Genesis 10-11 - God’s Sovereignty Over Nations
Main Idea: Rebellious mankind insists on defiance of God and His character, but His purposes will be accomplished.
GOD KNOWS EVERY PERSON AND NATION (10:1-32)
God knows your name, your background, and your situation.
God sovereignly knows and directs the leaders of nations.
GOD FRUSTRATES THE PLANS OF THE NATIONS (11:1-9)
The nations plan to disobey God and His Word.
The nations cannot have a new heart or live the life God commands.
God has created a new nation that is able to follow His design.
GOD INVITES YOU TO JOIN IN HIS KINGDOM PLANS (11:10-32)
He calls you to make Him your King in every aspect of your life.
He wants you to be an ambassador to invite others to the Kingdom.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
Today, we are concluding our series in Genesis 1-11. We've been looking at this series, Sovereign, seeing how did God design this world to work? Is it all simply random happenings?
Are we just at perhaps the mercy of what is strongest, or is there someone that is in control of our universe?
And as we've looked through, we saw in week one God's good design for His earth, that as He created each part of the cosmos and of life itself, that He said that it was very good.
And His design for our world was that we would be in relationship and harmony with Him.
But then in week two, we saw what went wrong, namely that Adam and Eve, our forefathers, and all of us afterwards have rejected God's design and have tried to define good and evil on our own terms.
And because of us doing that, because of us rebelling against God's design, we invited sin and death into the world. God's design was goodness, righteousness, life, and to reject that design brought into our world, everything that went wrong.
Then over the past several weeks, we saw human wickedness and what it means for humans to have that definition of right and wrong by their own labels, how we tend to devalue others.
We saw some of the first murders taking place, some of the first things of sexual immorality, of dominance of other people. And we saw God's just punishment in the flood.
And even in his punishment that he dealt out on the world, he did not forget grace, and he did not simply wipe us out.
Instead, he loved us so much that scripture would tell us, for 120 years, Noah was preaching to those that saw him putting together all of the things for the ark and building it, that Noah was a preacher of righteousness, calling to whoever would
that they would find safety and refuge through God's design. Then last week, we saw with lots of fun illustrations and a picture of me getting stomped on and all that kind of stuff.
We saw God's now kind of restoration, his restart for our world, which namely was to Noah and to his family, I want you all to start off brand new.
What had been given to Adam and Eve at the beginning, the call to multiply, to spread out all over the earth, to bring God's good design and order to every corner of creation, God now gave that command to Noah and to his children.
However, what we find as we look at Genesis 10 and 11 is even though God has lavished his mercy and his grace, he has made incredible promises and covenants that said you don't have to worry about your future, you don't have to worry about a coming
justice. I'm in control and I've promised blessing that it didn't change our hearts. Our circumstances may have been changed. There was a kind of new world in effect, but there was not a new heart in mankind.
And to this day, what we are in need of as people in 2024, it's not simply a new set of circumstances. We are in need of a new heart that only God can provide.
I'm not talking a literal heart, I'm not going to ask if there's any heart surgeons here, any cardiologists. God wants to put a new spiritual heart in you.
That who you are, your desires, your wants, how you treat people, how you think about the world would change, not to mimic any individual person, but to mimic our Creator. And that's what the story of the Bible is all about.
That we are in desperate need of help, and that God pursued us in the person of Jesus, and that He made a way that we could be restored to Him, and that we could live in His good design.
Today, we're going to be looking at God's sovereignty over nations.
It's kind of where the story goes from this point, that as we've been looking at individual people along the way, Adam and Eve and Cain and Enoch and Noah, now it's going to zoom out a little bit.
And even as Moses here is writing much of this, and later editors coming along and showing the children of Israel, here's where your place is in this world that God has created. God wants them to know on the scale of nations what's going on.
Did God somehow miss out on, oh no, there's all these other nations around you, Egypt or Canaan or the Hittites or Babylon? What happened with them? Why isn't God actively working there?
And Genesis 10-11 shows us much of that. When we talk about God's sovereignty, one of the things, especially over nations, one of the things that comes to mind is back in the summer of 2016, I was on a Southern Gospel men's group.
We were a college recruitment group sent out from my Bible college, and we traveled throughout the Southern states of the US.
Over the course of about three months, I think we did somewhere in the realm of 65 different churches and four different Bible camps. And at one of those Bible camps, we were down at Camp Loma Da Vida down in Texas, and it was very hot.
It was in July, and if you guys think it's warm here, try adding about another 20 degrees worth of heat down in Texas where there are no trees, and I don't think it'd be dissimilar to perhaps Purgatory or Level 1 of Dante's Inferno, something like
that. So we were there, and so because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time inside the building where there was air conditioning. And one of the things that the kids were doing during that time were they were playing chess.
And some of you that have maybe played games with me, I'm somewhat competitive, not incredibly so, not obnoxiously so, but I can be a little competitive.
And so I'd played a few rounds, and if I were to play any one of you today, I would most likely lose. I'm not that great. I haven't studied the art of chess.
However, when I'm playing like sixth and seventh graders, I'm amazing. So I played a couple different rounds of chess with the kids, and I completely destroyed them.
And finally, I stepped out so that other people could have a turn at that particular table.
And there was, I think, a sixth or seventh grade girl that had sat down, and she was facing off against, I think it was probably an eighth grade boy or something. So someone older, a formidable opponent.
And me with a little bit of competition, type A, I try and control everything. I began giving hints to the sixth grader. And I was like, hey, you should move this here.
And sure enough, she completely beat the eighth grader.
And though she was the one doing it, there was someone behind her actually calling the shots, that someone was in control, that she didn't really need to worry about, okay, like I'm moving my hand, but really there is someone else that's at work.
When we look at God's sovereignty over the nations, over our world today, there are individuals, there are parliaments and presidents and ruling congresses and things that are at work, but there is someone that is truly in control in our world.
No world event occurs without God's working and his aims being accomplished. And we can have peace and comfort knowing that what he wants to happen will happen.
For America, we vote as is our right and our privilege, but we don't have to worry that God will somehow drop the ball or that his purposes for our nation, whether to strengthen or weaken or bless or judge, his purposes will take place.
Since he is in control, we are called to peace, calmness, and a resolution to do what he's asked us to do in the time that he's given us. Rebellious mankind insists on defiance of God and his character, but his purposes will be accomplished.
Seven to our passage today. If you look over the chapters, you are going to see a lot of names. I would encourage you be reading through perhaps the rest of the passage even over this coming week.
But for sake of time today, I'll summarize many of the names with this. The Bible is not merely a myth or a fairy tale. The Bible is God's account of our world and what took place.
And so here in real time and real place, you have the writers that are saying, here are the different ancestors, the, if you will, heads of these different nations and tribes that as the children of Israel looked around at their world in the ancient
Near East, they would be able to see, okay, I know some people that come from the land of Cush. I know some people from Mizraim. I know some people from Babylon. And here, God is telling us where all of these people came from.
I want us to notice first from chapter 10 that God knows every person and nation. As you look through, you can perhaps find some boredom in just reading some names.
Just as a summary, verse number two, Japheth's sons, Gomer, Magog, Medai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tirass, Gomer's sons, Ashkenaz, Rifath, and Tagarmah, and Javan's sons, Elisha, Tarshish, Kidim, and Dodanim.
Verse number six, Ham's sons, Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan, Cush's sons, Seba, Havala, Sabta, Ramah, and Sabteca, and Ramah's sons, Sheba and Dedan. Sure, as I read those, that many of you go, man, that's just a blessing to my soul. Thank you.
As we read through names in the Bible, we can sometimes find some boredom. We go, okay, why is this here? Number one, it's grounded in reality.
And frankly, reality is sometimes more boring. But the point here that I want us to see is that God knew each individual person. That God knew each of these nations.
He knew their origins. He knew where people had come from and what they would do with their life. For you today, God knows your name, your background, and your situation.
You are not unknown. He made you, and He knows even the hairs on your head. For some of you, that's a little bit easier task than others.
You are not unloved. God made this world for you. He came to die for your sins, and He calls you His child.
And you are not abandoned, as He has promised to never leave us or to forsake us. Psalm 139 says this, It was you who created my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb.
I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw me when I was formless. All of my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began. God, how precious your thoughts are to me.
How vast their sum is. If I counted them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I wake up, I am still with you.
God knows you, and He loves you. You might have had other people in your life tell you that you are unimportant or unloved or not worthy. That's not how our God sees you.
But God made you, He knows you, He knows your situation. But that doesn't simply mean that we don't have any relationship with God as a result. We say, God knows me, and so it doesn't really matter if I know Him.
God, regardless of your situation or your circumstance, He calls you to faithful obedience in your situation. Tough times and bad situations don't exempt us from pursuing a relationship with God.
And like Daniel, Esther in Xerxes' harem, Paul in prison, or Jesus, God might have a unique purpose for you in your obedience to Him.
But not only does God know our names, our backgrounds, our situations, God sovereignly knows and directs the leaders of nations. We can see this beginning in verse number 8 in Genesis 10.
It says this, Cush fathered Nimrod, who began to be powerful in the land. He was a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord. That is why it is said, like Nimrod, a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord.
I want to mention one thing here. At maybe a cursory reading, we could say, Oh man, a powerful hunter in the sight of the Lord. He's just the best deer huntsman.
And even God is impressed by how he's able to hunt the deer. As we look at the rest of the scripture, and even as we look at how the Jews understood this passage to read, Nimrod was one of the first kind of big kings.
And as it would say, even in the following verses in verses 10, 11, and 12, we'll see what kind of a king he was, what kind of hunting that he was doing.
Scripture in other places does tell us about people that hunted animals and about their exploits, but here the specific type of hunting is mentioned. Verse number 10, His kingdom started with Babylon, Orek, Akkad, and Calna in the land of Shinar.
From that land, he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Cala, and Rezin, between Nineveh and the great city Cala. Here, as Nimrod's going through, there is a conquering of place after place after place.
As we look back in world history at this time period, there was much violence. There was domination. Whoever could subject and subdue others felt free to do so.
And here, God makes it clear, I know even the leaders of nations, that yes, he knows individual people.
He knows simple ones like you and me that may never ever hold a political office or be important in the eyes of the world, but that does not mean that he is not aware of leaders.
And God's awareness of leaders is not just a passive awareness, but as they lead people, as they lead armies, as they lead policies, that God is at work even in their actions, not willingly so many times that it might not be that they say, what would
God want me to do in this situation? If there are people like that, that do want to follow the Lord, then wonderful. But many times as we read in Scripture, God's working behind the scenes. He's working in their hearts in unique ways.
Proverbs 21 in verse 1 says, a king's heart is like channeled water in the Lord's hand. He directs it wherever he chooses.
I don't know if you're much like my son, maybe in the shower or in the bath where he'll pick up some water, and he decides when it pours, he decides where it goes.
He doesn't necessarily change what the water is, but he chooses where it goes and when. And here scripture tells us as we look at nations, that is how the Lord works.
In Ezra 6 and verse 22, it says, the Lord had made Israel joyful, having changed the Assyrian king's attitude toward them so that he supported them in the work on the house of the God of Israel.
God even influences the attitudes of those in leadership. Acts 4 and verses 27 and 28 says this, Herod and Pontius Pilate, if you have any passing knowledge of Scripture, not really great godly people.
Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed to do whatever your hand and your will had predestined to take place.
There is nothing that happens in a world that takes our God by surprise.
So if we know that God is working through national leaders, and sometimes it's not for things that are good, even as we would read in the book of Habakkuk, where Habakkuk is a prophet to the kingdom of Judah, and he tells God, God, don't you see all
the wickedness that's taking place in Judah? Why aren't you doing anything about it? And God responds with, oh, I'm going to do something about it.
I'm going to bring in the Babylonians, and they are going to lay waste to Judah, and they're going to take the people captive, take them back to Babylon. And Habakkuk goes, Lord, no, no, no, you don't understand.
The Babylonians are way worse than us. I'm not sure if you were aware of this. And God replies, oh, no, no, don't worry.
Then I'm going to bring someone along to take care of Babylon. God is only able to work through flawed, imperfect humans. There are no perfect humans, no perfect judges that would be able to work in our world.
So as God utilizes kings and nations to accomplish his work, sometimes to bring blessing to the people of God, as we would read about in the Old Testament, or sometimes to bring along judgment, to bring along wicked rulers, to perhaps bring a
judgment within a nation. How do we interact with it? If we know this is God's thoughts, what do we do? Scripture tells us three things.
Number one, to respect them. This is hard for us as Americans. We are natural born rebels.
If someone tells us to do something, we don't want to do it. They tell us, hey, buckle up when you're in the car.
Even though we technically know, I live in the Baltimore area, if I drive and I don't have a seatbelt buckle on, I might be flying out through my windshield at some point.
Even though we know that, we go, oh, okay, no, just because you told me to do it, I don't want to do it. And that's true in a hundred different circumstances for us. But scripture tells us to respect those that are our rulers.
First Peter chapter 2 says this, submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority or to governors, as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is
good. For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. If you want to make a difference, do good. It says submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but as God's slaves.
He says you are free people, but act as though you are captive to do the will of God. Not that you are captive to do whatever you want. He says honor everyone, love the brothers and sisters, fear God, honor the emperor.
Here there's a holy respect that we are to have. Acts chapter 23 says this, Paul's on trial before kind of just the local religious group. This was the group that sentenced Jesus to death.
It says Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience to this day. So he's starting to give, he's on trial. And so he's given his opening line.
The high priest Ananias ordered those who were standing next to him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall. You are sitting there judging me according to the law.
And yet in violation of the law, are you ordering me to be struck? Most of you would find it weird if you were on trial for maybe a traffic court violation or something, and the judge from the seat told the clerk or someone, hey, go slap him.
You'd find that a little weird. It was specifically against the Jewish law. And so Paul points that out.
He calls him a whitewashed wall. Those standing nearby said, do you dare revile God's high priest? I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, replied Paul.
For it is written, you must not speak evil of a ruler of your people. As Americans, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, that's something that we all need to remember. So we're called to respect.
We're called to not speak evil of. We're called to honor. What does that look like?
We know that the nations are in rebellion against God in most instances. So is that all we're supposed to do? Bible also tells us, pray for them.
First Timothy chapter two says, first of all, then I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for everyone, for kings and all those who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness
and dignity. This is good and it pleases God our Savior who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God says, you want to lead a tranquil, quiet, godly life? Pray for those that are in authority.
You can rant and rave and stage protests and try all different things to change your government's mind or to switch out who's in office. But are you imploring God to work? Are you asking for Him to step into the situation?
Are you praying for the salvation of that one politician that drives you crazy? It's what God calls us to do. Not only does Scripture call us to respect our national leaders and to pray for them, but it also says don't trust in them.
Psalm 118 says, It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humanity. It's better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in nobles. In all God's people said.
Psalm 146 says, Hallelujah, my soul, praise the Lord. I will praise the Lord all my life. I will sing to my God as long as I live.
Do not trust in nobles, in a son of man who cannot save. When his breath leaves him, he returns to the ground. On that day, his plans die.
Happy is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. He remains faithful forever, executing justice for the exploited and giving food to the hungry.
The Lord frees prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord raises up those who are oppressed.
The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord protects resident aliens and helps the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The Lord reigns forever.
Zion, your God reigns for all generations. Hallelujah. So God knows every person and nation.
He knew each of the individuals that started all of these families. He knew the kings gaining more and more ground and conquering place after place and having people work to build them greater and greater capitals.
But then we can see in chapter 11 in verses 1-9 that God frustrates the plans of the nations. So Genesis 10-1-32 highlights, here's all of these nations, here's their background, here's where they come from.
And then in chapter 11 verses 1-9, we get a little picture of something that happened before the scattering of all the nations. It says this, the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary.
As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, come, let's make oven-fired bricks. They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar.
Here, as the writer is talking to Israelites, they would have known about stone and mortar. That land of Israel at that particular time especially was very rich with limestone, so they would have been used to not using bricks.
They would have used stones for many of their things. So here that's given. And they said, verse number four, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.
That word is Shemayim in Hebrew. It's the same word in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth.
They say, we want a tower that's going to reach up to the heavens, the realm of the gods in their thoughts. They said, let us make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.
The command that God had given was, go into all of the earth, multiply, fill the earth, bring the order and design. And here they said, being scattered isn't going to be great for us. We're not going to follow God's command and God's design.
Instead, we're going to stick here, we're going to band together, and we're going to accomplish something to make ourselves and our name great.
Verse number five, then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans are building. I love here, they said, hey, we're going to build up to the skies. We're going to go up to the heavens.
And the writer here, the Lord came down to look. He says, despite human efforts, God is so far above us. He says, the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building.
The Lord said, if they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
He's not scared that they're actually going to reach spiritual heaven, but he's saying this banding together in defiance of God's will and design is going to lead to more and more and more problems even as we read about in Genesis chapter 6.
It says their evil that they did all together is just going to continue if they are united. We'll say this too.
If this is true for evil, that one people with one language working together for evil, if God says here, nothing will be impossible for them, then how much more for the people of God, those that with one Lord, one faith and one baptism, one pursuit,
one God that we worship together, what could God do through a unified church? Think about it. Verse number seven, God said this, come, let's go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's speech.
So from there, the Lord scattered them throughout the earth and they stopped building the city. Therefore, it is called Babylon.
For there, the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there, the Lord scattered them throughout the earth. In Hebrew, the word for confusion, as I'm going to put in English letters here, is like N-B-L.
So it's like navel, kind of like that. And here, God flips it around. He gives confusion.
So Babylon, that there's a whole plan where it's there, and I think that's really fun if you want to look it up sometime. So God here does a navel to babble.
And God here says, human design, their best intents, it's not going to work, because I am the one that is in control. First here, we can see that the nations plan to disobey God and His words.
Psalm 2 says this, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers conspire together against the Lord and His anointed one. Let's tear off their chains and throw their ropes off of us.
The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord ridicules them. Then He speaks to them in His anger and terrifies them in His wrath.
I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain. There is no nation today that as you walk into it, you could say, here's what God says. You could open up the Bible and say, here's our marching orders.
No one would follow it. The nations are not built to follow the Lord. And that's because the nations cannot have a new heart or live the life that God commands.
There is no heart for a nation to have changed. There is no spiritual composition in them. There is no soul in a nation at large that they would follow the Lord.
It's only in people. You can look at the Book of Judges in Scripture. There, there was a theocracy under the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses, with divine miracles taking place over the course of centuries.
And it could not last more than a few years because nations cannot follow God, only individuals, and in our sin-cursed world, there is no one that follows after God. There's no one that pursues Him.
And when people have tried to perhaps intermarry, okay, I know here's what God's Word says, and I think that I can make a nation follow God and pursue Him wholeheartedly.
Well, frankly, church history would show us the awful results of attempting to control the government, the police force, and the army through a pseudo-religious lens that is kind of Christian, but not really.
The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Bloody Mary, and many of the atrocities done in the name of kingdom expansion in the 14th through the 1700s all show us that when the church and the state link up, what they create no longer resembles Jesus
Christ Church in any way. It's because government was never designed to be that life-changing presence of Jesus living inside of us. Government's great at punishing. Government's great at perhaps bringing in armies or police forces.
What it's not great at is being that role of God in our life, the one that would come along and give us mercy. It's a real tricky thing when you're trying to balance justice and mercy. It's great when you're Almighty God.
It doesn't work so great when it's a human government. So what's the answer to this? If we know that the nations can't follow God, that when they try to do it, they always butcher it.
It never goes according to plan. It always ends up with persecution and demeaning the name of Christ in the eyes of our world, and sometimes even persecuting true Christians. So what's the answer?
Do we just give up on nations and go live out in the woods, complete anarchists? God tells us that he has created a new nation that is able to follow his design. And again, unfortunately, that nation is not America, just so you all know.
1 Peter 2 tells us what that nation is. It says, You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
It says, Once you were not a people, you were all from different backgrounds. Across the room today, we've got people from different nationalities, even people from different countries that are here at the moment.
But God says, Once you were not a people, but now you are a people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
He says, Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. He says, You guys are just passing through this world. This world is not your home.
The nations of this world do not deserve your ultimate allegiance. God alone is worthy of that. Revelation chapter 5, those singing around the throne of God, they sing a new song.
You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slaughtered. And you purchased people for God by your blood, from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth. We have a spiritual kingdom, not an earthly kingdom, just as Jesus told Pontius Pilate when he had asked.
We say, okay, if we've got a nation, then who's the ruler of the nation? Who do we pick? Well, it's King Jesus is our ruler.
What's our currency? It is generosity with abandon that we give to each other and to those in need. What is the army of this nation comprised of?
It's those equipped with the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, and with faith as our shield. We fight spiritual forces. Ephesians 6 tells us that our fight is not against flesh and blood.
It's not against people, but it's against spiritual forces, against demonic influences around the world. People are not our opposition. They are the mission field.
They are the ones to be one with the gospel of Christ. They are not who we fight against. They're the ones that we fight for.
What are the perhaps borders of this spiritual nation? Scripture tells us, whosoever will make up. What's the health care like in this coming nation?
Eternal life, guaranteed. What's our national anthem? It's the praises of our king, like we praised today.
So lastly today, God invites you to join in His kingdom plans.
Here, as the Children of Israel looked back on history, and they saw these nations, Babylon was still very alive and well, and would be for centuries after they had received this particular book of scripture. And they would wonder, is God in control?
Is He going to make everything right? And at the end of Genesis 11, we read this in verse number 27. It says, These are the family records of Terah.
Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in his native land in Ur of the Chaldeans, that would be in Babylon, during his father Terah's lifetime. Abram and Nahor took wives.
Abram's wife was named Sarai, and Nahor's wife was named Milka. She was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milka and Iska. Sarai was unable to conceive.
She did not have a child. When we come back to the book of Genesis in just a few months, we're going to look at the story of Abraham, where God says, I'm starting a whole new thing. I'm starting a new nation, and he begins it with this man, Abraham.
That from this land where there was great defiance against God in Babylon, a nation started by Nimrod, God says, I'm inviting you into my kingdom plans. First, God calls us to make him king in every aspect of our life.
Choose to follow God's design for your mind, what you think about, what you meditate on, what you listen to, what you watch. Choose to follow his design for your body, that you would treat it as 1 Corinthians would tell us.
Treat it as the temple of the Holy Spirit, that because God lives in you, it has value. So treat it well. Choose to follow God's design for your words.
I was reading earlier this week, death and life are in the power of the tongue.
That how you speak, whether you speak the gospel of Jesus Christ, you speak the love of God, you speak respectfully and kindly to people, or on the other hand, if you are speaking with cruelty and malice and degrading and insulting in your voice or
in your tone, choose to follow God's design. Make him your king in every aspect of your life. Why would anyone choose to follow a king whose purported subjects don't even obey him?
Not only does God call us to make him king in every aspect of our life, but God wants us to be an ambassador to invite others to the kingdom. 2 Corinthians 5, Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ.
Since God is making his appeal through us, we plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. He made the one, Jesus, who did not know sin, to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I read a quote before by Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller from the magic show in Vegas. And he said this. He said, I've always said that I don't respect people who don't proselytize.
I don't respect that at all.
If you believe that there's a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward, and atheists who think people
shouldn't proselytize and who say just leave me alone and keep your religion to yourself, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
I mean, if I believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn't believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.
God doesn't just want someone else in this church to be an ambassador for him. If you're here today, if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are given the call of being an ambassador.
That where you talk, it's like Jesus is there, that the words that you say would be like Jesus. You would invite people into relationship with God. You would maybe even just something as simple as invite someone to church.
We've got the Sit With Me This Weekend cards at the back table, where you can get those bulletins over by the little hand sanitizer post thing. I would encourage you, grab a couple of those. Invite someone to be your guest.
If we believe that God's Word is true, then it demands action on our part. And God wants you to be involved in that. He doesn't just say, oh yeah, you know, maybe Pastor Ron or Roy, those are the only ones great enough to be my ambassadors.
And you don't really make the cut. God has called each of us to be ambassadors for Christ, to our families, to our neighbors, to our coworkers, to our loved ones. God has called you and placed you where he has.
Today, as we look at the nations of this world, as we consider that God is in control, that we can have a rest and a reliance on knowing that his will will be accomplished, and so it means that we are to be busy about building his nation, being
ambassadors for him, living out his kingdom way. Today, will you follow God personally? Will you pray for your leaders and refuse to treat them how the world treats them? Will you follow and obey your king personally?
And will you invite others into his kingdom? Today, the world's got enough of the rebellious mankind that doesn't want to follow the Lord. Let us that name the name of Christ not be in that boat.
