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[0:00] To your bulletin to Daniel chapter 2, Daniel chapter 2. Our theme today is the kingdom of God. I hope you picked that up as we were working through our service. There were lots of different hints. The church seeks to build throughout the service what we will focus on in our passage.

[0:20] And today we're studying the kingdom of God. And we're particularly looking at how does the kingdom of God speak to evangelism. That is to sharing our faith. I looked at this last week as we looked at Judges chapter 19. We're looking at it again this week. Same topic. Through the lens of the kingdom of God. One of the visions or one of the values of this church is fervent witness.

[0:45] Matthew and I went to seminary together. And when we were in seminary we just were pounded over and over again. If you're not equipping Christians in the pews on how to share your faith. We're not doing our job. And one of the things that we love to do. Me on a college campus. Matthew here is to think with you all.

[1:06] On how do we take what many of us have believed for many years or what we confess as Christians and speak to it persuasively, kindly, but firmly to our friends who are not yet Christians.

[1:18] People that you work with. People that you share a neighborhood fence with. People in your family who perhaps have been in the faith and have since left the faith. We all know people who we wish would follow Jesus with us. And how do we welcome them and challenge them into that life together.

[1:34] And so that's what we're going to look at today. Particularly looking at it in the lens of the kingdom of God. And so we're going to read Daniel chapter 2. And then we'll make. We'll look at it together.

[1:46] So Daniel chapter 2 starting in verse 31. This is Daniel. He says he's interpreting a dream from Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. Asks the people of God. Asks for his magicians to interpret it. But only Daniel is able to rightly interpret it.

[2:04] I'll say more on this in a minute. But starting in our text it says, You saw, O king, and behold a great image. This image mighty and exceeding brightness stood before you and its appearance was frightening.

[2:16] The head of this image was of fine gold and its chest and its arms of silver and its middle and thighs of bronze and its legs of iron and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

[2:27] And 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 into 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.

[2:46] 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. Verse 36.

[2:58] 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, and in whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all.

[3:20] You are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things.

[3:36] And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and the toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom.

[3:48] 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 brittle.

[4:01] 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. 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.

[4:18] It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and shall bring them to an end, and they shall stand forever. 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.

[4:37] A great God shall make known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure. This is God's word.

[4:47] Would you pray with me? Lord in heaven, as we study your kingdom this morning, we pray that your spirit would be with us, and that we would behold the goodness, the grandeur, the surety, the might of your kingdom, and that we would be persuaded by it.

[5:06] In our hearts, in our minds, with every part of our being, so persuaded that you would give us the courage, the confidence, the words to share it with our friends, and that you would be glorified in it.

[5:17] It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So in 1992, a political philosopher, a guy named Francis Fukuyama, he's one of the brightest scholars that has ever written about political philosophy.

[5:30] He wrote a book called The End of History. The End of History. And in it, he argued that Western liberal democracies and market capitalism had become so dominant, so triumphant in the world that the prospect of global war, of international conflict, and even of political ideological struggle was irrelevant, was gone, was impossible.

[5:57] He argued that the West had won the Cold War. China was increasingly adopting pro-market strategies and policies. Southern continents like Africa and South America were either moving toward democracy or knew they should be, knew that democracy and capitalism were the best, most peaceful, most prosperous forms of government.

[6:19] Global organizations like the UN and the EU and others were ushering in a new era of civility, camaraderie, and peace.

[6:30] And history, he argues, Fukuyama argues, history, which is the tumultuous rise and fall of nations, the grist of war, the conflict of ideas, communism, capitalism, liberalism, socialism, all of this history, he argues, was effectively over.

[6:49] It's done. There's a new era of confidence, a new era of optimism. There was a lot of, if you were alive back then, I was barely alive, you remember that in the 90s, there was a lot of hope.

[7:00] The Cold War was over. The market was on the rise. Things felt very peaceful. And then, September 11th happened.

[7:10] And we were challenged in this, this new idea of radicalized Islam pops up. Then, in 2008, the stock market crashed.

[7:23] Whether or not it was a recession or a depression depends on whether or not you had a job, but it was a thin line. Then, in 2020, a global pandemic happens. We thought we had won against modern medicine had triumphed, and we realized how quickly and how vulnerable we were to even a small COVID bug.

[7:43] And brought with it not just illness, but tremendous market political and social upheaval. And the unity that we thought we had was gone. In 2022, you know this, Russia invades Ukraine for the first European war since 1945.

[7:58] Now, we see the AI revolution is challenging the very question of what is a human being? What is human society?

[8:09] Closer to home in the U.S., the 2016 presidential election reveals significant political divide in the U.S. that we did not think was present.

[8:21] The right and the left moved to the extremes. And this is only a tiny percentage. All the things I've just talked about, you know this. You read the news. You watch the, you scroll.

[8:32] A tiny percentage. We could go, I've read, I mean, this is an area I love, books and books and books about all the upheaval that has happened since, let's start with 2020, let alone 1992.

[8:45] Racial tension reemerged. Cultural issues of what is gender, what is sexuality. The rise of the reemergence of Soviet and Russian era. The emergence of China.

[8:57] The last few memes, the last few years, there's been a meme that circles around on the internet for my generation. I'm a millennial. And whenever something happens, the meme is that millennials are, it says, I'm tired of living through another unprecedented event.

[9:12] You've seen the memes, right? Of how many times do millennials have to live through another unprecedented event? Something that's never happened in human history, it's happened again. It's just wham, wham, wham.

[9:23] Every eight months, something new happens. In fact, just think about what happened last week alone. The U.S. takes out, does regime change in three hours on a level that we've never seen.

[9:37] Tumult of whether or not Greenland should be ours or not. And again, huge ideological conflict in our own nation in Minneapolis. Minneapolis. All in one week.

[9:51] Michael Bird and N.T. Wright have a book. I highly recommend this book. It's called Jesus and the Powers. Jesus and the Powers. They write this. They say, We are not the first to say so, but Francis Fukuyama was wrong.

[10:04] The 2020s appeared to be the most precarious and perilous time in human history since the 1930s. And the optimism of the early 1990s died in the killing fields of Kosovo, the ruins of the World Trade Center, and the valleys of Afghanistan.

[10:19] History has struck back with a vengeance. History, the rise and fall of nations, the rise and fall conflict of ideas, has struck back with a vengeance.

[10:30] And we have all felt this. We've all felt this. Through our swiping, through our conversations, through the awkwardness of getting together for Thanksgiving dinner, there was another meme that went around that was just like, How are we going to make it through Thanksgiving dinner when all of our family gets together and we start talking and politics comes up and everybody's just like, Oh, heavens no.

[10:57] Oh, man, how are we going to talk about economics? We've all felt this. There has been an increased anxiety in the air. And we could attribute this to, it's definitely attributable to the access that we have to news, which is truly unprecedented.

[11:14] We have access to 24-7 news channels, which bring in tons of money by being extravagant. Bad business sells money. And yet, at the same time, there is an undeniable sense of political and economic instability in our world.

[11:35] We all feel it. And this is particularly true among my generation and the younger generation, the generation I minister to, Gen Z. Gen Z is increasingly pessimistic about their own personal prospects, about a nation, about the nation of America, and about the globe.

[11:53] They don't expect to own homes. It's the first generation ever to say, We probably won't ever own our own home. They don't expect to have their job that they desire to have.

[12:05] Listen to this. For college graduates, this is 2025, only 30% of college graduates got a job in their own field, in the field they studied. 30% got a job.

[12:16] And 33% right now are unemployed. It's the worst ever. Both on the right and on the left, there's a sense that America is increasingly unstable as a nation.

[12:28] We see this in our political cycle, 2020, 2024. The American Psychological Association did a survey, cites that at the 2024 election, around two in five adults reported that the state of the nation has made them consider moving to a different country.

[12:45] 40% and political environment in their state has made them consider moving to a different state. In addition, nearly two-thirds, 64%, of adults felt that their rights were under attack.

[13:01] Even this week, like I said, we feel the turbulence politically and globally. What's the point? What's the point? You and, here's the important part, your neighbors worry about global peace, worry about economic prospects, worry about culture and values.

[13:20] They fear that their personal political values and their economic prospects are not good. Now, we can talk at length about the legitimacy of these anxieties, where they come from, wisdom in navigating them.

[13:33] I love that conversation. What I want to start with is, regardless, regardless of those, the reality of the anxiety is true, real, and felt.

[13:44] We all feel it. And, here's the fun part, I'm convinced, I'm convinced that those anxieties that we feel are tremendous open doors for talking about our faith.

[13:58] Those are open doors for talking about faith. The Bible, here's what's amazing, the Bible is very confident in the presence and in the midst of unprecedented events. The Bible's very comfortable in the presence of unprecedented events, the rise and fall of nations.

[14:16] And, there's no better picture of this than a text that we've just read. Daniel chapter 2, the book of Daniel is part narrative and part prophetic literature. Part of it is a history.

[14:28] It tells the story of God's people, particularly for men in the midst of God's name, God's history. And, it's also partly prophetic. That is, it is speaking from the divine lens about what God is doing.

[14:42] And so, the narrative part is that it exists in one of the most tumultuous times in Israel's history. Israel had been, or God's people, Judah, had been in deep spiritual rebellion and the consequences of that rebellion is they are exiled from the land.

[14:57] And so, after a prolonged period of God saying, please repent, please come back, they fail to do so. And so, God does what he promises. He sends a foreign nation into Judah and obliterates them, wipes them out culturally, politically, militarily.

[15:15] In 586, the Babylonian Empire invades and takes out, exiles most of the Israelites. And he takes with them their best, their brightest, their most culturally, their most potential that they have.

[15:32] And when he does this, when the Babylonians, when Nebuchadnezzar does this, he attempts complete, total culture annihilation. He brings the best of the best out and says, I'm going to train you, not in your culture, but in my culture.

[15:45] I'm going to beat you so bad that your children don't even remember who they are or where they came from. Chapter 1, we see this. Daniel is among them. Four Jewish men resist this.

[15:58] Daniel among them. And you can read more about this. But then in Chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has a dream.

[16:09] He has a terrifying dream, a vision, and he challenges his spiritual elite to interpret the dream, and they can't. They're unable to interpret it. And so only Daniel can interpret it.

[16:20] So Daniel is brought to Nebuchadnezzar to interpret the dream. And Daniel describes to Nebuchadnezzar what he sees. He sees a huge statue, a giant terrifying statue. You can read this in verse 31.

[16:32] A great image, exceeding bright, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. And it's made of a series of different materials. There's a gold head, a silver chest, bronze thighs and legs, and then a mix of iron and clay feet.

[16:46] And then, interestingly, in verse 34, something interesting happens. A stone, not cut from human hands, comes and destroys the whole image.

[17:00] Destroys the image. And Daniel says, the dream means that there will be a succession of four kingdoms. Four nations will rise and fall, and then a fifth different kingdom will destroy them all and grow to fill the whole earth.

[17:14] That's what the dream is. Now, what does it mean? Daniel here is describing, prophetically, that is, from the lens of God, from God's standpoint, the rise and fall of nations and kingdoms in human history.

[17:30] And most scholars reading this think that he's probably immediately concerned with the particular next 500 years of politics in the ancient Near East.

[17:41] And so he says, you, O King Nebuchadnezzar, are the head of gold. You, Nebuchadnezzar, are the Babylonian Empire. And then after you will come another kingdom, the Persian Empire, which will take over the Babylonian Empire around 530, 540 B.C.

[17:57] And then after them will come, we know our history, the Greek Empire with Alexander the Great. And then after them will come the Roman Empire, which is a mixer of iron and clay.

[18:07] One nation will rise, and then it will fall, and another nation will replace it. And so here Daniel is describing the next 500 years of geopolitics.

[18:19] But here's what's important, that it's not just 500 years of geopolitics, because Daniel is not just literature, or it's not just narrative, it's prophetic literature.

[18:30] And as prophetic literature, he is also describing a spiritual reality. Daniel is also describing a spiritual reality.

[18:42] Biblical prophecy, the genre that this book is written in, is a literary tool. It's beautiful, because it can use historical events, the rise and fall of ancient nations, to reveal the spiritual dynamics happening underneath and behind.

[19:00] It uses historical events to reveal spiritual truth. That's what biblical, one of the things that biblical prophecy can do. And so Daniel here is more than just anticipating or prophesying about the next few hundred years of geopolitics.

[19:18] He is showing how and what God is doing behind all of that. Namely, that God is orchestrating the rise and the fall of nations for his own glory and for his own purposes.

[19:36] For his own glory and for his own purposes. Prophecy is less about telling the future. Often we think, you know, a prophet is somebody who just kind of blurts out this is what is going to happen tomorrow.

[19:47] But it's more about describing theological forces and spiritual motives at work in human affairs. Daniel here is revealing spiritual dynamics behind and beyond what we see.

[20:04] Namely, history from God's standpoint and under God's direction. And from this, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, if this is true, it tells us two things that are really, really important.

[20:17] One, nations rise and fall under God's command. And two, God has and will establish an eternal spiritual kingdom that will only grow.

[20:29] So first, nations rise and fall under God's command. Look at verse 37. This is the dream, verse 36, and now we will tell the king its interpretation.

[20:41] You, O king, the king of kings, to whom God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory. Now there's a subtle, almost irony here.

[20:51] He says, you're the king of kings, but God made you that way. God is the one who gave you this authority. God is the king of kings. He's the one who even you are subservient and submitting to.

[21:04] God is the true sovereign. And any human authority, any human who has any level of authority, has been delegated from God. Here's our truth, and this is very important and very good for our world today.

[21:19] Any human political power exists only because God in his providence and his power enabled it. Providence is God working in and behind everything that happens to accomplish his purposes.

[21:37] Think about, think that there's another place where Jesus talks about this. Jesus is on trial with Pilate. Pilate, this great Roman ruler who has the authority, the capacity to kill Jesus.

[21:51] And Jesus says to him, you have no authority over me at all unless it has been given to you from above. Pilate's authority, significant as it is, has been given to him by God.

[22:05] Romans 13, Paul says it even more clearly. There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

[22:17] There is no authority except from God, and those that do exist have been instituted by God. Over and over and over again, the Bible is very clear that God alone, our God, is the king of the creation, and every human political ruler and system exists because God created it.

[22:41] And Daniel recognizes this. You can flip back just a few pages, a few verses in chapter 221. Daniel prays this, Blessed be the God, blessed be the name of God forever and ever to whom belong wisdom and might.

[22:58] He changes the times and the season. He removes kings and he sets up kings. Behind the rise and fall of nations is the hand of God, his providence, his final, ultimate sovereignty.

[23:19] Nebuchadnezzar is only a tool in God's hands. And Nebuchadnezzar himself grows to recognize this. We'll read in a minute how he understands and internalizes this, that the total supremacy and eternal dominion belongs to God.

[23:37] And this means that God has planned and accomplished the rise of the Babylonians and the fall of the Babylonians. The rise of the Persians and the fall of the Persians.

[23:47] The rise of the British Empire where the sun never sets and the fall of the British Empire. The rise of the American power and someday the fall of the American power.

[24:02] First thing that we see here is that God sets up every nation for his purposes. Second thing is that God has established and will protect and grow a spiritual and ultimately non-spiritual kingdom.

[24:18] Verse 44. And in these days, he's talking about the stone, 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.

[24:36] It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end and it shall stand forever. Just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand and it broke in pieces the other kingdoms.

[24:51] What is he saying here? A stone made without human hands appears and destroys all of the other kingdoms and it so thoroughly destroys them that they become like chaff, dust in the wind, right?

[25:05] What's the great Kansas song? Dust in the wind. Are we all dust in the wind that gets thrown up in the air and blows away and is gone forever? The kingdom of God, this is something unlike anything that a human being could conjure up.

[25:19] A stone made without human hands will rise up and decimate in the truest sense of that word. Obliterate, annihilate, pick your word. all of the human schemes, powers, rulers, and authority.

[25:36] And, the vision tells us it will happen at a very specific moment in time in the kingdom mixed with iron of iron and clay which we know is the Roman Empire.

[25:49] The Roman Empire and what does Paul say in Galatians 4? In the fullness of time, the right time, God sent forth his son. God sent forth his son and when Jesus Christ appears in the Roman Empire in human history 30, 31 AD, something like that, what does Jesus' first words say?

[26:13] The first words that Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. God in the middle of human history establishes, builds a separate kingdom that will grow and expand not through human political power, not by the might of armies, but through what Paul would say is the foolish and weak proclamation of good news, the Gospel.

[26:45] The proclamation of the Gospel. And even that word Gospel has a kingdom ring to it. The word Gospel comes from the old Greek word euangelion, which was the word of victory in battle.

[27:01] When a Roman or a Greek king would win, they would send a soldier up ahead and say he would bring the good news of victory. And so when the Christians first appear, they are proclaiming the Gospel, the good news of victory, of a king who has come.

[27:21] Richard Loveless, great theologian, writes this, the recurring conflicts between nations represented in Daniel's vision as segments of a human statue.

[27:34] The Son of Man is presented before the Ancient of Days and is given dominion and glory and kingdom so that all peoples and nations and languages should serve him. Daniel is anticipating something beyond a human political system that will come and create something beyond a human political system.

[27:57] A trans-political kingdom that will endure despite and beyond the rise and fall of nations. Again, right and bird and Jesus and the powers.

[28:11] Successions of empires rise one after another, Daniel tells us. But the kingdom of God or sorry, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed nor shall his kingdom be left to another people.

[28:25] It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end and it alone shall stand forever. forever. I encourage you to go read there's a poem by Percy Shelley Ozymandias that talks about this.

[28:40] It talks about this great statue this great statue of a great old ancient king and he's powerful and he's almighty but now thousands of years later he's this crumpled statue in the middle of a desert with sand whipping around him so much for all his might Percy Shelley writes a great statue only in dust.

[29:06] So what's the point here? Daniel is showing us that God has and will establish a kingdom that will exist beyond and within the rise and fall of nations and that is the gospel and that Jesus is the king who came and announced that kingdom and has been and is welcoming and inviting others into following him.

[29:33] That is what our text shows us. That is what the Christian faith tells us. Now how do we begin to apply this to evangelism to sharing our faith? I hope it's obvious after I did the setup of talking about the anxiety that we feel but I'm going to take it in a slightly different angle and then we'll get to the obvious part.

[29:54] Here's the thing the first and most urgent thing we must do is recognize that the Christian is first and foremost a citizen in the eternal and trans political kingdom of God.

[30:06] The first thing that you and I must do, the first thing that Cheyenne Mountain Prez must do and be is an outpost. This is what Matthew talks about all the time, an outpost of the kingdom of God.

[30:20] What does Paul say in Philippians 3? That our citizenship is not here. First and foremost it is we are citizens in heaven. This means frankly the first task we must do and this is hard in America is to understand ourselves as exiles and pilgrims here.

[30:42] We do not belong here. I was reflecting this on this as I was driving over the great temptation that we have is to think that I this is where I belong this is my home this is my people and this is true but this is where I belong this is my people the person next to you and we are but exiles and pilgrims as Daniel was living in and among a nation that did not like him was seeking to dominate him in every other way and he was to point to and live in the kingdom of God Stephan Pass he's a missiologist great book called pilgrims and priests writes this listen closely this is amazing from the expulsion of Eden Genesis to John's exile in Patmos Revelation the Bible is a book of uprooting and displacement

[31:45] Christians have oriented themselves from the beginning to the end especially in stories and songs that were written about Israel and its captivity in Babylon as people who do not belong in 597 to 586 the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and they carried a large part of the people away in exile we are people in exile we do not live here we look to a kingdom that is far greater the kingdom of God this is of course the theme of the city of God Augustine's great work which is frankly probably the most important piece of literature written after Christ it's incredible it says this Augustine says the heavenly city that is the kingdom of God that part of it which is on pilgrimage in this condition of mortality and which lives as the basis of faith must use must make temporary peace temporary peace until this mortal peace mortal state for which this peace is essential passes away and it therefore leads to what we may call a life of captivity in this earthly city as in a foreign land what is

[32:59] Augustine saying Augustine says that we live in the city of man we live in America and we use the blessings and the pieces that it provides but we know that we are this is not where we reside we know that this is not our true citizenship we live as captives anticipating a finer and greater city to come Daniel understood that he did not belong in Babylon even though he knew he would die in Babylon he belonged to Israel he was a child of God he is a pilgrim this is how first Peter describes us as exiles and sojourners now what does this mean for evangelism it means that we must form communities and habits that reveal our citizenship in heaven the church the community here becomes so much more than a social gathering but this is amazing church coming here on a

[34:02] Sunday morning becomes in a way a form of protest against the status quo your coming here this morning says I belong to something greater than America I belong to something greater than the rise and fall of nations I anticipate something bigger than anything that our economy anything that our nation anything that liberalism anything that democracy can accomplish and I will show up on a Sunday morning to believe and entrust and reinforce that it becomes a protest against the status quo it becomes a protest against the allegiances of the rise and falls of one government over another we are a people with a king beyond this king and what this also means is that we must not pin our earthly hopes or anything that we would hope even our spiritual hopes on any temporal nation no nation on earth today has God's special blessing they are tools in the good providential hands of

[35:05] God to establish his purpose but the primary tool that God will use to establish his kingdom is the church proclaiming what the gospel of the kingdom of God through what the proclamation of the death of the king and the new life of the king and the proper administration of the sacraments that is what we hope in not in the strength of our military not in the power of our economic motor not in the goodness of liberal democracy as much as I love those things they will go away at some point and just by doing that by believing that by showing up here on a Sunday morning by being in your home group by learning and being catechized and taught in the Christian faith we become missional people we become people who proclaim the gospel which is beyond this world Abraham Kuyper is a brilliant theologian and politician he was a!

[36:02] politician in the Netherlands he was the president but he understood what I'm talking about he says though the lamp of the Christian faith only burns within the walls of the churches as it shines through its windows to areas far beyond illuminating all the sectors that appear across the wide range of human life and activity through the administering of the sacraments exercises of discipline forming of disciples the church nourishes a vibrant core of believers who infiltrate and leaven the whole society one of the ways I often talk with my college students about campus ministry is in some ways we're like special forces I'm not a military man I've never been well I love I know more about it than most but what we do is we go on to a college campus we're too small and not to be able to change the campus through a full frontal attack we just can't do it but you know what we can do is go into a college campus classrooms other clubs cafeterias and be public

[37:09] Christians not annoying not offensive not argumentative but public Christians and that whole process infiltrates and leavens like yeast this is how Jesus talks about it yeast in the whole lump the whole things changed and the kingdom grows what's the takeaway do church publicly do church publicly tell your friends I can't go hiking with you on Sunday morning I'm going to church tell your friends that my kids can't compete on Sunday we are church on that morning Sunday is a special day for our families to reflect on the Christian life that is a missionary statement there's this guy I see regularly at a coffee shop he grew up a Christian in Colorado Springs and he's left the faith and he and I have gotten to know each other regularly and we got in coffee a couple times he's interested in the Christian faith and I've just been very present in his life and open about my faith open about my job in front of him things like hey I can't hang out that day I'm taking my kids to a choir

[38:15] Christian choir concert or I can't hike I'm going to church would you like to go to the Christmas concert with us and just last week he texted me and said hey can I come to your church home group I'm curious about spirituality that's a huge win that's a huge win just by me saying I'm a Christian I belong to something bigger than myself Christian faith is more caught than taught the Christian faith is more caught than taught be a Christian live in the kingdom of God do it publicly and others will see it now the obvious application we live in a world that's deeply and highly anxious deeply I describe this to you and they're anxious about economics politics ideas struggles of culture the rise and fall of nations the tumult that is described in Daniel 2 we have the opportunity you have the opportunity as it comes up and it will you know it will around the water cooler when somebody asks what do you think about what happened in Venezuela when somebody asks how do you make sense of Minneapolis when somebody asks what are we doing in

[39:31] Denmark you can say I don't know I don't know but I have hope and confidence in something far bigger something far greater this is particularly applicable for Cheyenne Mountain Prez where most of you are or have been involved in the military this is your job the rise and fall of nations and you get to say I will participate but I will hope in something far greater and I will join a people that is a part of what does Hebrews 12 call it an unshakable kingdom that will fill the whole earth as the waters cover the sea that's hope that's peace in a world that's deeply anxious and that's what we get to share it's the gospel it's the good news that is what evangelism is and that kingdom changes hearts it even changed Nebuchadnezzar's it's one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible is Daniel chapter four because

[40:32] Nebuchadnezzar has goes through a bout of insanity absolute insanity because he thinks that he is the king of kings and then God in his mercy restores him to sanity and he prays chapter four listen to what he prays I blessed the most high and praised and honored him who lives forever for his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation this is the head of gold and this is what he says all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing and he does according to his will among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say to him what have you done now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the king of heaven for all his works are right and his ways are just and those who walk in pride he is able to humble this is a man who encounters the kingdom of God and says I'm in even in all my power it changed his heart this is what we welcome our friends into it's a great kingdom that offers hope and security and permanence in a world that feels the opposite and so go be a citizen in the kingdom of

[41:48] God and welcome others into it would you pray with me Lord in heaven thank you that your kingdom is an unshakable kingdom it's one that will not pass away it's one that you will establish not through power but through weakness through the death of a mere human who also was God Colossians one all rulers and authorities are in submission to you so that in you you may be preeminent in all things and so we do pray your kingdom come preserve your church and make it grow destroy the devil's works do this until your kingdom comes fully when you will be all and in all it's in Jesus name we pray amen as Thank you.