Greetings. Welcome to White's Run Baptist Church. You're looking at an artist's conception there of the Tower of Babel by Peter Bruegel, painted in the 1500s. And that brings us to our topic of today. What we're going to take a look at today is we're going to take a look at Genesis chapter 11, verses 1 through 9. They're nine short verses, but they cover a very significant event in world history and a turning point in the Bible. And it comes very early on in Genesis 11, just 11 chapters into the Bible. As the plot is unfolded, we begin to see God working his plan to save humanity from the fall of Genesis chapter 3. And we come to chapter 11, and this is an event that is every bit as important as the flood, which is dedicated about four chapters to the flood. But here we've only got nine verses. But the significance of what happens here really cannot be understated. But what this illustrates to us and what we're going to see today is we're going to see this great contrast that sets out a major theme of the Bible and a major theme of history. Because what we see being played out in the Bible here is not just limited to biblical accounts of history, but it's actually relevant to the here and now where we can see these things being played out in our very day. And so we want to pay extra careful attention to what we find here in Genesis chapter 11. Let's go right to the scripture and get started. What we see in Genesis chapter 11 is this. It says, Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language. And this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they purposed to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.' So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. Well, it's appropriate to begin with a moment of prayer. Father God, we praise you this day and we thank you and we ask you to lend us your spirit that indeed we would understand the scriptures and we would understand the relevance to where we are today. May we search our own hearts to see how these apply to us. May you please open our eyes to see how this is unfolding in human history. And Lord, indeed, let us then be part of building your kingdom rather than the cities and the towers of men, so to speak. Lord, I pray you'll give us great guidance, work past the weaknesses of the messenger and the hearer both, and make yourself known in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we have here the story, of course, of the Tower of Babel, and this is where we actually get our word to Babel, meaning a confused kind of speech. This is definitely a supernatural event. This is not a parable meant to illustrate how languages evolved over time or anything like that, because they actually took off in the middle of the city and of this building project. Well, let's take a look at this. Like I said, we're going to see a theme of human rebellion and divine intervention. So, humanity continues to rebel against God, as is illustrated here in chapter 11. but God continues to work his plan to bring forth one who would keep the promises of God and forever put away sin and restore mankind to a favored position of life with God. And so here we have human rebellion and let me put up a definition for you. This is from the ESV Study Bible. They're very helpful in their passage on Genesis 11. It says, the tower is a symbol of human autonomy and the city builders see themselves as determining and establishing their own destiny without any reference to the Lord. So this is important. This is about human independence and self-sufficiency apart from God. That what humanity is trying to do here is trying to free themselves from God, establish life on their own terms, meaning on their own terms. Of course, the foolishness of this is that they were initially created to live forever, that death itself, the single greatest specter we have looming over us all the time, is something that was dragged into the world by our sin, and so how they expect to make things better by continuing and furthering their rebellion against God is very difficult to understand unless You're honest about your own heart, and you understand the way humanity works. Well, let's take a look at some common characteristics of this human enterprise. Human rebellion is characterized by several things that are common here. Unity, and we saw that in verse one, that they were of one language. Initially, God made mankind with a singular language. He communicated to Adam and Eve with this language. And together with this language, they're unified. It said they had not just the same language, but it says had one language and the same words. In other words, they had one vocabulary and one way of using that vocabulary all in common. And we know from different languages, not only do we have different vocabularies, different words for different things, but different ways in using those, and different ways we decline our verbs, and we change our nouns, and we sort out our sentences. Languages are very different. Well, here they are in unity, and this will characterize human endeavors. There has to be a cooperation for humans to achieve great things. None of these attributes that I begin with here are bad in and of themselves, but when they're used ambitiously to go against God, then indeed these can be negatives. So here we have unity. They also have technology. In verse 3 it talked about let's take and make bricks and let's burn them thoroughly. In other words, these were baked bricks, not just mud bricks cured in the sun, but something that would be cured in a furnace and so these would be exceedingly strong and could actually make a very sizable structure. We believe this tower to be in the form of what's called a ziggurat. That would be kind of a stair-stepped pyramid kind of form. This kind of form has been found all around the world and indeed has been found even in Mesopotamia where Shinar is and where this city was. And it's believed by some, some remains that were found there of an exceedingly large ziggurat that was apparently either destroyed or not completed, perhaps is this very tower. And so remains have been found in the area that would go with this kind of a description with these thoroughly burned bricks. And this was a significant technology of mankind to be able to build a sizable structure. Something else that human rebellion has in common, an attribute that it has, is ambition. It says in verse six, nothing they propose now will be impossible. Their unity technology gave them a great confidence and this was motivating to the people. They were going to undertake an enterprise that had never been attempted before. We call that ambition. Sometimes we do things as human beings just because they haven't been done. And sometimes we do things just because it's something that we imagined. And we like to do these things. We are ambitious, and I believe God has given that as a gift. He's built it into us so that we could have progress. But sometimes we undertake these things simply to elevate ourselves and elevate those who undertook it to have a unique or higher status of having accomplished it. George Mallory, who is known for climbing Mount Everest, When asked why he climbed it, he's reported to have said, which might be a paraphrase of his words, but it was definitely a sentiment. He was asked, why are you going to climb it? He said, because it's there. This is human ambition. It's something hardwired into us. It's sometimes even difficult to explain why we do what we do, but nevertheless, we have ambition. There's also effort involved here. They were endeavoring to do some seriously hard work. This would take a lot of planning and design. This would take a massive undertaking of building literally millions of bricks to be able to make this, to move those bricks, then to apply the mortar, and then to put them into place. This is a massive undertaking. And as human beings we value hard work and indeed we were made for work. Adam and Eve were given work to do in the garden and then after the garden then that work became something that was necessary for them to survive. Part of the curse that we would have to work hard all the time just to get by. But here, the problem is, you know, we're made to work. We should cheerfully undertake to work and to be productive. Those are good attributes. But here, their purpose is rebellion. And good things put to bad use is never a good recipe for success. Something else these kind of endeavors have in common is leadership. Every great endeavor will have some kind of leadership, and this leadership is found, mentioned perhaps, this was the leader in Genesis chapter 10. Let me take you there just momentarily. In chapter 10, beginning at verse eight. Here we have a description, and this is given in the lineage of the sons of Noah. So his three sons are lined out here as to the children that they had, and it's really a description that comes after chapter 11 in this building program, but here's what it says. Cush fathered Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore, it said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord. So this was a saying in the day of Moses who recorded these things by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel. Eric, Akkad, and Kalna in the land of Shinar. So that's where we are in the land of Shinar at Babel. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh. Rehoboth, Ir, Kala, and Rezin between Nineveh and Kala. That is the great city. So, very important and interesting to understand is this guy Nimrod, he was a great leader. He built a great number of cities. And he's connected then to Babylon, but he's also connected to Nineveh, which later becomes a capital of Assyria. And later in the Bible, the Assyrian and the Babylonian empires become really key players in the unfolding drama of God bringing forth his people and his Christ. And so both these great empires have their roots in this person of Nimrod who founded these what would later be capital cities of these tremendous empires. So both these nations become quite mighty, and as you read through the Bible, as you're reading through the prophets and through kings and chronicles, be mindful of where this started. This started with this fellow Nimrod, who apparently was part of building this city and this tower. to God. So this all bloomed out of rebellion to God and later Assyrian Babylon are used to bring judgment upon the people Israel. But they themselves also are used or are judged. So this is very common, that humanist ambitions would be led by great personalities. And watch the Bible in this, because there's always great personalities involved in these rebellions and this opposition to God. And very often, these great personalities are humbled by God. Rarely do these go on in peace. Well, there's another important element that we see involving human rebellion and that is great presumption. Presumption, that means they just kind of presumed that they could do a thing and God wouldn't have anything to say about it or they could get away with it somehow. Walt Disney is credited with saying this, he said, if you can dream it, you can do it. Now there's some truth to that in that a thing must be conceived before it can be implemented and accomplished. Every great achievement has come as a result of visualizing a thing before it came to be. But straight ambition without permission is an attitude we call presumption. The focus is all on the fact that we can do this, that I've imagined this thing we can do, let's do it. But these things are often undertaken without asking the question, should we do this? So the question's not always whether we can do a thing, it's whether we should do a thing. They did not consult God on this, so their plan, therefore, we call presumptuous. Not necessarily that God will approve is the problem, they do not seem interested in that at all. But they're presuming that God will not care, and God's not gonna stop them. And this is amazing because this presumption is something that goes on into the New Testament. It's warned against by James. In his letter, in James chapter 4, he warns believers, you know, don't just presume that you're going to go to some place and accomplish some things. He says, you know, don't say, let's go to this place and we'll do this and that and we'll make a profit. He says, rather say, if the Lord wills. And Peter, in his second letter, in chapter 2, he writes about the fact that some people were saying in his day, in the first century, gee, it's been a long time since Jesus left and he said he's coming back. It's been so long, is he really coming back? And Peter says, you know, you ought not to presume that the Lord is slow, but rather that the Lord is patient with us, wanting us to come to repentance and so be saved. So this is characterized by great presumptions. They just say, oh, let's build a city and a tower. We'll make a great name for ourselves. And they just presume that God's not going to do anything about it. Well, something else that characterizes human ambition is it undoubtedly becomes, for human beings, a religion. At its core, the building of the tower represents man-made religion, as we find ziggurats similar to what's been described here, though not necessarily as large as perhaps what was planned here. We find in these ziggurats, you take the stairs all the way to the top. There's usually a ramp that goes around the thing so the top can be accessed. And in the top, in the very pinnacle of this thing, would be a great room decorated ornately inside with images of their gods and of the sun, moon, and stars and things like that. And you'll find as a recurring theme in the Bible and in history that people seek out high places to commune with deity or to worship their gods. And so this is really at its core about religion. And if you look in chapter 11 verses 3 to 4 that we just looked at, they say, let's do this lest we be dispersed. In other words, we're going to do this as kind of a rallying point. This is going to somehow organize our efforts to disobey God because humanity liked being all together. They didn't want to go across the earth and scatter across the earth. And if you recall, this was God's very plan for mankind from the beginning. He said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And he reiterated that command after the flood. And so they are purposefully rebelling against this command and establishing their own religion. See, if you think about it, religion always involves faith. And rather than have faith in God, they're having faith in their own abilities, faith in their own will to be able to disobey God and do what they want. And this indeed is why we can classify almost every thought system in humanity as a religion, because it is by faith they think they're going to accomplish something. So the real motivation here is to do things on their own terms, their own way, without regard in any sense to God. And so any human activity to achieve fulfillment, to achieve purpose, to achieve happiness, apart from God, is a man-made religion. And it is, in itself, very sinful. So in a very real way, Every man-made system brought into existence without God is a religious system. Now, another great and important attribute of human rebellion is this last one, and it is failure. Their unity, technology, their ambition, all the effort they poured into it, their valiant leadership, because of this great presumption and because what they were doing was essentially establishing their own religion, and rejecting God, there was divine intervention and there was failure. They did not make a name for themselves. They did not avoid their dispersion across the earth. And it's the truth that indeed there's divine intervention. So let's talk about divine intervention for a moment. There are several things that characterize this divine intervention of God. First of all is great power. This was supernatural. Some people say, well, this is an account of the Bible trying to explain how different languages came to be and how the people groups got separated. Linguists will examine languages and they theorize, well, one language could have evolved from another, everything, but they only get back to a certain point. And of the thousands of languages on the earth now, they seem to be able to trace them back to a little under a hundred. Root languages. But the problem is that these root languages that they identify, they can't reconcile them into a single language. But these hundred or so root languages accords very well if you make a count of the people that are in chapter 10 and some more detail comes out in chapter 11. and you consider the number of people and families that were on the earth at the time that this occurred, you would come to around a hundred family groups there at the Tower of Babel that God gave different languages and dispersed. This was supernatural because it left off in the middle of this thing. This didn't happen over centuries. This happened quite quickly. And so there's great power in divine intervention. And that's what mankind needs to understand, as great the power that flooded the entire earth, breaking forth the fountains of the deep. In other words, bringing water up from beneath the earth's crust to flood the earth and all that then coming down in rain. you know, had gone into the atmosphere, had come down as rain, flooded the entire Earth. Great power we're talking about here, unlimited power, because you're talking about the One who spoke matter itself into existence. Our Creator God has no limit to His power. And from an earthly perspective, His power is everything. His power, the power of His Word, is what is literally holding everything together at this very moment. And so He is powerful and it is an active power. Something else that characterizes godly intervention is this, and this is perhaps the most important, it's purpose. God is fulfilling promises. God is not making predictions here. God is never making presumptions like people do. God makes promises, and then he fulfills those promises. And one of the most important promises is back there in chapter three, verse 15, where God promises the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman. So we see the theme of the people of the serpent versus the people of God all through the Bible. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruises heal." So then it comes down to a singular that indeed one descendant of this woman is going to come forward and overturn Satan, destroy Satan, though he himself will take an injury because of it. God is fulfilling that purpose to bring forth the promise seed, Jesus Christ, through all of these things that we read about in the Bible. This is the overarching theme of the Bible. God bringing forth Jesus Christ to put an end to sin and put an end to the serpent and restore mankind, all who believe, to a righteous life with Him. And that is indeed the theme of history. Too often we read our Bibles and we put them down and then we turn on the television or we speak to our friends or we go about our business and we're not making the connection that what we see revealed in the Bible is what we see happening in our world. God is fulfilling His purposes in all things. and this is the greatest news, is that He is successful. He is successful. The attributes of God tell us indeed that He is both powerful, that He's omniscient, He knows everything, that He has character attributes like goodness and kindness and mercy and grace all these things are a part of God and those are revealed all through the Bible and they can be summed up like this when it comes to His promises and purposes. God is both able and willing to accomplish all of His purposes. I want to give you the example. This happens in chapter 11, and you think, oh, this is a horrible thing. This is a terrible thing that has happened here, that has happened here in Genesis chapter 11 with this tower. They try to endeavor to build this tower, and God has to come down and confuse their languages and then scatter them. But now look what happens in chapter 12. right back to God's plan and his purposes. The Lord says to Abram, okay, that's one of these descendants mentioned at the end of chapter 11, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Do you see the beauty of this is that God has this divine intervention at the Tower of Babel for a specific purpose, and that purpose is to continue his plan. And sure enough, he's continuing his plan. And he's actually just tipped his hand to Satan because he has selected this guy, Abram, and he's telling him, hey, and you, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed. Well, what does that tell us except that it's from Abram that this specific seed, this descendant of the woman's going to come crush the head of serpent. So now the Bible narrows its focus down to Abram and his descendants which become the people of Israel who ultimately bring forth Jesus Christ. So the point here is that God, His divine intervention is characterized by success. And contrast that to the human endeavor, the human rebellion that ends in failure. Human rebellion will always end in failure. But divine intervention will always end in success. This is the theme of the Bible, and I invite you as a cross-reference to today's sermon. I won't go into it all here. I want you to read the end of the story. And I want you to begin reading in Revelation chapter 18. In Revelation chapter 18 is described a beast with a woman riding it. And in the prophets, a beast is often representative of an empire or a world government system, and sometimes the leader of that system as well. But these are symbolic. These are representative. You find them in the book of Daniel. find some other odd descriptions in the book of Ezekiel, but in the book of Daniel specifically, and in the book of Revelation, these beasts describe world systems, human government. And riding upon the beast is a woman who is called Babylon, the harlot. See, all through the Bible we keep coming back to this idea of human rebellion, and it's represented by the city of Babylon. And the city of Babylon is often set in contrast to the city of Jerusalem, where Jesus is presented, and where Jesus is ultimately crucified, and the plan of God has great fulfillment there. And so it's kind of the city of God versus the city of man. That's how Augustine saw this when he wrote his great work called The City of God. It's this contrast between the rebellion of man and the successful salvation plan of God. And this is a theme of the Bible, but it is a theme of history. And what we find at the end of the Bible is we find the ultimate success of God. We find His people, oddly enough, from every tribe, tongue, nation, language. You know, so right there it tells us this is people from every language. He's bringing it back together at the end. Yet they are cleansed of their sins, they are forgiven, they're cleansed of their unrighteousness, and they are enjoying eternal life with Him in a new heaven and a new earth. Walking with Him in the new Jerusalem like Adam and Eve walked with Him in the garden. Only they'll be no more serpent. There'll be no more tree of knowledge of good and evil as a temptation. There'll only be the tree of life which we are free to eat from for all eternity. Everything is going somewhere in the plan of God. He is bringing things together. He is totally in control. So let's discuss then the implications of this, because there's some pretty serious implications to this if you really think about it. First of all is this, as I've suggested here, look for the recurring theme of human rebellion versus divine intervention played out in the Bible. As you read the Bible, as you study the Bible, look for this theme. You'll see it everywhere. But not only that, look for it taking place in history, even in your current history. Right now, today, look around your world and you see this playing out. You see human beings apart from God, trying to accomplish certain things, but then you see the people of God, and God is still using them to accomplish his purposes. He is still saving those from every tribe, tongue, nation, language, and bringing them together into a singular entity, the church. You're going to see this in the Bible. You saw it in the account of the flood. You saw it here in Genesis 11 with the account of the tower. You're going to see this happen with Egyptian bondage in which the people of Egypt try to enslave the people of Israel, but God brings them out to fulfill his plans. We're going to see him bring his people in to possess the land of Canaan with great miracles, great power he's going to show there. Then he's going to work with his people through their faithfulness, and he's going to have to work with the nation Israel and discipline them. He's going to bring Assyria to do it. He's going to bring Babylon to do it. Then he's going to bring Persia along and put the people back in their land. Then he's going to bring the Greek Empire to lay a common language around the world. Then he's going to bring the Roman Empire to bring a great peace to a great chunk of the world. And it's ultimately under that Roman Empire he brings Jesus Christ and his apostles that now can use those great Roman roads and the great Roman peace to spread the gospel all around the world in a very sudden way. And so you see every layer accomplishes something. Assyria dispersed the people of Israel all around the world. Babylon took them into exile. and allowed time to prepare them for the synagogue kind of thing, which would eventually evolve into Christian churches and things like that. But he brings them back into the land because he brings Christ out of the land. And then he brings a Persian empire to bring them back to accomplish certain things, Greek and Roman. They all have purposes in God's plans, even though these are all human endeavors. These people accomplishing these things have no idea what it's all about. And yet God is accomplishing his purposes in world history. Empires and nations rise and fall. The Roman church rises and then departs from the faith and very much falls. And then there's a great reformation. There's Christian revival and liberty. And in this great Christian revival of the Reformation, it brings forth this rational thought, and science and philosophy bloom, and Christianity gives rise to universities and hospitals, all these things growing out of the Reformation, birthed in Christian thought. But now all those things are almost completely given over to worldly ways. And each in their own right is a babble waiting for judgment. And when you think about even the history of the United States, the founding principles being so profoundly biblical, the very first settlers of this land being people, Christian people, looking for a place to worship freely, independently, free to execute their Christian religion. And so the United States comes along as it's founded on these biblical principles, but never quite living up to them because they are impossible to live apart from the power of God. And the United States has aspired to keep these things, all men are created equal, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, all these things, all these biblical Christian values, we've inscribed it on our money, we've inscribed it on our buildings, and it was part of our founding philosophy. Now, I know most of the founders weren't completely Christian, some of them even if at all, but they were saturated in this way of thinking. But we're called into World War I called into World War II. We give the world great victory. We advance things in the world very profoundly. Prosperity unparalleled since then. But then a movement and it's a movement that's always there. Rebellious human nature. This movement becoming larger and more influential and we're experiencing in the United States and I'd say we're nearing the end of a great moral revolution. breaking free from God and unto this very day. This is happening and it is growing and it is very influential. There are some ideas being tossed about politically, some ideas being talked about that are so divorced from biblical rationalism, from truth, that these things seem like they're even from another world. And as is so common, many of these things are an actual overreaction to bad religion and the unfaithfulness of those who would call themselves followers of God. But look what it's done. It has divided our thinking. that the communication between people of differing political philosophies in our nation right now is almost non-existent. We almost can't even talk about politics with one another. It's like we're speaking different languages because we come from profoundly different world views. Doesn't that feel a lot like people working together to do a thing, but then all of a sudden they're not understanding each other? It's almost like the judgment of God. has given a division so incredibly deep in our language that it's almost like having, it's so deep in our nation, it's almost like having a different language. See God is always judging all nations. He's judging this one right now, but that is good news. Because if you notice, that means that his purpose is going forward. His great power is working. And he will succeed. What's around the corner for us in the United States? A great change? An overturn? A dark age? A revival? An awakening? A new reformation? I don't know. But I do know this, that beyond those things, God is going to continue to save a multitude of people for His great name, and then the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return to the earth. There's going to be one final judgment, and then there's going to be a reformation of the earth by fire. A new heaven and a new earth will become the dwelling place of mankind. They'll be able to walk with God in the new Jerusalem as they walked with Him in the garden. Oh yeah, God intends to judge the entire earth once again, but then He will enjoy His people forever, free from the penalty, the power, the presence of sin forever. So look for the recurring theme of human rebellion versus divine intervention played out in history in your nation. this very day, but be encouraged by it, because it means that God is in control, that he's working things according to his great plan. He will do nothing on this earth, and he will allow nothing to be done that will thwart his plan. He will succeed. We already have the end of the story. And what this means then to our faith is profound because our call is a gospel call. As His people, we are called to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it is only that endeavor that we are promised will have success. We're not promised political success. We're not promised a peaceful nation. What we are promised is a peaceful reunion with our Heavenly Father if we will but believe in the person of Jesus Christ and repent of our sins. Our kingdom is not of this world. It is above it. Think about when Jesus Christ gave the Great Commission, and we know the Great Commission says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them all things whatsoever I've commanded you. But we often forget about Jesus' important preface to that command. He says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples. That means we go and we make disciples in all the authority of heaven and earth. there's no authority higher than God's authority to send us to spread the gospel. And so if you want success, if you want enjoyment, if you want fulfillment of life, embrace the gospel and spread the gospel and you will be blessed in ways that the world cannot provide. And regardless of whether you live affluence or poverty or peace or war, it won't matter. You'll have the gospel of peace and you'll have peace with God and you will see his great work in bringing together people from every nation to be unified in the gospel truth. So be encouraged, and also notice how the gospel continually overcomes the curses of this world. One more important cross-reference I want you to read. Remember, I want you to read Revelation chapters 18 to the end. I also want you to read Acts chapter 2. In Acts chapter two, we have a reversal of the Tower of Babel in essence. All these people are gathered into Jerusalem from all around the world to celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost. And then the Holy Spirit comes upon the people of God and they speak in all those people's languages to give them the gospel truth. And then those people go back to their homes. and the Gospels instantly spread throughout the Roman world at that time. Reversal of the language barrier. God is indeed so good as to do that. So then we have as our only priority then, kingdom concerns. being devoted to God, being in fellowship with his people, studying his word, knowing his word, and most importantly, spreading his gospel truth around this world. Strive continually to prioritize kingdom concerns. Make the Bible your first stop for information. Make God's people your first place you find fellowship. and make God's gospel the very place where you establish your purpose. And you will be blessed. Well, I thank you for joining me today and I hope this has been an encouragement to you. Again, I invite you to read the cross-references and really think on these things and really begin to open your eyes to see what is happening around the world through the perspective of what we see here in God's very own plan. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you so much for bringing us together this day, however you've chosen to bring us together. I thank you so much that your word, it just has so much relevance to what we see go on in the world today. Lord, as much as we have in our own lives or in cooperation with others, we have tried to build things that do not have your blessing or things that are outside your desire for us. Lord, I pray that we would recognize those things, that we would repent of them, and that indeed we would take up the work of the kingdom as our priority. Lord, let us not forsake all things of the world for all these things that you gave us are good and Lord can be used for your good purposes, but let us rather set our affections above on you and let us then work from that to endeavor to do wonderful things in the name of your great gospel of truth. Lord, I pray today for all those listening. Lord, I pray that you would work your spirit with them to give them faith and have them to repent of their sins and to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. I pray a great blessing upon them this day that they would see the wonderful truth that is revealed in your scripture. In Jesus name, amen. Well, I thank you very much for joining us and we are going to that you're going to see here are contact information. I invite you to come visit us at whitesrun.org. There you can find information about us and what we believe. You can also contact us by email at whitesrunbaptist at gmail.com. And that will be personally read and answered. It is not something that goes into a machine. It is something that is considered very personal. So if you have questions or even objections or comments regarding today's message, please send them there and we will get back to you and we will appreciate any input that you have. May God richly bless you. And indeed, may you go and build His kingdom.