All right, so good to see you this morning. Please take the copy of the scriptures you have in hand there and open to the book of Daniel, Daniel chapter two, Daniel chapter two. So we're making tracks, all right? We are making tracks in the book of Daniel. We are going to start reading in verse 31 this morning. Those who are willing and able, I am going to ask that you stand with me, please, as we reverence the reading of the Holy Word of God. Beginning in verse 31, chapter 2, You, O King, were looking, and behold, there was a single great statue. That statue, which was large and of exceeding splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. And the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream. Now we will tell its interpretation before the king. You, O King, are the King of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. And wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, he has given them into your hand, and has caused you to rule over all of them. you are the head of gold. After you there will arise another kingdom, inferior to you, then another, third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth. Then there will be a fourth kingdom, as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things. So, like iron that breaks it in pieces, it will crush and break all things in pieces. In that you saw the feet and toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron. It will be a divided kingdom, but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. And in what you saw, the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seat of man, but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery." Quite a lengthy reading, let's pray. Well, we do thank you for your scriptures. We thank you, Heavenly Father, for you are the God of all history. You control, you manifest your power and your authority over every single nation, every single country. We pray, Heavenly Father, that You would help us to draw from this passage of Scripture this morning a humbleness about us as we recognize how controlling and how sovereign You are, how we do not in any way begin to understand how You, O God, direct all things. But I pray, Heavenly Father, that this will result in a deep sense of worship for who you are as the true and living God. Now, Lord, bless our hearts. Help us to be attentive to your word. Help each and every one draw from it a principle that will help them have peace and joy and calm in a world that truly is full of chaos and troublesome times. But we know, Heavenly Father, that we have a Savior who one day shall set His foot upon this earth, and He shall literally have a kingdom and a throne from which to rule, and He will rule with righteousness and justice. Help us, Heavenly Father, to anticipate the coming of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and live like it is today. In His name we pray, Amen. Thank you, and so be seated this morning. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw back a little bit. I'm going to review some of a prior message that I shared with you, and I'll remind you that time is not stagnant. Okay? Time is constantly moving forward. There is no such thing as a cyclical reincarnation type thing. God has made time linear. Now, I know there are a lot of things that, you know, don't seem to change, right? This old world's spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and I still have a hard time comprehending that. That's what the scientists say. We're on this earth, we're standing on this earth, and we're moving at a thousand miles an hour as we go around this old earth. And that continues all the time. That never changes, you know. I think if it was possible to measure it all the time, you'd probably find out that that thousand miles an hour is pretty consistent. It doesn't deviate five miles or ten miles an hour. It's a thousand miles an hour. That's God's purpose. That's God's plan. That's God's power. That's the way He made it to go. The tilt of the axis of this earth kind of determines the seasons that we live in. We have four seasons every year. We get the same all four seasons, round and round. We get summer, winter, fall, and spring. never fails. Now, I know that you have some people out here who claim to be very scientific, and they're climate changers, you know, and they're going to, you know, they say that, you know, everything's going to change. Well, you know, God set things into motion. It's not going to change. The Bible says, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, Summer and winter bayonet shall not see so God planned these natural cycles To continue as long as this earth remains in its current condition now. That's kind of paradoxical when you think about it because There's a sense in which the continuancy of the four seasons, changing all the time, is indicative of the unchanging promise of God. God made the promise that we would have all four seasons. And sure enough, we have all four seasons. It's indicative of the faithfulness of what God said. He said, this is the way it's going to be. And that is exactly what we are seeing over and over and over again in our own lives. But do not be deceived, even though we see these things over and over in our lives, the same pattern over and over in our lives, time is still going forward. I know that Ecclesiastes said, there's nothing new under the earth. And since that's true, you know, but at the same time, We're moving forward. God's got a plan. God's got a goal. God is moving us toward His ultimate goal, which is the setting up of the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon this very earth upon which we are living. God has a destination, folks. We're moving toward it. You're not stagnant. I know that you get up every morning, you see the sun rise in the east and go down in the west, and that happens over and over, 365 days out of the year. But I'm telling you, as deceiving as it may be, we are moving forward. We are moving toward the climax. The final curtain is going to fall and Jesus Christ is going to come back and He's going to set up a kingdom upon this earth. God has established that plan. We're looking at God's unfolding of that plan in Daniel. He's showing us that this morning, that it's linear. You know, God has two points for your life. You're going to be born and you're going to die in this physical life, I should say, in this physical life. You're going to be born, you're going to be born, you're going to die. In between those two points of your life, God has given what we call a gospel message of Jesus Christ. Right now, God is calling upon you. If you're lost, you know Jesus Christ is your personal Savior. He's calling upon you to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, so that you can be part of the Kingdom that is surely going to come. Through Jesus Christ, through repentance of your sins, and putting your faith in Jesus Christ, God is calling upon you what He did 2,000 years ago, okay? What He did 2,000 years ago, on a hill called Golgotha, on a cross there, Jesus Christ shed His blood so that you would have eternal in eternal life and a part in the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ. Well, Nebuchadnezzar's dream is not just a dream about what's coming. It is that. It is that. But the main purpose of the dream is to reveal the authority, sovereignty, and power of God. And to create in Nebuchadnezzar, and in all men, humility. That's really what we're going after. We're going to see that this morning. When Daniel gets through explaining the dream to Nebuchadnezzar, even Nebuchadnezzar understands that his kingdom is just a cog in the plan of God for the world. So today we finally get to the long anticipated dream of Nebuchadnezzar. We look at its interpretation and Nebuchadnezzar is finally going to get some relief, right? I mean this guy has been miserable and he hasn't been getting much sleep lately. And finally after tonight, or after today, Nebuchadnezzar is going to get a good night's sleep. He's finally going to go to bed at ease. So, let's pick up this scene in verse 31, and let's unfold it a little bit. You, O king, are looking, and behold, there was a single great statue. That statue, which was large and of exceeding splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. So, the first thing that Daniel does here is he gives us this tremendous overview. all right he doesn't get into the specifics here or the details here in this particular verse but he but he stops and he pauses and he gives us this big uh overview of the entire dream that nebuchadnezzar had he says it is it was a single great Now, I want to pause there because it's important for you to understand the overall meaning of what Daniel was getting at in this particular statement and what got him in mind when he gave this particular inspiration, okay? So that statue, that phrase there, there was a single great statue represents what Jesus called The times of the Gentiles. That's what we're getting into here in this particular statute. Jesus used this phrase when he was talking about the end time of the times of the Gentiles, okay? We're going to look at that statue, and then we're going to get into the particular parts of that statue in just a minute. But we need to understand the principle that's driving this whole scene. And so what you need to do is you need to understand what Jesus was saying way back. And if you want to turn there, you can go to the book of Luke, and you can find in Luke chapter 21, verse 24, what I'm talking about. about here and it's important for you to understand I'm gonna make a connection between three verses here and so you're gonna have three verses that cross-reference each other so that you will understand what this very first phrase means and what happens after this. So it's important for you to understand that. So here we are we're Luke chapter 21 Jesus is talking about what's going to happen to the nation of Israel and His coming back to this particular earth. And so He says in verse 24, He says, "...they will fall by the sword, and be led captive unto all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." important statement Jesus was actually looking back to this statue when he made that statement in Daniel chapter 2 that's where you're referring back to remember no no no I also want to tie this is another cross-reference that you got a pop and bet you got to write in somewhere remember somewhere you must tie this in with Daniel chapter 2 in verse 21 So this is all fitting together. Go back to Daniel 2.21. This is all connected here, and I'll show that to you in a minute. But you need to get the emphasis. So in Daniel 2.21 it says, it is He, who is the pronoun He, is referring to God Almighty, right? So he's talking about God Almighty, the Creator. He says God changes what? The times. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of your Hebrew Bible. The reason I'm mentioning that is because the Greek word that Jesus used in Luke is the same Greek word that the Septuagint uses here to translate the Hebrew word, time. Same Greek word, okay? They're all connected together. Jesus has in mind, you know, looking back in history to the time of Daniel, okay? So again, you need to make that cross-reference. And between these three verses, between Daniel 2.21, Luke 21, 24, and what we're reading here in verse 21. They're all connected together. They're all cross references to give you a picture of the plan of God. So, this is why you can't separate the Old Testament from the New Testament, folks. I know we live in an age today where people say, you don't need the Old Testament anymore. The Old Testament is antiquated. It doesn't apply to our lives today. Just do away with the Old Testament. Just stick with the New Testament. Don't bother about the Old Testament whatsoever. You don't need it anymore. That is not true. I know it's becoming popular today, but it is absolutely not true. You cannot understand the New Testament without the Old Testament. And you cannot understand the Old Testament without the New Testament. I know that there are some people who don't like the God of the Old Testament. I don't like the God of the Old Testament. And there's something wrong with a preacher that doesn't preach from the Old Testament. If you've got a preacher that doesn't preach from the Old Testament, you probably need to find another church. Honestly and truly, because they're that connected together. And you know, if he only preaches from the New Testament, let me tell you the problem. If you have a preacher that only preaches from the New Testament, this is likely, I'm not saying it's true in every case, but I'm going to tell you, in the majority of cases, this is going to be true. What you're going to find is a preacher who preaches some kind of weak, wimpy, lovey-dovey, gushy, romantic, milk-toast view of God. That's what you're going to get. That's what you're going to get. More than likely. I'm not saying every time. But generally speaking, that's what happens because you turn to the New Testament and you find a God there who literally is a hating sin. You find a God who loves that which is righteous. You find a God that stands for that which is just. And that's what we need. Both sides of God need to be presented to get an accurate, adequate view of God. The God of the Old Testament is not compatible with woke Christianity. The God of the Old Testament is not compatible with this DEI stuff. He's not compatible with any of that stuff in the Old Testament. Well, Jesus himself quoted the Old Testament, right? And when Jesus Christ quoted the Old Testament, he lent his approval to its inspiration and its validity, and he approved of the God of the Old Testament as well. So, in this passage in Luke, Jesus is looking back to Daniel because the times of the Gentiles begins with the Babylonian Empire. The times of the Gentiles begins with the Babylonian Empire. Okay? Jesus and Daniel are quite in tune. You say, well, how do you know that? Are you sure you can make that kind of a bold statement? Let me share with you a sneak preview, okay? Let me give you a sneak preview of what's coming. So we're in Daniel chapter two. I want you to look at verse 37. So we're going to go from 31 to 37. I'm going to give you a sneak preview here. So, this is what's going on in verse 37. You, O king, are what? The king of kings. Wait a minute. You are the what? King of kings. Now, sometimes we apply that to Jesus Christ, right? But that's not what we're doing here. We're applying it to a Gentile king. You, Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. This is the beginning of the times of the Gentiles. He gave Nebuchadnezzar the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. Now, there were other kingdoms, obviously, before Babylon, right? There were other kingdoms. Solomon was the king of Israel. And when Solomon was the king of Israel, he was one of the greatest kings ever on the face of the earth at that particular time. But it was a Jewish kingdom. It was not a Gentile kingdom. Okay? Everything changes with Babylon wiping the nation of Israel, basically, off the face of the earth. Now, he doesn't kill all of them. He's got them in captivity, obviously, and God's preserving them. But as far as a kingdom, they are destroyed. There's nothing left of the nation of Israel, you know, which was one of the greatest nations on the face of the earth. But Babylon comes in, and he destroys the nation of Israel. And from this point forward, Gentiles, the Gentiles dominate the world. It says, God said, kingdom, power, strength, and glory all belong to Nebuchadnezzar. God gave that to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar set the stage for the Gentiles to have dominion over the world from that point forward until, of course, Jesus comes back, which we get to later, right? So let's look back at verse 31. So we've got the general principle going here, so let's pick up the particulars a little bit in verse 31. Okay? You, O king, were looking, and behold, there was a single great statue. That statue was large, of exceeding splendor, standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. So, size-wise, in his dream, Nebuchadnezzar looks at the statue. It's huge. What he's trying to say there is that this statue was Intimidating. It was that big. Even in his dream, the sheer size of the statue was threatening. And you know, Nebuchadnezzar looked like a little twerp compared to the statue that he was looking at, you know. And so he felt small, and maybe a long time since Nebuchadnezzar felt small. Then he says it's a extraordinary splendor and the Hebrew has the idea that his splendor was surpassing anything that he had ever seen he had never seen anything so bright he'd never seen anything so dazzling or as shining as the statue was it was so it was so amazing in his dream that he could not take his eyes off of it you know you all know what bling is okay bling Well, this statue was like bling on steroids. It was so brilliant, you know, it caught his eye and all of his attention and he literally could not take his eyes off of what he was looking at. And then he goes on, he says this, That it was awesome. It was awesome. The Hebrew word there has a strong sense of fear, fearful, dreadful, terrible. He's got that feeling. The very sight of it gripped Nebuchadnezzar's heart with fear. You know, here he was the king of the world. who should be afraid of nothing and nobody. And at this particular time, he was so terrified that maybe he needed to change his nightgown. I don't know. But Nebuchadnezzar didn't know he could be afraid of what he was afraid of at this particular time. It was that awesome to him. Question then. You see the statue. You see all that it represents. You have to ask yourself, what was God doing, right? What was God up to here in this statue with Nebuchadnezzar? Well, obviously, He was trying to get Nebuchadnezzar's attention. People who are proud and people who have a problem with arrogance are only prone to listen to themselves. And Nebuchadnezzar had power, he had money, and money and power tend to make people think they don't need to listen to anybody. They've got all they need, you know. And so God comes along, and just as a side note here, you know, I realize it doesn't take a lot of power and money for people to think they don't need God. I realize it's probably more of a problem for rich people, but we can have the same problem as as those who are rich as well to some degree or another. But the truth is that power and money tends to make it difficult. It multiplies the problem. And so this is kind of what's going on here. God has to get Nebuchadnezzar's attention and he has to pull the rug out from under him to bring him down to size to where he can listen to what God is trying to say and God does that too to us. He kind of has to get our attention once in a while and pull the rug out from under us. So God then is getting Nebuchadnezzar's attention so he can listen to what God has to say that takes us to verse 32 So in verse 32 it says the head of that statue was made of fine gold and his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of bronze, his legs of iron, his feet partly of iron and clay." So Daniel continues then to get to the specifics. I mean y'all know what A table of contents is in a book. You know, you open your book, the first thing you see is the table of contents, right? And each chapter heading has a description, you know, what's in there. And so you read through that whole table of contents, you get an idea of what's going in the book. So what you're looking at now is past the table of contents, and we're now getting into the book itself and seeing what it says here. So Daniel gives us this short description. of the statue in these verses here. So what's the one thing you see? What's the one thing you see? What's the one thing that jumps out at you as you go through this? He says, yeah, the statue, it has fine gold for its head, it has breasts and arms of silver, it has belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and clay, okay? So what do you, you guys are, intelligent. Okay. So you know that when you read through here, that you see diminishing value, right? I mean, it's so obvious. You can't mix it. You can't miss it at all. You know, you start with a gold, you move to the silver, you go to the bronze, you go to the iron, you go to the iron and the clay. Okay. So it's diminishing in value as time passes. Now, that principle is not mine originally with me, okay? It's not only common sense, but you can also see it in verse 39. In verse 39, notice what it says. After you shall arise a kingdom, what? Inferior, inferior. to you. So God moves in from gold, according to this principle, gold, silver to bronze to iron and iron and clay, each one being inferior to the other. So God sees here this diminishing value. And so you have to ask yourself, well, now, how does God measure the ultimate value? Well, it's gold, right? The ultimate value here is gold. So what's the gold standard? What's the gold standard that God is using here? Because everything else is inferior after the head of gold. Well, I want to remind you again, skip ahead again to verse 37. Let's look at the gold standard. You, O King, are the King of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. That is the gold standard by which God is going to measure all other kingdoms following Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar will always be the Gentile King of kings. Nebuchadnezzar will always be the kingdom who will have the power and the glory and the strength and the unity of nation that is embedded only in him. Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was more unified, it was more integrated. He had more complete control over his kingdom than any other king that followed him. That's important to note. No other king ever after Nebuchadnezzar had what God says Nebuchadnezzar had in verse 37. They all were of lesser degrees as time progresses. All other empires after him indeed had greater landmass. You look at the kings that followed Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom. They were great in landmass compared to what Nebuchadnezzar had. But the largeness of the landmass is not what makes the empire that Nebuchadnezzar had with the authority and complete control that he had over his kingdom. All other kings had greater landmass but lesser control over their kingdoms. And it doesn't have anything to do with age either. or how long an emperor rules. Nebuchadnezzar was a monarch in Babylon for only 43 years. His kingdom was 70 years, his empire was 70 years, but he only ruled for 43 years. And there were kings after Nebuchadnezzar that ruled much longer than him, but they did not have the power, control, and authority and the glory that Nebuchadnezzar had in his kingdom. This is one of the reasons that you look in the book of Revelation. When you get the book of Revelation, have you noticed how much the Bible refers to the kingdom of Babylon? It doesn't refer to any other kingdom but the kingdom of Babylon. Why does it do that? Why do you think God does that? Because of what we read here in verse 37. Except God is not going to give it to Nebuchadnezzar. He's going to give that same thing to Satan. Satan is going to be a knock-off. Well, no, he's not. He's not going to be a knock-off. Nebuchadnezzar is probably a knock-off to Satan, if the truth were known, you know. But the idea of Babylon applies to Satan because God is going to make Satan the king of kings. He's going to give Satan power. He's going to give Satan authority. And he's going to give Satan full control. Full control. Absolute. God is going to pull his hands off the earth. He's going to give Satan full control over the earth. Just like Nebuchadnezzar had over his kingdom. And that's why he uses it as an example in the book of Revelation. just as surely as Nebuchadnezzar destroyed and took over the nation of Israel because of their disobedience, right? Israel rejected God. Israel didn't want anything with God. God said, okay, you don't have anything to do with me. I'm going to send Babylon down to take you over. And the world is going to get to the place where we reject God, where we don't want to have anything to do with God. And when we get to that place, guess what God's going to do? He's going to turn Satan loose over the earth and take control over the earth. That's what He's going to do. That's why it's used as a likeness between the two kingdoms. He's going to use Satan to punish the world just like he used Satan to punish the nation of Israel. That's the way it goes. So, who are these kingdoms? Let's start in verse 36. This was the dream, now we will tell its interpretation before the king. You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. And wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, he has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. You are the head of gold." Not much to talk about there, right? It's pretty self-explanatory, pretty self-descriptive. He is the head of gold, which refers, and notice now, I just say head, singular, picturing solidarity of His kingdom. From here forth, below, it's all two parts. The head is one, below this is two parts. No solidarity. So, verse 39. After you there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze which will rule over the earth. So Daniel in one verse kind of breezes through two kingdoms, right? I mean, he doesn't even hardly take a breath, but he describes two major empires upon the earth. The second empire, he says, is represented by the silver breast and the arms. That's the Medo-Persian, Medo-Persian empire. They conquered Babylon in 539 BC. So again, two-part kingdom. Medo-Persian doesn't have the solidarity that the gold head of Babylon had. It's made up of two parts. So why did God set up the Medo-Persians to come in and conquer Babylon? Why did God do that? There's one reason. Israel's 70 years were up. God told him in Jeremiah, you're going to be in captivity in Babylon for 70 years. Sure enough comes 539 BC. Guess what happens? God sends the Medo-Persians in and wipe out the Babylonians and set the Jews free, right? And sends them home. God raised up a whole nation. God raised up a whole empire to destroy another empire just so that his people could go home and keeping his promise. He promised them 70 years. And he didn't, you know, they didn't have to serve in slavery to Babylon another day than the 70 years that God promised. But even though they were back home, they were still under the control of the Medes and Persians, right? So that's the bigger picture. So then comes the third kingdom, and that's the Grecian kingdom. Greece came into power. They're represented by the bronze here, the belly and the thighs. The Grecian empire, led by Alexander the Great, conquered the Medo-Persian empire in 331 BC, right? And the Bible, my version says bronze, You could call it brass, you know, but it was inferior. It was inferior to the Mede-Persian Empire because although Alexander the Great acquired a great landmass, no doubt about that, he was short-lived, right? He died. in the process of trying to conquer the world. Alexander the Great never really had a strong rule over the world. He just didn't do it. He died too young. And so the kingdom was split between the three generals, right? And so the kingdom was even further displaced. Less solidarity, because it was divided between the three generals, weakening the solidarity of the kingdom. And then verse 40. Okay. Then in verse 40 it says, And there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron, and as much as iron crushes and shatters all things, so like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these into pieces. So that's Rome, right? You know your history. Rome comes along. And Rome was a gradual takeover of the Grecian Empire, there's a little bit of difference about exactly when you would call Rome the actual empire following the Grecian Empire. A lot of guys say it was 27 BC because that's when Caesar became the true emperor. Well, that empire lasted 500 years. That was a long time. And then it finally, you know, after 500 years, the West fell and then Constantinople fell in the East. And that was it for Rome. But nonetheless, one of the longest empires. God says it's going to be as strong as iron. It's going to be crushing and shattering and breaking things into picture, into pieces. That picture is a description of the way Rome ruled. They ruled with an iron rod. They destroyed anything and everything that got in their way. Anything and everything that would try to raise themselves against us. So, Rome was the last world empire. Now, hear me out. Hear me out. The last Gentile empire. Now, with those thoughts in mind, let's not stop thinking about what's going on here. Let's proceed to verse 41. In that you saw the feet and toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom. But it will have in it the toughness of iron, And as much as you saw the iron mixed with common clay, as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. So let's just pause that for a minute. So you see here the iron introduced into this last empire. The iron still has not changed what it represents. It still represents what it represented in the Precinct verse, which is the Empire of Rome. So we see here a continuation. of this picture of Rome, only it's changed a little bit because there's this addition of clay mixed with the iron, indicative of the fact, of course, that it is a divided kingdom, with the old Roman kingdom, or empire, still being a part of it. Okay? The only addition is the mixture of clay, which further distributes the unity of the empire. It's not a strong united empire. Rome is still in the picture. When Jesus was here the first time, Rome was the empire in control. When Jesus comes back the second time, Rome is still going to be part of the picture, okay? The 10 nation confederation. We're not talking about countries, we're not talking about states, we're not talking about nations, we're talking about empires. Empires, Rome, It was the last standing empire. Like again, we're not talking about countries or nations and stuff like that or states. We're talking about total dominion. Okay. And so that's what he's saying here. So what can we learn from this history lesson? that not only get Nebuchadnezzar gets, but what we get as well. But first and foremost, here's the first thing you need to know. God is not arbitrary. God is not capricious. But He is ordaining and He is organizing the events of the world to bring about the coming of His Kingdom. This world is not on autopilot. I know that you tend to look out there and say, well, everything's such a mess. There's so much confusion everywhere. I don't understand what's going on. God is still on the throne. God is still ruling and reigning. And I know from my perspective, it may look like things are out of control. You say, well, what about Russia? What about China? What about North Korea? What about Iran? What about Afghanistan? What about all these evil places and evil men that are on the face of the earth today? You know, when we look at evil on such a large scale, we're often challenging the love of God. How can God be loving, you know? There was nothing godly about Babylon. There was nothing godly about Iran, Iraq, China, the Medes, the Persians, the Romans, the Greeks. There was nothing godly about any of those empires, folks. Nothing. They were all Gentile. They were all wicked empires that God used up to suit His purposes and plans to prepare the world for His kingdom. You say, well, you know what? That don't make me feel any better. You know, I want to feel better about this whole thing, but you're not making me feel any better whatsoever. You know, I understand that. I understand that. So let me take a stab at it, okay? Let me take a stab at it. Let me take a stab at it with Isaiah chapter 55. Isaiah chapter 55. Something to make you feel better? Isaiah chapter 55, the Old Testament prophet, and in verses 8-9, here's what it says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. Again, how about that, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, and so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Does that make you feel better? You know, the only way you can feel better is to abandon any idea or any thought that you have that you can somehow or another orchestrate a plan that would encompass all of time, all men that have ever been born and come up with a plan that would bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God. You can't do that. The size of the statue intimidated Nebuchadnezzar to the point that he feared it, the Bible says, and that fear translates itself into worship, because that's what genuine fear does. And that is exactly how we should feel before our Heavenly Father above. He is so big that we fear Him, and that translates into us worshiping Him, because we don't get it all together. And secondly, that fear and that intimidation and that reference comes out of our inability to comprehend the vastness of God and His ways, and it must transform itself into faith, because faith is what produces actions. We are not to be stagnant in our sharing of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the way that we live our lives for the Lord. It compels us to preach the gospel of the coming. You need to know Jesus Christ And this may sound, and I hope it doesn't sound sacrilegious to you, but Jesus Christ believed that His Heavenly Father was going to bring in His Kingdom. You say, how do you know that? Because Jesus Christ said this, Repent! You remember this? Jesus Christ came and said, Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! That's what Jesus Christ said because He believed what His Father told Him that He was going to do. So, what do we do? We preach the same gospel. Repent, because we believe that Jesus Christ is going to come back and he's going to set up his kingdom upon this earth and there's going to be no more crying, no more sorrow, no more disease, no more death, no more sickness, none of that stuff in the new kingdom. We believe that. And because we embrace that, we go forward with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we go forward with joy and peace in our hearts knowing that it's coming. It's coming, it's coming. How can you not believe in a God who orchestrates the kingdoms of the world? How can you not believe in that God? But He does. We are sinners. And the good news is that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. And R.D.' 's going to help us with an invitation hymn this morning. Jesus came to die for you and God planned that event. God so organized the empires of the world so as to bring about the death of Jesus Christ on a cross on a hill in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago to pay for all of your sins. God's desire is for you to repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ. Would you stand with me please as we pray and then Brother R.D.' 's going to lead us in a hymn. So Father, we come before such an awesome, powerful, mighty, wonderful, everlasting God who has no beginning, who has no end, who is in control of this world upon which we live. You control every single blade of grass, every granule of sand, every star in the sky. You control it all. You control all men and all events. You are God. We come before You this morning to worship You. to express to you our smallness and our humility before you, to humbly bow before you, and say, O God, use me, use me in this time in which I am in. Use me to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Use me, O God, to stand for that which is righteous and true and just, to represent you well. Use me, O God, to love the loveless. Those who are hard to love, help us to love them, Father, just like you do. Because you sent your Son, Jesus Christ, to die for them, you love them. For Jesus came to this world to die for sinners. That's still the message, Father. Help us to seize every opportunity you present to us to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, God, if there's one here who is shaking a little bit and says, you know, I don't know. I don't know that I've ever come to know Jesus Christ, my personal Savior. I don't know that I could give a testimony of salvation. I don't think I'm saved. I pray, Heavenly Father, that you will fall upon them with great conviction and that your Holy Spirit would fall upon them in such a way that they would find no escape except to come and confess Jesus as their Savior and Lord and as the one who is going to be King of their lives. Continue to bless us, Father, in this congregation. Help us to move forward in this church. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.