God, we thank you that you have given to us a time to set aside in our life, where we come together and we worship you and we honor you. We honor you with our thoughts, we honor you with our words, we honor you with our actions. And so may this day bring glory and honor to you, for it's in Christ's name we ask it. Amen. All right, if you all want to go this direction, with Ms. Anna and Ms. Ray. This morning, I'd like to invite you to turn with me to the book of Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 21. You know, each, I guess probably a couple times a week, I'll get an email from a fellowship of Southern Baptist pastors called Nine Marks Ministry. And so they will make an argument in there that why you should preach through the book of Zechariah, or why you should preach through the book of Job, or why you should preach through Ecclesiastes. All of scripture is profitable. All of it. 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 and 17 says it's profitable for us. It's to be for our instruction. It's for encouragement. It's for our rebuke. It's to build us up so that we can be thoroughly furnished to do every good work. So every place in scripture, every verse, every chapter, every book has a purpose that God has designed for us. And when we come to chapter 21, and I will read it in a moment, but when we come, there are three sections to this. Verse one begins, and it may be translated as a burden, But a Massah is something that's heavy and it's carried. It's not an easy, happy, joy-joy kind of a message. It's something that comes with great weight. It's something that's burdensome, something that's hard. And so it begins with a Massah, with this burden, with this heavy oracle or message against the desert sea. And then we come down to verse 11 and we find another one, a second one, and it's a Massah, a heavy burden that comes against the land of Dumas. And then verse 13, we find the burden then is directed towards Arabia. So beginning in verse 1, we read, the burden or the Massah against the desert sea. Whirlwinds are coming from the south and they are turning. From the desert it comes unto a land that is feared. This is a severe vision which is reported to me. The one that plunders, plunders, and the one that destroys, destroys. Go up, O Elam, and lay siege, O Media. and all who sigh or groan shall come to an end. Therefore, my loins are filled with anguish, and I am seized with pains, and pains like that of childbirth. And I am bowed so low that I cannot hear, and I'm dismayed so that I cannot see. My heart, it rules within me, and horror terrifies me. It's like the evening breeze that comes and it takes my affections and it turns it into trembling. And so it is that the table is prepared before me, the rug has been spread and it's for eating and drinking. Rise up, O princess, and oil your shields, for thus saith Adonai my God. Go, O watchman, and take your stand, and what you see report. I see one who's riding, a pair of horsemen. One's riding up on a donkey, the other's riding up on a camel. Listen intently, exceedingly intently. The lion is roaring, and it's roaring against the watchman, oh Lord. I'm standing continually, daily I am at my post. I am stationed, and it's all night long. And behold, this one that's riding, he comes, a pair of horsemen. And he answered me and he said, fallen, fallen is Babylon and all the images of his God shall be shattered upon the earth, my threshold and my son of winnowing. And when I heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, it was reported unto me, the burden that comes to Duma. My God has called out from Shire, a watchman, what of the night? A watchman, what of the night? And the watchman answered, the morning's coming, but also the night. And so if you inquire, inquire, go, return, and come. The burden of Arabia, in the thicket of Arabia, they will lodge the caravans from the down. and they will meet the thirsty, who bringing out to them water, and those who dwell in Timah, they will bring his bread to meet him for the fugitive. Those who have fled from the mouth of the sword, from the mouth of the sword which has been drawn, and from the bow which had been bent, and from the mouth of the heavy battle. For thus saith the Lord Adonai, Within a year, as a hired man measures a year, it shall come to an end, all of the glory of Kedar, a remnant from the number of the mighty bowmen. As the sons of Kedar, they will be few, for the Lord God of Israel has spoken. This message is meant to be heard with feeling and with fervor. And for this reason, by the repetition, by repeating it, he's wanting them to catch their attention. Now, I'm 64 years old, and in my lifetime, there has never been a time that there either wasn't a war or the threat of a war. Are there any threats of war today? Yes, there are, aren't there? Some guy in North Korea has bombs and he likes to send them off. Some fellow over in Persia, or Iran, likes to flex his muscle as well. But not just from nations, but it seems that we find ourselves more threatened from insurgent armies that, as Max Boot calls them, the invisible armies, ones we don't see, the ones that just show up and blow a bomb up, blow up a car, blow up a building. So we live with the threat of war, do we not? And it reminds me, and I knew I brought this for a reason, I couldn't remember why. It reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24. And as he is walking past the temple with his disciples and they are looking at the complex and they're so amazed with all that they see and the beauty of it. And so they ask him, they said, tell us what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age of verse 3 of Matthew 24. And so he tells them in verse 4 down through verse 8. Then Jesus replied to them, watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name saying, I am the Messiah. And they will come and deceive many. You're going to hear of wars and rumors of war. See that you're not alarmed because these things must take place. But the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines and earthquakes in various places and all these events. or the beginning of birth pains, it kind of sounds a little bit like the feelings and the emotions that I.J. had just described, does it not? So here's a nation, Babylon, and actually we're not just talking about the nation of Babylon, we're talking about Assyria and Babylon. When we think about nations in the Old Testament and the period that the Old Testament reign was written under, usually when we think about kingdoms, it's not a kingdom like we would expect, like Iran or North Korea. What you have is you have city-states where there's a king, there's a ruler in each of them. When you think about the Philistines, well you have Ashkelon that would have a king over Ashkelon. You have Gaza, which would have its own king. Each of these cities the city states would be a coalition and so they were always battling among themselves whether it was in Babylon or Asher they were always battling among themselves as who's going to be the one that's on top who's going to be the king over all of them and they required for them to have coalition in chapter 7 we found that That israel to the north had joined in a coalition with syria to come and try to force jerusalem And judah in the south to go in coalition against the assyrians there was always the threat of war and trying to get people trying to buy people or to To conquer people so that their people then would be on your side whenever the battle came And god was always telling his people trust in me trust in the lord Don't go down to Egypt and don't go to Assyria. Don't go someplace else. Don't look for your help somewhere else. Trust in the Lord. Is there a lesson in that for us? Is there a lesson in your life for us to learn from this? Where should we seek our refuge? Where should we seek our help? Where should we seek our security? Where should we seek our health? Where should we seek our livelihood? Where should we seek everything? Should it not begin and end with the Lord? Should we look to the Lord rather than to agencies or to governments or to programs or organizations? They may have a place, but the fact is is that we have to trust in the Lord. The Lord knows what we have need of before we ever ask it, does he not? And those that may seem to be dominant and always in power and always seem to be in the place of rule and making decisions for us that we have not yet decided for ourselves, we still trust in the Lord because our Lord is our strength, our Lord is our God, our Lord is our shelter and refuge. So he describes those that have been in coalition with Babylon for millennium. have turned against them, and God uses their very security, uses their very defense, their very trust, as a means in talionic justice to turn the law of the claw. What they have sown, they're going to reap. And that's not just an Old Testament concept, the law of the claw. Whatsoever a man sow, that shall he reap. We find that Paul says that in Galatians chapter 6. That if you sow to the wind, you will reap, as Amos says, what? If you sow to the wind, you're going to reap the whirlwind. If you don't read your Bible, at least watch old Westerns. I mean, if you watch something like Rawhide or something like that, you probably have heard that quoted sometime or another, right? For all of us old folks. But you ought to read your Old Testament. You ought to read the prophets. You ought to read these things, because they remind us of much. And so the desert, those that are to the east of Arabia, they're going to come, and it describes it as a scorching wind. I was watching on the internet, I guess it was Friday, and they showed this big sand dust cloud that was coming from the Sahara Desert. And it was coming all the way across the ocean, and it had already made its way to the Antilles Islands. And it's going to make its way, if it hadn't gotten here yet, it's going to make its way through the United States this week. Big dust cloud, all of a sudden the sky's gonna change its colors, and we're going to live with the effects, I think I'm already living with the effects, all the sinus and everything that comes with it, but we're going to deal with the effects of that, this huge dust storm. And so here you find that the Babylonians are told that God from the south, from the desert, he is turning the winds, and the winds are turning against them. They're not favorable winds, they're not winds that are going to be, it's kind of like Paul on his journey when he's being taken to Rome to stand before Caesar. And they leave the island, and he said, no, don't leave, this is a good seaport for us to stay in through the winter. And they had favorable winds that were blowing out from Europe and were coming down, and there were favorable winds, and they said, no, we can set off, we can go now. And he says, no, it will be to your peril, you'll lose everything. You will lose both life and you'll lose all your property. They would not listen, and all of a sudden, the winds turned against them. And that's the picture here, that what they thought was theirs, what they thought was their strength, what they thought was their confidence, turned against them. And it's the very thing that swept against them, and it was just like the desert winds that come and destroy everything. You see, Babylon was known It was known as the beauty of the sea. And yet, Isaiah is finding God giving a taunt to Babylon, because she who is the beauty of the sea, who had a coastal beaches, is going to be the desert of the sea. They would get that. We may not. We may read it, and it'd just zoom right over our head. But the picture is, it's that that was beautiful. I remember back when I was in high school, that we used to get to see old Texaco and Gulf Oil, they would put together these movies. You can't even get them now because they're copyrighted and belong to them. But they showed in the Sahara Desert, and they showed how it was moving. At the time, it was moving five miles a year. And they show up the edge of the desert, and you'd have these beautiful trees that are full of lush and life, and you'd find grass, and you'd find livestock, and they would be living there. And the next year, you'd see the same tree, and it was dead. There were no leaves on it, there was no grass, and there was no livestock. Things that were there were dead. And that's what we find the picture here. That here, it seemed like they had everything. And yet they did not trust God. They did not lean upon the Lord. Was it not Jonah who had gone to them and called them to repentance and faith in the God of Israel? And God did stay their judgment. For a hundred years he did. Nothing happened to them for a hundred years. And God forestalled his judgment upon them because there were children and cattle. Read the last chapter and the last paragraph of the book of Jonah. But by the time we get to the book of Nahum, the hundred years has passed, and God comes in full judgment just as a picture here in chapter 21. The application is that with our, and I'm not speaking to us as a nation, I'm talking to us as individuals, that the things we think we can hide, the things that we think are secure, the things that we think that nobody sees, don't fool yourself. Don't kid yourself into believing that you're secure because nobody knows. Why? Because our God sees everything. In fact, it would be an embarrassment to all of us if we knew how well it is seen. Can you imagine? I mean, now I grew up going to Arkansas and we had an outhouse and most of the time my brother and I just went to the bushes. And mom and dad had planted a little silver maple tree out in the front yard. The thing wasn't any taller than this, and about as big around as my thumb. And my brother's four or five years old. And he goes out in the front yard, which has a main road on it. I mean, you've got traffic constantly going back and forth on that thing. And he gets on the other side, away from the house, to use the bathroom. But everybody driving down the road seeing my brother behind that silver maple tree, because there's nothing hiding him. And he thought that, you know, mom can't see me, I'm good. But everybody driving down the road seeing him, and yet it's 1 Peter 1 that says the angels are stooping, looking into so great a salvation. You think you're not seen? You think I'm not seen? Do I think I'm not seen? The fact is, is that we are accountable. Every thought, every word, every action, we are before the Lord. And Babylon thought that they were secure, and then one night they fell, one night. It's an amazing thing. They had a wall, they were secure behind the wall, but Daniel tells us that the Persians came in on one night, they diverted the river that ran through the city, and they had gates and they had bars, and they diverted it to a lake. And when the water had receded, they walked right into the city while everybody was drunk and slept. One night. And that's how he ends. That all of this is going to happen. All three of these nations are going to fall. And when are they going to fall? In one year, as he describes it, in one year as a hired servant measures the year of his hard labor. One year that God would accomplish this. Now I'd like you to at least take encouragement in this. When this message of Isaiah came, there was a year for them to prepare themselves. They were given a window. They were given a time. How many of us know what our window is? Our window of opportunity is for us to get our lives right before the Lord. How many of us have that window? We know what the time is. That on February the 4th of 2022 that I'm going to depart this life. How many of us have that? Nobody. And they're told they've got a year, a year to get ready. What do you do if you've got a year? That I know that at the end of the year that this is it and I'm going to stand before God. What do I do? Do I waste six months? You know, I know when it's going to come. It's going to come at the end of the year. I can mess around for the first 10 months. I got two months to get it right. And you know, hey, I'm pretty good. I can probably clean it all up in one month. And so I just keep going on because I know I'm not held accountable for this time. They did not fret, they did not worry. Why? Because they were a nation at the end of verse one, they were the land which brought terror and fear to everyone. I've got a book called pictures of the, an ancient Near Eastern pictures that associate with the Old Testament. And to see reliefs which are carvings and engravings either on brick and on building or on stone. and to show how the Babylonians and how the Assyrians went in and they laid siege to a city and they came in and they devastated it and all that would go on. Pictures of horror, they brought fear, they brought terror. And when they came to one city and the governor, the king, or the commander, the ruler, whoever it may be, did not surrender, they would impel him with a pole and stick him like a shish kebab outside the city for the birds to eat his flesh. What do you think the guy down the road was going to do? If it's anything like us, where cities are within a day's travel, or used to be in a day's travel, 20 miles in most places in the US, but walking much closer. What do you think the guy that's down the road that gets the message, hey, the Assyrians and Babylonians have just conquered, and you wouldn't believe what they did to George. What do you think Fred's gonna do? He's run to the desert, because he doesn't want to be the guy that they stick on a pole outside the city wall. He wants to flee. He wants to get away. But he doesn't, because they don't leave them. And so he describes his vision, he says it's a severe, it's a harsh vision, which was reported to me. You remember when Joseph met his brothers in the book of Genesis? His brothers come down for food, and he brings them in, and he puts their money back in the mouth of their, back in the mouth of their bag, and he lets them get off a day's journey, and they're in an oasis, and he comes, and they find the money in the bag, and they bring them all back, and it says that his words were harsh to them. It's the same word. These words were hard to them. He had every right. He could have disposed of them. He could have killed them. He could have sold them. He could have given them into slavery. He could have done anything to them. And his words to them at that time were harsh. It's used when Eve was told that her labor, when she would bear children, that it would be harsh. They'd come in great pain. They'd come in great anguish. And that's the same picture, the same word. This vision. When we look at the demise, when someone's preaching of hell or they're preaching of the final judgment, there should never be a glee, there should never be a grin, there should never be joy in their heart. Boy, they're gonna get it. Should never come that away. In fact, we find that Isaiah is drawn right into this judgment, right into this picture, and he feels it to the bone. Daniel had the same experience. In fact, he was sick. He was sick because of the vision that God gave to him. And he looks and he says, so let the one who plunders go on plundering, the one who destroys go on plundering, go on destroying. It's a picture that he gave earlier back in chapter six. He's gonna preach to people who have ears to hear but won't hear and eyes to see but they won't see, why? Because if they did, they would turn and God would heal them. And so those who sin, let them go on sinning. Let them keep piling it up. You know, it's an amazing thing. If I know that there's a day of accounting, if there's a day that I'm going to have to lay the records straight, you would think I'd be laying them straight now, wouldn't you? Wouldn't we? But it seems that there's a dullness, and that we just keep going on doing what we have always done. And both of these, kind of like the riddle that was given by Samson when he says, speaking of the lion that he had killed with his bare hands, he says, from out of the eater came something sweet, from out of, yeah, from out of the eater came something sweet, from out of the mouth came something to eat. It's the same kind of a riddle, same kind of a pattern. Those who are plundering, plundering. Those who are destroying, destroying. And it says that those that have been their allies, who have been in their coalition, are commanded to rise up and lay siege against them. So from their friends, from their enemies, and those who sigh will come to their end. Listen to the description. He said, I'm filled up. I'm filled up. And it says though, even into the depth of my body, I'm feeling the anguish. I'm feeling the pains. It seized me all over. You know how you feel before you've gone to the doctor and you've got the flu? You start feeling warm, you start feeling sick, you start running fever, and the fever seems to go right to your joints, every one of them. It's not like it's just in your, it just seems to get right to your joints, and you just kinda, and that's the picture he's giving here. He says, they seized me, I'm like a woman that's going through childbirth, and the pain's so bad, I bowed so low, I can't even hear. I'm not hearing what's being said around me because the pain is so severe. And I'm so dismayed about what it is, I can't even think to see. I can't reason, I can't discern. I can't see what's going on. My heart, it's upside down. And I'm horrified at what I'm seeing. Now, we just read that, and I didn't see anguish on anybody's face. Did you? Did you have it? But if that was said to us, If someone had locked the door and they came in, like my friend from down in Haiti, when Aristide came to his father's church, and they locked the door and they came in with guns, and they drug him out, and they told the congregation, they said, the church is shutting down today. It's a Baptist church down in Haiti. And so Paul, he's there, he's just a child. They take his dad out in front of the church, they lock the church. And they take a sledgehammer, and they put his dad on his knees on the ground, and then they bust his head open. And they think he's dead, but he didn't die. He lived. The church hid him away. They hid him away for a while. And he did recover, but he had, obviously, he'd have effects from that, wouldn't he? What do you think the congregation did after that? You think they cut the boat off the door, and they went back to meeting again the next Sunday? You think that's what they did? That church was abandoned, the building was. They met in the bush, they met in the woods, they met out away because fear had seized them. And do you think any of them ever got over the idea of seeing their pastor's head bashed open? Do you think it ever, at least, well, be like some? Well, at least it wasn't me. It could be, though. It could be. And the fact of the matter is, why do we even say this? Why even bring this up? Because it's in scripture. And it tells us, as he's telling me, he says, my affections, they're turned up. I don't know how to deal with this. On the third Saturdays of the month, we tried to go to Houston to an abortion clinic. My wife won't let me, and kids won't let me go any more than that. How come? because just like Isaiah, you're sick when you leave. You're sick when you plaid with young ladies not to do this, when you plaid with their boyfriends not to go forward with this, and they go in, or when the nurse leads them out because they're having to take one to the hospital with complications, and you say, but the blood of the baby is on your hands, and she starts licking her hands. If you can't get sick over that, you can't get sick over anything. You can't get sick over anything. Do we have problems? Do we have problems? Yes or no? We have horrible problems. And we're taunted if we even say anything. If we rise up to raise our voice, we're taunted or threatened. And the reality is, as he said, that this, everything, it's upside down. I tremble. I don't know how to deal with this. And those that have the voice and those that have the opportunity to speak are the only ones given that opportunity. So they prepare themselves. They're completely oblivious. It's like the night in Daniel chapter five when Belshazzar is sitting there drinking from the cups that came from the house of the Lord, and he sees a hand appear, and it says, mene, mene tekel parsin. They knew what the words meant, but they didn't know what the saying meant. They didn't know what it meant. They knew Wade weighed, measured, and found wanting, but they didn't know what that meant in connection to them. They understood the words, they just didn't know what it meant in regard to them. And so it is that they hear this, and they go on just like life normally is. They spread the table, they put out the rug, they're ready for their eating and drinking. But Isaiah says, stand up, you princes, and oil your shields. What's that? What is this? Oil your shields. You know, there's some that would go out and say, we need shields and we need to oil our shields. What is that? They would oil the shields so that if an arrow hit the shield, it would skid off. It's kind of like greasing the railroad tracks where there's an incline so that the train, when it came, the old locomotives, they'd hit that grease and their wheels would just spin. And they got no traction, then they slide back down, they couldn't get up the hill. That has been done. And so they greased the shield so when the sword hit it, it would reflect off of it because it was slick, it would slide off of it. So prepare for battles, the conversation that he's having. And he says, this is from my God. And so what's God say? There's a watchman on the wall. Jeremiah was told he was a watchman too. He says, so watchman, you stand and you report what you see. Watch when you stand. You know, I think one of the hardest things about being a preacher is that you've got to tell the truth. You think that'd be the easiest thing, don't you? The easiest thing to do would be tell the truth. No, it's not. Because some people need to hear some very hard things, and you've got to tell them the truth. And one, they don't want to hear it, and they're not going to receive it well when they do hear it, but they've got to hear it, just like I have to hear it, and you have to hear it. And it's one of the hardest things you have to do, is to sit and say, This has come because of your own behavior. This has come because of your own action. That's a tough thing to have to do, but what you see, you stand, you see, you report. So what's he seeing? He's seeing a pair of horsemen. He sees the two nations coming. He's seeing the two that are coming against them, and they're riding against them, some on donkeys and some riding on camels, and they're coming from the desert. And he says, so listen attentively, pay attention, pay great attention, listen. Why? Because what's he going to hear? He hears a lion. And the lion is not the nations that are coming. There's another lion and he roars. We read in the book of Amos that our God has roared from Zion. Our God comes like a lion. In fact, Jesus Christ is called what? The what of the tribe of Judah. The what? The lion. You know, I don't know about you, but I don't like being around lions or tigers or bears. I don't like being around them. I remember a few years ago, they had some small lions over here at the Port Natures Park. I only live a couple blocks down from that. And so they had this one fence. I mean, just one little measly fence, and they got like four juvenile lions in there. You know what? A juvenile lion can rip you to shreds very easily. They weren't sedated. I saw them down there and I told the kids, we're not going to the park. Why not? Because the only thing I'm afraid of is something that can eat me. Literally, I don't want to get eaten. You can hit me, you can bite me, you can kick me, you can shoot me, but don't eat me. I don't want to be eaten. Not alive anyway. These are not things. God's roaring. God's coming like a roaring lion. Isn't there a song we sing like that? Are gods coming like a roaring lion? That's what I hear. I hear God roaring. And he's coming as a lion. You know, when we were living in Dallas area, we used to love to go to Fort Worth Zoo. We never went to, hardly went to Dallas Zoo. I didn't like it near as much as Fort Worth. But they had a tiger. They had a tiger and they had a big, you know, it was kind of in its setting. So they had this cliff and here's the tiger. And they had two tall fences, I mean huge fences, and there was a space in between them. And the guy that would feed the tiger walked in between the two things and he would throw the meat in. And so this tiger's sitting up there on the top, and here's a busy day, and kids and people are all standing along the fence, and they're watching this guy come in to feed the tiger, and when he throws the meat into the cage, in seconds, that tiger was off the wall, down to the fence, had his arm underneath the fence, and was dragging this guy underneath the fence with one arm because he didn't want the steak. And they had to put the tiger down. I'm just telling you, this ought to — we ought to have the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. If we call Father the one who judges without impart — or without partiality, should we not live out the remainder of our days in phobia? And I don't mean hiding behind the door, but we need to give an awesome and great respect to our God, who is a mighty God, who comes as a roaring lion, a God that's not tame, a God that we will give an accounting to. I shouldn't enter into judgment thinking that it's just going to be an awards banquet. And I may not get the first place. I may get a little, whatever the thing is, a little green or whatever color they give you for participation. I'm not getting that. I'm gonna stand before Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 says, and I've gotta give an account, and you've gotta give an account. I not only have to give an account for me, I've gotta give an account for you. I have to account for every one of you. It's a hard place to be to look at your lives and to see, and if you're complacent about your walk with Christ, to have to give an account for that. And if you love the Lord, then it'd be easy. And if you wander from the Lord, I've got to try to bring you back and try to plead with you to come. Why? Because I not only had to stand before God for me, and that's tough enough, but I had to stand before God for you, and you'll stand before God as well. I read, in fact, Wednesday night, I showed some of them. Someone sent me from Facebook, they sent me a sign and it was Tarrant Baptist Church up near Fort Worth. And the sign says this, there are consequences for sin and God is going to punish, but they didn't put a period. They said, God is going to punish Pastor Larry. Pastor Larry was underneath there and they had the church times. God's going to punish Pastor Larry. You know what? There's a sense that that's true. God's gonna hold us accountable. He comes like a lion. And it's gonna come quickly. Like he says, it's gonna come within a year. A year of this announcement, and that's exactly what happened. In history, it's exactly what happened. All three of these places, places that were oases in the desert, and that's what we find in the other two. The Duma was a place, it was a place of refuge, it was a place of refreshment, Babylon's fallen, and that's going to be announced again, isn't it? Revelation chapter 18, verse 2, we find that that's the announcement, isn't it? Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. It's announced here, and it'll be announced again that there is a fall, and there's a place of winnowing, and there's a place of threshing where it will all be done. And he tells in verse 11, the watchman says, they asked the question, how was the night? Watchman, how was it at night? And the watchman says, well, the morning has come. And morning in the sense, symbolically is that we've been relieved, that the danger this evening is gone, and it looks like it's gonna be safe. Well, if it's safe, then everything's secure, let's not worry about it, right? Because the danger's passed, morning's come. But the watchman says, but also the night comes. so that their reprieve is only short, it's only short-lived. And we may think for a moment that we get away with something, that we didn't get caught now, that we've gotten by. And we may have, the morning may have come, and we've walked away and we're unscathed, but the night's coming. And the night's coming, he says, so go, leave, but come back. Come again, because the danger's not gone. And what you feared and what you dreaded isn't gone away. I'd like to encourage you in this sense, that there is an escape. It's not all, it's not even many. In fact, he describes it in verse 17, he says, a remnant from the mighty bowmen, the guys who have the bows, only a remnant will be escaped from the sons of Kedar, only a few. A few will be rescued, but when they are rescued, that there'll be a place that God provides in the thicket, a place to, in verse 13, a place for the caravans where they have come to lodge, a place where the thirsty can get refreshment, can get drink, a place where the fugitive is met with bread. God does provide. And in the midst of the judgment that comes upon men and upon the world, God has provided for us a place of refreshment. So that by the time we get to chapter 55, we have the invitation. Come buy and eat without money, without cost. Come buy and eat. Come drink without cost. Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread? The invitation is to us now, not tomorrow. The invitation is to us today. We don't know what the year is. We don't know when the year of the higher man is going to come to its completion. We don't know when the year is going to come, like for Babylon. Babylon the Great wasn't Babylon the Great after its Great Fall, nor will it be in the future. The reality is, is one day every one of us have to give an account of our life before God. And when we give an account, it's not going to be as though we stand before a Sunday school teacher, before our class, and they say, well, you're a good boy, you're a good girl. Well, you kind of backed it up, you don't get a star today. You know, we got the little star things, the gold stars on the thing, and all of us wanted them, but I didn't get very many. So I was proud of the ones I did get. You know, it's not going to be like that. We will stand before God, and it will be a day of great dread. But we can stand before God without any dread at all. When we stand in Jesus Christ, we stand complete. All of our sins forgiven, every one of them. Not one to be brought back up. That we come away with a clean sweat. And when we stand, and even though the accusation comes, Zechariah chapter three, when Satan stands there and makes all these accusations against us, and they're true, he doesn't have to lie, he knows this pretty fully, he's seen everything we've done, and he makes all the accusations, God's gonna take our dirty clothes and take them off, and he's gonna put on a clean stately robe, and we will be anointed as his priests and kings forever, because of Jesus Christ our Lord. So there's two ways to face this, in and of ourself, or standing in Jesus Christ. So we're gonna stand and have our invitation. If you don't know Jesus Christ, even as Harold has already invited, come. Today's the day of salvation, come. And if today's the day for you to come and find yourself in fellowship and united with this church, we invite you, come. The door's open, come. Come be part of the fellowship, come grow in Christ. And if there's things in your life that you need to deal with, then this is as good a time, it won't get any better than now, to deal with the issues that God's wanting you to deal with. But whatever it may be, as the music plays, you come.