The Rickety Kingdoms and The RocK (Daniel 2:24-49)

Housekeeping—if you would find these welcome pads at the end of your row and pass them down, we do have to welcome you and invite you in. I'm going to switch packs. Is that okay? Is that better? Yeah.

If you're also new, I want to welcome you and let you know there are restrooms right outside these back doors and to your left. There's also no bulletin download today, so you're just going to have to follow along on the screen. Hope that's okay. We will rectify that for next week.

This morning, we are in Daniel chapter two, verses 24 through 49. It's our custom as a church to read God's word aloud together. So if you'll find that on the screen behind me, let's join our voices.

Therefore, Daniel went to Arioch whom the king had assigned to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He came to him and said to him, "Don't destroy the wise men of Babylon. Bring me before the king and I will give him the interpretation."

Then Arioch quickly brought Daniel before the king and said to him, "I have found a man among the Judean exiles who can let the king know the interpretation."

The king said in reply to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, "Are you able to tell me the dream I had and its interpretation?"

Daniel answered the king, "No wise man, medium, magician, or diviner is able to make known to the king the mystery he asked about. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has let King Nebuchadnezzar know what will happen in the last days. Your dream and the visions that came into your mind as you lay in bed were these.

Your majesty, while you were in your bed, thoughts came to your mind about what will happen in the future. The revealer of mysteries has let you know what will happen. As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me not because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but in order that the interpretation might be made known to the king and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind.

Your majesty, as you were watching, suddenly a colossal statue appeared. That statue, tall and dazzling, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was terrifying. The head of the statue was pure gold. Its chest and arms were silver. Its stomach and thighs were bronze. Its legs were iron, and its feet were partly iron and partly fired clay.

As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it, struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the thump summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream. Now we tell the king its interpretation.

Your majesty, you are king of kings. The God of the heavens has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. Wherever people live or wild animals or birds of the sky, he has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all. You are the head of gold.

After you, there will arise another kingdom inferior to yours, and then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which will rule the whole earth. A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron, for iron crushes and shatters everything. And like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others.

You saw the feet and toes partly of a potter's fired clay and partly of iron. It will be a divided kingdom. The sum of its strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay and the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly fired clay. Part of the kingdom will be strong and part will be brittle. You saw the iron mixed with clay. The people will mix with one another but will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with fired clay.

In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great king has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is certain and its interpretation reliable.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell face down, worshiped Daniel, and gave orders to present an offering and incense to him. The king said to Daniel, "Your God is indeed God of gods, Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries. Since you were able to reveal this mystery, then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many generous gifts. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and chief governor over all the wise men of Babylon.

At Daniel's request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to manage the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained at the king's court. — Daniel 2:24-49

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever noticed how many of our pop songs are about dreams? This is a huge theme in popular music. If I want to give you a little list, think about "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day or "Dream On" by Aerosmith, "Wildest Dreams" by T Swift, right? "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car" by Billy Ocean—my first cassette tape way back in the day. "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, "Daydream Believer" by the Monkeys, "These Dreams" by Heart, "I Can Dream About You" by Dan Hartman—a really sweet classic right there. The Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams Are Made of These." "Only in Dreams" by Weezer—and there's so many others and I could go on and on.

I think what's fascinating to me is we're fascinated with dreams. We want to know what they mean. And dreams leave us many times shaken or excited, fearful. There's lots of reactions—from small kids to adults—to our dreams. And so this passage, which is about an interpretation of a dream, should immediately be interesting to us. Should immediately grab us because in this, we get something that I think all of us would like: tell us what this means. What is my dream about?

Today, we're going to look at Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Last week, we saw the king in his anxious state over having dreamed something and then demanding that the wise men in his court be able to interpret this for him. We compared and contrasted Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar—an anxious presence, a non-anxious presence. Today, we're going to look at the meaning and interpretation of this dream.

The Statue and the Rickety Kingdoms

Now, here's an artist rendering of the statue: head of gold, arms and chest of silver, torso of bronze, legs of iron, feet of clay mixed with iron. This really represents what I'm going to call the rickety kingdom. This is one of three places in the book of Daniel—in chapters two, and then again in chapter seven and chapter eleven—where we walk through the history of these kingdoms beginning with Babylon and going in order, working through what is to come. What is to come for the Jewish people? What are the kingdoms they're going to have to live with? All these world empires that are represented by the statue in this dream.

As you go down the statue, each part is less valuable than the one before it, and yet each part of it is a little stronger than the one before it. Let's walk through each of these.

The head of gold. We're told in this passage, "Nebuchadnezzar, your kingdom is the head of gold." Now, the kingdom of Babylon lasted until about May when it was destroyed. We're to read about this in a couple of weeks—Daniel five—there's this wild party which is kind of the culmination of the end of Babylon and the beginning of the next kingdom. You can still visit Babylon today. It's 55 miles outside of Baghdad in Iraq and it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site even today. You can go and visit that.

The chest and arms of silver represent the kingdom of Medio-Persia, the Medes and the Persians. There was a coming together, a joining together of two powers to create this power. So from May until about two hundred years later, until 331 B.C., the Medes and the Persians reigned. We're to hear names like Cyrus and Darius as we continue through Daniel, and that kingdom lasted until they were conquered in March by a man named Alexander the Great. Many of you probably remember, maybe have heard that name from history—the warrior general, the king and general who led Greece to full military dominance over the known world.

The bronze kingdom is the next one—the torso and the upper part of the legs are meant to be represented by Greece. Greece ruled from March under Alexander until January when the Greeks were defeated at a very famous battle, the Battle of Carthage, by the last kingdom that's listed here: the Kingdom of Iron, which represents Rome. Roman rule lasted until 70 A.D. All these kingdoms are about two hundred years each.

But the main point of this, of course, is the bottom part of the statue. What are the feet made of at the bottom of the statue? Clay, right? They're made of iron mixed with clay.

Now, think about what this meant for Nebuchadnezzar. There's been a lot of ink spilt throughout history about all these kingdoms and the way that this works out, and maybe you grew up in a church with lots of charts. Lots of churches love to look at Daniel and Revelation and chart it all out. But for Nebuchadnezzar, the point of this wasn't, "Hey, what are all the parts?" The point of this for Nebuchadnezzar was one message: your kingdom isn't going to last. You're done. You're done. This is very short-lived for you. Your kingdom won't last.

And I want you to think about also what this meant for Daniel.

Daniel is a Judean exile who's been brought forcibly out of his homeland. He's been brought in to serve in the Babylonian court and they have had one word from God about where they are and what's going to happen to their people. I mean, they're in this place of, what is going to happen? They've gotten one word from the prophet Jeremiah who said, seventy years. That's the length of time that my people will be in Babylon. But this is the first word that they get from God again. Guess what? It's not just seventy years. Seventy years and there's going to be a kingdom. God has all these plans lined up and there will be a true and lasting kingdom symbolized by the little rock at the end of the vision.

Now, we need to hear both of these messages: both the message that Nebuchadnezzar heard—this kingdom is not going to last, you're done—and we also need to hear the message that Daniel heard from this, which is this: God is the true king and there is a kingdom to come.

Political Uncoupling

Here's why you need to hear this today: the next thirteen months are going to be crazyville if they're not already because we're headed into an election season and we all know what happens in election season. People lose their minds, right? Some of us lose our minds. We need to think about this. Another election year means political advertising, debates, constant statistics on who's the front runner, scandals. Not to mention, right now we have the Democratic front runner who's got whispers about impeachment around him and the Republican front runner has criminal charges against him. Wow. Crazyville.

Could it get crazier? Yeah, probably. But here's my hope in preaching this Daniel series: that we will not freak out. We will not lose our minds no matter what happens in the economy, no matter what happens with government shutdowns, no matter what happens with the environment, no matter what happens even in the general populous. We will not freak out. We will be okay because we need to. My hope this morning is that we will uncouple both our hopes and our fears from American politics.

Now, uncouple your hopes from politics. I need to say this. Many of us are prone to want to invest a lot of energy in this over the next year—to listen to pundits and follow podcasts and listen to the debates and read the blogs and hear all the stuff and doom scroll in the middle of the night about what's going to happen. And I just need to remind you that every person running for office is a politician. This is not that big a news flash, but every person is. They are not normal people. They are not like you. These are people who are paid to have platforms and postures.

If you do a little case study on this, research how many of these people who are running for public office in our country have flip-flopped on their personal convictions in order to be elected. This is an almost universal thing. And can I also say, how many of our candidates drop God or Jesus or something about the Almighty or the divine in their language to pander to voters? I doubt there's a true Christian among any of them that are running this year for president. Okay? I'm just going to be honest about that.

And I just want to remind you: uncouple your hopes from politics. Every person who's running this year has feet of clay.

But the other one I want to say—you may be like, yeah, I know this. I know. You may not be tempted to deify any candidate. You may be like, yeah, old news, Bradford. But while you may not have your hopes attached to any candidate, my gut is that we have a lot of fears attached to candidates. Right? And so my call to you is again: uncouple your fears from American politics.

Whoever wins this office next November will become a footnote of history. You heard me right. A footnote of history. Can you remember who was President ninety-four years ago? Not off the top of your head, probably. Most of you—maybe one person in this room can do that, right? But I just want to remind you, this election, yeah, it's important, but we are not voting for the infinite sovereign ruler of the universe. That position is comfortably taken and permanently filled, right? We are not voting on that. As we said last week, there is a God in heaven. He is the revealer of mysteries and He is king of the rocky kingdom.

So follow the trajectory of this passage, right? It goes from the shiny but transient to the insignificant and permanent. So let's shift from talking about the rickety kingdoms to talk about the rocky kingdom, right? The message of Daniel 2 is very simple.

Earthly kingdoms are all going to fall. God is the true king. And so here's what the readers, the first readers of the book of Daniel—whether you think it was written in the May or the January doesn't really matter because the main message was the same. No matter what is going on, look to the rock. Look to the rock. Can you recognize what is the real and the lasting kingdom?

Several years ago, what should have been the last Indiana Jones movie came out and it was called Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and it was a hunt for the Holy Grail. So here's the backstory of it. Indiana Jones and, of course, the Nazis—they're looking for the chalice, right? They're looking for the cup that Jesus had at the last supper. And they finally locate it. And here's what happens: you go in, there's a pile of all these chalices and cups, and you have to pick out the right one. And then you get the water, and you can either drink it yourself and it's supposed to give you everlasting youth, or you can give it to somebody else and it will heal them. Well, the Nazi shows up first, right? And gets the chalice. I hope I'm not spoiling this for anyone—sorry. So he gets the chalice, right? Drinks the water and, of course, Steven Spielberg moment, turns to dust and falls to pieces. It's really great, right? Then Indiana Jones shows up, and, of course, he's looking around—which is the right chalice?—and he says, "Oh yeah, Jesus was a carpenter." So among all the gold and the silver and the bejeweled chalices, there's one little wooden cup. He takes that, fills it up, gives it to his dad who's injured, and it heals him. Indiana Jones identified the right king and the right kingdom. The question for us is: can you? Could you identify? I mean, that's really what's laid out for the reader of this passage. Can you identify what's the real king and what his kingdom is like?

In Daniel chapter 2, verse 44, Daniel identifies the rock—the little rock that comes at the end—as the kingdom of God and tells us four things about what this kingdom is going to be like.

First, this is a rock that's not cut out by human hands. In other words, this is not a human invention. God's kingdom is not human effort. It's not human creativity that makes the kingdom. The statue is the work of all human effort and creativity—smelting, metallurgy, forming, and shaping. The rock is the only thing that's just a natural substance that's unprocessed. The rock which strikes is not made by human hands.

Now, this is what Jesus said about his kingdom when he came:

The kingdom of God doesn't come by your careful observation nor will people say, "Here it is" or "There it is," because the kingdom of God is within you. — Luke 17

God's kingdom is not a man-made tangible thing. Now, let me be real straight: churches feel all too human, don't they? Then the church—often times coming to church, being part of the church—feels really, it's not a very human thing sometimes. But God's kingdom is much larger. It contains the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's even larger than that. And God's kingdom, while invisible, while it's invisible, it is the one thing that is not human into human invention. It's God's own invention. It is an invisible and supernatural reality.

Second, the rock is the least valuable substance in the whole dream. So God's kingdom, despite being unconquerable and eternal and divine, isn't it something that looks kind of poor and small and weak? I mean, don't we want to see some power? And for many people, the church also seems to be weak and foolish and inconsequential. God's kingdom seems weak and foolish.

This is the time of year when the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown comes out. Remember that holiday classic? For Halloween, all the gang are going trick-or-treating. They go and they got their bags, and they come out to the sidewalk after going to each house, and they say, "I got a candy bar. I got an apple. I got a cookie." And Charlie Brown says, "I got a rock." They do it like house after house: "I got a rock." Charlie Brown always has a rock, right? And I think that's how we often feel about God's kingdom. Everybody else has got a candy bar and a cookie and we got a rock. It feels inconsequential. But this is what God had told people about his kingdom:

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. — Psalm 118

The rock that looked worthless—it is the vital part. The cornerstone is the vital part of construction, or the capstone. Another way you can interpret it: the capstone—the most important part of the structure, structurally vital. That which looks insignificant is the most important.

Third, this rocky kingdom grows. Look at verse 35. It's not a huge mountain that smashes the stone.

It's a little rock that smashes the statue. It starts off small but then it grows. In the dream, Nebuchadnezzar sees the little rock that smashes the statue grow into a great mountain. This is exactly what we also know about Jesus and his kingdom. He comes two times. The first time, he came in weakness, in human frailty, in an insignificant village in Palestine. He came looking small.

Matthew 13 even said of his kingdom. He told them a parable:

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. And even though it's the smallest of the seeds, yet when it grows, it becomes the largest of garden plants. It becomes a tree, so that even the birds come and sit in its branches. — Matthew 13

This is really important for us because it's important for us to remember that the kingdom has come but the kingdom is also coming. It grows. It grows. This is why Jesus taught his disciples: the kingdom's here but it's not fully here yet. He taught his disciples to pray for the kingdom. He says at the end of the time, his followers received the fullness of the kingdom. The kingdom is at first so small and so weak—in fact, so weak that John the Baptist, remember Jesus's cousin who baptized him in the Jordan, was pretty disappointed with Jesus. Do you know this? He was kind of disillusioned. He's like, are you really the one? Or should I expect somebody else? This is so insignificant what you're doing.

And yet, think about the miracles of Jesus. The miracles that Jesus performed—they were not just naked displays of raw power. If they were, what about stripes on the moon? That would have been a good one. Turning the Sea of Galilee into chocolate milk. That would be a good one, right? Melting all the Romans, Steven Spielberg moment—great miracle. Jesus didn't do any of those kinds of miracles. He did these odd miracles, these healings, these exorcisms. What were those for?

Well, John calls them in the Gospel of John—he calls them signs. Signs of the kingdom. We think of miracles as disruptions of the natural order, something odd, something supernatural and out of the ordinary. But a lot of theologians have pointed out over and over that the miracles of Jesus weren't disruptions of the natural order. They were restoration of the natural order. Blindness shouldn't be. Death should not be. Sickness should not be. Being taken over by demons should not be. And Jesus's miracles were all displays of: this is what my kingdom is going to be. I'm going to set everything right, and one day it will all be right.

The Already and the Not Yet

This is why when we talk about the kingdom, we talk about it as both the kingdom that's come and the kingdom that's coming. We live in an overlap of the ages where Jesus's birth was the inauguration. The first coming—the life and ministry of Jesus—and yet we wait for the fullness of his return, his second coming, where he will come and make all things right. So we live in this tension moment of what we call the already and the not yet. The kingdom—it's already here but there's more to come.

Jesus's death rescues us from the present evil age and brings us into the kingdom of his dear Son, whom he loves. — Galatians 1, Colossians 1

And yet we also know:

The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. — 1 John

The fullness is what we're waiting on. So look here, Charlie Browns—fellow Charlie Browns this morning—don't judge the kingdom by what it is right now. The fullness of the mountain isn't clear yet. Hold on to hope. What will be has not yet been revealed.

The Kingdom That Lasts

Last thing we could say about this kingdom: this rocky kingdom lasts. I want you to think about what we call gold and silver. What kind of metals are gold and silver? We call them imperishable metals, right? I could take my ring and take it somewhere and have it melted down and it could be reformed into another precious object. It's valuable. It's malleable. It's an imperishable metal because of that.

But this is what God shows Nebuchadnezzar in this dream: what looks imperishable is actually perishable, and what looks perishable is actually imperishable. What you think is going to last forever—the gold, the value, the silver—that's all destined to be destroyed. And what really lasts is this rocky kingdom. That's what's really going to last.

So again, the question for us, like Indiana Jones: can you recognize the real kingdom? Are you living into the real kingdom? Because there are messages all the time about who's really in power. We're going to spend the next year debating who's really going to be in power. And we need to really be able to discern—and actually discern not just with our mouths but in our very lives—that there is a real kingdom. All these rickety kingdoms, they don't last. They have feet of clay.

All these politicians. Daniel was a man who lived between an already and a not yet. He was given this promise that in 70 years you guys get to return home, and then he saw this vision of a kingdom that's to come. So he's living between a promise and a fulfillment.

Can I remind you? This is where you live today. This is where I live today. Jesus has come and said, "The kingdom of God is within you." It's here now, and yet there's a sense in which it's not here yet. We live in a tension point. Anybody love to live in tension? No. Living in tension is a terrible thing. Humans always want to resolve tension in some way, and we live in this tension point of the ages between what has been, what has already come to pass, and what will be—between promise and fulfillment.

Understanding this chart, understanding what time you live in, helps us not to make the mistakes that a lot of Christians are making in our age. I want to characterize it this way: too much already and too much not yet.

The Error of "Too Much Already"

The Kingdom of God is already here. That will get you to Christian nationalism. That will get you to Christian nationalism. You will think the kingdom is right here, right now. But let me remind you: America is not God's country. America is not God. Christian nationalism misunderstands the nature of God's kingdom. It's too already, as if God's kingdom was right here, right now in our government.

Making our government into a Christian government has never been a biblical goal. We're never commanded to make that happen. That's not really what we're supposed to be about as God's people. Any talk of Christian values apart from Christ isn't Christianity. The main value of Christians is not kind of restoring some kind of moral order. Our main value is a Jewish peasant who died on a cross and everybody knowing him. That's our hope.

The Error of "Too Much Not Yet"

There's also the error of looking for it too much in the not yet. Too much not yet turns you into the Amish community in Central Pennsylvania, or fundamentalism. You'll think the kingdom is all future, and so your job is to withdraw from society and just wait around. Wait around and pray a lot. You'll think that anything secular is really bad. Too much not yet leads to people who are disengaged.

Living in the Tension

If you learn this dynamic in the already-not-yet kingdom, this calls you and helps you to live in two ways in the tension.

First, this already-not-yet kingdom calls us to both patient waiting and also immediate action. Look at what we see in the passage: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel—they're praying. They're waiting in prayer. They're waiting for God to come in his fullness. They're praying for that, but they're also working. They also stepped into the political appointments in that court, in that day that God had placed them into, and said, "Be fruitful here." And they embraced that.

Apparently, in C.S. Lewis' day, there was this statement that was very popular among Christians: "To be so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly use." C.S. Lewis hated that phrase. He said, "First, I've never met somebody that actually fell into that category. I've never met somebody who's so heavenly minded that they were of no earthly use. I'm not sure that's a real problem."

But he said this: "A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not some form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do—live in the tension. It doesn't mean you're to leave the present world as it is. If you read history, you'll find out that the Christians who did the most for the present world were the ones who are longing the most for the next."

I love that statement. The ones who did the most for the present world were the ones most longing for the next. That's living in the tension. The already and the not yet.

Humility and Confidence

The second tension is that it calls us and equips us to live with both humility as Christians and confidence as Christians. I don't think this is probably news to anybody. We all know Christians can be kind of the worst—arrogant, proud, self-righteous, smug. There's a type of confidence among Christians sometimes that's really just pride at root, isn't it?

But Christians who have this already-and-not-yet perspective have that perspective even of themselves. When you look in the mirror in the morning, you see yourself in this all. If you look with the all-winds of the already and not yet on your eyes, you see: I'm both something God has started, but I'm something he hasn't finished yet. There's a sense in which I'm not already arrived. I've not yet arrived. I'm his, but not fully in all the ways that I want that to be expressed. And what that leads to in a Christian life is humility.

When somebody confronts you in sin, you should respond with humility, saying something like, "You don't know the half of it. You're right." Because we are already and not yet—already saved but not fully in all the ways we want that to be expressed. This should make us approachable, non-defensive, and humble.

John Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace," put it this way:

I am not yet what I ought to be. I'm not what I ought to be. I'm not what I hope to be. But still I am not what I used to be. By the grace of God, I am what I am.

This already/not yet reality gives us humility, but it also gives us a robust confidence in what God is doing in the universe.

The Confidence of Knowing the Ending

Think about watching an animated movie with a child—a Pixar, DreamWorks, or Disney film. As an adult, you know they all have happy endings. Ariel doesn't die. Lightning McQueen doesn't end up in a junkyard. Even though a child experiences all the highs and lows of the plot, you're not jarred by what happens because you know the end.

We are people like Daniel. We don't know how it's all going to work out, but God has told us the end. There is going to be an everlasting kingdom. There is a kingdom that is sure.

I know a pastor who said this verse is the only thing that allows him to get out of bed in the morning. Listen to it:

The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it itself will endure forever. — Daniel 2:44

Kingdom people can live in this tension with humility and confidence.

Living in the Already and Not Yet

Last week's sermon was about anxiety. Today's sermon is about God's Kingdom. One person who embodied this kind of living in the already and not yet was Martin Luther King Jr.

On the night before he was killed—April 3rd, 1968—he gave a speech to sanitation workers in Memphis who were striking for better wages, more rights, and equal pay. He went to rally with them and gave this speech that embodies such a sense of non-anxious presence in both waiting and working, in humility and boldness, in living in a place where you're hanging on to a kingdom that's yet to come. Listen to what he said the night before he died:

I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the mountaintop and I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. He's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Hear that hope. That poise. That confidence. He had no idea of the bullet that would come the next day, but he was a man who lived in the already and not yet.

May God give us grace as people who live in an anxious age with lots of rival kings to identify the king and to live in his kingdom—in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

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Father, we thank you for your word. There is nothing like your word. We pray that we would be people who, as we look in the mirror and in the newspaper, as we look at our phones, as we look at ourselves, would hold out the fact that we live in the already and not yet kingdom. We would hope in this rocky kingdom that will become a mountain. Father, make us people of confidence and humility today. Make us people who work and wait well as we look to you. Father, we pray that you'd preserve and protect us. Lord, fill us with hope. Help us to be kingdom people. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.