Romans 15:4 • Hope's Power

Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.

Sermon Notes

Transcript

(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

As we prepare for today, let me tell you we have a tall order covering Romans 14 and 15, two whole chapters in the book of Romans, absolutely crucial for thinking of the mission of the church worldwide and our church as well. As we're preparing, I'm going to ask that you look in your Bibles at Romans 15 and put your finger on verse 4, Romans 15 and verse 4, and we'll use that as home base as we cover this large portion of Scripture.



 As you're looking at Romans 15.4, let me prepare you for what is there by telling you of an experience that I had with a number of you very recently as we were in northern Israel



 walking up a slight hill and observing right in front of us an ancient mudbrick archway.



 Archaeologists have only recently uncovered that archway. It stands at the pinch point in the only mountain pass between Mesopotamia and northern Israel. It is over 4,000 years old, which gave us the sense of chill as we were walking up to the archway because what it meant was we were right on the path that Abraham journeyed as he went from Ur of the Chaldees into northern Israel responding to the promise of God to make him a blessing to the nations. We were following Abraham's journey. We were actually in the steps and then part of the journey and not there only. A few days after that, we would stand gazing upon ancient Jericho where Joshua had seen the hand of God operate in such a way that the walls came tumbling down and he learned unmistakably God provides for those who cannot provide for themselves. We were not only witnessing where he was, we were walking up to the place being inspired to continue the journey of making the message known that God provides for those who cannot provide for themselves. A few days after that, we were walking in the valley of Elah between the two hills where the armies of Israel and the armies of the Philistines were to pose each other and a little shepherd boy named David would meet a giant named Goliath right in the middle of the valley where we were walking and Goliath would say to David, "Am I a dog that you come against me with a sling?" And David said, "You come with sword javelin and spear, I come in the name of the Lord." And we were reminded as God gave strength to a little shepherd boy that the strong take care of the weak, even a mighty God preparing for a king who would betray him greatly with the sin of adultery and murder and raising bad children as God was saying to him and to us, "This is the journey that you understand I provide for people who cannot provide for themselves the strong take care of the weak, you may be faithless, I will abide faithful." And we felt it again as we walked the streets of Jerusalem. On one particular day going down a street into a dark tunnel that would take us into a little room where a 12-year-old boy 2,000 years ago would have argued with the scribes in the temple saying that Christ was to come and he was that Christ. And we would later walk down the hill that he went down as he looked over Jerusalem and those who would put palm branches in front of him would praise his name but he would say, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you into my arms like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not."



 And we were in the Garden of Gethsemane where he sweat blood for you and me in prayer and walked the road that the mobs would have taken him as he went up to the high priest house where he would be struck and mocked and turned over to Pilate. And then we walked from that place of the Antonia fortress to the place where he would have been crucified. The steps of the journey saying over and over again, "The Almighty God will provide his grace to his people and this is written for your instruction so that you might be enduring in the trial, encouraged for the task, and given hope for whatever God calls you to do." It is that background that prepares you for verse 4 of Romans chapter 15. Do you see the words? Paul writes, "Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." When you see the places you have this sense of history.



 There was a plan being unfolded across thousands of years for our instruction. And you have this sense of mercy. Though God's people failed and often betrayed him and often walked away, he kept walking toward them until he would actually come in the presence of his Son. And not only that great sense of God's enduring mercy, but you have a sense of the reality of what happened. This is not random. It's not myth.



 It's not circumstantial. God was working a plan through the ages. And when I know that I'm so encouraged to recognize I'm not suddenly here as an oops, as an afterthought, God was working a plan to collect a people from all nations like me and like you. And for that reason, in the days that we feel I've walked away from God, surely he will walk away from me, we recognize that what he was saying in every page from first to last whatever was written in the former days was written for us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.



 It becomes necessary to continue our mission, to continue in faith, to know what God was accomplishing through all of what was written a four-time. The Apostle says simply, "Whatever was written was written for our instruction." But instruction in what?



 It's very clear what the Apostle is addressing. If you just go to verse 1 of chapter 15, "We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves." Simple message.



 The strong take care of the weak. Sounds so simple until you recognize the issues that Paul is dealing with. Why do we need that instruction? If you go to the 14th chapter and the second verse, you'll see what Paul is dealing with. If God is going to be faithful to His promise to Father Abraham to bless the nations through Him, that means ultimately in the house of God made possible by the Messiah, there will be people of different ethnicities and languages and nations and customs and practices and boundaries and acceptable behavior. And they're all going to be getting together in the same place. And they are not going to like each other.



 And they are not going to like the way they deal with different issues. And the Apostle Paul is saying, "If this mission of God is going to go forward, if there's a journey of grace that's going to continue through you, then you're going to have to learn to deal with these differences. And you need to know the strong take care of the weak. Like what? 14, 2.



 One person believes he may eat anything.



 While the weak person eats only vegetables. Now Paul is not concerned about certain people becoming vegan.



 What he's concerned about is as people are coming into the church, they come with different perspectives of what they can eat particularly when meat sold in the marketplace has previously been offered to idols.



 The Apostle Paul himself thinks, "So what?



 It's just an idol of wood and stone. It doesn't have any power. So what if food has been offered to an idol? You know Jesus Christ has made you right with God by His work, not by your work, not by that idol. Go ahead and eat."



 But other people are saying, "No, that would compromise us to eat what has been offered to idols." Paul's opinion is clear even in the way that he states the case in verse 2 of chapter 14. One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. I mean Paul is clearly saying the person who will not eat out of this compunction of concern for idol honoring is the weak person.



 Curiously that weak person thinks he's standing strong and not giving in to the compromises of culture. We recognize the difficulty. And Paul recognizes the difficulty. And so he writes in verse 14, "I know and am persuaded that in the Lord Jesus that nothing is in clean of itself."



 What's his own conviction?



 Idols nothing.



 Just eat. It's just meat. God provided it for your nourishment. Go ahead.



 And yet the end of verse 14 in chapter 14 says, "But it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean." When the apostle Paul says, "Nothing's unclean of itself." It's just material things. It's just something that God blessed in creating the animals for your goodness.



 But he says, "I know some of you won't see it that way."



 He's actually reflecting the words of Jesus in Matthew 15 where Christ says, "It's not what goes into the mouth, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person." And you would think that would just settle the issue. Jesus and the apostle Paul say, "It's just meat.



 It's clean in itself." You know you've been sanctified by the work of Christ. Don't worry about other people's opinions. You would think that would settle the case.



 But Paul doesn't end there because he began by saying, "The strong take care of the weak and don't just please themselves."



 And so he adds the conclusion of the matter in chapter 14 verses 20 and 21 saying, "Do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God."



 Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.



 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.



 Uh-oh.



 Everything was going fine until he mentioned wine.



 I mean as long as we can kind of put 2,000 years of distance between us and the issue.



 There were people who were struggling with whether or not to eat meat offered to idols. There were people out of pagan cultures and Jewish cultures and they're struggling. What silly people that they couldn't figure it out that they struggled about that sort of thing. Then we get to the issue of wine and suddenly everything that they were struggling with we know we struggle with as well. As the Apostle says to the people then and to us, the strong take care of the weak even though everything is clean in itself.



 Don't we struggle with that, everyone? We know in our church what the struggle is. There are some in our church who clearly are embarrassed by the association of the American Evangelical Church with the temperance movement of the early 20th century. As industrialization made so many people work in sweatshop settings that created despair as rural settings where at that time so isolated without the technologies of communication that people in hopelessness and darkness turned to alcohol in such a way it was destroying our culture. And the temperance movement joined with the church movement to in essence say prohibition is the only standard for believers. And now we a century later look back and we recognize that was an overstatement of the Bible's position on alcohol. And yet because we are embarrassed by that overstatement there are other people in the church who are just as concerned that in an era where alcohol addiction is at record levels where we are struggling with issues of drunken driving and death due to it and sexual assault and binge drinking such as has not been experienced before in our culture the church is virtually silent.



 And the reason that we are silent is that we are so embracing our liberties that we are forgetting the strong take care of the weak. Nothing is evil in itself but it can be used in such a way that it damages people and the church of Jesus Christ is always obligated to say I've got to take care not just of my preferences but of someone else's needs and hurts and weaknesses so as not to cause others to stumble. And that becomes downright personal and inconvenient and controversial.



 Just a couple of months ago some of you were with me in Cuba as we were ministering to pastors and some of the wonderful volunteers from Grace Church were doing kitchen work and setting up chairs. And just to identify themselves as volunteers everyone who went with us kind of had an oversized t-shirt identifying themselves as from Grace Presbyterian Church so the people would know what they were doing. And because it was one size fits all for some of the smaller women the church were just awkward to work in. And so what some of our women did was they tied a knot in the side of some of their shirts until one of the Cuban pastors came to them and said, "You are causing our women to stumble, you floozies." No, he didn't say that.



 He did say you're causing our women to stumble because in Cuban culture tying the knot into one's t-shirt is meant to become form-fitting and alluring.



 And so what did our women do? Now was it evil for them to have tied knots in their t-shirts?



 Of course not. But they remembered verse 20 of chapter 14, "Do not for the sake of food," or knots,



 "destroy the work of God.



 The strong take care of the weak." I'm not just concerned about pleasing myself. I'm concerned about the good of others as the gospel is intended to move forward. I think about impact and impression and the concerns of others. Now that does not mean that we give in to every whim. In this very same chapter where the Apostle is saying, "The strong take care of the weak. We need to be careful not to call to others to stumble." He says in exactly the same chapter, chapter 14 and verse 16, these words, "But do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil."



 He's going to say it stronger in 1 Corinthians 9 where he will say this, "Why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience?



 If God has given me liberty, if everything is clean in itself, then I have to be concerned of what causes other people to stumble, but one of the ways people stumble is by legalism.



 And so if I just give in to it every time, if I'm not examining the consequences, then I may actually be doing damage to the gospel causing people to stumble in the opposite direction. And so here Paul is actually encouraging people to resist what is against liberty, even if somebody else thinks that you should not have resisted. Why? Because he said, "Even if you are not going along with their legalism, it's not because you just want to please yourself.



 It's because you're actually concerned for their spiritual good." What ultimately will build up the church. That's Paul's whole point. Remember in chapter 15 and verse 2 after he just said, "The strong take care of the weak," he says in verse 2 of chapter 15, "Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up."



 There are hard issues to weigh out. I mean even the Apostle Paul struggled. Some of you may remember in Acts 16, the Apostle Paul was struggling to get the gospel to be heard by certain Jewish converts and their friends.



 And so Timothy, who was a Greek, was with Paul in Iconium and Lystra. And people stopped listening to Paul's gospel. Why? Because Timothy had not been circumcised.



 And so at that point Paul said, "For the sake of the gospel, we're going to have Timothy circumcised."



 Then you get to Galatians 3 and the Apostle Paul is exactly on the opposite side of the fence where he says, "You foolish Galatians! What are you doing insisting that people be circumcised in order to honor Jesus Christ? Get off of it! Stop talking about this! This is not the issue for the gospel." Now you think, "Well, no, how inconsistent?" In one place he says, "We should be circumvented." In another place he says, "Don't." It's not inconsistent at all. What's he saying?



 What will serve the gospel? What is not about my good but the good of the progress of the gospel and the culture? How can I let people know? So to the Jew I become as a Jew, to the Greek as a Greek, to the weak I become as one weak, to one strong as one strong. I become all things to all men that I might by all means what?



 Save some.



 My goal is not legalism, it's not license. My goal is the gospel.



 And my example is Jesus Christ, verse 3 of chapter 15. For Christ did not please Himself.



 As it is written, "There are approaches of those who have approached, you fell on Me." Jesus accepted pain, personal non-good for the good of the gospel to spread. That became the goal. That became the thing that He would put higher above all other priorities. What will help the gospel to be heard? And that priority has to help us in situation after situation after situation if the strong take care of the weak. Because if the church is healthy, won't you hear me say that? If the church is healthy and it's reaching beyond its present boundaries, we will always have these issues. We will have people come from different backgrounds, different family structures, different languages, different customs. If the church is reaching out, it will have to deal with these issues over and over and over again and it will never stop, but the principles are always the same. The strong take care of the weak. We're not just pleasing ourselves. We are doing what is necessary for the gospel to progress.



 And as a consequence, the issues will keep coming for the people of the church who are mature enough to know, "We're going to have to navigate this."



 In terms of the priorities of the gospel.



 Now just for fun, because I was doing this sermon, I thought about listing the various controversies on Christian liberty that have been around in my 40 years of ministry in the church.



 Now, this can be painful or it can be fun, depending on how you want to listen to it, okay? I mean, just kind of think, these are the issues that have come and will keep coming.



 Especially in different generations and different nations.



 You know, this next week, Kathy and I will celebrate our 40th anniversary in Germany. We're going to go to her legacy church, the church from which her ancestors came in the late 19th century and came preaching and teaching in this country. And we'll go to the family farmstead. Let me tell you something. The people in Germany have a very different view of alcohol than we do.



 It's just not an issue. You know what the issue will be?



 Makeup.



 Because in that part of the world, women who put on makeup are identified as street walkers. And in the evangelical church of Germany, women do not wear makeup. It is viewed as causing people to stumble. Now, if you have makeup, I want you to feel very guilty right now I don't.



 I want you to recognize the church has to wrestle with the issues of its time and its place. What are the issues with which we've, with which we have wrestled? Obviously music, right? Especially when it's in the church. Is it too rocky or is it too gloomy?



 Movies.



 Too coarse or not realistic enough. The issues of hair, length, location, on the face or on the lip.



 And style.



 Is a man bun allowed?



 Or a mom bun required, which is the church some of you came from?



 Ties required. Are they spiritual or unspiritual?



 Slacks, jackets, jeans. Even when I came here, there were people pushing one way or another and I took the tie off from this morning's service. Yes, I did.



 Skirts or pants if you're really spiritual.



 And if it's a skirt, how long, how short, how tight or how loose?



 Caps in church.



 Big a decade ago when virtually every young person wore a cap every place they went. Not so big these days, but still sometimes troubling us. Flags in church.



 Really in a church that some people believe is only to honor God and not the institutions of men.



 Sports logos in church talk about honoring the institutions of men.



 Is it pot luck or pot providence?



 Or just get away from it, it's a carrion meal.



 Do we have Christmas trees, which by the way the druids used in their worship?



 Do we have Easter lilies, which pagans used in their spring fertility rites? Can our library include the works of C.S. Lewis? After all, he wrote about the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.



 Should the preacher wear a robe or not?



 Should the choir wear a robe or not?



 Scripture translations, which one? Because you know whichever one we choose, the others have to be evil.



 What is the name of the big room in which we gather to worship?



 Is it the sanctuary or is it the worship center?



 Or is it the big room where we gather to worship?



 Any of the three D's gets us in trouble.



 Drama, dance, or drums?



 Yeah, some people are going, "Ooh."



 You know, I have a friend who was a missionary in Africa for a while, and he talks about going to a conference where the night before this big outdoor conference was to occur,



 surprise reigns had come and had destroyed the piano on which the worship music was to be played. And the consequence was they still played the worship music but on turtle drums of that culture. And afterwards the elders of the village came and apologized to him. He said, "What's wrong?" He said, "Well, in our culture, turtle drums are used for devil worship."



 He said, "Oh." He said, "You should see how the pianos are used in our culture."



 We get troubled if we get along anything but what is promoting the gospel, and yet we still have to be aware of the culture and how people will interpret the different things that we are facing. As we are dealing with the issues that trouble us, you have to recognize they will keep changing.



 I was raised by a Baptist father who was on a circuit, three churches in three different states, and those were very, very conservative for the culture, churches, and that meant men and women in some of those churches did not sit together.



 And even where they were sitting together, the entrances to the church were still always two doors where the more conservative churches would require the men and women to go in separate doors, but the liberal churches didn't care anymore.



 One of the reasons I remember that is while we were in Israel on the Temple Mount, which you may remember is controlled by Muslims, men and women are not supposed to touch.



 And I watched as some of our people wanting to get photographs, just couples got close to each other.



 Some of them had been married 30, 40, and 50 years and got yelled at like they were at a junior high sock hop for touching each other.



 And you think, "Well, it's funny, but it's sad at the same time that people are letting something as innocent as it might be deprive them of their joy in the Lord, the ability of the gospel to move forward. But I want to remind you, this will always be the case."



 Everything that was written in former times was written for us. The Apostle Paul did not write Romans 14 and 15 just thinking, "Well, this will never occur again. No one else is going to be concerned about this." He knew that these issues would keep on coming, particularly in healthy church where the gospel is reaching beyond the people who are now sitting here, where people who are coming in don't look like us, don't sound like us, don't teach like us, don't have the same priorities. That's actually the sign of health, that we're moving beyond the boundaries of who we think we are. And for those of you who are graduates, let me just say to you, these issues will not get easier.



 They are just going to get more intense if you think about where we are as a world. We are experiencing the largest migration of peoples in the history of the world due to war, oppression, and economic pressures. And at the same time, because of technology and transportation and communication advances, cultures are mixing and changing and going into one another more than they ever were before. These issues are only going to intensify as our culture secularizes and polarizes and diversifies and our graduates are not going to be prepared for the church of the future if they do not have some principles in mind. Like the strong take care of the weak.



 So what does that mean? I mean, just simple principles here. Stand firm, says the Apostle Paul. Let everyone be firmly convinced in their own mind of what is right and what you think is right, you stick by it.



 At the same time, love others.



 The strong take care of the weak. You're not committing yourself just to what you think is for your good. Your convictions have to be for what you think will be for others' good. So even as you stand strong and love others, you are obligated to think about what will build up the church.



 Can be hard, exceedingly hard. I mentioned to you my father, pastor of little one-room churches in the rural areas of Tennessee and Kentucky.



 One time when I was ministering in St. Louis, not in my church, I'd been invited to another church but my father was visiting that weekend. And so I just thought, well, it'd be great to have my father. I grew up listening to him. He can listen to me, not thinking.



 Because the church in which I was ministering that Sunday was a twenty-something church full of hundreds of young people and the music, how do I say this to you? I mean, we were rocking out that Sunday.



 My father's church, not just one-room churches, they didn't believe that instrumental music was appropriate in the church.



 And so from little, conservative, baptismic, non-instrumental churches, I'm taking my father into this rocking out twenty-something church.



 You know, at some point in the worship session, I kind of looked over to my father and he just looked lost. I mean, not angry, just lost.



 Like I can't relate, I can't identify, I don't know what's going on here. And I preached and I felt so bad. Why didn't I think about my father in this situation?



 But as the service was over and I went and stood by my father, there was actually one of his friends from decades previous. So when we as a family lived in St. Louis, that one of those friends came all the way across the sanctuary to speak to my father.



 And he knew him well and he said, "Waymon,



 I hate the music too."



 But look at the young people.



 And what he was saying was, "I rejoice in what is not for my good, but is for the good of the gospel." And it wasn't just a one-way street, I'm just thinking about the young people. What was happening? He went all the way across the sanctuary to deal with my father in his seventh decade to say, "I want you to understand. I want to help you and I want to provide for you and help you understand why we're doing what — as much as I'm concerned for the young people, I'm concerned for you too." And it was that concern that was that two-way street, that concern for every person that was saying, "What will build up the church for the sake of the gospel?" And it's that mentality that's going to enable us to endure when we face all the issues that are going to be coming to a church that says, "Our goal is unlimited grace to the nations and the community, and it will inevitably challenge and change us, and we're going to struggle. Praise God! If we weren't struggling, we'd be dying."



 God is going to call us to make decisions that say, "I understand the gospel is going to have to be different than the style that I may be accustomed to, but its heart will not change, and I have to be committed to that." Why do I know that that is the goal? Because again, Romans 15.4, what does the apostle say? All Scripture is for instruction that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.



 These Scriptures are given so that we would endure. That's God's goal, even as He endured for us.



 What after all is Christ's goal? The apostle is clear about that. He says, remember verse 5, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus."



 Christ's goal was that Jew and Gentile, Jewish faith, Gentile, pagan faith, that they'd be together living in harmony, that's in accord with the goals of Christ Jesus, the Messiah deliverer.



 How do we know that was His goal? Because we just see what the apostle Paul says, verse 8, "I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised," that is the Jews, "to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs." What was God's goal? "I will make Abraham a father of many nations." That was the goal. And what would happen if that reaching out really happened? "Together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." It was always the plan. That's what Paul is going to keep saying over and over again. Verse 9, "Therefore I will praise you among the nations." Paul grabs a little piece of 2 Samuel 22, David's song. As David, who had sinned so badly, said, "I have failed, but God is faithful. He will bring in the nations as He promised He would." Verse 10, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people." That's Deuteronomy 32. Moses' song, after Moses had arrogated himself to take the status of God, had failed so miserably. He still sings, "I may have failed." God will not. He will bring in the nations as He promised to our Father Abraham. Verse 11, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles." Psalm 117, "The great halal as the people of God who are now returning from exile, where they were punished for their idolatry, are now learning how to praise God again." And right in the midst of that praise, they are saying, "God means to bring us to the pagans like the ones who just enslaved us.



 He means for us to reach them too. We may have failed, but God is faithful." Verse 12, "The root of Jesse will come to rule Gentiles, and in Him will the Gentiles hope." That's Isaiah 11. As Isaiah, the great prophet of the Messiah, is saying, "What is the Messiah's hope?" Not just Gentiles, but all nations being gathered in with all of their differences. That was the plan of the Messiah. And so what Paul has done, he's grabbed a piece of a portion of the law and a piece of the histories and a piece of the wisdom literature and a piece of prophecy. And he just kind of takes every portion of the Scripture. And he said, "It was all about the same thing.



 We may fail, but God is faithful. He will bring the nations in." That was his goal, and that is his glory.



 When we were in Israel, we had those last moments, and we flew to the Garden Tomb, one of those places in which it may very well be that Christ rose from the dead. And it's just the way you picture it, this beautiful garden, this cave-like tomb that still has the trough where the stone would have been rolled in front of the entrance. And you walk into this tomb, and when you come back out into the light, you hear the sound of birds in the garden, and you hear the flowing water from the fountains, and then you begin to hear the singing of the groups from the different chapels. And you begin to recognize they may be singing a song that you know, but it's in different language, and the people are of a different color, that they are of different clothing. And suddenly you just get this sense of, "This is the way it's supposed to be. This is God reaching across all boundaries, all human limitations." And what He is doing is He's saying, "My risen Son is the hope of all of these people." And this is to the glory of God. From every tribe and language and people and nation, they are singing praise to our God, worthy is the Lamb, to receive glory and honor and wisdom and power, because with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe, every language, every people, every nation. And with one voice, they are singing in harmony to God of the glory of what Christ has done. And you know that brings glory to God and joy to His people. It's what we are about when we talk about this unlimited grace for all peoples and generations. This is not political correctness. This is God's people saying, "I'm going to endure in the plan of God, and I'm going to be encouraged by what He has done, and I'm going to live for that Jesus. I'm going to reach others for Him. That is my goal. That is my hope. That's what I'm being encouraged to do." Because after all, what did Christ do for me? Verse 8, "I tell you, Christ became a servant to the Jews to show God's faithfulness." Wait! They rejected Him, and He serves them, and not them alone. Verse 9, this is in order that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy. They crucify Him, and He is merciful to them. What is the great message? Why should you and I be encouraged? Because God is faithful to His promises and merciful to His people. And when I know that I have wandered from Him, when I wonder if He's still here, is He still working? I remember everything that was written in the former times. It was written for us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. It motivates us. It takes us forward. I can't help but think of that day when our church in St. Louis had the choir come from Belarus, the Belarus National Christian Choir. And as they came and oppressed people who had lived for decades under deprivations and communist oppression, nonetheless, they sang of their hope with such zeal. The joy just washed over us, filled us with strength, inspired us. Their very last song was the Hallelujah Chorus. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. And as the first strains of that Hallelujah Chorus began, they didn't know it, but Kathy's choir had been also working on the same piece. So she just signaled to her people who were sitting in the congregation, and they came to sing with one voice, with the people of Belarus, the Hallelujah Chorus. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. And He shall reign forever and ever. Amen. And I looked at an elder who came out of our church and he joined the people, his wife, that week put in the hospital for a diabetes condition, and he didn't know if she would ever come out. And he sang the words with hope, "The kingdom of this world is not the final thing. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign." And I looked at an older couple whose Down Syndrome child was now older and harder to handle as they were getting weak, and they looked out and sang to us, "This is not the end. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign." And I looked at a set of parents whose teenage child by antics and anger had been imprisoned that week, and they held each other and they wept with the hope of the gospel. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah. Amen.