Here we are, back from the Feast of Tabernacles; and I thought Paul's sermon was most interesting on practical ways to extend the experience. What I have to say sort of builds on that a little bit, or provides another way to add to it, to build on the sermons we've heard. We can review the points; we can talk about the wonderful fellowship that strengthened our faith—and, believe me, that fellowship does strengthen our faith when we go to the Feast. We could reflect on some of our favorite Feast-related millennial scriptures, and I never find that tiring. It's always fascinating to read through, for instance, Isaiah, which has like a photographic album of the world tomorrow before the world tomorrow gets here. It's found in Isaiah, but the other prophets, too.

Or—and that's what we'll try to do in this—we could try to capture and articulate the incredible spirit of the Feast overall to get an impression of it, of what the Feast was and the details we can look at periodically. One of the ways that I have found to do that is through poetry. Some poets, I don't know, strike a nerve for me. Others just drive me nuts, you know. I like rhyme and I like reason; and if the poem doesn't have some of each, then my mind wanders. I'll go find the ones that I already know that do [it that way]. And usually the poets that had rhyme, at least a measure of it, and reason are the wealthy ones because their poetry is well read. This one is.

He was English born, but he was famous for being a Canadian for a while. He's called the Klondike Poet, Robert Service. He managed to capture the spirit of a thing about the gold rush. That was in the 1890s in the Yukon Territory of Canada that borders next to Alaska, because the gold rush was both in Canada and Alaska at that time; and it's one of his most famous poems. It's called The Spell of the Yukon. I wanted to share, just at the outset here, several stanzas from it. Not all the stanzas, but I think it has an idea for us to think about from the Feast we've just passed and to reflect upon.

Now, please note the word "spell" in this poem and in the sermon has nothing whatever to do with Halloween and its demonic origins and traditions. And believe me, that holiday is one to contend with. It has begun to rival Christmas. Christmas used to account for 50 percent of retail sales in the United States, and maybe it still does; but Halloween is gaining traction fast. I don't know if you've been paying attention to the changes over the past few years, and this year it seems like they have kicked in the turbo thrusters. The level of advertising for Halloween and the sale of costumes and the sale of candy...you know, used to be you thought about little cheap kid costumes and candy that you saw and you kind of had to walk around in the grocery store. Now you have entire Halloween boutiques for adults...and, you know, there is a preoccupation.

We were reading a commentary, it escapes me, the writer, but I think in the Wall Street Journal—my daughter found it yesterday or the day before—and he says it's a natural expectation that this would happen because in America, we have so carefully scratched God out of everything in the school system [in order] to develop a secular religion, or a secular education, rather, that it's natural that people are going to look for some kind of religion—kids as well as adults—and so, they're doing it. Since we've eradicated what knowledge there was of the true God in the Bible  so well—not we but they; we're not going to claim this—since it has been eradicated so well from America's educational system for so many generations, now we're having a backlash where people are seeking religion; but they're going right straight to paganism easier than they go to Christianity or any of the more traditional religions. They'll go to something very ancient and attractive to them. That's why the vampire books and movies are so popular. That's why the "Goth" and "Emo" movements are so alluring to young people.

Paganism has always been an Achilles' tendon of the Israelites, and it's been the Achilles' tendon of everybody else. We really should wear boots that go up to our ankles to protect those tendons and to avoid falling into that trap. So when I say "spell," you know, the title of this poem was The Spell of the Yukon, I don't mean "spell" in a Halloween sense or demonic sense. I use it in the sense of a fascination, a charm, a preoccupation with, in his case, the Yukon. But for us, it's a preoccupation and a fascination with the Feast and all that it means, so it's the right use of the word.

The Spell of the Yukon, just a few of the lines from it, Robert Service wrote this:

I wanted the gold and I sought it,
            I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
            Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
            I hurled my youth into a grave.
            I wanted the gold and I got it—
            Came out with a fortune last fall—
            Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
            And somehow the gold isn't all.

            No!  There's the land. Have you seen it?
            It's the toughest land that I know.
            From the big dizzy mountains that screen it
            To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
            Some say God was tired when He made it,
            Some say it's a fine land to shun;
            Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
            For no land on earth—and I'm one.

Then he goes on talking about the Yukon from the other stanzas that I find magnificent, or one like this:

            I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That's plumb-full of hush to the brim;
            I've watched the big husky sun wallow
            In crimson and gold, and grow dim.
            Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming
            And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
            And I've thought that I surely was dreaming
            With the peace o' the world piled on top.

            The summer—no sweeter was ever,
            The sunshiny woods all athrill,
The grayling aleap in the river,
            The bighorn asleep on the hill.
            The strong life that never knows harness,
            The wilds where the caribou call;
            The freshness, the freedom, the farness,
            Oh, God! How I'm stuck on it all.

            The winter—the brightness that blinds you,
            The white land locked tight as a drum,
            The cold fear that follows and finds you,
            The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
            The snows that are older than history,
            The woods where the weird shadows slant;
            The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
            I've bade ‘em good-bye--but I can't.

            There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
            It's luring me on as of old;
            Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
            So much as just finding the gold.
            It's the great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder,
            It's the forests where silence has lease;
            It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
            It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

It's a pretty good piece (another word for "peace" there). Pretty good poem. In fact, it's a really good poem. Service didn't write any junk, I don't think. You do have to edit his lines. I mean, he was a gold miner, and so, you have to change out a few words here and there; but [he has] the ability of capturing the gorgeous beauty, the rugged beauty of the Yukon or of Alaska, either one.

If you stop and think about it in an analogy, the Feast is like the gold in the poem; and the spell is the spell of the Kingdom of God, which is pictured by the Feast of Tabernacles, which we savored in the incredibly inspiring and positive effect during the past Feast that we're just back from. But how can we describe that wonderfully spiritual spell, if we were to think of the spell of God's Kingdom? How does the lure of the Feast of Tabernacles pull our minds and hearts constantly back to God's great Kingdom? We can answer those questions and, in so doing, perhaps, create our own version of Robert Service's poem.

You know, good poets, like good authors, write what they know. Whatever it is that they know, that's what they tend to write about. They know the details, so they can do it. It sounds plausible; it sounds reasonable when they do. So we have to ask ourselves, what do we know? And as God's people, what we know is God's word, God's Kingdom, God's feasts. We know the details of those like nobody else on this planet. We know God's feasts, we know His Kingdom; so as we reflect on this Feast, let's form our poem and give it the title, The Spell of the Kingdom.

I have several points about how we can do that and there are plenty of others you could, perhaps, add to them; but, first and foremost, we had a driving desire to go to the Feast. I don't mean just because we went in vehicles or drove to the airport, but we had a driving desire and great dedication. It was like the Feast was calling to us. For instance, you see an echo of the same thing in Acts 18:21. You can put it down as a reference. I think we covered it in the Acts Bible study series. In Acts, chapter 18, and verse 21, the apostle Paul said:

Acts 18:21 – ..."I must by all means keep this coming feast in Jerusalem..."

He had been traveling, but every so often Paul would get this thing in his head that he had to go back to Jerusalem. He didn't do it too often because the last time he did it, he ended up being in prison in Caesarea for two years and then in prison longer in Rome after being shipwrecked once or twice. But he would periodically home back in on Jerusalem, even though he was the apostle sent out to the Gentile areas. And this particular Feast he wanted to keep in Jerusalem.

Now, technically, the word "feast" there in that particular verse could be applied to any of God's annual feast days; but, typically, as it was for Paul (and the commentators recognize), he applied the term "feast" to the Feast of Tabernacles, the fall holy days. It's the biggest of the festivals of God, bigger than the Days of Unleavened Bread because there's an eighth day added onto it. And it is the day where everybody gathered—and does gather even in modern times—someplace where God placed His name for them to gather. So Paul was just preoccupied with getting to Jerusalem to keep the Feast. He had a driving desire to go there.

Likewise, now, in 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 8—and this is one that you mostly know by heart, but it is for reference—1 Corinthians 5:8, Paul appealed to the Corinthian brethren, who had a lot of problems; and they really needed to get the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread right, particularly some of them. So he had taken them to task for the sexual immorality they were harboring in the congregation, in chapter 5 of I Corinthians; and finally in verse 8, he comes down to it, talking about the Days of Unleavened Bread, which is a feast, you know.

1 Corinthians 5:8 – Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

That is a passionate sentence and a fervent appeal to the brethren to keep this feast the right way. In this case, it was a spring feast; but the principle would apply to the Feast of Tabernacles as well. There's a sense there of a driving desire. That's part of the positive spiritual spell that we're talking about in the spell of the Kingdom.

Another example is Christ Himself. This is in Luke, chapter 22, verse 14. We'll turn to that one. This is His final Passover. Now, you know, we live a lifetime, and some people recognize that they have a great mission to accomplish in life. It dawns upon them gradually. Sometimes they try to run, kicking and screaming away from it, like Moses did; but finally they realize that they have something that they must do. But they only know it, like in Moses' case, for not that long. Well, he had an inkling of it forty years before. Maybe he had it even most of his lifetime, so even if it was all of his lifetime before he began, that would be eighty years, because he was eighty years old when the exodus took place. Christ knew what His mission was, what His calling was, what He had to do, long before that. Before the foundation of this world, He knew that He must live and die as a human being and go through what He went through in His life and ministry. Thus, when He says:

Luke 22:14-15 – When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. Then He said to them, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer..."

He was talking of all the emotional and spiritual connections He had with these men and their families and with the brethren that were yet to be converted, but that were represented by them, and the ones that they would baptize. He could see ahead as to what would develop with the Church of God; and He could see so far back and for such a long time, from our perspective and the way we look at time. Christ had the desire to fulfill that feast.

The Passover's a feast, one of the feast days of God. That's why it's listed in Leviticus 23, the feasts of the Lord. It's not a big feast. In the New Testament, you get a bite of bread and a tiny sip of wine. That's it! But it's more than Atonement, and that's a feast, too, so be thankful which days you end up with! They all balance out!

But when Christ said, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover, to keep this feast," then that principle applies to the Feast of Tabernacles as well. All three are instances of a driving desire to keep God's festivals because of what those days meant. Christ wasn't hungry for the sip of wine and the bite of unleavened cracker that He was going to share with the disciples at the end of observing it in the Old Testament way. You know, that wasn't the main thing; and it wasn't even just because of His affection for them as His friends—lifelong, no doubt, in many cases: James and John, Peter and Andrew...very likely, He had known them all of His life, and they had grown up together. No, it was far deeper than that, what that Passover meant. The door to the Kingdom of God was going to swing on it's hinges and fall off one of them. It would be hanging there where it couldn't be closed again, because Christ was going to blow it off like the giant panda did the saloon doors. I knew there would be a way to bring that back in [referring to something that had been said in a previous message].

The spell of the Kingdom, therefore, includes a driving, fervent desire to keep these days and to keep these things which connect us to God's Kingdom. It's not the Feast so much as [it is] the keeping of the Feast.

Secondly, the Feast is often and always—sometimes it is more so than others—a courageous, visionary action; and it carries a visionary tone, the keeping of the Feast does, as a celebration of God's Kingdom.

Let me give you an example of that. It's in Ezra. The history of Ezra is this: he was one of the priests who was in the vanguard, the leading group of the Jews who were allowed to come back to Jerusalem, eventually, to rebuild the temple and re-establish Jerusalem as a Jewish city and Judea as a Jewish nation under Cyrus the Great. They were taken captive by the Babylonians; they were held in captivity for seventy years; and then when the Medes and Persians (dominated by the Persians) conquered the Babylonians and Cyrus became the great emperor or the great king, as it was prophesied, and even his name was prophesied hundreds of years before, over a hundred years before by Isaiah, then he immediately allowed them to go back, rebuild their city, and rebuild the temple and reestablish the function of the true religion. Quite remarkable. In a sense, Cyrus had a visionary sort of approach to things as well, as far as this world goes. So they came back and here we are in chapter 3, verse 1:

Ezra 3:1-2 – And when the seventh month had come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered together as one man to Jerusalem. Then Jeshua the son of Jozadak and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and his brethren, arose and built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God.

They immediately got there, they had returned, there were fifty-thousand, total, and these men were among the priesthood, they immediately rebuilt the altar of burnt offerings.

Verse 3 – Though fear had come upon them because of the people of those countries...

They had been threatened constantly by those people, including the Samaritans and including the various and sundry other ones—a couple of names, one of the names was Sanballot, and his sidekick. They were threatening war with the Jews. They tried legal action by suing to stop the Jews from rebuilding the temple, and they got it postponed for a period of time. You know, it was a battle. Eventually, well, you know the story, when Nehemiah, who was an associate of Ezra's, when he came, he had them building the walls of Jerusalem with one hand...they were one-handed walls. In the other hand was a sword. They were constantly, because they were, you know, a part of this world, constantly at the ready. They had to be, in that sense. So, continuing verse 3, fear had come upon them because of the people of those countries, but in spite of that, ignoring that fear, they courageously set the altar on its bases; and they offered burnt offerings, kind of in the face of those who were trying to get ready to attack them... and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, both the morning and evening burnt offerings. They did the whole "schmo." They immediately went as far as they could to establish the true worship of God. And being the seventh month, verses 4-6, they also kept the Feast of Tabernacles, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings in the number required by ordinance for each day. Afterwards they offered the regular burnt offering, and those for New Moons and for all the appointed feasts of the Lord that were consecrated, and those of everyone who willingly offered a freewill offering to the Lord. From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings, on the day of Trumpets right through the

Feast of Tabernacles and on beyond, ...although the foundation of the temple of the Lord had not been laid.
They set up the altar and they started the offerings. Now, come to think of it, for all the prophecy buffs, maybe they don't need a temple in place to begin the offerings at the end of the age, the offerings that then get cut off at a certain point. They didn't need the temple built to offer these offerings. They needed an altar for burnt offerings. That's what you need for offerings. That doesn't take much to build, relatively speaking. But in spite of the pressure they were receiving from those around them and the threats that they were getting, they went right ahead and they made a powerful statement. "We will follow God as He has taught us, by keeping these feast days, keeping specifically the Feast of Tabernacles, and with all the pomp and circumstance that we have available to us," and they did exactly that, very publicly, in the face of those who were against them.

Now, there was courage, visionary courage. They stepped forward when others wanted them to step back. They stepped forward more enthusiastically when others wanted them to step back. When others were threatening that they would fall apart, wouldn't amount to anything, they kept right on doing what they needed to do, primarily and especially by keeping the feast. They made a huge statement.

You know, in a way, for the United Church of God, we have needed this feast as much as any feast we've probably needed in our time, because we had to make a similar statement. And so we have. And that in itself carries a lot of honor and a lot of, I don't know, emotional appeal and spiritual appeal that goes down very deep. So we have courageous, visionary tone; we have a fervent, driving desire to keep the feast; a third thing is, there is a certain security in keeping the Feast of Tabernacles, that we want to capture. And as we capture the spell of the Kingdom that comes from keeping the feast, let that feed our minds, reflect upon it, down through the months to come, and year to come, as well.

Back in Deuteronomy, chapter 31, there's a very interesting command that Moses gave to the priesthood. The security of God's law as expounded in all of it's immediate and prophetic brilliance...bear in mind, in the Old Testament, when you say "the law," as the Bible was written, it included all of the Bible. Initially, it included what Moses had written, and thus it was then; but even Moses wrote prophecies as well. And there were prophecies before him that alluded to the Kingdom of God on earth again. We notice in verse 9:

Deuteronomy 31:9-11  – So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying: "At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing."

The law would be publicly read on the land sabbath, that's the year of release. It is the seventh year, so in the seventh year, at the land sabbath...but, it's interesting. You think, oh, so you're about halfway through the land sabbath, and then you have a feast where the entire law is read. That was very important then, because how many copies of the law were readily available to people? And the answer is, initially, one, when Moses wrote it. Then they could make some copies from that, but they didn't have any toner. So it took a long time! Needless to say, most of the Israelites didn't have access to a written copy of God's word. They had summaries of God's word that would be posted in their village squares and places like that and they could see those and would be reminded, but they needed the details at least every seven years. So this was a hugely important time of coming to the Feast of Tabernacles. And, as I said, you wonder, well, where did that fit into the land sabbath, into the year of release? Well, being farmers, you know when your crop or your agricultural year begins? It begins when you're finishing your harvest. That's when it begins because if you're going to move from one farm to another or if you're going to take on other land, there's a planning time that has to go into place. You start as soon as harvest is over; you start planning in the fall.

Likewise it is with the land sabbath. You can read it in Leviticus 25. The land sabbath is started in the autumn. It started, ironically, on the Day of Atonement. You know, when the trumpets were blown and liberty was proclaimed throughout the land, liberty on a seven-year basis; but bear in mind, the jubilee, which is specifically talked about there, the jubilee was a great year of release, where families who had been in indentured servitude because of debt or whatever or mismanagement of their family finances, they could go back to their freedom. They were released from that. Other debts were released every seven years. But primarily the family property came back to the family on the fiftieth year, so it was a year of opportunity. A wonderful time in Israel! And it began on the Day of Atonement. If the jubilee began on the Day of Atonement, then the land sabbath had to do so as well, because the jubilee was calculated based on seven land sabbaths and then the fiftieth year after those forty-nine. So it began on that. Thus you are five days into the land sabbath year when the Feast of Tabernacles begins; and during that year, on that land sabbath year, you get to hear the entire law read. And there is a security and a strength that comes from that for the people. It informs our culture in the way we do things, the way we think of things, the way we feel about things.

Deuteronomy 31:12 goes on to say, Gather the people together, men and women and little ones...

So it wasn't, in that sense, a church service that was just for the adults, and the kids could go be babysat someplace. No, no! This is a family thing. We learn together. And believe me, our youngsters learn, too. It was about twelve years ago I gave a sermon, it was at the feast out in Bend, and it was, "Will the Real Millennium Please Stand Up." It was just before Y2K, before the year 2000 came, and we had all these predictions of all the computers, you know, dying and frying and so on. It didn't really happen, but there was a concern. So I thought, well, OK, we're talking millennium. Let's talk about the real millennium, God's millennium. And there has been a fascination with millennial things, you know, in almost every culture in the world. I've had books I've read about it in Brazil and, of course, in Europe, in the Middle East, but in Africa as well. A thousand years, a thousand years, a thousand years, which are all echoes, straight from the Bible. They just don't recognize where they come from. So I was explaining what our understanding of the millennium is from the Bible and that theologians have several views of the millennium. One is post-millennialism. That's where you believe Jesus returns at the end of a thousand years of peace. Most of the world was post-millennial until World War I. Then came a-millennialism. "A" and then "millennial" because that means in Latin, "no millennium." Now, in 1995 we found out what a-millennialism was, because that's what they believed, which is what mainstream Christianity believes today. And then there are those, a few Evangelicals in America at least, and the Church of God has always believed this, we're pre-millennialists, meaning we believe that Jesus will return before the millennium starts. But how could anybody get anything else out of the Bible? I don't know. But most of them don't see that. But we do. We see it very clearly. We also know that we are apocalyptics, meaning that we believe that we're at the end of the age. Apocalyptic actually is based, comes out of Revelation, because that's what Revelation is, is Apocalypse. It isn't the end of the age, but it is the end of the age in the way that we look at it, so we're apocalyptic, pre-millennial, but we're post tribulation, in the sense that we believe that Christ comes at the end of the tribulation—not mid and not before, but at the end of the tribulation and before the millennium, and that we are in the end of the age. So we are, therefore, post-tribulational, pre-millennial apocalyptics. And I explained all that. I gave a whole history of the millennium. It took all of twelve minutes in the sermon, with charts and everything. So, you wonder, well, how much do our little ones get out of this? A few weeks after the feast, I got a note from a lady in the Northwest, and she said, "My eight-year-old daughter was sitting there playing with her Barbies quietly on the floor by my chair while you were giving that sermon, and she came in the other day," this was after the feast, a couple of weeks after the feast. She said, "Mom, I've been thinking. You know what we are? We are post-tribulational, pre-millennial apocalyptics." She didn't take any notes during the sermon. She just sat there listening to these big words, you know, and I was, you know, we were just having a bit of fun with the big words, except that it's nice to know them now and then. An eight-year-old girl memorized them. Never underestimate what your children are learning at church. It sticks.

And, thus, Moses said, continuing Deuteronomy 31:12-13, "with your little ones you're going to be there, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess."

So there is to be a reading of the law. We read the law every day, personally. We read the law on the Sabbath. We have access to the law like never before, just because we've got Bibles. And now we've got the electronic ones. Don't trust those things because one of those electromagnetic pulse bombs and all those things are fried, except for the really heavy cell phones that are lead shielded. If you have one of those, you're OK; but it really holds you down on the one side as you walk around.

Now, let me ask you a poetic question. How do we love God's law? Let us count the ways. It defines God's right way of life. It defines and exacts true justice. It gives our lives boundaries, God's law does; direction to our thinking, to our feelings and to our behavior. It produces happiness when obeyed and not, not (if you follow the two "nots"), and it will be the rule under the Kingdom of God on earth in the millennium. Now those are just some of the ways in which we love God's law; and it ties us right back to the Kingdom, right back to the feast. It's a wonderful thing.

Notice in Isaiah, chapter 51, again on this point of the security of God's law that comes from keeping the feast and focusing on the Kingdom of God. We know that from chapter 2 of Isaiah, the famous one we always read, that from Zion shall go forth the law—Zion meaning Jerusalem, where the capital will be, where Jesus' throne will be during the millennium—but in chapter 51 we pick it up in verse 3:

Isaiah 51:3-8 – For the Lord will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in it, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. We celebrated that by celebrating the feast. Those conditions, the world will be as it should have been. "Listen to Me, My people; and give ear to Me, O My nation: for law will proceed from Me," God is speaking, "And I will make My justice rest as a light of the peoples. My righteousness is near, My salvation has gone forth, and My arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands will wait upon Me, and on My arm they will trust. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, the earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner; but My salvation will be forever, and My righteousness will not be abolished. Listen to Me, you who know righteousness," and, in the context of our time today, that is us, brethren. "You people in whose heart is My law..." God writes His law in our hearts and minds. That's what conversion is. That's how God's Spirit works. "Do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but My righteousness will be forever, and My salvation from generation to generation."

Stay under the spell of the Kingdom. Remember the lessons of the feast.

In Ecclesiastes, and I really wanted to read one item out of Ecclesiastes, so I thought the last three or four verses would be good, in chapter 12. Traditionally, Ecclesiastes is read, by Jewish tradition, on the third day of the feast. We don't always think about that. That isn't a command, but there's a tradition. My theory—and I have a theory on Ecclesiastes and I might give it to you in some detail sometime. I think it was actually Solomon's last great feast message. That's my theory, which would require repentance on Solomon's part, because he needed to, toward the end of his life, and that does seem to be what this says. Beginning in verse 9 of chapter 12:

Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 – And moreover, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yes, he pondered and sought out and set in order many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find acceptable words; and what was written was upright—words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails, given by one Shepherd, a Messianic reference there. And further, my son, be admonished by these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, the security of God's law, the point we are making, one of the great lessons we always learn at the feast. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. This is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

There is a great security that comes from God's law, great peace that it brings us. Great peace have they who love Your law and nothing shall offend them. Psalm 119, verse 165.

Finally, there is a mystery about the Kingdom of God that carries that positive spell, that sense. Let's go to John, chapter 7, and hit a couple of the high points, as we draw this to a close and see what we've come up with for a poem called The Spell of the Kingdom. John, chapter 7. Now,  you know the story, and probably it was covered a little bit during the feast; but this was going to be His last Feast of Tabernacles. Christ's year of last things was six months old by this time.

John 7:1-5 – After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. Now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brothers therefore said to Him, "Depart from here and go into Judea," John, chapter 7, I think we're in the middle of verse 2 or so, "Depart from here and go into Judea," his brothers said, "that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world." For even His brothers did not believe in Him.

They were being sarcastic, and you have to wonder, how do we respond when somebody hits us with sarcasm like that? Especially when, you know, they're family. Why do they have to be so sarcastic? Because family knows how to make it sting the best! Well, I think it's very instructive and it shows a divine sense of humor in Jesus Christ in the way He responded. He didn't get mad; He didn't lecture them; He didn't even say, "Show a little respect. I'm the head of the house around here, not you," which He was, being in the absence of their father. No, He just smiled and said:

Verses 6-8  – ..."My time has not yet come, boys, that's why, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil. You go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come."

He sent them on ahead. Well, He kind of deflated their plan. You know, they tried to be insulting, and He didn't take it as an insult. You know, what kind of a guy is He? He's a guy with a sense of humor, is what He is, a divine sense of humor.

Verses 9-10 – When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret...

Or incognito, is the fancy-dancy three-bit word. If you're in secret, you're incognito, pulled the hood of His robe over His head. You know, He was such an average-looking fellow, as a human being, that He could get lost in a crowd; and so, that's what He did. But He went on up there. He kept the feast. He wasn't not going to keep the feast. He just wasn't going to go with His family. He needed to come quietly. And over in verse 17, we find one of the very interesting conversations that took place:

John 7:14-17 – Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught. And the Jews marveled, saying, "How does this Man know letters, having never studied?" Jesus answered them and said, "My doctrine is not Mine; that's how I know. I'm not telling you from My resources, but it His who sent Me. If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I'm just making it up on My own, whether I speak on My own authority."
So He threw this challenge out. This mysterious stranger is there, talking, and mystifying the experts in the law of the day; and yet, He threw out to them the challenge, "If you want to know if what I say is true or not, just try it. You'll see. Put it to the test." And then He sort of disappears back into the crowd, back and forth He would go, until finally, on the seventh day of the feast, which is the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, that great day of the Feast of Tabernacles—not the Last Great Day. We borrowed the title and applied it to the eighth day, which is appropriate as well.

John 7:37-39 – ...Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." But this He spoke concerning the Spirit...

This again, was a mysterious outburst, a revelation of what God was doing through Him. And there was a certain aura, I'm sure, about the feast at that particular time that was mystifying to some and very enlightening to others. Finally we come down to verse 40:

John 7:40-46 – Therefore many from the crowd, when they heard this saying, said, "Truly this is the Prophet," when they had heard what He had just said in verse 37. "Truly this is the Prophet." Others said, "This is the Messiah, or the Christ." But some said, "Will the Christ come out of Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" So there was a division among the people because of Him. Now some of them wanted to take Him, some wanted to arrest Him, some of the authorities, but no one laid hands on Him. Then the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, "Why have you not brought Him?" They had sent the officers of the guard, the Jewish officers, to go and arrest Jesus and bring Him to the Sanhedrin. They said, "Why didn't you bring Him?" And the Jewish officer said, this was their defense, "This is why we didn't arrest Him. No man ever spoke like this Man!"

Just talking the way He talked and being authoritative in the way He presented what He presented, it stymied even the officers from doing what normally would have been considered their duty. Mysterious indeed. Spell-binding. They'd go and stand there listening to Him instead of trying to arrest Him. I don't know. I think that this is particularly interesting, what Jesus writes about His last feast. The last feast for us that we've just kept has also been fascinating and encouraging. There was a spirit of peacefulness at Virginia Beach like, I don't know, ever before, perhaps. And that's what I'm hearing from those of you who have been to other sites—a wonderful Feast of Tabernacles, a tremendously positive sense.

The feast is mysterious, and so is the Kingdom of God. The mystery of the Kingdom. You know, the Mystery of the Ages was a book we used to publish, talking about God's Kingdom. The world doesn't understand or know much about the Kingdom of God or about the Feast of Tabernacles, for that matter. So wanting to keep the feast and keeping it is the key to understanding the great mysterious spell of the Kingdom.

So I mulled that over, and it's only three stanzas but I'm trying to maintain some of the rhythm that Robert Service uses in his, and I came up with this as a conclusion:

The Spell of the Kingdom

We wanted God's feast and we got it;
He gave us the tithe and the time.
Was it trials or trouble—we fought it,
And went to where God placed His name.
We wanted this feast and we got it;
Came home with God's truth this fall—
Yet somehow life's not what we thought it,
And somehow the feast isn't all.

No! There's the Kingdom of God! Have you seen it?
It's the blessedest place that we know;
From the glorious high mountain of Zion
To the rich verdant valleys below.
God was well rested when He made it,
Yet some think it a Kingdom to shun;
Sadly; but there's some that would trade it
For no place wherever—and we're them.

There's the feast and it's calling and calling;
It's luring us back to its place;
Yet it isn't the feast that we're wanting
So much as just keeping the feast.
It's that great Godly Kingdom yet yonder,
It's the nations where joy holds its lease;
It's the beauty that thrills us with wonder;
It's God's Kingdom that fills us with peace.