I say at chapter 25 versus one through five follow along as I read these verses out loud.

O Lord, thou art my God, I will exult thee. I will give thanks to thy name, for thou hast worked

wondrous, plans formed long ago with perfect faithfulness.

For thou hast made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin.

A palace of strangers is a city no more.

It will never be rebuilt.

Therefore a strong people will glorify thee. Cities of ruthless nations will

revere thee. For thou hast been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress.

A refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, for the breath of the ruthless is like a rainstorm against a wall. Like heat in a drought,

thou dost subdue the uproar of aliens, like heat by the shadow of a cloud, the song of the ruthless

is silenced

one of the great motives for world evangelization that has carried us and continues to sustain and energize us here at Bethlehem

is hope.

And what we mean by hope when we say that is not a kind of finger crossing,

oh, I hope it works or that it's useful for people to go overseas, but rather a tremendous

biblically based confidence that God's cause in the world will triumph. That's what we mean by hope and therefore the confidence

that what we're engaged in will triumph will succeed carries us. It fills us

with the sense that nobody goes in vain. Nobody

sends in vain. Nobody prays in vain. No child puts a penny in in vain. Nobody

lights a little candle and shines it anywhere in vain.

No sermon is preached in missions this in vain because everything under God's wonderful sovereignty is moving toward this triumph.

And what we have in these few verses that Greg read is a picture of that triumph. Let me just say a word about how prophets speak in the Old Testament.

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