[Ken Martin] This afternoon, good evening everyone, good to be with you once again as we now approach a very special time for all of us called the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. You know, if you work for any type of establishment and a job review is required of you on a yearly basis, you have to sit down with whoever it is who is designated for that and they give you a yearly status report. They sit down with you and to see what have you accomplished and what needs to be improved. Or they may tell you that you really blew it and you need to, you know, really take note of what's happening.

Well, we were given that admonition in Ephesians 4:1 where it tells us that we are to walk worthy of the vocation to which we have been called. Now, vocation is another term for a job, a calling, or a work that you're involved in, and we're involved in the work of God. That's what we've been called to do. And Jesus set the example and then He told us that we get busy and do the work by preaching the gospel to the world as a witness, not that they were all going to just line up and jump on board. But that it would be a witness against them, some would respond and be like on good soil, everything would be fine. Others would jump in and get excited for a while, and then they would just kind of die out.

All these things are part and parcel of what we are to take note of today as we look prior to Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, and fulfill a command that God has commanded of us to examine ourselves and see whether or not we're in the faith. Now, what I would like to give you as a title for this and where we're going, so you have a clear picture of where it is we're wanting to ask ourselves, where do you stand with God and Jesus Christ? Where do you stand with God and Jesus Christ, because we're being interviewed by our Heavenly Father and our elder brother; we're looking back on a year that God has granted to us. And in that year we are being evaluated as to what we have accomplished in our calling, our spiritual calling, our vocation in Christ, and we're also being evaluated in where have we fallen short? This is part of the examination process.

Now, we know shortly we're going to be here observing the Passover followed by the Days of Unleavened Bread. We know that they picture some very important things to us. And as Romans 15:4 reminds us, everything that is written is written for our learning. So we must learn the lessons that God has ingrained in the Bible. And I would just add this very important point, the Bible is a book that reveals the goodness of God and it also reveals the failure of mankind. It is not God who has failed, it is mankind who has failed.

And God is in the process of redeeming mankind to Himself through a marvelous plan and a purpose that He and He alone is working out. That's why it is called God's salvation, not yours, not mine. Nobody can save us from our circumstances but it is God who will bring about a deliverance of our terrible state of affairs that we find ourselves in. And God wants us to understand that once He has brought us to the knowledge of His truth and brought us to conversion, and that conversion comes through, first God leading us to come to repentance.

To realize we've all gone astray like sheep, we've all got to get ahold of ourselves and acknowledge our transgressions before our God. And God is merciful and willing to forgive us through that which is pictured in the Passover. This is why Jesus Christ died, and so we go through certain things at this time of the year as a yearly remembrance of things that happened to our ancestors in the past and where they fell short. And where we as individuals now in the New Testament, understanding our calling in Christ Jesus in the new church, where Jesus said, "I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." It becomes important for us to understand that what pictures in the Old Testament concerning Israel, they were to be the role model that God would use, of all the nations God chose Israel, the smallest.

He always likes to start small like mustard seed, and through those people He chose them as a special treasure and He was going to use them to bring about this marvelous plan of salvation that ultimately would affect every human being made in the image of God: male and female. Well, what God wanted us to understand then as we read His Word, His miraculous holy Scriptures, we see that the Israelites were in a terrible state of slavery. You and I, whether we realize it or not, have been in a terrible state of spiritual slavery, not slavery in the terms that many times people think of when they hear the word slavery. We're thinking in terms of something that goes on behind the scenes that most of us were not aware of that we were being held captive by an unseen power and force that has dominated the world and has controlled everything in it, other than the fact that God rules in the kingdoms of men and He has the final override, or what I call the X Factor, people forget about that.

That God rules in the kingdoms of man and He makes the final decisions and anything that happens that happens, and if it happens God has allowed it for some reason in the great plan that He's working out with human beings. We don't always understand all those ramifications because He doesn't think like we do. He tells us that in Isaiah 55, He says, "Your thoughts, are not My thoughts, your ways are not My ways… and as the heavens are higher, so are My ways from your ways." So we have to acquiesce to the fact that God is so superior and so, so fantastically qualified to tell us what is it that we need to understand about our condition, where we're at as human beings and where do we find the solution to our problem. And the answer is in God Himself. And so God ordained with those people called Israel, the Israelites, who were in slavery for about 430 some years, He gave them a deliverer, his name being Moses.

We're familiar with these stories. These stories have a greater impact than most people care, they're not just cute, little stories written for people to be entertained with or to go see Charlton Heston play Moses in The Ten Commandments. The real Ten Commandments and all that is written in Scripture carry a powerful message for all of us as men and women, young and old alike because everyone is affected. Everyone comes into the play of this great plan of salvation. So God gave a command to Moses to tell the Israelites to prepare for a thing called the Passover, and if they would do what God had asked them to do then God would pass over them as He would deliver them from the hand of a cruel taskmaster: Pharaoh and the Egyptian. What happened is that they came out.

They came out on the night which we celebrate called the night to be observed or remembered, and they came out of Egypt by the hand of God. And once they departed we learn from these lessons that God has to pass over our transgressions like He passed over Israel to deliver them, He delivers us, and what else does He do? He provides instruction for coming out of sin. And so the Days of Unleavened Bread are revealed to as a seven day period in which we have all gotten busy and we've gotten rid of leaven products, and all the things that have leaven in it. Now, we do that as a reminder of what we must be doing to house clean these temples, these bodies, these temples of the living God.

Your very life is a temple and the Spirit of God dwells in you, and you and I are commanded to constantly remember we must house clean, keep the temple clean because God does not want our bodies to be defiled in any way, shape, or form. That's why He gives laws about what you eat. Some people say, "Well, you can eat anything." God says, "I don't want you to eat anything. I don't want you to eat bugs and cockroaches and all these other things. And think that this stuff is some kind of a, a wonderful new, new revelation of eating food and protein."

He said, "Forget it," He said, "I've got rules and guidelines for you. I want you to be strong. I want you to be healthy. I want you to follow my instruction." So what we do is we come to understand, as Israel departed out of Egypt so we must depart out of sinful behavior, whatever defiles us. Because they were defiled in the Old Testament by the things they did.

You and I are also somewhat defiled because of the things we do. And as we take our analysis and ask, where do we stand with God and Christ? We have to look back at this past year and see what have we accomplished to the glory of God? And where have we failed and defiled these temples of the most high? Because don't kid yourself, folks, we are all guilty, we are all guilty. We have done things that we… we've thought things, we've done things that shouldn't have been done this past year.

I'm not here to judge you. I'm not here to throw stones. I'm just here to tell you what you're guilty of, I'm guilty of, and everyone in the Church of God and the whole world is guilty of. They just don't know it. They just don't know it at this time.

You and I have been called to understand that we've been sloppy in our conversion, we've taken things for granted. We think that we're a-okay because we come to church every Sabbath, because God says this, "Come to the Sabbath," and that's fine and good and it is important. But there are weightier matters of the law that God wants us to be mindful of and wants us to understand during these days, we focus on the deliverance that we receive through Jesus Christ, not Moses but Jesus Christ. And He delivers us from this world and from the god of this world, Satan the Devil. The whole plan of salvation is to bring human beings into the family of God, that's your destiny my destiny and everyone's destiny as human beings, to be a part of the eternal family of God.

What greater purpose for life could be given to any human being to comprehend? To live in eternal destiny of the family of God. And so we are practicing some very important things that God wants us to understand. And in Exodus 12:15-19, it reminds us that we were to put leavening out of our house, why? Because leaven does things, it contaminates, it causes a lifting up sensation. And so we understand that, and we want to understand that while we are cleaning our houses we don't get excessively strict.

Where we go straining at gnats and swallowing camels, trying to get every little piece of leaven out because you can't do it. Leaven is everywhere, you got to get as much out of as you can. And it just… it's a token showing, as God looks at us He sees that we're taking it seriously and that we want to clean up our lives just as we clean up our homes. But we have to understand that during this seven day period that we normally… you would normally eat bread. We don't eat bread. We don't eat any leavened products, why? It reminds us seven the number of completeness that we would have to get completely away from sin; anything that defiles or causes us to break the laws of God.

Now, the important thing it is is that while we're thinking about putting things away we have to understand there's a positive aspect in all of this, and we must never lose sight of that. Because the positive side is as you clean out the temple, get rid of these areas where you're falling short you're drawing closer to God, and closer to, as He says in Scripture, in the book of Leviticus. It says, "Be you holy for I am holy." Now we have to think about that because we don't tend to think about ourselves taking time to be holy, but that is the destiny God wants for all of us, to become His holy sons and daughters. He doesn't want defiled sons and daughters.

He wants sons and daughters that obey Him and follow His positive example and lead. And we need to be righteousness, by during these days, putting on sincerity and truth. That's the important thing, the spiritual dimension. So how are we to examine ourselves in the time remaining because that's what I want to do, I want to go a little bit deeper and show you that as we evaluate ourselves in this yearly review, an assessment of our spiritual progress. In some areas, we have advanced, in other areas we have regressed and gone backward.

The Bible says, “remember Lot's wife,” you cannot afford to go back. So when God gives us this command it is for the purpose of helping us to see and moderate where we are, because He says, "If you think you stand take heed lest you fall." Because it can give you a false sense of security, you think, "Well, I'm doing okay." Well, we may not be doing as much as we think we are that's why the warning to the church at Laodicea, because they are wretched, poor, blind, naked, and they don't see that. They don't see any of that.

And He says, "Oh, I hate this," because if you would just do as you're asked to do and evaluate yourself you wouldn't have to go through the fire that I'm going to have to require of you to purge away these things and make you realize where you have gone wrong. It is better you do it to yourself than I'll have… because if God has to do it... He doesn't do it to hurt us, that's the most important thing. He's doing this to show us where we have been lax. And that becomes very important because there are two Greek words that we're going to investigate this afternoon, both of these words have to do with the word test, test.

Because again, there are different types of testing involved. And when we understand these words it gives us a little better picture of just exactly what you and I are doing as we investigate on a yearly basis this area. And this is what it is, these two words will help us to understand and explain the difference between how God tests us and His approach, and how Satan tests us and his approach. Because there's two different ways, and this is very important, one of the words that we want to look at is dokimázō, don't worry about it, it's a Greek word, but basically, I'll give you the definitions for it. Dokimázō, it's a word that means “the act of testing something or someone for the purpose of approving it.” In other words, for the benefit, is this genuine?

Is this genuine? This is one of the very important areas to test, to examine, to prove, to scrutinize, to see whether you are the genuine article. All right, now if we take that and apply that as Christians, what does God say? I'm allowing things to happen in all of our lives and it does, things happen in all of our lives, and what is the purpose of it? To see if we're genuine Christians.

Are we the genuine article or do we just have form and ceremony of righteousness but we really deny the power thereof, we're not relying on God's power. We're trying to do it on our own strength. This is very important for us because again, this is what God wants to understand. He wants to recognize in us that after our examination to approve that we're the genuine article. And that's what we want to be, don't we?

We want to be the genuine article. We don't want to be a false Christian or a false brethren, the Bible talks about those type of things. But you see, everything in life has to be proven, has to be tested. For example, in Luke 12:56, it talks about proving oxen, and how oxen have to be proved in a certain way. We also find in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, the admonition for all of us to “Prove all things and hold fast what is good.” If you hold fast what is good, what is else implied?

Discard what is not good, get rid of the leaven, the things that are not good that you don't want to hang on to, holdfast the good things. And what about the Bereans, we read about them in the book of Acts 17:11. Now, what is it that is focused about the Bereans, it says they “were more noble than those in Thessalonica." So you have two churches here, people in Berea and people in Thessalonica. And Paul says the people in Berea, they approached this thing in a much more noble manner than the other church group of individuals. And what were they trying to do?

They were not trying to disprove Paul and say, "Oh, I don't believe that Paul. I don't believe what you're saying." No, they were not trying to disprove but they were trying to prove and check up to see, is what he's saying true? It makes a lot of sense but I'm not sure. And so they were having to investigate and check it to see is this… and this is what you and I have to do.

We had to prove about the Sabbath. We had to prove about the Holy Days, the clean and unclean meat, all the things that we have learned in the course of our calling in the Church of God. So they were not trying to discredit Paul. They were trying to see exactly what was involved. In 1 Corinthians 11:28, we are told to examine ourselves, and this is in the context of the Passover, and after we have done this evaluation of our years, either growth or failure. And I want to emphasize again, we've all had some areas of growth but there are some areas of failure in all of our lives.

I'm here to tell you, God is not pleased with everything that's going on in our lives. And that's a hard one to have to swallow because we want to think we're all so good but we're not so good. We have a deceitful heart, our hearts trick us, make us think because we see other people may be in a worse spiritual condition than ourselves we tend to think, "Well, I know I'm bad but I’m… hey, maybe I'm not that bad." Oh, we're that bad because God doesn't discriminate, you know, whether you got bad sins, real bad sins like David or Saul, the things that they did. God is merciful, remember.

He forgave Manasseh when Manasseh repented, He forgave David when David repented, He forgave the apostle Paul as Saul when he repented. And He forgives us when we repent. Because God's a merciful and loving God, and everything He does He's doing for our good because He wants one thing out of us, He wants to bring us to the final apex of what we were designed to do; to bring glory and honor to God the Father and Jesus Christ. That's why you live, I live, anyone lives, otherwise, you're in it for yourself. If you don't do it for God you're doing it for yourself, and you “verily, you have your reward” as Jesus said, you're going to live and you're going to die, and that is it.

But if you see what God has called you to, He wants you to realize, I'm in it with you folks, I've got your back. I'm here to help you, and all the trials and difficulties that you struggle with, just remember you've got divine help if you ask, if you seek and if you knock. Now, if you don't do that you're on your own. We've tried it on our own at times and we realize it doesn't work, it just doesn't work. If you don't have God pushing and guiding and directing and helping you with His Holy Spirit, you go nowhere, you go the broad way that leads to destruction. Why?

Because you want to be like everybody else, so you dress like everybody else, you act like everybody else, you do what everybody else does. Why? Because you don't want to be different. God's called us to be different, "I want you to be holy. I want you to be our sons, my sons, and daughters. I want to put glory, honor, and immortality upon you in crowns of righteousness." Wow, how many people understand that? Very few, many are called, few are chosen.

The ones who have been called and the ones who've been chosen, must do what? Be faithful, they must be faithful and endure to the end. Because there's no other road to go, you either go the road God has outlined or there's nothing. So we examine ourselves and when we've done that, rather than get discouraged or maybe say, "Oh, man, I really, I really blew it this year and I really messed up," we just tell God that. And once God sees that we're honest with Him and we tell Him because that's what He's testing us, to see if we're honest, or are we playing games with God.

 And if we can tell Him honestly, "I'm really sorry Father, I really blew it in many areas. Please help me never to go back and do these things. I know I said I'd never do these things and here I am and I did it again and did that." Whatever that is, you know, fill the blanks, the missing blank, everybody's got something that they're struggling with. You don't have to have somebody tell you and say, "You know, you did this wrong or you did that wrong." Man, God's eyes are everywhere.

He sees the wrongs we do, we can't hide it from… people hide sins from other people but you can't hide from God. That's why you got to be an open, open book with God in everything you do because He sees everything, you can't hide from Him. And so God wants to know as we approach the Passover, “I want you then my sons and daughters to take the Passover and then eat knowing that what?” Every wrong way will be blotted out, you need the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because you are making the commitment to God, that “I believe, Father, in what You have promised. That Your Son was given to us as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world.” Nobody else is qualified to do that. There's nobody else that can do that.

So the first word, again, for testing is dokimázō. The second Greek word also carries an examination, it's called peirazō. Again, don't worry about how it's pronounced, I'm maybe not even pronouncing it right myself, I'll do the best I can. I'm not a Greek expert, but I know the definitions when I study unlike you who read the books. But what it makes, this other Greek word, it has this purpose.

It is for the “purpose of ascertaining something, a quality of what a person thinks” and how that individual will behave accordingly.” And here's the kicker that you want to keep in mind. “It carries the connotation to solicit an individual to sin or to tempt them.” This is where Satan comes into play because see, God is testing to raise us up, Satan is testing to bring us down. This is where you and I are commanded to examine ourselves, to say, "Look, are we more on the upside or are we more on the downside?" And boy, if we're on the downside we need to run to God and ask for guidance, help, and forgiveness in these matters. How that word applies?

Well, Jesus when He was testing Philip, there was a situation where feeding the masses — Philip was asked a question and Jesus wanted to see what kind of faith or lack of faith? And whether he had clear spiritual insight or lack of it? And whether he viewed things from a spiritual or a physical point of view? And Philip, he was asked, "How much… how much do we have here to feed this group of people?" Now, remember, miracles had been seen. Jesus had already done miracles, and even though this looked like an impossible situation, if you knew who you are dealing with you realized, "He'll take care of it. This is no problem for God."

This test brought out what was Philip's thinking, how was he thinking, he was thinking physical. He had the Son of God here and “Jesus, You know what to do. Take care of it, You make miracles, You do these things.” But he wasn't thinking that way at that time. So again, how often are we thinking on a human plane when God tests us, or are we thinking on a spiritual plane? As we see these worldly conditions swirling around us, are we doing that very thing, are we just thinking physical?

You know, we read in the Scripture something very interesting, it's in Hebrews 4, where it talks about in the future… it carries the connotation in the future about it. It says, "There remains a sabbatismos, a keeping of the Sabbath for the people of God.” Now, what does that reference to? It's talking about the future time in the Kingdom of God when the world will be at rest when you are changed from flesh into the keeping of what the Sabbath picture's a day of rest. You'll be in God's eternal rest in the Kingdom of God.

But there's another aspect of that that we need to understand. You and I are commanded to enter into that rest right now, not just by keeping the physical Sabbath, which is important and which must be done. But everything in the Bible points us and teaches us the lesson you've got to focus your mind your thoughts and your direction to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Now, it's interesting that Jesus used this terminology. Now, I'll just give you a few thoughts to kind of prick your conscience, make you think about some things.

What did Jesus say on one occasion in the Gospels where He said, "Come unto Me all you who labor," and we all labor, "and are burdened," and we're all burdened, "and heavy laden," and we have problems, some more severe than others at times. And what did Jesus say? "And I, Jesus Christ, will give you rest," rest. Then the Bible talks about the peace of mind that passes all understanding in Christ Jesus if you keep your mind focused there, on Christ as the foundation of your whole existence. And what does the Scripture say about the Lord Jesus Christ?

He says, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, do I give to you." Notice the difference? Peace from God, peace and rest, it comes as a forerunner to the ultimate rest in the Kingdom of God. You and I are told that we can rely with all the confusion that goes on and things that cause people to get upset and worried and frustrated over this, frustrated over that.

When we see that stuff start to arise in our own lives we're told to fight against that, that's the flesh. See, we live by faith, not fear, and that wrong type of fear pulls on us all the time. It wants us to deny the Spirit that works in us through God, and that Holy Spirit that gives us the insight to know that God is there. That's why the Scriptures use terms like, "Be still, and know that I am God." If you know God you got to be still, He's in charge.

So everybody worries, "Well, what's going to happen here, what's going to happen there?" You don't have to worry, "Oh, bad weather, we better be careful." Who rules in the kingdoms of men if you're praying and you're asking God for God’s, “Can I… did we dodge a bullet?” How does that happen, those things… nothing happens by accident in God's world. Things that men call accidents, many times God allows for purposes of teaching and training and working with people to bring them ultimately to the Kingdom of God.

But when people see things thrown at them like children dying of gas attacks, children dying of starvation, it gets to you, doesn't it? And it makes you… should make you realize why you pray. "Thy Kingdom come," because nobody wants to see children die. Nobody wants to see anybody die, but the graveyards are loaded with soldiers who are dead, who were just alive like us 100 years ago, this Thursday was the anniversary of World War I. And it was one of the most terrifying wars of human history because it was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but it didn't do it, did it?

Twenty-some years later, World War II, under the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. But back then at that time, everybody was so excited to get into war, and they all joined and the nations started fighting one another. And a whole generation of British youth lost their lives in a place called Flanders Field in Belgium. Where those men were told by their commanders, "Go forth." And they went forth, dutifully following orders, and to marks machine guns led by the Germans on their side, literally cut down a whole generation of young men.

And all you've got to show for it today is all these crosses lined up from war after war after war. That's why we pray, "Thy Kingdom Come." Who in their right mind wants war? Nobody, we want peace. Even Jesus said, "Love your enemies don't, don't hate them," you don't want to go to war, you want peace, and only God can produce peace. Well, what this all boils down to is the fact that God is testing mankind in many ways.

You and I can't answer all the questions that we pop up in our minds and try to answer because God says, "That's not where I'm working, to answer your question. I'm working to fulfill My purpose that deals with every human being and nobody escapes My hand. I've got everyone designated in the plan of God." And so we find some very interesting things that in Hebrews 11:17, lo and behold, God tested a man called Abraham. Abraham, and what happened to him? He proved Abraham's character and willingness to put God first, and because of that, he became the father of the faithful.

He became the role model that you and I are supposed to follow and to go with confidence, that if God did this for Abraham He will do it for us. He's no respecter of persons. God must know where you and I stand in all matters, He's got to know. And you can put yourself in God's position and you would know, yeah, that's what you would have to do if you were God. You've got to know, “Who are these among human beings that I have created in My image, who are with Me and who are against Me?” And God says, He loves those that love Him unto the third and fourth generation.

He says and to those that hate Him, He says unto the third and fourth generation God deals with them too, nobody gets away. God says He's not deceived and He's not mocked. In Matthew 4:1, Jesus had to contend with this devil, and what did the devil do? The devil tested Jesus. I don't know if you've thought of it from that standpoint, but he tested Jesus just like he's a roaming, roaming lion seeking whom he may devour.

So he tested Jesus, and what did He do? He said, "Well, if You're the Son of God make these, You know, You're starving, You're hungry, everybody needs to eat when you're hungry. Go ahead, turn these stones into bread, if You be the Son of God." Oh, Jesus knew He could read that this was a wrong testing. It was designed to tempt Him to disobey God, to go in a wrong direction.

That's where you and I have to sharpen up because we have fallen for so many of the tricks that Satan has used on us down through time. That's why Paul said, "Don't be ignorant of Satan's devices," he's got a lot of traps in his particular little bag of tricks, and for what purpose? He was soliciting Jesus to do evil and Jesus wouldn't do it. But now, what about us, has Satan come from time to time to tempt us, to entice us to sin, to have wrong thoughts or to do wrong things. Has Satan destroyed a lot of people who are caught in the drug mania today?

They don't know their purpose for life, and so they're just busy taking drugs all the time because they want to feel good. They want to feel at ease, but they're losing their life over drugs. That's a false idol, a false god. Satan desires and has one motive only, and this you must write and emblazon this in your mind, he wants to destroy each of us. He's a destroyer. And if he can destroy you and cause you to have a knee jerk reaction instead of following God's instruction, because this is what the world is doing. The world moves, what are you going to do, what are you going to do?

God says, "In your patience possess ye your soul," why? Because things are happening all over, who's stirring all that pot, Satan the devil, who works in the children of wrath. And when all the stuff begins to happen God is telling us that the adversary wants to get you to disobey. And God wants you to resist him, to fight against him, and to listen to His instruction. Please remember some very important elements here, God's motive is to strengthen you, to strengthen me. He has not designed anything to hurt us.

He's a loving Father, He's a loving God. This Bible is a revelation of the loving God who made mankind through Jesus Christ, who was the God of the Old Testament and who came to die for us, to get us out of this quagmire and quicksand that you and I are dying in. There's nobody else coming to our aid except God Himself. He even told Israel in the prophecies of the Minor Prophets, "Oh, Israel, you have destroyed yourself but in Me is your help." God is our help. He's the only one who can deliver us.

And so, God wants us to understand that Satan has never… he never puts to the test in order to approve you but to disapprove you. He wants you to be disapproved of God, that you have gone contrary to the will of God. This is why Jesus did what? Emphasized constantly, "Not My will but Your will be done, Father." He always considered His Father's Will.

James 1:13, reminds us that… from one of those Greek words, and I think it's peirazō there, that no test or trial can ever cause God to do or be tempted to do evil. He will not… He can't be tempted to do evil, and He will never tempt any of us, His children, to do evil. What happens is that we are… tempted as it says in verse 14, "We are tempted and solicited to sin, encouraged to do the wrong thing by our own lust or desires," because we have desires. We like to eat, we like to do things, we have desires. And so Satan comes along and he feeds on our desires.

And what it does… like a fisherman fishing what does he do? He throws out bait, and if you get the right bait with the right lust, “Gotcha!” And that's exactly what Satan has done. And there are things where you and I have gone astray as human beings, and not just us, everybody is in the same boat. They just don't know it.

Thank God, by the grace of God we have been given eyes to see and know what we're up against. Because it's hard to fight an enemy when you don't know what the enemy is. Look at our political situation, they're afraid to call the enemy who the enemy is. And if you don't know who your enemy is you don't know how to fight an enemy, when you don't know who he is. And yet he's taken advantage of you every step of the way, and that's what's happening in our world today.

It's just like when a woman conceives, she knows she's pregnant, lo and behold. She knows something has changed. And when we are lured into the trap, sin is conceived, and we know something is wrong. We might think temporarily it's right, but it shows itself in the process of time. 1 Corinthians 11:28, tells us to examine ourselves in order to be approved. Check yourself out and see whether or not you pass the test, that's all it's talking about.

You know, if you go to school and you're in grade school, mainly high school and college, or post-college work, whatever you're studying, sooner or later you've got to take a test. Did everybody just love when those tests came? I don't think so. We knew we had to do it, and what was the purpose? You had to get an A or a B or at least a C, hopefully, not a D and an F, because you had to pass the test in order to get your degree, graduation, or whatever it is you were working for, certification, you name it. So what God is showing us here is that to examine ourselves we want to see, are we approved?

Where do we stand with God the Father and Jesus Christ? How do they see us? Not how we see ourselves. That's why He says, "You don't see yourselves right," that's why you have to examine yourself in light of God's Word. And in the light of God's Word, you begin to get a different picture of yourself, and you begin to see that, “Uh-oh, I have allowed myself to stray from the straight and narrow path.”

So in Romans 12:2, it says, "Prove what is the will of God," we know we need to know what God's will is so that we can be approved or we passed the test with God. Galatians 6:4 we are told to examine your own works to see if they're approved. And what are our works? Let's really get down to the nitty-gritty here on this, this is what we're being evaluated with, what is… what do we… what are we striving for? We would all like to have the blessing of eternal life, you would, I would, anybody who says they wouldn't they haven't got their head on straight.

Nobody wants to die, everybody wants to live because God has put eternity in our hearts, Ecclesiastics says, and He wants us to live. Christ came that we might have a life and life abundantly with the knowledge and understanding of what it's all about. And prior to the calling of God in our life, we didn't know what it was all about, we were struggling like everybody else just trying day in and day out. And we had no clue as to what was going on until God opened our eyes, took away the scales, brought conversion into our life. He gave us understanding.

Once that happened the whole world changed, we could see things now from a totally different perspective We're looking through the eyes of God. And what we begin to realize is that, what has God called us to? Well, folks, He's called us to do this, He's called us to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and all our strength, and to love our fellow human beings as the same. Now, in that process what is it we're going to do. Are we going to sit for all eternity playing a guitar and singing songs? No.

Are we going to just sit like the beatific vision, like some people that God is such a wonderful God, we're just going to sit there and be dumbfounded and watch the beatific vision? No. We've got a tremendous, tremendous work ahead of us. This is small fry stuff that we're messing around with now, let me show you what I mean. God wants to know and He wants to check us with our standards, and He wants to see whether or not, how did you do this past year in serving, in helping, in giving, and loving your neighbor as yourself? Where does it begin?

The love of the brethren in the Church of God, we are to work together and love one another and pull for one another because we see the calling all of us, one for another. This becomes a very powerful motivating factor. We know that God wants to give us a tremendous gift.
It's by grace we are saved through faith, that's eternal life. But there are many other wonderful things He wants to do but He's going to… He's going to put those things out based on 5 cities, 10 cities, 20 cities, 30 cities, however many He wants. People who are qualified will have those responsibilities.

Some might just be doorkeepers in the Kingdom of God, David said I'll be just happy to be a doorkeeper, to be there to open the door for the Master every time He comes out, just like the Marines do when the president comes out. Food for thought, isn't it? To really make us realize what we're about to involve ourselves with. We have a wonderful God who wants to do wonderful things for us, but in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, mark that down because that's a major testing area. God will test our works, it says, to see have we built these works with the Holy Spirit by relying on Him or have we tried to do these things on our own?

Remember there's a group of people that come, they believe they're the people of God. They knock on the door after Christ comes, and what do they say? "Open to us Lord, please." In the book of Matthew, I think it's chapter 25 if I remember correctly, and He says there to them… and they say, "Lord, open to us, haven't we done these wonderful things. Haven't we done this and that, and cast out demons in your name?" And what did Jesus reply?

He says, "You, who are you? I don't know you. You who are workers of iniquity," in other words you are going about doing "Christian works" on your own strength and level not following My commands. So what you end up having? You have individuals, their hearts were not right, their attitudes were not right. They were not considered faithful. And God says, "Nope, doors stay shut. I don't open to you. I don't know you."

It is imperative that God knows where we are standing. He wants to know “Are you with Me or are you with this world?” And 1 Peter 1:6-7, it tells us our faith will be tested. And what is faith? Is it not trusting in God Himself, believing. You see, the reason they couldn't enter the Promised Land it says it was because of their unbelief.

You're told that in Hebrews 3, that you and I must remember to believe. It says because they did not believe that God would do that. And God says, "I always fulfill my promises," and you and I have to know that, that God will fulfill His promises, you may not know how He's going to do it but He's going to do it. And then He warns the Church in the New Testament, He says, they could not enter because of unbelief, therefore, be careful that you don't make that mistake. Even Jesus said it Himself if you can't believe in the power of God and see that God is everywhere, if you've got eyes to see. And like David said, "Fearfully and wonderfully am I made and by the hand of God."

He said if you can see all that, all things are possible to those who believe. Why are all things possible if you believe? Because God says, "With God all things are possible." There's nothing that God cannot do. We limit as the Psalm says in the Scriptures, “we limit the God of Israel because of unbelief.” Don't limit God in your life folks.

Stir up the Spirit of God, make sure that your faith is genuine, your trust in God is genuine because God wants us at this Passover season to examine ourselves, to make sure that we are being tested, first voluntarily. God wants us to do it on our own. He wants us to see where our problems are and to change, make the effort and He will help us with His Spirit. But if, if we don't and God has an investment in us in which He does, He will allow things to happen to bring you to an awareness, that's why it says, as a father… a loving father, He corrects us. Now, He'd rather not. If we will judge ourselves we would not have to be judged, but God may have to do certain things because He wants us to be approved, He wants us to pass the test.

Satan wants to destroy us, He wants us to fail. The choice is ours every day. The Scripture makes it very clear that we have to come to know that Jesus Christ is in us, and the fruit of God's Spirit is in us, and that we are truly a new creature in Christ Jesus, oh yeah, we're in the flesh, but something different has happened, our lives have truly been changed. There's another word that is used in the Greek, it's adokimos, and it means disqualified. It doesn't mean a loss of salvation, it's talking about in context that when you are testing yourself you may find out that you failed the test this past year. And what does that do?

That means there's room for improvement, and get busy and ask God for the help you need, and take the Passover so that God can pass over your sins and blot out your transgressions and all your mistakes. That's why it says 1 Corinthians 11:31-32, "If we judge ourselves then God does not have to correct us." There are people who have not done that, and if they end up doing… taking the Passover and they haven't done the examination, then they're taking it in a wrong manner, that's called unworthy. And that could bring serious consequences. And apparently, if you read carefully, there were some in there and it's recorded in our learning that some made the wrong mistake. They didn't make the right choice and they failed the test.

Well, God always has our best interest in mind. And God wants out of love not to condemn us with the world but to save us from this world that is dying. And that's why we pray, "Thy Kingdom Come," because I hate to see people dying in this world. Life is the most precious gift anyone has, may we use it wisely to the glory of God. And as we assemble Sunday evening, may God be with you all as we take the Lord's Passover.

Brethren, do you remember what I asked you in the last sermon that I gave here? I asked, "Are you a big loser?" That's right, with a capital L; are you a big Loser? It was a reference to a very popular reality show on TV that has produced some absolutely amazing results in the lives of thousands of people. I don't know if you are aware of it, but this show has 'ignited' around the world. It's in seventy or so countries besides the United States, where it began in 2004. If you'd like to check up on it, you can go to Wikipedia and they'll give you all the titles of the shows in other countries. In some countries it is called "The Biggest Winner"; in Asia is something like "Super Diet King"; in one country it is called "Weighted". The people in that country are said to get on the scales to be 'weighted'. The title "The Biggest Loser" doesn't translate very well into the languages of some countries.

As I said before in the last sermon, I don't care if you are the "Biggest Loser", but I do want you to be a 'big loser'.

The show is about fifteen seriously obese people who are selected to compete for a quarter of a million dollar prize. There were at least two who weighed over 400 pounds to begin with; there were a couple of people over 300 pounds, and several over 200 pounds. In reality the largest and most valuable prize of all is simply the weight that the winner loses, because these people have been struggling with a weight problem for years and years; they haven't been able to get control of their weight. Getting control is more important to them than money. Every contestant is really a big winner because every one of them is a 'Big Loser' on the program; they all lose a lot of weight. You and I have been called to be big winners on the road to eternal life, but in order to be big winners we must be overcomers. To be an overcomer, we must lose the SIN that weighs us down spiritually. That's what I'm talking about when I say you need to be a 'big loser, you need to lose your sins. You need to have your sins forgiven and STOP SINNING! Then you'll be a 'big loser', but also a very big winner from God's perspective. We must be overcomers, in fact Jesus Christ says, "To he who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne." There are many scriptures that talk about overcoming and say there are rewards for being an overcomer.

God has called us at this time to be not only called, but also chosen and faithful. We are now on a road that is very narrow and difficult and right now there are few that find it. The Bible says God isn't calling everyone now, and of the ones He is calling, very few are responding and doing something about it, so very few are right now 'chosen'. As we are on this narrow and difficult road, it is important that we stick with it and endure to the end, running the race with patience and receiving the crown of life at Christ's return. This is a vital subject as we prepare ourselves to take the Passover in just about two weeks now. The time for Passover will be here very quickly. I had hoped to get this three part series of sermons done today, but when I got sick that slowed things down so I'll finish the series during the Days of Unleavened Bread.

If you didn't listen to the first sermon in the series, I would encourage you to go to UCG.NWA to hear that. This is an important subject that will help you prepare for the Passover. Are you determined personally to lose the weight, the sin that pulls you down spiritually? What will God the Father and Jesus Christ, your Savior do to help you along the way? What can you do to aid yourself in losing the weight, the sin and become spiritually lean and fit?

The show "The Biggest Loser", as I mentioned has caught on around the world. It's been instrumental in changing thousands and thousands of lives all around the world. You may have heard the expression "IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD, YOU MUST START WITH YOURSELF'. That is a very true saying, you must start by making yourself a better self and the world will be just that much better. This world will, of course, still be desperately lacking; we still need the return of Christ and the government and Kingdom of God at Christ's return; nevertheless, it can get better now if we all change our own lives.

Rachel Henderson was the actual winner of the contest; she started at 260 pounds. She had formerly been an Olympic athlete, a swimmer, but she got sidetracked, discouraged, and depressed and started eating and put on a lot of weight. By the end of the program, she had gone down to 105 pounds. She dropped 155 pounds, 59.62% of her body weight. I'll be quite honest, Rachel went a little too far because at 105 she didn't look nearly as good as she did at 140 pounds. She almost looked like she was bordering on anorexia. She had a $250,000 carrot, so I think she may have thought, 'I'm this close, let's just go for it and I'll put the weight back on.' I think she has actually put some weight on since then. There was a lot of publicity about her being so thin, but she is the "Biggest Loser" of all time. She beat out Danny Cahill of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; we used to live in Broken Arrow, but I don't actually know Danny Cahill. He was the "Biggest Loser" up until Rachel. One thing that Rachel said in the course of this program was, "I'm sick of hiding" and as she progressed she said, "I see the athlete coming out in me; I've found her, I'm never going to let her go." You could just see her life being transformed; she was becoming more and more positive about being able to make changes, about being able to actually lose this weight and move on.

David was one of the favorites on the show to a lot of people. He started at 409 pounds. He was actually the second largest, I think Reuben was 430 pounds or something like that; I don't remember his exact starting weight. David went from 409 pounds to 222 pounds, so he lost 187 pounds; some of us don't weigh that much. He lost 54.36% of his body weight. He said, "I'm half the man I used to be, but twice the man in every other way." He was really encouraged by what was happening in his life. He said, " I lost seven buckets of fat." That's seven heavy buckets of fat. He said, “You have to have a breakdown before you can have a breakthrough." David was having emotional issues and problems. He began eating for comfort and got way too big. He said, "I was inspired, but not really changing in the beginning of the program because I didn't really think that I could, not deep down inside, but the winning step was the first one." That is often the case, you have to take that first step to be able to get 'into the groove' and get things going, and get things started. David's teen-aged daughter, half- way through the program said, " I am crazy proud of my dad." That's how kids speak these days, I guess. It was really cool to hear her say that she was 'crazy proud' of her dad for losing all that weight and he was making some very positive changes. Bobby was the one who came in third place; he lost 52.51% of his body weight. He started at 358 pounds and went all the way down to 188 pounds. He wasn't one of the hardest workers, but he was able to lose a lot of weight anyway. He had a good metabolism or something working for him.

Tumi was one of my and my wife's favorites. She got sent home earlier, about two-thirds of the way through the program. She started at 319 pounds and she went all the way down to 144 pounds, so she lost 174 pounds; 54.86% of her body weight. She actually lost more than Bobby or David. She would have come in second if she hadn't been sent home early. There was a $100,000 prize for the person who went home and then lost the most weight, and Tumi won that prize. She said, "I spent the first forty years of my life in fear." She wanted a second chance so she could live the life that she wanted to live. In fact this last series of "The Biggest Loser" was called: "Biggest Loser Second Chances". She is now making plans to run a marathon. It's amazing that she did weigh 319 pounds, but now she's planning to run a marathon, that's a huge change!

I mentioned last time in Romans 14:17 that the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, it's not about physical weight but it is about righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. So, obviously this is a sermon, not about losing physical weight but it is a sermon about losing spiritual weight or sinful weight, you might call it. I have these questions for you. How much excess ungodly weight and baggage, otherwise known as sin, have you put on because of being a spiritual 'couch potato'? I want you to be honest with yourselves. Some of you have been in the church a long time and perhaps you've let down some over the years; perhaps you've allowed some ungodly excess weight and baggage to creep in. That's what happens to a lot of people who end up with a lot of excess physical weight, it just creeps up on them little by little and before they know it… they're fifty pounds overweight. It can also happen spiritually and we can become a spiritual 'couch potato', not really doing what we should be doing. That's what this series of sermons is about: doing what we ought to be doing so we can put the sin out of our lives and grow and be overcomers.

What sinful junk food and decadent desserts, sins, have you been indulging in? Is there anything sinful that you've been indulging in that you've been cozying up to and making excuses for not changing? Those things will add harmful 'weight' and threaten your spiritual existence. We need to examine ourselves this time of year and be honest with ourselves. Hebrews 12:1 "Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." "Let us lay aside every weight" goes very well with the theme of this sermon and also "the sin that so easily ensnares us" because sin is deceitful and it can creep up on you.

We're covering in this series of sermons seven principles for losing the weight, the sin that so easily enslaves us. Last time we covered POINT NUMBER ONE: TRUST, LISTEN TO, AND FOLLOW YOUR COACHES. Of course, ultimately our coaches are God the Father and Jesus Christ. Christ is the head of the Church and God has also chosen some human beings to also aid Christ in leading and guiding you, shepherding you. We must recognize from scripture that God does use human beings. Some people say, 'It's just me and God", they don't want to listen to anyone else, they don't want to get any input, they're turned off by organized religion (which I can understand), because a lot of men have set very poor examples. It's easy to get disenchanted and discouraged by that type of behavior.

The first step on the road to salvation and becoming a 'big loser' is to RESPOND TO GOD'S CALL AND TO BEGIN TO SURRENDER YOUR LIFE TO HIM AND TO HIS SON. That is part of listening to your coaches, and surrendering to them. On "The Biggest Loser", there are three coaches who lead the way for the fifteen contestants. In order to succeed, the contestants must be willing to submit to the coach's instructions and rules because the coaches know something about helping people lose weight. They know something about the kind of program they need to be on, the kinds of foods they need to be eating, and also the kind of exercise program they need to be on to help them optimize the losing of the physical weight. God the Father does the calling; HE calls every individual who is part of his one true Church and Christ is the head of that Church. In order to be in God's Kingdom, in order to receive salvation, it is absolutely imperative that we surrender to our coaches and realize they do know what's best for us. Father does know best. There used to be a series "Father Knows Best", that goes back a ways… that dates me quite a bit. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Our Father really does know best in this case and we need to follow our Father and our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ loves us; He died for us, He laid his life down for us. Both God the Father and Jesus Christ desire to give you the Kingdom; it is their good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. They want you to be in their Kingdom, they want you to become just like them. They want you to be born of the Spirit of Almighty God; they want to share their glory with you. They want you to be glorified, just as they are glorified. They're not jealous or envious of anything that we might become. We know that we'll always be subject to them and they certainly understand that. God is all-powerful. We are created beings, we're only what God allows us to be, but He wants us to share in his glory. He wants to give us his Kingdom; He wants us to become like his Son, Jesus Christ. Christ is the first-born among many brethren so we have a wonderful calling and future ahead of us. So, we need to surrender to our Coaches and allow them to lead and guide us. We need to have faith and trust in them. The Father and Son have called human beings also to serve under them on earth, the scriptures bear that out. You can't deny the scriptures we went through last time. God called some to be apostles, prophets, teachers, pastors, evangelists and so forth. There are scriptures that talk about following those who lead and guide you, not rule over you. That's not a good translation because a good shepherd doesn't try to rule over his sheep. A good shepherd leads and guides the sheep to still waters, he restores their soul, he takes care of them and nurtures them, he lays down his life for them. These are the things a true shepherd should do. It is very important that we follow men as they follow Christ. Follow human leaders in God's church as they follow Christ's lead and example. Give them due respect as they serve well. That's what the scripture teaches, but do not follow them into sin and do not follow them into rebellion. Keep the commandments and keep the laws and statutes of Almighty God. We believe in God's commandments; let them be your standards for living, not just in the letter of the law, follow the spirit of the law. Christ came to magnify the law, to make it honorable; He wanted to go beyond the letter of the law and for us to keep the spirit of his law. The spirit of God's law should permeate everything we do, it should lead and guide us.

God is LOVE, you can trust him and follow him; you can surrender fully to God and know that He will take care of you. In order to have your sins forgiven, you must yield and surrender to God that's what the Passover is all about. Have you repented of your sins? Have you accepted Christ as your personal Savior, your Lord and Master, your High Priest; your soon coming King? The only way to get rid of your sins is to have them forgiven. We can all strive to not sin and to put sin out of our lives, but we've all sinned and we all fall short of God's glory. WE ALL DESERVE THE DEATH PENALTY FOR OUR SINS, the only way to shed our sins and the consequences is through the sacrifice of Christ. Overcoming sin is possible because of Christ living in you and him doing the work in you; because of ourselves we can do nothing. Through Christ I can do all things Who strengthens me.

So the first step in salvation and in being a 'big loser' is following your coaches. We took a whole hour about that one point last time because you have to get the foundation. We have to realize that God the Father and Jesus Christ are our Coaches and if we follow them, we'll be fine. The other six principles will fall in line if we're putting God first.

THE SECOND STEP ON THE ROAD TO SALVATION AND IN BECOMING A 'BIG LOSER' IS THAT YOU MUST ADMIT THAT YOU HAVE A 'WEIGHT' PROBLEM.

You have to admit you have a problem or you will never overcome it. Of course the 'weight' problem is a sin problem. We're talking about sin that infiltrates; it is deceitful and it will pull you down and it will harm you, so we need to seek the gift of repentance that only God gives us. Repentance is a gift; you can't work up repentance on your own. God looks at your heart, your attitude and then He grants repentance. God grants repentance based on your approach and heart and attitude; God knows the heart. People who are obese and have a serious weight problem generally know that. It's pretty easy to see it and to feel it so they're generally aware of it but that's not so true of people who have a lesser weight problem. They still have a weight problem, but not a huge weight problem; so from a spiritual perspective if you're not an ax murderer, but you're a liar, you're still a sinner, aren't you? You still have a 'weight' problem; you still have something that needs to be dealt with. Some of us who need to lose just a small amount of weight physically, think we're doing fine but we don't realize twenty or thirty pounds still pull down on our heart and cause some stress for it and also on our joints. It's causing some kind of physical issues even though we might not be aware of it. So being just a little overweight is deceitful; there may be a weight problem there and we don't even realize it. SIN is deceitful; it's not always so easy to detect as physical weight.

Hebrews 3:13 "…Lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." That's the part I want to focus on, 'the deceitfulness' of sin; it is very easy to be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We can think we are doing well, but sin is deceitful and sometimes we can become self-righteous and we can look down on other people thinking about how bad they are; thinking they're such sinners when we ourselves are also sinners, and we can be hardened in our self-righteousness by the deceitfulness of sin. We need to be careful that we're not hardened toward other people or toward ourselves. Sometimes we can be hardened and make excuses and justify ourselves when we don't see our own sins.

1 John 1:8 "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves" . This is written to church members long after Christ had died. Sin was still in existence; the law was not done away because sin is the transgression of the law and God's people were still subject to sin. They didn't just become perfect; none of them became perfect just like none of you are perfect. We all have this sin problem that we have to deal with. I've been in the Church a long time… forty years now and I've had to deal with the sin problem every single one of those years. It's not something that goes away, it's something you still have to deal with, something you have to admit: that you're a sinner and you fall short of the glory of your Savior, who never sinned. He was tempted in every point you are, but He never sinned. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." That goes for every one of us.

Sin can come in from all different directions. Some sins are more easily seen than others. 1 John 2:4 "He who thinks he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him." That is pretty blunt; if you know the truth, you know that you are a sinner. If you know the truth, you know what sin is and you know what human nature is. The carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Unless we are walking in the spirit, allowing God's Spirit to lead and guide us, we're going to have some issues with carnality, with sin. The lust of the flesh, the pride of life… these things are going to ever be at our heels, so to speak, trying to overtake us. Satan is the great adversary and he uses these things; he stirs these things up in us. Romans 3:23 "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." We're not perfect; so admit that you have a 'weight' problem; admit that you have a sin problem. Don't waste time and energy denying it.

We're going to go through some sins, so I ask that you consider yourself. I would hope that you're not guilty of all these sins, in fact I don't think you are guilty of all these sins I'm going to go through, but if any of them apply… take it to heart. Admit that at times, you have taken sin too lightly. Can you admit that? ADMIT THAT YOU ARE WASTING TOO MUCH TIME ENTERTAINING YOURSELF. We are told to redeem our time and use it wisely in Godly pursuits, so I think this sin is one a lot of us probably do; I've been guilty of that, I sit down in front of the TV and an hour goes by and I know I should be up and moving, but I'm still there. I try not to let that happen too often, but I must admit that that has happened far more than it should. We could be wasting time in other ways entertaining ourselves… if you like to golf and play four or five hours every day, then that's probably too much. ADMIT THAT YOU SOMETIMES INDULGE IN TRASHY ENTERTAINMENT. Sometimes you may take too much pleasure in things you shouldn't. I remember that I used to like Robin Williams from "Mork and Mindy", but then I saw his stand-up comedy act and it was one of the most vulgar things I had ever heard. It was just really vulgar so I didn't sit around and listen to it for very long but there may be times when we allow ourselves to be entertained one way or another where we shouldn't.

PERHAPS YOU NEED TO ADMIT THAT YOU GOSSIP TOO MUCH. How much gossip is too much?

ADMIT THAT YOU ARE LAZY SOMETIMES. Are you ever lazy?

ADMIT THAT PERHAPS YOU LOVE MONEY TOO MUCH. Money may be too important to you at times.

ADMIT THAT YOU'VE BEEN TOO SELFISH. Has anyone here ever been selfish?

ADMIT THAT YOU ARE SOMETIMES ENVIOUS OF OTHERS. I don't really have a big issue with this one, but I never have gotten a decent bass boat yet. I see these big bass boats going by me all the time, but I don't think I have a big issue with that. I'm just kidding for the most part.

SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU LOVE ALCOHOL TOO MUCH. For some people alcohol becomes too important and it becomes a crutch, they drink more than they should and some have become alcoholics in the Church of God.

SOME STILL STRUGGLE WITH GETTING OFF CIGARETTES. I know some in the church who still struggle with addiction to cigarettes.

PEOPLE CAN STRUGGLE WITH MANY THINGS; YOU NAME IT. There can be other things we like too much.

ADMIT THAT YOU'VE BEEN COVETOUS AND GREEDY AT TIMES. Have you ever been covetous a little bit?

ADMIT THAT YOU'VE CATERED TO YOUR LUSTFUL NATURE AT TIMES.

ADMIT THAT YOU ARE SELF-RIGHTEOUS, PRIDEFUL AND EVEN ARROGANT AT TIMES. I've been arrogant at times.

ADMIT THAT YOU'VE BEEN A LIAR AND THAT YOU STILL LIE ON OCCASION.

ADMIT THAT YOU HAVEN'T ALWAYS OBSERVED GOD'S HOLY SABBATH PROPERLY. Admit you've gone over the line and have done some things you shouldn't have done.

ADMIT THAT YOU HAVEN'T ALWAYS KEPT YOUR FESTIVAL TITHE PROPERLY PERHAPS, if you didn't save it like you're supposed to.

ADMIT THAT YOU'VE BEEN LAX PERHAPS IN EVEN PAYING YOUR FIRST TITHES.

ADMIT THAT YOU ARE A SINNER.

There are lots of other sins, I was merciful, and I didn't go through all the sins that are out there. There are a lot more.

The admission that you are a sinner needs to be heart-felt. It does need to be genuine or you will not lose the sinful weight that God expects you to lose and actually requires you to lose. IF YOU TAKE SIN TOO LIGHTLY, YOU WILL NOT OVERCOME.

Matthew 6:33 "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”; the Kingdom of God should be our goal.

Paul wrote a letter to the church in Corinth and addressed a situation in 1 Corinthians 5 and then in 2 Corinthians 7 he commends them for their response, but he is also giving more correction.

2 Corinthians 7:9 "Now I rejoice not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow lead to repentance; for you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you may suffer loss from us in nothing." Verse 10 " For godly sorrow produces repentance that leads to salvation, not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world, that produces death." There is a certain sorrow we might have because maybe we got caught in our sins and we were punished and maybe we were more sorry about that than sinning against God. God wants us to be sorry that we sinned against him. He is our Creator. We owe everything to him so we should obey him and follow him. When we break his law, we show disrespect toward God. GODLY SORROW PRODUCES REPENTANCE. When God looks at the heart and He sees that you truly are sorry, in a godly way, and then He will grant you repentance. If He sees that it is just a worldly sorrow, He will not grant repentance and eventually that will lead to death, eternal death. Verse 11: "For observe this very thing that you sorrowed in a godly manner; what diligence it produced in you" this is what repentance will truly do. The real kind of repentance that God grants us will produce diligence, because you'll feel bad that you've sinned and you'll have motivation to go and sin no more. That is what Christ told the woman caught in adultery, to 'go and sin no more'. Verse 11 continued: "what clearing of yourselves" there's a great clearing that comes about by no longer having to feel guilty. Guilt is a good thing, because when we sin, we should feel guilty about it. Guilt will help us realize that we do need to repent and so we'll seek repentance and God will see our heart and He will clear us of all that guilt. IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING TO HAVE YOUR SINS FORGIVEN AND TO NO LONGER HAVE THAT GUILT AND CARRY THAT GUILT AROUND WITH YOU. Verse 11 continued: "what indignation'; there should be an indignation against sin. God abhors sin and we're supposed to learn to hate sin as well. Verse 11 continued: "what fear" this helps produce in us the proper indignation. When we truly repent, we see that God is the One we must really answer to and that He is the One who can destroy us, not any man, not any human being; Satan can't even destroy us. It is God who will cast us into the lake of fire if we don't repent and if we don't change. We should have a proper godly fear and reverence and awe of God; repentance will lead to that. Repentance will give us a vehement desire to go and do the right thing. Verse 11 continued: "what vindication" when we truly repent, we are justified, vindicated. Verse 11 continued: " In all things you prove yourselves to be clear in this matter." Paul is commending the people because they did repent of their sins.

SO THE SECOND STEP ON THE ROAD TO GOD'S KINGDOM IS TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE A SINNER! You need to admit it and then seek repentance and God will grant you repentance based upon your heart. So the second step in becoming a "big loser" is to admit that you have a weight problem; that you are a sinner, to confess your sins, and to go under the blood of Christ and be forgiven of those sins.

THE THIRD STEP ON THE ROAD TO SALVATION; THE THIRD STEP ON BECOMING A 'BIG LOSER' IS THAT WE ALL NEED TO COMMIT FULLY TO LOSING THE WEIGHT.

Step number three is all about commitment. You have to be fully committed; that gets back to what I said about surrendering and following your coaches. You have to commit fully to your coaches and to losing the weight, which is the goal in your life. Sin has to be dealt with because the wages of sin is death; that is what we all deserve, so that has to be dealt with. Matthew 6:33 "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness". The Kingdom of God should be our goal and his righteousness should be our goal. God doesn't sin; He's righteous. James talks about being fully committed by being a doer of God's law. Just coming to church, just being here isn't enough, and just listening isn't enough. You must go beyond hearing to being a doer of God's law. James 1:21 "Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." If you live by every word of God, if you allow God's word to become a part of you, then it will save you. Verse 22: "But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." It's not enough to come to church and sit there and think that you're all filled and warm and everything is perfect, because if you walk out of here the same person and you haven't changed at all, then you haven't really grown closer to God or learned anything; you're more a hearer than a doer. Verse 23: "For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror". Verse 24: "For he sees himself and immediately he forgets what kind of man he was." Verse 25: "But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does." So when we look in a mirror, what should we see? Should we see somebody who's perfect? Should we see somebody who doesn't need to change? We should humbly look into that mirror and see someone who desperately needs to change, someone who needs to get the sin out of their lives; someone who needs to draw closer to God and become a DOER of God's law; not someone who just hears, but someone who puts it into action in their lives. Verse 26: "But if anyone among you thinks that he is religious, but does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless." The tongue is a powerful weapon, a powerful evil if you don't watch it. You can hurt people with your tongue very easily. Verse 27: "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." This means to do something unselfish, to get away from the self and to help the orphans and widows, to stand in the gap. To keep oneself unspotted is talking about putting sin out and not following the way of Babylon. Satan is the god of this world and the Babylonian system is in full swing here in the United States of America; we need to be careful that we are not spotted from this world.

Luke 9:62 "But Jesus said to him, "No one having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God." Christ is telling us what we need to be doing in our lives in terms of our total commitment toward him and toward the Kingdom of God and the way we should be living our lives. What does this verse mean? What does it have to do with total commitment? If you put your hand to the plow and you look back, what is going to happen to the tractor? You're going to be going off course. You have to look ahead; you have to have a goal in front of you and go toward that goal. If you look behind, you can't stay on course. I've done a little bit of plowing in my day and it's not that easy to plow straight, but if you're looking behind you, you really can't stay on course. That's one thing this verse could be referencing, but there's something in the Old Testament that is actually reminiscent of this, an incident that happened with Elisha. Elisha became a prophet of God, but Elijah was the prophet before him. (I'm adlibbing here.) God basically told Elijah to go get Elisha because Elisha was going to succeed him as prophet. Elisha was out in his field, and guess what he was doing? He was plowing with ten or twelve teams of oxen, so he was probably a wealthy landowner, probably a successful farmer. He was running one of the teams and Elijah comes up and basically says, 'Come and follow me, you're going to be a prophet.' Being a prophet in some ways was not the most venerated position to have; in fact prophets often were ridiculed. They were sometimes thrown into dungeons (or worse), not everyone loved prophets. So Elisha had a decision to make. He was out there having a good time making money in his field and then Elijah comes along and says, 'Follow me.' So what does he do? He takes his plow and he sets it on fire and then he takes his oxen and he sacrifices his oxen on the fire from the plow. Basically what he is saying is that he is leaving everything behind and he is going to go follow Elijah and do what he is called to do… follow his commission. His actions show he is going to walk away from everything and he isn't going to look back. When people in the New Testament would have read this they would have been reminded of this incident with Elisha. In fact this is a technique called 'Remez', we might cover that in the Bible Study we're having later because it is fascinating. God expects you to put your hand to the plow and leave everything else behind. Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God and his RIGHTEOUSNESS. God expects you to be an overcomer. Overcoming is losing the sinful 'weight', putting sin out of our lives; that's what the Days of Unleavened Bread are all about… putting Christ in and putting leaven out. You'll be getting the leaven out of your homes in the next couple of weeks. We need to be doers of God's law, not just hearers.

After a time on "The Biggest Loser" ranch, contestants must not only change their habits, but they learn to actually have a different perspective on exercise on food and on themselves. I know when some of them came to the ranch they were eating all kinds of junk food and they weren't exercising much. A lot of them probably couldn't exercise a whole lot because they were too heavy and it just didn't work very well, so they had to make a lot of changes. They had huge amounts of weight to lose, some over 200 pounds, so they had to stay focused and be fully committed to reaching their goal without allowing themselves to become discouraged. The first pounds probably came off quickly and easily with proper diet and exercise. Some of these people were losing fifteen or sixteen pounds a week, most of us can't do that; we don't have the time or coaches or resources or the willpower. There are a lot of reasons most people don't do it that way. Most people will begin to hit a plateau and then it's hard to get rid of the weight. That is how it is oftentimes spiritually with us; we may make some real progress initially when we first come into God's church. At first we change a lot: we stop eating pork, we stop lying and stealing and whatever else we might have been doing. We change our behavior and clean up our lives but we too can reach a plateau. The people who are on the "Biggest Loser" are ordinary people, but they are people with great determination and they are able to turn their lives around if they get on the right program and they get focused. Many have sad stories and many have emotional baggage that they need to shed in order to move forward; we all have to do the same thing, we all have baggage that we bring into God's church and God has to help us deal with that and help us move beyond that. They and we have to heal emotionally; we have to find better ways of coping with stress. Some people who become obese do so because they eat to deal with stress, then they just keep eating more and more to deal with the stress instead of learning other ways to cope. Then when they are really heavy, they have more stress because they don't feel good about being so obese. We have to deal with the issues in our lives, also, but first we have to commit fully to becoming like God and like Christ. So, the third step is to commit fully to losing the sin, the weight that so easily ensnares us.

THE FOURTH STEP TOWARD GOD'S KINGDOM IS TO EXERCISE SPIRITUALLY ON A DAILY BASIS TO LOSE THE WEIGHT (THE SIN) AND TO KEEP IT OFF.

These steps work in losing weight and in the process of conversion. These seven principles will really help us grow and overcome… IF WE WILL JUST DO THEM. That's the key, we can hear them easily enough, but that's not enough, we must do them.

We need to be exercising to lose the spiritual weight, but if you need to lose physically, you need to exercise also even if it's just walking. Some people don't even walk; they won't even walk down to the corner. They'll walk maybe to the TV set, no they don't even do that anymore, and they have a remote. We don't even have to walk there. Some may walk to get something to eat once in a while to stock up and bring it back. I'm speaking honestly; some people just hate exercise and are just unwilling to do it. If you'll begin to exercise just a little bit more than you are, you'll get stronger and it will be easier; it's something we all need to do to lose the weight. The same thing is true spiritually. The most serious weight we can carry is the sinful 'weight' that easily ensnares us and hinders us from finishing the race.

Those on the "Biggest Loser" ranch commit themselves to over three months of rigorous training and serious diet changes. Last week I told you that potluck would be off limits, or at least some of it would definitely be off limits. No matter how much they lose at the ranch, they know those killer pounds are coming right back on if they go back to the lifestyle they came out of. It will be very easy for some of them to put that weight back on now that the program is over and no one is there making them exercise and they don't have a $250,000 carrot any longer. They still have to apply the things they've learned or the weight will come back on, so there must be a total change and not for just three months, there must be a complete change of mind, mindset, attitude, heart, focus, and habits. Habits are very important; your habits will become your destiny, eventually. If you have good spiritual habits, you'll be in God's Kingdom, but if you have just the opposite, then God can take his spirit away from you because you are so neglectful and unwilling to change. During the course of the "Biggest Loser" program, they had a sprint triathlon, so they swam for half a mile, biked for twelve miles, and then ran three miles. This was to help them lose weight and also to win a prize, maybe a car. I think it was a car, a Ford Fusion that Rachel won. I think it gets 108 miles per gallon in a certain mode. She won that plus the quarter of a million dollars.

I'm suggesting that we all get on a spiritual quadrathlon. Have you ever heard of that before? The first leg of the spiritual quadrathlon is prayer; we need to be praying people. You need to have a daily habit of praying. David and Daniel set the example of praying three times a day, morning, noon, and night. Paul talked about praying without ceasing; having an attitude of prayer as we go throughout our day having a prayerful approach to everything we do and to let that help to guide our decisions throughout the day. So praying is extremely important, in fact our president, that is The United Church of God president, Mr. Kubic said a few months ago, "As we strengthen our relationship with our Father in heaven, I would like to ask for a church-wide day of fasting". Do you remember that back in January? There was a two week period where we were supposed to fast, we were asked to fast. He said, "We're not in a crisis, nor is there any monumental decision to make, I'm just asking us all to humble ourselves before God so we can grow and bear fruit." Then he said, "Prayer is our lifeblood." The life is in the blood and prayer is our lifeblood. If you're not praying, that shows you're not really seeking God's will and you're not seeking to help others either. Because when we pray, we seek to know God better; we're seeking His will; for Him to guide us; to direct us; to show us things we need to know and we're praying for one another. There are certainly enough people to pray for, so if you're not praying, then you are neglecting to pray because the Scriptures show that we should be praying people. THE FIRST PART OF OUR SPIRITUAL QUADRATHLON IS PRAYER.

Mr. Kubic went on to say that Bible study is our food; Bible study is the second part of our spiritual quadrathlon… study the Bible, read the Bible, put God's word into your mind and into your heart. You need to be studying the Bible and when you do that, you will be growing spiritually. If you'll read it, some of it will stick; you may forget a lot of it, but some of it is going to stick and it will make a difference because it is our food. We need to have good spiritual food and Bible study is our food. Our booklets are good, they can supplement the Bible, but we should be reading a few chapters of the Bible every day. In fact, if you haven't read the Bible, why not challenge yourself to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation? It takes only three or four chapters a day to read the entire Bible in one year; we're talking fifteen or twenty minutes a day. Can you at least start doing that if you're not studying the Bible much? Read three or four chapters a day and march through the Bible. If you haven't read it, that should keep you busy for at least a year. Fifteen or twenty minutes a day, is that too much to ask for the One who created you and formed you in his image? THE SECOND PART OF OUR SPIRITUAL QUADRATHLON IS BIBLE STUDY.

Mr. Kubic goes on to say it is fasting that is a catalyst to focusing our spiritual attention upon doing what we should. FASTING IS THE THIRD LEG OF OUR SPIRITUAL QUADRATHLON. Remember what Christ said… that some things don't happen except by prayer and fasting. It is a very dynamic duo. We need to be fasting on a regular basis. You have to decide what regular is. I'm not going to tell you how often you should fast. I know you should pray daily and study God's word daily; I don't think you should fast daily that would cause some problems unless it was for a few hours a day. Fasting regularly is important. We should all be fasting. Remember the Pharisees said they fasted twice a week. I've always wondered, "Was that a full fast, twenty-four hours without food or water?" I've never really studied into that, I suppose I should. I'm questioning whether they were really that diligent. Maybe they did; it is possible to fast twice a week. We could do that; it would be healthy for us probably. I don't know if they were fasting fully twice a week, but I do know that Christ said, "Your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees." That doesn't mean you have to fast three days a week, but it means you have to have your heart right, because they didn't have their hearts right. They did it to be seen of men, not for the right reasons. THE THIRD LEG OF OUR SPIRITUAL QUADRATHLON IS FASTING AND THE FOURTH LEG IS MEDITATION.

Meditation is very important; as I grow older I put a greater importance on meditation. It's something we should be thinking about continually throughout the day. As I get older, I tend to wake up earlier, but I don't necessarily want to get out of bed at four o'clock or three thirty in the morning. I'm too awake to go back to sleep, but I'm not really gung ho about hopping out of bed yet. That's when I get a lot of my meditation in; I try to reflect on God and his commandments; things I need to be doing in my life. That's a good time to meditate, but you should meditate throughout the day. As things happen around you, you should be meditating on how God would want you to handle these things. All meditation is thinking about God and spiritual issues, spiritual things. Meditation is thinking to yourself, "What would Jesus do? What would God do? What would He have me do?"

"Only God can provide spiritual growth to his Church," Mr. Kubic said, "and we are praying that our labors produce good results in people. But the growth you and I are personally responsible for comes from inside our lives." We all have to be responsible for our own lives; we all have to grow spiritually. That's one thing I really liked about the last fast, it wasn't because we were having a crisis, not a huge issue we need to seek God's help with, it was just because we need to grow spiritually and draw closer to God; that's the right kind of fast, that's fasting for the right reason. Hebrews 5:11-14 (This is after speaking about Melchizedek and the qualifications for the priesthood, and how Melchizedek is our high priest and how Christ came according to the order of Melchizedek.) Verses 11-14 " Of whom we have much to say and hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing." The point I want to bring out is that it is possible for God's people to become dull of hearing. The writer of the book of Hebrews was addressing God's people. He says you've become dull of hearing, you're not sharp, you don't pay attention, and you’re not listening. So sometimes even the hearing is lacking. God says we should not be hearers only, but doers; in this case even the hearing was lacking. Verse 12: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God and you have come to need milk and not solid food." Verse 13: "For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe, Verse 14: "But solid food belongs to those who are of a full age, those who are mature; that is those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." God wants us to be able to discern both good and evil and to choose to do that which is good. I remember that Mr. Armstrong used to say that's what character is all about, knowing the difference between good and evil and choosing to do what is good. That is real godly character… to choose to do good instead of evil. Exercise is also resisting sin and doing right, that's part of the spiritual exercise that you need to have: resist sin, with prayer, Bible study, fasting, and meditating. If you do all of these, you will have the strength to resist sin in your life and do the right thing. We have our senses exercised by being doers of God's law, that's what this is talking about. In verse 14 the word 'USE' is the Greek word "Hexis" which means habit or practice. This use is a habit, something that is going on continually, habitually. By having these kinds of habits, we have our senses exercised. " Exercised" is the Greek word "Gumnazo" which actually means to practice naked in the games. This is a reference back in the old days in the time of the 'Isthmus Games" when the athletes would actually practice in the nude.(I don't recommend that. In fact I don't even like Speedos. Have you seen some of the swimmers that wear Speedos? That's actually not enough; not wearing anything would be way out of bounds.) Anyway, that is where the word comes from:" to practice naked in the games or to train". Strong meat is referring to being able to apply and use godly principles in your everyday life choices. Those who are eating strong meat know evil when they see it and they reject it. You have to be active; you have to get out into the 'gym' of life. You have to exercise, use wisdom, and practice the fruit of God's Spirit. What are the fruits of God's Spirit? Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Goodness, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Self-control.. these are the fruits of God's Holy Spirit. Those are the things that we need to be sure that we're producing. That's being a doer of the law, producing fruit, getting something done that's affecting other people's lives; that's not selfish, that is very outgoing. The fruits of God's Spirit are unselfish; they're flowing out of us to help others.

We all need to "turn on the heat" now, we need to get fired up. Watching these shows did fire me up some I'll have to admit. They were inspiring at times. WE NEED TO BEGIN TAKING STRONG MEASURES TO ENSURE CHANGES IN OUR LIVES. Remember some things don't happen except by prayer and fasting. TO DO THIS QUADRATHLON, YOU HAVE TO BEGIN PRAYING, STUDYING THE BIBLE, FASTING, AND MEDITATING ON A HABITUAL BASIS. These need to become a habit in your life. One thing I've learned is that if you don't plan to fast, generally you won't fast. You have to plan ahead a bit to fast, because generally you don't just wake up and decide to fast that day. You have to look ahead and try to find a day that will work well for you so you don't have too many distractions and then put it on the calendar and plan to fast on that day.

I'd like to read a few quotes from some of the contestants that I found inspirational. I remember Rachel Henderson the one who became the "Biggest Loser" said, "I can't believe I'm seeing this day. Rachel in week one would be absolutely floored at how much progress has been made in fourteen weeks. I have come so far on my journey and I have arrived at who I love." She didn't really love herself all that much before because she just felt bad. She knew she wasn't doing the things that she needed to be doing and she looked in a mirror and didn't like what she saw. She had to change her mental outlook and start doing some things that would get her into a more positive frame of mind. If you're having trouble loving yourself, make the changes you need (it's not wrong to love yourself); how can you love others if you don't love yourself? We're supposed to love others as we love ourselves. We're created in God's image; He loves us so we ought to love ourselves. We should be good to ourselves. She gave some words of advice. She said, "Keep pushing hard because it is so worth it." She had to push herself hard and we have to push ourselves hard, too. We can't be wimps spiritually; we have to discipline ourselves. We have to bring our bodies into subjection, that's what the Apostle Paul said.

Dolvett was one of the coaches one season on the show and he said, "What a journey we've been on. You come here, you show up, you find yourselves." That's awesome because he saw big changes in these people's lives.

Jillian Michaels said to one of the contestants, "Get up there! Let's go! You want it! Show me how bad!" That's Jillian Michaels; she pushes them on. She was a pretty hard-driving taskmaster you might say.

David is the one who was 409 pounds when he started out. His first wife died of cancer and he promised her that he would lose weight for their four children's sake, because he was being left with four children. He said," I told my family that I was going to finish strong. Here I am in the last week working out with Dolvett in the final week." Then it shows him working out on day one when he first started and he has a bucket of sweat just pouring out of his body and he's looking like he's about to have a heart attack. I think he's pumping iron or doing a rep or lifting a medicine ball; I can't remember exactly what he was doing. Dolvett is looking at him saying, "Breathe, breathe." David said, "Looking back to week one where defeat was part of my vocabulary, where going home was an option; but look at me now, look at how strong I am." This was a flashback showing him how weak he was. He could hardly do a rep and then fourteen weeks later he's pumping iron, looking stronger, not sweating nearly as much, and just looking a lot healthier. He said, "There was something deep down inside me and it was that heart of a warrior that I knew was in me and I've been able to reveal that guy a little bit more each week." I think there's a spiritual warrior in each and every one of us. I really do. I think there's a spiritual warrior there; we're created in God's image… there has to be. God wants us to find that spiritual warrior and He wants us to stir that up and reveal that a little bit more each day of our lives. Draw closer to God and become a warrior for God's truth and way of life. David went on to say, "How do you like me now?" Kind of cocky, but he earned it; he worked hard. He lost one hundred eighty seven pounds.

Jennifer said, "The feelings I am having today are so much different than the ones I had in week one." (This was in week fourteen.) "In week one, I was nervous, apprehensive, scared.. but today I'm excited about working out. I've been chipping away and busting through my safe zone, my comfort zone since I came here. This has become my life now." Her total approach toward exercise had changed.

Chelsea said, "It's been six years since I've been in the one hundreds" . She was over two hundred pounds, and she's a little girl, five foot four for something like that. Chelsea continued," Chelsea from week one would not even believe Chelsea from today. I knew that Chelsea could do it, but I don't believe she knew just how far she would come. Now I'm so much stronger and more positive. I'm happy, I want to live life." There was a total transformation. In fact, that was one of the titles in one of the countries, "Total Transformation".

Our spiritual journey is a much longer and more arduous one than just a few months of intense physical exercise. It would be very difficult for the contestants of "The Biggest Loser" to keep their exercise regimen going for their entire lives; it's not very practical to exercise four hours a day. They'd probably burn themselves out or waste away. That would be a bit extreme, but they got themselves off to a good start. Now they must be diligent in maintaining their habits. They don't have to keep doing the same things, they just have to eat less, eat better foods, keep exercising (not four hours a day, but maybe thirty minutes a day), and stay on a right program to maintain what they've accomplished. This life can be spiritually discouraging at times, it can seem to be a slow process and we may have some ups and downs, too. Maybe we were flying high for a while and then Boom! Something happens. Maybe Satan gets a hold of us, he develops a stronghold in our lives, maybe even an addiction of some kind and we have all kinds of problems then. So, we have to be careful that we don't become so discouraged that we give up. We can become impatient; we can stop trying because the sinful "weight" doesn't come off fast enough. The process of conversion is not an instantaneous one. It takes continual effort. After you're baptized, you have to keep studying, praying fasting, and meditating in order to maintain and grow spiritually. SO WE MUST FOCUS ON THE GOAL..THE KINGDOM OF GOD and know that one day we will have the perfect mind of Christ. When Christ returns and He changes us, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, we will become like him. We are going to see him as He is and we're going to be like him, so we will have the mind of Christ. We don't have it fully yet, but we have to know that we will get there if we endure to the end… if we keep staying on the right course, the right track, keep fighting the good fight, and running the good race.

Are you still working hard? Are you exercising spiritually in your life, or are you neglecting your daily Bible study? Are you neglecting to pray daily, to pray fervently for others, to pray faithfully? Are you getting spiritually lazy? Are you resisting temptations or are you giving in to temptations? Are you becoming a spiritual couch potato? Maybe you were twenty years ago and you're moving in that direction again. These are questions you need to ask yourself. You need to examine yourself this time of year and be honest with yourself. If you're doing everything you can and you're not shedding the spiritual baggage and putting on the mind of God as fast as you'd like, then look back at how far you've come and take some encouragement in that. Take some encouragement that you are still with it, you are still here, you're still working at it. You've most likely hit a plateau (that happens sometimes when you're in a marathon), but then you get a second wind and you can run better. Keep pushing, and just like those on the ranch, you will eventually break through. They made a lot of breakthroughs and we will, too.

Hebrews 12:2-4 "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. Verse 3: "For consider him (Christ) who endured such hostility from sinners against himself…” (He was crucified by sinners.) "…lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls". Consider Christ's example; Christ was crucified for being faithful. You haven't been crucified, things may not be going as well as you like, but you haven't been crucified. Verse 4: "You have not yet resisted to bloodshed striving against sin." Christ even shed blood as He was praying the night before his crucifixion because his prayer was so intense. There's actually a medical term for that, hematohidrosis. He was praying fervently all night long, diligently and his sweat was like drops of blood coming from him, pouring forth from him. We haven't done all that have we? We need to look to the author and finisher of our faith, to see his example. Let's not become discouraged. Let's continue to fight the good fight, continue to do what we can do, continue to apply these principles. Let's not compare ourselves among ourselves, either. Scripture tells us not to do that. Sometimes some people seem to be making more progress, and maybe they are and we're discouraged because we're not making such progress, but don't compare yourselves among yourselves. Know that God is a just and loving God and He loves you and He's there for you. He has promised to never leave you or forsake you.

So the fourth step on the road to salvation is to: DEVELOP GOOD SPIRITUAL HABITS THAT WILL HEIGHTEN, MAINTAIN, AND SUSTAIN YOUR SPIRITUAL FOCUS. Let's consider this; we've gone through four steps so far. These things will help us draw closer to God as we approach the Passover season. I'm scheduled to be here on the Sabbath during The Days of Unleavened Bread and we'll end this series of sermons at that time. On the Passover baptized members will come here and wash one another's feet and eat a small piece of unleavened bread, and drink a small portion of wine. We know the wine is symbolic of Christ's shed blood and the unleavened bread is symbolic of his broken body, broken for us. We will all have some unity as we eat that bread, and remember that Christ died for each and every one of us. We're all part of his family; we're all made in his image. So the Passover is a very meaningful ceremony that renews our covenant with Jesus Christ. We will reflect on how Christ is our Passover, how He is the Passover Lamb. He is the perfect sacrifice that takes away our sins through genuine, loving forgiveness… lasting forgiveness. The next evening we will meet in one another's homes or in private settings, perhaps in a restaurant and we will reflect on how God lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. It is called "The Night to Be Much Observed" or "The Night to Be Much Remembered". We're going to reflect on how the Israelites came out of cruel bondage, how they came out of harsh slavery. We're going to reflect on how God is bringing us out of spiritual bondage. He is helping us get rid of the sin that does beset us. Then on the next day, the First Day of Unleavened Bread, we are going to meet together and speak about the importance of putting sin out of our lives as we have diligently put the leaven out of our homes. So, be diligent in putting the leaven out; you don't have to go to extremes, but do your best to put the leaven out of your homes. Certainly don't do so much physically that you don't have time to pray and study during this time. That would be defeating the purpose, wouldn't it? Get the leaven you can see out; don't break your back because you are never going to get every single spore of leavening out anyway. Again, it's our attitude and our approach. It has to be balanced. The spiritual aspects are more important than the physical ones, but we should put the leaven out of our homes. We should get it out and out of our cars. We're going to go to The First Day of Unleavened Bread and the leaven will be out and we're going to have some wonderful days ahead of us. I wish we could be here with you guys. We'll be here during The Days of Unleavened Bread, but not during those first days. But, I know you'll all get together and you'll be well fed, I'm sure. God will provide. Remember we're all called to be "big losers" because we're all called to lose the weight, the sin, which so easily ensnares us. SO LET'S THANK GOD THAT WE HAVE VICTORY OVER SIN THROUGH CHRIST OUR SAVIOR. Let us go forward to keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but as the scripture tells us "Let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth". Let's continue to be "big losers" as we approach and as we observe the Passover.

[Mike Iiams] At our home in Idaho, we get a daily paper that keeps getting smaller, and I try to read it every morning a little bit and catch up on the local news and the world news, see what's going on here and there in the world. And as I work through the paper, I always enjoy reading certain comics that are maybe enlightening or bring a smile to my face. And at some point there as I wind up reading the paper, I like to read "Dear Abby." "Dear Abby" is the syndicated advice columnist in our paper. There are lots of "Dear Abby" style people in lots of newspapers. People who give answers to people's questions on, I believe it came off of "Dear Abby's" website, they receive 10,000 questions per week. People seeking advice on all kinds of things that, honestly, we could answer if we just used our Bible.

So as educated students of the Bible, you should be able to answer the advice columnist and even the young people, the 13, if you're 13, you should be able to answer the advice columnist. So I'm not suggesting you have to read them, but I think it's just interesting that people ask questions that just don't seem, like, really? You asked that? You can't figure that out on your own? But no, they can't. So 1 Peter 3:15, we don't necessarily have to turn there. You can write it down. You probably know it. You've probably turned to it many times, but it says that we should always be ready to give an answer. So whether it be "Dear Abby" or somebody at work or somebody on the street, you should be able to read and give answers. So you can be turning to Ezekiel 36. I had it and then I pulled my paper out and lost it. So let's see if I can find it again. Ezekiel 36:33, we've been told various times during the Feast that we're going to be kings and priests in the Millennium, in the world tomorrow, Millennium just being the beginning of the Kingdom of God. We look forward to that.

And people are going to need questions to fundamental answers. They're going to need answers to fundamental questions that have occurred because no one has ever lived through a time such as is going to lead up the Millennium. So people are going to need answers. Ezekiel 36:33 says, "Thus says the Lord God, ‘On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will also enable you to dwell in the cities, and the ruins shall be rebuilt.’" I wonder how they got that way. The ruins. "The desolate land shall be tilled instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass by. So they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.’" How is that going to happen? Does God wave His magic wand and suddenly these things take place? Verse 36, "Then the nations which are left all around you shall know that I am the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted what was desolate. I, the Lord, have spoken it, and I will do it."

So you might notice that God works through people and many times, yes, God is quite capable. He could come down and do everything Himself, but that's not the way it works when you're around God. He works through people. We can assume that the people that have lived through Satan's wrath and the Day of the Lord will have a lot to learn. But they'll have a lot of questions when they start picking themselves off the ground and dusting themselves off, they're going to need some help. And who is going to be there? Who do we anticipate being there to help them? They're going to be confused folks. They're going to be heartbroken. They're going to be, you know, "I can't find my glasses." "Where's my cell phone?" "Call 911." There's nothing for them to go to because their cities are laid waste and they're desolate.

You folks on the East Coast recently experienced a near brush with a disaster with Hurricane Dorian. And unfortunately, I haven't met the people from The Bahamas. Are there people from The Bahamas here? I'd like to meet you. I don't see you, but that's okay, we can talk later. They're out there. Yep. Okay. We'll talk later. Please come find me. I'll be back in the booth back there, sitting in the corner. That's what I did when I was five. But you people here in Georgia had a near miss, right? That hurricane went up the East coast, but the people in The Bahamas weren't quite so fortunate. They had 2 days of 185 mile an hour winds. And when the wind blew over and people started coming out of their shelters or wherever they were hiding, they started looking around, I don't think they were saying, "Well, where's my cell phone? Where's my new car? Where's my this or that?"

I think they were looking for their husband or their wife or their child and saying, "Are you okay?" And the big hug. They needed some comfort. They needed some people there to take care of them. And maybe they were even saying, "Now what? Now what?" Like, "Our blackboard just got erased. Now, what are we going to do?" "Our house that we just finished. The streets, the schools, the grocery stores. What are we going to do?" But they were thankful to be alive and materialism took a back seat to what they were dealing with. I see the people of the Millennium being somewhat similar to that, only worse. I imagine that they will be looking for food and clothing and comfort and everything has changed. Nothing is going to be the same. There is no Calvary riding in from the United States with foodstuffs and ships and helicopters.

I think it's going to be very quiet because just about everything will have been wiped out. Over the years as the kids were younger, there was this TV show called MacGyver. They're laughing. MacGyver could be in the most desolate, impossible location, and he would find something to solve the problem, make a bomb out of duct tape, or make a helicopter fly with… I don't know. It didn't matter. He could fix it. Yeah. He always lived to the next show so. He could escape or solve a problem when there was nothing around to do it. I don't see MacGyver getting along very well. I don't think it's going to work. There won't be any cell phone networks. There won't be any Amazon Prime, no interstate trucking. The grocery stores probably won't be there and they certainly won't have stocked shelves.

I can't tell you what it's going to be like, but for anyone of us who lives in America, you better be scared. Because it's not going to be like you grew up. I know that Jesus Christ said in Matthew 24:22 that “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved alive… no flesh would be saved alive.” This is going to be a pretty big deal. “But for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” Actually. The verse doesn't say alive. Lots of flesh will be saved. But if you read into it, literally we could blow ourselves off this earth with the technology that we have. So there will be survivors. They will pick themselves up. There are people there that are going to need served. What I expect them to see is not what they'll be expecting to see.

What I expect them to see is not what they'll be expecting to see. They're going to expect to see the way it's always been. They're going to expect to see the helicopters coming in or whatever it may be. But I'm expecting to see entering from stage left, God's saints. The people who have been prepared for such a time as this. Brethren, I expect to see us coming in stage left, to be there to help those people. And they're going to need it. God's saints will have the golden opportunity of their life to practice what they've been learning for decades. Things that become old hat right now. They seem like, "Well, we've always done it this way." Things will be different. Everything will be different. Okay. Here's a question for you. You can write this one down.

Have you ever thought of yourself as a student teacher? Have you ever thought of yourself as a student teacher? In my school career, occasionally, there would come a person into the class that wasn't the regular teacher, was not a professional, would walk in and typically this person would be nearing the end of a teaching degree program. They're trained, they've had a lot of experience doing lots of things, but they've never stood in front of the class and taught them. And so they're a little nervous. They're not professionals, they're not seasoned, they're nervous, and they already know it's not as easy as it looks. I kind of think maybe we're going to be that way. "Okay. This is all new. This is new territory. We've never done this before." And so you're going to have to buck up and say, "Okay, how should we do this?"

So what will we be doing in the Millennium? The beginning of the Kingdom of God? Again, the Millennium is not for us, unless I could see God using it as a training ground for us to say, "Well, there are lots of other things. Do you ever see the planets and stars out there?" Maybe we're going to, you know, go into some development program and move on after the Millennium, I don't know. You have to speculate. You have to read these verses and say, "Where's God going with this?" And we'll talk more about that on the Eighth Day. So, again, the Millennium is not for us, except that it would appear that God's using it as a training ground for us and having us there. So we could talk about, okay, we've been raised incorruptible. The saints have come back to life.

We've been changed. We join them in the air. We end up sitting with Jesus Christ on His throne. That will be different. And Daniel 7:27 talks about “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people, of the saints of the Most High. Whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” And then the saints are going to judge the world, as we've heard about. And at some point in there the rewards are being handed out. This is all new territory for us, brethren. We have to open our minds and think like, "What is God doing here?" This is not just repetition, repetition. There's something bigger coming down the pike. Returning to Isaiah 30, so who is experiencing the Millennium? Who's actually the ones that need the help? We're there to help. We see ourselves as teachers, we see ourselves as God's in charge, and God's working through us. God's doing things.

Isaiah 30:20 says, "And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore." Who are those teachers? It would stand to reason that that should be us. We're the saints. We're supposed to be the saints. We're supposed to be growing and overcoming day by day and we need to do that. Said, "Yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers." So I would read this as the people of the Millennium or they can easily see who's there working with them and their teachers. “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.” Many people would rather have someone show them how to do something. We rented a car at the Feast, right? Have whatever your heart lusts after, right? So we rent this Cadillac.

This car is so smart. I get in the car, this isn't in my notes. I get in the car, because I'm not short, I close the door and hit the start button and the seat goes right up to the windshield. Like, all right, somebody short drove this car. All right. So I run the seat back, put the steering… and the steering wheel comes out. And so I push everything back where it's supposed to be, and I hit set. One. All right, that should be good. Turn the car off. Turn the car back on. And I do this like three, four times. Every time getting like, "All right, maybe I missed something. Maybe I didn't hit the set button right. Adjust the mirrors. Okay. Ready? Try it again." Right up to the windshield. Time after time, I'm like, "All right, get the manual out." Has the manual in the car. So I read the manual. And I carefully read the manual. Same thing.

I must have done this a dozen times and I'm going, "Never buy a…" No, I don't want to say never buy a Cadillac. I'm reading the book and I still don't get it. Finally, I tried something different, and eventually, not that it stayed that way, but eventually, I get the seat to stay back where it's supposed to be and if my wife doesn't drive the car, I'm okay. But we read the Bible on a daily basis, right? And then we have to have time to go out and put it to practice, you know? And then your wife walks in the room and somebody drops something on your toe. And so like, what you just read in the Bible, doesn't work. And so you read the Bible again and somebody drops something on your toe and it doesn't work and you keep going back, right? There's this process going back and forth.

So the owner's manual is important, but the actual living, the actual doing, you need both. Right? So in my work, I work in the electrical trade, there are a series of steps between deciding I want be an electrician and receiving the credentials that tell you that you are an electrician. You need four years of on the job training and you need classroom instruction. Both are needed. Have you noticed that God gave you six days to work, and the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God? And so we need both. And those people in the Millennium are going to need both. But they're going to need someone there because if somebody had come up to my Cadillac and showed me how to do these silly buttons, I would have gotten it so much easier.

The fact that it kept breaking, I don't know whether it's me or the car, but whatever, but the people in the Millennium are going to need, just like I would prefer to have someone show me how to do something, it'd be so much easier. I wouldn't have to think about it. I could just do, you know, "Okay. They did that. That's what I'll do." So the people of the Millennium are going to need the same thing. They're going to need the daily education. They're going to need the formal training. Who's going to do that? I think we are. Yes, folks. It looks like we're going to be teachers, and right now we're learners. Right now, we're sitting here quietly, laughing at my funny stories. We're sitting here, we're being taught. We can't stay this way. It's not going to stay this way forever. Things are going to change. I hope you realize the day is coming when the survivors will need teachers.

We're going to have to break out of our mold. We're going to have to do the caterpillar butterfly thing. We're going to have to change. And we're going to be there for those people to oversee them, to look after them, and I don't see us ever stopping learning. You can argue about this or discuss it when you're not sitting here watching me but do you ever see a time in your life, even if you're a spirit being, do you ever see a time when you're not going to learn anymore? Do you think when you turn spirit being that God's going to suddenly plug in the hard drive that gives you access to everything He's ever done or ever known? I don't know. I kind of don't think so. I just think we're going to spend an eternity going, "Aha. Aha! Oh, look at that. That's how you did that." I don't see us stopping being learners. I see an eternity with God, an exciting time when He lets us in on secrets and how He does things, and how He teaches us in that time, we'll have to wait for.

I think it'll be nice to learn for all eternity from God. It's hard to imagine things that we have never seen. Turn to 2 Kings 6. I want to relate a little story. Like, how does God do things? How is God going to proceed? I mean, we see through the glass darkly, right? 2 Kings 6. You know, we're we have limited vision. There are things that we've never seen before. Things that we've never done before. And somehow, we have to look beyond the here and now. We have to look beyond. So 2 Corinthians 6… I said that wrong. 2 Kings 6:15. And so we're going to break into the story here. The King of Syria is making war with Israel and there's some dialogue going on. So we'll break in verse 15, "And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And the servant said to him, ‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’” This is death, you know, “How are we going to survive this? The city is surrounded and we're toast.”

Verse 16. "And he said, ‘Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’" Verse 17, "And Elisha prayed, and said, ‘Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.' Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So when the Syrians came down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘Strike these people, I pray, with blindness.’ And He struck them with blindness, according to the word of Elisha." So no man in this story was going to know what God had in the mountains. Couldn't see it. And in many ways, we can't see what miracles God's going to perform for the people of the Millennium. There's some stuff has to happen. How do we feed the people? How do we take care of them?

We have to, in some ways, wait and see. We have to get there. Brethren, we must remember who is the captain of our salvation and never underestimate his ability to have a plan and working out in an awesome way that humans could never think of. I don't know the details, but we serve a God that has had a plan in place since the foundation of the world and He's not going to be defeated. That plan is going to happen and fortunately, by God's grace, we've been called to help take care of it. Certainly, you know, our lack understanding is not going to impede God. God can show us what He needs and I think we'll be eager servants to do whatever He says. He'll tell us what to do. We just have to be ready. So does it bother you a little bit, even a little bit, that you're going to be in teaching positions? For a lot of people, it does.

Because we're all self-conscious and in our society, teaching usually means standing up in front of the classroom, you have this organized group of, you know, they're five rows of chairs and six rows, deep or five chairs in a row and six rows deep, and you have 30 people and you have all this, you know, you have to have your lesson plan ready and this and that. But you have to think about it, you have been teachers basically all your life. There's a picture in our album, somewhere of my son and I standing side by side, he was much younger. I don't know how old he was. Much younger old. And just the way we're both standing, whatever the pose was, we were both doing the same thing. I never taught him how to do that. I didn't instruct him, "All right, you sit down and I'm going to show you how to do a pose with your father."

But somehow, I modeled it and he copied it. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that picture? Nothing's wrong with the picture. And you probably have poses and pictures in your album that show you the same thing. Parents teach children even when they're not trying to. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not so good. So this life is a training ground and we get to… whether it be woodworking or how to line up or how to do music or whatever it is, most of you, probably all of you through your life at some point have taught others how to do things. I've spent a little bit of time in the classroom as a teacher. It's different, and yet that's the formal education. But I see teaching as a multifaceted collection of stories, examples, good examples, bad examples, examples how to do it, examples how not to do it.

You could say, "Do it because God said." You could say, "Do it because God said not to." But those in the Millennium have to be taught God's way. They have to own it, but it will be easier when they can look at their teachers and model what the teacher's doing and copy it and see that God's way works. We're supposed to be learning that now. Our kids learn that at camp. They have to remember that and they have to make it a part of it. They have to own it. So the reward for us is not sometimes obvious or apparent. It could be that when you look back on something, that you're awed by how God has led you through a certain trial or through a certain situation. You're awed that God is working with you. You know, the fact that we're even here, God's working with us and draws us, and then we ended up walking by faith and say, "Well, if you say it, I'm going to do it."

So we have to trust God that He's going to do what He says and not worry about the reward. God can take care of that. We don't have to. When I was 17, I started working for one of the fellows in the Church and he was a house painter. So I started working as a house painter. He was a church member, right? You say, "What does this guy have to offer?" Well, let me tell you his credentials. He fought a common addiction at that time, he was bankrupt, he'd lost everything. He had a wonderful little wife, and I think she was quite an encouragement to him, but he had a checkered background and a lot of trials. And it would have been easy for him to quit, to throw in the towel, to give up. And for some reason, this guy that just didn't have a lot going for him took me under his wing. I don't know why. He took me under his wing. He became a teacher and a mentor and a helper and he came alongside me at age 17. This old guy… It was impressive.

Did he set out to say, "Well, I'm going to make Mike Iiams' day. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this." No, he just did what he read in the Bible and he saw that it worked. And he did it and I look forward to seeing him again after the resurrection. So I think there will be, again, a lot of work to do, and I think we have to look to God to work out the little things that we're not sure about how to do it. He can help us. We're gaining experience now. And you gain experience now in whatever way you can. So I think we're going to be teachers. I think there's some things we need to know. All right. So I've been around teaching. I've done a little teaching, as I said. I want you to think about this, write this question down. What makes a great teacher? What makes a great teacher?

So after the teaching experience that I've had of both teaching and sitting in the class, I've never really thought about this question until recently. So I started researching it. Hooray for Google. So I started looking at church literature and I read blogs and I read the summation of surveys and I read essays. And I even read the Bible to see what I could find what makes a great teacher. Well, I've come up with 22 items. There'll be three scriptures on each one, and I want you to think about it. All right. So the classes that you like best. The learning situations that you've liked best. The times when someone showed you how to adjust the seat in your car. What is your favorite way of being taught? Think about this. This is personal. I can't tell you what the best way is.

So can you copy some of those ways? Are those good ways? Was the teacher entertaining and, or, you know, what made it go well? Why did you like those classes? It's been a long time since some of you sat in class. A long time. But you go to church services every week, don't you? And you take your textbook with you and you take notes. And I've heard that you have tests all week long. So isn't that like education? I think it is. All right. So we've got to go through our 22 items. What makes a good teacher? Okay. Get your pen revved up. All right. The number one, all the surveys, the number one thing about being a great teacher is you have to have a good attitude. Good attitude's essential. No one to go sit through a class with a grumpy old teacher. All right, we've got to move along. Number two, patience. Patience.

The Bible term for this is longsuffering. And sometimes it feels like that. And the secular definitions of patience include words like bearing pains, trials, without complaint, strain, not hasty. The capacity to tolerate delay or suffering without getting angry or upset. The ability to stay calm when it would be easier to freak out. Patience. If you're going to be a great teacher, you need patience. Oh, by the way, patience is only developed through trial and adverse conditions. Aren't you lucky? I'm not there yet, because what's interesting is it's like this trial, next trial, every trial, you have to have patience. And that seems like are we ever going to get there? I think we will. So as we go into the Millennium, it's going to be important to know how to calm people down, because you're going to have to be patient, but they're going to have to be patient, right? So you're going to have to develop patience. A good teacher has to be patient. And it's a process.

All right. Number three, enthusiasm. I wrote this point and I thought of Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh. It goes like this. "Yeah. We're going to the Feast of Tabernacles. It's going to be cold. The ocean's wet and I get sand in my hair and it's really dark at night. Oh, my." We need to exude enthusiasm. How about, "We went to the Feast and we learned so much. We met new people and had a great time. I can't wait to go back to Jekyll Island." Even your friends would rather have you be excited about going to keep the Feast of Tabernacles than being Eeyore. I'll refer you to Acts 18:24-28. This is a little story about Apollos who was an eloquent man and he was really into the truth of God. And even though he was teaching wrong, he taught it with enthusiasm until Aquilla and Priscilla pull him aside and say, "Hey, dude, you got it wrong." And they enlightened him. And then he went out with the new truth and he taught them vigorously. And it's a good example of how we can be enthusiastic.

So a great teacher needs to be enthusiastic, and that too is a process. All right. Number four is encouragement. Encouragement. So imagine the saints getting dropped into these little pockets of millennial people. They're frightened, they're hungry, they're scared, and here comes to the chopper with the parachutes and they drop some saints in on them. I don't think it's going to be quite like that. Maybe it's more like Star Wars, and all of a sudden you materialize. Okay? I'm not sure how that's going to be. Anyway, they have to figure out if you're a good guy or a bad guy, but you're going to have to again, talk them down. You're going to have to encourage them. You're going to have to give them hope, feed them, turn some crumbs into meals, whatever it takes. You're going to have to be there to encourage them.

I give you as a reference, go read the first few verses of every one of Paul's epistles. And he encourages them. He just baffles them with this brilliance as he goes into this, you know, whatever the subject is going to be in the book, he just gives it just flowery and the gift of God in Jesus Christ. And he's just like, wow, how could you not keep on reading? So go read Paul's and Titus. All of them are, again, the people in the Millennium are going to need encouraged. It's a process. All right, number five, you ready for this? All right. So I'm going to start going faster or we're going to run out of time. All right. So these are accumulated from, again, as I said surveys and all the various things that people write. Okay, great teachers set expectations high for students. They have clear objectives. They were prepared and organized. You're getting all these?

A great teacher engages students and gets them to think. A great teacher formed strong relationships with students. A great teacher has mastered their subject. They are great communicators. A great teacher has a love of learning. A great teacher is a skilled leader. He is one who collaborates with colleagues, who maintains professionalism, who doesn't take himself too seriously, who doesn't put himself on a pedestal. Hope you didn't miss anything. A good teacher loves to teach. A great isn't just a teacher. He has a life outside the classroom. A great teacher helps students if he sees them struggling. A great teacher eats apples. The reason is because, apparently, it's kind of a peace symbol and it says to the students, "I've been where you are," and it becomes kind of a bonding point. "This guy eats apples. He must not be quite so bad after all." And number 22, a great teacher sings.

And their point was that he's willing to take risks in front of those he's teaching. He demonstrates reaching new heights, the occasional bumps and bruises that happen when you don't get it right the first time. Now, I know that a bunch of you didn't get all of these. So how about turning to Galatians 5:22, where it says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." Now, if you summarize the 22 points I gave you, a bunch of them are there in that one verse. These two verses summarize what I just rattled off. And other things in this list are scattered all the all through Paul's writings, and honestly, through the whole Bible, through Proverbs, through many of the stories in the Bible. You know, you've been studying to be a great teacher ever since you were converted. Isn't that amazing?

And so you're well on your way to being a great teacher because you already have the textbook. And yes, the patience and enthusiasm and all those things, you'd dig those out of the Bible. It's all there. You're supposed to have joy, you're supposed to have love for one another. So there's nothing new here. You get to the Millennium and you just flip to Galatians 5, and you go, "Okay, what's my lesson plan?" All right, we're going to do these things. And do you realize that you're regularly studying about the greatest Teacher of all. The greatest Teacher who's ever lived. You have a lot of experience studying the best, all right? You go to the ultimate, you study the very best of teachers, and you find you're studying Jesus Christ who walked the earth and the Bible has recorded some of His greatest teachings. How did He teach?

Well, He taught with authority. He knew His subject. He presented it differently than anyone ever had. He taught in parables. He taught so that He actually would confuse the audience. And it worked. He taught, where did He teach? In the classroom? No, He taught as He walked by the way, as He walked through the grainfield as He, yes, when He was in the synagogue. When He was hanging on the cross. He taught frequently and often and in many ways. He was the master. He was the teacher. He is the ultimate master teacher. And He determined at some point that people learn better when they have a full stomach. So then He would feed them and then they would learn better. And the food that didn't belong there, He ran them into the sea.

So I don't know what formal education will look like in the Millennium. I believe God isn't going to use the model we have in society today. I just kind of don't see classrooms and universities and higher education. I somehow see, see I kind of believe that God isn't going to reinforce the foundation if you're thinking about the Kingdom as a building project. He's not going to reinforce the foundation and He's not going to rewire the electrical system and patch the roof and straighten out the walls. The Kingdom of God is a do-over. It's erase it and start from scratch. Satan's done. Man's ways are done. And now God takes control. And He doesn't need the help of the great minds of this day to do those things. He needs the minds that are filled with His Word. Minds that that will listen to what He says, will do it and do it with a good attitude. Do it enthusiastically. People who eat apples and sing.

A lot of it will have to do with reeducation. There may not be much left of dams and infrastructure and I kind of don't think the food processing plants are going to work all that well. I anticipate a whole new infrastructure and, yes, I too will have to learn a lot of things because I've lived in Satan societies all my life just like you have so many things are going to change. And yes, we're going to be spirit beings, but that doesn't answer all my questions. So I'm going to have some questions. So what will we be doing in the Millennium? I think we're going to be teaching and working with bruised people. I think there'll be lots of ways of teaching and you don't have to worry that you're going to have to stand up in front of the class and be embarrassed about it. I think God's going to give you what you need when you need it. And you can do what you are given to do boldly and strongly and not worry about failing. I think there's going to be something about being a spirit being and it's going to help us there and God's going to give us, again, what we need when we need it.

What makes a great teacher? I'd say a righteous person makes a great teacher. You can figure out all the T crossings and I dottings. That's going to work out just fine. You just keep on studying your textbook, it's going to be okay. You can be there and you're going to be part of the solution. And we need to continue learning those skills in this life in preparation. We just keep on day by day, week by week, year by year, taking in the information and learning how to interpret God's Word and how to use it. God is fully capable of having the preparations in place, but He does a lot of work through people. And I believe He's going to do a lot of work through His saints and He is going to be able to take care of all the people in the Millennium. He's going to be able to feed them and clothe them and give them shelter. Exactly what that plan is, we just need to wait and see.

And one other thing, I believe that we'll be able to answer any of the "Dear Abby" type questions. And again, you can do so with your Bible knowledge now. You can read, you can look around, in many ways you can see the problems in this world and you can nail what the problem is and the solution that it's going to take to fix it. And a lot of it has to do with Satan's influence right now. We have a plan coming down the pike for that. We've already celebrated that day recently, and it's going to be okay. So living God's way today is not imaginary. We're not just doing this for some exercise. It should be part of our foundation and our core. It should be something that we learn everything we can as we're walking through the steps where we can have confidence on a week by week basis that we're, we're coming closer to the Kingdom of God.

Yes, we're all getting older and that's a good thing. We're still here and we're still chugging along and God's still teaching us, but we have to sometimes stretch our mind a little bit. It is not going to be like it is now. It is just not going to be anything, it's going to be a do-over. And we can talk about it, we can prepare for it, we can use our imagination. I don't even know if I can, just like I read to you about Elisha, what can't we see? What's going on in our lives that we can't see? And just trust that God knows what He's doing.

So if you prepare yourself, as I believe, all of you are, if you prepare yourself, an opportunity will come. Student teachers, accept that you're always going to be able to learn, that you're ready to learn and be willing to pitch in and teach anyone in this life that is willing to learn and wants to learn. Whether it be God's way, whether it be woodworking or how to mow the grass, it's good for us to teach each other now, and it's good for us to learn from each other. And I would just say that we keep on preparing to teach, keep studying your textbook, and learn how to be the best teacher, learn how to be a great teacher, and we model ourselves after Jesus Christ.

Well, brethren, I'll ask this question just one more time: Are you a 'big loser'? How have you been doing in the last couple of months since I began this series of sermons on becoming a 'big loser'? Have you been losing the sin that so easily besets you? Now, we've already kept the Days of Unleavened Bread; that was certainly a reminder of what we've been talking about, about losing the sin. The Days of Unleavened Bread obviously picture coming out of sin, putting the leaven out, and the sin out of our lives. Have you been shedding the weight of sin that drags you down spiritually? You might remember that I said before: I don't care if you are the 'biggest loser', but I do want every one of you to be a 'big loser'.

The contestants on "The Biggest Loser" all lost a lot of physical weight, some of them nearly two hundred pounds. They were all big losers, every single one of them. From a spiritual perspective, we also need to be big losers. This is a vital subject and as we look back on the Days of Unleavened Bread, let's ask ourselves: Are we following these seven principles that will enable us to put the sin out of our lives? Are you determined to lose the 'weight', the sin that does pull you down? What will God the Father and Jesus Christ your Savior do to help you along? Certainly, we all need help in putting sin out of our lives. What can you do to aid losing the 'weight', the sin and become spiritually lean and fit? Today, I intend to conclude this series on becoming a ' big loser'. We've covered four of the seven principles for losing the 'weight', the sin that so easily ensnares us and ENSLAVES us. Today, we're going to cover the last three principles after quickly reviewing the first four. If you missed any of the first two sermons, I will review them quickly now.

Principle 1: WE NEED TO TRUST, LISTEN TO, AND FOLLOW OUR COACHES.

Just as on the TV program where the people have physical coaches, we have some spiritual coaches. Our ultimate coaches are God the Father and Jesus Christ. (They're far more than coaches; I hope you know I understand that.) They are everything to us. They guide us, they direct us, and they show us the Way. God has also selected human beings to lead us and guide us. We should be willing to follow those who are following God. The contestants on the 'Biggest Loser' follow the lead of their coaches and as a result, they are very successful in losing physical weight. When we follow God the Father and Jesus Christ, as well as the human leaders who love God and his people and also keep the Commandments of God, then we too will lose the sin that so easily besets us. If we'll follow God's instructions, if we'll keep his Commandments; do those things that are pleasing in his sight, then we are well on our way to losing the sin that so easily besets us. Of course, we know that Christ died for us and it's through his sacrifice that our sins are forgiven in the first place.

Principle 2: WE MUST ALL ADMIT WE HAVE A SIN PROBLEM.

You have a 'weight' problem, I have a 'weight' problem; if we can't admit that, then we have a HUGE problem. We have to be able to admit that none of us is perfect and that we all have a serious 'weight' problem. Those on the 'Biggest Loser' program all knew they had a serious weight problem; that's why they applied for the program in the first place. They understood; it was pretty simple for them to consider that they had a weight problem. For us spiritually perhaps it's not as easy… although it should be in many respects, because we all fall short of God's glory. We are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Those who applied to be on the program did so to help them lose the weight that was pulling them down and affecting their lives in negative ways. We also need to admit that we have a serious 'weight' problem. We all need to have repentant hearts and minds if we are to put sin out and keep it out. We are to examine ourselves and certainly during the Passover season we have looked at ourselves and examined ourselves. We also, of course, need to confess our sins, seeking repentance and forgiveness through the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Principle 3: WE NEED TO FULLY COMMIT TO LOSING THE 'WEIGHT'.

We have to make a commitment; a firm commitment and we have to lose the sin, the 'weight' no matter what the cost. We have to be willing to 'pay the price'. SO THIS MUST BECOME PRIORITY NUMBER ONE: SEEKING FIRST GOD'S KINGDOM AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, becoming like him.

The contestants on the 'Biggest Loser' must commit fully to losing their excess physical weight and then keeping it off. There has to be a commitment, otherwise the weight wouldn't come off. How much more should we commit to fully repenting of our sins, accepting Christ as our Savior and putting the sin out and keeping it out of our lives? Remember last time we talked about Elisha's complete total commitment when he sacrificed his oxen on his burning plow? Then he went to become a prophet of the Most High God, he answered the call. We're all being called as well; we're not all being called to be prophets, but God is calling us all, and we must all answer the call. We must be totally committed to answering the call that God has given us. So don't look back; keep your hand to the plow. Look forward and keep your eyes on the Kingdom of God; this is our goal. We are marching toward the Kingdom of God together.

Principle 4: EXERCISE SPIRITUALLY ON A DAILY BASIS TO LOSE THE WEIGHT, THE SIN AND TO KEEP IT OFF.

We must exercise spiritually daily if we are ever going to lose the sin that so easily besets us. Now I mentioned last time that the contestants on the 'Biggest Loser' exercise four hours every day. That's the routine, four hours of hard exercise every day. They also did a triathlon where they ran, they biked, and they swam. Now I suggested that we all go on a continual spiritual quadrathlon. Do you remember that word? It basically means four events as opposed to a triathlon, which has three. Those four spiritual events are: PRAYING (We need to be praying continually. We need to learn to pray three times a day like Daniel and David did. That's the example we see in the Bible. Paul goes beyond that and says to learn to pray without ceasing, to have a prayerful approach throughout the entire day.) The second part of the spiritual quadrathlon is BIBLE STUDY. We should be studying God's Word daily because it is through Bible study that we really get to know God's mind and we draw nearer to God and understand his thinking; we understand what He expects of us, we understand what He wants of us. We need to study the Bible, to put the Word of God into our hearts and into our minds. Thirdly I talked about MEDITATION and the importance of meditating on a regular basis. I may have mentioned that as I grow older, I meditate more because I wake up early in the morning and I don't necessarily want to get out of bed at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. So, that is the perfect time to meditate, to think about God, to think about his truth, to think about his way of life. I've tried to make it a practice for many, many years now to meditate continually throughout the day. As employees, we get challenged from time to time on certain things, and if we're in the habit of meditating on God's ways, we'll come up with better answers to those challenges that face us. I would encourage you to develop a habit of meditating throughout the day about God's Way. Ask yourself, 'How pleasing am I to God as I go about my daily business?' Wherever you might be, at work or at home or on the golf course; how pleasing are you to God? Are you doing it his way or are you doing your way? If we'll meditate more, we'll draw closer to God; we'll understand his mind better. The fourth part of the quadrathlon was FASTING. Fasting is a spiritual power tool. Prayer and fasting are spiritual power tools. Some things don't happen except by prayer AND fasting. We need to be fasting on a regular basis. The Bible doesn't tell us how often we should fast, but Christ did say that when He was crucified and went to the Father his disciples would fast. I don't believe He was talking solely about fasting on the Day of Atonement. I think He was talking about having a habit of fasting throughout the year. THAT IS THE SPIRITUAL QUADRATHLON: PRAYER, BIBLE STUDY, MEDITATION AND FASTING.

We'll go on to a new principle number five, but not really new. Hopefully these are principles that we've already been practicing for a long time now.

Principle 5: EAT ONLY GOOD SPIRITUALLY HEALTHY FOOD.

It's a proven fact that physical food that is not healthy for you is unhealthy! It's not good for you, and it will take a toll on your body. When we choose to eat things that aren't healthy for us, we choose to pay the price to some degree. Sometimes it's not much of a price. Something can taste good and the consequences aren't immediate, so we decide to indulge. We all do that sometimes, but we shouldn't be so naive as to think that it's healthy for us. It is critical from a spiritual standpoint that we make the right decisions. It's not as important from a physical standpoint, perhaps, but it is very, very, important from a spiritual standpoint. We can't afford to be bringing in a lot of spiritual junk food. You can get away with some physical junk food, but the spiritual junk food is something you need to be able to identify and reject. This point is the positive aspect. Point six will be the negative. We need to put the good 'food' in our hearts and minds.

One of the finest scriptures we could turn to in this regard is in Philippians. This has always been one of my favorite scriptures because I've seen the importance of it and I've seen the power in it for many, many years. When I came into the church, I was only eighteen and at that time I realized that my heart was deceitful above all things. It was desperately wicked, because I had a human heart and Satan would try to infiltrate that heart and that mind by broadcasting his ways. He is the prince of the power of the air, so we are fairly regularly being bombarded by ungodly thoughts. Satan tries to bombard us with these spiritually unhealthy, evil thoughts. This scripture gives us sound advice about how to deal with this temptation, and we have to recognize it for what it is, and we have to say 'no' to this temptation. Phil. 4:8 "FINALLY, BRETHREN WHATEVER THINGS ARE TRUE," (This is telling us what to think about, what to meditate on; if it's not true don't dwell on it, don't meditate on it because it isn't healthy.) "WHATEVER THINGS ARE NOBLE," (If something is the opposite of noble, why are we thinking about it? Why are we dwelling upon it? That type of thing leads to gossip. Don't be thinking about things that aren't noble, that are against God) " THINK ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE JUST, THAT ARE RIGHT AND GOOD, THAT ARE PURE" (Don't be thinking about things that aren't pure.) "WHATEVER THINGS ARE LOVELY, WHATEVER THINGS ARE OF GOOD REPORT, IF THERE IS ANY VIRTUE, AND IF THERE IS ANYTHING THAT IS PRAISEWORTHY, THEN MEDITATE ON THESE THINGS." THAT is principle number five; you have to be very selective in what you think about all day long. You cannot afford to let Satan to put his thoughts into your mind. You've got to reject those thoughts and you have to be proactive by first putting in the good things. If you have lots of good thoughts going in, it's a lot harder for Satan to interject his evil thoughts. Make the right choices from the beginning. Meditate on those things which are good!

Here's a little acronym that I want you to remember: GSI GSO: GOOD STUFF IN, GOOD STUFF OUT. If you bring the good stuff in, you're going to get the good stuff out. Philippians 4:8 is all the good things. Think on those things that are pure and lovely and right and good and noble. If you think on that, that is what you will produce; that's the kind of fruit you will be producing in your life and you won't have the opportunity to get weighed down by sin.

At the 'Biggest Loser' ranch, the contestants are taught to eat good, healthy, nutritious food. They're taught to eat good things like lean meats, lots of veggies, only healthy carbohydrates. These are the things that are put on the table before them. That's the kind of food that is served at the ranch. We need to do the same thing in a spiritual way; our banquet should be spiritually good things, not the spiritual 'junk food'. Satan would like us to banquet on those things that are evil, things that are contrary, that aren't noble, and that are bad for us. Meditate on the things that are right and good.

I remember Holly, one of the contestants on "The Biggest Loser" saying, "I can do anything I put my mind to." That reminds me of something Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

If we put on the mind of Christ, we're thinking about good things. Put on the mind of Jesus Christ; that's a pure mind. Phil. 2:5 "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Think about the things Christ would think about, and you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

I remember Jennifer, another contestant saying, "I know there's been a change on the outside, but even more change on the inside." She was beginning to think differently about herself; she was beginning to make better choices; she was eating better foods; she was exercising more. She was starting to do the things that would make a difference in helping her to reach a goal of putting the physical weight out. If you have a goal of putting the sin out of your life, then you have to change your thinking from the inside. You have to clean yourself up; God is actually the One who does it by living in you. Galatians 2:20 "…Christ lives in me; and the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me." We need to put Christ in.

This fifth step of conversion, putting sin out of our lives could be labeled a lot of different ways. These seven principles put us on the road to God's Kingdom. They help us clean ourselves up and do the right thing. The fifth step in putting sin out and keeping it out is to eat only good, spiritually healthy food. You should also be making good choices about the physical food you eat; you should be eating lots of good food. Don't stock up on the junk food; eat more of the good stuff than the other stuff. From a spiritual standpoint, it's even much more important to stay away from the spiritual junk food.

Principle 6: AVOID AND RESIST ALL BAD AND SINFUL THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS

Principle number six is the opposite of principle number five in the sense that before we were proactive about bringing in only good things. Now let's be proactive in avoiding all the bad stuff. I made it two points because I think it's important to get this concept from both angles. We have to also avoid all the bad stuff, the 'weight gaining' thoughts. We have to focus on the good things, but we also have to say 'no'. When it comes to exercise, there are different types. There are exercises where you resist, and that makes you stronger. You need to learn to spiritually exercise by resisting Satan. James 4:7 "…Resist Satan and he will flee from you." We have to resist him; we have to put up a resistance.

There's another acronym that you've heard before: GIGO Garbage In Garbage Out. I'd like to also add another one: BSI BSO Bad Stuff In Bad Stuff Out. If you put the bad stuff in, you are going to get the bad stuff out." Garbage In, Garbage Out" is something that has been used in the computer field for a long time. If you input something into your computer that's not accurate, then you're not going to get the good stuff out. You'll get the garbage, it's not going to be accurate; it's not going to be right.

You won't find all the candy bars, all the chocolate, the cakes, the pies, the cookies, the cinnamon rolls, the greasy foods, or the French fries on "The Biggest Loser" ranch. It's not there! In order to be a big loser, you can't have all that bad stuff around. It doesn't work, you have to resist it, put it away. You can only imagine if every day after they exercised for four hours they had piles and piles of chocolate; ice cream of every imaginable variety; scrumptious everything that is decadent, they'd minimize the affects of all the exercise that they just did. They'd have to exercise even more. But if they eat good lean foods, powerful foods that would give them energy, good carbohydrates, good vegetables then it would be much more effective.

To avoid sin, you must really learn to hate sin and see clearly the devastating danger and damage it is doing to your own personal life and those that you love most in life. You have to look at this logically, realistically. You have to see it for what it is and learn to hate sin if you're ever going to put it out of your lives. This next scripture is talking to all of us. Psalm 97:10 "You who love the Eternal hate evil. He preserves the souls of the saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. " Verse 11 "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart." Verse 12 "Rejoice in the Eternal all you righteous; and give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name." He who loves the Lord learns to hate evil. This was written by David; a man after God's own heart. David had his problems, but his approach to God was wholehearted. He who loves God, learns to hate evil, he learns to reject that spiritual ' junk food' that is unhealthy. The prophet Amos in chapter 5 also says that we need to hate evil. Amos 5:14-15 "Seek good and not evil" (that's point 5 and point 6 of this sermon) "that you may live; so the Lord God of hosts will be with you." If you want God to be with you, you have to follow these two points, number 5 and 6: love good, reject evil. Verse 15 "Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph." Brethren, we need to learn to hate evil and love that which is good. A very powerful verse is in 2 Corinthians will help you greatly if you will follow the advice given here. This fits very well with the point to 'keep the garbage out'. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 "For though we walk in the flesh" (we're all fleshly, right? If we do the pin test we'll all pass it, it'll hurt. If we stick ourselves with a pin, we may even draw blood; we'll see that we are all flesh.) "We do not war according to the flesh." Verse 4 "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but our weapons are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds." What is he talking about? What is a stronghold? Any sin that has power over you is a stronghold. Anything that you do on a regular basis is a stronghold. Satan has set up a stronghold in your life. So what are some of the strongholds that a person could have? Think about any addiction. If you're addicted to drugs, that is a stronghold. If drugs have control over you, whether or not they're prescription drugs, or pain medicines that have control over you and they're hurting you; that's a stronghold. There has to be a balance; I know some people have to take pain medication and it's healthy for them to take it because they have so much pain they have to do something. But, I'm talking about when you're going overboard. Some people just get addicted, and then they just keep on doing that sort of thing. Another type of addiction that happens in people's lives is pornography, it becomes a stronghold, it gets a grip on someone and then they seem almost powerless when it comes to pornography; so that is a stronghold. We have to be careful that we don't allow any of these strongholds to be set up in our lives. He's telling us what to do about strongholds. There are other strongholds, it could be anything; gossip could be one. If you continually gossip, that's a stronghold Satan has set up in your life. It's something that you need to resist and you need to stop doing. Gambling can be a stronghold; there's a lot of gambling that goes on in the world. Oklahoma is filled with casinos. I drive by four or five every day. If I'm out driving any distance, I'm going by several casinos. There are about one hundred and fifty casinos in Oklahoma. If you are addicted to gambling, that is a stronghold Satan has set up in your life; I've been told that it is one of the strongest addictions. If the addiction for gambling gets a hold of someone, they have a difficult time controlling it. They lose money they don't have and they get themselves into financial straits, so gambling can be a stronghold. We have to be careful that we don't allow any of these strongholds to be set up in our lives; we have to be able to recognize strongholds in our lives. In these verses, he is telling us what to do about strongholds. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds. With any stronghold, what does the Bible tell us to do? The key is going back to point 5, thinking on things that are noble and right and good and lovely that are virtuous. That will help you to have strength over these strongholds. It will help you cast down arguments and every high thing. That may be talking about how we argue (I'm not sure, this is just something that came to mind) with ourselves and sometimes we rationalize our behavior. We can say to ourselves, "Oh, pornography is not so bad; God made the human body." We can rationalize about the things that people play games with, saying gambling isn't so bad. You can go on and on with the rationalizations; these are arguments that we set up in our lives, and they are destructive arguments. This will help you to cast down those arguments: there is no argument, if it is unhealthy, if it's ungodly, strive to find the strength to pull down the stronghold in your life. 2 Cor. 10:5 -6 "Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." Verse 6 "And being ready to punish all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled." Frankly, you can't do much if you're setting a bad example yourself. If you're setting a bad example, how are you going to deal with problems that other people have? You have to put the plank out of your own eye before you can help someone else. That is a tall order: bringing every thought into captivity. That's not easy: to imprison these thoughts. Because if Satan has a stronghold set up, trust me, he is going to be throwing those thoughts out there. He's going to want to keep his grip on you. We have to be careful, very careful that we don't allow that to happen. We have to bring every thought into captivity.

What does it mean to bring every thought into captivity? If Satan sends you a thought or you come up with a thought on your own (we are fully capable of doing that as well), no matter where the thought comes from; if it's unhealthy, you need to imprison that thought. You have to imprison it immediately and you have to cast it out. Cast it away and don't allow it to get inside your head, and get inside your mind or your deceitful heart… because you will rationalize doing the very thing you know you ought not do. So let's cast down arguments, let's cast down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Let's bring every thought into captivity.2 Cor. 10: 6 " Be ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is fulfilled." It is very important that we learn to cast down these imaginations and every high thing, every proud thing that exalts itself, and bring every thought into captivity unto the obedience of our Savior, Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 10 is a powerful scripture to help us deal with addictions. If we put ourselves in compromising situations, we are making provisions for the flesh. Romans 13:11 "And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep;" Paul made this point and it is a valid point because, frankly, none of us knows how long we are going to live; none of us knows when we will meet our Maker. Paul was under the impression that Christ was going to come back much sooner, this was close to two thousand years ago that this was written. Paul was wrong about thinking Christ was coming back right away but we are nearly two thousand years closer to the return of Christ. How much more should this apply to us now? We are definitely getting closer. Things are happening very quickly these days; knowledge has increased, prophecy in Daniel is being fulfilled and so we are drawing ever closer to the return of Christ. We should take this even more seriously than the ones in Paul's time, although they needed to take it seriously, too because we don't know when we're going to die. They all died, none of them are living today. It is high time to awake out of sleep. Romans 13:11 "…for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed." Verse 12 "The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the deeds of darkness ad put on the armor of light." The conclusion is that because we are drawing ever closer to the return of our Savior Jesus Christ we need to stop doing the deeds of darkness and do what's right. The church at Rome and Corinth, Philippi, and Thessalonica were real human beings and real human beings have problems no matter where they live or what age they live in. Paul knew there were people sitting in that congregation who were doing works of darkness. They were not yet perfect; they had not yet put sin completely out of their lives. Verse 13 "Let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust". Some of them were involved in lewdness, they were involved in lust and revelry and drunkenness. Verse 13 "…not in strife and envy." We see people today in God's Church who struggle with these same things. Verse 14 "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ". That's what we're supposed to do, put on Christ. Point five and six are covered here. We are to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. We are to resist Satan and he will flee from us. Verse 14 "…and make no provision for the flesh". That's the point I really want to bring out. Sometimes we make provision for the flesh. Instead of staying as far away from something as we possibly can, we want to see how close we can get, thinking we'll have the strength to say 'NO'. But, the closer we get, the harder it is to say, "No". So the principle is to pull away from it, get as far away as you possibly can, and do not make provision for the flesh. It's no wonder we can't overcome these things, because we are making provision for the flesh. You have to be on guard and make wise choices so that you don't make provision for the flesh. I'm not picking on anyone specifically at all today; I don't have anyone in mind, but if gossip is an issue in your life then you might have to be careful about who you hang around. If you're hanging around all the gossips in town, then that's going to rub off on you. If when you go to the beauty salon, everyone around you is gossiping it is much easier to get into that spirit and that's a wrong spirit. It is true with any evil thing in life; that is why God says to pull away from people who are adulterers or adulteresses or that type of thing. Don't get involved with that. Make no provision for the flesh.

Are you still working hard and eating right spiritually? Since we first started this sermon, have you been working hard or are you putting negative selfish thoughts, unhealthy 'junk food' entertainment into your mind? There's a lot of entertainment in the world these days and not all of it is suitable for human consumption. There's a ton of it out there that is unsuitable. You have to be careful about the choices that you make. Stay away from these spiritually 'weight gaining' foods; don't bring them into your minds and your hearts. Don't meditate on spiritually harmful things. If you have a problem with lust, don't sit around dwelling on the object of your lust. You have to say, 'No.' You have to pull away from that. If you have a problem with lusting, you don't want to pick up 'girlie' magazines, you don't even want to pick up the magazines that aren't considered so 'girlie' because there are a lot of things in them you don't need to see. They may not be the worst, but they may be unhealthy for you. Keep your thoughts out of the gutter and the cesspool of life. I remember one of the contestants saying, "I lost more than weight; I also lost emotional and mental baggage." There are all kinds of emotional and mental baggage that we need to lose. So principle number six is to "Avoid and resist all bad and sinful thoughts and actions.

Principle 7: DRAW STRENGTH FROM YOUR SPIRITUAL FAMILY

We started with point number one, which was to follow your coaches, both God and Christ, but also human leaders who are also following Christ and setting a good example for you. Point seven is related to the first point but it goes a little bit further in some ways… draw strength from your entire spiritual family. The first point was mainly about the leaders, God and Jesus Christ and also human leaders that speak to you giving sermons and sermonettes and so forth; the ones God is using to teach you and guide you, but frankly, we are all in this together. We are all God's family and we can learn from each other. Ministers can learn from members; members can learn from ministers; we can learn from each other. We need to benefit from friends of like mind who love us and have our best spiritual interest in mind. That includes everyone in this room. I consider all of you my brothers and sisters in Christ. I can learn from you. My association with you can benefit me, so I want to draw strength from my spiritual family. Every Sabbath I look forward to coming here and getting together with all of you; it is very, very important that we look at each other in this way. We're all in this together; we feed off each other in many respects. We need to draw closer to each other; just like how the ones on the "Biggest Loser" program draw close to each other, knowing that they have something that goes beyond what physical team they're on. Not only do they draw closer to each other, but to the trainers also. It's a complete family operation here, you might say. Mark 10:28 "Then Peter began to say to Him" (to Christ), " 'See we have left all and we've followed you.'" That's what we've done as well, we've left everything, and we’ve followed Christ. Verse 29 "So Jesus answered and said, 'Assuredly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and the gospel's" Verse 30"'Who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time". We have lots of brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers, in the faith. God has given us each other to learn from and to draw from. It does say that there'll be persecutions so we need each other to stick together and battle against the ways of Satan the devil, who will try to persecute us. Verse 30 "…and in the age to come eternal life." God is going to give us eternal life, but now while we live here in the flesh, we need to learn from each other. We come together with others of like mind, we have the same goals; we want camaraderie, we want support, we want encouragement from each other. We have a responsibility to give that to each other… to encourage each other, to support each other, to be friends, to be friendly. This is a very friendly congregation. It's a small congregation and you've had to pretty much pull together and you've done a marvelous job of doing that. As we grow larger though, it needs to be infectious. What you have now needs to infect everyone who walks through the door. If there's anything we need to deal with now, we need to deal with it so that we will be better examples as God gives us more growth. I have a feeling that God is going to help us grow in the future; if we will be pleasing to Him, He will help us grow. There are many principles in the Bible that say that to us. I don't think God is done with us yet; I personally believe we are going to see some growth and I hope we are going to be ready for that growth. There's plenty of room in here. We could go this way and talk to the whole filled congregation. We have to have faith that God will work in us and through us. We do need to become a church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

2 Cor.6:14 "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, what communion has light with darkness?" These are questions that Paul is asking on God's behalf you might say. We should not become unequally yoked together with an unbeliever. It's very important that we strengthen our spiritual family by choosing those who will be the best fit for us, someone who believes the same as we do. We don't have anyone here today that we necessarily have to admonish in this way, but it is important not to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. It's an important principle. The seventh step in the process of conversion and in losing weight is to continually draw strength from your spiritual family. We need to build our spiritual family; we need to draw close together; we need to be here for each other.

These seven principles are important principles. If we will follow them, surely we will continue to put sin out of our lives and we'll be able to maintain. I want to go back to Hebrews 12 where we started as we draw to the end of this sermon. In this series of sermons, we've talked three different times about this topic. Hebrews 12:1-2 "Therefore, we also since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Verse 2 "And let's look unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Christ is the author and finisher of our faith, and we need to consider that great cloud of witnesses that came before us. It's interesting that when the fifteen contestants enter the gate of the "Biggest Loser" ranch for the very first time, they walk down a walled street and covering the wall on both sides are banners of the names and total weight loss of the biggest losers from the past. These people are just getting started, but they're walking down this hallway and they're seeing what has been accomplished before them. Those past contestants stand as light and inspiration that the goal before these new contestants is not unattainable. They were all very heavy when they started the program and they were all big losers. Now these banners represent the lives of these people, they represent their examples, the story of their battles, their setbacks and their ultimate success. All of this comes into the minds of the present contestants, you can be sure that a lot of those contestants watched those programs in the past. They saw the inspiration that came and they decided they could do it, too, so they applied to be on the program. They have their wall of greats, but we have our wall of greats from a spiritual standpoint. You can sense their admiration and excitement as they realize they have the same opportunity to accomplish great changes in their lives. Looking at the people who have become their heroes from just watching a TV show, they share vicariously in the lives of these people who overcame. They put off the physical weight and became great losers. So the new ones are inspired to walk forward and start their journey, laying aside the weight that ensnared them and they are ready to run with endurance to accomplish their goals. The cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12 that we referred to is our Christian wall of greats. We're not going to go to Hebrews 11, but there it mentions Abel, and Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and even Rahab, and Samson and Jephthah; these are all examples for us; people who overcame, who became "big losers", who put the sin out of their lives by following these seven principles that we've been talking about today. Hebrews 11:40 says that without us they should not be made perfect; we are a part of that. They have not yet received the promises; they are awaiting all of us. When Christ returns, the first fruits will be raised and those who are alive will be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. We are awaiting Christ's return; all of us are waiting. There's a great cloud of witnesses that have come before us, but they are also waiting for us. We have something in common with all of those who have come before us. The ups and downs of their lives that are revealed in the Bible and their eventual victory through Christ should inspire us to shed our sinful weight so we can run with endurance to the end as they have done. The goal is ultimately becoming like the glorified Christ as He was at his resurrection; that is our goal. It is He we must fix our eyes on and focus on in order to arrive at the finish line where we will all become 'big winners' as we enter God's Kingdom. Brethren, as we approach the Day of Pentecost, let us be extremely grateful to God and Christ for our calling and for God's wonderful plan of salvation for us and for all mankind. We know fully that we are indeed saved by grace; we're not saved by our own efforts. This is not a " pull yourself up by your bootstraps" sermon. We have to rely on God to give us the strength to obey and to follow these seven principles that we've talked about. God has to live in us. We are saved by grace; Christ is the One and only perfect sacrifice, He is our Passover Lamb that enables us to escape death and to come out of sin, to come out of bondage and slavery. Satan would like to brutally keep you in bondage. Brethren, let us continue to examine ourselves. We've been told to examine ourselves before Passover, so let us continue to examine ourselves, and let us continue to repent of our sins. Let's follow these seven principles and let's put sin out of our lives and next year before Passover, we will look back and we will see that with God's help we overcame, that we are stronger spiritually because we've applied these seven principles. Brethren, let us all become 'big losers' in this life.