Resurrection – Effects of Anxiety

The “Musts” of God: What He Wants from You

When people talk about, “What must I do to be saved?” I don’t; I’m going to speak for this church and I’m going to tell you this very simply put. God expects that once you have an encounter with Christ through His word, that you come to a place of faith, to a place of amen where you say, “That happened. He is Lord,” not robotically, to come to know Him in reality. Not some box I check, but something that suddenly the word of God is no longer a book with words.It is alive and comes alive to me. “What must I do to be saved?” Okay, the answer is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, have faith in Him, trust in Him, that He is the Messiah, that He is the Deliverer, that He has the power to save because He did what He did at the cross, that He’s coming back, that He’s promised you and me eternal life.♪ ♪ Now many years ago I delivered a message about the musts of Christ, the use of the Lord’s words, “one must,” “he must,” all right? It’s quite a significant word in the Greek, the word die, and I’ve got my Theological Dictionary of the New Testament in front of me, Erdmann’s, and they’re in so many volumes, so I mentioned it, all right? But if you look under the Greek word dei, it says, “The character of necessity or compulsion in an event. In most cases, the word bears a weakened sense derived from everyday processes. It thus denotes that which is given, which in a given moment seems to be necessary or inevitable to a man or to a group of men.” Then if you move on, there was something that I found very interesting and that is that there are 102 occurrences of the word either dei, which translates to our English word “must,” or deon esti, which would be the equivalent of “one must” or “you must”; 41 of the 102 occurrences are found in Luke’s writing. That’s pretty significant, significant in the way we know how Luke used words.So this is what I want to actually focus on a little bit, a dining in of a word which I think is very helpful for us a lot of times, not so much in the technical, and linguistic, but in the actual applications and examples. So let me give you examples to kind of set the stage for the message. Let’s start with the boldest of the musts of our Lord coming out of the mouth of a young boy, possibly no older than 12 years old, and He says, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Now this statement is made in conjunction with Him going into the temple, His parents leaving and leaving Him behind.Well, we’ll leave that part alone for a bit. I don’t know how you’d leave your kid behind, but whatever. Okay, so what’s interesting about what He says, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” coming out of the mouth of a young person like that is the fact that He didn’t, He didn’t say, “Don’t ye know I’m just a kid and I should be able to play and do whatever I want and get a trophy for showing up,” right? But at this young age He says, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Now here’s my thinking. How could a child be so focused and say, “This is what I must do, and don’t you know that this is what I must do?” Now, wouldn’t you be surprised, moms and dads out there, if your kid turned around and said, “Hey, I got business to take, I got the Father’s business to take care of,” you know, you’d be kind of like, “Whoa, what happened there?” But I think the big thing is to see there is no harm.And I will probably take a lot of flack for this, but I do not care. There is no harm in teaching a child the Bible. There is no harm in steeping and raising your child in the Lord’s word. There is no harm in opening up the horizons to be able to sit down and talk about, even if they are done in more simplistic ways, what God does how He does it, and who we are in Christ. So it’s interesting, this must be the first one that kind of caught, my mind. Now, we have another one of Christ’s musts. He says, “The Son of man must be lifted,” and this passage directly tells us, this is now, He’s much older, which tells us that He knew exactly what His mission was. He was not confused. I wish that we would even just take; I could make a whole message just out of these two verses.I wonder what would happen to the church if two things, if we all took it seriously as in we all have something to do in the Father’s realm, like Christ, said, “Don’t you know I must be about my father’s business?” if we all took that as, we all have a part in that, number one. And number two, the fact that when Christ said He must be, He must be lifted, He must die, that we also come to accept we have a mission too. I often feel like a lot of Christians don’t see the vision and the value of what God has placed in front of them. And that mission and that value, if you will, is not just so that you can be infused and imbued with information, but you also become a beacon of light for other people. And I’ve said this before, I am not a proselytizer, I don’t like people coming up to me and talking to me about, you know, “Do you know God? Do you know who God is?” But I am a big fan of conversation at any place, at any stage, if someone is open to having the conversation.And that makes every one of us if you just took these two musts, that makes every one of us kind of understand these musts, they are for Christ, they are His work. But we also have a part in it. If you remember last week I talked about fellowship. This is almost directly tied into that in some way, shape, or form. Before He says, “The Son of man must be lifted ,” He says, “The Son of man must suffer many things.” Now who walks around telling other people, “This must,” out of necessity, according to this dictionary, “This must come to pass,” this “I must,” can you imagine walking around town saying, “Yeah, I’ve got to suffer. I must suffer”? You’d have people looking at you going, “Yeah, okay, all right.” But if you understand in the context of what He was saying, that this is inevitable, it must happen.And I think as I said, just looking at these, it actually kind of could make you see how we are kind of, we’ll say, a little bit laxer when it comes to the kind of digging in, seeing what His musts were. Now He also gave musts to us, which I will get to later on in the message. But back to when He said, “The Son of man must suffer many things,” this was in direct connection to Him saying, “The temple must be destroyed.” He made all these statements. And what I love about this is, that it’s not just, “This is what must happen.” You read the book and you realize that is exactly what happened.So His musts that He declared were, we’ll call them, of necessity. Not “must” as in a mandate that may or may not, but “must” as in there is no way, shape, or form that this is not going to happen. So you get that emphasis, I think, is pretty important. Now, why did it become a must, this is self-evident, for Christ to go to the cross, why not? We could have just said, “You know, whatever happens, happens,” but there was something else said. You remember repeatedly, “The Scripture must needs be fulfilled.” I want you to think about that. That’s another one of those mind-boggling things that what was written afore time must come to pass. Now imagine making these statements. We wouldn’t be standing here. We wouldn’t be sitting here if the statements didn’t come to pass. That’s, that’s the obvious one. Somebody says, “This must happen. This inevitably must happen,” and it doesn’t come to pass. Christ said He must die. He must suffer many things. He must die, “Don’t you know I must be about My Father’s business? These are the things I came to do.The Scripture must needs be fulfilled.” And then nothing happens. This is why when people argue about the veracity of Christianity in Christ, I have to say this is where faith kicks in. You either read this book with confidence that the writers were chronicling to leave us the information that we process, that we take in, that we must somehow come to the faith in or not. And so this is why I think it’s interesting. These words, and I’m emphasizing the word “must” obviously, I think is interesting because it keeps something in focus. Let me go back and reread this, in case you think I am just trying to kill something already dead. The emphasis on the word “character of necessity or compulsion in an event, and in most cases moments that seem to be necessary or inevitable to man or a group of men,” inevitable: this must happen. So this is why I stand here because I’ve come to the place.You read this and you kind of go, it, it happened. There’s no question that it happened. So if you take all of this information, if it didn’t happen, we’re just a bunch of fools gathered talking about imaginary stuff, but it happened. So let’s get back into the musts because these actually will lead us to first His musts and then ours. He also says elsewhere, Christ says, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.” And that brings me to an interesting must for, even though this is a must for Him. I want to make this a little license because there are some things we can apply to us. When will people stop putting off for God? I want you to think about that. So, you know, we, we’ve often had the caricature of the evangelist, “If you died today, do you know where you’re going?” and all that good stuff, all right? But the fact of the matter is there are so many people in the sound of my voice that procrastinate and put off what, if you think about and take a page out of Christ’s work, He says, “I must work the works of him that sent me while it is the day,” while we still have the time.This is Why Paul said we are to redeem the time, the days are evil, while you have the time; not when you’re on your deathbed, not when you can barely see, but now, today, if you hear His voice. So, you know, if you kind of start picking these apart, it Actually may be a little bit of a conviction that we could get so complacent in a lot of our understanding, even Scripture we read regularly. There’s another interesting must of Christ, which I’ve referred to in the last two or three weeks, I’m sure.That one is Christ referring to, He said, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” Now that’s a future time, but He said there are sheep that He must bring in that are not of this flock. So again, things that have come to pass or things that will come to pass, and this specific one I know scholars are all over the map on this. I’m a big believer in the fact that this was God’s way of putting in the book, Think of this, people that do not view Christ as Lord, future time, remember, we talked about this, will look on Him and know He is Lord. There’ll be no confusion.You know, right now People can fight about which prophet or which deity, but when You stand and you’re standing before God, I don’t think you’re going to have too much more to argue about, but That’s just my opinion. What do I know, right? Then you have, as I said Jesus’ many statements that He makes that He must lay down His life for the sheep. He says He must rise again from the dead, of course, He did. Just if I was preaching on a message about the Resurrection, this one-word would be important. And the reason why? Because if He said, “The Son of man must die, the Son of man came to suffer many things, this is what must happen” and it didn’t, again, we’d be reading, we’d be quoting Paul, but not for Christ, “Our faith is vain,” right? Because Paul said, “If Christ has not risen, our faith is vain.” So I want you to think that they must are tethered essentially, all in all, to Christ’s death and Resurrection, because of all the other stuff that was said, “I must━don’t you know, I must be about My Father’s business,” could have just been a statement if these other things didn’t happen.You’ve got to start with those musts, death and Resurrection, then everything else becomes clear. So I would say there are a lot of musts from Christ that we should be cognizant of. Now there are other musts, and I’m going to touch on this one real quickly, but I’m going to come back to it, because, I want to finish the message with this for another reason. If you remember in the passage in Luke, don’t turn there, because we’ll turn there in a little bit. Christ, upon seeing the tax collector Zacchaeus, and says, “Make haste, and come down; today I must abide in thy house.” And I was thinking about this must. See, Christ is still doing this, but we don’t have these, you want to call them vignettes or stories; Christ is still doing this. He’s not saying, you know, “Hey, you up there come down and you must,” No, but He’s still saying, “I must come and abide in your house,” this tabernacle. He’s still saying that, and that’s what’s important when you read this to recognize that these musts are still in force. They’re still applicable, they’re still powerfully moving if we are analyzing them right.And of course, I, as I said, we’ll come back to this, but Zacchaeus was going to be saved. We have that crystal clear in that passage, and I always think it’s thrilling because something about that man who we know had to be ripping people off━he is a tax collector. Come on. And Jesus focuses on him, calls his name, and says, “I must abide with you.” And that tells me that, you know, again, when people say, “Well, how does salvation occur? How do these things happen? What is the process?” Let’s read that. God finds you right where you are. Now granted, Zacchaeus was curious, and he went to look. He wanted to see about this Jesus.But when Jesus said, “I must abide,” essentially in his house, it wasn’t as though━how many houses were around Jesus. He could have taken up anywhere, but it was that one that He wanted. Again, I’m going to come back to this, because this is the picture I want people to understand. I’m tired of the whole idea somehow that we, we play, we have a façade. If this isn’t where the rubber meets the road, and if this isn’t helping you to live out your life as a Christian, then as I said, maybe Christianity isn’t for you. And you might say, “How could a pastor say that?” I did. I just did. Do you want me to say it again? I mean what I say, and I say what I mean. So the reason why this is important, as simple as it is, is you can understand He had a focus, and He repeated his focus, “I must.” And when you start looking at all of the musts that He declared for Himself that He must do in His brief ministry on earth, and then what He must do, be raised, obviously reappeared, and then ascended, and will return. But this is all part of these musts.And again, for somebody who’s just starting, you might say, “Well, okay, He said all this for Him.” Yes, and, we should learn of that, by the way. Remember where I started. If we all took the position, “I must be about my Father’s business,” it doesn’t mean that you spend all day in the things of God and the things of the church, but a commitment like that says, “I’m serious about God.” Now I’m not suggesting we walk around and say, “I must be about my Father’s business.” People are going to say, “Okay, yeah.” But this is my commitment as a child of God.I’m not just in, I’ve not just been thrown into some little play universe. God expects something of me. And whether that’s my simple faith or whatever else He requires of every one of us as He reveals His plan and His will for you in your life, some musts must be applied. So we’ll start with the first one. It’s the one, and now we’re going to talk about us, not Him, but us. So the top of my list, and I’ve preached this many, many times, but I’m going to talk about this real quickly and move through it, so the first one at the top of my list is Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” And I love to talk about this, and I cannot talk about this enough. I want you to think about this. Nicodemus was a religious man. He knew God. He at least knew the God of the Old Testament; Let’s put you this way. There was no New Testament yet. So it’s not as though he was godless.Christ says, “You must be born again.” That translation strictly word for word from the Greek, “You must be born from above,” because the question is, “Well, how can a man when he’s old go back into his mother’s womb?” And what Christ was saying there, and I’ve preached on this many times, “You cannot will yourself into the kingdom. You cannot act yourself into the kingdom. You must be born again from above.” And I don’t care how religious you think you are. If that Spirit of God does not descend and take up residence in you, you are not born from above. And I’ve said this before. I used to listen to Dr. Scott’s comments, I believe it was Jimmy Carter, and he used to say, “I believe in the born-again experience.” No. I believe everyone must be born again. Period. No experience. Period. This is a must and a mandate of God.It is a necessity. When you put it that way, it becomes clear. It’s not an experience. It’s not a choice. You either are receiving your salvation and all the motivation that comes with it, that power to change, that power to have faith, that power to understand, the desire to learn from above or nothing at all, or you’re operating in the flesh, which a lot of people do. They don’t understand this passage and they think, “Okay.” So that’s number one.So to be clear, for those people who maybe don’t think, you know, they think, “How, how spiritual, a very religious, self-righteous Nicodemus,” when in fact Jesus said, “No. All that info that you have is info in your brain, but you need something from above.” And without that, you ain’t going to do any musting, all right? All right. The next one is out of the book of Acts, and there’s a statement there that says, “We ought to obey God rather than men,” and this verse says, “We must obey God rather than men,” if you read the translation aright.So What does that mean? It means you must be a follower of Christ and a learner of Christ to be a Christian, and when we talk about this, this is quite relevant today. You can decide that you want to be in on the latest trends, and you want to identify as a giraffe today, and that’s fine. Or you understand you’re a child of God and you identify with the heavenly Father and in that identification, I must come to an understanding. God has a plan for my life which is revealed in this book, which is why the great commission is “Go into every corner and make learners, make disciples.” He didn’t say, “Go make entertainment.” He didn’t say, “Go make fans that are, “Whoo, Jesus, yay!” No; make learners.Now how many of you, I, I want to hear you on this because I think a lot of people think the church is an entertainment center. It’s to be taken lightly. It’s a game. How many understand that learning takes effort and is difficult? Do you know the worst part of learning? Learning things you don’t want to learn and you’re not interested in. Trust me, been there and done that. You don’t go through a Ph.D. program without being subjected to having to read stuff. You’re like, “Oh, I would rather watch paint dry than read this stuff”” okay? But it’s opening up your mind because if you’re going to get an education, that’s how you get educated. You don’t just educate yourself on, “I want to become a mechanical engineer so I only learn about this dimension.” No, there are other things that you would want to secondary or tertiary subjects that will complement and give you a better understanding, maybe beyond that even.So when it says we must obey God rather than man, even in the current climate of things. Important for people to get this right, We are not following the multitude and what the multitude does. Now, if you want to do that, that’s your business. I’m not interested. I’ve seen what the multitude is going for and I’m, I’m just not there. I don’t want it, okay? So, but if I’m going to say this right, I’m going to say what the book of Acts says that we must obey God rather than man.We must learn about God. We must understand, process, and take it in and that requires effort. Don’t come to a church, this church, or any other church and think, “Oh, I’m going to learn. Oh, I’m going to learn like it’s going to be a great hour-long massage and I’m going to walk out of there and I’m just going to feel like a bag of marshmallows.” No, learning is tiring.It’s exhausting. It makes your brain hurt. If you’re listening, I told you this before, your heart rate goes up. You do not necessarily break out of sweat, but your body temperature does get hotter. There are different components in your body happening as you really if you’re listening versus the people that I’m just talking right now and they’re going, “Wah wah wah wah wah wah,” right? Or she said, “Must. Oh, I must go to the grocery store later.” That’s those, you know, undisciplined, “I’m not here. I’m here but I’m not here” type people. All right, so I’ll move on to the next one because I think I killed that one. The question that is always asked in the Bible is, “What must I do to be saved?” And the reason why I’m going down there is I realize with so many new people, there are so many people asking questions and coming in with all kinds of weird ideas.So I just figure, you know what, this is a message that can cover a lot of the problems. It’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty simple. Let me ask you this. What would you do if you were dropped on a desert island? You’re all alone. You don’t have a Bible. You don’t have a Bible teacher. But you suddenly decide, you cry out and you say, “I want to know You and I want to be saved.” Now faith says, you know, God can open up your mind and God can through the Spirit do stuff. But I want you to think about this.We are so distracted that when people talk about, “What should I do to be saved?” they go down a laundry list so that the person who thinks, “Well, if I check all these boxes, I will have arrived.” If you watch any of these religious programs, they will go through their shtick, and at the close of the shtick, they will say, “Now, if you want to be saved, you must repeat this prayer. And once you repeat this prayer, you are saved.” I have a problem with that.And the The reason I have a problem with that is that no two people are alike. Somebody watching that same person on TV may be in a terrible crisis, in terrible torment, and they’ll latch onto anything because they’re desperate. And you’ve got other people who may just go through this kind of rote, “I’m a sinner and I know I’m a sinner.” And there’ll be people who’ll say, “Well, how could you even criticize that, because that’s showing people who don’t know?” Well, here’s my problem with that. There are a lot of people who don’t know who didn’t have the auditorium or the front row experience or who come up and say the sinner’s prayer. They were just saved by hearing the word of God. No one coerced them. No one kicked their shins, “You’re kicking my shins! You’re kicking my shins!” When people talk about, “What must I do to be saved?” I don’t; I’m going to speak for this church and I’m going to tell you this very simply put. God expects that once you have an encounter with Christ through His word, you come to a place of faith, to a place of amen where you say, “That happened.He is Lord,” not robotically, to come to know Him in reality. Not some box I check, but something that suddenly the word of God is no longer a book with words. It is alive and comes alive to me. “What must I do to be saved?” Okay, the answer is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, have faith in Him, trust in Him, that He is the Messiah, that He is the Deliverer, that He has the power to save because He did what He did at the cross, that He’s coming back, that He’s promised you and me eternal life.Number four on my list, “He that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Have you heard the word must again? You must believe that. You must believe that. It’s not enough to come and say robotically, “I follow Christ.” No. I believe that not only He is God, but He is also a Rewarder. Now, that shouldn’t make you think, you know like you just pulled the jackpot in Vegas or something. Don’t━it’s not like that. He is a Rewarder of them who diligently seek Him. He rewards people who are seeking Him out, and how does He reward them? Some, with some, in favor, with others, it may be extra faith, and some are extra blessed in other ways.I can’t tell you, maybe it’s a spiritual gift, but whoever comes must believe that He is and that He is a Rewarder. You don’t just come and it’s like, “Oh, I just showed up now.” No, I’m standing in line. God told me to come here today and I’m standing in line until my number is ultimately called and I’m, and I’m not only faith, trusting, and believing all that He said, but He has also promised to reward the ones seeking Him out. And whatever that might mean to some, I can tell you what it means to me. You may say, “Well, do you think that’s a reward?” Yeah, I do actually. My reward is God’s given me extra faith.He’s given me, the surety that I’m not alone. He’s given me the surety of eternity. I can keep building on these. They all come back to the same place, very repetitive. All right, we’ll go to the next one and I think this one is also an important must. “He must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.” This is why it’s important for the church of Jesus Christ right now to get its groove back: “He must reign,” He must reign until what? “He hath put all his enemies under his feet.” Now we know that that last act is death. The last enemy is death. And if you want to think about it, it’s not just death, it’s also, if you read the last book or the last book of the Bible, Revelation, you’ve got the devil. But for the Christian, think of it this way. What are people talking about when somebody who is not familiar with the book, somebody dies and goes into a depression?It goes into what’s, what was and there’s no, there’s no hope, there’s no future. So the last enemy being laid down, I love this one because it says very clearly, that the enemies of the children of God and specifically the last enemy, death, are vanquished. Now if this doesn’t make you realize that all this other fretting stuff over here wasn’t worth too much because He says, “This, this must happen.” And this is why the church of Jesus Christ, no matter what’s going on in the world, still must reign.There still must be a voice leading people and guiding people, not entertaining all of this woke garbage and all of this stupidity of the world, but rather focusing on our Lord and Savior, focus on what He said, focus on what He said must happen. And guess what? You’re going to find something incredible when you realize, you know, sorry to say this, there are predictions from AI about when World War III will start. It’s kind of very interesting. If you look these things up, it’s kind of like, “Oh, okay, that’s, that’s interesting.” And somebody said, “Well, don’t, don’t you care?” Well, at the moment when I think about it, I want to do all that I can for the kingdom, but if somebody’s going to launch a bomb that’s going to blow up the world, there’s not too much you can do about it, right? Except for the Christian, because you understand God’s promises are. Now everybody must make the trip.I’ve said this before, but He says that the last enemy’s death is vanquished. That means for the believer, no matter what happens, we will be with Him. So I like reading these musts. They are not only informative, but they enforce something about our faith where it becomes clear. You, if you are worried about all this stuff to the point of having a meltdown, your focus is in the wrong place. Remember, I taught out of Psalms 42 and 43 when people are depressed and down, “Why art thou downcast, O my soul.” Why are you looking there instead of looking up to Him? Why are you looking at the problems? It’s not like you weren’t warned as a Christian. I’m not saying that they’re effective now, but wars are the rumors of wars, tribulation, the Great Tribulation. Somehow, and then people act like, “Oh, I’m surprised. I didn’t know this was going to happen.” Well, we’re not in it right now. That’s number one.And number two, expect it; that’s what we are to expect. We’re to expect persecution. We are to expect the world to hate us. There’s some, “Why do people hate us so much?” Why did they hate Jesus so much? Okay, don’t answer the question. It’s all good. So next must, here we go, that “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.” And I highlight this one because it is one of these pieces of information that people just gloss over.He must be worshiped in spirit and in truth, which brings me back to what He said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again from above.” That’s your connection, to be able to worship in spirit. And if you think about it, Jesus said, “I am the truth.” So this whole idea of how we worship, and I just want you to think about this, and don’t take offense. Anybody listening to me, we all have different ideas on worship. Now somebody could be listening during a music service, and they’re stirred in their soul by what they’re hearing, the words of the song, and they are worshiping in spirit and for their understanding and truth.And I don’t condemn that, and I don’t look upon that and say, “Oh, that’s a freak show. That’s weird.” But I don’t like the idea somehow that if you go into a church and everybody’s not all doing this because one person does it, we all must do it now. Now this is called the chorus line. This is not called worship. This is, “Oh, God, I’ve got to put my hands up now,” right? And this is what happens━trust me; I know these things, okay? This is what people do. I’m like, “Oh, God, I’ve got to put my hands up. Aw, I don’t want to clap anymore. When’s the song going to be over?” Okay? What I’m saying to you is that you could be just standing there enjoying the music and be just as much worshiping in spirit and truth as the person who is praising God with their hands.Remember I said I was going to come back to this? The idea somehow is that godliness and worship must look a certain way. That’s, I’m sorry, that’s the error right there. I, I can tell you, I think I’ve told you this story before, and I’m sure that folks there probably don’t like me telling this story, but I was at a Full Gospel Fellowship meeting and I told you they were playing all kinds of 7/11 music and everybody’s standing up and praising God. And someone’s son who I knew quite well got up and played “How Great Thou Art,” at the piano. I was the only person standing in the room and it ministered to me. I was standing up and I was praising the Lord. I didn’t care. I thought all the people in there were probably saying, “Why is she standing?” Or “She’s the only one standing.” I didn’t care.It wasn’t about anybody in the room. It was about my moment with God and that’s worship. So whatever that looks like, I mean, within reason, I’m not expecting people to━there are some churches where I was watching a video of one woman, she was, they had a dance team, and all of a sudden her dance went into breakdancing. Okay, so I’m not talking about that, okay? All right, next one; better to move on here. These are the words of John the Baptist, but if you think about it, they apply to every one of us, “He must increase, I must decrease.” And this is a big one. See, even if you think you’ve heard all this before, these are good reminders. Sometimes, we take up a lot of space and if you were to weigh out the space that we perceive to take up versus the space we allot to God, it’s kind of skewed. So this is a wonderful place to camp out, meditate, and pray because He must increase.He must take up the better part of my thoughts or my life or whatever it is, and I must decrease. It doesn’t mean I cease being. It just means that if I call myself a child of God and I’m tethered to Him by faith, then my mindset is, and my thoughts are about Him more than anything else. Now, how easy is that or how hard is that? I’m going to tell you something. When people make the statement, “Well you’ve got to think of the Lord all day long,” I’m sorry. You’re human. I’m human. That doesn’t happen.” I think about being hungry. I think about being tired. I think about how much work I have to do. I think about all the million things, but I also think about God. See, I’m human. I don’t play at church. I’m not wanting you to play at church. The important part of this reflecting on, “He must increase and I must decrease” is to remind us of proper perspective. I’ll say it this way, In an age of self-absorbedness, of in an age of ego-driven, egomaniac, selfie, whatever you want to call it, “He must increase, I must decrease” will keep a person treading on the right path.I mentioned this one before, “That the Scriptures must need be fulfilled,” and this is important for the Christian because there are Scriptures that have already been fulfilled that build our faith, and then there are Scriptures that are yet to be fulfilled. But He says the Scriptures must, it is inevitable. So when somebody goes and they read the, we’ll call them books on eschatology, specifically Revelation coupled with the pepperings of some of the prophets, the Scriptures and it is inevitable, they must be fulfilled. So when somebody says, “Well, why are you so committed and so,” because I understand something, this all must come to pass. The next one is that “we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” I’m touching on every part of everything, we’ll call it a dimension of our faith.We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and the Christian does not stand there to receive punishment. You read Romans 8, and Romans 8 says, “There is therefore now no ultimate punishment to those who are in Christ Jesus.” And people get this confused. This is much different. The throne of, the judgment seat of Christ is different than the great white judgment seat; two different and distinct moments.One is for those who have trusted Christ and those who have not. Which door would you like to pick? Never mind. It’s a very bad place to make humor, but I figured a little levity might help the situation. Okay. Number 10, “this corruptible must put on incorruptible.” This one I love; you know why? Because it’s not saying this might happen.It says this is inevitable, and I’m, I’m okay with that. Are you okay with that? This corruptible, this thing that’s rotting every single day and rotting every day that goes on inside and out must put on incorruptible, must put on immortality, must be clothed in that by God, must, this must happen. You start kind of thinking about what it means to be a Christian now when you line up all these musts. You’re not looking at game playing or entertainment. You’re recognizing these are hardcore to the point of what’s expected. All right, from the book of Acts we have another one that says, “The multitudes must needs come together.” And I want to say this happens at every age. You’ll have the banding together of people and then it’s just this kind of movement that happens over time. This one reads a little bit differently in your Bible, but if you were reading it in Greek, it would be translated as “must” and this is out of Romans 8 where it says, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought.” And that word “ought” actually would be a “must.” We don’t know how we must pray, okay? And there couldn’t be a more truer statement.So I’ll go back and kind of put this in proper perspective. Developing a relationship with somebody takes time to learn, you know, in a relationship you have to learn the language of the other person, how they think, how they speak, and until that’s figured out, it can be on rocky ground because you don’t know where the person’s coming from. But if you’re reading this book and you’re talking to God, you’re talking it out with God. You know, prayer is kind of weird. You start off thinking, you know, “Should I, should I say, ‘Dear God,’ or should I,” you know, think about sometimes how silly we are, right? I’m trying to think about how I’m going to pray or what I’m going to say versus I’m just going to sit down here and I’m going to think about God and my issues and what God’s done. And as soon as I kind of feel that everything’s congealed together, I’m going to start talking to God. And I don’t; I can’t tell you that it’s, it’s something that’s planned out.Sometimes I start talking and something else comes out of my mouth. And I didn’t, I was thinking, “I’m going to talk about, I’m going to talk to God about this,” and I’m talking to God about that. Don’t ask me because I can interrupt myself. It doesn’t matter. But what I am saying to you and what is important is if we don’t know how we must pray, then think about how ineffective a lot of our prayers are. Now I’m not saying that there’s a method to prayer like, you know, “Step one, you do this and step two,” What I’m saying though is in sincerity and genuineness. When you relate to somebody, when you’re having a relationship with somebody, you talk to them. You don’t try, and no, sometimes we’re talking to other people which I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m going to be very diplomatic and I’m, I’m going to say this in a way. You want to talk to God in sincerity and with openness of heart. And you might say, “Well, what if that sounds offensive?” Do you think that God doesn’t already know the thoughts that you’ve thought? So speaking it out to Him or meditatingly, however you want to convey your thoughts, He already knows about them.So It’s like, I’m already confirming what God already knows because He knows my thoughts and when I open my mouth and talk to Him, those thoughts and my words connect before Him. So when people try to make this like, “Well, I’m going to think about this now,” have you ever sat down, and somebody says, “Will, you pray for the food?” And instead of ━again, think about this, instead of thinking about why we’re praying to receive food and, and, or the concept of why we would even pray in receiving it. You’ll hear people take the opportunity like, “I’d like to thank the governor and,” You know, their prayer, their prayer is everything, right? “And the silverware, whoever polished the silverware today, they did a very good job.” You’re praying for the food! Now, I know I’m being ludicrous, but I’m trying to make a point that it, it has to be something that comes from here and flows out of you and that genuineness, whatever that is, that is what connects with God; nothing more, nothing less. Anybody gives you a formula, tell them to━yeah, that’s what I said.All right, the next one, which I’m sure you’ll all like, says, “The servant of the Lord must not strive,” and that is a Greek word, machethestai, or machthesthai, “to fight.” That doesn’t mean that a pastor is milquetoast or wimpish, but one who can discern between righteous indignation and blatant, we’ll call it, you know, you can distinguish Between these things, someone who’s angry because something has been done against God or the church or God’s people versus something that affects me personally. Now that personal thing could be righteous indignation if it’s about the things of God, but typically we don’t see it like that. So this daily struggle, if you want to call it this, of what the servant of the Lord must not strive, and I’m saying this because there are people, again, who get critical and they say; Sometimes I’ll say something, “Well, that was kind of brutal”” or “That was kind of harsh.” How about that was kind of honest? And how about, I’d rather tell you to speak the truth in love? And It may be brutal to try to give you some syrupy stuff that doesn’t help you with anything, doesn’t even make you face reality.So when we talk about not striving we’re not talking about someone, I’m not a brawler, and I’m not out there looking for fights, but someone capable of being firm, and leading. That doesn’t mean, as I said, imagine the shepherd, If all the shepherd does all day is take his staff and beat the sheep all day long, okay, you get the point. So I must not beat the sheep, all right. All right, I’m almost done here. For the believer, I will, I ought, or I must, you’re getting the gist of this now. So what the Revelation given to John in that book, says that the Scripture related to what John wrote “must shortly come to pass.” And I want to address this one because what does “shortly come to pass” mean if it’s been all this time? Now, and I want to answer this because I think there are a lot of people that say, “Well, you know, you talk about a lot of stuff, and all the stuff you talk about that’s past and present I can deal with, but the future stuff; how do we know it’s even going to happen because it’s been so long?” Well, again, this is the thing.The Lord talks about a day as a thousand years or a day as a thousand years. People start to go with, “Well, what is, how does that translate, and how should we think about time?” The Scripture says that all the things written must come to pass could mean another thousand years have to happen. It could mean that there are events; not could mean, it does mean that there are events that must happen that are prophetically revealed in some of the prophets that tell us when these events start to happen, other events will start to happen, which will cascade into the final events. So when it says these things must come to pass or shortly come to pass, if somebody’s reading that and saying, “Well, but all this time has passed?” Yes, but in between, many, we’ll call them things that must happen, have happened.And there are; there is an order in God’s book. So what happens, let’s just say in the middle of the week or in the middle of the tribulation, there are events leading up to that before that must take place that If those don’t happen, these other events can’t happen. So Think of it this way for people who say, “Well, I’m still not convinced because all this time has elapsed.” If you are so inclined to, you’d do yourself a really good service to read about, especially out of Daniel and some of those other books that talk about prophecies of kingdoms that didn’t yet exist In Daniel’s time, for example, that was the future that came to pass. And then you start recognizing that this whole book has enough, we’ll call them markers, street signs, neon signs to tell us these are events that have unfolded, these are yet to happen, and when this happens, trust me, you’ll know it.So when he says that the Scripture must shortly come to pass, I don’t want anybody in the sound of my voice thinking, “Well, because it hasn’t happened, it won’t happen.” No, these events will unfortunately happen on earth, ushering in, as I’ve talked about in the last week or two, the Millennial Kingdom. Obviously, for some of us who believe in this, I think it is super important to understand when it says, “This must pass. It must come to pass.” That means it will. And this is why when people don’t take their commitments and their faith and their learning about God in the now seriously, how do you expect to take it seriously when we don’t even really know the timeline of things to come? You start now.That’s all I can tell you. You start now. So here’s what we’ve learned in all of these. There were musts that Christ spoke of Himself. And if you go back and reread those musts, He fulfilled them. He fulfilled every single one of these musts when He said, “This is what I must be about my Father’s business. I must suffer. The Son of man must be lifted.” Everything that He said came to pass. Now the things that were said in direction to us, what must be, how we must be born again, how we must be saved, I want you to think of all this because the reality is when you take all of this information in, you realize that there’s a lot more, there’s a lot more substance in analyzing these words, what must happen. I said I would take you to the passage in Luke 19 to close out, and that’s what we’re going to do because I do want to show you something here. It’s a passage we’ve read before, Luke 19, the conversion of Zacchaeus. But I want you to look at this as we bring, this message to a close for a purpose, and here is the purpose.As you know, “Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press,” the crowd, and “because he was a man of little stature,” he was short. “And he ran before, climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And Jesus came to the place, he looked up, saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, come down; for today I must abide at thy house.” Now, I want you to stop right there. Anybody reading this, there’s your must. He wasn’t saying it like, “Hey, I’ve got to come in because I’ve got to use your bathroom,” or “I need a cup of coffee.” “I must abide at thy house,” it was Christ’s way of saying, I must; Forgive me, it’s a really weird way to explain this. Like the Spirit coming into a person, “I must come and live in your; in this abode.” And the only way that could happen, is because the Spirit was not yet given, was for Christ, whatever was said inside that house, whatever was done inside that house, who knows, except when everything was said and done, “Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is the son of Abraham. The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” I want the takeaway for this to be, that it is a must for Christ to take up residence in a person. This is why you must be born from above. But I also want you to take a look at something. If you looked at Zacchaeus standing or hanging in the tree, you’d say, “That’s not godliness. That’s not a picture of godliness.” Well, because all you see is a man who’s collected taxes, who’s rich, who’s probably hated by people, and probably had a hateful appearance even. But godliness looks like this, that same man said, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” That’s what godliness looks like.Don’t make the mistake of succumbing to the stupidity of the vast majority of people who think somehow this is what spirituality looks like and anything else is not. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a message like this in its simplicity cannot show you the bullet points; we’ll call them the mandatory sign points of the Christian. This is not law, this is not some mandate by God, but if you’re going to be a Christian, you be one, which means you read the words and you understand at some point, I hate to say this, but something has to happen with the words. You can take the words in, you can masticate them, and then you can forget about them, you can reflect on them, you can pray about it, or you can ask yourself, how, what, what does this mean for me? That’s the starting point in my opinion asking, “How does this apply to me and how am I to apply this?” Because once you start asking those questions, it reveals something about where you are. I sat and asked myself these questions in preparing for this message and it was kind of a revelation to me.I could do a lot better, a lot better, and that’s not work. That’s talking about pressing in and pressing close and doing all the things that I just chronicled to you today about the musts of God. So don’t think this is just an exercise in futility. For my new listeners, welcome to a church that does not; I don’t judge you, do not judge me. Welcome to a church where people come from, We’ve got Jewish people, Muslim people, we’ve got Christian people, we’ve got people who are not sure. That’s all fine because God has to sort that out for you, not me. And last but not least, we’ve got, as I said, a body of people who come together, we’re like-minded and these reinforcements for those who have been here for a long time are good because they show us sometimes, “I might be getting a little bit complacent here.I need to step up my game or step up my faith,” however you choose to say that. So I hope that this is a message that people will listen to again. And it’s not that I haven’t preached on the musts of Christ before, but this is a good staple to say, if somebody’s confused about what Christianity looks like, I just laid it out for you today. These are the words of Christ or the words of Paul or any other writer of the New Testament telling us what is important, and why it matters. And as I said, just a little bit of reflecting on these musts can carry a big weight on our understanding of where we’re at. It’s called a spiritual inventory. It’s good to do every once in a while just to see that you are still in the faith. That’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.If you would like to attend the service with us, on Sunday at 11 am, simply Call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, The address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.As found on YouTube http://flywait.4parkinson.hop.clickbank.net $49.⁰⁰Blue Heron Health NewsI thought my Parkinson’s diagnosis was a death sentence – I was so wrong! 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Christ Is the Firstfruits, and We Are the Harvest – The Tabernacle through the Eyes of Christ #18

Don't say you are a Christian. Don't parse words with me. Don't play games with me. You are a Christian when you are following Christ, period. You're not a Christian because you come to church one day out of the year. You're following Christ. And following Christ doesn't necessarily mean you come to church either. How's that for putting it the way it is? But you're following Christ, which means you are studying Him. And “Him” is not a pronoun limited to one book or one half of a book. It's the whole thing. ♪ ♪ So, we've been in a study now, I think 17-plus weeks, looking at through the lens by way of the New Testament, looking into the Old Testament.

We started with looking at the tabernacle, its furnishings, we moved on to the offerings, and now we are kind of in the set times. And it all ties together, but I've been trying to say this over and over and over again. And maybe you'll hear me repeat it a few times, even in this message today. You've got repeatedly things that are; they are types of our Lord. They are pictures. They are things that when we read them, let's just put ourselves in the Old Testament saints' shoes for a minute and there is no New Testament, just for a second, we would only be seeing one dimension, what God said to Moses, “These are the directions.” That's all we would see, all we would know; we wouldn't know that there's more.

So not just the practical application, but we, reading the full book can see the prophetical application and fulfillment in many of these things, pointing to Christ. Now if I sound repetitive on this, it's because this is what this book does. A lot of people say, “Well, I don't, I don't bother with the Old Testament because it's the Old Testament.” That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm sorry, but that is. Without this Old Testament, even reading the New Testament doesn't really make sense. You know, if you're reading “Jesus, born of a virgin,” ah, okay, but if, if you're reading the Old Testament and you can see that there were prophecies foretold that our Lord would be born of a virgin, that certain things foretelling, that's why you need the Old Testament. You can't do away with it, and why would you? It's only those people who really don't understand why it's here or they are adherence to the old way.

They are still slaying saber-toothed tigers, even though the saber-toothed tiger doesn't exist anymore. So we, we've been looking at, we started with the Sabbath, Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, marking the beginning of Israel's feasts, commemorating the deliverance of Egypt, out of Egypt's bondage and the first harvest of the year. Now the New Year would later be marked out in the fall season, so we have two New Years to deal with eventually, but I'll explain that in a minute. All of these set times, all of them, first and foremost in their practical setting, were to remind the children of Israel that time, as well as attorney; eternity, as well as everything else, belonged to God. Now, see, sometimes I think these people were really fortunate because, well, they were. They had the direct sight of everything that happened.

We are living generations after and we are having to, by faith, take everything that's here. They got to see firsthand. So if you think about it, if you lived in that day, you might be a little bit better off in some respects, unless you were the stiff-necked, rebellious children of Israel, but you might be better off in that there was some type of connection. I mean, imagine if you were in Egypt's bondage and you saw the plagues poured out and you saw the most powerful ruler in the then-known land basically succumb to the words of God, letting the people go.

I mean, something tells me it'd be a little bit different than how we are in today's day and age, very distracted, it's take it or leave it. We're all in this very, “I'm not sure it really happened, did it happen that way?” And so to really assess why God made these set times, which I've said already, the set times have a connection or a correlation to Israel's history or in general the history, for example, the Sabbath takes you right back to creation. But much of these set times as we begin to study them, we see that God is saying, I want you to remember something in perpetuity, your deliverance out of Egypt's bondage. And why is that important? Because you could read this, just reading the Old Testament here and say, “Okay, I got it already; they, God delivered them out of Egypt's bondage.” But what if Egypt's bondage is God delivering you out of a life basically with no God, full of sin? If that's, then it would be remembered. It would be something you'd keep thinking of and you'd be grateful for that God opened your eyes, that He found you.

That's called prevenient grace. So when God says to remember their deliverance over and over again, yes, He's talking about that specific act, but we who are reading this should remember two things. It's a double; it's a double whammy for us. The first one is that God made good on His word to deliver the people. He said they would go in to a land that was not theirs, they'd be strangers in that land. They'd come out of that land, greater in number, richer, etc., which they did. And then you've got the double whammy for us as Christians, understanding God has called many out of the darkness into His light and that is the same as being delivered from Egypt's bondage. Your, your eyes have been opened.

So don't think, don't just read it in a one-dimensional way. Now on the fifteenth of Nisan, which is the equivalent to our April, depending on when it falls, but usually it's equivalent to April, the Feast of Unleavened Bread began. It went for seven days; no leaven could be consumed. And we read often a term, if you've ever seen━how many of you have ever seen a Passover booklet called a Haggadah? Okay, so it's a little booklet and basically it's, we'll call it the synopsis of the deliverance story, okay? But what's interesting is the Haggadah, the name on there, “festival” or “festivity,” we don't tend to think about this, but the Passover was referred to that. And in fact, there's a passage in━let's see if the brain's working good here━in Exodus, I'll read it to you if I can find it. Okay, here. So Moses is talking to Pharaoh and he says━“And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” Now why is that interesting? Because that word is we'ahogu, which is very much, because it's a Semitic language, it's very much like the Arab word hajj.

They're just pronounced differently. So we have that same concept, a “pilgrimage,” or “wandering,” if you will. And these feasts or set times, don't think that they just happened like God said, “Okay, we're going to have a party now.” They were all to tie back, as I said, either in creation, Israel's history, things that God wanted the children of Israel, and after that, us, we who are of the new dispensation, to think on, believe, and obviously this is where I'm going with this.

So we're tying the old feasts and showing how they connect into the New. The law instructed the children of Israel that when they entered the land; this is always missed; when they entered the land, the Promised Land, the land that God said they would enter into and reap the harvest, that they would bring a sheaf of the first grain to the priest who would weave it before the Lord on their behalf. And there's something that I don't know why it's missed often, but I have it open in front of me and I'll read it to you as well from Leviticus 23 and verse 10, “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,” listen carefully, “When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, there ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest.” So clearly, a lot of times people think━first, how could you do a harvest and practice a real true harvest if they wandered for 40 years in the desert? Hello.

So I mean, you could probably harvest some things, but you're constantly moving. So He clearly says, “When you come into the land which I give unto you,” and that's key to understand how this would become regulated and obviously everything in the law becomes regulated. So by yielding and offering their firstfruits of their harvest to God, the first of it, they acknowledge that they were dependent on God for the harvest yet to come. And this is the other thing I'm finding people━you only know what people mess up when you start to read what people have, in good intention, I'm sure, penned. There's a lot of confusion about Firstfruits that is the gathering of the first of whatever and the feast of ingathering, which happens as we'll call it the full-orbed, full-blown harvest at the end of the season, okay. There's, there are differences here. So this particular Firstfruits would have been observed with somber tone.

The sheaf was to be waved on the day after the Sabbath. What we New Testament folks, I refer to this in my message on the Sabbath as the Lord's Day because it's the day the Savior rose. And the apostle Paul refers to Christ, in 1 Corinthians 15:20, as “the firstfruits of them that slept”" So this act, if you will, of our Lord's, of basically of dying and resurrecting and ascending, but the death and Resurrection portion, the Firstfruits hallowed the harvest from which it was taken. So I want you to think on why Firstfruits is important. Now, don't get me wrong, the late Dr. Gene Scott taught on Firstfruits and made it an integral part, if you will, of giving in this church, which people would basically first of the year and whether it's your first paycheck or the first of anything usually, and that's how it was taught.

I'm not saying that that ought not to be done, but there's something actually, in my opinion, infinitely more important than that, and I'm going to tell you what it is. If let's just say we go to glean the firstfruits of whatever is coming up and we're choosing the choicest and the best, it is a type. We're saying; we're not saying, “Oh, I hope that the rest of the harvest is going to be like this.” The firstfruits that we would be offering to God in the agrarian society would definitely be the expectancy of the rest of the harvest.

Does that make sense? Good, because now I want you to think about what Paul wrote when he said, “Christ is the firstfruits of them that slept.” For the Christian, we should expect, it shouldn't be; I don't know why I've done how many funerals and I still see people doing this very same thing, not understanding their faith. And that to me is the greatest, if you want to know what a crime is, that's a great crime because Christ died, went first as the first Goer. We have a right; we'll call it the right of expectancy that we too will be like Him. We too shall rise. That's the concept that for me, the most important concept of Firstfruit to recognize that something like this had not happened before. And don't get Lazarus confused in the mix. Lazarus was called forward to show Christ had the power over the grave and over death, but Lazarus still had to die.

So he's called out of the dead. Deliberately we know that the passage tells us that he was in the grave, and it's either Mary or Martha says, “You know, by now he's going to be stinking. It's been, so”━you know, it's well beyond the third, fourth day now. And that was deliberately put in there because you could not be considered certifiably dead unless three days had passed.

So we know Lazarus was certifiably dead when Christ called him out of the tomb, but that is not the Resurrection. He did resurrect from the dead, but he'd still have to die again, a normal death, and then like everyone else, hate to say it like this, but Lazarus is not like, he's not an exception, like everybody else, all must die. And this is why that expression that says, “Unless a grain of corn go into the earth.” It takes something essentially that looks dead to bring life. So here we have Christ as the first Goer and what was removed, and you're looking at these feast times, what was removed, the impediment, was the ceremonial impurity, and I'll explain what I mean by that.

The relation that the Firstfruits sustain the harvest is one thing, but remember the steps that had to be taken before. So if we understand the laws of the offerings that we looked at, and we kind of string this together, I hate to say it, like beads, it becomes clear that these times were set up with special times before or after one could be cleansed. Let's just say if you were making a sin and trespass offering, and then this would be offered or this would be celebrated. So God had a way of basically making sure everyone could be included if you went by the prescribed method, which we're looking into right now.

And if you're curious to know, Leviticus 23 spells it out. You've got a couple of passages in Exodus, Exodus 23, I believe━don't quote me on that, but I believe it's Exodus 23 as well. And then in Deuteronomy and Numbers, you've got some kind of extra material there, so yours to kind of pick apart. But when I, and you're going to hear me repeat this throughout this message. If the same relationship that the children of Israel had to the harvest, that is the Firstfruits, the expectancy, the, “Okay, we offered, we took the Firstfruits and we offered the best to God”" we are following the same pattern as Christ is the Firstfruits.

We should be expectant. Not “I expect and it may not happen.” No, that's the first harvest of the Resurrection; we are all going to follow that harvest. There's only one criteria, that you remain connected in faith and trust in Christ. We will all be in that harvest. So it's important to understand, or if you want to say, “If He's the Firstfruits, we will be the harvest,” that is the expectancy of the hope that's promised to the believer. Now the apostle Paul also wrote, “He was delivered for our offenses, raised for our justification.” So God laid upon Him, you've heard me say this before, all the iniquity of us all, and it would not have been a finished work had He not, had God the Father not laid that all upon the Son. As for Christ, the law had no further claim to urge penalty or to exact. Hence, He could be raised up from the dead to take His life again. Remember, He said, “I take my life, no one takes it from me.” So even though; see, these are the things that I, sometimes I have to stop and just scratch my head.

Jesus said, “I take my life, I lay it down, I can pick it up again,” essentially. So it makes no sense to me when I hear our Jewish brothers and sisters get very offended when we talk about the act of crucifying Christ. And the reality is, if you think about it, Christ had to die one way or another. If, if His plan, what He says, something's wrong with the world and only His death could fix it, He had to die one way or another. And it always comes down to this, people with lack of understanding will get very offended when we say the religious leaders basically urged Pilate, and the religious leaders were the ones kind of angling for this. Back to my message and my notes here; like the wave offering, waved to be accepted for the people by God, I'd say that Christ also became the wave offering, not accepted by God, but accepted for us by God. There's that little addition that makes everything count. The Firstfruits was the earnest of the upcoming harvest, a pledge that the harvest would be gathered, and there's also a special set time for that, that God says, “And this is harvest time.” So, if we want to talk about this particular Firstfruits, we can't, in this particular subject, we cannot not talk about the Resurrection, because that is how we connect to the New Testament over and over again.

And several times you'll, you'll hear me mention, especially about it, the apostle Paul will mention Firstfruits. So, it's important to understand the connection there starts at the Resurrection. And if you remember the only sign when they came to Him, they said, “Give us a sign. He said, “There'll be no sign except the sign of Jonah,” which was to say, “three days and three nights,” or at least being in the giant fish's belly, only to be spewed out alive, which if you think about it, we're not going to take this too far to the extreme. But that was Christ basically saying, “You want to know what My guarantee is? Now, your guarantee is Firstfruits. Mine is the sign of Jonah.” And you can take that however you want, but Jesus to us, Jesus is the new covenant. He's not just representing a covenant; Jesus is the new covenant, much like the old when it was given, a promise that God would make good on His word, so here Christ is telling these people, basically, “The only sign you're going to get is the Resurrection,” which Paul calls Christ “the firstfruits of them that slept”" He's the first of his kind.

So forgive me for making a circle here, but just as we are connected to the first Adam in our fallen condition, because of nature, condition, etc, we are indeed condemned. It's a death sentence, being born in Adam, in the first Adam, but being born again into the second Adam or the last Adam, which is Christ, brings life. It is the, we'll call it the reconciling or the making right, what was in the beginning, we have now access to the Father by this avenue, the one named Jesus Christ. And not only that, not just access, but the promise. This is the whole amazing thing, in my opinion, about studying these set times. See, these people didn't have a promise of eternal life or immortality. They didn't have that promise. They knew that the first parents had given it away.

We have that promise though, which makes wanting to know about this Firstfruits. As I said, you can talk about the giving part of it, the component of giving, which is important. But I'd like to start with the most important, which is what, why we're here: “If Christ has not risen, our faith is vain.” And I'm not interested in having the discussion with people. Let me just say it now, so I get it out of the way and, and you know, you can be angry with me later if you want, or you can be angry with me now. I do at both. Don't say you are a Christian. Don't parse words with me. Don't play games with me. You are a Christian when you are following Christ, period. You're not a Christian because you come to church one day out of the year. You're following Christ. And following Christ doesn't necessarily mean you come to church either.

How's that for putting it the way it is? But you're following Christ, which means you are studying Him. And “Him” is not a pronoun limited to one book or one half of a book. It's the whole thing. That's what makes you a Christian; you're following Christ, you're learning about Him. It's like saying, “Yeah, my family.” Well, if you spend time with them and you live under the same roof or your blood, born blood, or; but there has to be a connection there to say that. You're not going to go to a stranger out there on the street and say, “Ah, that's my, that's my family over there.” That person's going to be looking at you and saying, “Call 8-1-1.” Not 9-1-1, 8-1-1.

Do you know what that is? 8-1-1 is the number you call before you dig a hole, courtesy of the power company. All right, so what makes the difference here? These people didn't have the promise of Resurrection, but we were given that. Christ said, “I need, A) to go away that I might send the Holy Spirit.” Number two, He had to go away showing basically that this was the pattern planned by the Father. His public ministry would give enough time, demonstrate enough miracles, explain enough about why He came. And then the rest was left back, if you think about it, the rest was left back with humankind, “Now you go out there, you teach, you go make disciples, you go make learners of every nation.” He didn't say, “I'll come back and I'll do that work for you.” He said, “Now you go out and do it.” Just as the first Adam was told to go and tend and till the earth, we in the second or last Adam are still tending and tilling the earth, but it's in the human form that we do it, not working and laboring for the ground.

So there's a lot of, I'm sorry, just a lot of confusion. It's very frustrating for me because I find people, even some who have a good intention, would like to tell you that, “You know, if you come on Easter, it's enough.” That's just a show. How would you like to be married to somebody and you only show, you only come home once a year? It's kind of like that, okay? I don't think that's a marriage, by the way; anyway, enough of my opinions here. So we know, by the way, why Paul wrote, “For we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him,” because we shall be like Him. That is the promise of Firstfruits, and this is why this is so vitally important. The same Spirit of God that opened up the believer's spiritual eyes, that raises us from the death of sin and the life of righteousness in Christ, descends upon a lifeless body.

Now the Spirit's already in the person, but there's also that, what I call the, that the helping Spirit; and don't quote me on this, I'm just trying to make this as clear pictorially as possible, that takes the final, final claim on what is inside the believer. So that means whatever the person's person was, plus the Spirit of God. You remember, I taught on this many years, the part payment, the arabon, it's called in the Greek. Now that ticket is turned in for the whole person, not just, “Hey, I tag you with my Spirit because you belong to Me,” but the whole individual. That means everything in my memory bank, all that I━not this shell, but everything that I am at the point of death basically is released with the Spirit to be with God until a new body, until the time that a new body will be granted to every single believer in Christ. So here's the kind of, we'll call it the litmus test.

I'm curious to know how many people actually believe, don't answer me; I'm curious to know how many people actually believe what I just said because you know, people actually believe that it's very clear to me that we deceive ourselves all day long. You know, you, you, you can be a biohacker, you can be engaged in fitness, eat the cleanest diet, have the best mental health. And when God says it's your time, it's your time. You don't get to bargain. You don't get to plea deal. It is what it is. So this is what is all equally baffling. If you knew and understood, which I hope that every creature that's born on the earth can come to understand and know that there's a terminus to life.

Don't think I'm talking like the grim reaper. This is actually a message rooted in extreme hope and certainty of what's said here that I wouldn't be looking at that day and saying, “My God, no, help me for I'm not ready to go.” No, when that time comes, the expectancy, because I've known; I'm sorry to say this, it's going to sound a little bit funny when I say this, but I've known the Firstfruit for a long time.

And I'm not trying to be blasphemous when I say that. So if I've known Him for a long time and I've built my relationship on that, then when I come to that hour, that moment, I have the expectancy and it's not something that may or may not happen. This either happened, He either died and rose up or He didn't. Now that, I think we've settled in many messages on the Resurrection. So if a person has settled that and you believe that this is absolutely true, that a man, all-man/all-God died, was put to death and rose from the dead, then the expectancy for you and for me should be just like these children of Israel with the Firstfruit of the harvest. They went in there looking for the choicest and the best, presenting it first to the priest as a wave of offering and presented to the Lord with expectancy, that the rest of the harvest, not━and expectancy is a bad word because it leans towards, is there a possibility that it may not be as good as the things that we offer to God, but in fact it's the promise that what we rendered to God at the first, the rest of it, it's putting God first, God takes care of the rest of the rest, but the rest will be just as bountiful and just as good.

And that's why it's important to make these connections between those Old Testament saints and we who believe in Christ, we who faith and trust Christ for our salvation. So I'm going to try and paint a little picture here that gives some understanding because there's a lot, you know, in these feasts there's a lot to think about. Of course there is the sowing of seed, the caring for, ultimately the harvest that would be reaped. And I can tell you as someone who has just recently started growing a lot of food, it's hit and miss. You plant a seed and you can hope and pray, but trust me, the passage says, “Thou shall not kill,” I've probably killed a couple of hundred plants of late, okay? Some people have that green thumb and some people don't.

But imagine this is, you can't just go down to Publix or Vons. You're in the desert, wherever you are, this is your food supply. This is, if it's messed up, you're all going to starve. I want you to think of it in that respect. So going to get those, planting the seeds, taking care to tend and then seeing the first harvest, the first thing that comes out of the ground would be almost, silly, but miraculous. And if the rest of the crop came out like the first part, that'd be even more miraculous, but that's the promise of what God basically was saying, “Put Me first, I'll bless and take care of the rest.” Now the prosperity people get a hold of this and they milk, manipulate, and twist the heck out of that verse to make it mean something that it doesn't.

And you're never going to hear me talk to you about something like that because I don't do that. That's not what God promises either. God's blessings, if you're really interested, you've probably received more and I've probably received more in terms of blessings than most people I know, and they're not tangible. They're not tangible. To be able to stay in the faith. Look, we're living in an age of crisis and chaos and craziness. To be able to stay connected in faith, still look unto Him, still have the sense that I belong to Him no matter what's going on in the world I'm okay because He's got me and I've got Him! Now at the temple time, because remember it said, “When you come into the land,” so I'm going to jump to the temple time. But at the temple time, messengers of the Sanhedrin, those dirty rats, they would go out from Jerusalem on the evening of the feast and they would bind all of the tall standing corn and bundle it to make it easy to be taken up.

See, they had all these little ways of getting around God's rules and regulations and this is one of them by the way, it's kind of interesting. And no wonder why God said, “Enough.” If you keep trying to find ways to sneak around God's back, I think God eventually is saying, “I saw all of it. I didn't just see one time, I saw it all, you children of Israel, you,” all right? Sometimes it's hard to say what you want to say. All right, later at the time of the temple, the grain would be threshed with rods so that the barley corns were not injured. After this it would be parched over an open flame, winnowed in the wind, and that would remove the chaff. Finally the barley corn would be milled and put to an extensive sifting process until it was sifted finely. And to show you how; sorry, how nutty this was, according to the writings in the Talmud, the sifting would go on and on and on and on and on and on until a temple inspector/priest could plunge their hands into the flour, remove the hand without any flour adhering, and then it would be ready.

But I mean the procedure that they did just went on and on and like overkill. But anyway, that, that's their business, not mine. So the sixteenth of Nisan, the Firstfruits were presented to the Lord, an omer of barley, which would equal approximately five pints, was mixed with three quarters of a pint of olive oil and a small amount of frankincense was sprinkled upon it. This was the Firstfruits offering. It was then waved before the Lord by the priests in accordance with Leviticus 23:11-13. Firstfruits was a national observance, not just a singular. So each family at this set time would have to bring their Firstfruits. Every family, one set, one set offering for each family unit, right? So you're not; if you have five people in the family, five people aren't offering Firstfruits.

It's offering from that household, from that family. We have a clearer picture recorded for us by the time of the temple than we do in the tabernacle because it clearly tells us that it says, “When ye enter into the land,” they had not yet entered into the land. And if we were looking at what happened at the time of the temple, there would have been a lot of buzzing, a lot of mulling around, a lot of chatter going on right outside of the temple with people probably repeating Psalm 150 and verse 1, “Praise God in His sanctuary.” Perhaps on the inside you might hear sounds of Psalm 30 being sung out, if you will, “I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou have lifted, you have lifted me up, and have not let my foes rejoice over me.” Essentially there would be some type of psalm before entering and then upon entrance, something worshipful and joyous to the Lord.

That's how they would do it. In the court of the priest, the flames would be seen dancing feverishly from the altar in a trail of smoke that would be ascending. In the court of the Israelites, a steady stream of men could be seen on the steps of the temple, presenting their offerings to the priest. So if you get the whole picture, you know, we tend to maybe have images of things, but we tend to think of the temple really does give the fullest embodiment of this, people lined up with their offerings on the steps waiting to get in. I mean that's pretty powerful if you can imagine and envision what I'm talking about. Now today's modern Judaism, Firstfruits are not offered because there is no temple. Only a ritual survives today of counting the days, perhaps marking them off on a calendar. And this is where, again, I'm going to say things that are controversial, but I'll just say them.

Because there's no temple and there's therefore no priest, but why would you not offer an offering? See, this is where I get a little bit like, okay, there's no more temple for you, but in this day and age where there's synagogues, okay, and there's places of worship, if you are going to be slaying saber-tooth tigers, right? Does everybody know what I mean when I say that? Okay, good. Because if I have to explain it, I will; I don't want anybody to go, “What the hell is she talking about, saber-toothed tigers?” They're extinct, okay? No, there's one at the back of the room. So my point is this, it's mind-boggling to me that Christians and Jews are reading the same book, and the book didn't say, “Now you'll stop.” Okay, I get it, at the fall of Jerusalem, everything ceased. But now you've got places of worship, so why, why wouldn't you do that? “Oh, because we don't live in an agrarian society anymore,” okay, but there's other ways to present Firstfruits, and we've exercised them here for probably at least 40 years.

So there's a lot of things. I don't know, is this as selective, how we're going to worship? Do we, do we engage in selectivity? How do we decide what we worship and what we don't? What we say, “Oh, we don't do that anymore. We just mark it on the calendar, but we don't do that anymore.” I don't understand. And don't, you try to understand because it won't make sense to you either. So first things, first things in general, are very important to God. If you remember, just take the passage of the children of Israel in Egypt's bondage, the firstborn.

So when we think about firsts, that's important. And the first, when I speak of Firstfruits, yes, the harvest is one, but the Firstfruits, first things, Christ coming out of the grave, I'd say, “Put these two things on a very equal plane and understand,” and this is what I think is very important. First things with God matter, and I think they still matter today. Not so much as you're firstborn versus your thirdborn, or if you; whatever it is that's first, but the concept of putting God first.

That still matters to God. See, there are things I can say to you, God has not changed. It's we who have changed, and that's a big problem because I don't think, if people are not being taught a template; that doesn't━don't be a box checker, but if you “put God first, He takes care of the rest” is a concept that basically summarizes Firstfruits. And the promise is to expect no less than what was offered could, in this case, let's say, whatever your crop was; that the rest of the crop would be likewise.

There wouldn't be bugs, it wouldn't be destroyed, it wouldn't be rotted; fill in the blanks, okay? Now in the New Testament, there are no less than seven mentions of Firstfruit, but they deal directly with Christ or with followers of Christ. So the apostle Paul spoke of Epaentus as the firstfruit of Achaia or Achaia in Romans 16:5. He also refers to a Stephanas in 1 Corinthians 16:15. And the difference, because they're both, both being referred to as the firstfruits of Achaia, but one of them is of an individual, the other is of Stephanas, of he and his household, which also must be understood like this, because a lot of it was church in the home.

So it could have meant not Stephanas and his family alone, but the church around him in his house as well. So that's ambiguous, we can't know exactly, but one is to an individual, one is a family. Paul also used the Firstfruits in referencing what was pinched from the dough to teach that if the Firstfruit is holy, then the lump is also holy. He says that in Romans 11:16. By this he means if God chose whomever He chose, say Abraham or Jacob, then the whole lump, that means the whole, all the children of Israel, let's; if we're using that reference, okay? Paul also used the term Firstfruits in relation to the Holy Spirit and the fruits that are manifested within the believer. So all of these components are important, because what they paint is a picture of the whole Christian, of what we are to be focusing on as believers. We're not to be focused on, you know, a thousand different things.

Our focus is, look unto Him, the Author and Finisher of salvation, Jesus Christ. And if we're going to talk about how that focus remains, it's kept by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us, guides us, teaches us, instructs us, help, helps us to even learn while we are being taught. You know, I was reading a message in my office and the message said, “I finally found you again. I lost track of you for several years.” But this person also went on to say how when they were watching, they tuned in and they tried to understand, and it was like I was speaking a foreign language, and now they've learnt more in the last six months.

And the person says in their message, “Maybe I just; it wasn't God's time yet for me.” And that's exactly it. I know because many of you are just like that. I'm like that. I've shared with you my anger. Why couldn't God have opened my eyes sooner, right? But that was part of God's plan. He knew the timing to be harvested, at least to be picked or opened up, right? Because that's what He does. He knows how to do it. We talk about the deposit of the Spirit in each believer. I just referenced as a type of Firstfruit. And much later in the book of Revelation, we'll encounter the 144 preachers of righteousness who will be sealed just prior to the opening of the seventh seal; all these numbers are important, 12,000 from each tribe sealed from God's wrath at the very start of the day of the Lord.

And that expression alone becomes important because these 144,000 will be preaching to people and there will be what we'll call a final harvest, an end harvest. That will be it. That's the final call, like you're in a bar, “Last call for alcohol,” “Last call for salvation happening right here with 144,000 peppered throughout the earth. That's it. That's your last call.” And I, I would really love for people to read that passage and don't read it like it's a cartoon or it's some caricature that maybe will happen. No, that's, that's what God said is going to happen in the future. And by the way, we're, we're far enough along in the world to see what's going on to know that most of the stuff that is being foretold of in the future, for us is coming to pass. So, I don't know, you know, when God has a pretty good track record of, of making things that he says happen, happen, you've got my attention. I don't need to be convinced or coerced into believing what is blatantly obvious.

So these 144,000 are called Firstfruit. They will be the guarantee that God has not cast away all His people or the ones that didn't answer immediately forever. But rather that God will purify the remnant, just as was prophesied by Daniel, in Daniel's seventieth week. Now I know I'm probably saying stuff that some may not be familiar with and that's okay, stick around and we'll eventually get to it. But this is how the apostle Paul makes a bold claim when he says, “All Israel will be saved.” That is in Romans 11:26. If you read that passage carefully, it makes perfect sense that he's talking about a final harvest that will occur.

It makes perfect sense to me. And I, I hate to sound redundant and repetitive, but in the book of Zechariah, it explicitly says, “They will look upon him whom they have pierced and they will mourn,” meaning they will recognize that the very Savior that they said is “A fraud, it's a lie, it's not true. And we're waiting for our Messiah who's not your Messiah” will go, “Uh-oh, my bad. He was the one all along.” Can you imagine that? I mean, I can, I actually have to feel sorry for people who have been so closed in their thinking that they couldn't read the Old and see the description of the One who came in the New.

It's Him; there aren't two Messiahs, there's only One. He was here and He's coming back and God's going to give those people who rejected Him a second chance, which is why when we read passages that talk about all the people coming to the mount to worship, again, don't think that's a caricature. Why is Israel such a big deal? For the right reasons, not all the ones that a lot of people in ministry try to make it a Zionist movement or they try; no, because the Bible says, “In this little swath of land, basically where I started I will finish.” Don't, don't get more hung up on the land or the people, and the people who are there now won't even be there, likely when He returns. And I won't tell you why either. And it has nothing to do, and it has nothing to do with the rapture either. So leave that one alone. The Firstfruits, like Israel's other springtime feasts, has its fulfillment, fulfillment in Christ's first coming, but perhaps the more important emphasis should be, but now Christ is risen from the dead, has become the Firstfruit of those who have fallen asleep.

And we know that Jesus rose from the dead━I told you I'd be repeating a lot, which I'm doing━which makes the fulfillment of that feast as it's applied to Him. Just put a period there because He did come out of the grave. The Resurrection is a guarantee of harvest of souls that will be like Christ. The fact is that there is life after death, not just we just cease being.

Daniel says something pretty profound. Remember, Daniel, he's not known for these things, but his 70 weeks and all the messages within his book are New Testament, or as New Testament as you can get. He says, “And many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame, and some to everlasting contempt,” which means all. Check this out. The resurrection or the resurrected life if you will; oh, you're going to love this, all will be resurrected. All. But not all will be resurrected with Christ. Would you like me to say that again? All will be resurrected, but not all will be resurrected with Christ. Some will be resurrected to eternal damnation. That's also resurrected life that lives on in perpetuity in torment. “Oh, I don't like that.” Well, I didn't write those words, so don't, don't come complaining to me. But, you know, even Christ said something that was pretty shocking in His day.

He said, “Do not marvel for the, for the hour is coming in which all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come forth, some to resurrected life and others to condemnation.” That's John 5. So even out of the mouth of our Lord, He even says this. Don't think everybody gets a ticket and you're all going to paradise. Some are going to get a ticket to “Coffee Break's Over”; that, the ones that laughed, I know how long you've been around, okay? I know where you live. So there's always been two parts to the harvest, and there will always be two parts to the harvest, the wheat and the chaff.

And that sums it up for you. Some will inherit and receive eternal life, dwell with God forever, and some will inherit eternal punishment. And those that belong to Him, that have trusted Him, that have looked to Him their entire time of knowing Him; and that could be a day, a year, a lifetime, they will be resurrected in the same fashion, the same way as He was. So let me take a minute now to wrap this up because I'm really out of time. The main reason for preaching these messages is to demonstrate God didn't just set out in the Old to put together a whole bunch of nonsensical, ceremonial, “Now, these are these routines we do at a set time.” They were all pointing to the future.

They were all pointing to Christ. I explained to you how Christ; we talked about the Sabbath, and we are Sabbathing in Christ daily. I talked to you about the Passover when God said, “Celebrate this, basically in perpetuity as a memorial.” Well, we are, because how could you not do two things? Remember the children of Israel's deliverance out of Egypt's bondage, and then remember your own deliverance out of this world flesh and devil bondage. Now your eyes are open and you can be able to celebrate and to rejoice and to be glad in the Lord. So when I say, without, as I said earlier, without the Old Testament, we wouldn't have the full picture of why it matters.

And if you want to put kind of the exclamation mark, Paul says in Romans 8:29, essentially that we are the first, in terms of brethren or sistern, we are the first of many, the body of believers. So it becomes clear that the church of Jesus Christ must continue until the final harvest of souls comes. Now I cannot tell you how long that time will be. The Bible's very clear, no one knows the day of the hour, but there are signposts.

There are things we can see happening in the world, and wars and rumors of wars. That doesn't mean the end is here. Trust me, when there are definitive signposts along the way that must happen that will tell you the time is nearer and nearer and nearer when these things happen. Some of these have not happened yet. That's why I said to you, there's a lot of craziness going on. There's a lot of weird stuff going on.

There's a lot of scary stuff going on, but the end is not tomorrow. Don't, don't walk out here going, “Oh my God, we're doomed tomorrow, tomorrow.” It's not like that. And I'd say to you, if there's anything that should be a takeaway from this message, and I'm, I don't engage in the antics of evangelists, but if anything is a takeaway, especially for people who are not so familiar in listening to me, it would be take the time now while you have the time. The Bible says redeem the time. Take the time now to begin learning about Him, learning about who He is, His ways, His message, His words, not to study them and repeat them like a rote computer, but that His words and Christ may dwell richly in you, that when the day comes, you're not scrambling to figure out what you need to do. You know what; you've already done it, you've already taken care of business. And I'm sorry to say it like that, but just to be as colloquial as possible so there is no misunderstanding.

It is, it is truly, it confounds me that people, if, if people say, “Well, it must be in the last days,” or “It must be close,” well, then why aren't you pressing in closer with God? That's going to be the thing that keeps all of us, I hate to tell you, sane, calm, and with the clarity of vision to know what to do while the stuff is hitting the fan. So I would say to you in, in an age which people don't seem to be that concerned, the church is very important, not the building, but as the Greek calls it, a people that belong to the Lord.

And if we who are trusting Christ, and I'm going to say it this way, you know there's a Scripture that says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” We have been partakers of that goodness. We have tasted what the Lord has in store for those that trust Him. Then it is indeed just like the Firstfruit, we can say, “This offering of Christ stands,” in, in terms of our version of time, “as the expectancy promised,” not, “I'm not sure it's not going to happen,” for you and for me.

Put a period there. Don't be trying to figure out “How much more, what more can I do?” That's the other problem that people engage in, “What more can I do?” Now, one last footnote here and then I'm done. We have a lot of people that will give a Firstfruit offering. And listen, I'm really a strange bird when it comes to money, and I say that because I believe that when we read the New Testament there's great clarity and understanding. God does love a hilarious giver. God loves the spirit of the person; we're not just talking about money, we're talking about somebody who says, “Sure, I'll help you out.

Sure, I'll give you a hand,” that generous nature. So when I say to you, Firstfruits is not just about everything that I've talked about, but it is also about understanding, presenting the first of whatever comes into your hand, and you can't just, where, where do you give it to God? Well, you can't, but the Bible says you bring your tithes and your offerings to the storehouse, wherever you get your spiritual food. And I still believe that's a good way of saying, “I'm putting God first”" That, that's like something that, I hate to say it like this, but it actually costs you something. And I had to learn this from our good friend, Ray Sidney. He said, “You know, you shouldn't give anything away for free,” he was referring to the people in Japan, “because then they don't think it has any value.” And I thought, “That's kind of odd, but okay, if that's your, if that's your mindset.” But if you think about it in God's book, for how much it costs for God to send and give His only begotten Son, and we who take it so casually, I think the concept of Firstfruits is brilliant, because what it does is it says, you know, we don't work to get in, we don't labor in works of the flesh, but it does say, “I'm, I'm giving my first to God, which is my best and my first.” And that could be in dedicating your child, could be any number of things, but I'm not specifically talking about Firstfruits in giving right now.

And I'd say to you, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the person's doing it for the right reasons. Don't give with strings attached. Don't give and say, “Yes, but I, I'm hoping that if I do this, this will happen.” If you're doing Firstfruits for the reason I said, which is putting God first and He takes care of the rest, then I applaud you and I think it's a good thing.

Any other motives for doing it are the wrong motives and I don't agree with them. Now, I know that's a little bit strange, the way I just worded that, but what I'm trying to tell you is, I'm the person who's known for, I think in all of ministry, there, there might only be one person that does this and it's, it's this person right here who sends back offerings to people who don't get it. And I'm talking about people who have been abusive to me in the past or they think they're going to tell me how to run the church or how to conduct or whatever. I don't want your money. We're not; this is not that type of church.

I'm not here to take your money or grab your money or do anything with your money, because it's not your money anyway; it's God's, ha, ha. But what I am saying to you is I can give you structured ideas that if they're carried out right, they, I believe are good in God's eyes and if they're carried out, like anything else, if they're carried out for the wrong reasons, like people who give to get, if that's your mindset, you're not giving to God.

You're doing some investment scheme or you're doing some trading deal with God. But if you're really giving, this is God's, the rest God lets me keep and He puts His stamp of approval on it. He blesses me for that very reason. Now, I can't tell you what else to do, but I can tell you in these feasts as we've been looking at them, I love this one in particular because going back to the whole message I just preached, it tells me if you and I have that same expectancy, like those people that took the first of their crop, and we should have that expectancy, then there's no reason in the world why whatever we face, whatever we deal with, whatever sickness comes under our dwelling, whatever pitfalls may happen, whatever this country goes to hell in a handbasket, which it's halfway there right now, but I've connected myself to God, I'm not letting go.

I'm going to be just like Jacob/Israel. I may be a little bit crippled right now, but I'll be God-damned if I let go because I know He's the only one that can take me through this. He's the only one that can take you through all of this. So wouldn't you, you'd think you'd want to do your best. In that respect the Firstfruits speaks volumes to me. I hope it speaks to you. We'll continue on with these, but for today that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.

If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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1 Corinthians 15, Luke 16 – Don’t Fear Death

foreign [Music] one day we're all going to be dead period I will be dead too everybody has a time I don't care what science is coming up with in fact I'm a firm believer that if the world keeps going the way it's going some of the Fulfillment of the Book of Revelation sang a third of the earth Earth's population has to die maybe even started already I don't know if that's part of it or not I can't say I don't want to speculate just saying so somebody who doesn't want to talk about death and I've met people like oh God I can't talk about that it means the resurrected life and understanding of the resurrected life has not penetrated into your soul what do you mean I'm saying exactly what I mean here go back to the disciples their beloved master who foretold of his death multiple times over and of course while he was alive no no no be it far from me no no this can't happen right they didn't understand but how is it that after he died Rose and ascended they were able to go out and talk about his death they talked about his death in light of the Resurrection the Ascension and his return and the scriptures abundantly clear Jesus was the first goer the first of his kind which means anyone who calls himself a Christian following Christ will follow in his footsteps which means when we read death has no more sting over the believer that's what it means it doesn't mean that losing a loved one is not going to hurt it will that's the flesh part and trust me I know there are a lot of widowers in the sound of my voice it does not take away the sting it does not take away the absence or the void it does not but what it does do is it lets you look at the reality that person devoted to Christ Christ is not a liar if Christ said basically I am the first goer and you're following him you too shall follow as he did that means you too will enjoy the resurrected life now somebody who has not got the mindset I don't care what you think there isn't some playing tiddlywinks when the end comes let me show you something I know I haven't opened up the scripture very much but let me show you something that has an impact for me in Luke 16 the passage about the rich man and Lazarus and and if you read this with the eyes I'm speaking about it'll really make sense to you a certain rich man clothed in purple fine linen fared sumptuously every day and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full of sores Desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table moreover the dogs came and licked his sores it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the Angels into Abraham's bosom the rich man also died and was buried and in hell he lifted up his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom cried saying Father Abraham have mercy on me send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue frame and torment in this flame but Abraham said Son remember that thou in thy lifetime receiveth thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things just for a little footnote Lazarus received evil things what does that mean it means probably that he suffered he probably didn't have money he probably grappled with a lot of things that we grapple with that's evil things whatever that is but now he is comforted and thou art tormented in other words you spent your time here on Earth pleasuring yourself with the pleasures of this Good Earth but not paying attention to God and what comes next is what I want you to focus on and besides all this between us and you there is a great Gulf fixed so they so that they which would pass from hence you cannot neither can they pass from us basically if you understand this and all the other things that are said about heaven and hell there is a Great Divide there is a chasm the resurrected mindset fixed on Christ understanding we too shall rise that there are sometimes we'll call them mild or light afflictions which Paul talked about which are only for a Time don't think because Something's Happened to you that God isn't with you actually it usually might be a sign that God is with you that he's letting certain things buff at you just like he did to many of the people in the book but it drives home the point there is a Great Divide between those who have a changed mindset towards death dying in the resurrection versus those who may have heard it but are indifferent don't care couldn't be bothered by it Great Gulf fix so you know you might say well that's pretty terrible but if you think about it and if you believe the proofs Jesus is the tangible proof and so many times in the book it says to him that overcometh death so you know I'm thinking to myself there is something to be said there in our understanding you are either fearful of that it brings about fear it brings about the shiverings that's the flesh the spirit says when is my time I'm going to go be with the Lord I don't exactly know 100 what exactly that's going to look like but that's what I'm told multiple times over that makes for good doctrine that makes me stand on that rock to say that's that [Music] [Music] said goodbye coming to this house

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Understanding the Resurrected Life

Part of understanding how His Resurrection affects you life is what God was doing the day after Adam and Eve fell from grace. It didn't just start with your birth or with the coming of Christ. It started way back there and it's a whole history of redemptive process until God said, “This is the final way.” ♪ ♪ If we're going to talk about Easter, the first thing we have to talk about is that Jesus lived.

We shouldn't stop at the information in the Bible. I know a lot of people are reluctant. They read the Bible and say, “Oh, it's, it's a collection of good stories written, and we can't really”━save that for somebody who hasn't done the years of studying. But for the benefit of those people who are suspicious that this is just a mere collection of things, I step outside of the Bible for a minute to say you've got a first century Jewish historian, Josephus, who writes about Jesus. He does not say too much, but he does indeed admit that Jesus lived. You have evidence from the Babylonian Talmud, which was written between 70 A.D. and 200 A.D., although there, there is a continuation that takes you all the way up to 500 A.D., but the specific portions I'm interested in actually come around 80 A.D. and do indeed mention Jesus that He lived. He was not a figment of the people's imagination. And if you really want to go to the extremes, even the prophet Muhammad, who lived some 600 years, more or less, after Christ's death, in the early-600s when he was writing the Quran, he spoke of Jesus, although Jesus, in his version lived, Jesus was a mere prophet.

Nonetheless, even Muhammad acknowledged Jesus lived. And if you want to go even beyond that, you've got the writings of a Roman, non-Christian source in Tacitus recording Jesus and the life of Jesus. Pliny the Younger, who was the Roman governor of Bithynia Asia Minor, who wrote to the emperor Trajan in 112 A.D., asking what was the proper legal conduct, “What should we do about these followers of this one Jesus Christ?” And we know from these writings obviously that are outside the Bible, they are all talking about a living━a person who lived, not a figment or an invented persona. Also Lucian, the Greek satirist who wrote about second century A.D. as well, so there is abundant evidence outside the Bible for Jesus' living, being an actual person and not some made-up fabrication as some would tell you. The next bullet point is that Jesus was crucified. That's not difficult to believe, because crucifixion, and anybody studying, just even go beyond the Roman period, we've, actually here we've taken a look at crucifixion in a historical way to see that it existed long before the Romans took it up as punishment.

So there's no doubt in my mind if somebody says, “Well, could it be possible that this man was crucified?” Beyond, beyond plausible, as that was the punishment of that day. So two things: that Jesus lived and that He was crucified. If you start there, you're starting at a good place. You know, don't, if you, if you're not even willing to consider that He lived, don't even bother studying this, let alone that He was crucified. That He died on a cross, this is an important one, because there are many people who doubt━good Lord and Lord help us━that this methodology could kill anyone. Okay, well, I highly urge those people who are doubting of that to actually do some research to understand that the whole premise of this type of death was to be slow and painful, and that the victims didn't usually die because they were nailed to a cross.

But they usually would die from collapsed lungs or other things, not necessarily the first but second and tertiary events that would occur in the body to bring about death; and slow and painful usually. So we've got to put that there. But of course, there are many theories that people have propagated over time. For example, that He really didn't die on the cross, but He fainted, and when they took Him down from off the cross He resuscitated in, in the coolness of the tomb. Or that this is all made up. There, there's so many theories as to what really happened on the cross. In fact, if you google, “Did Jesus die on the cross?” you will find a lot of fantastic ideas. They're all fantastic, but if one actually understands the science, and there is a science behind crucifixion, the likelihood that any individual could actually survive crucifixion is slim and none.

So let's just put that there that Jesus did indeed die on a cross. All right, the fact that He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea, a high-ranking person in Jesus' day and this is important, because the controversy still goes to this day. There are two tombs in the Holy Land that people visit and people argue about which tomb. Let me help you out with this. We know from the Scriptures that Joseph of Arimathaea went to beg, went to Pilate to beg for the body of Christ. And the question must be asked: why Joseph of Arimathaea? See, there are a lot of minutia in Jewish law that most people don't know about, and one of them is that only next of kin could go and ask for a person's body.

That was basically according to actually both Roman and Jewish law. They both had their intricacies. We know that Joseph of Arimathaea was uncle to Mary, mother of Jesus. So put that down as one not so odd if you consider that. The greater oddity is that Joseph of Arimathaea was a high-ranking person in the Sanhedrin, and it is the body of the Sanhedrin, the 71 elders, that had the influence to crucify Jesus at the behest, by the way, of the Jewish leaders. Do not say all Jews, because His disciples, many of them were Jews, so at the behest of the Jewish leaders. So what's important here is we know Joseph of Arimathaea, much like Nicodemus was a secret follower or an underground follower of Christ. And something written in Mark 15:43, it says he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. It didn't say he was devastated at the death of Christ, but he was waiting expectantly. That tells you that Joseph of Arimathaea believed what Jesus was saying about Himself. So put that as a one-second pause right there. Now, the other thing that's important to recognize is when we talk about the tomb.

As I said, I'm not going to argue about which tomb, but I am going to point out a few things that are of interest. As you know, there were Roman guards posted outside of the tomb. The tomb was closed with a large stone rolled in front of it and sealed with a Roman seal. Now let me give you the small details of that. The Roman guard would have been a detail of 16 guards, each guard responsible for a 6-square-foot area. And this is what people don't talk about. If you were a Roman guard and you fell asleep there was punishment. You would be beaten and you'd be burned in your clothes.

But not only that, the entire unit of guards would also be put to death. So it would behoove each guard to be keeping watch not only on the tomb, but on each other. You get my point? Hmm, okay, good. The stone, the stone weighing anywhere from one to two tons, and here's the, the magnificent thing. The stone would have been on a track somehow, grooved, but it would have been on a decline. That means that the stone would be easy or easier; two men could have, two men, two strong men could have facilitated rolling the stone to close it.

But because if was on a slant, two men could not push up to two tons up a hill. So the likelihood of somebody tampering, once it was closed, is very unlikely. Furthermore, the Roman seal put on the tomb itself; that seal, the breaking of that seal, which represented the authority of the Romans, breaking that seal was the death penalty. So you've got a whole, what we'll call it a conundrum of how do you explain all of this? You know, were the guards on the take? Did they accept a bribe? Come on, even if that happened, they all would have been put to death.

So when people talk about this, the tomb, it's important to understand this is not some cartoon version of what you think. There were a lot of details. And those details need not be excluded from a close examination. The tomb that Jesus was buried in was indeed, after the fact, after He rose, empty. And this is another interesting thing that we should discuss. The followers returned to find the stone rolled away and the body is not there, and in fact, at least in one or two records we have angelic beings saying, “He is not here; He is risen,” basically “go find where He is, you'll see Him.” If you go and read Matthew 28, it says that the Jews were saying that the disciples had stolen the body. Just by those words alone, they were acknowledging that the tomb was empty. Sorry, but you did it to yourself. And I could go on, but I'm trying to do this in a very quick fashion. The leaders who instigated the crucifixion had an agenda to try and disprove the Resurrection. Theories to deny or disprove the Resurrection were being circulated because, think of it this way and this is probably the most important thing I could say, if the Resurrection actually happened, who would have greatest problem on their hands? The Jewish leaders, why, because if it was true, if it was actually true and could be verified as true, let's just say that you were all part of this Jewish leader community and you had heard that this man rose from the dead and He was seen amongst His followers preaching, what would you do? I know what I'd do.

I'd jump ship from that conglomerate of people and I'd go follow the One that came out of the grave, as He said He would. So food for thought, this would have endangered the future of Judaism. And if you think about it, the Gospel starts in John with, “He came to his own, and his own received him not.” The idea that they could have acknowledged Him; now some did, as I said Joseph of Arimathaea is one, Nicodemus is another. And I'm sure we've got a catalog of many more, but the bulk and the vast majority, it would have injured their religious careers in the future, so their best interest is to disprove and put out as many ridiculous stories as possible. The disciples preached what they had seen: Christ was raised from the dead. The record tells me that Jesus called forth Lazarus. Now Lazarus had to die anyway to eventually live a resurrected life, but calling him forth was a sample in kind. And this is why the apostle Paul talks about “If Christ is not risen our faith is vain”; we're all gathered for naught.

But the fact of the matter is that if you want to talk about this, actually this book cover to cover has more people being raised from the dead. And I would say pre-Christ's incarnation, proof of God's ability to raise people up from the dead, then God sent His only begotten Son, tented in human flesh, and still continued to do the same thing that was being done in the Old Testament. You just have to read and wonder, why would such things be written? To give us false hope? Or did they actually happen? And in Lazarus' case, I believe it actually happened. The more important thing is as they were preaching that Christ raised from the dead, they also preached that He would be coming back, that He would ascend and that He was coming back. Now, we cannot relate to this, because 2,000 years ago something happened, but put yourself closer to the event and they were all waiting for His immediate return.

And that's what stoked the fire under the early church: “Christ is coming back!” “Christ is coming back!” So we have to kind of be mindful. They were all basically saying, the disciples were all saying the same thing: He is alive. He was crucified for our sins. That He was raised up just as He Himself had said He would. And that brings me to the next thing. How do you explain the birth and growth of the church? There is no logical explanation.

If you start from the day of Pentecost, there is no logical explanation for the testimony of hundreds of thousands that have been radically changed, but specifically the Scripture says so many thousands were brought into the church in one singular day. How does one explain that? Except the power of God, the speech that was coming forth that was so powerful, not the words themselves nor the speaker, but the power of God coming through that individual that moved the hearers. So you can say, “Well, if this is not true, these poor, delusional followers, they were making up a lie, they built a church on a lie,” but you still have some problems explaining how. Remember, these are just regular people, how did they remember? How did they come up with? Why is it that people were gravitating towards these people and expressing things like the belief that these individuals had “super powers”? And I use that term, they thought it of Peter, they thought it of Paul, except that they had been endued by the Holy Spirit, which Jesus said, “If I go not away, I can't send the One basically who will do this for you.” Now you're either reading the most fantastic woven tale or you're reading an absolute chronicle of what happened.

And I get it. I, I understand people would say, perhaps they were just protecting the memory of their dead leader that they loved so much that they'd do anything to keep perpetuating a lie to protect this poor, dead Jew. You think about it. The problem is if you would think about how they all dispersed, Jesus told them before He left and ascended, He said, “Go into all the corners of the earth and make learners basically of all that I've told you.” And that would only be made possible, by the way, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we know they all took off in far-flung corners of the earth.

They all, they all went in different directions and they all started repeating the same message: Jesus was raised from the dead, just as He said He would after a set period of time, three days, three nights, just as Jesus, He Himself had said, “There will be no other sign but the sign of Jonah.” And interestingly enough, you've got perhaps the most doubting person of them all, Thomas, who by the way, had the exposure, he was with all the other disciples, and yet he's the only one that would not actually believe that Jesus was risen, until the Lord appeared in front of him and he could touch the nail-pierced part of His body, look at where He was pierced on His side. And that brought about the exclamation or his declaration, “My Lord, my God,” the reality, “Oh my God, this is true.” Now I think there are a lot more Thomases than anything else.

And a lot of people, who can be following in the church, who can be going along with this great, “Let's just gather and waste an hour's time every Sunday,” much like Thomas. But here's where the rubber meets the road. At some point exposure to all this is going to produce something. It's not for, it's not just for entertainment value, it's not an educational purpose, if you will. Thomas, the most doubting one goes off to the most philosophical part of the world, India, think about that, to preach and proclaim Christ. We still have Thomas; basically they're called Thomas, Indian Thomas. There's different denominations, but they all have “Thomas” in them to this day.

So you think about that. What would it take to make you pick up, let's just put ourselves in modern times, pick up from California, although for me it wouldn't take much, but what would it take for you to pick up from California and, say, go to Turkey and start teaching people over there. You don't even speak their language, and start talking to them about everything that you've learned from this book. And you'd have to say, “You're out of your mind.” Well, that's what I'm saying to you. These people were either out of their mind or what they were telling was the absolute truth. But on top of all that, as I've repeated year after year, they all died terrible martyrs' death, all but John, and John probably would have died.

They dipped him in hot oil, burnt his body and somehow he was spared. And I believe the reason he was spared is to be exiled to Patmos that God would give him the final Revelation, the book of Revelation. I believe that's why he was spared, like God was saying, “Wait, wait, wait! I've got to save this one because this one I'm going to use to write the last chapter of the book.” But all the others died a terrible death. And it was very simple. They all could have said, “Oh, we're lying! We made it up!” to be spared, but none of them changed their tune.

None of them stopped preaching. In fact, they all went their death saying, “He rose, He ascended, He's coming back.” Think about that. And I don't know about you, but at some point even the most hardened criminals will usually roll, and they'll usually to spare, to save themselves. So there's a lot to put into this. And then, of course, as I've pointed out we can talk about the disciples, and we can talk about Christ, but as I introduced to you probably a couple of years ago the most important factor for me is one who was not part of the disciples.

He was a zealous Jew, Saul of Tarsus who became the apostle Paul. He was not part of the close band of followers. In fact, he persecuted the church; he persecuted Christians. And you tell me why a man who had everything going for him; he's a member of a high religious council, he's highly respected, he's doing his own commission, which is to go and persecute and stone and kill Christians. What is the interest or the value for him to make up a story that he had an encounter with Christ? And Christ said, “Why are you doing this?” What is the; what's the benefit? You're going to be ostracized from your community, you will become persona non grata, no one is ever going to let you back into that circle, because you're a traitor for━in their eyes you're a traitor, you deserve to die; an infidel. So what was the benefit of the apostle Paul to make up this story? There is none, except that he had an encounter that changed his life and the consequences for him, it was more important for him to preach Christ than to revert back or to, excuse me, cover his derrière about anything.

He could have gone back and said, “Yeah, I met the guy; nothing to it,” and kept on doing what he was doing, but he didn't; a complete life change, radically changed. In fact, all of the disciples were transformed. There isn't one of them that wasn't changed or touched by an encounter and time with Christ. Peter, from the impetuous, fast-talking big mouth, to the man who stands up and collected and in measured, we'll call it eloquent oration, preaches the sermon on the day of Pentecost.

The two brothers, but specifically John, they were known as “the sons of thunder,” and in the Bible, John is known as the disciple of love. And we could probably catalog even, by the way, Judas. Although I said he wasn't affected, he had to be somewhat transformed, because at the very end he does end up repenting and feeling bad for the deed he did. See, when you actually are exposed to the evidence, the Resurrection of Christ, if you study it, believe it, have analyzed it, it should change the way you think, your mindset.

That's the first one. Write it down if you will, because someday somebody is going to ask you, “What? What is the purpose of all this?” Once a person has truly looked at the evidence with an open mind, I believe it changes the way you think about almost everything. The apostle Paul wrote something, which you've heard me reference many times over, but put it in the context of this message. He said that those that basically live in the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and those that live in the Spirit mind the things of the Spirit. People who are unaffected by this message are still living in the flesh. They heard it, many people will hear it, but they don't know what it is to live in the Spirit.

And let me dial this back a little bit. The conversation that was had between Jesus and Nicodemus, and He says clearly to Nicodemus, because Nicodemus is asking the question, “Well, how? How am I saved?” “You must be born again from above.” Do not use the expression “I'm a born-again Christian” unless you understand what that is. All Christians are born again from above, that is the Greek word: to be born again from above; the second birth. The first one is when you came out of the womb, so put that down as correct verbiage. And Jesus says basically the Spirit goes where it wills. Someone who is born from above, the Spirit will come and inhabit them.

Don't think that it's going to make you speak in tongues, roll on the ground, jump up and down, and do crazy stuff. I've said to you before the Spirit of God is given for service. And service is not limited to the pastorate. Service is across the board. It empowers people, it helps you to remember the Scripture, it keeps us guided, directed; there's a whole host of things. If you, especially reading the book of John, you can see how this actually would affect yours and my life. Now I'm standing in front of you. And if somebody said to me, “Well, I, I don't know how it could change the mindset,” then listen to me, because I came into the church, you've heard me say this before and this is not personal testimony; this is a fact. I came in the church in the mid-'90s, the early-, mid-'90s. I did not know one verse of Scripture, not one. Now, do I just have a good memory? No, that's just not true. But Christ's words say, “If you abide in My word, My word will abide in you.” That's the essence of John 15.

Think about that. You don't need to be━I've met people who are writing down verses of Scripture, trying to remember them. That's not going to help you. That's like what you do in the flesh. But mining the Spirit is being in here, and let this word, as the apostle Paul said, “Dwell richly in you.” That is the first marker of the Resurrected life: you have interest in the word of God.

You don't just read it on Sunday, and it's living in you, it's guiding you, it's giving you direction. So what about the people who read this and are still unaffected? I'm going to tell you that that's a big problem, because I believe there are people who hear, they've heard the message, but nothing else has penetrated. There's no word dwelling in them. No, I'm not your judge.

I can't know like the person who criticized me and said, “I don't even know if she's saved.” I can't tell you who's saved and who's not. That's God's job. That's God's responsibility, but I can tell you change of mindset is at the top of the list. Now, why does the Resurrection matter? We're still sinners. We are covered by the blood of Jesus, washed and forgiven by the blood, but I still sin every day. I'm not going to stand here and lie and say, “Well, I don't sin anymore.” We're all sinners, every single one of us. 1 John says, anyone who says they don't sin is a liar, and the truth is not in you. And there's way too many pastors and parishioners, who think once they've come to the Lord, they sin no more. Good luck, because you're still wearing your Adam attire, surprise. Don't run out with some perfectionist ideology that somehow because you came to the faith you're perfect. There's only one perfect One, that's Christ.

But learning about Him, His word, and His way is part of our life. So the Resurrection matters on so many levels. This is probably the biggest one and the one every time I talk about this I have people that just, they do this. One day we're all going to be dead. Period. I will be dead too. Everybody has a time. I don't care what science is coming up with. So somebody who doesn't want to talk about death, and I've met people like that, “Oh, I can't talk about that.” It means the resurrected life; an understanding of the resurrected life has not penetrated into your soul.

“What do you mean?” I'm saying exactly what I mean. Here, go back to the disciples, their beloved Master, who foretold of His death multiple times over, and of course, while He was alive, “No, no, no! Be it far from You! No, no, this can't happen,” right. They didn't understand. But how is it that after He died, rose, and ascended, they were able to go out and talk about His death? They talked about His death in light of the Resurrection, the ascension, and His return. And the Scripture is abundantly clear. Jesus was the First Goer, the first of His kind, which means anyone who calls themselves a Christian following Christ will follow in His footsteps, which means when we read, “Death has no more sting” over the believer, that's what it means. It doesn't mean that losing a loved one is not going to hurt; it will, but that's the flesh part. And trust me; I know there are a lot of widowers in the sound of my voice.

It does not take away the sting, it does not take away the absence or the void, it does not. But what it does do is it lets you look at the reality. That person devoted to Christ; Christ is not a liar, if Christ said basically, “I am the First Goer,” and you're following Him, you too shall follow as He did. That means that you too will enjoy the resurrected life.

Now, somebody who has not got the mindset, I don't care what you think. There isn't some playing tiddlywinks when the end comes. Let me show you something. I know I haven't opened up the Scripture very much, but let me show you something that has an impact for me. In Luke 16 the passage about the rich man and Lazarus, and, and if you read this with the eyes I'm speaking about it will really make sense to you, “A certain rich man, clothed in purple, fine linen, fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. He cried, saying, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am in torment in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things,” just for a little footnote, Lazarus received evil things.

What does that mean? It means probably that he suffered. He probably didn't have money. He probably grappled with a lot of the things that we grapple with; that's “evil things,” whatever that is, “but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” In other words, you spent your time here on earth pleasuring yourself with the pleasures of this good earth, but not paying attention to God. And what comes next is what I want you to focus on: “And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so they, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass from us,” basically, if you understand this and all the other things that are said about heaven and hell, there is a great divide, there is a chasm. The resurrected mindset fixed on Christ, understanding we too shall rise that there are sometimes, we'll call them mild or light afflictions, which Paul talked about, which are only for a time.

Don't think that because something is happening to you that God isn't with you. Actually, usually it might be a sign that God is with you, that He's letting certain things buffet you, just like He did to many of the people in the book. But it drives home the point. There is a great divide between those who have a changed mindset towards death, dying, and the Resurrection versus those who may have heard it but are indifferent, don't care, couldn't be bothered by it; a great gulf fixed. So you know, you might say, “Well, that's pretty terrible.” But if you think about it, and if you believe the proofs, Jesus is the tangible proof, and so many times in the book, it says, “to him that overcometh death.” So you know, I'm thinking to myself there is something to be said there in our understanding.

You are either fearful of that, it brings about fear, it brings about the shiverings; that's the flesh. The Spirit says, “When it's my time, I'm going to go be with the Lord.” I don't exactly know 100 percent what exactly that's going to look like, but that's what I'm told multiple times over. That makes for good doctrine. That makes me stand on that rock to say, “That's that”" Now, you might say, “Well, how are you dividing this?” Let me show you from Christ's own words. People came to Him and said, “Lord, Lord, Lord! We did this in Your name and we did that.” What did He say to them? “Depart from Me.” Why? “I never knew you.” Do you think all these things are written so that we can just read a good story, or are they given to us as instruction? “I never knew you” means you never spent the time to know who He is to get acquainted with Him to even have a relationship: “Depart from Me; I never knew you.” I want you to think about that, because that changed mindset would bring about somebody who says, “I need to know everything I can know about Christ,” and not just as a onetime deal like you read an article in the newspaper.

I need to know everything I can know about the One who said these words. And I'll tell you for me, I, I would pray I never hear, “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” but rather I'm hoping it will be, “Enter in; well done, good and faithful servant.” The idea here, a lot of people come, even in Jesus' day, with lip service. Now we just kind of discount that in today's world, because you know, there, there's different levels of people in the church. They have different levels of faith, different levels of all kinds of things, but we all have one thing united that binds us all together. That is you do not have an excuse for not taking the time to learn and to know about Christ; again, a changed mindset would bring about that frame of reference. And as I said, many of us start off like Thomas, doubting. We're exposed to it, “Yeah, I don't know.” But let me tell you what happens when you spend time in this book. You come as close as humanly possible to touching the nail, the nail holes or the scars, if you will, of Christ as Thomas did when you spend time in this book learning about Him.

That's as close as you're going to come in this lifetime. Don't think there's going go be some other thing to come and show you; there isn't. So you may start off as a Thomas, and that's fine, but eventually, as I said, spending time in this book is going to reveal certain things to you that may actually make you just like Thomas say, “Oh, my God; this is all true!” I, I hope and I pray for that. I, I don't know if anything I can say can bring that about because I know it's not possible. Only God can do that. We call that prevenient grace; God is the Initiator. Okay, what else happens if I am focused on this resurrected life? What other things will be impacted in my life if I understand; I've looked at the Resurrection, I've looked at all the proofs? Okay, it all happened, what else? Tell me honestly; don't put cameras on anybody.

Tell me honestly; is there anybody here in the sound of my voice that still grapples with forgiveness or being forgiven? Okay, that's a lot of you. That's actually most people. When I traveled, here's the best place to find out, into the institutions, into the jails, into the prisons, even with inmates that had really been, you could tell they were in the word, not just passing time reading. They were in the word. They still grappled with something, whether it was guilt of the event or many times over we'd hear the expression, “But I can't forgive myself.” Do you remember that? “I can't forgive myself.” And the idea is you don't have to be a hardened criminal or be incarcerated for that to be your mindset. See, what happens is what regrets or mistakes we make, Jesus offers forgiveness to each and every one of us, because the Bible says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died.” Again, you'd have to believe all that. You'd have to believe that that was the purpose of teaching the disciples to forgive one another, because in a microcosm how those instructions affect our lives also affect our relationship with God.

You may not see it that way, but that is the truth. Holding something in is a blockade, not letting go of it is a blockade between you and God. So the resurrected mindset says, “I'm going to work at this until I can figure out what it actually means.” You're looking at the evidence of that. I've told you the story many times, but hear it again in this particular message. The wrongs that were done to me in the first few years of ministry, the attempt to try and violate, tear down, rip apart, from some of the closest people; by the way, most of, a good chunk of these people are now dead. And I'm not going to say where they are, because I don't know. I really don't. I can have speculation, but I don't know. The very people that were trusted, insiders even, who tried to rip apart this ministry and told lies and you know, I'll just say it.

Here's a man who was even let in the most personal space, got to sit on Festival and talk to you all, who was in the room when Dr. Scott gave the final orders. They were, they were in writing already, but gave the final orders and spoke them out in this person's ear just before he had fallen into a stroke. Actually, it was, it was before he was in the hospital. This person turned around and said, “Oh, I, I don't know of any orders. I think she just usurped the position.” That spawned a whole bunch of people who listened to that person saying, “Well, she's a usurper,” that spawned other people making up lies. And it just became an implosion of people trying to attack. And I understood. It took me a while to process this; I don't even know how, because I am not wired this way. I was never wired this way. I was never good at forgiving; never. But I remember sitting in what was our old library, on the floor with my Bible praying and asking God to help me, because it was weighing so hard on me, “How could all these people be believers, followers of Christ, instructed in the word,” and yet they were hell-bent on destroying me and this ministry.

And I sat and I prayed, and I started reading the Scriptures and it dawned on me: I have to let all that go and release them. Not, I don't have to tell it to their face, I don't even have to ever see them again, shake their hand, do nothing. I have to release that. I have to forgive them before God, and theirs is the problem, not mine. I didn't commit the wrong.

Now sins against fellowman we forgive, we can forgive each other. Sins against God and the body of Christ, that's not for me to forgive. So I forgave the part that I could. The rest of it I left with God, because there was a lot of stuff against God and His work that, I'm not God, I'm not put in that position to do. Guess what happened? It happened in front of your eyes. I went from being so weighed down it was almost crippling that I couldn't even talk to you to one day after many months of processing the Scriptures and praying about it the clarity came to me. And it was like some heavy weight had been lifted off my back. And no, God didn't speak me in audible terms, but it became clear to me from Scripture that that is God's way. That's why He told Peter when Peter asked, “How many times should I forgive, Lord?” And basically Jesus' answer is “Indefinitely.” Well, in the flesh I can't do that.

That's right, but in the Spirit it's possible. So you think about these things how it changes everything, but forgiveness, I must digress back to that. If you read the Scriptures, how many times did Jesus say, “Your sins are forgiven; go and sin no more”? And we always take that out of context, but idea is that the Lord Himself looked upon people and forgave them. And remember what, what somebody said to Jesus, “Only God can forgive sins,” well, there you go. Forgiveness happened fully and completely on the cross to reconcile fallen man back to God, not to be put in the state of original Adam, but to be put back in the state to be able at some point to be eternally with God. So all I can tell you is part of understanding how His Resurrection affects you life is what God was doing the day after Adam and Eve fell from grace. It didn't just start with your birth or with the coming of Christ. It started way back there and it's a whole history of redemptive process until God said, “This is the final way.” I've been teaching on the tabernacle trying to show you that even there God was saying, “Christ is the way,” except Christ hadn't come in the flesh yet.

So by different shadows and types the depiction of Christ, His vicarious sacrifice; you can list all of them, they're all there. Don't think I'm preaching on the tabernacle because I want to talk about furniture. He knows our frame. I wish I could say this colloquially, because it would hit home for some of you. He knows how messed up we all are. Don't think; you're not fooling me and you're not fooling God and I'm not going to fool you; we're all messed up. There is no person in the sound of my voice that isn't a little messed up in the head, and God knows that. Only some delusional person would say, “Well, some of you are and some of you aren't”━you're all messed up! I'm messed up! And that's part of forgiveness is understanding our frame. You can be the most; you could be a strong person on the outside. You can give all the verbiage of strength, but inside, I don't care if you're a man or a woman, you are as frail and as weak in the frame that God knows that.

Not designed to be a stoic. This is my grievance with some people. They think somehow, “I can't possibly show any weakness at all.” Try that with God, because God knows the façade, He knows the games and the charades we play. That is, by the way, a changed mind before God through the Resurrection will change that. The next one is hope; hope is a part of the future as in life and death, hope through the resurrected Christ offers something else, the ability to see how He is able to help you when everything else is lost, bleak, and gone. Now, that's not battlefield prayers. That's hope that's always been there. That's the knowledge that, and don't misinterpret this, we spend our entire lives messing things up. We do. Even with good intentions, even with the best of intentions. He doesn't somehow with a magic wand fix everything, but it is through the things we mess up. If you're willing to see the direction that He gives, there's hope in watching how God will use certain things to help shape and form and give us direction.

That can give great hope, when you understand that not everything is a disaster. Let me give you a perfect case in point. Look at this crazy world. It looks like it's gone off the rails completely. Would you agree? (Yes, ma'am) But hope, for me, is looking at this crazy world and understanding something that for some people these current events are going to drive people who would never pray and never ask God, “Help me,” that gives me hope that not all is lost, because you know, God has a way of bringing the ones that He wants to their knees. And that may come sometimes through sickness, it may come through loss, poverty; you name it, but God has a way, knowing exactly what it is that will bring me to my knees; same for you. That gives me hope.

And you might say, “Well, what kind of hope is that?” It's the hope that I'm not alone in this world, even when I feel like it. It's the hope that through all of this, I know this sounds like a really cheesy statement, but I have a singular most important Friend, who will never leave me. So when everybody else is running because they're scared, I know the One who not abandon me. That gives me hope. What else will this do? Well, it will definitely change your heart. And by that I mean, and I hope this one hits home, how many people will listen and not have a change of heart? And by that I mean they will never make an attempt to understand what being part of the kingdom of God and being a child of God is. That means I'm part of, I'm actually part of a community of believers. I belong somewhere.

I am not some outsider. Do you know how many people I've heard say, “Well, I come to church, but”━you don't have to come to church to be a Christian. But a changed heart says, “I actually long to be amongst people that are likeminded.” Just think on that. A change of heart can also bring about a change of mind when it comes to things like giving. I know people that are so greedy or so cheap or so tightwad, the idea of actually giving every single week or month to the work of the ministry is absurd, “Oh, no.

I've got to keep the money in my bank account. I might need it. I've got to buy myself something,” fill in the blanks. But I, I'm sure about this; you have a medical emergency, you'll, you'll find the money for that. You have something dire, you've got life or death, you'll find the money for that. And don't tell me that understanding about God isn't life and death either.

See, that change of heart changes everything. Now some people come into the church, and let me talk about this for a minute. Some people come into the church and they are not generous, they are not givers, they have no understanding; they just come. They're happy to just be. And I get that. But at some point there's a nagging that starts to happen, “What can I do? How can I help? What is there more than just sitting in a seat and listening? What is it?” That is the genesis, and I've seen it; trust me, with a lot of new people that have come, “What? What more can I do? How can I help?” And it's not because they believe their help is an embodiment of works; they want to put their hand to the plow and participate, because anybody who understands the work of God and the work of the ministry and doesn't make it into a caricature, you can't help yourself.

And with the resurrected mind you cannot stop yourself, you are going to be, in fact, I've had this problem of telling people don't be here so much. Now you think, “Oh, okay, this person's got problems at home, that's why they don't want to be here, right?” Wrong. You've got husbands and wives coming to fulfill commitments together. That's not because there's a problem in the home. I can give you all kinds of scenarios, but I can also give you the people who give excuses, “Somebody else is doing it. Oh, I'm not really needed.” That's not the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ says, “How can I participate?” Like the disciples who were called, maybe initially they didn't understand what Jesus meant when He said, “I'll make you fishers of men from mere fishermen.” But you come in contact with the resurrected Christ and you take in that evidence and the change occurs, you might actually see it's not going to be some change from A to Z, but the context, the frame of reference, your focus will be different; it will be changed.

Or you'll be like I said the one who's indifferent and decides, “No, not my problem.” That's the flesh talking, by the way, not the Spirit. So I will say one last thing on this, on this particular sub-header here, and that is when I look at some of the most famous converts, which I would highly urge some of you if you are still not hearing down to the core, read the story of the most reluctant convert, C. S. Lewis and how his friends, like J. R. Tolkien, who I believe was a Catholic, but influenced in his inimitable way. But C. S. Lewis didn't come to the faith because of Tolkien. He came to the faith because of God. And there's a whole list of these, but you know what is amazing? From a man who discounted and said, “This is all mere rubbish,” and he goes on to write what I would call one of the most genius books that children and adults alike can read and enjoy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is cloaked in Christian symbolism all the way through.

And you read that book and it has to make you shake your head for a minute that this was written by someone who absolutely discounted the faith, let alone reading the Bible. There's something to this that somehow if we are really looking at the evidence and we're really looking at everything what comes after that is a change. And as I said, it may not happen instantaneously, it may happen over time. Some people will frustrate the grace of God because they say, “Well, maybe I'm turning soft, or maybe I'm becoming this.” But the greatest thing that I can tell you that I have seen with my own eyes, I have watched people, not just for 18 years, but for all the time I've been with this ministry I have watched people that were living a certain way, and not under the, the coercion of anybody else, but they came to a conclusion: this has to stop, this has to change.

And not just words, with my own eyes I've seen. And I'm not going to stand here and take the time to calculate and enumerate how many. That's not the point. The point is exposure to the evidence should produce a change, a change in heart, a change in mind, a change in attitude; a change, by the way, that starts with I'm interested in learning more, tell me more. And maybe like many people who tune in, they say, “I'm not sure that I understand everything you said.” That's okay, because I didn't understand everything at the first. And most people; tell the truth, so that the world can hear. When you came in and you first started listening, did it all make sense to you? (No, Ma'am.) So don't think out there that you're somehow unique because you don't understand. It's called tenacity to stay with the stuff until something clicks, the lights come on, and you actually say, “Oh, my God! Why didn't I see this sooner?” How many, that's, that was my experience, why didn't I see this sooner.

How unfair is that that God didn't open my eyes sooner? But thank God He did. And that's the attitude we have to summarize and, and stay with. So, yes, maybe sometimes your pastor gets a little analytical or she gets a little parsing and things, but I wanted to keep this as simple as possible for the people out there that say, “What am I supposed to do?” I've given you enough in this to tell you there should be something that happens, and don't expect it to be something radical, something overnight; things that happen over time.

And I, I urge you to just consider this one thing. The disciples were with Christ for over three years. Did they change in three years? No. What changed them? The Resurrection, that single event, not just analyzing it, not just being a witness to it; that singular event just radically changed everything. And that same process, don't think that that event stopped and there was a terminus. You know, the terminus will be when God says, “I have enough souls. The number of souls that I desire to have with Me in My eternal kingdom has been met,” whatever that is. I have no idea. And when that number is fulfilled and God says, “Okay, the time is up here on earth.” But that shouldn't scare anyone who has this mind, because it opens the door to something else.

You know, this age we live in where people want to live forever and it's chasing after the fountain of youth, and “How can I keep this? And how can I hold onto it?” instead of thinking this old thing is going to rot. I'm more interested in the eternal clothing I'm going to get that I get to wear forever that I don't have to think about disease, I don't have to think about wrinkles, dying, disease, what I, whatever I just said in multiply it by a million, because everything will be magnified in the positive with Christ, with Him forever. That is really if you take; the takeaway from all this is about the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God starts the moment a person's eyes are opened. And I don't just mean because you heard, but the words have sunk down, taken root, and somehow that change is happening. My prayer today is for all those people who have not even understood what the application is, that your eyes may be opened and that something starts to click with you that this is not some exercise like a checkbook that you just check off that “I've done that,” but rather, a process that will last until you depart from this earth.

And the process is a beautiful one; pain along the way, there's some tumult along the way, there's some suffering along the way, but all the while you recognize there's a purpose in all of this. My purpose I understand, your purpose I understand, is to be a child of God in the kingdom with Him forever. That can only be understood in the Spirit. And I can't make somebody have the Spirit, but somebody who's desiring, somebody who earnestly wants, they will come to that conclusion and understand that's God's job and He is still doing. What He did back here in the book He's still doing today. So you say to me, “Well, change hasn't happened to me yet.” Be patient, my friends. Stay in the word and keep looking unto Him who is able to accomplish all in your life. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass.

If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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