When God Came Down (the Tower of Babel and beyond!)

For today's scripture reading, I'll be reading Isaiah 64:1-2, and it's quite an expression-filled passage here. So, 'Oh, that you would burst down from the heavens and come down! How the mountains would quake in your presence! As fire causes wood to burn and water to boil, your coming makes the whole nations tremble. Then your enemies will learn the reason for your fame.' When you came down long ago, you did awesome deeds beyond our expectations, and oh, how the mountains quaked! For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him.

Thank you, Jayden, for that beautiful reading. One thing I've said to my kids since they were little was, "There's no such thing as being bored, only boring." And the scripture should never be boring. And I love that, Jaden, that you said that. This is actually a passion-filled bit of scripture, so, and then read it with such passion. So thank you for that. Today we're going to be looking at what we, whenever we look it up in the Bible, we look it up under the title, The Tower of Babel. But the Tower of Babel and all the titles that are in your Bible were added by people later going, "Let's help people find the stories." And so they put titles on it. Titles on things. I want you to listen to the story of the Tower of Babel from Scripture and give it a different title. Like, think to yourself, what would be a good title for this if I was looking for, um, something different? I'll let you choose the Tower of Babel if you really want it, but you have a listen and see what you think. The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary, and people migrated from the east. They found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, "Come, let's make oven-fired bricks." They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let's make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will be scattered throughout the earth." Then the Lord came down to look over the city and the tower the humans were building. The Lord said, 'If they have begun to do this as one people, all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let's go down and confuse their language so they will not understand one another's speech.' So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore it's called Babylon, for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the whole earth. What would you title that passage of Scripture? The scattering of the nations. That's a good title. That's a really— that's— I really like that title. The tower barely features in the story, but I guess it is unique because there's a tower. But any other ideas of what you might name that passage? The history of confusion. Ooh, the history of confusion. I like that. That's a good one. Well, I had a look at it, and as I was— of course, because for the last 2 weeks since Pastor Darren has asked me to preach on this topic, I was like, you want me to do 30 minutes on the Tower of Babel? Wow. And then I started looking. So what is— what's here? What is there to go with that to stretch out for 30 minutes, 9 verses? And as I looked, one commentary said this one phrase is by far the most important phrase in the whole narrative of the Tower of Babel. And the phrase was, "The Lord came down." And so I thought, ooh, you know, we're looking at this golden thread this year of the Lord's presence with his people, the Lord leading his people, the Lord's love being shown on people on earth and them following that love and becoming his carers for community, creation and for the church. So if that is the key phrase in this, I wonder what else I could find about when the Lord came down in Scripture. And I'm sure your mind goes, oh, that's a great theme, that would preach well. The title that I chose for my sermon was When God Comes Down, and that's a theme that you can track right through the Bible. In fact, you can call it the loom on which the tapestry of salvation history is is woven. When God comes down, the golden thread is introduced. It's reintroduced, it's renewed, it's reclaimed. God comes down at the start, the finish, and repeatedly through human history to reestablish the golden thread of Scripture, to show us his glory, to show us that his glory is his love. Each time God comes down, he comes in all of his glory, but humanity interprets his arrival through their muddy lenses. Let's take a look at the God— let's take a look at God and let him clean our glasses bit by bit, as he did in the Old Testament and the New Testament. His presence becomes clearer and clearer, as I hope you will see. First of all, in the story, the tower doesn't come down. I remember as a kid the way it was told— God destroyed the tower. But if you look at the story, it doesn't come down. God comes down. And that's the theme of the story and the theme of the whole narrative of the Bible. As in many other places in Scripture, God comes down and people are sent out. Babel is one of two times that God comes down and new languages follow. There's a huge reenactment in the book of Acts, but we'll get to that in a bit. While the Tower of Babel story is primarily seen as God coming down with a curse to confuse and scatter people by mixing up their languages. It is equally God coming down to remind people of his commission to spread throughout the world, and then motivating them to do so by giving them the ability to speak a variety of languages. This story is the introduction to the great biblical theme: God is a God of many nations, many languages, and many people. In today's lingo, God is a multicultural God. So in the Bible, what happens when God comes down? As Christians, we have it easy. To describe God, all we have to do is look at Jesus. But Old Testament people only had faith stories handed down to them and the stories their neighbors told of foreign gods. Often the point of Old Testament stories about God is to establish the difference between Yahweh and the other gods, rather than to drill down into the true, deeper nature of Yahweh. Does the Tower of Babel sound like Jesus? It doesn't really. Doesn't it feel like Jesus scattering, saying they're going to get too smart, and then we're going to have to— so we'd better just split them all up, confusing them. So if it's not a clear picture of God, What is it? Well, it is clearly a testament of God's judgment. It also is a retort to the Babylonian creation story, which is recorded— it's the oldest document in the world that they found, is the Enuma Elish, which is the Babylonian creation myth. And it has fantastical stories that are great mythology and fun to read. But when you find the creation of Babylon in the Enuma Elish, it's fascinating because this listen, these 9 verses, take a number of themes and ideas from that and say, uh-uh, that's not how it is. It was like this. And it's a retort to this story. First of all, Babylon was built— this is the Enuma Elish— Babylon was built in heaven by the gods as a celestial city, and as expression of their pride, Babylon was placed on earth. Then in 11, in chapter 3 of Genesis, the phrasing and the process of the brickmaking, you notice it like slows right down and describes describes how they make bricks and how they use the asphalt, it's actually word for word from the same way as the way that they describe in the heaven of the gods how Marduk created the bricks and how he formed them together. Only in their story, he stamps his name on every brick, so every brick in Babylon has the name Marduk stamped on it, which it doesn't, but in their mythology it does. And so God's people, when they told the story, they said, 'God didn't come down, your gods didn't make the bricks up there and then put the city down here. People just like us built, made these bricks, and here's how they did it. They used bitumen, they used mud, they made bricks just the way we make bricks, and they didn't use stone.' That's because of where they were in the world. They had to make bricks if they wanted to build anything big. So, God is building, the people said to themselves, "Let us build." That's the two, the comparison. God builds it, or the people built it. Babylon is a human city, not a godly city. That's their response to the Babylonian myth of creation. The Enuma Elish says that Babylonian god Marduk inscribed every brick with his own name, and the Israelite version of the story said those bricks were made with human hands by people just like us. The tower, the ziggurat, if you can imagine, if you've done any kind of looking at old pictures of towers, the ziggurat is the one with the huge staircase up the front and the staircases up the sides. And in historical excavations, Babylon seems to be the first culture, the first place where ziggurats were used and built. And so it's likely that this tower that it's referring to was a ziggurat. And the step-like tower that goes up to the top and at the top of this artificial mountain is a center of worship where they build a temple for their god to come down. The Enuma Elish says that its top is in the heavens. It's a place of worship for their god to come down. The Israelite rebuttal says God did come down, but not to accept your worship. He came down to disrupt false worship. He confused people and sent them to the four corners of the earth. So, the Babylonian pride, the Babylonians took great pride in their building, not just in their city, but in their strategy, their way of building, and how their city was impenetrable, and their temple was the best thing. And in fact, they called their city Babilu, which became Babylon, but Babilu means gateway to the gods. Interestingly, in Hebrew, Babel sounds— it's "bay-bee-lee"— Babel sounds a lot like "Baal," which is the word for confusion. So when you read the story, they just, they twist them, they go a play on words, and they say, "This isn't the gateway to the gods, it's the gateway to a confused bunch of people who couldn't even finish their city because our God had better plans." So, what happens? I guess if you want to say, "What is the theme of this story?" It's really an answer to the question, "What happens to arrogant people when God shows up?" And the answer is God humbles them and he sends them out, just like in the Garden of Eden and multiple other times in the Bible when humans establish their arrogance and their pride, God establishes his judgment by humbling them and sending them out with something useful to do. The builders of Babylon arrogantly imagined they had united the world under their rule. God stops activity in the city and tower by scattering the people across the earth. In its place, later in the same chapter, God calls Abram to start the family of faith through whom the nations would be blessed in God's time and God's love, rather than by their own arrogance. So, we get this idea that God does have an answer. He does have a way for people to worship and for people to come together, but it's not through their own ingenuity and arrogance. Arrogance, and building skills. It's through family. It's through community. It's through a line that he chose and a man that he chose and then began to bless, Abram, who became Abraham, who became the father of nations. So, if we take this Old Testament golden thread and we follow it through, what happens when God comes down? What happens when God comes down in the Old Testament? One of the first stories we have is in Exodus 19. Which is where God's people are around the mountain. And it says that God came down. Exodus 19:16-21, if you want to read with me. Exodus 19:16-21. On the third day, when morning came, there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, and a very loud blast from a ram's horn, so that all the people in the camp shuddered. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. And they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke because the Lord came down on it in fire. Its smoke went up like smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the sound of the ram's horn grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in the thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai at the top of the mountain. 'Then the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and he went up. The Lord directed Moses, "Go down and warn the people not to break through to see the Lord." It's actually Yahweh, "To see Yahweh, otherwise many of them will die." So there's this picture that when God comes and stands in front of many, he's scary, he's overwhelming. He is interpreted— there's another place in the Old Testament where God speaks and Moses can understanding, but the people just hear thunder and they're terrified. And so God is interpreted by the people as this very scary, very distant, we need to step back. And even he says, "They're not ready to see who I am, so have them step back away from the mountain. Make sure that they don't come up on the mountain." Then just a little later in the story, in Exodus 34, we actually have Moses going up on the mountain to meet God. And if you look at verse 4 to 10 of Exodus 34, it's fascinating how different what God looks like and sounds like and feels like is, because he's one-on-one with somebody whose heart is right with him. Exodus 34, verses 4 to 10. Moses cut two stone tablets like the first ones. He got up early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hand, he climbed Mount Sinai just as the Lord had commanded him. The Lord— that's again, that's Yahweh— came down in the clouds, stood with him there, and proclaimed his name, Yahweh. Yahweh passed in front of him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity rebellion and sin, but he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the father's iniquities on the children and the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation. Moses immediately knelt low on the ground and worshiped. Then he said, my Lord, if I have indeed found favor with you, my Lord, please go with us, even though this is a stiff-necked people. Forgive our iniquity and our sin and accept us as your own possession. God introduces himself as love. His self-description is loving and compassionate and generous. In the passage that Jaden so beautifully read for us, we get this picture of Isaiah talking again about God coming down. Isaiah is epic because it's so many— he writes Many have called it the Old Testament Gospel because it's just this beautiful picture of the character of God, the activity of God, and the intercession of God for his people. And when Isaiah gets to this picture near the end of everything that he said about God, he says, "If only you would tear the heavens open." This is Isaiah 64:1-4. If only you would tear the heavens open and come down. So that the mountains would quake at your presence, just like fire kindles brushwood and fire boils water, to make your name known to the enemies, so that nations would tremble at your presence. When you did your awesome works that we did not expect, you came down and the mountains quaked at your presence. From ancient times no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you, who acts on behalf of the ones who wait for him. And wait they did. After being set free from Babylon, there was some 400 years of waiting, waiting for the golden thread to continue, waiting for God to come down. Then the New Testament. What happens when God comes down in the New Testament? By the way, it's new. Jesus arrives. Jesus is incarnated. He's born as a baby. He's a star for the wise men. He's a song of angels for shepherds in the field. He's a baby for a young mother. And then he becomes the leader for disciples, and he becomes a, a thorn in the side for Pharisees, and he becomes sacrifice for all of us. So that we can live unrestricted in God's presence. Jesus said, "God is love." He lived showing it, he died declaring it, and he was raised again proving it once and for all. God is love. We humans are, are really slow to let the true nature of God sink in. 4,000 years between the garden and the incarnation. We want an authoritarian taskmaster. But he is not. God is like Jesus. It wasn't until after the resurrection and a bit of time to think things through that the believers began to understand the love of God. And even then, as Paul says, it was through a glass darkly. The first time we have God coming down after Jesus went back up, it's that promise that he made: When I go, I will send the Comforter, and when he comes, you will do things beyond even what I have done. How is that even possible? Let's read in its entirety Acts chapter 2, 1 to 40. So it's not actually the entirety, but it's just really important to get the gist of what actually happens here when God comes down. Acts chapter 2, starting at verse 1: When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled filled the whole house they were staying in. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven. When this sound, the wind, occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking his own language. They were astounded and amazed, saying, 'Look, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native tongue? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, those who live in Mesopotamia and Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own language.' They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' But some sneered and said, 'They're drunk on new wine.' Peter stood up with the 11, raised his voice, and proclaimed to them, 'Fellow Jews and all of you residents of Jerusalem, let it be known to you and pay attention to my words, for these people are not drunk as you suppose.' It's only 9 in in the morning. On the contrary, this is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel. And it will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. I will even pour out my Spirit on my servants in those days, men and women, and they will prophesy. I will display wonders in the heavens above, the signs on the earth below, and blood and fire and a cloud of will be turned to darkness, the moon to blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Fellow Israelites, listen to these words. This Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God with miracles, wonders, and signs that God did among you through him, just as you yourselves know. Though he was delivered up according to God's will, But according to God's determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail him to a cross and kill him. God raised him up, ending the pains of death, because it was not possible for death to hold him. For David says, I saw the Lord ever before me, because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. Moreover, my flesh will rest in hope because you will not abandon me in Hades or allow your Holy One to see decay. You have revealed the paths of life to me. You will fill me with gladness in your presence. Brothers and sisters, I can confidently speak to you about the patriarch David. He's both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us here today. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn an oath to him to seat one of his descendants on the throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke concerning the resurrection of the Messiah. He was not abandoned in Hades, and his flesh did not experience experience decay. God has raised this Jesus. We are all witnesses of this. Therefore, since he has been exalted to the right hand of God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, he has poured out what you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, the Lord declared to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah. When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Peter replied, repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 'For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.' With many other words he testified and strongly urged them, saying, 'Be saved from this corrupt generation.'" So, at Pentecost, God underlines the linguistic diversity that he introduced at Babel. Everyone in the crowd was able to understand disciples speaking in his own or her own language. The first miracle that the Holy Spirit did was to make it possible for the story of Jesus to be understood understood in many languages at once. The triune relational God did not force conformity on his followers by making them all hear his message in one language. He encouraged diversity by allowing them to hear in their own language. From even before Christian church was called Christian, it was multicultural and multilingual. That's from an article called "Babel: Pentecost and Blessing of Diversity" by Eddie Arthur. John Wesley said it this way, it's shorter, "The miracle was not in the ears of the hearers, as some have unaccountably supposed, but in the mouth of the speakers. And this family praising God together with tongues of all the world was earnest that the whole world should in due time praise God in their own various tongues." There's a number of stories in Acts trying to get the young Christian church to wrap their head around including everyone. Because in their day, we don't really get the idea, you know, the sheet that was lowered and Peter is told to eat whatever's in the sheet, and he's, ah, I can't eat any of that, it's disgusting stuff. As Adventists, we get that a little bit, but Peter, it's so much bigger for him. That's— it's not just food that's on that, it's an entire culture, it's an entire identity that's represented by what they eat and don't eat, and also whose houses they go into and don't go into. And so when Peter is told, take and eat, and then there's a knock knock at the door downstairs. It's fascinating if you read this through, it's 2 chapters, Acts 10 and 11. It starts with Cornelius in his house seeing an angel, and the angel says, "Send for Peter." And in Peter's house, he's hungry, and so he's on the top of the roof waiting for dinner to be made, and he goes into a vision, and he sees all this food come down, and he gets very uncomfortable, I think because he's thinking, "When it says take up and eat, what are they going to bring me from the kitchen downstairs? Oh, no." But instead, there's a knock at the door, and it's these men, from Cornelius' house, and they say, "He wants you to come. The Lord has said, an angel has said for you to come." And he realizes, "Oh, a Roman centurion, a soldier. I can't go into his house, but now I know I can." And so he goes and he says to them when he shows up, he says to Cornelius, "You know," like imagine that you come over to someone's house, they've invited you, and you say, "You know God forbids me to come into your house, and yet look, I'm here. How humble am I?" But he doesn't say it like that. He says, "So something bigger than us is happening here because God gave me this dream." And again, he tells the story. "I had this dream and the sheet came down." And Cornelius says, "Whoa, you had a dream. I had a vision." And he tells that story again. And so the reader, as you're participating in Luke's telling of the Book of Acts, you've got the story once, now you've got the story twice. And then the people in that house start to speak in tongues when the message of Jesus is told to them and they connect through that this teaching of God that our leader Cornelius has been teaching us about, 'cause he's a worshiper of God in the Jewish way, but now he understands Jesus. And they begin to speak, and the way Peter says it is, "They speak in languages just as we did at the beginning." So in other words, it's a big gathering in his house and he's invited friends and family. They're speaking to everyone in their native tongue, and they're proclaiming the Messiah, proclaiming that Jesus is the Lord. And then, Peter says, wow, what's stopping you guys from being baptized? If you've had the baptism of the Spirit, you should have the baptism of water. And so he baptizes the whole house. He does it a little bit differently than what Darren said this morning, where he said, you know, there was no coercion. They just wanted to do it. It actually says, you could read it in there, he demanded that they all be baptized. He's like, you guys, whoa, you're speaking in tongues, you're speaking other languages. You need to be baptized, or who knows what's starting here. And he baptizes them. Then he goes back to to Jerusalem, and when he gets there, what do the leaders of the church say? "You!" Oh my goodness, the Pharisees say it. They call them the circumcision group. "You went into the house of an uncircumcised— not only that, but he was a Roman and a soldier, and they are our oppressors. How could you do that?" And Peter says, "Let me tell you a story." And as the reader, we read the whole thing again. It takes 3 times through before Luke thinks maybe, maybe people are starting to get it. Maybe they're starting to understand what it means to have a multilingual, multicultural, all-inclusive God come down and say, "I'm here to save the whole world." When God comes down, he sends us out. Our mission isn't to judge the people we encounter as worthy or unworthy, but to share the God who embraces all languages, tribes, and people, and calls every human to give life a fresh start in the water of baptism. Everything else comes in God's time. There's one more story that I want to finish with today, and it's the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. And this man has— he worships the Jewish God, and he's traveled from Ethiopia. He serves Candace, the Queen of Ethiopia, and he's traveled because it's It's Pentecost, it's Passover, and he's come and he's celebrated and he's evidently purchased. He's very wealthy and works for the queen as her treasurer. He has a scroll of Isaiah, which was not like where we can go down and buy a Bible for $5. He would've spent a lot of money buying this entire scroll of Isaiah. And as he's bouncing along in his chariot, he's reading it aloud because it's in a different language. And so he's reading the Hebrew of Isaiah and he's, So he's bouncing along and he's sounding out the words and he's getting this message and he's flabbergasted by it. And Philip is brought by the Spirit and told, "Catch up with that chariot. He needs to talk to you." And so Philip's running next to this chariot and he says, "Do you understand what you're reading?" And the guy's, "How can I? There's no one here to explain it to me." He says, "I could come in and explain it." "Oh, yeah." So he knocks on the wall and he gets him to stop, the driver to stop the horses. And he lets Philip in, and then Philip rides with him, and Philip, starting from that very passage that he was reading— and I just want to read that passage to you because it's from Isaiah, of course. He reads— that's Acts chapter 8, verses 29 to 39 is this story. But the bit that he's reading, he gets in there, and so he starts reading aloud again, and he says, He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and a lamb is silent before his shearers, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who will describe his generation? For his life was taken up from the earth. The eunuch says to Philip, I ask you, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else? Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning with that scripture. As they were traveling down the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, "Look, there's water. What would keep me from being baptized?" He couldn't go in and celebrate in the Passover because he was castrated. And Deuteronomy makes it clear you have to be a whole man to go in. And so he would have gone and worshipped God from outside. His whole adult life he would have been outside the temple, outside the system, but still worshipping the God who somehow attracted him even though he was so excluded. Excluded. And he hears this gospel from Isaiah, but explained through the lens of Jesus, and he says, "What's keeping me from being baptized?" So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer, and he went on his way rejoicing. So, come back to that desert road with me to consider what happens next. The Ethiopian eunuch climbs back into his chariot, still soaked in the waters of baptism. He leans forward and knocks on the front wall. The driver prods the horses and the journey resumes. As the chariot returns to the rhythmic sway of travel familiar only to the wealthy, the Queen of Ethiopia's eunuch dries his hands and carefully quickly returns to his place in the scroll of Isaiah. He's found Jesus, the God who forgives sins. What else might he discover? He begins to read aloud, taking care to pronounce each Hebrew word correctly. Just two short— sorry, just two short chapters later, a few turns of the scroll, he stutters to a stop. Can this really be here in the middle of an ancient scroll? How? It's clearly a personal letter written directly to the eunuch. He reads on under his breath rather than reading aloud, unsure what Isaiah will say next. Moments later, his excitement of discovery is too high to keep to himself. He leans forward and knocks on the wall, bringing the horses to a stop. Stepping out of the chariot, the eunuch takes the scroll and rests it on the side of the driver's bench. "You've got to hear this," he says. "But first I need to tell you everything Philip told me before you saw him baptize me." After sharing the gospel of Jesus about the forgiveness of sin and conquering of death, the eunuch says to the driver, 'So I kept reading, and listen to this.' He looks down at the scroll and he reads in a loud voice Isaiah 56:3-8. No foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord should say, 'The Lord has excluded me from his people.' And the eunuch should not say, Look, I'm a dried up tree. For the Lord says, for the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold firmly to my covenant, I will give them in my house, within my walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off. As for the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and become His servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold firmly to my covenant, I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. This is the declaration of the Lord God, who gathers the dispersed of Israel I will gather to them still others besides those already gathered. And this is what happens when the Lord comes down. Our God is above all, yet he came down and was crucified for us. Can everybody please stand as we sing our last song, Above All.

Above all kings, above all nature and all created things, above all wisdom and all the ways of man, you reign forever, Amen. Above all kingdoms, above all crowns, above all wonders the world has ever known, above all wealth and treasures on the earth, there's no way to Visualize your work. Crucified, laid behind its door, lived to die, rejected and alone like a rose, trampled on the ground. You before and for me above all. Who's mine? Lay behind the stone. You lived to die, rejected and alone. Like Like a rose trampled on the ground, you took the cross and brought it me above all.

Like a rose trampled on the ground, you took Dear Lord, may we be filled with your glory in the sense that we reach all people for you. In your name, amen. Amen.