This week Pastor Jared continues week four of the sermon series, "Daniel: Hope In A Hostile World".
Park Springs Sermons
Sept 22, 2024 - Hope in a Hostile World - Daniel 2:31-49
(upbeat music) - You're listening to a message from Park Springs Bible Church located in Arlington, Texas, where we discover life in the power of God's grace and share his life-changing grace with others. (upbeat music) Join us as we hear from the word. - It's good to see all of you, and I hope you have a copy of God's word this morning as we dig into it together. You can go ahead and make your way over to the book of Daniel we will be in chapter two. We will be finishing up that chapter this morning and finally getting into this dream that has been building for the past two weeks. But before we do, I want to introduce a term to you that maybe some of you are aware of or maybe it'll be something new for you this morning, but it's something I want you to kind of hang on and stick in your back pocket and kind of dwell on this with me this morning. The term is metanarrative. And so I don't know if that is something you has come across your way at some point, but if I could give you a very simple definition, this is how I put it. A metanarrative is an overarching story that gives context, meaning, and purpose to life. Meta meaning like above and narrative meaning story. It's kind of this philosophical term, and interestingly enough, it was coined in the '70s and '80s by an intellectual movement called postmodernism, which kind of gained ground and kind of the university level as people were moving more into modernity that kind of coming up on the turn of the century and the different kind of waves and seasons of different ideological thought and just kind of the times we were living in, this kind of intellectual movements began to embrace some new ideas for humanity. And so one of those was the idea that truth is subjective. And so everything is kind of subjective to your own individual experience or the culture you've grown up or the time you've grown up in. And so there was this rejection of the idea of objective truth. And so this phrase was coined to articulate something that the postmodernists were against. And so a metanarrative would be this overarching theme to reality and existence that maybe religion would provide or different other philosophical thoughts. And a key aspect of the idea of a metanarrative is that there is an objective truth or an objective reality to life. And so the postmodernist rejected that idea and came up with this term. And I think it's really helpful in overarching term. One of the other terms you might be familiar with is the idea of worldview. That every single one of us kind of has this lens with which we see reality. And so that is absolutely true within the religious setting that as Christians, there are different ways that we interpret events and look at the world around us. But for this morning's sake, I like this term metanarrative because I like this idea of story. Like it's how we as humans kind of interact with the world around us. It's how we learn as children. And even as we continue to grow into adulthood, we kind of view things in terms of story. And I think that's really helpful. Because as we have moved into the 21st century, those ideas that were laid in the '70s and '80s kind of have permeated culture and thought. And so you've kind of had this ebb and flow and this pull and tug and this tension between this idea of like, is there anything that is objectively true about the world around us? And so as Christians, as those who claim Jesus Christ, we would say absolutely, there is this objective reality for all times and for all people in all seasons and all cultures that the same thing is binding all things together. That is not subjective just to the fact that I grew up in Texas, which is what we call the Bible Belt, and so I had this religious upbringing that those things are just true for me and not true for someone else, we would hold that there is a truth that binds all of reality together and that there is this story that we are involved in. And so we've often talked about our faith or our belief in terms of story. And so you can even articulate in that regard that there is a Christian story that we hold to. And so it is part of our worldview or our meta-narrative that we believe that there is this story unfolding throughout history and our belief and understanding of what that story says does give us context, meaning, and purpose for life. And so usually when Christianity is broken down to that story format, we talk about it in like four main chapters. And so how we would articulate the Christian message and kind of four movements or progressions would go like this, and I hope this has some familiarity with you this morning. So we would say kind of chapter one of the Christian story is creation. It's part of our story and it's part of our worldview that there was a time when there was nothing except a eternal, pre-existent God and then that God spoke everything else into being. So our first two chapters of the Bible that kick off that story, the creation narrative is how we often term it. And it's that reality that we believe that God created everything, that there is a being that is above and beyond our temporal existence and he spoke all those things into motion and into action. And so that's kind of the first part of the story we believe in. And then the second aspect of the Christian story is what we call the fall. That when God made all of the things and made all of creation, that it was good and it was perfect and it was in this complete union with its creator but then sin entered into the world. And that's where we get Genesis three, when Adam and Eve rebel against God and sin comes into the world and it fractures everything. That's part of our story and it's part of our worldview. The presence of death, of disease, of famine, of natural disasters, of human relationships, being fractured and broken is all part of this story of what we call the fall. And that's part of the reality we have all been living in. We've been living in that aspect of this story that we live in a fallen world. We talk about that. We all recognize it. We feel it internally and in that tension every single day of just the frailty of our humanity and the disasters that go on in the world around us. But then there's this third chapter in the Christian story that we most often call redemption. That the God who created wasn't going to leave us in that state of brokenness and so he sent a savior into the world. That the story of the Bible, the story of the scriptures is one of God purchasing back his creation for himself. And so we use that term redemption that's woven throughout the scriptures and it really means to buy back. And that's what God's been doing, that he chose this guy Abraham and said, "Hey, all the other peoples are seeking other gods but I'm gonna create a nation out of you and I'm gonna be your God and you're gonna be by people so I can show the world how I am going to redeem all things." And he established these covenants with these people and they begin to move through time and history and we're reading about them even today but it all culminates in the person of Jesus Christ, the God of the universe reduced to human form to take on the sins of humanity in himself and a perfect sacrifice to atone for the sins of the creation that could not atone for themselves. And we're also living in that chapter of the story that we're living on this side of the cross where we would look back at the sacrifice of Jesus and hold that it was sufficient for my sins in the past, the present and for tomorrow, not only my sins but the sins of the whole world. And so I am placing my faith that there's a fourth chapter in the story. And we typically term that as consummation. That we believe that this story is going to have a conclusion and that conclusion is in the second return of Jesus Christ where all things will be made right and history will be drawn to an end and we will be restored to that perfect relationship with God that we were made for. That's how we talk about our collective Christian understanding that there is this arc that is taking place and we're in the midst of that arc but that's how it is usually articulated. That there is creation, there is fall, there is redemption and there is consummation. So you could say this morning that that is the Christian meta-narrative and it does give us context, meaning and purpose for life. It does allow us to have this lens on our reality. And so those are very broad terms and there's a lot of human history that we could evaluate it through. And so I would say within some of those categories specifically the second chapter of the fall and the third chapter of redemption, which we are all experiencing, that there are some subplots. There are some other things that God has revealed through his word and that we have lived through as the collective Christian family. And so I'd say one of those subplots that has some ups and downs all throughout human history and we can think about this morning is that of human empires and civilizations. So I mean, all of us have gone through some level of education and we talk about the rise and fall of different civilizations and how they've had an impact on humanity and our collective human story, their contributions to the world. We talk about these things. I think this is an important subplot because it gets into our text today but also because most movements of human history that have been found in different civilizations or different empires that have risen and fallen usually tell their own story that it is tempting for humans at that time to begin to believe over the greater story that is Christianity. So you can even think about through just the progression of scripture. One of the ones that would be easy to point out is in Genesis chapter 11, there's a group of people that begin to build a tower. And so there's this time when civilizations beginning to flourish, you know, they're not hunter or gathering too much and they figure out how to make bricks and they think that's pretty cool. And so this is what it says in Genesis chapter 11. It says that those people in a land called Shinar, they begin to marvel at themselves. They began to tell this different story and part of their story was, we can build a tower big enough to get to God and then people will think we're more awesome than the heavenly creator. They begin to believe this other story and they begin to walk it out and it has an impact on their lives. And so I'd say for us this morning, as we have been getting into the book of Daniel, the goal of our study of this book is to fill us with hope for the times that we are living in. That we can recognize in so many different ways and facets of our existence that things are not the way they're supposed to be. And so a position we could take is one of nihilism, one of depression, one of cynicism about what we are living through. We don't believe that that is the message that has been given to us by a holy God and passed down through his saints and through his church to us today. We believe the message of the scriptures is one of hope. And so as people of the book and people who claim Jesus Christ as Lord, we want our lives to be marked by hope. And so I would say this that us understanding in a large part the Christian story and the narrative God is writing throughout history should inform our lives and allow us to build a foundation of hope because we have an understanding of what God's doing in the world around us. I would say it also like this. So I by nature am not a scary movie person. But every once in a while, something that's more in like maybe the suspense genre has piqued my interest. And there are a couple of movies that are more like in the crime thriller that I've enjoyed. But I would say this anytime I've watched something that's just slightly more scary than not, there's that first time you watch a movie and like you don't know what's going to happen. And so I don't know, my heart starts to beat a little bit more. Maybe I'll distract myself a little bit more with my phone. Maybe I'll find a reason to turn off that movie. But a couple of the, I would say quote unquote, scary movies I've seen, like the first time through is the worst. But then after you can get through that and you understand, okay, the guy's going to pop out at this point or the person's going to show up behind them or the monster or the alien, whatever it is. And you know that's about to happen. You could probably watch it a second time and not be as freaked out. I think there's a reality for us today that as we look at the world around us and the things that might occupy our minds or cause anxiety and stress is a recognition that we know where the story ends. And in fact, in so many ways, there is nothing new under the sun, even collectively as humanity, we've seen most of these storylines play out and we know what happens at the end of the day. And so I would say as we are about to look back at a prophecy in scripture, it can anchor our lives in hope, even for the struggles and trials we face today. And so I would say one of the things that is going to become abundantly clear at the end of the second chapter of Daniel in the story that is being written in the different subplots that take place throughout history is this. God is sovereign over the affairs of man. And I think we would all hold to that as Christians. It is something we would intellectually realize, but I think it needs to be a reminder for our souls when we also look around and recognize that things are not the way they were meant to be. God is sovereign over the affairs of man. So as we get into the second chapter of Daniel, if I can recap a little bit, we've been working towards this moment where Daniel is going to interpret the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. And so we've had two weeks of buildup that we know this tension has been happening of the king of kind of the known world at the time who has all power, he has this dream that very much unsettles his calm and peace. And he wants to know what it means. It feels of supernatural origin to him. And so he knows that this is going to have an impact on what's going to transpire in his life. And he's desperate to know so he calls all the wise men and says, not only do you need to interpret the dream, you need to tell me what the dream was even without me revealing it to you. None of them can do it. And so he's going to kill them all because he's desperate to know. And then Daniel, who God has gifted with the interpretation of dreams, says, hey, take me before the king. And God will reveal this to him. So him and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they pray. And now it's Daniel's moment to come before Nebuchadnezzar and not only interpret the dream but reveal what the dream was to begin with. And so that's where we are picking up this morning in Daniel chapter two, beginning in verse 31, Daniel before King Nebuchadnezzar. This is what it says, "You saw O King and behold a great image. This image mighty and of exceeding brightness stood before you and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was a fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold, all together were broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer-threshing floors. And the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." So this is kind of step one in Daniel's audience with the king, is he tells him what he actually dreamed. Here is this dream that we've been waiting on and it's not an ordinary dream and Nebuchadnezzar recognizes that. And so what he sees is some type of statue image that is made of a lot of precious commodities for the day. There's gold, there's silver, there's iron and there's clay. And then out of that it says a rock was pulled by no hand and the rock smashes the image. And so as one who believes in signs, it is freaked Nebuchadnezzar out. And so pretty much the only people of the time that would have been given the privilege of having an image made of them would have been somebody of significance and prominence. And so that's what he is seeing in his dream but the end result of the dream is that that image is smashed by a rock and everything falls apart. And so that is the dream. But what does the dream mean? Daniel begins to unpack it for him, verse 36. This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory into whose hand he has given wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all. You are the head of gold. So this is the first part of Daniel's interpretation within the dream is, hey, the top of this image, this head of gold, you, Nebuchadnezzar, that is you. And so it's kind of interesting even within this interpretation is that Daniel, a Hebrew slave who claims one singular God over the universe is recognizing that this pagan king has been put in his place by the provision of Almighty God. And so this is what Daniel is revealing to Nebuchadnezzar like, hey, maybe you thought it was your military prowess or these sacrifices you have made to other gods or your ability to organize a kingdom or whatever it might be. Maybe you thought that's how you ended up in this position of being king of the known world. Daniel is saying, no, that has been given to you by somebody else, which is significant for Nebuchadnezzar and for Daniel, 'cause Daniel is living as a conquered person, that he has been taken out of his homeland, which was the promised land that was promised to Abraham by God and the kingdom that had been established and the lineage of David and Solomon and all those things that the Israelites had been a part of and then it was completely destroyed by Babylon. What Daniel is recognizing in the interpretation of this dream is that God accomplished that. Not Babylon, not Nebuchadnezzar of his own might. God gave it to him, which is a significant reflection for both Nebuchadnezzar and for Daniel. This is recorded in other parts of scripture as well, the prophet Jeremiah, who is a contemporary, he says the same thing about Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 27, verse five and six. It is I, speaking as God through Jeremiah, who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth with the men and the animals that are on the earth and I give it to whomever it seems right to me. Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him. I think sometimes we can get so fixated on the events that we live through that we can lose the broader story that God is sovereign over the affairs of man. And what the scriptures would attest to that we might have a hard time believing or understanding that there are even moments where humans who create great acts of evil are part of God's plan. And so we have seen this transpire throughout history. We can read about it in the Old Testament over and over again as kingdoms rise and fall and then as we even get into broader areas of history, but we also need to think about it in terms of what we currently live through. I think there are two struggles sometimes we face as Christians when there are things that transpire that we think ought not to be. One temptation we could struggle with is to think that things are outside of God's control. That maybe that event that took place was not part of God's command. And to me that's a scary thought. To think that something could transpire in our world that was not ordained and ordered by the hand of providence. But that is a struggle because then within that reality we would have to recognize that sometimes God is going to use evil people who accomplish his redemptive plan in the world around us. Proverbs 21.1 says it like this, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. The nations will rise and fall and there are leaders that history sometimes would say are benevolent and good and sometimes have been evil and wicked. And what the Bible set would say is that all of that has been part of the sovereign providential plan of God. And that includes Nebuchadnezzar in this moment. But the dream continues. Verse 39. "Another kingdom inferior to you shall rise after you. And yet a third kingdom of bronze which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom strong as iron because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, the partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brutal. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together just as iron does not mix with clay. So this is what Daniel reveals to Nebuchadnezzar. You are this head of gold. You are king of kings at this moment in time, but then he begins to reveal what's going to transpire in the future. He says an inferior kingdom is gonna take you over. So he kind of begins to work down this image that there's this aspect that is silver and then bronze and iron. He's saying first there's this inferior kingdom that's going to dethrone you Nebuchadnezzar. And then after that there's going to be another kingdom that destroys that kingdom. And then after that there's going to be a third kingdom that smashes all of those kingdoms. It begins to work out this interpretation. And he doesn't give necessarily a timeline on it in this moment, but we have some of the hindsight of history behind this this morning. And so what pretty much every biblical scholar would hold to and most historians would say that what begins to transpire Daniel predicted perfectly. So not too long after Nebuchadnezzar, another kingdom does arise in the near east that was the kingdom of the Persians in the Medes. And not only do we know that through history is that also begins to transpire in the book of Daniel. If you can remember back to Daniel chapter one, it says that Daniel serves in the palace up to Cyrus the Great. Cyrus was not a Babylonian, but a Persian king that took over after Nebuchadnezzar. So that is this inferior kingdom that's going to rise up and dethrone Nebuchadnezzar. And so the Persian and the median empire was very prominent at the time. They kind of once again took over all the lesser kingdoms and they established themselves. And a lot of us, we know a bit of that story because then it begins to have this conflict between the Persians and the Greeks. So if you've ever seen the movie 300 is talking about that because this Persian king Darius and then Xerces, they wanted to make their empire even further up into the European continent. And so they begin to have this conflict with the Greeks. And so then it gets into this third empire which most scholars would hold to is the Greek empire. That there was a Macedonian by the name of Alexander who united the Greek-speaking peoples and then went on a rampage that unseated the Persian dominance of the Near East. And so Alexander the Great, his empire, spanned from Europe all the way to India. And that began to be the known what's called the Hellenization of the world. It spread all over. But then after Alexander died, it didn't last too much longer after that. And then the country of Italy had a kingdom known as Rome that then began to dominate the known world. And so most people would hold that that is the kingdom of iron that smashes all things because the legions of Rome went all the way from the British Isles, also all the way to about India and established their kingdom in the empire. And so Daniel is just laying out this history that is about to transpire. And it's pretty incredible how God does reveal these things. And so as scholars have studied the word of God and dug into the prophetic nature of it, usually as a kind of historical critical method is applied to the Bible, people in the modern times have questioned when these books were actually written and dated. And that happens with Daniel a lot because there is the Christian understanding and the Jewish understanding of when did Daniel live and when were these prophetic words written down. But one of the contentions against when Daniel was written down is because how could he have predicted what was going to happen four to 600 years before it actually transpired. But that is what happened. In fact, when Alexander the Great began his kind of rampage through that part of the world at that time, Israel, the geographic place of Israel would have been under control of the Persians and the Medes. And when Alexander's army got to Jerusalem, they began to siege it. Now there is a Jewish historian named Josephus who also writes about Jesus. So he was written from the Jewish perspective but not the Christian perspective. And he records that when Alexander got to Jerusalem and the people were worried, they were about to be completely decimated like everyone else, a group of rabbis got together and they took out the scroll of Daniel and they read to Alexander this prophecy and then Daniel recounts it in the later chapters in the book of Daniel in chapter seven and eight and they read this prophecy to Alexander and they say, we think this is you. And it freaked Alexander out and he made a sacrifice to Yahweh and then he moved on without rampaging Jerusalem. So God just lays this out not only for Daniel, not only for Nebuchadnezzar, but also for us. All of these kingdoms probably told their own story and other kingdoms have as well different civilizations and powers have all had their moment. If it was either Rome or the Ottoman Empire, how the sun would never set on the British Empire, even into the 1940s when you had the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany, they told a story that Hitler called what he was doing in Germany the third Reich. He believed a story. He thought it began with Charlemagne back in the Middle Ages and then there was a German Empire and what he said about what they were establishing in Germany is that the third Reich would rule for a thousand years. Human civilizations and empires held their story. And even us in this moment, we are living in the United States of America, post-World War II where our story has not been challenged in many, many decades, that there are certain things we believe about our moment in time, the culture we are brought up in, and in history, and I would need to challenge us on if we are buying into a different story more than the story of God. Daniel's interpretation isn't finished verse 44. And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. Nor shall the kingdom be left to another people, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end and it shall stand forever. And just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hands and that it broke in pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, a great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain and its interpretation is sure. So what Daniel lays out for Nebuchadnezzars, there are gonna be these kings and kingdoms, they are going to rise, they are going to fall, but there's gonna be this other kingdom that begins without human hands. This is like a rock was taken out and it smashes all of the other kingdoms and not only that, it becomes a mountain. It's a pretty incredible prophecy. One of the things we would hold to about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. One of the prophecies that was said about him and that imagery that makes its way into our story is that he is a stone. He is a stone that builders rejected because no human hand had touched it, it hadn't carved it or shaped it into the way they think it should be, but that that stone was laid as the cornerstone for a kingdom that will have no end. And what we know of the story of Jesus is that he came in a moment in history where one of these kingdoms was at its prominence and height, that there were no challengers to the Roman Empire at that time and he came into a position of humility and as Jesus began his earthly ministry, he began to preach a gospel of a kingdom. A kingdom that would not be established by human might, by the ability to wage war, a kingdom that would be established through a sacrifice. And that kingdom would have no end because the king we serve is not dead but is alive. And as you look through the course of history, Christians have lived in many times in places under lesser kings to varying degrees of evil and most of those kingdoms and civilizations have passed away but the Christian remains. And this is how God has always revealed his plan to his people. I was reflecting back even when God called Abraham and has said he was going to establish a people for himself and he was going to make his descendants as numerous as the stars or the grains of sands. Even in that moment, God prophesies to Abraham in Genesis 15, 13, he says this. He says, "No for certain that your offspring "will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs "and will be servants there "and they will be afflicted for 400 years." I wonder if the people of God as they were enslaved in Egypt remembered that God told them this was going to happen. After Nebuchadnezzar hears this prophetic word and its interpretation, this is his response. King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel and commanded that an offering in incense be offered up to him, the king answered and said to Daniel, "Truly your God is God of gods and Lord of kings "and a revealer of mysteries "for you have been able to reveal this mystery." Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many gifts and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. Daniel made a request of the king and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedgo over the affairs of the province of Babylon, but Daniel remained at the king's court. So this kind of concludes this chapter of Daniel's life, but to me what's been striking is I've reflected on this this whole week. Is the reality that God in so many ways has revealed to us what is going to transpire even in our own times? Maybe not with the specificity that we would like to know kind of the play by play, but he has shown us again and again and again that humans are gonna create things for themselves to counter God and that for a time in a season people might put their hope in it as some manner of savior and then inevitably it'll come to nothing and then people will move on. And so we have to ask ourselves to the people of God of what story are we living out today and what thing are we believing over and above what God has already revealed through his word. I think it was pretty common for us to worry about the future, but in a lot of ways we do know what is going to happen. Nations may rise and fall. Different philosophies and ideologies will come and go and people will continue to look for salvation from human means and be disappointed. History is going to arc towards getting worse and at some point known only to the Father, Jesus will return. Would you turn with me to Psalm 33? ( pewling) Beginning in verse eight, the psalmist says this. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm. The Lord brings the council of the nations to nothing. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The council of the Lord stands forever. The plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven, he sees all the children of man. From where he sits in throne, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. The king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation. And by its great might, it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive and famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us even as we hope and you. We are living in a story written by a sovereign God who will bring all things to conclusion. And my prayer for us this morning is that our hope is firmly anchored in Jesus Christ. I'll leave us with a final quote from the chronicles in our near. Wrong will be right when Aslan comes inside. At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more. When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death. And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly. All God's people said, "Father in heaven, we turn to you." Trusting that you will bring your people home, that your gospel will be validated. That we will overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. God, that we don't have to believe the story that might makes right, because we serve a king who conquered through sacrifice. We've got to pray that just collectively, as Christians, there would be a calmness in peace about us in this world, because we remember that ultimately, we belong to a different kingdom. That we can be good citizens in this present time. We can care deeply about what happens to our country, to our countrymen. But the story that we are part of is your story. That you began, that you were leading and guiding, that you've already written. God fill us with hope. Help us remember your sovereign control over the affairs of the world around us. God help us to care about the things that you care about, and be fully dependent upon Jesus Christ than his name that I pray. Amen.