Well, happy Feast. It's really special that we get to be here on this Feast of Pentecost as God's people, as His people. And I want to talk about us as His people a little bit here today. But I want to talk about signs. I want to talk about signs because signs are very, sort of tied up into this feast of Pentecost. The feast started with a pretty miraculous sign when all of a sudden people started speaking in tongues and those who were there in Jerusalem saw it and they witnessed it and they didn't know what was going on. And Peter gives a sermon and he says, "These are signs being fulfilled. These are the signs of the prophet Joel. These are the things that you're seeing." And so there are these signs that occurred on the day that are very woven into the Feast of Pentecost.

I want to talk about some other signs though. Signs are interesting because signs in general are something that stand for something else. There's a definition from the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible that says a sign, especially the word for sign in the Old Testament, that word for sign, it means an action, an event, a ritual, or an object. So kind of just anything, it seems. A thing, an action, an object, a ritual, a routine that is used to stand for something else. That's what a sign is. And you think about that in our modern usage of the word sign, and it is. A sign is a thing that stands there to remind you of something else. In the Old Testament, some things that are called signs include the rainbow. The rainbow is a sign that God gave that stands for His promise to never destroy the earth with a flood. It is a sign. You have to look at that sign, see that sign, know what it means, and be reminded that it stands for something else.

There are a lot of things that He calls signs, things that He did, like the rainbow. Another sign, an interesting sign when He is talking to Moses and He's telling Moses to go and bring the people out of Egypt. He says, "This is going to be a sign to you that you will come back to this mountain and worship Me." He says, "That's going to be a sign." So it wasn't a billboard, but it was an event that took place, that ended up taking place that would've been reassuring to Moses and to anybody else that understood that sign that God had said He would do something and then He did it. He brought them out. And the sign was that they gathered there at Mount Horeb and they worshiped God.

Some signs are things that humans do, that humans carry out, that humans have some part in. The Passover began with the Israelites putting blood on the doorposts of their houses. And that was called a sign. That was a sign that they were part of. They had to go and put up in that sense. That was a sign that they marked. They marked it there. And because that sign was there, then God saw that sign on their doorpost and passed over their houses. So that was a sign that they had an involvement in.

Another interesting one, because of, after, after coming out of Egypt, after God taking all the firstborn, the Israelites were then to offer their firstborn to God. They were to take the firstborn of their cattle, of everything that opened the womb, and they were to offer their firstborn to God. And that, He said, was a sign to them that He had brought them out of Egypt. It was a sign. And so, again, it's not a billboard and it's not something that you carry around in a protest, right? Those are all signs too. But these were signs that were reminders to them of what God had done. It was a thing that stood for something else, and it was a reminder to them. So signs are interesting because they sort of have... They have three components that I want to talk about today as we go through different things. There's the sign itself, the actual thing, right? So, for example, in the rainbow, rainbow is a sign. There is an audience for that sign, right? There are those who the sign is intended for, for a certain audience to be able to see and understand. So, there's an audience for a sign. And there's a message that the sign communicates. In the case of the rainbow, right, the message is not written on the rainbow. The message is something that you have to have understood that God communicated. So there's that message that's communicated that is not explicit in the sign. It's not written on the sign.

There are lots of different kinds of signs in this sense. So, if you have a finger with a string tied around it to remind you of something, right, that's a sign in a way, right? There's a sign. There's the string that you've tied around your finger. I don't know that anybody actually does this, but for some reason, it's a thing we all know and understand, right? There's the string itself, there's the audience, which is usually you, and then there's the message that it's supposed to communicate, reminding you to do something or whatever it is. Most people aren't going to know what that is, but it's reminding you to do something.

There are signs that are very explicit about what they are. There's a sign that says Flo's Diner, right? And it's a sign and the message is right on the sign. And the audience is anybody that's passing by that sign. There are signs like heavenly signs that we're told will come, that will be miraculous things that happen in the heavens. And the sign will be whatever the heavenly thing is that happens. The audience is going to be the whole world that will see that sign. But the message isn't necessarily going to be clearly understood by everybody. It'll be understood by those who have read the book and who understand what God is doing and what He's planned.

There are all sorts of signs. There are some interesting signs. If you've ever been in an airplane and you've been taxiing down the runway and you've looked out your window and you've seen some sign there that has some weird characters on it, or you don't know what exactly, but it's a sign, it means something to somebody, that's a sign with a very specific audience. That sign is not for the people in the airplane. It's for the pilot in the airplane, right? There's a sign, it's for a specific person, and it communicates a certain message, not very explicitly because otherwise you, and I'd be able to understand it too. But if you just see a sign that says J with an arrow pointing that way, I don't know what that means. I hope the pilot does.

So I want to talk about signs, but I want to talk about the signs of the people of God. Are there and what are the signs of the people of God? Because there are signs of the people. There are signs of us, of who we are, of who we're supposed to be. But the signs are different things. The audiences are not always the same, and the message is not always the same. And the message can be different. I want to look at four signs today, four signs of the people of God. Let's go over to Genesis 17. We'll dig in. We'll look at the first sign. This is one of the first signs of the people of God. Here God is making a covenant with Abraham.

Genesis 17:10-11 And He says, "This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you."

That's the sign that was given to Abraham. He probably would've preferred a different sign. But that was the sign. That's the one he got. And so this was a sign of God's people for thousands of years. This was evidence that they were God's people. This was a sign, but it stands for something else. The sign stands for something. What did it stand for? You don't have to go far. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 30:6 because here's the intent. This was never just intended to be a physical sign, a physical thing that was just sort of there on its own. This was the intent. That sign was there to reflect something about Abraham, about who he had been, about what God was doing, about where He was taking his people. And there was a physical sign that was a type of something more significant.

Deuteronomy 30:6 "And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live."

That was the intent of the sign. So that's the message of the sign, is this is a thing that is done symbolic of something that is happening inside you, that is supposed to happen inside you, that causes you to submit to, to yield to God. Let's go over to Romans 2:28 because this is still a sign. Now, we can go through a lot of the New Testament and talk about why physical circumcision is no longer a requirement of the covenant. It's not. It's not part of the new covenant, but circumcision is still a requirement, just not the physical type.

Romans 2:28-29 "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor a circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly." This is what was intended all along. This is what Moses talks about in Deuteronomy 30. "He is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter whose praise is not from men, but from God."

Circumcision is something that happens inwardly in the spirit. And it is still a covenant sign. Let's go over to Colossians 2.

Colossians 2:11-12 "In Him, in Jesus Christ, you are also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." This is still something that must happen in a Christian. This is still a sign. It is evidence. "Buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead."

So our baptism is a part of this spiritual circumcision process, this circumcision made without hands made in the heart, in the spirit. Let's go over to Ephesians 1, because it's not even just in the spirit, it is by the spirit. It is God's spirit that actually performs this circumcision of the heart.

Ephesians 1:13 "In Him, you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom you also having believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise."

If you go back to Romans 4, in verse 11, it talks about Abraham. It talks about him being sealed by the sign of circumcision. It's the same word. That's the same imagery that's being used that talks about us being sealed by the spirit of God. It's God's spirit that seals us, that circumcises the heart. Now, it's a little bit of a weird metaphor. I get that. I think it's very peculiar that this is the metaphor that God chose to use both in the Old Testament and then carry through in the New Testament. And the New Testament is chock full of scriptures about circumcision. So, I'm not picking out some obscure thing here. If you go and look for circumcision scriptures in the New Testament, it gets very deep. But what is it saying? What does that mean? What does it mean if we have a circumcised heart? And who's the audience? If you think about it, right, this sign, this circumcised heart is a sign that is only a sign to you. It's not a sign to other people.

And in the Old Testament, nobody knew just walking around the street who's circumcised or not. You don't know that stuff. When we sit down at Passover, we don't actually know who is baptized, who is a spirit-led person here. We don't know those things. Who is circumcised of heart in this room? Should they really be here? That's not for us to judge. We don't know. We can't really judge whether somebody else is circumcised in heart. So it's not a sign that's out there for everybody else. This is a sign to you individually, to you personally. You are the audience for that sign. Nobody else can really tell. So it's one that we have to evaluate, that we have to look at, that we have to determine. You know, am I the kind of person that is circumcised in heart? Galatians 6:15, and this really gets to the point. On the surface, I think it sounds like it is discarding the whole point, but I think it's actually really making the point.

Galatians 6:15 "For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation."

What he's saying is the physical circumcision that they were arguing about, that wasn't the thing that God was intending. He wasn't intending for them to debate about physical circumcision. The root of it, the heart of it, of circumcision is are you a new creation or are you not. Am I allowing God's spirit to lead me? That's what circumcision communicates. That's the message. Only you and I can look at ourselves and know I am allowing God's spirit to lead me in faith. I will trust it. I'll follow it. I'll listen to it. I'll be sensitive to it. You and I know that. It's very hard to discern that from the outside. It's just for you and me.

By contrast, Stephen, as he was being martyred, he talks about the people around him being stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart. That's the contrast. Sometimes we look a little more like that. We're a little bit stiff-necked. We can be a little bit uncircumcised in heart. We can sort of choose our own way and do our own thing. We don't let God's spirit lead us the way that we ought to. But again, that's a sign to you and to me individually. That's something we need to look at and we need to evaluate for ourselves. That's sign number one. Sign number two, let's go to Exodus 31.

Exodus 31:13 Says, "Speak also to the children of Israel saying, surely my sabbaths you shall keep for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you."

Exodus 31:17 He says it again, "It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed."

The Sabbath is a sign. These verses are echoed again over in Exodus 20, or Ezekiel 20, sorry, it talks about the Sabbath being a sign between God and His people. But if you look around today, there are millions of people that claim the Sabbath, millions and millions of people. There are different groups that observe the Sabbath. There are Christian groups, Jewish groups obviously observe the Sabbath. So, is this a sign then that all of those people are the people of God? I think if you look at it that way, this is clearly not a very good sign. This is a pretty bad indicator because there's millions and millions of people who don't really seem to be on the same page who all claim the Sabbath. But that's not what this sign says. That's not what this verse says. This verse isn't talking about this being a sign to everybody about who God's people are. This is a sign.

If we look at it again, verse 13, it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations. This is a sign. It's a two-way sign between us and God. That's the sign. That's the message and the audience of this sign. It shows us something about God and it shows God something about us. It doesn't show something about us to the whole world. So the whole world doesn't understand that the Sabbath is something that needs to be kept. So how could it be a sign? This is a sign between God and His people. Exodus 16:27. And it's also not just saying, "Oh yeah, the Sabbath, I do that. Therefore, I've got this mark on me and now I'm good." It's not simply claiming the Sabbath.

Exodus 16:27-28 "Now it happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather manna." So this is right after the Israelites have been given manna in the wilderness and they've received these instructions for the first time about how to collect it and what to do with it. And it's pretty specific. "And it happened that they went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found none." So they go out on the Sabbath to gather the manna and they don't find any manna. And God says, "How long do you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws?"

He generalizes this whole thing. He makes this a very big thing. He's not saying, "How long will you refuse to observe the Sabbath?" He's saying, "How long will you refuse to keep my laws and my commandments?" We talk about the Sabbath as being a test commandment, a test commandment in the sense that it's indicative of our willingness to submit to and obey all of God's commandments. That's why the Sabbath is not this sole indicator that you can look at and say, "Oh, well, you know, all these millions of people that keep the Sabbath are following God's way," because this is an indicator of, are we willing to observe all of His commandments? Are we willing to observe all of His sabbaths? Most people who observe the Sabbath do not keep any of the other Sabbaths. They don't keep His Holy Days. They aren't observing the things that God calls His sabbaths. There's one day that they keep, but the other ones are kind of not there. It's a partial submission. It's a partial obedience. And God's telling us that how we observe his Sabbath is a sign of our obedience, of our willingness to obey His laws, to submit to Him. Hebrews 3:16. Let's go over to Hebrews 3. Hebrews 4 has a lot to say about Sabbath rest, but this lead-in, in Hebrews 3, tells us something interesting as well.

Hebrews 3:16-19 "For who of those in the wilderness that came out of Egypt, who rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt led by Moses? Now, with whom was He angry 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey." So there's this obedience component. But then look at verse 19. “And so we see they could not enter in because of unbelief.”

They did not believe, and so they did not obey. They weren't willing to fully obey. They didn't fully trust God about His commandments, about His laws. Obedience requires faith. And they were unwilling to obey because they didn't have the faith. Now, in us, it should be mixed with faith. Faith and obedience should come together and we should have a full submission to God. But again, the way we keep the Sabbath, this isn't a sign to outsiders, to the whole world, right? It's an indicator to God. And it's something that we also learn about God. It says that God gives us a Sabbath so that we will understand that He is the Lord who sanctifies us. It talks about God setting us apart. As we take this day and we set it apart and we sanctify it in a right and a proper way, God also sanctifies us and sets us apart. And we learn that about Him and we learn about Him on His Sabbath. This is a two-way sign.

It's also an indicator to those that God is drawing, right? It's not an indicator to the world in general, but those that God is drawing, they understand that the Sabbath is something that is to be observed. So when they see a group of people who are observing the Sabbath, that's something that they'll sort of perk up about. Many people have come into the church because they were looking for a Sabbath-keeping church. And as God was drawing them in, they saw that, oh, here's a group of people that observe the Sabbath and they observe it in a way that God has commanded. They keep it, they honor it, they keep it holy. It's a little bit of an internal sign among the people of God. But you don't want to get too far down that road of judging another man's servant. But it is an internal sign. I remember one friend who would come to church and God was drawing him in. God was working with him. He would come to church, but there were still days that he would work on the Sabbath. He'd work on the Sabbath. He was uncomfortable with it. He'd work on the Sabbath, but he'd also come to church. And then at some point he said, "I can't do this. I can't do this anymore." And he made the decision and stopped working on the Sabbath and lost his job, but he started keeping the Sabbath. That's a pretty big indicator that somebody is willing to make some faithful decisions about obedience. It's a good indicator.

It can also be an indicator the other way, and it can be a discouraging one. When we see somebody who stops observing the Sabbath, that can be a pretty disheartening indicator. But it is an indicator. It tells us something about our relationship with God. It's a sign to God that we are willing to fully obey Him, that we're willing to obey all of His commandments. The message from God is that He is the one who sanctifies us. And the message that we send back to God is, I will faithfully obey you. That's what the sign says.

Sign number three. So both of those signs have sort of been, you know, they're a little bit more of those like secret signs. It's like the string around the finger. That's kind of more like circumcision of the heart and those, like, runway signs that really only the pilot understands. The Sabbath is a little bit like that, right? Now, we're going to get into some signs that are more billboard-type signs. These are the big ones. Let's go over to John 13. John 13. I'm sure many of you already saw this one coming. John 13:34. Here's another sign.

John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

So Jesus Christ is talking about a very specific kind of love. The love that he has had for his disciples, that's the kind of love that He has commanded us to have for each other. It's His love, it's godly love. And He says in verse 35.

John 13:35 “By this, all will know that you are my disciple." So here's the mark. Here's the sign. “If you have love for one another.”

So this is the sign that's to everybody, to all. He doesn't exclude anybody from that. That includes us, that includes outsiders. God can see something about us in this sign if we're following Him, if we are obeying all of His commandments, including this new commandment that He gave, then it's a sign. It's a sign about us. It's a sign about individually, are we disciples of Jesus Christ? That's what the sign's about. This sign can be a little bit confusing, right, because there are a lot of people in our communities that are doing good, that are doing a lot of real good. We are sometimes put to shame by the good things that are done in the communities around us. People doing truly good things for their neighbors. They're doing good works. And we should never play down good works. Those good things that are being done are good things. Good things are not necessarily evidence of the love of Jesus Christ.

On the outside, a lot of them look the same. So, this sign can be a little confusing because people can look around. We can look around and say, "These people are doing good things." A lot of people are doing good things and they truly are. But it's not always evidence of the love of Jesus Christ. How is this love demonstrated? How is the love of Jesus Christ demonstrated? Let's go to 1 John 5 because John is pretty clear about it.

1 John 5:2 "By this, we know that we love the children of God." And that's the sign, right? He says, "All people will know if you have love one for another, if you have love for the other children of God." And he says, "By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments."

That's the kind of love that Jesus Christ wants us to have is the kind of love that is toward God and obedience to His commandments obedience to all of His commandments because obedience to His commandments manifests as love towards a neighbor. That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like in all instances. It's not that other people are incapable of doing good things and expressing love toward other people. There's plenty of that around. But the Godly love that Jesus Christ is talking about is the kind of love that is based in full obedience to God and full obedience to His commandments. The other thing is Jesus Christ doesn't say when all people will know this, but we get a little clue about that over in 1 Peter. Let's go to 1 Peter 2:12.

1 Peter 2:12 He says, "Have your conduct honorable among the Gentiles that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation."

In the day of visitation. Their day of visitation may be in this life. It may not. It may be after they're resurrected, that they look and they see the love that you have towards others and go, "Oh, I recognize that now. That's the same love that God has shown me. I remember that person. They demonstrated this kind of love all the time. They were fully obedient to God. They followed His commandments. And I see how that looks in the relationships that they have amongst each other." It might not be evidenced now. It's very, very difficult for somebody who does not have God's spirit to discern what the love of God looks like versus what goodness looks like.

So, you can't necessarily just expect everyone to pick this out immediately, but those who do understand what the love of God looks like should see amongst His people that love being practiced. That's the evidence that we are disciples of Jesus Christ. It's also evidence internally and he says, "All will know so we can know, amongst each other, are we practicing the love of God individually between us?" Do we see that? Do we see that being practiced? That's the sign. The sign is love between us. The audience is everybody eventually, maybe not right now, but eventually. And the message is, we are disciples of Jesus Christ. We are His followers. We're the ones that are trying to be like the master. And so we obey everything that He commands. We follow Him faithfully. We do what He does. We love like He does. And that's the sign.

Let's look at the fourth sign. The fourth sign. Let's go to John 17. John 17. Okay, I think most of you Bible scholars out there probably have those first three. I'm hoping maybe this one sneaks up on you a little bit. All right.

John 17:20-23 "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word." So here He's praying for His church down through time. He's praying for the people of God through the next 2,000 years, right up to our day. He's praying for us. He says, "That they all may be one as you Father are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that you sent me." Here's the sign. If you look in verse 23, He continues it. He says, "I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me."

That's in the new King James. Most of the other translations there in verse 23, they connect the two things more explicitly, which is really seems to be the intent of the original. It says, "Make them completely one so that the world may know." He says our oneness is evidence of His mission, of His identity, of who He is because it's evidence of a family relationship. So where love is really evidence of individuals being followers, being disciples of Jesus Christ, this sign actually says something about God. Our oneness and our unity says something about God himself. And it's not that mysterious when you think about it, because here, when you read through it, He is talking about, "I in them and you in me," and it gets a little bit confusing like who's in who doing what. And the lines get very blurry because it's a family. And He's saying the oneness that we have should reflect the fact that we are family, that God is family. Let's go over to Acts 2. It seems like a good place to go on Pentecost.

Acts 2:1 "When the day of Pentecost had fully come," 120 people in one car. "When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place."

They were all with one accord. It's that they were unanimous. They had this oneness that He was talking about. This was like a 120-person family. And they were all there together in one place, in one mind. And that's what he wanted it to look like. That's what he wants us to look like because that's what the family of God looks like, one accord.

Acts 2:42 "And they continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers."

Yesterday in the morning sermon, Mr. Metzel said he was going to use part of Acts 2 that most people don't...he anticipated wouldn't be using on the day of Pentecost. And so that's the section that we're in now. For those of you who heard his sermon, he was making a lot of these same points. And I basically want to reiterate and re-emphasize some of what he said.

Acts 2:42-47 "They continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and in fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers." Verse 44, "All who believed were together and had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had need." And notice, "So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, in breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, those who were being saved." Verse 46 there says, "They were with one accord."

They were with one accord at the very start, and then all this stuff happens and 3,000 souls are added. And guess what? There's still with one accord. They still have that oneness and that unity that God intended. And they were added to daily. They were with one accord. There was a unity there that showed that God is family. He's a family.

Now, you can contrast that and I think it's discouraging when we contrast that with the church in the modern era, because obviously, we've not done the best job at looking like this. And so, in some ways, it's a little wonder that the world doesn't know what God is doing. Through time, through the last 2,000 years, Satan has clearly attacked this idea. He has created all sorts of churches that claim to be Christian, that claim the name Jesus Christ, and divvied them up into factions so that it becomes very unclear what God is doing. So nobody really knows that God is a family. And when you narrow it down specifically to the Church of God, we're not always doing a great job of having this oneness. And so we're split up into different organizations and different groups, and sometimes we look at that and we say, "Well, okay, yeah, but what can I do about that? What am I supposed to do?" Ephesians 4:3. We'll jump right in the middle of the thought.

Ephesians 4:3 He just says here, "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace."

Endeavoring is not the kind of thing that is just like, "Oh, we'll just sort of bask in this." That's not an endeavor. Endeavor's a pretty good translation. And if you're going to endeavor to do something or I'm on this grand endeavor, it's not something that I'm just kind of like taking it easy and floating down the stream. Endeavoring, the word here, means to use speed. That's literally what it mean, is to use speed, to use speed to do something. But the implication is there's exertion, there's effort, there's diligence.

Because this kind of oneness and this kind of unity does not just happen. It requires effort. It requires work, focus, and it's constant. It's constant work. But it says something about us as the people of God. I'll give you a little example, and this is maybe one of the easier examples, actually. We have a neighbor who has witnessed, now, she's witnessed a few moves on our street, and she saw us move in. We moved into a house, and then we moved from that house to the house next door. And then my brother-in-law moved out of their house, and so she's seen at least three moves happen just right along our little street there. And she told me one time, she said, "The next time I get ready to move, I'm joining your church," because she sees what happens when there's a need, a really hard need. Who wants to go to a move? Nobody really wants to do that, right? Hey, will you come spend your Sunday and lift heavy stuff into a truck, and then move that heavy stuff from a truck back into another house for me? And yet, we'll have 10, 15, 20 people show up sometimes to do that. That's unheard of. I've worked with people who have had to move and try to have a move party, and they're lucky to get two or three people showing up. This is something that demonstrates the unity of the people of God because we show up for each other when things are hard. And a move is really a relatively easy one.

There are harder things that we show up for each other for. Loss. Hospital visits. There's some fun ones that people show up for. Barn-raising type activities. Where, again, who really wants to go do this project, right, and just spend my whole day working on somebody else's house, doing whatever thing? But we know why we do it, because when we show up and we get to work alongside each other, it increases that bond. It builds that bond. There's a unity there that comes out of it. We have relationships that get built as we're standing next to each other pounding nails or whatever. That's what families do. So, it takes work. Unity takes work. We have to endeavor to do that amongst each other. Sometimes people get the notion that, well, you know, I should increase the unity by going here, and I'll go there and I'll go here.

Mr. Metzel talked about this and some yesterday too. You know, it is hard enough to maintain unity within one group, especially a big group, and especially when you have a big congregation. Unity can be tough. It's harder when it's like, oh, I'll be here one week. I'll be there one week. I'll be at this other place another week. I don't think that's the right approach. That's not the approach that we see practiced here in Acts 2. We are one with our community. We've got six other days of the week that we can reach out to other people. Dan Preston in a sermon recently, he encouraged his members. Give somebody a call, text someone, someone that maybe isn't a part of your congregation, maybe it isn't a part of your organization, but that you know is one of these spirit-led people who maybe you've fallen out of contact with. Just no motive. Get in touch. Let them know you're thinking about them. Just show them you love them. That's all it takes. Let's go over to Ezra 7:10. Here we get a little glimpse of something that Ezra had spent his life doing up to this point.

Ezra 7:10 “Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

He was preparing to be an instrument. He was preparing to be a tool of God. He was preparing for that. We ought to be preparing our hearts, preparing our hearts for unification someday. We don't know when we'll have that opportunity, but we know based on what's prophesied that someday you're not going to have anywhere to send your tithes. You're not going to have any tithes, right? We'll be hiding out somewhere and we'll be happy just to break bread with somebody who is spirit-led. And we're really not going to care what name we had on the door when we were...you know, back in the days when it was nice, and we could meet in these air-conditioned halls and everything was lovely. Prepare your heart for unification, for unity, whenever that may come. I think sometimes we're a little bit like these... You hear these stories about these old soldiers who never got the message that the war was over.

There's one Japanese soldier who was in the Philippines until like 1974 fighting World War II. They had to dig his commanding officer out of retirement and send him there, track the guy down and tell him, "You're relieved of duty." Sometimes we're preparing our heart to fight this battle that's behind us, that's passed. We're preparing to be able to tell our children why they should keep fighting the battle, and, you know, don't talk to those people. Those battles are passed. Those battles are behind us. We don't need to be fighting the old battles. We need to be preparing our hearts for unification with the people of God because this is a sign. The unity of God's people is a sign to the world about who God is, not just about who we are, but about who God is. That's the sign. These are our signs. These are our, I call them our vital signs. As a Church, we should be monitoring our signs. We should be keeping track of these signs.

If you haven't been taking notes, I'll give you a quick way to summarize this. You can sort of, you can jot this down if you want. You have three columns. There's one column that says sign, one column says about, and one column that says to. And the four signs we've gone over today are this. There's a sign of your heart. Your heart. That's our first sign. That sign is about me, and that sign is to me. That's the sign. So when I go to monitor and check my signs, that's my first one. These sort of go from the inside out, right? That's my first sign. The second sign is the Sabbath, and that's a two-way sign. So that sign is about me to God. It's also about God to me. That's sign number two. Sign number three is love. Love, the love that we have for one another. That sign is about us as a people to all, to the world, the cosmos, to everything that's been created. That's the third sign. The fourth sign is unity. Our oneness as a people. Unity. That sign is about God. That sign is about God's family, about His identity, about our identity as part of that family. That sign is about God. Jesus Christ said, "So that they may know that You have sent me." It's a sign about the Father and the Son. It's a sign about the love that God has for those who have followed His Son, the sonship that we have. Unity is a sign about God. It's a sign to the world. Those are our signs. What are they saying?