Nahum 1:15

Okay, so we're at chapter 1 verse 15. This is the last verse of chapter 1.

This is like the marathon known as Nahum, but I'm enjoying it and hopefully you guys are learning something from it.

So what I'd like to do again is just read verses 6 through 16 so we get the context. All right.

Say again? No, it should be 15. That's a misprint. I wanted to show my fallibility, showing you that the

Scripture is the only infallible Word of God. All right, let's read. Who can stand before his indignation?

Who can endure the burning of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken up by him.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in a day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overwhelming flood, overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of its sight and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

Whatever you devise against the Lord, he will make a complete end of it. Distress will not rise up twice like tangled thorns and like those who are drunken with their drink.

They are consumed as stubble, completely withered. From you has gone forth one who plotted evil against the

Lord, a wicked counselor. Thus says the Lord, though they are full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut off and pass away.

Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer. So now I'll break his yoke from upon you and I will tear off your shackles.

The Lord has issued a command concerning you. Your name will no longer be perpetuated.

I will cut off idol and image from the house of your gods. I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible.

Behold, on the mountains of the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace. Celebrate your feasts,

O Judah. Pay your vows, for never again will the wicked one pass through you. He is cut off completely.

This is good news for the Israelites. So let's take a quick review.

Last week we went through some of this. So the book of Nahum opened with a hymn that exalted the character and the person of God, and we've gone through that several times.

First, in these verses, the verse section between 12 and 13,

God will liberate the afflicted. In other words, the Israelites will be freed from the oppression of the

Assyrians and their internal shackles. Next, God will judge the oppressor.

He's going to judge Assyria for what they've done and bring complete destruction upon them because of their hatred against God and hatred towards his people.

Finally today, we're going to hear the announcement of good news. This ends up being a proclamation of the gospel.

The main idea is this. The omnipotent God is able to deliver his people and defeat their persecutors, no matter how powerful they appear to be.

So there's two things that are happening. The Israelites are being delivered, and the Assyrians are being conquered.

So again, here it is. Behold, on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace. Celebrate your feasts,

O Judah. Pay your vows, for never again will the wicked one pass through you. Again, he is completely cut off.

In verse 115, in many ways Nahum 115 is the key verse of this entire book.

The victory announcement comes at last. Having told of the Lord's goodness and his awesome power,

Nahum then tells of the Lord's ultimate deliverance of the people of Judah. The messenger returns from battle to inform

God's people that the divine warrior is victorious. Life as usual can return, but not really life as usual.

Rather, life as usual as it was supposed to be under God. As when God says, pay your vows, celebrate your feasts, he again wants them to celebrate the things that he's commanded them to celebrate, to draw them closer to him.

Those were things to be rejoiceful about, that God was your father, that God was in control, and Israel was the chosen nation.

That Israel was his people. This ultimately is going to foreshadow the ultimate final deliverance of God's people.

There's going to be a final coming of Jesus to the earth where all of God's enemies will be cut off completely and scattered from his presence, and all those who are his are going to be gathered together with him to be with him forever.

So this has immediate context in Nahum's day with Judah and Assyria, and it will have future significance for the final day of the final day of the

Lord. The contrast between the fate of the godly and the wicked is nothing but good news to Nahum and the people of God.

Now, we're going to learn about this in a second. The time period of Nahum's prophecy is key to the interpretation of the verse.

In one sense, the meaning is universal. God works at all times. He's constantly working in the hearts of his people, and he's constantly working against those who oppose him.

He's the Lord of all history who delivers the oppressed and judges the oppressor. In that sense, the message of Nahum is timeless.

Just like every book of the Bible, we can glean from and learn aspects of God and how he works out in the unfolding of history.

We look at the book of Nahum and see that this happened for a specific people at a specific time, yet the principles behind them can be carried through till today, and ultimately to the end when

God completely cuts off all of the people who were rebelling against him from him, finally.

The above verse also appears in Isaiah 52 .7. I'm sure you've heard, on the mountains of the feet of him who brings good news.

That should be familiar territory to most of us. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your

God reigns. When a nation went to battle, they didn't have text messaging, right?

It wasn't like you knew what was going on in the battle. So they relied on someone to come back from the field, from wherever the battle was taking place, to tell them how things went.

So this person would run back with news. Now depending on whether it was good news or bad news, the person up on the watchtower would look and see.

If he was running fast and it was a cloud, be like, oh that's good news. He's rushing back to tell us that there was victory.

If he's kind of trotting back with his head and his chin in his chest, bad news, right?

So how beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news? What it means is he was looking at the feet of the messenger who was coming towards him to get an idea of the news that was coming.

In Isaiah 52 -7, he uses the first part of the verse to announce the return of the captive exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem.

For one who brings good news, the ancient Greek translation or the Septuagint used a participle form, euangelizo, which from English derived evangelist.

Christians understand a powerful spiritual message involved in this passage. God's work has been to proclaim peace to all people of all ages.

In the Messianic Age, God proclaims the greatest message of peace, that there is the possibility of peace in the restless human spirit.

That's what I think all human beings long for. They long for peace, right? They may not necessarily know that they need peace with God, but they want peace.

They want rest from all their enemies on all the side, on all their sides, so that they can live in peace.

Isaiah marvels at the beauty of the feet of him who brings good news. Nahum would certainly agree because those who bring good tidings have beautiful feet.

They partner with God for the salvation of men. Now, beautiful feet doesn't mean nice polished nails. I was going to put a picture of that up, and I said, no, it's breakfast time.

They might get upset. You know, an ugly foot and a nice foot. So, the feet speak of activity, motion, progress, and those who are active and moving in the work of preaching the gospel have beautiful feet, right?

When we're out on the streets in Port Jefferson preaching the gospel or going door -to -door or whatever it is, wherever it is where we're going, obviously that message is brought by us because we're walking two people, we're coming two people.

So, that's where beautiful feet come into play. In Isaiah, the good news is the coming of the

Messiah. In Nahum, the good news is the defeat of the enemies of God's people.

Now, we're going to, again, we'll see this similar situation in Revelation 17 and 18, which described the fall of Babylon, representing the world system and all of its support structure.

Revelation 18 verses 9 through 19 shows how the kings and merchants of the earth mourned the fall of Babylon.

But Revelation 18 through 19 shows how heaven rejoiced over the fall of the world system.

What was mourned on earth was applauded in heaven, and the same principle applies in Nahum's prophecy of Nineveh's fall, right?

So, we have a righteous rejoicing, knowing that the enemies of God are getting justice, and we know that those whom

God has mercy on are being rescued. So, here, once again, we highlight the attributes of God. Justice towards those who rebel against Him, and mercy and grace towards those who are

His. Revelation 18, and the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning.

They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, alas, alas, you great city, you mighty city

Babylon, for in a single hour your judgment has come. Anybody want to venture a guess as to who

Babylon is in Revelation? Yes, Jerusalem.

Yeah, it's Israel, right? The whore of Babylon, right? Why is it a whore?

Because they were the bride of Christ. They were God's people, God's bride, and what they do?

They went with other kings. They went with the Romans. They went with anybody around them to bolster their own position.

Revelation 18, rejoice over her, O heaven, and you His saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her.

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, so will

Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence and will be found no more. So here we see the people on the earth, those who were in rebellion to God, weeping and wailing over the fall of Babylon.

Meanwhile, they were a wicked people. But then in chapter 18, verse 20, you see that they're rejoicing in heaven because justice has been done.

These were people who were in rebellion to God, that God finally gave what they deserved, right?

So the mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, so Babylon, the great city, be thrown with violence and will be found no more.

This is exactly what's happening to Assyria, okay? Two different countries though. This came up before,

I guess I screwed up the PowerPoint, but rejoicing is not in this context gleeful gloating at the misfortune of others.

Rather, it is pleasure at the vindication of God and his promises, right? So when we look at someone who doesn't know

God, okay, we don't gloat over that. In fact, our heart should break for people who don't know

God because they're running headfirst into hell and don't even realize it. I mean, some do and they don't care, but others don't.

There is a way that seems right to a man and in the end it leads to destruction. So it's our job to run

I think it was Spurgeon says if they go to hell let it be over us grabbing their feet so that they don't go.

Our heart should be breaking for the people who don't know him. That's why the message of peace is good news to the people.

Roger Ellsworth has written, Christians are not to live in the fear of their adversaries, powerful as they may be.

Why are we not to give way to fear? The Apostle Paul gives us the following reasons. So again, you had

Judah living in the time of Assyria who's coming in and is going to trounce them and has, you know, caused problems in Judah already and certainly to the other nations around them.

But how should we view what's going on in our world today? So this is where we're going to be able to apply this to our time right now and listening to what the

Apostle Paul says. The opposition of our adversaries is temporary. This is not an eternal state that we're going to be in, okay.

This is temporary. Their opposition to Christians constitutes opposition to God and that opposition will finally end in perdition or destruction.

Again, we shouldn't gloat over that. We should lament over that because that should be our fate.

But for God, drawing us to him and saving our souls, we would be in the very same position.

2 Thessalonians 1, 6 through 10, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the

Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know

God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the

Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all those who have believed because our testimony to you was believed, right.

So here it is. God is going to afflict those who've afflicted God's people.

Would that apply to the people who are afflicting Christians today? Absolutely, right.

So this has application today. Will he grant relief to us who are afflicted?

Yes, right. Even if it's just the peace of knowing that we know the Lord and we know that the day that our physical body dies, to be absent from the body is to be present with the

Lord, right. If we live, we live. If we die, we're the Lord's. If we live, we're the

Lord's. If we die, we're the Lord's. Either way, we belong to the Lord. So our life is not lived in vain, it's lived for a purpose to glorify

God and enjoy him. So we have to do that every day with our mouths, glorify

God, share him with the people around us, knowing and pitying the people who are going to be cast away from him for all eternity.

Number two, the opposition of our adversaries proves our salvation, and this is a tougher one to to grasp, right, to embrace,

I should say, not grasp. Matthew Henry notes that believers have been given two precious gifts. One is to believe in Christ, the second is to suffer for Christ.

The fact that our adversaries cause us to experience the second gift indicates that we truly have received the first.

While suffering is never pleasant, it is a privilege and honor to suffer for Christ, for the

Christ who suffered so very much to save his people. And like what I talked about last week,

God afflicts people. God will afflict us. He doesn't afflict us to hurt us, he afflicts us to strengthen us, to test us, to prove us, okay, to further us along in our salvation, right?

It's like when you go to the gym, if you don't put any weight on the bar, oh yeah, this is great, this is terrific.

It's when you put weight on the bar that things get a little bit more difficult, but without the weight, you're not going to build the muscles that you want to build, right?

So you're doing it for nothing. So God here puts us in this little atrium known as the world, right, and he puts people in our past that are going to cause affliction and cause us to grow.

First Peter says, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you.

This is a test. It's only a test, right? Remember, stay faithful. As though something strange were happening to you.

In other words, this should be expected as a Christian. If you're going to be vocal about your faith, people are going to oppose you, right?

If you're not being opposed, what does that say? Well, maybe you're not talking about your faith. But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit of the glory of God rests upon you.

But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a meddler.

So we're going to suffer, right, whether we suffer for sinning or we suffer for righteousness sake.

Peter's saying, don't suffer because of your sin. Suffer because of your righteousness, right?

When you live a life that glorifies God, people are going to oppose you. It's just the way it is. Yet if anyone suffers as a

Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is the time for judgment to begin at the household of God.

And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

And if the righteous are scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?

Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good.

So when someone says, oh is it God's will for you to suffer? I think Peter thinks it is. Let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator.

Why is that comforting? Amen. Well yeah, now listen, those are all correct answers.

And you know, I have something in my mind. Jerry's right. So when you entrust your soul to a faithful creator, you trust in the sovereignty of God.

He's faithful. He has a decree. He knows the end from the beginning. He's designed all this the way it's happening right now.

It doesn't mean that you're not free to act. You are free to act and you're responsible for what you do.

So in the midst of this, remain faithful to him because he's faithful to you. You trust that God is sovereign, that this isn't happening outside of his plan.

He has a reason for it. Think of Joseph when he was thrown into the pit. Right?

Did Joseph remain faithful? Yes. Yes. He was thrown into a pit.

And then, you know, he has the dreams. He's thinking, oh this guy's gonna go tell, you know, Pharaoh that he's gonna get me out of here.

Didn't happen. He remained faithful. Why? He knew God had a plan. Right? God is sovereign.

Think of this one, Philippians 127. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent,

I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

You do not have to fear people who don't know what a woman is. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God.

Sovereign. Right? For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw

I had, and now hear that I still have. So Paul is explaining to them he had suffering, he's still in suffering, and expect it.

It's been granted to you to suffer for the name of Christ. Don't suffer as a and people oppose you, praise

God. It's a sign of their destruction, but your salvation. Oh, those who announce peace.

Who knows what the Hebrew word for peace is? All right, what does it mean?

Besides peace. It's more than just peace. It's very interesting what this word means.

I'll just give it to you. I gave you the first one already anyway. It means to be complete, sound, wholeness, unity, integrity.

Right? So it's not just being free from all turmoil, which would be peaceful.

It's to be complete, whole. Right? Integrity. A very interesting word.

It means peace. It also means a peace offering or a payment of a vow.

When you pay for something, it's complete. Right? Like our salvation. To me, it means to be in a covenant of peace.

When we're in covenant with God through Jesus Christ, we have peace with God.

That means that it will be unbroken because Jesus is the one who paid for it. Okay?

It's not dependent on what we do or don't do. It's dependent on God, who's paid the vow.

Right? He made the payment for our salvation. It means to be perfect, whole, full, recompense, reward, or broad.

Recompense, reward, reward, and then it's actually the root of the name

Solomon. Okay? Peace. Right? This is really, really important because the

Hebrew's whole worldview was centered on peace. That's how they greeted one another.

Shalom. Shalom. Yes, Jerry. City of peace. Jerusalem.

Right. There you go. I'm surprised that didn't show up there, but yes, excellent. Excellent. Jerusalem. City of peace.

So it's centered on peace. Right? Unfortunately, those who were in opposition to God didn't have peace with God.

It was those who had faith in him who had peace. The term

Hebrew, the Hebrew term shalom, is used 237 times in the Old Testament and was used, also used to greet someone.

Like I said, shalom. It is common in Hebrew to ask how one's peace is.

Right? So again, this is, this centers on the greeting, how people knew each other back then. How are you is equivalent to asking how your peace is.

Moreover, this word was often used to describe someone's manner of coming or going. Sometimes this took the form of a blessing.

Go in peace. Go in shalom. Another common expression involved dying or being buried in peace.

Right? We even hear the term rest in peace. Right? Shalom. Peace is present with the wise, but absent from the wicked.

That's Proverbs. It's often pictured as coming from God. Peace comes from God. Gideon built an altar and called it, called the altar,

Yahweh shalom. The Lord is peace. Thankfully, this is good news to the, to the

Judeans at this point in time because God is announcing peace.

Celebrate your feasts, so you to pay your vows. Peace in this case means much more than mere absence of war.

Rather, the root meaning of the verb better expresses the true conception of shalom, completeness, wholeness, harmony, fulfillment.

Those are closer to the meaning. Implicit in shalom is the idea of unimpaired relationships with others and fulfillment in one's undertakings.

So it's a whole way of life. Yes, sir. Mm -hmm.

Amen. Exactly. Exactly. There's a big difference between the peace of man and the peace of God.

We're actually gonna hit that in a couple of minutes. So when he says celebrate your feasts, fulfill your vows, this is only possible in times of peace when people can travel safely and leave their homes without fear of raiders attacking in their absence.

In the Babylonian Chronicle, frequent entries report the failure to hold that major annual festival marking the new year there, usually because of wars or unrest.

So when things were, things were tumultuous around you, you could not travel to whatever city it was that was holding the festival.

You could only celebrate your feasts and travel around in times of peace.

So this is, this is important. God calls for the celebration of festivals in the new safety of the countryside.

He calls for the people to do what they have promised in their vows made while praying for deliverance.

So while they're praying, Lord, deliver us, now he says, pay your vows. I'm delivering you.

No longer will they be overwhelmed, over, flooded over by the

Assyrians, right? The Assyrians are going to be overwhelmed and flooded by God. So no longer will

Israel be overwhelmed by a wicked invading army. Peace and its security will come.

Such prophecy brings hope to those who have trusted in Yahweh. When your faith and hope and trust are in Yahweh, you will have peace in the midst of the storm, right?

Peace isn't determined by what's going on around you.

Peace is determined by what's going on within you, right? So that when things are going wrong on the outside and it looks horrible, you know on the inside,

I have peace with God. I'm at rest because I'm in union with God, the

God of peace. Similarly, God's people celebrated the destruction of the evil world power that persecuted believers in the last days.

When evil empires fall today, believers celebrate because their evil and oppression of God's people have ceased.

And there will be a future time when the people of God will celebrate the ultimate and final destruction of all of the enemies of God for all eternity.

Permanently. There's going to be a time when there's permanent peace on the earth.

Never again will the wicked one pass through you, is what God tells Judah. He's going to cut them off.

He is cut off. Assyria is cut off completely. Gotta remember where Judah was at that time, being surrounded by Assyria and all the other nations, right?

They always had the imminent threat of someone coming in and crushing them. And here God says,

I'm going to protect you and deliver you. Finally, Paul takes up part of this same message in Romans, where he says, it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

I think this is the only verse in Nahum that's quoted in the New Testament. Here is the messenger.

Here, the messenger is a preacher who brings the good news. And the news is called the gospel, which means good news.

It tells of deliverance from sin through the victory won through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And these same blessings flowing from Christ's death are available for all who will come to him in repentance and faith.

You know, we often look around at what's going on, you know, in the society, and we say, this is horrible.

But it can also be a time of great harvest, because you know people are in turmoil.

They don't know what's going to happen in society. We do. We know that ultimately this is going to come to an end, and God is going to bring full restoration and peace on earth.

So you can bring the good news to somebody, and it be really good news. Why? Because you have ultimate peace with God, and you will live with God in eternity, forever.

Not to be surrounded with the wickedness and the evil we see going on today.

Previously explained, Paul previously explained this in Romans chapter 5. He says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith...

What does justified mean? Yeah, that's a pastorism.

Yeah, say again? Declared legally innocent in God's sight, because of what

Jesus has done for you. Right? So that's your justification. You're declared innocent, and our sanctification is working out practically what we've been declared legally.

Right? It's not that we work in order to be justified. We're justified already.

Now we have to let our life and our actions match the legal declaration that God gave already.

Right? The reason this is good news is because the verdict for the trial comes at the beginning, not the end.

We're not waiting to see if we're going to be saved. That's what all the works righteousness cults do.

I got to do this. I got to do that. And at the end, are you saved? I don't know. When I ask the Mormons, are you sure you have peace with God?

Are you sure you have salvation? I don't know. Well, that ain't good news. Keep it.

Keep it. I have good news. You could be declared legally innocent today by placing your faith and trust in Jesus.

Verdict done. Now you can celebrate with joy. You have peace with God, so that when you see the evil and the stuff happening around us...

I don't want to say it doesn't matter. It does matter. But inside, you're settled.

You know who's in control. You can entrust your soul to a faithful Creator who will deliver you.

So, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace, shalom with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him, we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the

Holy Spirit who has been given to us. I've been kind of harping on this, you know, going through suffering and affliction thing, because I think

I need to hear it. I need to be reminded over and over and over that suffering is part of the life.

Suffering is part of what happens to us as Christians. We're not meant to skate through life, you know, easy.

Oh, this is the easy life. I see so many people putting stuff up on Facebook. Oh, he's at the beach. This is the easy life.

Yeah, it's easy now. It's easy now. It's not gonna be easy later. Acts 10.

So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he's the

Lord of all, you yourselves know what happened throughout Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism that John proclaimed, how

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

Again, this is the beginning of the new creation, all we see in Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and John, in the beginning, was the

Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld his glory, right?

This is Jesus starting the new creation and starting to heal the sick and the oppressed, showing that this is going to be a reversal of the fall.

Peace. For those who put their trust in Jesus as Messiah, Jesus says, peace, shalom,

I leave with you. My peace I give you. Not as the world gives do

I give you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. When you have peace from God, it's not like peace with the world.

We could be at peace with each other, and something can happen, and that peace can be disrupted in a second.

Not with the peace from God. That's settled. He will never, he will never leave you or forsake you.

You are in union with him. It's done. And the reason

I say this, Jesus says, let not your hearts be troubled. I always look back to Deuteronomy 20, and it says, when you go out to war against your enemies, and you see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them.

For the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And when you join near the battle, the priests shall come forward and speak to the people and say to them, hero

Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies. Let not your heart faint.

Sounds a lot like, let not your hearts be troubled. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them.

For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.

Right? In Deuteronomy, the priest went into the middle of the battlefield with the soldiers and said, okay, let not your heart faint.

We're gonna, God's gonna deliver us. In John 14, this is Jesus coming in the midst of his disciples saying, let not your heart grow faint.

Go out, take the world. Right? This is part and parcel of the Great Commission.

Go into all the world, teaching them to do everything I told you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I will be with you even till the end of the age.

Do not fear your enemies. So easy, easy to be taken over by fear.

Your flesh feels it. Oh my goodness. This is disruption. First, you need that inner peace.

You need to set apart Christ as Lord. You need to repent of your sins and trust in him, knowing that you're entrusting yourself to a faithful creator.

Okay? Knowing that he's sovereign over all things. Once I know that, then I can go out into battle.

And I forget what soldier who said it says. He says, I go right into battle. I know that I can't die one day sooner than God would permit, because he's sovereign.

So take the meaning. Yes? Stonewall Jackson. Do you remember the exact quote?

Because I butchered it. All right. Thank you. Stonewall Jackson.

For never again will the wicked one pass through you. He is completely cut off. Right? So once you have peace with God, you recognize no matter what happens to you in this life, it's for the glory of God.

We persist. We push forward. We bring God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And we do not fear.

Do not fear. Any questions? Yes, Steve?

Amen. Amen. It is finished. Beautiful words.

Yes, brother? Okay. Amen. Amen.

The funny thing, it's a religious belief either way. Whether you don't believe, that's a religious belief.

Whether you do believe, that's a religious belief. I can relate.

All right. Let's close and pray if there aren't any more questions.