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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
Zephaniah Part 16: A Pure Language And A Path - Junior Haley
Series End Time Prophecy
| Sermon ID | 914231413335324 |
| Duration | 57:09 |
| Date | |
| Category | Bible Study |
| Language | English |
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