So hopefully tonight the message that God's given me, that I feel like He's put on my heart, it'll not only teach you some things about prophecy that I can honestly say I don't think I've ever heard anybody teach me. It's not like it's something that people are afraid to teach, they just don't talk about it. And it's also something that will hopefully give you some practical applications in your life as well as we go forward. So Zephaniah chapter number 3, verse number 9. It says, then will I turn to the people a pure language that they may call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering. Now, in these two verses, you find a thought that I'm going to be calling a pure language and a path. What's going on in these two verses as we start to study in other passages, is Christ is explaining how that in His kingdom, and this is something I believe happens early in His kingdom, but you are into the millennial reign at this point. Because some of the things we're going to deal with, you see, are part of the rules that He institutes once He sets on His throne. So the sheep and goat judgment should have passed. All these things have passed. We're into the actual millennial reign right now. And so what you have is He is reshaping humanity and the world itself in these two verses. It doesn't sound like it if you just read them and go past it. But when you start comparing scripture to scripture, we're going to find he's reshaping literally geography and language to make a way that people can worship Him easier, to make it more accessible to get to Him and to serve God. So the first part that we have to deal with is verse 9 when He talks about the language. He says, For I will turn to the people a pure language that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent. Something we saw the other week. We skipped a week because of the fact that last week we talked about the Great White Throne Judgment. I wanted to get all the judgments out of the way while we were dealing with judgments. That way we could move into the other part. So we skipped pretty far ahead into the story, a thousand years ahead to get there, but I wanted to cover the judgments while we were there and while we were in Revelation doing it. But one of the things we dealt with in the week before that is we're talking about the aftermath of that judgment of nations, the sheep and goat judgment, is that God would be using that time period, the thousand years, to draw together his people. By the time you've entered into the kingdom, the decision's already made. We've talked about that. The judgment has already been made because those who are saved have already received a glorified body, it teaches, and those who are lost will, at the end, stand at a judgment. And so in the kingdom, this is not a time where your decision as to whether you're going to worship God or not is being made for you. You've already made that. But what's going to happen across these thousand years, because as we'll study some of this, you'll see God is reshaping the world in a lot of ways to be when he made it in the first place. I mean, you're talking about, he describes it as being a time where, you know, a child can take a wolf and lead it and not have to worry about being eaten. You know, that a lamb and a wolf can sit down together and there not be a problem. You know, a child, I mean, taking a lion and leading, that they can play next to the snake's den and not have to be worried about being bitten by it. That a lot of what God made the earth to be before when He made the Garden of Eden, where you didn't have to worry about so many things like disease and plagues and poison and all that stuff, He's undoing a lot of that and preparing a new way. You know, He's preparing in His Kingdom something different. And so you're going to see this incredible time. That's why what we've studied and seen that the people who love him are going to gather to him and the rest will be left around. And like we saw last week, the reason why the devil would be unleashed after the thousand years is it says he's going to gather those who didn't love God together to be destroyed before the judgment. So you have all of that that we've understood. But one thing that we discussed in that is that as part of him gathering his people together, the ones who love him, gathering to his throne there in Jerusalem, as he says that the world will be covered with the knowledge of him. I believe it's Isaiah describes it as being like an ocean of his knowledge just going across the world. The world is flooded with the knowledge of him is what he's talking about. He talks about in some of the passages that he'll send out, it even seems, preachers to preach about him and teach his ways and teach his laws and so forth throughout the world. And so that's some stuff we've already discussed a little bit. We already understand that a little bit. So what we're going to talk about tonight picks up in that same idea that he says one of the things he's going to do to make that more accessible is that he is going to remove the language division that he put in the first place. Because I don't know if you understand this. We don't talk about this a lot. Most people don't preach a lot about the Tower of Babel. But before Genesis 11, we all spoke the same language. There was one language. There wasn't multiple languages. There wasn't divisions like we have today. But all those things that separate and divide us come about around that time period. Even the land divisions come about as something after the flood. You'll read when you're reading the generations that come after the flood and one of those particular generations you'll read where it's recorded it was during this time that the lands were separated. What he's referring is that by this point the water from the flood had all settled down to where it was going to be and the land had settled to where it was going to be and the world had taken its shape at that point. So a lot of the things that had been done in the early part of the book of Genesis are going to be undone during this time. That's kind of what I'm talking about when I say that a lot of the things that have happened over time will be undone. But I want to give you some thoughts from Genesis 11, so I would encourage you to turn with me there, because as we discover why God's going to undo that language barrier, I think we should read about why He instituted it in the first place. Hopefully you know the story of the Tower of Babel, but maybe somebody doesn't, that's why we talk about it. In Genesis 11, in verse 1, it says, And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. So again, at this point in time, everybody spoke one language. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. and they had brick for stone and slime that they had for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built it. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, And this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do." What's your understanding of that passage? And I'll read the rest of it in a moment. is that what has happened at this point in time is that the people have not spread out across the earth. They're gathering in one spot. They're pouring all their efforts together to build a tower that they could reach to the heavens, is what they've said. Now, the thing that's incredible about this statement, though, is God, when He looks at what they're doing, He says nothing that they've imagined is hid from them, meaning what they've imagined is accomplishable. If you give them time, and you leave them to it, man can do this. And it's an incredible statement when you consider it. You know, God's saying essentially that if we weren't limited by certain boundaries, you couldn't begin to imagine what we could actually accomplish. Because God's given an incredible capacity to humankind when it comes to the things we can imagine. I mean, you just imagine in the beginning when God takes this earth, He puts men on it, we break it with the curse, And then with time, things that, you know, maybe one time you could have made of any of the fruit, but now some of it's poisonous. You know, now we have stuff that we've come up with that if you just take this and you break it and you cook it this way, then somehow you can make this out of it. I mean, you just imagine who was the first person who had the idea when they saw a coffee bean that if I take and I burn this bean and then I cook it in hot water that I can make something drinkable out of this. I mean, you just think about how we come up with ideas like that because When you understand the Biblical speaking, the earth is not that old. I mean, you're talking about these ideas. Most of them were informed in the past 4,000 or 5,000 years, a lot of it. Because prior to the flood, we see that they had the culture, they had technology, they built stuff with brass. They had a lot of abilities that we think come about recently. They had it before them. And there's literally a guy, when you're reading about the people before the flood, that it says he was an artist, someone who made stuff. out of brass. So that wasn't something we just somehow come up with a few hundred years ago. That's something that was able to be done several thousand years ago. So with the flood you see that we kind of got reset in a lot of ways concerning our knowledge and technology and all of that. And you see even the world took several generations to settle back down because it took time for the land to separate and be divided the way it would be and the water to settle down. It took time for them to gather into this one place and decide we're gonna make bricks and we're going to build a tower and we're going to make our way to heaven. We're going to join together. And it seems to be implied in what's going on is that they're wanting to join together against God. So it looks like they have the same idea as the devil that we're going to ascend to be like the most high kind of mentality. It's not spelled out explicitly, but it seems to be a lot of the mentality of what's going on here. But regardless of whether you read into that or not, what is clearly going on is God's looking at His creation and He sees that knowing us, the imaginations of our heart are evil. And He's equipped us with an incredible amount of knowledge that just some of it seems to come almost supernatural when you think about it. The idea that we could know that some things you shouldn't do this, some things you should do this, to come up with some of the ideas we have to invent stuff. It seems quite clear that a lot of that has come about because God has gifted us with knowledge. He's gifted us with wisdom and with an ability to understand the world around us. And so when he looks at these people, he says what they've imagined, they can accomplish this stuff. It's dangerous for them to be able to join together all with their wisdom and all with their abilities because the imagination of man's heart is evil. The stuff we come up with is evil. So if we're allowed to pool all our resources together, we're not typically going to use those for good. We're going to corrupt and we're going to do bad stuff with it. If you don't believe that, look at any empire throughout history. Maybe they begin off decent, but the more power they have, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and they start using all of that technology to do evil stuff. We think that if somebody just had absolute power, they would cure all the world's diseases and feed the poor, but we have the ability to do a lot of that stuff now and we still don't do it. I mean, again, there's a few countries in the world that if they banded together, they could end world hunger today if they wanted to, but they're not interested in that because power doesn't bring about a real genuine care for the needs of others. It brings about a desire for more power. Just like people who are rich don't say, hey, I've got plenty of money. I should take my billions of dollars or euros or whatever and pour it into making the world a better place. I'll donate a small percentage of that, but then I'll use the rest of it to try to increase my wealth. I mean, have you ever noticed most of the wealthiest people in the world want you to give your money to charity when, again, if they just gave up half of what they had, they could fund any charity you could imagine. I mean, they could take care of most of the needs that money could help with. So my point of that is absolute power, absolute wealth, all that stuff is not going, it's not the answer. It's not that if we had that, we could just fix the world's problems. The problem is the wickedness in the heart of man. The problem is that we by nature are evil. The heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can know it? All who sin come short of the glory of God. It is our nature to be sinners. And when you look at it that way, what God does here in this story is he says they have the capacity to do more than, you know, more than they even realize, more than they could imagine they could do that. And so the best thing to do is to separate them. And that's what you read about in the next part of that passage of Genesis 11. In Genesis 11, verse 7, where we left off at, he says, Let us go down in their confounder language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did therefore confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon all the face of the earth. So what you see at this point in time is that what God did was He looked at that. He saw that the imaginations of man's heart are evil. He saw that their capacity, if they're united together, is beyond anything they could imagine. And so for our own sake and for the sake of keeping us from being corrupted by the corruption that would naturally come, He separated us. In fact, I'll be honest, sometimes it's why it's better for things to be in small groups, because sometimes the bigger things get the worse they get. And so that's what God saw in us. He said, as a people, we would be better off at this point in time, all the way until His kingdoms, which you're going to see. That's when He's going to undo this, is when He sat on the throne there in Jerusalem. So until then, he separated us. He put a division because that barrier doesn't stop us, but it stops us from getting so big that we destroy ourselves. That's the whole point of it. That's why he changed the languages. That's why he put division and separation amongst us. So we have to understand the power and importance of language to understand why He separated us and why He's going to undo that in His Kingdom. Why He's going to, as He says, unite us under a pure language that we might all come together and worship Him. You see, one verse I could give you, I won't make you turn there, but I would recommend writing it down and reading this passage, is 1 Corinthians 14. I had wrote down to start in verse 7 and go through verse 11, but I would encourage you to read more than that. I would encourage you to read the whole chapter because the whole chapter is dealing with an idea. The illustration that's used is speaking in tongues. And Paul explains how the speaking in tongues is unprofitable unless you're using it to reach someone with the gospel. It's not something that needs to be done in a church. He explains that the times where it needs to be done in a church is if you have somebody in the church who needs that other language. So I'll give you an example of how that works so it's easy to understand. Tonight, everybody who's here speaks English, so there's a few that Romanian might want help, but you speak English, so we don't have to translate the service. But on a Sunday morning, we're pretty much always translating a service because there's always somebody here who cannot speak English or they don't speak it well enough to just go through the service without it, without the translation to remain. So what we do is we use that discretion, that discernment, that when the translation is necessary, we use it. When it's not, we don't. You know, you've been here a while, you know that. But what he's describing is that idea. And the reason why he presents that is he presents this situation where he says, what would it profit you if I were to get up tonight and I would begin preaching in Mandarin? Nobody in this room, I'm picking that, when I did that one time and I got in trouble because there was a lady here who spoke it, I didn't realize she learned that in Malaysia. But tonight I think I'm safe if I use Mandarin and nobody here speaks that. So if I got up and preached this entire message in Mandarin, I have not profited. Nobody in this room profited from that because you didn't understand it. But if I preached to you in English, all of you understand it, it has the highest amount of profit. If I was to preach to you in Romanian, It's the second highest amount of profit. There's plenty of people in this room who speak Romanian. They would get something from that. But this whole side over here would get nothing from it. Because you don't speak it. It's not your language. If we went with Dutch, there's a couple people in here that could get some help from that. But the rest of you, you're on your own. Serbian, we've got two of you. If I was to start doing that kind of thing, you see that you lose profit when you don't understand. That you can be here, and I'm speaking to you, I'm saying a lot of things, But when you don't take it in and process it and understand it, it doesn't help you. Now, there's a whole other lesson in that. I could preach an entire night about the importance and value of understanding and the importance and value of language. But I've done that. I've actually, when we went through 1 Corinthians, I taught that entire passage. I spent several Wednesday nights talking about that. A while back, we talked about that with studying the Bible, the importance that you take it in and you process what you hear and you understand it. So hopefully that's something that you get, but it is important that we understand. The other example he gives, he talks about if you're playing an instrument, you know, if you have like a trumpet and you play the trumpet and there's no discernment, there's no natural distinction as to what notes you're playing, then nobody knows what you're trying to say. Because you can play a trumpet to note that it's time to go to war, but you can also play it to say it's time to worship God. So what are you trying to say? It's important. It's necessary that you understand it because if you play the wrong thing, then you're trying to tell people, hey, we're under attack, get ready to fight. And instead, you're telling them, let's all go worship God. And they're falling down on their knees praying and the enemy is coming in and defeating them. It's very important that there is understanding. That's why even with the music, in fact, I'll deal with this some Sunday night, even with the music in a church, it's important that the notes are spelled out in a way that they are promoting the worship of God and that they're doing something for you spiritually, that there's some understanding. If you're going to play a song that's instrumental, It should be a song that people know. That way, the notes are speaking to their heart and they can hear the words that they already know. That's why when we sing a song in Romanian, I always do my best to give you the English equivalent, because I want you to still take away the understanding of the song. Not just to say, oh, that was beautiful. I mean, it's nice if you think it's beautiful, but that's not the main purpose. There's a message being conveyed through the music. And so, language and all of these things. God says that everything has a voice that it speaks with. whether it be inanimate objects like the trumpet, whether it be you speaking language, whether it be animals barking, whatever, we all have a voice and you know that there's something wrong based on the sounds we make, you know that there's something good based on the sounds we make, you understand that. And so by taking away that understanding, by putting us in a situation where Eli can talk to people on the phone and say all the bad stuff he wants to and we just don't know what he's saying, you're in a situation where there's times where it's easy for there to be misunderstanding. Now, if you ever want to see the power of language, just consider this, that most fights come because of a language barrier. Most issues we have come because of a language barrier. I mean, I can attest to this probably better than most people in this room simply because of the fact that Lori comes from a dramatically different culture and language than I do. It doesn't matter that she grew up around Americans. It doesn't matter that she knows English very well. She grew up around people from a different part of America from me. So a lot of the terminology and phrases I would use, she doesn't quite get them. And so there's a lot of things that we've had to learn across a couple years of marriage now, that to me, it's not offensive. That's just the way we talk. That's what this means in English. It's not a bad thing. But to her, her understanding is that I'm saying something rude. Or the opposite. She'll say something in Romanian and it's not rude, but to me, I think it is. I always typically go to that example of When they say lasa, which means leave it, if you say leave it to me, that's offensive. If you're telling me something in English, you're telling me today I had a bad day at work and all this kind of stuff happened and I just look at you and say leave it. That's rude. I'm being hateful to you. I'm telling you, your issue is not a big deal. You just need to get over it. Stop being a baby and grow up. All of that's contained in that one sentence when you say that to me in English. But if you say it in Romanian, it's normal, it's proper, it's natural. There's nothing offensive or rude about saying lasa about it. So my point is, you have things like that, that when you take from one language to the next, there's a lot of misunderstanding because of this. So the importance of language is that that's where we shape our ideas, that's where we shape our understanding. Words have so much value that when I say the word chair to you, everything that you know about a chair is contained in that word. The idea that it's something that typically has four legs, that it has a back, it has a seat, you sit on it, it supports your weight, sometimes they're cushioned, sometimes they're not. But all of the images that pop in your head when you hear that are contained within that one word. So it's very important that you understand what that word really means. I mean, we were given this example last night that we're talking about what the word pulpit actually means. And I said, I'm not going to try to correct all of America just because they're wrong on this. But technically speaking, this is not a pulpit, not by the definition that I read in the dictionaries the times I've read it. The word pulpit would mean the raised platform where someone stands to speak. It's a raised area where you stand to preach at. This is not raised, it's just a podium. You can call it a lectern if you want to, it's a podium, it's a book stand even. But in all honesty, it doesn't fit the definition of pulpit. So in America, if I tell them I'm going to stand behind the podium, some people get that. If I say lectern, that's above a lot of people's heads. But if I say pulpit, they all understand I'm talking about this, even though that's not what the word means. But I'm not going to try to change the understanding of the entire country. I just speak the word that I know they understand. My point of that being that when you don't actually know what a word means, it gets you in a lot of trouble. That's why when we study the Bible, I encourage you to look at the way the word is used in the Bible to form a definition or an opinion on it. Instead of letting me or somebody else or even just a dictionary tell you what it means, because you'll get in trouble doing that. Because you'll take definitions that we've changed, that we've gotten lazy with what we use the word for nowadays. There's a lot of examples of that in the Bible. Again, that's not the whole point of the message, so I don't want to get stopped in that. But I say that just to establish that there is a high importance on language. That everything you see and understand, everything I convey to you, because I understand there's a lot that can be communicated through body language, but words mean more than you would ever imagine. Because when I say something to you, you take that word and you understand it to the best of your ability, and that determines what you take away from what I said. More even than body language does a lot of times. You take what I've said and you process those words, and if there's a lack of understanding, then there's always going to be confusion, there's going to be trouble, there's going to be problems. And so again, the reason why God did that in the first place was to keep us from getting so big we hurt ourselves. It was to keep us from getting caught up in the evilness of our imaginations and doing things that were terrible. Now though, when you're coming into his kingdom, he teaches that he's undoing that and it's for entirely different reasons. It is because now with him as king, ruling here on the earth, he doesn't have to worry so much about one government or one country or one people getting so big that they destroy others or cause damage. Now it's more important that you understand. So as this ocean or wave or whatever you want to call it that he describes of knowledge about him, as the preaching about him is going to be going across the earth, he's uniting everybody back under one language for the purpose that there can be true and genuine understanding. So that there's no misunderstanding about the message, that you get it. Because even tonight, I mean, because of everybody in this room, I don't know if all of you English is your second language except for maybe me. It depends on how much it counts. But for everybody else, English is your second language, so there's a tremendous amount of space there for misunderstanding. I guarantee if we were to give a test after I'm done, there will be something that you didn't get, no matter how good you are in English, because maybe I used the word wrong, or maybe I meant something wrong. Maybe I'm not proper in the way that I spoke something. Maybe I spoke too much like a redneck, or from my dialect and my people. So my point of that is by removing dialects, by removing language barriers, you create an atmosphere where understanding can be done completely. So that everybody in the world can truly know exactly who Jesus is and exactly what He expects of them as they go into His kingdom. There's no more need for that division. So the main thing going on in that verse is He's taking away the division. The thing that has separated us as a people, as a culture, and all of that, He's undoing that. Because this is something that I think we fail to understand. And it's a message that, to be honest, I probably could have just preach on this tonight because it's something that really bothers me. But biblically speaking, there are not races. There is one race that is the human race. Every one of us descend from Adam. Every one of us descend from Noah. There are different shades. There's different colors of people. Sure, I get that. There's different ways that we can look. I mean, you look tonight, we've got Romanians sitting in this room, some who are blood related, and you still look quite different. Unless you're talking about edgy, none of us have an identical twin that I know about. You have two people sitting from Serbia in this room, but at the same time, you have a difference in hair color, there's a difference in size, there's a difference in a lot of features. I mean, we have people here that even though I guess technically you're Dutch and he's Flemish or whatever, you're still from the same people group as far as ancestry. You're very different if I stand you side by side. At the end of the day, I understand that there's differences in appearances, but that's irrelevant. I mean, you look at me and my brother side by side, you can figure out we're brothers, but you're talking about we're only one generation, I mean, we're only separated by the fact we're brothers. We have the same set of parents. and yet we still look different. My sister still looks different. I mean, it's evident we're related, but yeah, we're very closely connected. We ought to look the same. But here's the thing, my brother and I, we don't share the same dad. So yeah, there's some other differences there. I get that. But at the end of the day, what you wind up with is this. Those differences are not a difference of race. The Bible is clear that there is one race. The real division amongst us is nationalities, tongues, all that kind of stuff. So since nationalities are really not that big of a deal, people move countries all the time. I mean, I'm an American living in Belgium. Actually, the majority of people in this room are somebody from another country living in Belgium. You know, we've got one actual official Belgian living here tonight, and one from just across the border. But the point of that is that people change nationalities all the time. Nationalities don't really mean that much. We get attached to a country, but then when you go back and realize, Well, actually, I was more attached to the memory and the ideas because most of the people I liked are not still there. The things I was attached to are not still there. You find out that your love of that country wasn't as strong as you thought it was. It was the people and the idea of that place that you were in love with. So nationalities are really not as big a deal as we think in terms of tribes and more local things like dialects and stuff. As someone who comes from a large country that from one place to the next changes dramatically, I can tell you none of that is remotely as big a deal as you think it is. A lot of that's just traditions and things that you can unlearn just as quick as you learn them. But the one thing that actually does make a difference, though, is language, because you do have to learn a new language to get rid of that barrier. It is a big deal. So because there is no such thing, biblically speaking, as a real racial division, it's mostly just a division of where you live, and a division of language, he's undoing the main thing, and that's the language. He's putting it so that there's just one language that we all have, that pure language that he mentions. Now, I do want to say something interesting about it, though, is when we get to Isaiah 19. So I ask you to turn with me to Isaiah 19. That's where we'll look at most of the rest of our thoughts from. But Isaiah chapter 19, beginning in verse 18, It says, In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts one shall be called the city of destruction. In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt, for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and He shall send them a Savior. and the Great One, and He shall deliver them." Now, what you're reading in this passage, we're going to look at a lot of what's said in Isaiah 19, but what you're reading in this passage that I bring out is something that connects these two thoughts. He's mostly, in Isaiah 19, going to talk about the fact that He's going to dry up the Red Sea to make way for people to cross over from Africa and going back in towards Jerusalem. Because that's the other half of this message. He said He was going to make a way for the people beyond Ethiopia to come to Him to worship Him. So that's the other side. That's what verse 10 was talking about in Zephaniah 3. But as you see that we're getting ready to make that jump from talking about the pure language into the pathway that He's making, the highway He calls it. Something you'll notice is He talks about here that the people in Egypt that are going to turn to Him. Because this passage, what it deals with is that a portion of Egypt will turn to God during this time. But a large part of Egypt will refuse him. We actually already saw this talked about once before, and I'll bring that up in a minute. But what he's discussing here is that during his millennial reign, he's going to have to punish Egypt. He's going to have to chasten them because they're going to have a wicked king and a large part of them are going to turn against him. But the ones who are going to follow after him, he said they speak the language of Cain. Now what's interesting about that is there is no, as of right now, there is no language of Canaan. You know, Canaan is that area around there, except for Hebrew. That's the closest thing we would have to saying a language of Canaan. But if he wanted to say Hebrew, I think he would say that. If he wanted to say the language of the Jews. I think what he's illustrating in that is not so much that we're all gonna speak Hebrew in that time. You can take that away, and I wouldn't argue with you. But I think what he's showing is that the people of Egypt during that time, the ones who choose to follow him as king, will go to his language, but the ones who don't will try to resist that. Which brings us to what is, to me, the most interesting thought in all of this, and that's that when we looked at earlier in chapter 2, I believe, when he was talking about drawing the people together for what he calls a day of meekness, a day for the meek to seek him. You know, when the meek shall inherit the earth and all of that. What he talks about in that is we saw he describes how that once a year, during his millennial reign, He will call the nations together. Every nation has to come for the Feast of Tabernacles and to worship Him. It was something we read about. We read that if they don't do it, there's a punishment. And that punishment is, for the rest of that year, their land will receive no rain. So if you don't come to worship Him for one whole year, you get no rain. So there's where I want you to start connecting dots when you look at this, that what He's describing is that there is a part of Egypt that refuses Him, refuses His kingdom, refuses to go to the pure language, refuses to change in any way. They're still going to go their way and do their thing. And so God has to punish them. But in punishing them, He says He heals them and also makes a way for the others to come. So that's why I said I want to look at some more of this chapter because I'm getting ahead of myself. But Isaiah 19.1 says this. It says, The burden of Egypt, behold, the Lord writheth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at His presence. and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. So you look at that, that's everything we've described the second coming of Christ to be like. And he says he's going to destroy all the idols, that he's going to come in the clouds with his angels, he'll be seen of everybody. So now you're actually getting the description of the second coming of Jesus Christ from Egypt's perspective. I mean, he's talking specifically about Egypt getting to see what this is like. So it's very interesting because we're getting this thing that a lot of people don't know or talk much about, But you see, the Bible actually gives it to you a lot of ways. The Bible says a lot about it. And here, they're even showing you what it's like for Egypt. And then in verse 2, it says, And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians, and they shall fight everyone against his brother, and everyone against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof, and I will destroy the council thereof, and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards, And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord and a fierce king shall rule over them, said the Lord of hosts. And the water shall fail from the sea and the river shall be wasted and dried up. Now, with that in mind, what you're seeing described is this, that when Christ comes back and they see him coming back in the clouds, that the Egyptians are going to be a group of people that instead of truly turning to him, there's going to be a division. They're going to be fighting against each other because some of them want to follow Christ as king. Others want to cling to their idols. They want to cling to their false gods, and they don't want to follow Him. But the real heart of the problem, he says, is that they have a king who is an evil king that will rule over them. Now, the thing that's interesting, though, is you see the last part of that. He says, I'm going to dry up the sea. I'm going to dry up the rivers. If you skip later on in the chapter, he talks about that again in verse 21. Isaiah 19, verse 21, it says, And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day and shall do sacrifice and oblation. Yea, they shall vow a vow unto the Lord and perform it. And the Lord shall smite Egypt and shall smite and heal it. And they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be entreated of them and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria. and the Assyrians shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance. Now when you read that last part about some big union between Egypt, Israel, and Assyria, where Egypt has turned away from idolatry and accepted Christ as their Savior, and Assyria has turned from idolatry and accepted Christ as Savior. Don't let anybody confuse you by saying, well, that was this war or that. Because I don't know of any time in history where Egypt has turned to Christ and accepted Him as their King and worshipped Him. You may find times where they met a small agreement with Israel or with Syria or something like that. But there's never been a time where God dried up the Red Sea and united these three major groups under one group where they're all worshiping Christ together. That's not happening. That's definitely prophecy. The other part that proves this is prophecy is when you go back into Isaiah 11, he talks about the same thing. And in Isaiah 11, he clearly explains he's talking about when Christ is ruling in his millennial kingdom. In fact, we used Isaiah 11 the other week when we were showing how that during his millennial reign, He'll gather all people together to worship Him there in Jerusalem. So actually, I'll even give you that. Since we're in Isaiah, turn back to Isaiah 11. Isaiah 11, verses 15 and 16. We've already read most of the rest of this chapter, because again, we see where He's going to draw together His people out of every nation to meet with Him there in Jerusalem, they worship him. But starting in verse 15, it says, And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea. And with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river and shall smite it in the seven streams and make men go over dry shock. And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left from Assyria like as it was to Israel in the day that he came out of the land of Egypt. What he's saying is this, during that time period, which again is very clearly marked as the millennial reign of Christ, that something is going to happen that God says in order to heal Egypt, he's going to smite Egypt. And what it's going to mean for them is that the Red Sea is going to dry up, he says, just like it was when Moses took the Israelites across it. I want you to notice something that's interesting, though. In that verse, he makes a distinction that he says he'll draw his people, make a way for his people to come across. like what it was for Israel when they crossed it. So what's interesting about that is this is another time where the Bible makes it very clear for anyone who's trying to divide Israel and every other believer during the millennial reign of Christ, you can't do it. Because he doesn't say that Israel is going to be drawn together across this. He says his people. That's what you'll begin to notice. He separates that he's no longer dividing that it's Israel and the church or this or that. During his millennial reign, you have his people. from all the earth, from all nations are going to gather together to Him. We saw that when we looked at that. But you even see that added to in this passage. So to understand what happens, I believe it's in Zechariah that I gave you. Zechariah 14 and verse 16 through 19. I'm not going to read that passage, but you do have it, you know it because we've talked about it. What we explained before is that in Christ's millennial reign, that passage teaches us that once a year He'll draw all the nations. It'll be a rule. It's a requirement as part of His kingdom that all nations are to gather together and to worship Him and participate in the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, when we did that study, we noticed something. One of the main lessons of the Feast of Tabernacles was to let go of your pride and to do things God's way. Because the Feast of Tabernacles was one of those feasts where God told Israel that you'll do it where I tell you to, when I tell you to, how I tell you to. It's not something where you can come when you want to or any of that kind of stuff. He said, I'm going to appoint a place. I'm going to appoint a time. I'm going to appoint a way to do it. And part of what was going on in the Feast of Tabernacles was it was one of those feasts that, yes, pointed us to Jesus Christ. Because the three feasts that did that, one of them pointed us to His death, another one points us, even I believe, to His resurrection, and another one points us to His millennial reign. And that's the Feast of Tabernacles. It was to teach about the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, and it was to teach man that we must come to God on His terms. So if His terms is by grace through faith, that's what we do. But in the millennial reign, we come to him on his terms that he's king. And if he says we're going to unite under this language, we have to do it. If he says we're going to do this, we have to do that because he's the king. He has to be in charge. So what you can learn from Egypt in this lesson is what happens according to this passage is that Egypt refuses to do that. Because he says only five cities out of Egypt speak the language that everybody else is speaking. The rest of Egypt is refusing to do it. that out of Egypt, only those five cities want to come together and worship God. The rest of them are refusing to do it. So he says in order that he might heal them, he smites them. So what does he do? He says he dries up the Red Sea so that it's like what it was during the day when Moses took Israel across the Red Sea. He says that I'll dry up their waters. He actually goes into explicit detail in Isaiah 19 of how that he'll dry up the water so that if your work or anything of that nature is associated with water, you're out of business. that the land is going to dry up in a true drought, where even the banks of the rivers, everything's dried up. So what you're seeing is this. We talked about that, because he actually mentions in Zechariah 14, he calls Egypt out by name. When he says that the nations don't come and worship me, that I will punish them with a drought for one year, he says, and when Egypt doesn't come, I'm going to punish them even more. So he actually already told you in Zechariah that Egypt wasn't going to listen, that when he institutes this rule, that Egypt's not going to participate, that they're your example of somebody who, even when God's sitting on the throne, even when they've seen him with their own eyes, even when everything's clear and it's, I mean, foolishness to turn against him, they're still going to stop. They're still going to do it their way. They're still not going to listen to him. So we've seen in an earlier message the importance of coming to Him in meekness and how that is truly the meek that shall inherit the earth. But what you see here is that even with no reason to be so stubborn, even with no reason to hold on to your pride or your idols the way that they do, Egypt, because of a bad king, will still continue in that path. So what you see again is, you have to understand, these people have already made their decision. And so there's some there who want to serve Christ. The majority don't. So their nation gets punished for that. But in punishing their nation, God makes a way to unite Africa directly into the Middle East and into where Israel is. so that anyone who wants to come, that's why he said, I'll dry up the rivers from beyond Ethiopia, so that those beyond Ethiopia can come. He's saying, I'm making a way so that everybody there who has been separated by the Red Sea now has a highway. I mean, not just a small path, but a dry road that you can walk across to get to where you want to go. I mean, now we live in a day with cars. You can drive there if you want to, is what he's saying. He's saying that what he's going to do during his millennial reign is not only is he going to take away the division of language, but he's going to take away some of that division of land too. Because Asia, it's in Asia, Asia's already connected. Europe's connected, that part it's hard for you to tell me. where did Asia and Europe begin? Good luck with that if you want to explain why it's divided the way it is. Africa, on the other hand, there is some division there, but he's gonna take away that Red Sea that divides us so that you have one big land body in that place. Now, of course, you still have some divisions, you still have some separations, but in truth, knowing that all this world at that point in time has been through the Tribulation Period, there's so much that's been destroyed, so much that's been undone, so much of the water's been destroyed, all of this, that we don't know a lot about who's left at that time, but we do know this, your three major land groups right there are going to be connected completely now, to where now if you're in any of that area, you can just get there easy. So part of what he's doing is he's making it easy to get to him because he's giving clear understanding. Another way he's making it easy to get to him is by taking away some of the barriers that get in the way. Egypt's just an example here though to us. In fact, let me put it like this. The lesson I think that we can learn from Egypt, the lesson we can learn about His kingdom, the lesson to really take away from all of this is that as we have saw, the problem with man is our heart. That when people saw Jesus in His day, yet somehow they still rejected Him. So the idea that they'll reject Him when He comes is not a strange thing. The fact is, though, that that shows you, because they've already passed through the judgment of nations, that all of that stuff's already dealt with, that these are people who've made their decision. So the idea that when he's sitting on the throne, they still continue to be rebellious is not strange, because these are people who have rejected him. So of course, as a king who's sitting on the throne, there's politics and there's punishment and all that stuff involved. So he does have to punish them as a nation. And he said, that the punishment for not coming to worship on the yearly Feast of the Tabernacles is the drought. So they get that. It dries up. But through punishing those who are rebellious, He makes a place for those who truly want to get to Him to get to Him easily. So you see, one thing we can learn about God through this is that so many times God will take things that we think of as bad. God will take things that we don't see how this could ever work for good. And while for the ones who are stubborn and rebellious, the ones who hate God and don't want anything to do with Him, it is bad. Because for Egypt and the ones there that hate God and don't want anything to do with Him, that even when He's literally ruling as a king, still reject His right to rule them and still want to do it their way, it is bad when He dries up all their waters and leaves them in a drought-covered land. That is a punishment. But for all the others who want to serve God, those who want to get to God, they're chastening, they're being smited, their punishment makes a way for them to do that. So one thing we can learn about Christ and His Kingdom when I say that He's literally going to reshape the world. I mean, He's changing language. to make it easy for those who want to get to him to get to him, to make it so that those who want to know about him can know about him. When it comes to reshaping the world, he's going to reshape the geography. He's going to dry up rivers. He's going to dry up bodies of water as massive as the Red Sea so that anyone who wants to get to him can get to him easily. That's the thing that you see, part of what He's doing in His kingdom, is He's making access to Him easy. He's making it so that if you and I want to get to Him, we can get to Him. Because what we saw is what's going on during this thousand years, is again, whether you're saved or not, that's already determined when you enter into this. but he's giving this time as a time of sifting, I guess you could say. He has the wheat in the sifter and whatever else is there with it, the tares, and he's sifting it out so that the wheat is coming to him, the tares are just staying there in the sifter. They're staying in Egypt. It doesn't matter that it dried up. They're not leaving. They're staying wherever land they come from. It doesn't matter to them. They're not leaving. But those who want to come to him, he's making it easier for them to do that. The lesson I think you can take away in that though today is that God's nature doesn't change dramatically from one time to the next. He said, I'm God, I change not. That's what He does even today. God can take some of the worst events you could ever imagine. He can take punishments of nations. He can take natural disasters. He can take individual disasters in people's lives and use that to draw people to Him. The reason why my dad comes to trust in Christ was because when him and my mom got divorced, he was there by himself, that drew him to Christ. But you see even the other side of that, that when you really want to know Him, God makes a way for you to get to know Him. Right now you have language barriers, I get that, all of that. You have divisions of all kinds. But what does God do? I've showed you this before. You look at my wife and her family. When they began to pray and they wanted to know God, God took a missionary, in fact he's going to be coming here to preach soon, and He took him from America and dropped him down in their city as their neighbor. just right next door to them so that he could preach the gospel to them. You have someone like Eli who wants to know about God, that he went to India to look for the truth, and then he comes here and he still hasn't found anything, and God puts him right here on his path so that every day when he walks to school, he has to walk right by us. You have someone like Mia that wants to know about God, and Rose, who hadn't been to our church in over a year at that point, just happens... How much do you believe in coincidence? She just happens to go to church with Mia the same day that Mia is going to be there when she just herself is going to go look for answers and just happens to find out that Mia's moving to Ghent and needs somebody in Ghent. So she says, why don't you come to church with me? I'm going to go to this church in Ghent next Sunday and brings her here so that she can hear the gospel and trust Christ. I mean, how much do you want to write stuff on this coincidence and how much do you really want to believe that we have a God that is, I mean, He'll move heaven and earth to get the gospel of someone who really wants it. That's why, in fact, even there's a lesson you can take for the millennial reign Because one place people struggle with is this idea that the people who are there have already made their decisions. That that was settled before they ever even went to the sheep and goat judgment. That whether they were going to trust Christ or not was determined. And that's why those who have received Him, it says that they received their glorified body at the end of that. But what you see in this is that when it comes to our God, He knows the heart of man. He knows whether you actually are hungry and thirst after righteousness. Whether you really want to know the Gospel. And that's why, for us, we're a light because we're trying to open up that hunger for people. We're trying to get, you know, we're here in a community where they think the best thing they can do with their afternoon is get so drunk that the ambulance has to come get them. If you don't believe that, when I went outside a minute ago, that's what they were doing. They were picking up people off the street who were so drunk they couldn't even lift their heads. That's the kind of culture we live in. So they don't want what we have to offer. But there were people here who did. God brought us here for them. There's more people who do. God brought us here for them. But what we can offer to these people is that while there's time, while there is hope, we can still shine a light, we can be a lighthouse, we can be a beacon of the gospel to them, so that they might wake up to that desire, that they might see a need to come trust in Christ. Because I can tell you, when something bad happens, that oftentimes wake up people. When something good happens, that oftentimes can wake up people. But one thing that surely does it is when a church does their job and gives the gospel to them. That's why I understand with street preaching, some people don't like it, it's not popular, but so many people have simply heard just a portion of the gospel because somebody was giving it on the street, and that opened up a hunger in them that they wanted to know something about that God, and they went home and they began to read, they began to listen, they began to do something, and then they got saved from that. Brother Camps is an example, so many others are. And what I'm saying in this is that if you're hungry, yeah, God will move heaven and earth to get the gospel to you. But there's plenty of people out here that they don't know that they need. They've never heard. They don't know any of that. And we as a church have a responsibility to get the gospel to them so that we can open up that desire in them, so that they can begin to see the goodness of God. Of course, the reason why these countries and so many of these people are in the situation they are right now when we're reading about the kingdom is because nobody got the gospel to them in a way to change their countries. We let them go their ways and we let them become what they become. And so when they enter into this kingdom, they've already made their decision. They don't want God. And so now when he's king, they don't want him as king. I mean, let's use Egypt as the example, because that's the one he's talking about here. The problem is what happens to Egypt and we're talking about the kingdom of Christ. is that right now, I understand it's illegal to be a missionary in Egypt. I understand that anybody I know who's a missionary in Egypt, they can't even use their real names. When they go to churches in America to tell about what they do, they have to use fake names. If you record a service, you have to cut the video off. I get that. It's hard. But at the end of the day, there's still people there who are going to die and go to hell if you don't get the gospel to them. And knowing prophecy, we already know what's going to happen to them. That that particular group of people, that there's going to be some who seek to God. Whether it's because somebody during the seven years of tribulation reached them with the Gospel, or whether it be because there's a work going on right now that makes the difference. Somewhere, somebody's going to reach some of them with the Gospel. But the majority of that country is not going to be moved. Their heart is not going to be moved toward God. And so when He does come back and it's too late for them to change their minds, it's going to be too late. They're going to have to live with the punishment. They're going to have a thousand years of Him as King, and they're not going to want it. and then eventually they're going to have to stand before His great white throne and give an account of it. If we can learn anything from Egypt, it's that this is real. It's not just I'm making up ideas and talking about that there's souls and people who are in danger. This is a real country. This is a country you can see today, right now. Go look at it on a map. And we know they're fake right now because the Bible tells it to us that there's five cities, whatever that means. Well, there's literally five cities or whether there's a fifth or whatever that means. There are five cities He says will turn to God, but the rest of them, when it comes time for His kingdom, they're going to be rejected. And the question you have to ask, what are you doing to make a difference? Because you look at this, you look at the millennial reign, you look at His kingdom, you look at all these things, we don't know the fate of a lot of countries. We know some of the countries because, for example, the Bible tells us what happens to Persia. The Bible tells us what happens to Ethiopia. The Bible tells us what happens to Tarsus, whether you believe that's Spain or Algeria. The Bible tells us what happens to a lot of these places. But there are some really sad thoughts in that. But there's a lot of countries that we don't hear about. And so those are people who may get destroyed before they ever get there. And there's people that will die and go to hell having maybe not ever heard the Gospel. And again, if they were hungry, God will move heaven and earth to get them there. But if they're not hungry for it, then it's your and my job to get them to want the Gospel. It's your and my job to be a Christian example. To be salt that hasn't lost its power. to be a light to a world that's in darkness so that people will start to wake up and see the need to come to Jesus Christ. The reason why they think that this is the greatest, best thing that they could do with their lives is because nobody has ever given them anything else to ever live for. If their idea of Christ is the Catholic Church, then I don't think anything wrong with them going out of here getting drunk and drinking their lives away. Because if that's all religion is, if that's all God is, is a big statue and a bunch of priests walking around taking your money and taking advantage of you and doing evil things, then I have no reason for them that they should want to turn to God. But that's why you and I are here to build light of the truth so that they do have a reason to turn to God. Because if you grow up in that kind of mentality, you grow up in Orthodox, you grow up in Islam, you grow up in any of this kind of stuff, and that's all that God has to offer you, then of course you don't want God. Of course you would rather just go drink your life away and kill the time until you're gone. But that's why we have such an important job because we have the Gospel which is able to change their lives so that people don't have to find themselves in situations like what we're reading about here. Where people don't have to stand before God having already made a decision whether it be the great white throne we saw last week or whether it be people like here in Egypt who have God now set before Him as King, they already made their decision and now they're going to live in rebellion to Him and suffer for the thousand year reign of Christ because they don't want to turn to the one true King, the Lord Jesus Christ. See, it's something we should take serious. It's something we should realize that people's souls and where they spend eternity are in danger. And you have the only thing that will wake them up to that, the only thing that can save them from that, and that's the gospel. And that's why I say we have to take this so seriously. So if there's one lesson I think you should take away from this, of course there's lessons about meekness and the danger of not coming to Christ His way. There's lessons about God moving heaven and earth to get to the gospel of people. There's lessons about the importance of language and understanding. But above anything, it's the importance of human souls and the fact that you can see from the literal example of Egypt, and I know we're talking about the future, but if you believe God, then that means this is going to happen. That this country, that today, there's people preaching the gospel. They've heard the gospel in the past. You don't know how much gospel has been given there. I get that. But evidently, it's not enough because the majority of people, when Christ comes in His kingdom, still will not have believed in Him and still have to stand before Him one day and give an account of their sins. And you can't help but think some of that's at least our fault because what are we doing to get the Gospel to Egypt? But it's not just Egypt. What are we doing to get the Gospel to Belgium? What are we doing to get the Gospel to Serbia? What are we doing to get the Gospel to Iran? What are we doing just to get it across the street to people? Because we have the ability to make a difference and we would rather sit around and watch TV, play games, play on Facebook, do whatever we can to avoid the truth that there are souls in danger and we feel like we have better stuff to do, things of no value