an incredible thing to understand that this is about a fulfillment of a name given to Joshua that he carries as prophetic, Emmanuel.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1