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Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church

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with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith.

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Today, to who belongs all the nations of the earth, or as the Bible calls him, the desire of the nations?

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In a tumultuous world where conflict exists over possession of the earth,

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for example, Islam asserts the earth belongs to Allah, communists and socialists claim it is the peoples through the state,

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and of course the plutocrats, who are presently attempting to seize it, assume that they are entitled,

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since it is theirs bought and paid for.

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Who can we confidently say, however, as Bible-believing Christians, in reality does possess the earth and all that is in it?

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This is an important question since the answer will determine how we live in the future.

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That for which we labor, the form of government we fashion to live under, and those we choose to lead us.

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It will have ultimate consequences also, since the possessor of the earth is the one we end up worshiping.

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The Bible records for us this solemn expression of the consequence for choosing the wrong being to worship.

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If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire, from Revelation chapter 20.

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Now, over the last few weeks, we have been examining the way things are in America.

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That is, we see secularism ruling our spiritual lives,

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statism tyrannizing our political lives,

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and socialism running our economic lives.

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With the way we've been comparing this with the way we were designed by our founding fathers.

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That is, we were designed to have Christ for our spiritual lives,

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the constitution for our political lives,

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and capitalism for our economic lives.

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Yet, throughout this careful comparison,

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we have been insistent that the overarching point is that of Christ for all.

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Christ must be the center of our worship as a people.

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Christ must be at the heart of our constitution,

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and Christ must guide our capitalistic economy.

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If not, all is lost.

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And what I want to examine today in some detail is why Christ is central to all that we do as a nation.

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He is the desire of the nations.

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That is, the one to whom all of our labors and our aspirations culminate.

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The Bible is insistent on this.

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And how can we maintain, though, how can we put Christ so centrally in our understanding?

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Well, we establish this from the authority of the Word of God.

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Three points I want to make with you today.

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Number one, Christ is the desire of the nations because they are His by right of creation.

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The Bible documents that the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity,

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made the heavens and the earth.

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Secondly, we also maintain that Christ is the desire of the nations because they are His by right of redemption.

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Not only did He make and fashion the earth and the men who inhabit it,

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but also He redeemed them when they were lost.

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And then thirdly, I also want to assert for you,

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Christ is the desire of the nations because they are His by right of inheritance.

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The one follows upon the other.

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Since He redeemed it by His own blood, they are His by inheritance too.

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So let's take these one at a time.

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Number one, Christ is the desire of the nations because it is His by right of creation.

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God made it.

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He owns it.

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He possesses it, therefore.

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The Bible documents, for example, that the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity,

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made the heavens and the earth.

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And since He made them, He owns them, as Paul notes in Romans chapter 9,

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has not the potter a right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use

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and another for dishonorable use, from Romans chapter 9.

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Well, indeed, He does, of course.

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And Paul extols the preeminence of Christ owing to His making all things.

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This, He says of Christ, through Him and for Him, He is before all things.

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In Him, all things hold together.

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All things were created through Him and for Him.

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Just as the desire of a child is for his mother, for she has made him,

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so the desire of the nations is for their Maker, for He has made them.

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This is the sense of what the prophet Haggai declares when he says,

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Yet once in a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land,

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and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations will come.

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The Church has traditionally seen this text as pointing to the coming of Christ,

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who is the Maker and the Shaper and the Disposer of all nations.

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As Paul declares in Acts chapter 17,

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He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,

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having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

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Unquote.

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Oh, He made from man every nation of mankind.

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This is why we can confidently, boldly, in great assurance,

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call Jesus Christ the desire of all nations.

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It is for Him for whom they long.

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When the human heart yearns for peace, they desire the one of all nations.

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It is the living Christ for whom the nations cry out when calling for justice.

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It is Jesus of Nazareth for whom the nations reach when they long for salvation and deliverance.

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But, Pastor, you may say, and I thought of this too,

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How can you say this categorically when it is so obvious that very few, if any, of the nations seem to desire Him at present?

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In fact, we see evidence all around us that most of the nations now of the earth actually seem to hate Christ and to persecute His followers.

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And to all of this, I must acknowledge, yes, yes, alas, this is the condition of the human heart at present, isn't it?

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It is the human condition.

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But this brings me to my second point, and that is number two.

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Christ is the desire of the nations because they are His by right of redemption.

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They are lost, they are fallen, but they are redeemed back now.

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Not only did Christ make and fashion the earth and the men who inhabit it, but Christ also redeemed them when they were lost.

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Herein lies the key as to why the nations do not yet acknowledge Christ as their desire and recognize Him as their King.

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That is, the nations are lost and fallen and estranged from Christ and actually hate Him at this present moment.

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In fact, the Bible tells us, the Psalms tell us, the Psalm number two says,

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Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

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The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying,

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Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us, unquote.

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So the Bible, this Psalm in particular, speaks directly of Christ.

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From the very earliest account of mankind, we know that the nations do exactly this, do they not?

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They rage, they plot, they set themselves.

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And that Hebrew word means to obstinately block the way.

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They obstinately block the way against Christ and against the Father and His anointed, that is, the Christ.

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So, when humanity was one nation after the flood, for example, at the Tower of Babel,

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there was a period where all of humanity was one nation.

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Well, they conspired against God, did they not?

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They said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens,

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and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth, unquote.

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From Genesis chapter 11, when mankind was one nation.

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This was in direct contravention, however, of the dominion mandate at creation,

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when God blessed them, and God said to them, that is, to Adam and Eve,

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Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,

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and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens

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and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

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So the dominion mandate, then, was to go out, be fruitful,

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disperse over the face of the earth and fill it.

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But instead, at the Tower of Babel, they concentrated themselves into a city

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and built vertically, that is, to reach into heaven and unseek God,

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instead of building horizontally, that is, to spread abroad in the dominion

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God had granted them, that is, in the earth.

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So, make no mistake about this, dear listener.

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God was not the desire of the one nation of man at the Tower of Babel

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because they were true children of their first parents, Adam and Eve.

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They hated this God.

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They raged.

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They plotted.

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They set themselves and took counsel against God to disobey Him.

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Because of this, God made many nations.

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That's why we have so many nations and so many tongues and languages,

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because God, in His punishment, made many nations of the one family of man

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at this place called Babel by forcing them to go hither and yon over the earth.

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Genesis chapter 11 again.

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Therefore, its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all

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the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

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So then, ever since the nations have hated God, they have not welcomed Christ as the desire

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of all the nations.

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Even though He is, though they know it not, the one nation of mankind was smashed and

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dispersed into all the earth, isolated by having its language confused.

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That is, broken up into many languages, one unintelligible to the other versus this one

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universal language.

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So, this is a part of the miracle of the gospel of Christ and the beauty of the unity of His

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church, parenthetically, in that what happened at the Tower of Babel is reversed now in Christ

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and His church. We see in Revelation, for example, they sang a new song the saints sang,

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worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood

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you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have

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made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth, unquote, from the

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book of Revelation. But the trend among the nations has consistently been opposite to this,

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and to see Christ, then, as the despised of all nations rather than the desire of all nations.

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This is so true, is it not? Dear listener, Egypt, for example, found Him to be the despised

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of the nations, even though shown to be utterly superior to all of their gods by means of the

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ten plagues, right? The Moabites and the Amalekites found Him to be the despised of the nations as

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Israel passed through the wilderness. All of the subsequent nations of the earth ended up treating

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the Christ, Israel, my son, that is, the type of Christ, Israel, my son, began to treat Him as the

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despised rather than the desire of the nations. We see this throughout the Bible with Assyria and

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Babylon and Rome, to name but three of the most egregious of these nations. All through history,

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with some notable exceptions, the United States of America being one, this is the story of mankind

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as He has gathered Himself into nations. And as I make clear in other places, all nations have a God.

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All nations have a God or gods, including the supposed atheistic nations of communism.

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We all live simultaneously in a physical and spiritual realm as individuals, as families,

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as regions and states, and as nations. There is a spiritual community in a nation,

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as well as a culture and a society. Every nation has a spiritual community. It is part of what makes

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us human. So, unless a nation is conscientiously, consciously, overtly, and explicitly Christian

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in its religious faith, it will revert to its default setting that it had at the fall. That is,

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it will worship one of the many faces of the serpent, that is, the devil. But does this make

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those nations, that is, the nations we see arrayed before us in the world today, does it make them any

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less the possession of the Christ, the desire of the nations? And to this, we must give an emphatic

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note. They are still his, even though they do not recognize him. In fact, God, at every juncture of

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history, reminds us that the nations of the earth belong to his Christ. Once again, from chapter two,

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from Psalm number two, he says, I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son.

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Today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the

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earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's

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vessel. They are his, they are Christ's, because the Father made them, as we have observed, but also

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because he redeemed them. He bought them back. He saved them. Paul talks about this redemption as the

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obedience of faith, and it is required of a nation, the obedience of faith to this redemption. It

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acknowledges Christ. Paul says in Romans chapter one, we have received grace and apostleship to bring

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about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, unquote, from the apostle

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Paul. And then later in Romans, Paul also speaks in them in this same fashion. He speaks of the Christ

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having been disclosed, Christ and his gospel having been disclosed and through the prophetic

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writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God to bring

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about the obedience of faith. Oh, dear listener, one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible

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talks of the profound impact of the gospel upon the nations in the age to come when the labors of

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Christ will finally bring about genuine peace. That is so elusive today, isn't it? As we look around a

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tumultuous world, and we see in Revelation chapter two, in the new Jerusalem, in that place of bliss,

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we see on either side of the river, that is the river of life in Revelation 22, on either side of the river,

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the tree of life, with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the

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trees were for the healing of the nations, unquote. There will be a healing of the nations, brothers and

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sisters, but it will not be by man's devices. It will not be by the United Nations. No, it will not be

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by Islam. It will not be by any other religion. It will be by Christ and his gospel. The leaves of the

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tree of life, that is the new Jerusalem of Christ, will be for the healing of the nations. Nations will

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not be healed until then. Because Christ and his gospel is the only way that these things will

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transpire. He is truly the desire of the nations, including our nation. He should be the desire of

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the United States of America, because only through Christ will the healing of the nations come. But

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sadly, it is true that as we speak, most nations of the world do not know that he is their desire.

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But does that mean that they will never know him as such? No, dear listener. That means that it will

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transpire, but not in the near future. That brings me to point number three. Christ is the desire of the

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nations because they are his by right of inheritance. They are his. The nations are Christ's by right of

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inheritance. Christ has ownership of the nations because his father has bequeathed them to him. There is no

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escape from this reality, dear listener. The sooner the nations realize this, the sooner their

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desire will be satisfied. We have already observed how the nations are Christ's inheritance that is a

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thing to come to him by a will of the father. For example, Psalm number two says, I will tell of the

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decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the

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nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. The book of Revelation then becomes

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less of a mystery to us when we realize that it is in large part the book of Revelation, the story of

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Christ claiming in conquest the nations of the earth as it is as his inheritance and this inheritance

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is ensconced in a will and testament. For example, when John sees the father seated on the throne

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with a fulsome scroll sealed with seven seals, John weeps because apparently there is no one worthy

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to open it and claim its contents. Oh, something profoundly significant for heaven and earth is

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contained therein such that it brings John deep sorrow to think that it might go unclaimed. But many have

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ponder the nature of that scroll, but it is in reality quite simple, ancient last wills and testaments.

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This is what this was, an ancient last will and testament. These are all, especially for those

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with great lands and great holdings, these were composed in detail on a scroll. Ergo, both sides are

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full. And then that scroll was read and attested to by reliable witnesses who then closed the document.

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And sealed it with their own individual seal. Seven witnesses were customary for these last wills

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and testaments. So what we have before us in Revelation, in the seven sealed scroll is a last

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will and testament of the father. And then at the death of the testator, that is the one whose

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inheritance it was to give, only one person was authorized to break the seals and open the scroll.

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And that is the son by inheritance. And ideally it would be this son who would do this in the presence

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of the witnesses who sealed the document in the first place, breaking the seven seals. It would then

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be read and acted upon. So what you see in the book of Revelation is Christ laying claim to the

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nations. A thing he is doing now, I submit to you, even as we speak, not someday in the future as

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dispensationalists say, no, but Christ is doing this now. Heaven sings a new song now. And they sang a

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new song, the Bible says, saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you are

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slain. And by your blood, you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and

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nation. Christ is now making the nations his own. Christ is about that business throughout history,

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dear listener. Gradually over the millennia, those nations will come to see that he is their desire,

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that Christ is the desire of the nations of their nation. He is the desire of the United States of

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America. I submit to you, dear listener, though we are fast losing that realization. We're fast

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sinking into a sea of historical forgetfulness. But Christ, nevertheless, is the desire of our nation

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too. Can you not see this happening? The gospel began in a dusty, remote corner of the Roman Empire

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that is Palestine, far from the grandeur of the center of the universe that is Rome. And the gospel

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spread from 12 weak, fallible apostles to now. Today, look about you. The gospel has now reached the

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furthest corners of the earth. What continent, what island, what nation has not yet heard the gospel

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and does not have at least a church of believers within it? In fact, Revelation 14 and verse 6 is

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being fulfilled. Revelation 14, 6 says, Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal

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gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people,

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unquote. What John saw as future, this gospel going to every nation, we now see as fulfilled.

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What remains now is for the nations to acknowledge this Christ as their desire. How stubborn, how obstinate

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we are as nations, are we not? Even the one founded as an explicitly Christian nation, that is the United

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States of America. What's happened to us, dear listener? It is inevitable that all nations will

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recognize and worship Christ. Why have we forfeited that realization and that lead over the other

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nations that we had by denying him now in a supposed secular society? Really not secular at all, really,

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but pagan, worshiping the many-faced serpent. Oh, dear listener, make no mistake, he will conquer all

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nations and make them his inheritance. He will smash them with a rod of iron, like a potter's vessel,

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as the Bible says. Well, the only question is, will we do this willingly and gladly, or will we have to

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be broken with a rod of iron, like a potter's vessel? The Bible predicts and indeed foresees in

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Revelation chapter 15, who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations

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will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. Oh, dear listener, did you hear that?

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The Bible says that all nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.

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He is indeed the desire of the nations. The nations will fear, because those who do not, he will break

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in pieces with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Oh, dear listener,

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as you consider what we teach here, that we desperately need to return to Christ and constitution

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and capitalism instead of secularism and statism and socialism, go forward in the certainty that the

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Christ of the Bible is indeed the one for whom the nations search when they yearn for peace.

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Christ is the one they utterly require when they cry in righteousness for justice. And Christ is the

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only one who can save and deliver when the nations desperately plead for salvation. He, Jesus Christ,

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crucified, raised, ascended now to heaven to claim his inheritance, Christ is the one the nations long

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for, the desire of the nations. Go and tell those nations this. Go and proclaim it to the nations.

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Reveal it to the nations, the unknown God, their unknown God. This has been Pastor David Bass at New

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Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday at 101 4th Street

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on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. You can call us at 523-0196. We encourage you to come and visit us.

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Once again, Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And we meet for holy worship.

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Join us. Visit us on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.