Feast: God Expects a Return on His Investment (Part Five)

Not by Might, Nor by Power
#FT22-05
David F. Maas
Given 14-Oct-22; 73 minutes

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Greetings brothers and sisters from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, truly a millennial venue right on the breathtaking Atlantic seaboard.

Deuteronomy 30:1-5 “Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul [referencing the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4, Matthew 22:36-40, and Mark 12:29] that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you.

If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. [The late Keith Thomas, the pastor of the Minneapolis Church of God back in 1970, once speculated that God may have to retrieve the remains of astronauts or cosmonauts lost in space over one or two failed missions.] Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.”

This highly significant point event involving bringing back remnants to a promised homeland was fulfilled in the past, present, and future. In the past, our Lord regularly involved Himself in the lives of our ancient forebears, who were multiple times in and out of captivity for breaking God’s laws on idolatry, Sabbath breaking, murder, stealing, and the like—perennial sins which the leaders of both ancient and modern Israel continue to commit with predictable, shameless regularity.

In the present, this scripture (Deuteronomy 30:3) has been fulfilled in the lives of God’s called-out ones from Pentecost of AD 32 to the those living in the present day, who were called out of a miserable, seemingly hopeless bondage to sin, in which we, as the outcasts, the base things of the world, the things despised (I Corinthians 1:28), namely the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16) who have been and still are conscripted to put to shame those who currently have preeminence in the world, but have foolishly rejected the holy and spiritual law of God.

In the future, this scripture (Deuteronomy 30:3) is a Millennial prophecy, describing our bewildered and dejected clients (just like us when we were called), the homecoming rejects entering the Promised Land in the wonderful World Tomorrow, as well as the billions of clients we will be serving in the Great White Throne Judgment as teachers, counselors, kings, and priests under the reign of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—the King of kings (Revelation 1:6 and Revelation 5:10).

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.”

This joyful event describes something that is currently taking place on a much smaller scale, reminiscent of the incident in John 20:21-23, in which Jesus breathed on His disciples, saying to them, “receive the Holy Spirit,” a rather subdued, relatively undramatic event occurring well before the larger, more major dramatic event occurring in Acts 2:1-11 involving a rushing wind and tongues of fire.

God has clearly demonstrated or revealed in His master Plan, symbolized by His holy days, that He expects to work with a tiny spring harvest of firstfruits at Pentecost before engaging in the massive, dramatic fall harvest—the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles, in which we have been rehearsing for nearly a week here in Myrtle Beach, anticipating the even more enormous Great White Throne Judgment, the ultimate bridge between the last of the fleshly dominions to the exclusively spiritual realm, at which time in the New Jerusalem, our Lord and Savior will turn over the leadership to God the Father (I Corinthians 15:28).

In the meantime, the circumcision of the heart described in Deuteronomy 30:6 is inextricably linked with an event which also consists of a small micro, somewhat subdued, undramatic type and a much larger and a decidedly more dramatic antitype or fulfilment—again reminiscent of the small spring and large fall harvests. Please turn over to my favorite scripture in the Bible, Hebrews 8:10 (a New Testament reprise of Jeremiah 31:31-34 announcing the glorious arrival of the New Covenant). Let us begin a little earlier in verse 8:

Hebrews 8:8-11 Because finding fault with them, . . .

Remember back in Deuteronomy 5:29, when our Lord lamented, “if only they had such a heart in them, to fear Me and keep my commandments always, so that it would go well with them and with their sons forever!”—the same precious holy and spiritual commandments that the vast majority of professing Christians think are nailed to the cross, especially that onerous old relics from the Old Covenant, namely the Sabbath which Almighty God created for our spiritual rest, edification, and nourishment as well our liberation from the bondage of sin, established a long time before the Old Covenant, just as He had also established the clean and unclean laws long before the Old Covenant, laws which the majority of professing Christians also want to do away.

Continuing in verse 8, our Lord says,

Hebrews 8:8-11 . . . “Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.

This is an incredible Millennial prophecy, echoed and amplified by Isaiah 11:9, assuring us that the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Hebrews 8:13 In that He (our Lord and Savior) says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Sadly, most professing Christians believe that this New Covenant amounts to little more than the merciful discarding of that burdensome Old Covenant law replacing it with grace and faith without any works. God’s holy and spiritual law will never be discarded or set aside because it is the equivalent of the mind and character—the very core identity of Almighty God. Can we imagine ourselves trying to function without the contents of our minds or character? Let us return to Deuteronomy 30:6.

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.”

The physical to spiritual grounds of comparison between physical circumcision and circumcision of the heart have not always been easy to identify or clarify. Circumcision of the heart was preached in both the Old and New Testaments. Jeremiah, for example, warns our forebears in ancient Israel, “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest My fury come forth like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of the evil of your doings” (Jeremiah 4:4). In the New Testament, the apostle Paul reminded the congregation in Rome, “but 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” (Romans 2:29).

In the countries around the world inhabited by the offspring of Jacob, neo-natal circumcision has been faithfully practiced for centuries. Charles Whitaker, in his three messages: “Lessons from New Zealand Circumcisions” (March 28, 2020), “Neonatal Circumcision in America” (June 6, 2020) and “Circumcision is Nothing?” (July 11, 2020) revealed that because of the far-left, Marxist, woke regimes which have overtaken New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and America, with strident militant activists declaring the removal of foreskin to be brutal and barbaric (while ironically enthusiastically embracing infanticide and genital mutilation for gender affirming operations for pre-teens, signed into law exactly 16 days ago by the current reprobate governor of California), have managed to significantly damage the letter of the law regarding the circumcision covenant.

For example, according to CDC statistics, in the United States, as many as 85% of male newborns were circumcised in 1965. But that number has fallen steadily for the past half century, especially as immigration from countries where circumcision is not common has increased. In 2011, the Nationwide Sample, as reported by U.S. Hospitals, put newborn males’ circumcision rate at 57%, reflecting a catastrophic precipitous drop of 30% over the last half century. The strident anti-circumcision lobby refuses to listen to or acknowledge the commonsense benefits put forth by the Mayo Clinic, Web MD, and other scientific organizations, indicating that neonatal circumcision promotes easier hygiene, decreased risk of urinary tract infections, decreased risk of sexually transmitted infection (keeping in mind that if Jacob’s children had faithfully kept the seventh commandment, this would be a non-issue), prevention of inflammation, and decreased risk of cancer.

What separates God’s called-out ones from the rest of the world is a circumcised heart, hygienically clean from the world’s filthy pollutions, diseases, and infections. Sadly, many current ‘progressive’ so-called lawmakers in the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the State of Israel (the tiny domicile of brother Judah) are not lawmakers at all, but confirmed lawbreakers, intensely hating God’s laws—laws which would insure the morality and righteousness of the culture of Jacob’s offspring.

What separates God’s called-out ones from the overwhelming majority of professing Christians is a circumcised heart, sensitive to both the letter and spirit of God’s holy law (John 16:8) willing to be convicted of sin in order to turn around in sincere repentance, in stark contrast to the majority of the world’s religions who demonstrate a seething, unrestrained hatred for God’s Sabbath, as well as His commandment against murder, preferring to embrace infanticide, as well as His commandment against adultery, preferring to embrace sodomy and genital mutilation, claiming they are behaviors accepted and condoned by the God’s loving, compassionate grace. As kings and priests, teachers, and counselors in the wonderful World Tomorrow, we will have the solemn responsibility to prevail upon our bewildered and previously deceived (just as we had been), and helpless clientele to embrace God’s life-giving law and furthermore to develop their newly found spiritual gifts.

Fourteen days ago, Levi Graham unlocked some powerful insights for me, enabling me to synthesize some points which had been previously somewhat disjointed in my current message. Levi reminded us that God begins with basic building blocks, inviting us to systematically proceed slowly and deliberately to more complex developmental tasks as they are ready. As we enter the rigorous sanctification process, building godly character, when we use our talents and skills to serve our spiritual siblings, God expects that we learn to crawl before we walk, and walk before we run. Spiritual maturity—that is the metamorphosis from carnal physical human nature to spiritual godly character—is a slow, methodical process, with absolutely no dazzling feats of magic or presto-chango, except for the twinkling of the eye experience in I Corinthians 15:52 and I Thessalonians 4:17.

The presto-chango, abracadabra concept is also challenged in Proverbs 13:11, which I will read to you in the Amplified version: “Wealth [not earned but] won in haste or unjustly or from the production of things for detrimental use [such riches] will dwindle away, but he who gathers little by little will increase [his riches].”

When confronted by major goals such as overcoming, building godly character, or tending our God-given spiritual gifts, we must emulate the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, which teaches that slow-and-steady or consistency rather than rashness wins the race. As my late mentor Bob Hoops used to say repeatedly, “It is the plodders who will ultimately enter God’s Kingdom.” As kings and priests, teachers and counselors in the wonderful World Tomorrow, we must instill the concept to our vulnerable clientele of moving slowly, carefully, and accurately.

Back in 1963, when I worked in the Green Giant Company Experimental Cannery up in Le Sueur, Minnesota, we were coding bags of frozen produce in the deep freeze. My supervisor, James Evans, looked at each of us sternly, stating emphatically, “The biggest rule of the coding procedure is to ‘Go slowly and carefully—no shortcuts.’” My late Grandma Maas, when her grandchildren would run around excitedly and carelessly would exclaim loudly the German Sprichwort, “Eile mit Weile,” translated “haste makes waste” or “one step at a time.” Literally it reads “Hurry with leisure.” If we did not respond, Grandma Maas would add “nach dem lachen kommt dass weinen, or “after laughing comes crying.”

As Levi pointed out, the building blocks or incremental rungs to godliness or spiritual maturity as noted out by the apostle Peter in II Peter 1:1-4, describes God’s willful direction for mankind, moving from easier to harder steps—eight bricks, beginning with faith, adding incrementally virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and finally agape love. Each rung on the ladder cannot be attained unless the step immediately before it is mastered. I remember back in the third grade feeling embarrassed that I was not learning the addition and subtraction problems, but I did not want to be stigmatized by remaining in the slow learner category, so I convinced Miss Kroehler that I could move ahead to the multiplication tables. Sadly today, I still cannot do simple addition and subtraction problems without using my fingers or resorting to a calculator.

In both physical and spiritual maturity which uses basic simple to complex patterns, we are advised by Levi, the plethora of Miss Koehler’s’ in this world, as well as the apostle Peter and Almighty God, that if we should get wobbly on any step we should go back and establish sure footing before proceeding to the next rung. This same principle or pattern applies to loving God, loving ourselves, loving our spiritual siblings, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, and loving our enemies as God loves us, and we love ourselves—an extremely slow life-long process described by the lengthy fifty days walk from the Days of Unleavened Bread to Pentecost (symbolizing the duration of our rigorous conversion and sanctification process).

The Roman Catholics have an expression that says: One cannot move from altar boy to pope in one year. Many luminaries in the Scripture became enamored of or fixated upon dazzling, dramatic spiritual pyrotechnics, such as James and John, the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17, Luke 9:54), suffering what David Grabbe has described as the Elijah syndrome in his CGG weekly series “The Elijah Syndrome” appearing January 3, January 10, and January 17, 2020.

I Kings 19:9-13 And there he [Elijah running in abject terror from the presence of Jezebel] went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” So, he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”

Then He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

In verse 18, the Lord assures Elijah that he is not alone, but 7,000 people are just as loyal and zealous to the Lord as Elijah has been. The reality check God gave to Elijah should not be lost on us. At the time of our baptism and having hands laid on to receive the Holy Spirit, we did not feel a rush of wind, tongues of fire, or a compulsion to speak in foreign tongues, nor any newly acquired supernatural abilities, skills, or talents. Yet the magnificent earnest payment (Ephesians 1:13-14) silently impregnated our nervous systems planting a genotype (spiritual DNA and RNA) designed to grow into a phenotype of a glorified spirit body at our resurrection. In the meantime, the sanctification process is not generally attended with pyrotechnics, razzle dazzle, or presto-chango magic, but tends to be more of a quiet, understated steady progress, though impeded occasionally by mistakes, trials, and difficulties which bring spiritual maturity.

Almighty God provided Zerubbabel an insight about the power of God’s Holy Spirit which we should cling to. In Zechariah 4:6, we read, “So He [the Angel of the Lord] answered and said to me: “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts.” Zerubbabel learned that the Spirit of the Lord will enable us to do what an army cannot do just as the divine power of God’s Holy Spirit enables the believer to fulfill God’s plan for his life.

We must understand human agency, whether financial resources or political clout, is never capable of doing God’s work. Dependence on God’s power to do His work is fundamental to all followers of Jesus Christ. We must realize that we are vulnerable and powerless without exercising the power of God’s Holy Spirit shaping and molding us into His character and image. The diligent habitual exercise of God’s Holy Spirit dwarfs into insignificance all displays of human might or power.

In verse 10 of Zechariah 4, we see that the emphasis on all things starting small is underscored. Zechariah 4:10—let me read this for you from the Amplified: “Who [with reason] despises the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice when they see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. [These seven we will be discussing the Heptadic patterns (recurring cycles of seven) a little later in this message.] [These seven] are the eyes of the Lord which run to and fro throughout the whole earth.”

Remember, God usually does not seem to begin His greatest works with phrenetic bursts of energy, but instead contemplatively, beginning with small, insignificant things such as He has demonstrated with our calling, recruiting the base and undistinguished on the earth to confound the wise and the pompous (I Corinthians 1:26- 28). Even the zealous prophet Elijah had to learn that the contemplative and meditative, demonstrating unqualified trust in Almighty God, always trumps the dramatic and pyrotechnic.

Back on October 11, 2014, I gave a Feast sermon, titled “Spiritual Fine Tuning,” in which we explored one of Almighty God’s numerical patterns, sometimes referred to as heptadic patterns (that is the continually repeating patterns of seven ) running through the weekly and annual Sabbaths, the multiple patterns of seven running through both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, revealing the divine watermark or unmistakable signature of Almighty God in both the physical (consider the seven ascending pitches of the musical scale, the seven colors of the rainbow, the patterns of seven in DNA replication—which Pfizer and Moderna seem hell-bent to destroy in the nefarious manufacture of vaccines, just to name a few) and the numerous numerical patterns of seven in the Scripture from the phonological to the syntactic to the semantic levels.

The late Dr. Ivan Panin and his successor, the late Dr. Chuck Missler, made the fascinating discovery that only the Hebrew and Greek languages merge or combine letters and numbers in a pattern called gematria. The ubiquitous heptadic structure shows that the number 7-7-7-7-7-7-7 appears as a divine watermark in both Hebrew and Greek works in the canonized Scriptures, but it does not work when we put the Koran through the same process. Likewise, it does not work when we put the apocryphal books of the Roman Catholic Church through the same mathematical process. Personally, I do not think it would work either if we put the apocryphal book of Enoch through the same numeric procedure.

In his sermon on “Psalms: Book Four: A New Day Dawns,” delivered on September 26, 2022, Richard Ritenbaugh disarmed an annoying but sadly typical argument held by some Hebrew Roots followers that the word Jesus is a corruption of Zeus, demonstrating instead that it is a mongrelized adaptation of Hebrew to Greek phonemes. Having lived in the Hawkins-Big Sandy metroplex for several years, I developed many friendships and acquaintances among members of the Hebrew Roots movement. Our family enjoyed going out annually to blow shofars on the eve of Yom Teruah. Like every other fellowship (including ours) attitudes and beliefs within this fellowship ranged from moderate to extreme. One individual with whom I frequently clashed adamantly insisted that the New Testament is a Hebrew document and should never have been written in Greek, contending also that the Septuagint is a corruption of the pure Hebrew text. This individual, as well as several others in the Hebrew Roots movement, disparages all aspects of Hellenistic contribution, totally ignoring that it was God’s doing that Christ’s gospel of the Kingdom of God, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Revelation of Christ to John all would be recorded in Greek.

Paradoxically, it is by harmonizing these seemingly contradictory Hebrew and Greek outlooks that we are provided keys to understanding how the middle wall of partition (Ephesians 2:14) will be permanently destroyed. The anti-Hellenistic, anti-Greek animus held by certain members of the Hebrew Roots or Messianic Jewish movements fail to see that the Hebraistic-Hellenistic outlooks or viewpoints, instead of being adversarial positions, were intended by Almighty God to be symbiotic and complementary like that of male and female or the complementary relationship between animals breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide, while plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.

God’s ubiquitous perennial patterns and motifs are accessible whether we are given the Romans 1:20 public revelation available to all mankind or entrusted with the I Corinthians 2:7, Deuteronomy 29:29 mysteries of God, a private revelation entrusted only to the saints, a weighty responsibility which Mark Schindler expounded upon back on May 28, 2022, in his message, “Steward of the Mysteries of God.” Several prominent thinkers and scientists have marveled about the intelligent design reflected in creation. Albert Einstein, observing an orderly and predictable structure to the universe, proclaimed, “God does not play dice.” Linguist Noam Chomsky (a man whose political views and his penchant for leftist social agitation I do not share) nevertheless has presented to linguistic science some profound insights supporting God’s intelligent design. Chomsky violently clashes with the evolutionary hypothesis, claiming that language and grammar are an innate part of the human brain, not something which has been learned, developed, or evolved. Language, according to Chomsky, is a law-governed capability every human being has.

The apostle Paul warns us in I Timothy 6:20 to avoid science—or rather science falsely so-called, such as the Darwinian theory of evolution, the Al Gore bogus theory of climate change, currently embraced by all the woke leftist woke regimes occupied by all of Jacob’s offspring, as well as the nefarious United Nations and the sinister Klaus Schwab globalist elitist New World Order evidently spawning the emergent, terrifying Beast Power. We cannot forget the current reprobate CDC and NIH director’s opting for gain of function research and criminal vaccine mandates. Anyone who tries to wrap himself in the cloak of science or personify himself as “science” is truly not a scientist at all, but instead represents the worst and most damnable aspects of the apostle Paul’s warning in I Timothy 6:20. We must remember that true science is in alignment with God’s holy Scriptures because Almighty God holds all the patents, copyrights on all spiritual and physical laws.

In my September 30, 2015 Feast sermon: “Loving God’s Law: The Thread of Reality,” I made the case that God made all law from the laws of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, the laws of music, regulating tempo, pitch, dynamics, and rhythm, and the laws of nuclear physics (fusion and fission reactions). Though God gave us the spirit in man to serve as a kind of preview of what God’s creative power could do, we human beings did not invent or make law (including Albert Einstein, Gregor Mendel, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, or Abraham Maslow); we only discovered the existing eternal principles which God has already created, principles to which we must conform. We remember the teaching in Proverbs 25:2 that “it is the glory of kings to search out a matter.”

We human beings observe the cycles of nature, the flora and fauna, the ocean and air currents, the weather and climate patterns, continually finding analogues to improve our technology. When we do this, we should reflect on Betty Hutton’s lyrics in Annie Get your Gun, “Anything you can do I can do better”-changing it to “Anything we can do God can do better.” From the sphere of thermodynamics, no man-made air-conditioning system has improved upon tree shade and a pleasant breeze from air currents. I live in Simi Valley, California. Simi is a Chumash word meaning windy, referring to the nearly continuous breeze that envelops the valley from west to east. Just about every day this year, I have hiked the boulders, canyons, and mesas of the Corriganville movie ranch. When the temperatures reached the 90’s and even 100’s, I would stick to the tree-lined trail along the Calleguas Wash, walking from pools of shade to pools of shade. In this venue, I felt more comfortable than I would in a building with the air-conditioner running full-tilt.

When true scientists, with or without God’s Holy Spirit, conform to the eternal principles embedded within God’s laws, their conclusions receive validation from Almighty God. Sigmund Freud’s theory on sublimation, for example, supports biblical patterns such as Almighty God turning our patriarch Jacob (supplanter) to Israel (prevailer). The late Keith Thomas, former pastor of the Minneapolis Church of God back in 1972, insisted that if Freud had been a converted man, he may have been a powerful spokesman for God’s truth.

In my 2006 Forerunner article, “A Godly Quest for Pleasure,” I referred to a widely accepted scientific construct, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which places at the foundation of human behavior the systematic satiation of tissue needs or drives: hunger, thirst, fatigue, and sex. In simple terms, then, the drive-reduction mechanism, invented, patented, and copyrighted by Almighty God is how the body strives to reduce the state of tension that such needs produce.

As we human beings mature, we become oriented to higher order satisfaction, fulfilling safety needs, love and belonging needs and ultimately self-actualization, which is paradoxically the highest expression of self-less or other-directed needs. We have progressed from an intense “way of get” to “way of give” needs. God designed the wholesome cravings such as hunger and thirst. He has also provided a proper target for every one of these drive-reduction mechanisms. As the Puritan theologian Increase Mather pointed out, “Wine is from the Lord, but the drunkard is from the devil.” God has created within each of us the capacity to rejoice and experience the desires of our heart. Consider the instructions given to us for the Feast of Tabernacles:

Deuteronomy 14:26 “And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires; for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.”

Pleasure is not to be disparaged or shunned unless it is the inordinate or perverted uses of pleasure. Our Creator has also designed human beings to experience increasingly higher levels and intensities of satisfaction and joy. Many commentaries have focused on the dialogue between Peter and Jesus in John 21:15-17, in which they seemed to bypass one another using the words phileo (for brotherly love) and agape (for divine love). One such commentary by Matt Slick titled “John 21:15-17: Who Do You Love?” points out that the three words for love in the Greek New Testament are eros, generally known as physical love, phileo, or brotherly love, and the epitome of love agape (a subject which Bill Onisick has expounded in a number of his messages). Agape love is characterized as other-oriented, service or giving-oriented, and sacrificial divine love, a quality of godly character which takes us a lifetime of sanctification to attain. Again, if we study closely the structure of Maslow’s scientific construct, we conclude that all needs are satisfied by maturing levels of love, moving from the tissue needs encompassed by self-love or eros, belonging needs encompassed by collegial brotherly love phileo, and the creative, service-oriented needs, which Maslow refers to as self-actualization, which paradoxically corresponds to totally selfless agape.

In my Feast sermon “Stimulating a Spiritual Appetite,” I brought up a thesis of one of the world’s classic works of literature, Goethe’s Faust, a work which took approximately 57 years to write, spanning practically the entirety of the author’s literary life, completed when he reached the age of 81—a work that has often been characterized as the book of Ecclesiastes (the Megilloth read every year at the Feast of Tabernacles) filtered through German Romanticism. In this philosophical drama, a highly educated, but burned out and disillusioned old college professor , Dr. Heinrich Faust, agrees to forfeit his eternal life to Mephistopheles (the Devil) if Mephistopheles can give him one supernal ecstatic moment of joy or pleasure, one fleeting moment in which he is compelled to say, “Wait, you are so fair,” The Devil did his best to bring Dr. Faust to that fleeting moment of joy, including mirth, song, strong drink, illicit sex, political power, secrets of the occult, time travel (anything and everything pertaining to the way of get), anything his Jeremiah 17:9 heart desired, but failed to bring him that one fleeting moment of joy. Not until Faust experimented with Almighty God’s agape way of give, did he accidently stumble on the secret of joy, undertaking a land reclamation project in the Netherlands in which he and a crew of workers involved in hard work and sacrifice produced untold happiness and well-being for thousands and thousands of people.

From this altruistic motive (which Herbert W. Armstrong repeatedly referred to as the “way of give” or agape love), Heinrich Faust received his very first experience of joy which had eluded him his whole life, a moment when he could proclaim in total sincerity, “Wait, you are so fair.” This supernal joy stemmed from following and living in the Spirit rather than living in the flesh (Romans 8:5-6).

In Mark 10:43, Jesus, responding to the presumptuous request of the mother of James and John to be given preeminent positions, warns His disciples, then and now, that they are not to emulate the leadership style of the rulers of the Gentiles, who like to be served and exercise tyrannical authority over their subjects. But He states firmly and emphatically that whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. But ironically and paradoxically, the greatest pleasure comes from self-sacrifice with our reasonable service to others (Romans 12:1), serving the needs of others, making them happy. The Hampton Inn company’s motto is: “Making You Happy Makes Us Happy.”

Musicians, as they mature from self-consciousness to other consciousness in their performing, illustrate this principle. Back at one of the ‘Big Deal Socials’ in North Hollywood in 1985, I was discussing the motivation for a musician’s desire to perform with Becky Carlson. She made the insightful comment that musicians perform for other people because they have a deep-seated desire to be cuddled, echoing Thomas Huxley’s famous dictum, the biggest shock the nervous system can sustain is to no longer be needed. Andre Rieu claims that every time he goes on stage, he must battle a case of nerves and stage-fright. But as soon as he feels acceptance and contact with the audience, realizing he is making them happy, he feels wanted and appreciated.

In her book Discover Your God-Given Gifts, Katie Fortune makes the insightful observation,

The best way to measure whether or not we are operating in the sphere of our motivational gift is by this simple test: Joy is the byproduct of operating within our motivational gift. Frustration is the byproduct of trying to operate outside of it. Joy is always a byproduct of doing what is in the will of God for us. Joy can never be sought as a goal or an end in itself. But as we function in the giftedness that God has given us (to serve others and make them happy) we will have joy.

Every one of God’s called-out ones have been given a gift to serve our spiritual siblings and glorify God (I Corinthians 12:7). This gift appears to be a variety of seven psychological functions identified by three worldly psychologists (probably without the aid of God’s Holy Spirit but with the Romans 1:20 public revelation) stumbling on still another heptadic pattern of God embedded in the visible creation.

Katie Fortune, observing one of these psychological personality or psychological function measurements known as the Cleaver Technique, deriving the psychological techniques from the work of Carl Gustav Jung, expressed amazement at how this and similar tests could predict a predisposition toward a particular motivational gift listed in I Corinthians 12:4-11. Fortune declares, “God has created seven basic motivational gifts (or what might be called seven personality types) then there had to be characteristics consistently found for each.”

Designing a testing measurement or placement test based upon the Cleaver Technique, dividing all people into nine different types, logically combining two pairs, reducing the number to seven, matching precisely the seven biblical gifts identified in I Corinthians 12:5-12, which should be considered functions rather than titles. In his January 1, 2020 article, “The Seven Psychological Functions and the Seven Types,” Kenneth Sorensen synthesized the works of Carl Gustav Jung and Robert Assaglioli, converting the seven personality functions:

1. The Dynamic (influenced by the will)

2. The Sensitive (influenced by emotion and feeling)

3. The Mental (influenced by thought)

4. The Creative (influenced by imagination)

5. The Analytical (influenced by intuition and logic)

6. The Dedicated (influenced by impulse, desire, and passion)

7. The Practical (influenced by sensation and action)

Robert Assaglioli focused upon seven functions performed by each of the seven psychological types:

1. Will: transmits the dynamic energy

2. Feeling: transmits the sensitive energy

3. Thought: transmits the mental energy

4. Imagination: transmits the creative energy

5. Logic: transmits the analytical energy

6. Passion: transmits the dedicated energy

7. Action: transmits the practical energy

Katie Fortune categorizes the seven motivational gifts in I Corinthians 12: 5-17 as:

(1) The Perceiver

(2) The Server

(3) The Teacher

(4) The Exhorter

(5) The Giver

(6) The Administrator

(7) The Compassion Person

These seven motivational gifts are then matched to a combination of the seven psychological types:

1. The Will: Power type

2. The Love: Illuminative type

3. The Active: Practical type

4. The Aesthetic: Creative type

5. The Rational: Scientific Type

6. The Devotional: Idealistic Type

7. The Organized: Ritualistic type

The perceiver is a combination of the rational-scientific type and the devotional idealistic type. The server is a combination of the active-practical type and the organized-ritualistic type. The teacher is a combination of the active-practical type and the devotional-idealistic type. The exhorter is a combination of the will-power type and the rational-scientific type. The giver is a combination of the active-practical type and the devotional-idealistic type. The administrator is a combination of the will-power type and the organized-ritualistic type. The compassion person is a combination of the love-illuminative type and the devotional-idealistic type. Again, these gifts are not merit badges or titles, but interdependent functions which apply to the whole congregation and not just to the ministry.

In his May 2022 sermon “Without Me, Nothing,” Martin Collins pointed out a simplistic, but egregious assumption in our previous fellowship that the minister was to preach, and the rest of the congregation would simply pay and pray, making our precious calling a passive spectator sport. Martin assured all members of the Body of Christ that we all serve as “under-shepherds,” helping the pastor tend to the myriad needs of the congregation with the spiritual gifts God has given each of us to serve one another, preparing to serve as kings and priests, teachers, and counselors in the Millennial Kingdom—the wonderful World Tomorrow!

Over the past several months, while preparing this series of sermons, I have encountered a variety of placement tests designed by Protestant, evangelical, and charismatic organizations to match their clientele with their appropriate gifts. Though I did approach these various tests with a high degree of skepticism, I did learn that if I could override the charismatic church-speak, that the tests themselves did follow a common-sensical, practical logic and had a degree of validity. Those of my former students in the audience, which I know there are a few, know that David Maas would never challenge anyone to do something that he himself had not sampled first. Consequently, I took five separate tests from the Myers-Briggs Foundation, SpiritualGiftsTest.com, Tyndale House, Don and Katie Fortune, and Lifeway.com.

On October 29^th, I will continue with Part Six of this series, focusing on strategies for discovering our spiritual gifts, strategies for sharpening our spiritual gifts, and avoiding pitfalls that could sabotage our spiritual gifts, realizing that we are in a rigorous process of training to develop the mind and character of God, loving and serving our clientele as 100% pure spiritual God beings, serving fleshly future god beings in the wonderful World Tomorrow and the Great White Throne Judgment to meet their maximum potential. In Isaiah 30:21, our clientele will hear our firm but loving agape compassionate voices saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

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