God is in control of who is in control

All right.

Well, it is great to be back in Daniel this morning.

And as we sang earlier about Jesus being our living hope, man, we need some hope, don't we?

We live in a world and we live in a in a year that probably couldn't end soon enough for a lot of us, right?

But in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of all the tension that we have in this world, there is hope.

There is hope.

And I don't mean pie in the sky, naivete.

I'm talking about there really is hope.

And the hope comes from the word of God.

It comes from a story like we're reading out of Daniel.

Last week we spent the week in Daniel chapter 1.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

And it was this idea of how do we live faithful in a faithless world?

And it's not always about what happened, it's about what always happens.

And so I love what the Apostle Paul says in Colossians 1.27.

He says, to them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery.

What is he talking about?

What's the mystery?

Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So there is hope, even in the midst of a broken world, and we are living in a broken world, there is hope.

And the hope comes from Christ.

In the midst of just this tension that we're living with, in the midst of this event that's going to take place in just over a month, there is hope.

There is hope.

And so Jesus is the king, is what we talked about last week.

And we can be faithful in a faithless world because Jesus is king.

Here's the big idea.

Here's the sermon in one sentence for today.

God is in control of who is in control.

God is in control of who is in control.

So last week we introduced this character, this guy, this young man named Daniel.

And he was born a little bit before 605 B.C.

605 BC is when King Nebuchadnezzar, evil King Nebuchadnezzar from the kingdom of Babylon.

He traveled 700 miles to the southern kingdom of Israel called Judah.

And he conquered the southern kingdom.

And he took, he took what were the brightest, the sharpest, the most intellectual, the ones that had the most potential.

They took them.

They took them as prisoners of war.

You could call it human trafficking.

They took them and they marched them back 700 miles to Babylon.

And they wanted to indoctrinate them.

They wanted to assimilate them.

They wanted to confuse them.

They wanted to control them.

And so the idea that you see in this story of Daniel is about two kingdoms.

It's the kingdom of God, the real kingdom, and it's the kingdom of Babylon, which is the counterfeit kingdom.

And it's not always about what happened, it's about what always happens.

You need to know this.

Because God is going to use years, circumstances like we're in right now, maybe, maybe a tragedy in your life or some type of situation that where you feel you're out of control and there's chaos and there's anxiety and the enemy wants to paralyze you.

That's the spirit of Babylon.

See, the spirit of Babylon didn't just start, you know, 2,600 years ago.

The spirit of Babylon has always existed.

The spirit of Babylon is what caused the Egyptians to throw babies into the Nile River.

The Spirit of Babylon is what enslaved God's children in Egypt.

The spirit of Babylon is what Esther had to deal with to try to save her people from extinction.

The spirit of Babylon has always been at work.

The spirit of Babylon is what is what caused Nazi Germany to try to exterminate different ethnical ethnic groups and the Jewish people.

The Spirit of Babylon is at work today.

The Spirit of Babylon wants to confuse you, indoctrinate you, assimilate you, control you, and to discourage you.

And because God is in control of who is in control.

We can be living in a world that is broken and fallen apart and still have hope.

And so that's what I love about the story of Daniel, where he he is a he's a eunuch.

And if you need explanation with that, I'm I'm I apologize.

He's a vegetarian, he's a slave in Babylon.

He's working around people who have harems of women and have all this opulence and gold and wealth.

And right in the middle of that, God puts him.

And there's this tremendous potential.

Let's read.

Daniel chapter 2, verse 1.

Daniel 2:1

In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.

His spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him.

So the evil king, Nebuchadnezzar, the king commanded the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams.

So they came in and stood before the king.

And the king said to them, I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.

Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever.

Tell your servants the dream, and we will show you the interpretation.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The word from me is firm.

If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins.

And so in ancient life, in the ancient world, it was not uncommon for kings to have visions and dreams, and it would give them a glimpse of their future and their circumstances.

And that's what happens in the life of King Nebuchadnezzar.

And it is not a good dream because it leaves him with this weighted, disturbed feeling.

He can't sleep, he can't get any peace, he can't get any rest.

And you need to know there's something at work underneath what's happening here.

There's the kingdom of God, and there's the kingdom of Babylon, there's the competing kingdoms.

And we always have a choice.

When we're troubled and when we're faced with chaos and we're faced with potentially being troubled in our spirits, we can run to two different sources.

We can run to the source that God provides, which is his word, the person of Jesus Christ, the relationship that we can have with God, or we can run to the Spirit of Babylon.

Now the Spirit of Babylon may look like a bunch of different things.

It might look like astrology, it might look like a horoscope, it might look like a psychic, or it might look like uh any any number of things.

Anything that you that you find some kind of potential security in can be the king of Babylon.

Let me let me tell you, let me give you a little secret.

You turn on TV, it might be the Spirit of Babylon.

You turn on the news, it's probably the Spirit of Babylon.

And so you need to know what's at work here.

And so Nebuchadnezzar tells all of his magicians, sorcerers, Chaldeans, all of these that help him see the future.

He says, Hey, I want you to tell me not only the interpretation, I want you to tell me the dream.

And they they negotiate.

I mean, you read it verses six through nine.

Hey, hey, king, you give us the dream, and we'll give you the interpretation.

He says, No, I want the dream and the interpretation.

As a matter of fact, so he says in verse 10, the Chaldeans answer the king, and there is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand.

For no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.

The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.

And so you see this negotiation back and forth.

You see, and they say, hey, we we can't give you the dream and the interpretation.

Here's what they're not saying, but this is the truth.

They can't give anything that is divine because they're not plugged into the divine source.

There are some things in this world that cannot be explained outside of the Spirit of God at work in your heart and your life.

And so Daniel was part of this group.

Daniel had been kidnapped and was a Jewish young man who believed in the one true God, but he had been placed into this group of magicians, sorcerers, Chaldeans, and he had gone to the University of Babylon, like many of us have.

I went to the University of Babylon, got a degree from the University of Babylon, and thank God that somebody somebody taught me the truth in spite of being having a degree from the University of Babylon, but but but he he's he he's right there in the middle of all this chaos and this worry and this concern.

And here's what we need to know as believers and followers of Jesus.

We should be a voice of clarity and hope in the midst of chaos and anxiety.

Believers and followers of Jesus should be a voice of clarity and hope in the midst of chaos and anxiety.

Because of this, the king, verse 12, because of this, the king was angry and very furious and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.

Daniel's in that group, verse 13, so the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed, and they sought Daniel and his compassion, companions, to kill them.

Then Daniel decided to step up.

Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Ariok, the king of the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon.

He declared to Ariok, the king's captain, why is the decree of the king so urgent?

Then Ariok made the matter known to Daniel, and Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint a time that he might show the interpretation to the king.

Now I want to let me just let me focus on a couple of words that are used to describe Daniel's approach right here.

One is discretion, the other one is prudence, that the English Standard Version used.

Let me tell you about those words.

They basically mean divine insight and counsel.

The word prudent there is to judge wisely and objectively.

And the word discretion is to know how to handle and to act with wisdom and insight in any particular situation you're in.

And so Daniel knew in the midst of chaos, in the midst of trouble, in the midst of the threat of his life, he had something that everybody else didn't have.

And it was the Spirit of God that allowed him to act with prudence and discretion.

See, see, nothing, you can't substitute anything for the Spirit of God when the Spirit of God is in you and work and at work around you.

And so God trusts Daniel to make a bold request in a desperate situation.

He trusts Daniel to step up and to speak out.

And so the anger of the king is about to have all of these magicians and sorcerers, all of them killed, and Daniel speaks out.

He speaks up.

That's why.

That's why I love today being baby dedication and child commissioning day and gentry being a part of this.

Because my prayer this week, I literally prayed over gentry as we were preparing for this week.

I said, God, would you give Gentry the spirit of Daniel?

Would you give him the spirit of Daniel?

Would you give him the prudence and discretion to understand that you've called him to be a missionary for Jesus Christ and that he, whatever he does in his life, whatever his calling, whatever his vocation is, wherever he goes to school, wherever he grows up, that he will have the Spirit of God as a part of his life.

And so God trusts Daniel.

Daniel speaks up.

And so he speaks up with prudence and discretion.

But remember verse 4 from chapter 1?

It says, These young people are going to be without blemish, of good appearance, and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, competent to stand in the king's palace and teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.

Daniel stands up in a difficult situation with boldness to declare that God is with you.

God is here.

Let me speak, O king.

I mean, listen, you think that we are limited by what we can say in our culture, but I'm telling you, there are going to be circumstances where you are placed in a position, if you're willing, God will use you to speak his truth.

September 11th, 2001.

Most of us that are that are, you know, of age, we could probably tell you exactly where we were September 11th of 2001.

I know exactly where I was.

I was standing in Kennesaw Mountain High School in Kennesaw, Georgia, of Cobb County.

I had showed up that morning, I was a youth pastor at a local church over there, and I had showed up that morning to be part of a character education program that an assistant principal had written to teach kids in the public school about character.

And so he he was a believer and he knew, man, I if I can get pastors and youth pastors in here, and let's teach these kids character and things like commitment and work ethic, and so each month we had a different word that we would focus on.

And I showed up that morning and had walked in, and I was standing in the cafeteria waiting for the program to start, and my pastor walks in, he was part of the program as well.

He said, Hey guys, you got to come up here to the office and you gotta see what's happening.

So we walked up to the office to have the TV on, and one tower had already been hit by a plane.

While we're standing in the office of Kennesaw Mountain High School, the second tower hit, was hit by the plane.

And so we we didn't have a full picture of what was going on.

And so we we go back to the cafeteria, and here's what the principal asked all of these community leaders.

Many of us were pastors and youth pastors.

He said, Would y'all be willing to go and hang out in the classroom with our students?

Y'all can talk about anything you want to talk about.

All we know is they're gonna need somebody that will help them make sense of what just happened.

I said, Well, absolutely.

And I stood in class in a classroom while different groups of students came in all day long at Kennesaw Mountain High School, a public Cobb County school.

And they were asking questions like, how in the world, what in the world, what do we make sense, how do we make sense of this?

And I began to tell them that we live in a broken, messed up world.

And and and man, as tragic as the events that we're witnessing that we were looking at that day, I said, I said, here's the reality, we probably shouldn't be surprised.

Because things like this have been happening since creation.

Because humanity, humanity is broken by sin, and humanity is broken by by a search for significance and meaning, and and and human beings will do crazy things trying to think of how they can fill the hole that is there as a result of sin.

I said, even in your own life, you'll you'll find yourself trying to reach out to to fill things in your heart with with whatever it is, religion, it can be sex or it can be relationships, or it could be money and wealth and success.

And I said, There's only one thing that will bring you any hope and any sense of meaning in this crisis we're in right now.

And it's the fact that God sent his son Jesus Christ to die on a cross in a Roman culture and to and to be raised back up to life to prove that he had power over sin and death in the grave.

And even in the midst of a world where stuff like this has happened, has, will happen, and continue to happen, you can have hope.

So don't tell me you can't talk about God and that we are limited because God will open doors if you're willing, just like he opened for Daniel.

It's the Spirit of God versus the Spirit of Babylon.

God is in control of those who are in control.

Believers and followers of Jesus.

We need to understand we're not alone.

We have a faith community that values prayer and worship.

Look at verse 17.

Then Daniel went to his house.

Let me let me let me tell you what Daniel is doing here.

You could fill in the word house with church.

Daniel went to his church because his church and his house were the same.

So they didn't have First Baptist of Babylon on the corner downtown, right?

They didn't have churches.

They had a house church.

So Daniel went to his house, which was his church, and he made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishhael, and Azariah.

Now, if you might know them as Rach, Shack, and Benny from Veggie Tales, better, if you if that's you, but but this is his community of faith.

And so in the midst of this difficult situation, he runs to his community and he says, We've got to pray.

Verse 18, he told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery.

What's the mystery?

I've got to speak up.

I've got to give the king a dream and an interpretation so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night.

Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

So Daniel first goes to prayer.

He prays with his community, his faith community, his house church.

And then the first thing they do, once they receive, he receives the vision, he doesn't go to the king.

He says, First, I'm going to worship.

God has revealed something to me.

So I'm going to worship.

Let's worship.

Let's praise him.

Let's exalt his name.

So verse 20, Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might.

He changes times and seasons.

He removes kings and sets up kings.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

He reveals deep and hidden things.

He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.

To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter.

I bolded that phrase, O God of my fathers, because Daniel simply has been able to dig deep into what was already invested in his life.

He says, God of my fathers.

So he's referring to the fact that there is a legacy that he inherited from his family.

See, there's always something to praise God for.

There's always something to be thankful for.

God is sovereign.

He gives us revelation.

God is not surprised.

God is not going to wake up on November 4th and say, oh my.

God's not going to be surprised.

You might.

You might be brokenhearted.

You know why?

Because you put your faith in a balance.

And I'm I'm I'm pro-voting, so I by the way, I will vote.

That is a freedom that I cherish.

And I can I don't because I might spend the whole next year complaining, and if I do, I need to be have I need to have some skin in the game, right?

Be quiet.

If you're not gonna vote, be quiet.

But we don't promote politics, we don't promote parties, we don't, matter of fact, we don't believe that the bullets or bombs or ballots can change hearts.

And so God is not surprised.

As a matter of fact, God is in control of who is in control.

God's got a plan.

God may be bringing a little bit of a wooden spoon to our nation just like he did to Israel.

That's what Babylon was to Israel.

It was God's bringing judgment.

The disobedience of his people brings judgment.

And so Daniel's character and his competence opens the door for him to speak up.

Verse 24, therefore Daniel went in to Ariok, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon.

He went in and said to him, Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon.

Bring me in before the king, and I will show you the king, I will show the king the interpretation.

Hear what Daniel's saying.

He said, God's got this.

Then Ariok brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said to him, I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known the king the interpretation.

To the king the interpretation.

And the king declared to Daniel, whose name was Beltehuzzar, and I spoke to that last week, they gave them Babylonian names.

But if you'll notice as you read through the book of Daniel, they don't ever refer to themselves by the names that the Babylonians gave them.

They always refer to themselves by their Jewish family of origin names.

And here's the principle.

Don't you allow the culture, don't you allow the Spirit of Babylon to impose an identity on you that has been given to you through the blood and the resurrection and the death of Jesus Christ.

That is where your identity is.

And so they refuse to call themselves by the Babylonian name.

And so he says, Hey, bring me in.

Are you able, uh, he says, the king says, are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?

Here's what Daniel says, and this is important, because as followers of Jesus, we've got to recognize that we are limited.

As a matter of fact, our we have weaknesses, we have limitations, and we need to give God all the glory that's due to him.

So here's what Daniel basically says.

He says, I can't.

They can't, but God can.

So verse 27, Daniel answered the king and said, No wise men, enchanter, magician, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked.

But listen to this, verse 28.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.

And he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.

Your dreams and visions of your head as you lay in bed are these.

And he who reveals the mysteries made known to you what is to be.

But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have, that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, that you may know the thoughts of your mind.

And so Daniel is about to bring divine wisdom.

I love what Sinclair Ferguson says.

He says, You gotta imagine the seriousness of this moment in history.

Twenty, six hundred years ago, six hundred years before Jesus, Daniel stands in the throne room of Nebuchadnezzar.

Only because he had been in the throne room with his God.

And here's what Sinclair Ferguson says.

He said, This moment, this is the spirit of Jesus before the high priest and Pilate.

It's the spirit of Elijah before Jezebel.

It's the spirit of John the Baptist before Herod.

Daniel is full of the spirit of truth.

And even Nebuchadnezzar recognizes that there's something significant to his spirit.

Here's what Daniel says.

Verse 31.

Here's the prophecy.

You saw, O king, and behold, a great image, a great statue.

This image, mighty and exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening.

The head of this image was fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of human clay.

Verse 34 As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand.

And it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces.

Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold altogether were broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found.

But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

He is prophesying human history.

Daniel is prophesying human history before King Nebuchadnezzar and how God will work in the future.

And so here's something you need to know about prophecy.

There are different interpretations, and some things we consider open-handed.

We might, there's room for disagreement, okay, on some prophecies.

Then there are some things that are closed-handed, that listen, that are centered around who Jesus is and his life and his death and his resurrection and his return.

And we listen, those things we've got to agree on.

But here's the prophecy.

It says, this was the dream.

Now we will tell the king its interpretation.

You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might and the glory, and into whose hand he has given wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all.

You are the head of gold.

Here's what he's saying.

You, Nebuchadnezzar, you are the head of the statue.

The head of the statue, the gold, it represents the kingdom of Babylon.

It is a real kingdom that existed in history from 605 to 539 B.C.

And it was opulent and it was expansive and it was full of wealth.

That's why it's the kingdom of gold.

By the way, just so you know, I shared this last week.

This is modern-day Iraq.

Saddam Hussein, you ever heard of that guy?

History.

He said he was the reincarnation of King Nebuchadnezzar when he was alive.

So the kingdom of gold is the is Babylon.

It was the superpower of its day.

It was the massive, massive kingdom.

It plundered Israel.

It took the gold out of the temple and took it back to Babylon.

And so verse 39 is another kingdom, another kingdom in fear to you shall arise after you.

This is not good news to Nebuchadnezzar.

It's the Medo-Persian Empire.

It's the empire that Daniel also will spend time in during his life there in that part of the world.

And the statue and the prophecy, it's the chest and arms, and it's made of silver.

This is a period of history, 539 BC to 331 BC.

It's the period of time where Esther would have stood on behalf of her people in front of the Persian leader to ask for their salvation, for them to be saved.

She would have stood boldly.

And so this kingdom, modern day, is modern day Iran.

By the way, it's not about always, it's not about what happened, it's about what always happens.

Did you notice there's still some stuff going on over there in the Middle East?

A little tension between Iraq and Iran.

This ain't anything new.

And yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth.

This is the Greek empire.

This is the empire that Alexander the Great would have ushered in when he conquered the known world at the time, 331 BC to 146 BC.

And then verse 40, and there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things, and like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these.

And as you saw the feet and the toes, partly of the potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall not, it shall be a divided kingdom.

But some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with soft clay.

And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.

As you saw the iron mixed with the soft clay, so they will be, they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together just as iron does not mix with clay.

What kingdom is this?

It is the Roman Empire that we know.

We still are being influenced by the impact of the Roman Empire.

The dates of that would be 146 BC.

And people very on the end of the Roman Empire.

Part of the ending of the Roman Empire was 394 BC, right at 400, I'm sorry, A.D., 400 A.D.

But the extent of the Roman Empire, some would say, lasted for to uh 1476 in the West and then 1453 in the East.

1600 years later.

It is still influencing our culture today.

But here's the point.

What's the point of this prophecy?

Empires will come and empires will go.

The Roman Empire had one single purpose.

And it was too many.

The first coming.

The Roman Empire conquered a vast territory in most of the known world.

And they they ushered what they called the Pox Romana, which literally means the peace of Rome, where all the nations had been conquered, and they were able to live at peace.

It allowed for people to travel freely among the empire.

The Romans built an elaborate highway system, probably similar in ancient life to what we know is our interstate system, and it allowed people to travel from one part of the empire to the other part of the empire freely, which plays into prophecy so significantly.

And there's an event that took place that was that was initiated by a guy named Caesar Augustus, where he said, I'm gonna have a census.

I want to count how many people live in my empire.

I want to know the vastness of my empire.

And so everybody has to go to their hometown, and they've got to be counted.

And so there was this little obscure couple that were living in the northern part of the kingdom of Israel called Galilee at the time.

And they had to make this long journey back to their hometown called Bethlehem.

And the wife was Mary, her name was Mary, and the husband's name was Joseph.

And they traveled back to Bethlehem, and she was great with child, and she she gets back to Bethlehem and she goes into labor and she birthed this baby, and his name would be Jesus.

And it would fulfill hundreds and hundreds of prophecies like this in the Old Testament.

And the freedom that Rome had, the peace of Rome and the Roman highway system would allow Jesus to grow up and to move about freely and to teach a new type of teaching with a new authority.

And he would cast out demons and he would perform miracles and he would heal people.

And he brought a group of disciples along with him.

To the point that the Roman Empire was so nervous that he might cause some type of rebellion or upheaval, and they arrested him and they beat him, and he suffered and he bled and they killed him.

They put him on what was called a Roman cross, which was the way that they would kill many people in that day.

And he was crucified by the Romans, and they thought they were in control.

But what they didn't know is that God is in control of who is in control.

And so the Romans took him off the cross.

Actually, some of his followers took his body and they went and put him in a tomb that the Romans allowed him to be buried in.

And they they sealed that tomb with a rock and a Roman seal that would identify that tomb in such a way that there would be no argument about his body ever being stolen.

But they didn't account for a greater power that would take that stone and roll it away.

And then this Jesus, who the Romans had crucified, this great empire, this Jesus comes back to life, and he walks outside of the tomb to show that he had power over sin and death in the grave.

And he spent the next 40 days teaching his disciples about the kingdom and what was to come.

And he commissioned them to go make disciples of all nations.

And many of you know the story, the book of Acts, and how the disciples began to spread the gospel of the kingdom.

When Jesus was about two years old, there was a group of magi, which is short for magicians, by the way.

They traveled seven hundred miles from a place in the Middle East, quite likely that was Babylon at one point.

And they came and they brought gifts to this child.

How did they know?

How did they know?

They brought gold.

A gold is for a king.

They brought frankincense.

Frankincense is used in worship, it's a priestly gift.

And then they brought myrrh for a two-year-old child.

Myrrh is embalming fluid to prepare a body for death.

How did they know?

Maybe because 600 years earlier, a young man had stood up for his faith and interpreted a dream and became the chief magician over all the other magicians, and he was given full freedom in what he would teach these magicians, and he spent his life teaching about the one who is to come and the hope that we have.

And his children and their children and their children and their children continued the legacy for 600 years until one finally recognized the star and had remembered the prophecy of the one who is to come, who will build a kingdom that will last forever.

A God who is in control of those who is in control.

How's that hope for you?

Is that good news?

The king is come, he is risen, he is the one that we can put our hope in.

He is the one that we can come and pray to in the midst of chaos and anxiety.

He is the one that that provides us with hope in the midst of this troubled year.

He is the one who's in control of what happens coming up in our nation.

Not 2020, but forever.

And he wants us to be focused not just on what is happening this year, but he wants us to be focused on who Jesus is and what he accomplished in his life and his death and his resurrection and the fact that he will come and return again.

That is the focus of this story.

There is hope.

Would you pray with me?

Let's just spend a moment thanking God for who he is and what he's done.

And then we're gonna sing and we're gonna lift him up.

We're gonna put into practice what we have just learned from the word.

Father, would you speak to us?

Would you continue to work?

Would you reveal yourself?

I pray for those that are in this room and I pray for those that are watching online.

Father, would you work in a way and speak and draw people into a relationship with their Savior Jesus Christ?

If you never put your faith in Jesus Christ, the Bible says you simply come to him and admit that you need him, admit that you are a sinner, admit that you fall short and you believe and you trust in what he provided in the life and the death and the resurrection, that historical event that happened 2,000 years ago, and you put your faith and trust in Jesus.

You confess him as your Lord and Savior.

And if that's you this morning, I want to encourage you to respond.

If you're watching online or in this room, you can text start to follow to 9700.

If you're taking that first step and to put your faith in Jesus, you text start to follow to 9700 in the room or online.

And for those of us who are already believers and followers of Jesus, this is an opportunity for us to respond and for us to worship and for us to pray and for us to put our faith in the one who is good to his word.

He is the promise keeper.

He is the one who makes the way where there seems to be no way.

He is the one that we can trust.

He is the God who's in control of those who are in control.

Father, thank you.

We worship you this morning.

Would you stand with me right now as we close this time?