Did I happen to mention that I'm going to Japan for Christmas? Did I happen to mention that by chance? So if my family wants to serve, have Christmas with me, I have to go to Japan. You see, in Japan, the traditional Christmas meal is Kentucky Fried Chicken. True. It is true. Yeah, back in the 70s, about 1970, KFC moved in to Japan. And from 1970 to 1981, they built 324 KFC stores in 10 years span. And they started offering what they called the Christmas bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. And it was a hit. Millions and millions of Japanese people buy Kentucky Fried Chicken from the 20th to the 25th of December. Now, they're not a religious group, but they celebrate Christmas, and Kentucky Fried Chicken is the meal in Japan for Christmas. All right. I don't know what that is. I just don't want to call it. Anyhow, we're in Daniel chapter 2. Okay, we're going to start reading here in verse 44 for our text this morning. Those willing and able to I'm going to ask that you stand with me please as we read from God's Word. In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people. It will crush and put to an end all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future. So the dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy. Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, and he did homage to David, and gave orders to present to him an offering and fragrant incense. The king answered Daniel and said, Surely your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings. and a revealer of mysteries, since you have been able to reveal this mystery. Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole providence of Babylon, and chief perfect over all the wise men of Babylon. And Daniel made requests of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the administration of the providence of Babylon, while Daniel was at the king's court. Father, we come before you and we thank you so much, Heavenly Father, for the opportunity to be gathered together in your house today to worship you. What a great way to start the week. This indeed is the first day of the week. And therefore, we set you at the head of our week. And from our worship today will flow our activities and our worship of You throughout the remaining week. I pray, Heavenly Father, of course, that we will take from this service something that will encourage us to be bold and strong and mighty and righteous and true. and yes, loving toward those who would despise us or make fun of our faith in you. But Father, I pray that you would quicken in our hearts a reality that you're not through with us. The reality of this world is not all there is to our lives. Help us to serve you more faithfully this week. Help us to honor our Savior through our obedience. May we experience the grace and the mercy of God on every day of our lives and be conscious of it, and indeed, grateful, grateful. Now, Lord, open our hearts and minds to the work of the Spirit of God. Encourage us, strengthen us, convict us, and bring us to repentance if necessary. In Christ's name I pray, amen. Thank you, and please be seated. You know, we've all had experiences in life that have changed us in some way. Now, maybe the change wasn't extreme. Maybe the change wasn't extraordinary. But whatever we experienced changed us, made us different. You know, you're looking at the king of Babylon here, Nebuchadnezzar. He is experiencing a life-changing event at this particular time. He's not going to be the same guy. in a lot of ways. In many ways, He is. In a lot of ways, He's not going to be. You know, God brings changes. God brings events into our lives to form us and to shape us how He wants us to be. You live where you live. You marry who you marry. You have your children. You have your jobs. You have, you know, everything around us, everything about our circumstances. God brings these things into our lives to help make us into He wants us to be. We have life-changing experiences. We get married. We have children. You know, your marriage settles you down a little bit. You have children and then you understand what responsibility is. You get your first paycheck. You get your first job. You move out of your parents' house. You get on your own. You maybe have the loss of a loved one. Maybe sometimes you become ill. Whatever the case is, your life is not static. Your life is constantly changing because God is constantly shaping us and molding us into the person He wants to be, into the likeness of Jesus Christ. That's why God brings the changes that He does into your life. You say, what about the loss? The lost people, they have the same events happen in their life that we have in our lives. So what's God doing in the life of a lost person when He brings changes and events into their lives? He brings those events and changes and situations into their lives because He is trying to get their attention and help them realize that indeed this life is not all there is. He's trying to get their attention so that He might bring them into an understanding that they need Jesus Christ and that they need salvation. That's why God brings events into their lives. Unfortunately, the lost are being told that when they have a life-changing moment, that is called personal development. lost people experience what psychologists call personal Development. And I'm not saying that there's not some benefit to that. You know, when a man does get married, generally speaking, even lost men are tamed a little bit. They're settled down a little bit by their wives. Even lost people, when they have children, realize they now have another mouth to feed. They now have another responsibility. And they got to get serious about life and about keeping a job. Even they realize these things. But the world says, no, no, no. This is a personal development. And what God is trying to do through these myths is bring them to the realization that they need Jesus Christ. That they live in a turbulent world. They live in a world that is filled with sin and sickness and disease and suffering and even death. And all of these things are being used by God to make them realize that they need Jesus Christ. They live in a sinful world. They need a Savior. The Bible tells us, lost or saved, you have a consciousness of transcendence. Whether you're lost or saved, and what I mean, even lost people understand that there's something eternal about life. The Bible says this in Ecclesiastes 3.11, He has made everything appropriate in His time. He has also set eternity in their heart. Yet so that a man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. God put eternity in their hearts. The soul of every human being has a God-given awareness that there's a life that transcends the body that they are in. Now, not everybody responds, obviously, to this awareness of transcendency. As a matter of fact, they try to ignore it. They try to numb it somewhat. You understand, lost people don't like to think about eternal life. You know why lost people don't like to think about eternal life? Because you have to think about God. There is a a connection that cannot be ignored. When you think about eternity, you're thinking about the reality that you must face God. And I realize that people try to deaden that, and I realize people try to ignore that fact. But eternity, thoughts of eternity, and thoughts of God are actually inseparable. That's why God said what He said in the book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3. Now, you know, there are a lot of ways to try to deaden that, and a lot of people do that. But the reality is still there. The thought of eternity must embrace the thought of God. There's a trendy thought today that goes like this. Well, we're just going to die, and that's going to be it. We're just going to die, and we're going to lose our consciousness, and we're going to lose our existence, and that's all there is to life. There's really no eternity, and that's just another way of trying to deny the reality of eternity. I understand that. They don't understand that, but I understand that. Then there's the other side of the coin. The other side of the coin is this. Oh, I believe in eternity, but... I'm going to make the God that I want to have in eternity. You see, it's not that they deny eternity, but they come up and create their own idea of what kind of God is going to be in eternity. And I would tell you that of those two ways, of ignoring, trying to ignore the fact that there is eternity, and of realizing there is eternity, and trying to figure out what kind of God is going to be in eternity, I would say the second one is the most popular. The most popular. You know, every civilization known to man has some form of worship. You can look at the history books, break open the history books, and over and over again, you see that in their culture is some kind of a god, some kind of worship. Until lately, I would say, until we got this idea of communism and socialism. But generally speaking, Atheism is a personal choice. It's not necessarily a choice of the civilization as a whole until lately, until we brought into this idea of communism and socialism. But the overwhelming testimony is that there is a religion that's a part of that civilization. There's a religion that's part of that culture. And religion is never going to go away. Atheists, Atheism is on the fringes. Atheism has always been on the fringes of any culture or any civilization until lately. Atheism was a reality that even David dealt with, you remember? David in Psalm 53 said, the fool says in his heart there is no God. So even in David's day, he understood that there was such thing as atheists and skeptics. But atheists and skeptics are not going to win. Atheists and skeptics are not the problem. They are going to be on the fringes of society, and I'll tell you why. Religion is always going to be around. You know why religion is always going to be around? Religion is always going to be around because religion is Satan's best ally. Religion, not atheism, not communism, but religion is Satan's best ally. And you understand when I say religion, I'm not talking about true religion like we have here at Central Baptist Church. I'm talking about false religion. I'm talking about people making up their own idea of who God is. There's a sense in which false religion is a far, far greater enemy of the church than any lost person will ever be. Period. It's true. It's true in our passage this morning. We're looking at Nebuchadnezzar. He was a very cruel and he was a very wicked man. He was a very evil man, but he was very spiritual. Okay. He was a spiritual man. He had his gods. He had, as we've seen, his spiritual advisors and unfortunately his gods and his advisors let him down, right? And what happened when his gods and advisors let him down? He got very, very angry and he decided he's going to kill all of his spiritual advisors because they weren't coming through as he thought they should. You know what? I look at that and I say, yeah, that's just like today. There's a bunch of people out here who claim to be Christians, and they claim that they know Jesus Christ their personal Savior, but they have this concept of God that doesn't meet their reality, and they become disillusioned. And you know what a disillusioned Christian does? They get mad at God. And they said, I don't need this Christian jazz, man. I'm out of here. I don't need God. And I certainly don't need Christianity. Because their vision of God didn't measure up. Just like Nebuchadnezzar's vision of his gods didn't measure up. So what happens today? It's still a continuous process. It's still going on today in our churches. Because people don't understand who God is. So Daniel comes to Nebuchadnezzar, brought there by Ariak. He's a 20-year-old something that went behind the ears, and he's standing before the greatest man on the face of the earth, the man who has the most power. And in verse 37, he says, you have the kingdom, you have the power, you have the strength, you have the glory. And so he's going to tell Nebuchadnezzar what the dream meant, and what the dream was, and what the dream meant. And so he stands before this man who has his own death warrant in his hand, and he begins to tell him about the dream. And he begins to explain the dream to Nebuchadnezzar. And he begins to explain to Nebuchadnezzar that the statue represented kingdoms. And he begins to explain to Nebuchadnezzar that the gold kingdom was his, and then there would come the Persian kingdom, the Greek kingdom, the Roman kingdom, and then finally he would say there are the tows, which are clay and iron mixed together, a divided kingdom. And we talked last week how this was a description of what Jesus called the times of the Gentiles, the times when the Gentiles would rule over the nation of Israel, okay? But now in verse 44, in verse 44, It says, in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people. That won't be given to another people is what it means. And it will crush and put to an end all these kingdoms, but will itself endure forever. So we're looking at Nebuchadnezzar's dream here, and we're informed that there's another kingdom here in verse 44 that is not a part of the statue. And now, while this kingdom that we're talking about here that God is going to establish is not part of the statue, it is part of prophecy nonetheless. So let me remind you of something. Let's tie this together and go back to verse 28 of chapter 2. Let's kind of see what's going on here. We go from week to week and we kind of lose the connection, but I want to make the connection for you what's going on here. So I want you to go back to verse 28 and make the connection. It says, However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to Nebuchadnezzar that that will take place in the latter days. This was your dream and the visions in your mind while you were on your bed. Daniel says God has shown you the latter days Okay, so it's absolutely clear that God has a plan that God is moving toward that plan God has a goal You know, and I'm not and we're not talking about a goal for your life You know, there's a lot of talk today and and please please understand And I'm not really trying to be as negative as I sound, I guess. But there's a lot of talk today, God's got a plan for your life. You know, you hear that phrase over and over again today. God's got this wonderful plan for your life, you know. And He does. And He does, folks. He does. But here's the deal. Here's what's really important about God's plan for your life. It is merely part of something bigger. It's part of something bigger, and that's what we lose sight of. I'm not saying that God doesn't have a plan for your life. He does have a plan for your life. But I'm saying that God's plan for your life is part of something bigger than your own life. And I know Christianity has been hijacked by psychology, by convincing us, you know, that God has this wonderful plan for your life, and God is going to do something big in your life. You know, you're going to be the next Moses, the next Abraham, the next David, and the next Mary, and on and on and on we go. A lot of that is motivational hype. A lot of that we borrowed from psychology. You say, why do you say that? Because it's man-centered. It's you-centered instead of God-centered. It's not about you. It's about bringing in the kingdom of God. This plan that God has for your life, this wonderful plan that God has for your life is sometimes rubbed a little raw when you compare it to some passages in the Word of God. You say, what do you mean? Well, let's look at this passage here, for example, in Hebrews chapter 11. And others experienced mockings and scourgings Yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated. How do you how do you Put that together with God's great plan, wonderful plan for your life that these people were experiencing. How do you measure that up? Folks, you know, Noah, when he built the ark, he didn't say, I think I'm going to go build an ark and do something great for God. No, no, no, no, no, no. God came to Noah and God put his hand on Noah and told Noah, this is what I want you to do. Abraham was on the Ur of Chaldees. He was wandering around in Ur of Chaldees. And you think he said, well, I think I go to the Palestinian lands and I'm going to start a nation there and do something great for God. That's not what Abraham did. God came to Abraham and said, look, this is what I want you to do. Moses was wandering out on the backside of the desert. Moses said, hey, look, I'm going to do something wonderful for God. God's got a great plan for my life. I think I'm going to go down to Egypt. I think I'm going to get those Israelites out of Egyptian bodies. Do you think he did it? No, he didn't do that. God came to Moses and said, this is what I want you to do. David was a shepherd boy. David was pasturing sheep out of the middle of nowhere. And God calls him to be the king of Israel. You think David was thinking to himself, I'm gonna go do something wonderful. I'm gonna do something big. I'm gonna go out here and be the king of Israel. You think he said that? No way. God chose him and God put him in that position. You know what God was doing? He was making them part of the bigger plan. to bring his kingdom in. Noah, Abraham, David, they were part of God's plan, bigger plan, to bring in the Messiah and set up the nation of Israel as his people. I am not saying that God does not have a plan for your life, but I am saying that in order for God's plan for your life to make sense and to give you meaning and purpose, you have to understand that you're living for something bigger than yourself. You are living for something bigger than yourself. You are part of God bringing in the kingdom to this world. That's the plan that God has for you. And that plan is what gives your life a higher meaning and a higher purpose on a day-to-day basis. It's making yourself conscious that you are living, bringing in the kingdom that makes you shift your focus off of yourself, off of your wants, off of your needs, and off of your problems, and off of your sufferings, and reorient yourself to the kingdom of God. When we were reading just a minute ago in Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 36 and 37, and we were reading about all that those people went through, what do you think was going through their minds? Their minds were off of themselves because their minds were on something greater, like bringing in the kingdom of God. That's what made them able to do what they did and suffer like they suffered. There's a part, this really is what blew Nebuchadnezzar's mind. When Daniel began to explain to him the meaning of the statue, all of a sudden, King Nebuchadnezzar realized that he was just a cog in the plan of God. Now, he didn't put it in those terms, but he did realize that, wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's something bigger than me going on here. Look at verse 34. Look at verse 34. You continued looking until the stone was cut out without hands. And it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and it 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 was struck the statue became a great mountain, and it filled the earth. In order for you to appreciate what's going on here in these verses, once again, I want to go back again to verse 31. Verse 31, and see how it all began. You, O king, were looking, and behold, there was a single great statue, that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome. All right, pick up what's going on here. Nebuchadnezzar is looking at this statue. And it is incredibly big. It was huge. It was massive. It was intimidating. It was ablaze with brilliance and splendor, the Bible says. As a matter of fact, Nebuchadnezzar really could not describe what he was looking at. He simply says it was awesome in its appearance, but great fear in Nebuchadnezzar's heart. And then out of nowhere, the Bible says, there comes a stone. And when the stone comes, it absolutely obliterates the statue. Boom, just like that. Let me put this in context. Just about everybody in this room can remember the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9-11, right? You saw the TV images, right? You were sitting there, it was being broadcast all over the world, and everybody was watching those towers as the planes flew into them. And you continued to watch and watch. Then all of a sudden, the unexpected happened. Those towers, right before your very eyes, came crashing down. And you watched it. And as you watched those towers literally crumble, crash to the ground, You had no words to describe what you saw. You probably had a series of emotions like bewilderment, lack of understanding. What's going on? Fear. Just the awesomeness of what you were watching as it was being destroyed before your very eyes was incredible. You knew something terrible had just happened and you had witnessed it. This is Nebuchadnezzar. It's not a plane flying into the statue, but it's a rock. And he's watching before his very eyes as all the kingdoms of the world are demolished. And he is overwhelmed by their destruction. And the Bible says the destruction was so complete that the wind would blow it away like chaff, so that there would be absolutely nothing left, not even a speck of dust to identify its existence. It was all gone. Period. You say, well, what brought about that destruction now? A rock. Why did the rock destroy, crush, annihilate, totally obliterate all these kingdoms? Let me tell you why. Because all of those kingdoms had fulfilled the will of God. God had done with those kingdoms what God would have done. And God is now through with all of those kingdoms because they're all headed toward one focal point. One focal point. Which brings us to verse 44. So it says in verse 44 again, In the days of those kings, what kings? The kings in verse 43, 42 and 43. It says in verse 42, 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, in that you saw the iron mixed with the common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of man, but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery in those days, those kings. What kings? The ten-toe kings. The ten-toe kings. Keep it in context now of what's going on here. Now, there's some, obviously, any time you get into prophecy, there's going to be some difference of opinion, right? And you'll notice in the passage of Scripture that you're looking at in those verses there where it describes the toes, you will notice that the word ten it's not there. No place in there does it say anything about 10 toes, right? The 10, the number 10 is not there, but the toes are there. We understand that. So we have to infer clearly that we're talking about is 10 toes, right? Because that's normal. That's average. And some people would argue with you and go, well, since the number 10 is not there, it's still referring to the original kingdom of Rome. Maybe so. Maybe so. I personally do not believe that. And the reason I do not believe that is because it says in verse 44, in the days of those kings, plural, not in the days of the king of Rome, but in the kings of the Roman Empire. Those kings that make up the future Roman Empire as described back in verses 44 and 43 as the feet and the toes of the statue. There will be an empire when Jesus Christ comes back to set up His kingdom that will consist and He will destroy those empires. When Jesus comes back, there's only going to be one kingdom, ultimately, not a multitude of kingdoms. It's Jesus, it's King. It says in verse 44, look at verse 44, that God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. I believe this refers to the future kingdom that Daniel previously talked about in verse 35, where it says in verse 35, but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. The words mountain and kingdom are interchangeable. The word mountain is a Hebrew metaphor for kingdom and in the mind of the Jews and mind of the ancient people here when you talk about kingdoms they were pictures of power and majesty and splendor and authority and magnificence and they attributed that to kingdoms. The stone of course is a metaphor for Jesus Christ. A stone pictures all kinds of things depending upon the particular context, but in this particular context, it obviously is a stone of destruction and demolition and death. When Jesus Christ comes back to set up his kingdom, he's going to destroy every earthly kingdom on the face of the earth, and he's going to set up his own kingdom. This isn't the kind Jesus that people like to talk about. They want the fuzzy Jesus, they want the Jesus that's gushy, and they want the soft Jesus, and the loving Jesus, and the gentle Jesus, and the little lamb that followed Mary everywhere she went. No, this is the Jesus who is a king, who obliterates and destroys, who hates those who do not follow him. We want the Jesus who feels everything we feel, and we want the Jesus who coddles us. Let me tell you something about Jesus. He hates not being worshipped. Jesus hates not being worshipped. You say, that's harsh. No, that's reality. Because He deserves worship. And while Jesus is loving, and Jesus is kind, and Jesus is gracious, and He'll save your soul, and He will forgive you of your sins, there's no doubt about that. Because he is your shepherd, he loves his sheep, and he loves you with a treat, a tremendous deep love. But I'm telling you, beloved, he is our king. He is the only king. He is the sovereign king, and he has no rivals, and he will not have any rivals. He will not. The Bible says this, and this is a principle, but it's laid down, I think, across all ages. No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. He says your allegiance cannot be divided. There's only one God. There's only one King. I realize it's a practical admonition, but it's also prophetic. You cannot have two masters. And when Jesus Christ comes back to set up his kingdom, all other kingdoms will be annihilated, and the whole world will be under his reign and under his rule. Jesus gives a little more detail, speaking through John in Revelation 20. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss And a great chain was in his hand, and he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who has called the devil and Satan and bound him for a thousand years. Yes. Even though God has raised up each and every one of those empires that was shown to Nebuchadnezzar, none of them were considered to be godly. As a matter of fact, most of them were patently evil kingdoms. And that is because God gave those kingdoms over into the realm of the devil, Satan himself. But the day is coming when Satan is going to be chained up, He's going to be locked up. He's going to be thrown into a pit. His influence is going to be removed. And this world is going to be under the direct influence and rule of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the plan of God. He's going to rule this world for a thousand years. It's going to happen. You say, wait a minute, are you sure this is going to happen? Are you sure what you're reading here is something that I can build my life on, that this is actually going to happen? Notice what it says in verse 45. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future, So the dream is true, and its interpretation is trustworthy. Yeah, I'm positive this is going to happen. I am absolutely sure this is going to happen. This is not pie in the sky promise. Jesus is going to come back in judgment, and he's going to destroy the godness, and he's going to destroy evil, wicked men. I believe that God has a special place in hell that burns a little hotter for all the evil leaders of this world who have oppressed and killed and murdered and destroyed lives of innocent people. Their judgment's going to be hotter. On Judgment Day, there's not going to be one unsolved case. Every evil thing that men have done will be revealed and it will be punished in eternity. Justice is going to be carried out. Righteousness will be the theme of the Kingdom of God. Never again, never again will God's people be tormented, tortured, or oppressed. Never again. ever again. Secondly, you are living for a kingdom that is bigger than yourself. Because the apostles of Jesus Christ believed so firmly, you remember how the apostles responded to the idea of the kingdom of God coming? They finally got to the place where they said, yeah, we really believe that Jesus Christ is going to bring a kingdom in. And when they finally got to that place, they lost all of their rights. They lost sight of the way people treated them. They lost sight of how they talked to them. They didn't care whether they were slighted. They didn't care whether they were called names. They didn't care whether they were laughed at. It didn't matter. Because they had their eyes on something bigger than themselves. The kingdom, the coming kingdom of God. You remember what the Bible says about Abraham? The Bible says in Hebrews 11, verse 10, he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Abraham moved because he was looking for a bigger kingdom, the kingdom of God, a city not built by the hands of men. This is not all there is to life. Thirdly, living for the kingdom of God really does give you meaning and purpose for getting up tomorrow morning. Say, well, can you be more definitive of God's purpose for my life and meaning? Let me be a little more definitive what that means when you get up tomorrow morning and living for the kingdom of God. This is what Jesus said. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. It's living for a kingdom. That's what it means to live. And then Jesus went on to say this, and the second is likened to it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's the essence of kingdom living. So you gotta ask yourself, what are you living for? What are you really, really living for? What are you really going to get up tomorrow morning and live for? What's gonna be your real meaning, what's gonna be your real purpose when you get out of bed tomorrow morning? What's it gonna be? I want to remind you that one day, that if you're living outside the kingdom of God, you will perish. Just as surely as those kingdoms fell, you're going to fall outside of Jesus Christ. you will have nothing in the end. And just like the stone came and totally obliterated these kingdoms, totally destroyed them, as though they didn't even exist, they had nothing. That's going to be your life when you die without Jesus Christ. You'll have nothing. Even the Bible says this about Jesus. Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. The joy set before Him endured the cross. What is the joy? Being in the presence of the Father in the kingdom. Despising the shame, he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. The throne of God is where he sat down. Jesus endured the cross for you. He died for your sins so that you would not have to face God's judgment. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you the truth, that just as surely As the Babylonian kingdom, the Persian kingdom, the Grecian kingdom, and the Roman kingdom have come and gone, you can't escape the judgment of God either, except through Jesus Christ, His death on the cross. You can escape Judgment Day only if you repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus. Trust Him as your personal Savior. I'm going to ask R.D. to come. He's going to help us with our invitation to him this morning. God's justice will not allow you to get off scot-free. His justice is pining, pining to be absolved. And it is absolved through Christ. For the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Let's stand together as we prepare for the invitation this morning.