[Darris McNeely] Good afternoon, everyone. It is good to be with you here today. Thank you, Ray and Sabrina, for that very lovely piece. It brought back a lot of memories. We used to sing that years when I first came into what was then called the Radio Church of God. That was a hymn in our hymnal, and I remember that song, many, many times singing that. And it's a beautiful hymn with very special words. I won't go into it, but I will tell you that there is a backstory to that hymn that if you don't know, look it up. "It Is Well With My Soul," the author who wrote that there is a backstory that is one that everybody should know as to how that song came to be written, and it's full of meaning. So I'll leave that with you for homework to look up on Google after church, not during. Try to keep your attention so you won't want to do that.

I'm going to start here with a bit of a travel log. As you know, Debbie and I just came back from being gone for about a month on a trip to many of our areas and our churches around the world. We were with the Shabis and the Myers. The 3 couples left here on or about the 23rd of June bound for Australia, and there we began our journey. The Shabis and the Myers have not yet returned to Cincinnati yet. They elected to take some personal time after the trip we were on, so they're still gone. Debbie and I wanted to get home, and I wanted some watermelon, cantaloupe, and some fresh tomatoes before the summer got away from middle Ohio.

So I've already been into at least one of those items this week. You get on the road and the food is okay, but it's not home, and there are certain things that you just miss and you can't wait to get back to, and those were some of the things that we decided to get back to. We could have extended the trip with other meetings, but we decided a few weeks ago, just four weeks was enough to get on home. Let me just take a few minutes to tell you what we did. Traveling like this is a necessary part of the job that we have in the Church, and we began to plan this trip about a year ago for conferences in Australia and South Africa, which then necessitated that length and breadth of those two locations, added in other stops that we broke up and decided to do on this trip.

But then the planning began over a year ago, and trips like this take time, planning, and obviously take a bit of money to do as well. I hope all of us realize that trips like this are not junkets but are actually necessary part of the job, to get out and to meet our ministry and our members and sit down and just have conversations that you can't do on Zoom, you can't do in any other way other than to have an extended period of time where you meet and talk and meet and talk some more about issues and questions and matters that you may be emailing and Zooming about for months and months. But there comes a time you just have to sit down to understand and accomplish certain things to advance the mission of the Church.

A few years ago there was an ad for United Airlines that's been probably 20 or more years ago, some of you may remember, and the ad was very effective. It showed an office with the manager of the office rushing in one day with a handful of airline tickets to all of his staff, salesmen, sales reps, etc. And he said, "I've got a ticket to Des Moines. I've got a ticket to Sacramento. Get on the plane. Get out there. We've got customers that are doing this or doing that, questions leaving us, etc. Get on the plane. Get out there." "You know, we've been in our office too long," he said. Of course, it was an ad to build the support for United Airlines, but it was a very good point that there are certain things in relationships that can only be done face-to-face.

And I've shown that to our ministry over the years to show that, you know, we have to get to visit one another, visit our members, and in this case, we were out visiting our membership and our ministry in parts of the world. I think I'll reverse where we went. We came back after a successful trip to South Africa which was our last major stop. We had a conference plan there with all of our ministry from southern Africa, the countries were: Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Angola. George de Campos and Kathy de Campos met us there and provided translation for the Angolan ministry that came, and then for the South African elders. It was, I think, probably the first time we had our ministry from that part of the world all together in a meeting of this nature.

And we had a three-and-a-half-day meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa. At that time, after that, Debbie and I left for Cape Town to spend the last Sabbath with the members and our minister Viv Botha in Cape Town, South Africa, which was actually freezing cold down there. I've learned one thing in Cape Town, they don't do heaters. Literally, when they come to church, they meet in a hall. There's no heat. Members bring blankets and wrap up in blankets and deal with it. And so we dealt with it. It was obviously wintertime down there, and it was pretty cold, but that's the way things are done.

And we enjoyed our time with them, but we had a very good conference in Johannesburg with all of the ministry that was gathered there, about 50 total. We had come from Thailand. The Shabis and I met up in Thailand at a certain point. We had a really good three-day meeting in Thailand with Leon and Gloria Sexton. Leon Sexton has been a minister for about as long as I've been a minister which is a long time. And we were in college together back in the early '70s. Mr. Sexton studied the Thai language and the Thai culture, kind of got enamored with that during his college career. Actually, on his opening day at college when he was registering for classes, he told me he saw that Thai was a class offered at an Ambassador College, and he said, "I think I'll take Thai."

And it, basically, started him off on his whole life's journey, and he got into the Thai language and culture. And a few years ago he and his wife decided to move there and live there. They created something called the Legacy Foundation. Some of you will be familiar with that. They have conducted a school over there for people. Some of our ministers, many of our members, and young adults have gone there through the years. That school, that institute, shut down a few years ago. They still have their foundation. Our main purpose there was in a sense to explore what could be done with us, helping them. And so we had some discussions about that. Nothing settled, nothing decided. But also one of his proteges, one of his mentees, is a man that we have worked with in a couple of other conferences that has been ordained by Mr. Sexton and is seeking to be a part of the United Church of God.

He has about 70 or 80 members in Myanmar that he looks after. We also have other members in the other parts of Myanmar that are looked after by others that we work with as well. And so we were looking to decide and figure out how we can move forward in taking care essentially of the members that we have in Myanmar. Myanmar is under martial law, and Westerners don't go there at this time. But Seng Ong, the elder, came to us, his wife, and we had three days of really good discussions talking with the Sextons, getting another perspective on the long history of the Church's involvement in Thailand and that part of the world.

When I was at Ambassador College, the Church began to have contacts and work in Thailand with the King and Queen of Thailand. So it was good to kind of get another perspective on all of that and be reminded of a few things that I had forgotten through the years as to kind of how we got involved, what's been done, and why the Sextons went there, and more importantly, what can be done from this point going forward to build on what has been done. So no decisions have been made, so not much to say about that, but it was three very good productive days where we met in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Hopefully, in time, we'll be able to make some announcements of some projects or programs that would move the work forward in that part of the world.

I had spent a long weekend a couple of three weeks ago in Singapore with our membership there conducting a member enrichment program, and we had gone there from Australia where we had a very successful conference with the pastors in Australia. That's where we actually began our trip about four weeks ago and had a very nice Sabbath in Brisbane. We had also had a chance to spend a few hours, the day after we arrived there with Bill Bradford, a long-time elder in Brisbane. Many of you know Mr. Bradford. His wife Jenny died just a few weeks ago. They were married nearly 60 years. So we had a chance to spend some time visiting with Bill Bradford and his family and talking about just old times and a lot of other things. And then I moved into our meetings with our ministry there in Australia.

After that conference, the Myers went to New Zealand and spent about a week and conducted some "Beyond Today" presentations. Mr. Shabi went to Melbourne and met with the congregation there and others. And so we kind of split up, came back together in South Africa and Thailand, and we were gone about four weeks. And so it was a good trip, exhausting, you know, just one flight after another. I can tell you the airports are full, airline travel is grueling, and the food is not so good. So it was good to get home. And all along the way Debbie kept saying, "You know, when we get home I'm going to make this. I'm going to have this dish." And she did. We were all glad to get home. She is unfortunately not with me today because she picked up a head cold that I had for a couple of weeks, and so it's put her under the weather. But hopefully, she will get beyond that very soon.

But one of the observations that I had very early on in this trip, so here's the sermon where it begins, when we first arrived in Brisbane, Australia, about 3:00 in the afternoon, we were ready for supper. So we went out and had a very, very early supper. And not wanting to go to bed at 4:00 in the afternoon, we decided to go down on the Brisbane River in Brisbane and just sit for a while. They have a very nice park walkway along the Brisbane River that has been there for several years since they had a world's fair a number of years ago in the city of Brisbane. And it's a gathering place for people in the city. So Debbie and I went, and we sat for about an hour that afternoon and just watched people walk by. Now, I was struck after...you know, sometimes I just do like as many of you do to people watch and wherever you might be and you just notice humanity. In Brisbane, it seems like everybody from all parts of the world have gathered into Brisbane.

Obviously, I saw many, let's say Australians walking by out for an afternoon, coming to and fro work. I saw people from India, many. I saw Sikhs with their turbans. I saw people from all parts of Asia. I heard many different dialects. I heard a Russian-language couple walk by at one time and observe them, and children, old people, young people, single people, all kinds of people, and literally a mass of humanity walking by. And after a while, it struck me and I began to think about people going to and fro and people living their lives and how it is that we who are in the business of reaching people with the gospel, how do we do that? How do we reach these people? Because those people on the Brisbane River that afternoon were enjoying ice cream, they were on skateboards, they were coming and going from work, and just out enjoying the sun on a...what for them was a winter afternoon, although in that part of Australia winter is not too harsh, more like a Southern California winter.

Enjoying the sun and enjoying the water and enjoying the day but caught up in their life, whatever that life might be. And I began to think how do we reach...how do you get to people like that? How do you take the truth, the gospel, and get into their minds so that you get their attention, and they begin to understand? You know, we are in the business of doing that. Most people today live life as they find it, and these people were doing that. They had different faiths, different religions, no faith, no religion, atheism, agnosticism, eastern religion, Catholicism, Protestantism, whatever it might have been. Most people are born into a mass of genetic information today, and their lives take shape around family, around race, ethnicity, whatever their nationality might be. And they take life as it comes to them, as we do. Most go about a life without a sense of meaning or purpose, and whatever religion they might have or philosophy or a set of principles, it's based largely upon the course of this world. A world that's determined by the fruits of the knowledge that flows from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as we learn in the Book of Genesis.

And the mass of humanity largely go through life, again, as I say, as they find it, in a sense, sleepwalking. Lulled to sleep by the prince of the power of this world, content with whatever life they have made, whatever life has given them, wherever they find themselves at any given time living without the true meaning of life that God reveals. And that's the world, that's people. And I'm sitting, and I'm watching this, and I'm thinking about this, and I recognize that that's the way the world goes and that's the way all of us were going until God reached into our life and called us, and began to open our minds to understand the Bible, truth, who He is, what He is, and the true meaning and the true purpose of life. And really until God reaches into this teeming, swirling mass of humanity, a portion of which I was watching that afternoon, until God reaches into that mass of people and calls people to understand what I call the meaning of it all. The meaning of it all, that's where the world is going.

And I know the job that we are to do and as we go about it, but I sometimes think, and continually, that after all these years still learning what is it that will get their attention. What words, what sentences, what paragraphs, what hook, what can we do and say that will get their attention? God is the one that takes our feeble efforts and makes it happen. I do understand that, and I know that you do as well. But I know that we have to do our part. And I've come to certain conclusions that we have much to learn yet as to how to reach today's world and a mind today caught up with all of the distractions and all of the ideas and the philosophies. We can call it deception, which the Bible does, and that's what it is. But nonetheless, these are people that have lives, and sometimes they're our neighbors. And sometimes they're our colleagues at work. And sometimes that mass of humanity kind of comes into a sharper focus right in front of us, and they become people that we do know. And in time, I might care about as another human being because we get to know them as a neighbor.

And I'm talking about not our fellowship, not our fellow members, but people that we know and come to know in the neighborhood, at work, at school, and we begin to develop those relationships. And we recognize that they have hopes and dreams, unfulfilled wishes, needs. They need truth. And we're a living embodiment of that truth as we would engage with them, knowing that even with that there's a certain limitation we can only go so far because of God's calling. And yet we engage, and we live an example. And if an opportunity presents itself, we can give an answer for the hope that lies within us and explain ourselves and explain a bit of truth why we go to church on the Sabbath, why we don't go to the Christmas party. How do we do that? How well do we do? Do we do it in such a way that can be a positive manner that leaves a good influence? We all need to be able to do that as a church. Communicating the truth, preaching the gospel, seeking to reach people as God instructs us to do is a challenge.

And as I think it through so often, I realize we have to do better. We have to improve. What is it that is the key? Well, God knows and God leads us to do that in that way. And in time, God begins to call. One of the concrete observations, I come away from a trip like this, visiting our members and seeing parts of the world that I've never seen before, is that God is working. God is working in His Church. The Living Christ is standing in the midst of His Church, guiding and directing it with a voice like many waters, with a voice like thunder, with a countenance that shines and blazes like the sun. Christ is guiding. And every day something is being done of a positive, miraculous nature, not only in the Church, the spiritual body, but as God works with His people and God reaches out and begins to call and work with other people as the gospel goes there. We see the fruit of that. And it affirms what we always have known and what we observe every year as we observe the Holy Days, and particularly, the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of Firstfruits, that God has been working in every age to call firstfruits to salvation, a remnant.

That God has purposed it in that way and determined to call a remnant and work with a chosen group from every age of man. We read that in the Scripture. We experience it today. And every group that God has called is to prove by experience that the only way that works, the only religion, philosophy that can work is what is based upon truth through a heart that is changed by the indwelling of the Spirit. A people that would be prepared by accepting the terms of a covenant that has been set in place from before the foundation of the world. Turn with me over to Ephesians 1. Ephesians, the first chapter. The way Paul is inspired to put it here is a remarkable passage. Ephesians 1, beginning at verse 3.

Ephesians 1:3 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved."

God's purpose has been in place from the foundation of the world, before the foundation of the world. A covenant. A means by which God would begin to work with people in His very special way through a covenant that changes the heart. And it is done through a relationship with Christ as it begins to be explained here. It is foretold in many different ways throughout Scripture. One remarkable passage that we know about is in Genesis 17 where God appeared again to Abram.

Genesis 17:1 And He said, "Walk before me and be blameless." And Abram fell on his face at that point, and God changed his name. He said, "You're going to be called Abraham from now on."

But Genesis 17 is a remarkable passage because in it we have the expansion of a covenant of perfection. Where He said, "Walk before me and be blameless." Now, that involves a covenant of the heart. A covenant that can only be done by what we sung in the opening passage and one of the hymns, Psalm 177 or number 177 that was done, that was very appropriate to what I'm talking about here today, where God said, "I will make a covenant, and I will put my law into their minds and upon their heart." And that when it's all said and done and it's all stripped down to its barest is essentially what this purpose from the foundation before the foundation of the world is all about. Now, there's God's law, there's God's way, but it comes down to a covenant of the heart, where God puts that law upon our minds and on our hearts. And that is the process there. That's what has to be done for everyone in the world when God reaches down into that teeming mass of mankind that I illustrate with a group of people along the Brisbane River. You can fill in any group that you might observe in any given time.

God calls us to a relationship that is based on a covenant of the heart. And that's what He was doing with Abraham. And what is even more remarkable in Genesis 17 is that is the episode that opens up something that was referenced 430 years later when God led the Israelites out of Egypt to the selfsame day, Exodus tells us. And then in Galatians 3 of all places the Apostle Paul, as he's explaining everything as he does in the Book of Galatians, he goes back to that same episode in Genesis 17 and that one covenant, that one expression of the covenant, to which nothing could be added, that transcended everything. And it's a covenant where God said, "Walk before me and be blameless." Why would it be mentioned 430 years later in connection with the days of unleavened bread?

Well, we should know that because the days of unleavened bread we put sin out. We overcome sin. We come out of Egypt. We focus on the sacrifice of Christ and a blameless life. And that had been mentioned to Abraham 430 years earlier till the selfsame day we're told. And then Paul mentions it again in Galatians and brings it out at the very high level which it is. And that covenant and that relationship that is there, to which nothing could be added, to which nothing in one sense needed to be added, and ultimately was based on the eternal purpose of a walk defined by an eternal spiritual law that Abraham knew about, that was in place from creation, a law that God would eventually write upon the hearts of His people. The anchor of our hope that we have and we understand lies in the purpose that, this purpose that Paul describes in Ephesians 1, that God's bringing to pass, a purpose set in motion, set in place from before the foundation of the world.

Continuing on here, in Ephesians, let's just pick it up in verse 7 and read just a few more verses here.

Ephesians 1:7-10 It says, "In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace..." Of course, that is through the sacrifice of Christ. "In Him, we have that redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself." The purpose laid down before the foundation of the world. Verse 10, "That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him."

And at that point, with that verse, Paul just kind of soars off into the cosmic ether. And he just leaves it there. And we're still trying to figure it all out. And we can. It's not that difficult. But it is one of the most remarkable verses of all things being gathered together in Christ. All things brought together in one in Christ. I've mentioned that before. I keep thinking about it. How? How will that be done? And here's my latest thought. It's going to be done through a covenant of the heart. That covenant of the heart that God talks about. A relationship between God and man that is based on a connection that can only be made through the heart. Now, what's the heart? Well, we know literally it's what's beating in our chest that keeps us alive, pumping the blood around, right? But we also know that when the Bible talks about the heart, it's something far beyond that organ of life that is so critical and essential to us.

Look at all the Scriptures dealing with the heart. The heart is deceitful above all things. We learn very early, and we should learn more than that. Hopefully, your heart's not too deceitful where God has begun to write His Spirit. Okay? But look up and notice how many times in the Scriptures the heart is mentioned. And it's there. Abraham could only walk blamelessly before God and fall down on his face and worship God because his heart was changed. Again, what's the heart? It's the totality of our whole consciousness, our being, that body, mind, and soul that Paul talks about. The breath of life of the spirit in man and the Spirit in God all combined to create the essence of our personality, our being, and our humanity. It's all of that and everything that is in between. It's more than the organ that beats. It is who we are. It is what we think. It is what we say.

The thoughts that issue out of the heart are to be of righteousness. And on and on the Scriptures tell us. It is what expresses our whole being in a relationship with God. And when God writes His law upon our heart, that's the most important basic essence of humanity and of our life, and ultimately of our relationship with God. Abraham had his name changed to reflect a different mission now. His heart was changed. God's purpose, determined as we read before the foundation of the world, was that those who would be called from every age, each group of people from every age of humanity, would prove by the experience that the only way that works is through a heart changed by the presence and the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit. That's what these verses are bringing us to. That a people would be prepared by accepting the terms of a covenant set in place before the world's foundation. And that's the essence of it.

No matter what episode or passage or story we turn to in Scripture to read to understand what God is telling us, it's going to come back to that in one way or the other. Let me give another example through a couple of passages from two of the great prophets of the Bible, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Please turn over to Jeremiah 31. And let me show you something from two passages here. And these two great prophets, Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, the great prophet who came to the nation of Judah at its end and spoke for many, many decades, ultimately his life giving a message from God to the last kings of Judah. And we know Jeremiah. It can be a wonderful read and soaring passages. But perhaps one passage that we know quite well, and, again, we sung the essence of it in the opening set of songs, it's found here in Jeremiah 31 beginning at verse 31, where in the midst of all of Jeremiah's proclamations of judgment, of destruction, of a call to repentance for his own nation, but for all the other nations of Babylon and those of the day, here's what is said.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 "'Behold, the days are coming,' says the Lord, 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,' says the Lord." And that's speaking of the covenant made at Sinai, often called the Old Covenant, the one that is passed away, as Paul writes in the Book of Hebrews. But nonetheless, that important covenant...but He says there's going to be a different covenant. Verse 33, he says, "'This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,' says the Lord, 'I will put my law in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me. From the least to the greatest of them. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more.'"

Again, we sung that already here today. But that here in the middle of the Book of Jeremiah, in the midst of a number of prophecies, prophecies of doom, dark, gloomy utterances that cost Jeremiah a lot of suffering, esteem of his own family and neighbors, got him imprisoned, had him persecuted, made him depressed at times, led to some of the lamentations that Mr. Porter was referring to in his sermonette here, in the midst of all of that is this, which can never be forgotten because it's brought forward by Paul in Hebrews 10 and is speaking to a different covenant, a covenant of the heart. We call it the New Covenant, where God said, "I will write my laws upon your heart through the Spirit." And that's where we are and what we're under and what we are a part of today. But that's what is at the heart of everything from before the foundation of the world because that's at the heart of God's purpose. That's at the basis of God's purpose, is to have a relationship with man based on one of the heart, based on a mutual respect and love. And that's how it may be, in part, how all things in heaven and earth are going to be brought together in one through the body of Christ.

You know, brethren, when we start to think about the Bible, God's message to us, but also a message for today's world, when we begin to think about that message and how to reach the teeming masses, to answer the question that I came to on an afternoon in late June here on the Brisbane River, how do we reach these people? What will make a difference? What will grab somebody's attention? What is it that God can use? And I think we have to do better. We have to think it through. What is it that God can use? Well, no better, perhaps, than what God has always used, "Walk before me and be blameless. Know me from the least to the greatest, worship me, turn to me, and I will pour out the blessings of heaven." This is the way. Walk you in it. All of that from the Bible, how do we distill it? How do we distill it into such simplicity that people from every walk of life on the earth today, every race, every nationality, every ethnicity that is out there, can understand and relate to that? Through Jeremiah, God is telling us something.

Let me show you that other passage from another great prophet, Ezekiel. Turn over to Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel is the prophet of the exile. His work was done from Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. And we know Ezekiel. We know the passages that talk about being a watchman, standing upon the wall, issuing a warning witnessing message. Ezekiel was called upon to do some rather interesting, shall I say, things to illustrate his message before his people that would be looked upon as rather bizarre and dysfunctional today. But they were directions from God to do it. But right here in chapter 36 and at verse 25, He says this...

Ezekiel 36:25 He said, "I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all the countries, and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean, and I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols."

At the heart of every prophet's message, every one of the prophets God sent to Israel and to Judah, was a message to turn from idolatry. Gods that were not gods. And He said here, "I will wash you. I will cleanse you from the filthiness of your idols."

Ezekiel 36:26-28 "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall be my people, and I will be your God."

Now, there's a lot of other passages and pronouncements from Ezekiel too, as there would be from Jeremiah. But when you look at all of the totality of those messages, and throw in Isaiah, too, to complete at least the major prophets, and when you put them in their time and place and you look at what they were told to do, and they did it...and yes, it was a message of a call to repentance, and as I said, essentially the message that the prophets all took to Judah and Israel was to turn back to God. "You've forsaken the covenant that your fathers made. You have gone after other idols. You've served gods that are not gods. Turn back from that," and they didn't do it.

But in the midst of all of that, there was this ultimate message that we've just read from both...a message that transcends their time. And as I've said, without turning to it, because you can read it in Hebrews 10, where Paul says...and he outlines the essence of the relationship that all nations now can have with God, all peoples, and that is one where God's law is written upon their hearts. These prophets were onto something and led to it by God in their time, as they then, in the midst of messages to their people, were able to rise to this message of hope, a message of the heart, and to basically see and understand in their own time and in their own way, perhaps not with the clarity that we made from our perspective, but I think with enough to give Jeremiah and Ezekiel enough of a faith in God and a hope with God and a relationship with God in a positive way to know that He indeed did love His people and that love would endure. Because these men were able to rise up and look down far into the future and know that, even as God had taken from Israel their sovereignty, their nation, their status, and thrown them into captivity, He wasn't done with them.

They had seen down through the ages that God's ultimate message was, "People to turn to me." Yes, there was gloom and doom. Yes, there was a message to cry aloud and to spare not, but that was not the whole message. That was not the end of the message. Ultimately, the message was to turn to God in a heartfelt repentance and walk before Him and be blameless. The ultimate message that they gave was to rend your heart, not your garments. Rend your heart, change it, and not some physical expression. Change what is within you. These prophets saw far into the future to a people who would be drawn from the nations who would then be given the kingdom. The message of the kingdom was not done because Israel or Judah no longer existed. They saw that people would be drawn from the nations into a covenant of perfection made possible because the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ, came and would come and that all people could become the seed of Abraham, not by race, but by promise, by grace through the one seed, through Jesus Christ.

And that was the message that I think was the message that gave them an urgency, an Ezekiel, an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, and others to continue faithfully to live, to do their job. Their urgency did not come from headlines. It did not come from news events. Their urgency came from the Word of God. Their urgency came from the promises of God. Their urgency came from the knowledge that God was building a relationship through a covenant of the heart. And that whatever message of repentance, of harsh times, and of punishment was always cloaked and covered and bookended by a message of hope, that's what gave them their urgency. And that, brethren, is what should give us that urgency today as we continue in that work.

The prophets were stirred to an urgency to take a message from God to the people. It was a message to turn from idolatry back to God with heartfelt worship. And what motivated them was an urgency surrounded by truth, the truth about God, that God was living, He was not an idol, He wasn't some empty vein idol of the nations, He was a living and true God who had a purpose and had love, a God who had done something that no other idea about God had ever done. He had taken the people from slavery, delivered them from slavery, gave them a land in a manner that God did with Israel, which became their defining story, the Exodus story. That was our national legacy. That was their national epic story.

Every nation that has ever existed has some story that defines their origins and who they are. For Israel, it was that Exodus story. And that story transcends just the people of Israel. That story is applied to all of the nations through the seed of Abraham, through Jesus Christ. God had taken a people who were not a people, and He had made them a people. No other nation had been dealt with so generously by their God or through their national story, and, unfortunately, no other people forgot God's blessings and mercies as Israel had done. And a Jeremiah and an Ezekiel and an Isaiah had an urgency to deliver a message whose very essence was one that God's not going to forget you, God wants you to turn to Him, rend your heart, and He wants to write His law upon your heart. And though it may not happen in this age, it will.

And that was the promise that echoed down to every succeeding generation and comes down to us today in Scripture. And that is where our urgency comes from, because we have been brought together as a people who were not a people ourselves. We've been brought together to be a holy nation. We are a group of people who are called firstfruits. We're called together to understand the truth of God's plan and God's purpose because of the knowledge that God has placed in His church, and we see that. Our urgency has got to come from something far greater than what we might manufacture among ourselves. Our urgency doesn't come from headlines, I say again. Our urgency comes from truth. Our urgency comes from the Word of God and from the promises that God is working out. And if that urgency does not embed itself in your heart and in my heart, then the ultimate work of God is not being done in us as it is defined in Scripture.

Oh, we are going to look at headlines. You know, one of the things you find out when you visit with our members around the world, is they follow American politics. And they know what's going on. You've got CNN. You've got Fox News. You've got all of these things. And I say, "Why are you so interested in American politics?" "Oh, ours is so boring," they say. And, all right, I'll give you that. I will give you that. We'll watch the headlines, but if that's what creates an urgency, we're missing out. And I'm the world news and prophecy guy. My students know that. And I'm the teacher that says, you know, "Know what's going on in the world today." And yes, we should, and I will continue to. But if we're ever going to reach the people that are walking along the Brisbane River or any other place in this world where people gather and go about their life, we have to bring them to the truth of God.

We have to motivate them to recognize and to see that their gods, their ethnic story, their racial story isn't truth. And there is a better way. We have to take that to them and put it in such simplicity that it changes their life. That it can be used by God to change their life, and God can begin to reach down into them. The messages that Israel did fail at a time, but they're not lost, and they're not forgotten. In many ways, the nations have failed, but God will not fail. In 1 Peter 2, we read a description for us to be inspired by. 1 Peter 2. Let's begin in verse 1.

1 Peter 2:1-10 "Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

We're living stones, not dead, inert stones fashioned by the hand of men into idols. We're living stones being built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to give spiritual sacrifices.

"Therefore, it is contained in the Scripture, 'Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.' Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious, but to those who are disobedient, 'The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,' and, 'a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.' They stumble, being disobedient to the Word to which they also were appointed. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light."

And He has, and He's continuing to call people out of the darkness of this present world into His marvelous light.

He goes on, "Who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy."

God is preparing a people today prepared to rule with Christ on His throne. And He's doing this every day in all parts of the world among His people and those that He is calling. You know, God replaces people in His Church every day. I see the fruit of that wherever we have gone. He calls people from all walks of life. His Spirit does go out, and it does not come back empty. I see proof on these travels that Christ stands in the midst of His Church, guiding it to its purpose for which it has been prepared. And He's doing that every day. The miracle of God reaching down into the teeming masses of mankind is still being done in His time, in His way, and in His proportion. And it affirms the hope and the message of the prophets, as we've read, of a people prepared. That's our hope. It's the miraculous work of God. It's being done every day. And God's working in the lives of His people all over the world. That's our hope anchored in a covenant of the heart. And it's ultimately the hope of all of those people that I watched that afternoon on a waterfront in Brisbane, Australia, who represent people in every part of the world where God is working as Christ stands in the midst of his Church, calling people to a covenant of the heart.