The Promise Land Requires A New Identity - Sukkot 2018 (September 29, 2018)

Leviticus 23. Sukkot is the only feast celebrated for 7 days. Yahweh wants to spend time with us. The point is He will show up. This feast celebrates His presence with us. Yahweh doesn't say all we are to do, but this is a celebration. There is a place we need to get to where we end into the celebration, where you are excited to live life. Glad to be alive because you have a purpose today. My purpose isn't going to work, its being someone when I go to work. There should be a quality of celebration in our every day life. Can you put 7 days together where you are happy? As a Christian you say you believe in a savior who saved you, so can you be happy? Its not any one else's responsibility to make you happy.

Sukkot is in the middle of a journey. Its not where you were or where you will be, its on the journey. Remember you were once slaves in Egypt. Take out Egypt and put what you want, but you must remember you were slaves. If you don't remember where you were from the journey doesn't look attractive to you. Destinations are always in the land of hope. Hope is what we get from the scriptures when Yahweh describes a place for us to be. I am headed somewhere, becoming a certain kind of person, that gives hope. Biblical hope is a destination. Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

You can be a different person now. You can make significant changes in your thinking and actions that literally changes the course of your life. If you don't do what it takes to be a different person, it literally makes you sick. If you hear the Word that you can change, and don't do what it takes, then it begins to harden your heart. You get stirred up, stressed out, and you are primed for sickness and challenges. Hope deferred is because you are not doing whatever it takes. Hope is deferred because we made choices and are waiting for God to do it. Thinking He will one day drop something on us and we will magically be this new person.

Here's a secret about hope... The hope of a promise land is there. But what it takes to continue the journey of the promise land requires an absolute recognition of where you left. The Israelites forgot what they left, forgetting they were slaves, and when they forgot what they left it didn't seem so bad, the effort to move forward seemed more of an issue than it would be to go back. This is the battle that the devil wages against people. What causes people to go back? They forgot how bad it was. The motivation to keep moving forward requires that you absolutely know, I am not going back.

Don't fall back. With military strategy, retreat is leaving the battle. Retreat is an admission you are not going to win the battle and have given up all hope.
Retreat is not an option if you ever think you are going to win a battle. Fall back, go back to a position that you once held and you think you can maintain and fortify. When you have gained ground, and the enemy is strong, you can fall back to where you last were. When did you last know that God spoke to you? Then fall back to that position. Yahweh said do not fall back. Fall back was always part of the counsel of how you win wars. When you gain an inch, do not fall back from it. The image of a cog train. All the power of the train turns the wheels and the cog goes in place. Once the cog gets in, its locked. It can't go back, its designed to lock into place, it might not go forward but as far as its got, it will stay there. When you get hold of truth, hold onto it. Holding on might mean having to do a lot of things to insure you have that truth. You do whatever it takes, write it down.

We have left somewhere that was not good and are on a journey to a place that is good. In the journey we are changing. The point of sukkot is a season of drastic changes in the lives of the people. This is a journey that requires a new identity. You will not get to a new identity when you hold onto the past. The journey of faith, of sukkot is a journey of building a new identity. Just because you free a slave doesn't mean the slave will act free. They often live with the fears of slavery. We need to develop an identity as people of God. You need to develop that, it cannot just be a catch phrase. When we left the past, it is required that we develop a new identity. The sad part of Sukkot is that the Israelites did not get into the promise land because they did not develop a new identity.

The enemy knew they were people of God, Moses knew it, God knew it, but they did not know it. You are responsible for you because you are the one who talks to yourself more than anyone else.

Faith Christian Church
A Christian Church with a Jewish Heart
Fitchburg, MA

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