Why don't we go ahead and pray? We'll ask God to bless our time together tonight.

Father in heaven, thank you so, so much. I just, every time we say that and pray that, it just seems so inadequate.

But Lord, we are just so grateful to you, so thankful to you for this time that

we have on Thursday nights to come together as a body of believers and just open up our

Bibles and open up our hearts and open up our minds, especially our minds, because we're so prone to get distracted with all the busyness

of our lives, especially with everything that's going on in the world today.

And we just really need for the Holy Spirit to help us focus and concentrate and give you our undivided attention so our minds don't wander.

We don't want to miss anything, Lord, that you have for us tonight because, Lord, you're going

to speak tonight as you always do. And it's with a great anticipation that we look forward to you doing that.

So Lord, when you do, we want to have ears to hear and hearts to receive what it is that

you desire to speak to us and minister to us tonight hearing your word.

So Lord, with that, will you speak? Your servants are listening, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right. So the chapter before us tonight is actually a prophecy

again here in Isaiah, and this prophecy is about the second coming of Jesus at the end of the seven

year tribulation. It's very powerful and it speaks to very interesting the day of vengeance

from the Lord while at the same time also speaking to the loving kindness

of the Lord. This is what I refer to as the paradox of our Christian faith. And I'll explain

what I mean by that. You know what I mean by a paradox, right? An oxymoron, it's this, this on one side you have the vengeance of God,

the wrath of God, and then on the other side you have the loving kindness of God and

the mercy of God and that's the paradox.

And we're going to see that tonight woven into the fabric of this chapter.

And really one of the main takeaways for us as we're about to see is that of the love and the kindness of the Lord. That's going to come

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