Seeking First The Kingdom

To appreciate the significance of these verses that we have just read from the Book of Acts,
the 16th chapter, all we need to do for a moment is to look at a map of Paul's missionary
journeys.
If you're familiar with the Book of Acts, then you'll know that in obedience to his call
to be an apostle to the Gentiles, Paul undertook three missionary journeys.
And the missionary journey that is referred to in Acts chapter 16 is his second missionary
journey.
And though you'll have some difficulty following that along on the map, let me point out some
highlights.
His journey begins here in Jerusalem and he travels up to what is known as Antioch in Syria.
Antioch was a major Christian center and it is in Antioch according to Scripture that
the disciples were first called Christians.
So out of Antioch, he now travels into what is presently Turkey and so on and he goes
to Tarsus where he hailed from and he revisits places like Lystra and Derby that he had
evangelized on his first mission trip.
Even as he continued to go out in obedience to the call to make disciples of all nations,
he had wanted to evangelize the province of Asia.
The Holy Spirit said, "What?
Don't go there."
So when the Holy Spirit says, "Don't go, you better listen."
He continues to travel and he comes to this place which is Messiah or Messiah.
And he now wants to turn this way to the province of Bethinia and Fridia.
And guess what happens again?
The Holy Spirit says, "Don't go."
When the Holy Spirit says, "Don't go, what do you do?"
You don't go.
So he keeps on traveling and he comes to Troaz which is right on this side of the body
of water separating him from Macedonia.
And this is where it gets interesting because now he has a vision, he has a dream and
he has a revelation.
And in this vision, dream and revelation, he sees a man from Macedonia on the other side
of whatever that straight is that separates the two.
And the man from Macedonia says to him, "Come over and help us."
And Paul and his companions immediately conclude that God has a message.
Why were they not allowed to go to Asia?
Why were they not allowed to go to Bethinia?
God wanted them to go to Macedonia.
So they cross over and then you will notice his missionary journey continues all the way
through Macedonia, places like Philippi and Thessalonica and the Corinth and then eventually
back again to Caesarea and ultimately to Jerusalem.
Now remember I said earlier, you have here, one of those passages, you and I, we look at
it, we read over it and we don't think of the implications of this.
This marks a significant watershed in the work of missions in the Book of Acts, why?
Because it moves the gospel from a middle eastern religion limited to Asia Minor into the
realms of Europe.
And from there on the gospel begins to expand through the nations of Europe which become
evangelized eventually as the years go by through further apostles and missionaries that
reach out and of course from there the gospel also spreads then eventually to North America.
And it's pretty safe to say that you and I as citizens of this part of the world would
likely not know Jesus and would likely not be part of God's people were it not for the
divine intervention of the Holy Spirit and Paul's obedience to preach the gospel to Macedonia
and from there on eventually to Rome as he was taken there as prisoner on to Spain and
in to the rest of Europe.
And what this has done then is it has set the stage for the Christianization of Europe
and indeed most of the Western world.
Now I'd be the first to say today that Western Europe and North America can my own
stretch of the imagination be called Christian nations any longer in the sense that we're
shedding our heritage left right front and center and many people are seizing upon Christianity
as being the problem of our culture as we'll see in more detail in a few moments yet the
fact remains that if you want to see how the gospel impacts a nation then you look at
the effects that the gospel has had on the nations of Europe and North America.
Even though by no stretch of the imagination are we where we need to be the fact is that
many things we value many things that we hold dear many things that we are shedding more
rapidly than a cat sheds its fur are nevertheless the product of the gospel.
And so as we start looking this morning then what does it look like when the nations
respond to the gospel what are the best ways to do that is to look at what influence
the gospel has had in the Western world and set stage for that going to show you about
an eight and a half minute video clip of Dinesh D'Souza he is you may recall the author
of the best selling book what's so great about Christianity and he is engaged in the video
clip that I'm going to show you in a debate with Christopher Hitchens Christopher Hitchens
is the author you might recall of God is not good how religion poisons everything Christopher
Hitchens not only calls himself an atheist that is one who doesn't believe in God he considers
himself an anti-theist he has a campaign to get rid of what he thinks is the superstition
associated with faith and gone and so Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens were engaged
in a debate on the theme is Christianity the problem this debate took place last October
in New York City sponsored in part by a Christian liberal arts college called the Kings College
over a thousand people were in attendance representing both theists and atheists about
equally and the clip that I'm going to show you is part of D'Souza's introductory comments
on the debate so take a look let me begin if I made this way in reading through the various
atheist books by Hitchens Dawkins Harris and the others if I were to make a list of the
values that the atheist cherish the most I would list values like the idea of individual
dissent the notion of personal dignity the idea of equality the equal dignity of men and
women an antipathy to oppression inequality and slavery the idea of compassion as a social
virtue now what's interesting is that if you take a good look at this list you
realize that these values came into the world because of Christianity how do we know that
partly by looking outside of western civilization where we see that these things that we take
for granted there's a tsunami that devastates apart a place in Africa all the western which
is to say Christian nations rush to help nobody else seems to something unique is going
on that's internal to our civilization now you might say well western civilization isn't
just built on Christianity it's built on Athens by which we can say classical reason and
also on Jerusalem which is Judaism and Christianity and yet if you look at the world of Athens which
is to say Greece and then pre-Christian Rome you discover that those were civilizations
that were based on slavery there were civilizations where women were treated very badly there were
civilizations where human life didn't count for a whole lot the Spartans notoriously would
leave the feeble child on the hillside to see if it was still alive in the morning and
the great philosophers of Greece and Rome viewed these incidents with equanimity they didn't
think it was a big deal it is only from Christianity that these things that had been uncontroversial
for a long time become controversial for the first time in Sam Harris's book he prized
a blame slavery on Christianity but the reality is that if you look at history slavery was
a universal institution practiced in every known culture the Greeks and Romans had it the
Chinese had it there was slavery in ancient India American Indians had slavery long before Columbus
got here so it is Christianity that mobilized the first movement in the world to oppose slavery
first the Quakers and then the evangelical Christians took a theological idea that we are all
equal in the eyes of God and idea that by the way for some centuries was seen as a merely
spiritual truth and they gave it a political application if we are all created equal in the
eyes of God no man has the right to rule another man without his consent this idea became the moral
engine of the anti-slavery movement both in Europe and in America and this concept is not only
the moral root of anti-slavery it is also the basis of democracy what's the premise of
representative democracy no man has the right to rule another without consent and I want to
turn for a moment to science because one of the rallying cries of modern atheism is the
supposed incompatibility between Christianity and science and incompatibility rendered puzzling
at the outset because if you make a list of the leading scientists of the west in the past 500
years you find that the vast majority of them were not only theist but specifically and devoutly
Christian this was true of Galileo Copernicus Kepler, Bri, Freasley, Lavoisier you can just go down
the list all the way through Cassendi, Mercen, Mendel some of these guys were monks like Mendel,
Cassendi and Mercen were priests so right away you have a puzzle we have literary theorist Christopher
Hitchens and biology major Sam Harris positing a supposed conflict that was not evident to the great
scientists of the west stretching from Kepler to Newton I want to make perhaps a further point
about this though not only were the scientists Christian not only did they see their work as revealing
the divine handiwork in the universe but I want to argue that modern science itself is based on three
Christian assumptions that are at root metaphysical assumption number one the universe as a whole
is rational the universe embodies rationality now if you think about it that's odd it's pretty easy
to say that my friend Bill is rational or Christopher Hitchens is partially rational it's another
thing to say that matter and objects and planets embody a certain kind of rational they follow rational
principles number two the universe obeys laws that are comprehensible in the language of mathematics
again if you think about it that's very strange if I'm driving my car I can follow laws I see a
stop sign I come to a halt how does matter obey laws how does the electron know what to do
if we look at matter it is unbelievably well behaved it follows the laws of Newton's inverse
square law it obeys Einstein's laws the point I'm trying to get at here is that this is a metaphysical
proposition a third one the laws out there in nature are mirrored by the goings-on within our
minds we can apprehend and understand the laws very odd why should the goings-on within our head
match the goings-on in the universe now if you're a believer you know why
God is believed to be omniscient which is to say super rational he built the universe to embody
rationality God is a law giver and the universe reflects his laws we are made in God's image we
have a spark of the divine so it's not surprising to the theist that you have this arrangement but
for the eighth theist you can't take any of that for granted this is faith-based science a final
point we hear a great deal about how Christianity has been terrible for the world the truth of it is
if you look at the casualties of Christianity the inquisition the crusades the Salem witch trials
I read a book on the Salem witch trials I had been educated to believe the Salem witch trials that
killed thousands or at the very least hundreds of people I discovered that at the Salem witch trials
the number of people executed was in fact 18 the inquisition if you read Henry Cayman's book the
most authoritative study of the inquisition the Spanish inquisition over 300 years killed 2,000
people now just try to compare that to the crimes inflicted by atheist regimes not 500 not a
thousand years ago but within our lifetime if you look only at the big three Stalin's Russia
Mao's China the Nazi regime in Germany you have within the space of five decades over 100 million
casualties so atheism not religion is responsible for the mass murders of history I want to end by saying
that I think Christianity has done a lot for the world the world would be a lot worse if we didn't
have it I think even Christopher Hitchens by the end of today should be chanting if only under his
breath thank God for Christianity that is Denish desuza native of India actually born of a Roman Catholic
family came to North America when he was about 17 years of age engaged in debate with Christopher
Hitchens we don't have time to show you Christopher side of the story trust me he has an answer to
each of these arguments if you're interested in following the full debate search for it online
Denish Hitchens with an E at the end Hitchens E and S debate and you'll find tons of links it's
all over the place and if you don't have time or energy to do that then mark January 27th
on your calendar because in the evening service of January 27th we're going to have a live satellite
feed from Stanford University in California with Christopher Hitchens engaged in debate with
Dr. J. Richards who is one of the co-authors of the privileged planet many of us have seen him
on video he actually holds a masters of theology from Calvin theological seminary or denominational
seminary in Grand Rapids Michigan that debate is entitled atheism versus theism and will be an
incredible opportunity to bring seekers friends this topic is hot all over the place as atheism
rises to the top and seriously challenges who Christians are and what Christians believe so
the last Sunday in January January 27th in our evening service alive video feed from Stanford
University let me pick up then on some of the things that Denish was talking about and try to
expand just a little bit on the implications of that in the time that we have available to us this
morning what happens when the gospel makes an impact on a nation well one of the things that
happens as he pointed out is that the value of the individual human being increases immeasurably
and it's not hard to see why it is because from a Christian point of view we are all created
in the image of God we are the special objects of his care he brought creation into being so that
he could share his love with us when the world fell into sin he then sacrificed his son so that
we could be restored to a relationship with him we are of infinite value to the Lord and wherever
the gospel goes and wherever the gospel takes root that society gets to be influenced by a
biblical view of a God who has counted every hair on our head people matter whether they're rich
or poor good or bad they matter to God now compare that to an atheistic view and by atheistic view
i mean the kind of person who doesn't believe there is a God and for whom the whole process then
of life having a reason in the world is strictly by chance so we're here by chance we are the
product of a mindless process of natural selection and we have no transcendent purpose and we have
no life after death to look forward to or a hope of eternal judgment where all discourse will be
settled and so by definition people who lose faith end up living for the hero now and in many
instances end up just trying to do life as best as they can and it's the gospel that is behind
that transformation in society where individuals really begin to matter as people now that concept
alone has incredibly practical consequences let me talk you through just a couple of them it means
that freedom of conscience and freedom of choice is a high value among nations where the gospel
has had an impact now remember when i'm talking this way i don't mean to say that every person in
these countries is a Christian or even that governments or elements of society are all Christian far
from it but the gospel has had an influence and part of that influence is that there are a lot of
things you and i take for granted the freedom of conscience you can't make me do what i don't
want to do i am free to believe what i want to believe and i'm free to be who i am we take that
for granted people all around the world die because somebody cannot afford to allow people
freedom of conscience even to this day in most totalitarian regimes you've got to tell the line
and if you're thinking it's too far out of line you're in big trouble and so we have the right
and we value that highly to express our own opinion to choose our own careers to buy or
to sell property to travel if we can afford it to live in our own space and while it's true that
an ancient city state like Athens had participatory democracy it was only in the context of
making political decisions other than that you better told the line and if you know the history
of Athens every so often they would take a vote and they would kick out they would ostracize
anybody that they didn't think was towing the line in terms of the city so there's individual
freedom of conscience and choice there's also the right to freedom from oppression now Hitchens
makes the observation he quotes Sam Harris is saying that he blames Christianity for slavery
and you will have heard the argument time and time again that you really can't trust the bible
because you know the bible advocates slavery and many people shake their heads and they say well
how old fashion can you be but it's not true yes the bible is part of the culture where slavery
was normal but wherever the gospel goes the liberation of the gospel extends to every area of society
and so you have the Apostle Paul writing to masters on how to treat their slaves and you have
the Apostle Paul writing to slaves how to respond to their masters more than that if you read 1 Timothy
chapter 1 verse 10 you will discover that the Apostle Paul includes slave traders among a whole
list of sinners including adulterers and all kinds of other people who are not going to inherit the
kingdom of God a clear indication in my book that scripture doesn't support that form of slavery
but that it moves people away from it the same thing is true in areas of setting women free
the church is often blamed for being behind the times were oppressive to women and for women to
really be free they got to embrace the feminist movement and throw all of this sort of stuff aside
but folks fact of the matter is that women in our culture have the kind of freedom that they have
because to a large degree it is the fruit of the gospel that says both male and female
are created to the image of God men cannot just lord it over women as they have historically in
many pagan cultures no live considerably with your wives as the Apostle Peter and there is a
biblical understanding that while the roles of men and women in society and the roles of men
and women in marriage are in some ways very different that there is a freedom to be who God has
called you to be so whatever the gospel goalers there is an increase in freedom from oppression
and then of course there is the whole area of compassion as a social value
and D'Souza talks about that a little bit when there is a tsunami out in Indonesia
it is the western nations by and large that throw in the kind of assistance and the kind of help
that is needed most other nations and most other cultures they're concerned about themselves
but they're not concerned about people who are not like them and giving aid to your enemy
or supporting those from whom you receive no benefit in supporting you is a very distinct
Christian notion take for example the great Greek philosopher Aristotle a man of great wisdom
he believed that people should help the poor but why not out of compassion not because they
were valuable people in their own right but so that you could demonstrate your superiority
and we've all been in situations haven't we where we have been at the mercy of somebody else's
compassion not because they loved us or understood us or really wanted to help us but because in some
significant way it made them feel good as a matter of fact one of the best ways to get people
motivated to share of themselves with other people is to appeal to their self-interest and there is
nothing wrong with enjoying helping somebody but if that's the motivation and we'll look
more at that tonight when we talk about some of the values that we try to live by here as a community
if it's about you and not about them then it's a distortion of what the gospel presents
so the value of an individual increases where the gospel has its way and many of the liberties
and the freedoms that you and I take for granted that people have had a fight for and that people
have had a die for are the result of the gospel having taken root so that's one area that I want
to just pick up on the second area that I want to pick up on then briefly is the rise of science
and the Susa talks about that fairly extensively only in Western Europe did science arise historically
as a discipline that we have benefited from in the way that we have I mean think of the blessings
that science has contributed to us anywhere is from medicine to technology to understanding how
the world works we are incredibly indebted to those who have studied the natural order and who
could interpret it for us but it's a strictly Christian phenomenon as he points out science
arose in Christian circles and many of the early scientists in fact were Christians why
because it flowed out of a biblical understanding of reality it flowed out of an understanding
that the universe is rational that's very different from what ancient pagan religions believed
where the universe was chaotic and you had a sacrifice to all your demons in order to keep
them off your back it's a very radical view and this is a talks about the universe not only being
rational but it's based on a mathematical model you can make certain formulas and can explain
most aspects of reality as we understand them today and more than that we have a consciousness
because we're made in the image of God that enables us to study the universe and make sense out of it
and so as he observes the irony today is that science and religion are constantly
pitted over against each other you'll have noticed that these debates are as popular as they are
because there is a constant turmoil in society that says scientists are rational people
who make sense out of the world and believers are irrational people who live by faith
and who hold on to their superstitions now you may say that doesn't bother me I'll continue
to believe what I want to believe and that would be a good thing but you got to understand
these arguments which are being presented by very intelligent and clever people are incredibly
persuasive and while they may not persuade the already persuaded there is always a whole middle
category of people whose faith in God and whose confidence in Scripture begins to shake
because of the attacks that are directed towards them particularly by militant atheists so
if science comes out of the church as it did beginning in the 13 and the 1400s already actually
then why do we have this constant conflict between science why do we have court cases about
creationism versus evolution and why do we have intelligent design over here and other people
equally anxious to write all of that off as a bunch of hogwash and all of that sort of thing
well I can think of a couple of reasons I'm going to introduce two of them and then hopefully
Lord willing come back to the third one next week the first one is this one reason science and
religion are pitted against each other is that there is an agenda among militant atheists to use
science to prove their point and to get people away from faith let me just read you a couple of
quotes from De Sousa because I think he puts it better than I could ever hope to put it he says
long considered a marginal and reticent that is withdrawn minority atheists are now lashing out
at religion with enormous gusto that is not an exaggeration let me say it again though you and
I may not be aware of what's going on out there it is increasing in power and in ferocity
noble laureate Stephen Weinberg and I think he is a physicist puts it this way he says
anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done
and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization that's a pretty radical statement
people and Christopher Hitchens I'll bless his soul all religions and all churches are equally
demented in their belief in divine intervention divine intercession or even the existence
of the divine in the first place and Richard Dawkins writes the great unmentionable evil at the
center of our culture is monotheism that is to say belief in one God from the barbaric bronze age
text known as the Old Testament three anti-human religions have evolved Judaism Christianity
in Islam now not every atheist is that aggressive but I think you'll agree with me there many more
quotes like that that we could draw upon this is hardly objective scientific reason that
this is an atheist who's got an axe to grind and what gives atheists such confidence the answer
in a word is science many atheists believe that modern science the best known way to accumulate
knowledge the proven technique forgiving us airplanes and computers and drugs that kill bacteria
has vindicated the non-believers position and it seems the majority of scientists in the United
States are atheists only 40% a sizeable minority but a minority nevertheless believe in a personal
God and among members of the elite national academy of sciences only 7% of scientists can be counted
among the ranks of believers and these figures have remained generally consistent over several
decades with the proportion of atheists rising slightly now please understand not all scientists are
by definition atheists there are many good Christian scientists and among Christian scientists
there is by no means a uniformity of opinion about creationism or intelligent design or
how the universe came to be and all of this sort of thing all Christian scientists at least hold
at root to the reality of God's existence and to the fact that God made the universe
however a process he might have used in order to bring it there but there is a very vocal
minority of atheists and you've heard some of their quotes who have an agenda and their agenda
is to get God out of your life and out of society and out of your children's lives if I were to
read you some of the quotes on how they want to influence your children you would have good reason
to fear philosophy Richard Roarty argued that secular professors in university ought to quote
arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted homophobic religious fundamentalists
will leave college with a view more like our own because on to say that parents who send their
children to college should recognize that as professors quote we are going to go right on trying
to discredit you in the eyes of your children trying to strip your fundamental list religious
community of dignity trying to make your view seem silly rather than discussable and biologist
Kenneth Miller who has testified in favor of evolution in court trials admits that a presumption
of atheism or agnosticism is universal in academic life the conventions of academic life almost
universally revolve around the assumption that religious belief is something that people grow
out of as they become educated now again let me emphasize that not every institution of higher
learning by definition buys into that there are many godly sane and sensible people my point is
this there is a minority in a very vocal minority that is at work presently that is trying to do
everything that it can to get rid of God not just out of the public sphere which they have
already succeeded into a very large degree but out of your life and out of lives of your children
because you see if you're really going to be consistent as an atheist then the greatest
favor that you can do to other people is to disillusion them of their superstitious beliefs
and you and I we may not encounter that and it may be far removed from where you and I live
but I'll tell you the day is coming not very far that you're going to meet all kinds of people
all around you who will spout arguments that seem high and lofty today but that will permeate down
into the common folk understanding of how the world works and they become proud obstacles that
are raised against the knowledge of God and if we're to love the Lord our God with all of our
heart-soldered mind we need to learn how to understand what these arguments are and how we can
counter them because too long the church has just sat back and say well poor little us we don't
know what to do about this I think Christians are everything as smart as not Christians
and we ought to be every bit is capable of addressing those issues in the marketplace are you with
me all right one more quick point then and again notice I'm not knocking science I'm not critiquing
scientific endeavor I've told you many times if I wasn't a preacher I'd be a scientist what I'm
critiquing is atheists who use the discoveries of science to try to undermine faith in God that's
the agenda that is happening today why do they succeed because at root here is what's known as
differing epistemologies now that's a big word but epistemology deals with a study of how you acquire
knowledge how do you know what is true how do you know that what you believe is true versus what
somebody else believes is true while historically people of faith and people who do not have faith have
two opposing views as to how you arrive at the knowledge of truth Christians have said historically
and this is why science comes out of the Christian church that God has given us senses and he's
given us the ability to study nature and so from nature we can learn all kinds of things about
reality because the Bible says that the very universe reflects the character and the nature of
God that's why as I said science comes out of a Christian world in life you it can be studied it
can be understood and we have minds and skills and abilities and the tools to try to figure that
out we don't have to live in the realm of superstition but Christians have also said this our human
nature by sin has been corrupted and because we have been corrupted our senses are not always
accurate and if we want to arrive at a true knowledge of who God is we cannot just study nature we
can't just go by general revelation we need special revelation we need God speaking to us
revealed in his word and through his spirit and through the church in the course of history
to know what reality is and if there's a conflict between what I experience
and what I experience with my senses and what God says fundamentally then I will choose to trust
and obey God as opposed to my experience those are different epistemologies and you see it
for example in Genesis chapter three where God says to Adam and Eve here's the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil don't eat from it and the day that you do it's going to kill you now Adam and Eve
they look at this tree and does it look like a tree that's going to kill them in fact no what does
it look like a delight to the eye good for food and to be desired to make one wise and so what do they
do they reach out and they eat it because they have bought into Satan's lie that this will make
them like God instead of having to listen to God and submit to his authority that's the Christian
view now an atheistic view says there is no God why because we can't pick him up and we can study
him and so how do we arrive at an knowledge of truth well by what our senses tell us and by
what our studies tell us and while there are many things we can discover that way fact of the
matter is because we are fallen we open ourselves up to satanic deception and then before you know it
we think we know what's there but it's not and here is the complexity and this is why science
and religion today are so often in conflict with each other each area has its own area of limitation
the bible is not first of all a scientific book that is trying to give us a scientific
explanation of how the universe functions it has science in it I believe that we can trust
that kind of science but it's also subject to interpretation and it's written in the spirit of
the age in which it was written its function is not to help us understand how the whole universe
works its function is to help us to get to know God and to obey him true science on the other hand
deals with a realm of the material world and ought to stay out of the world of what is known as
metaphysics beyond the physical because they don't have the tools or the wherewithal to try to
find God or to measure God why listen to this is very important God is outside of time and he is
outside his space and you cannot reach him by logic by reason and scientific endeavor and so you
can mount any number of studies that you want to try to prove that God exists that I can find you
another study that proves he doesn't why because God is ultimately perceived by revelation and to
whom does he reveal himself to those who are humble in spirit and who are willing to bow before
he and know his truth so can a scientist believe in God you but your bottom dollar he can if he
doesn't let arrogance go to his head and if he's willing to come and repentance and faith like
everybody else has to God is more than willing to reveal himself to anybody and just as in the
origins of the scientific endeavor God's people and scientists walked hand in glove with each other
I believe that as scientists pursue reality and truth and as they humbled themselves in turn
under the mighty hand of God and as theologians are willing to let God speak and to help them to
understand what scripture means even in the light of modern-day discoveries the two will eventually
come together and I want to conclude with what is really one of my favorite quotes I had heard
it before it comes from the astronomer Robert Jestrow he says for the scientist who was lived by his
faith in the power of reason the story ends like a bad dream he has scaled the mountains of ignorance
he is about to conquer the highest peak and as he pulls himself over the final rock
he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries
all truth leads to God and if theologians will humble themselves before God and seek His truth
and if scientists will do the same thing there doesn't have to be this conflict between science
and religion we can all acknowledge that however God put all of this stuff together
because this is really the message of the Bible he's vitally interested in each of us he wants us
to have a relationship with him and he gave us his son so that we with our heart soul strength
in mind can know him can know the universe and we can serve him with all of our heart soul strength at
mind.
The glory of your name may our future like shine through us
may we bring the world to the nations the world and life to the peoples of the earth
tell the whole world with salvation to our age may your births be thought through us
do we bring the world to the nations and we bring the world to the peoples of the earth
tell the whole world the power of your name may your future be thought through us
using the song of joy to the nations as our great to the peoples of the earth to the world
tell the praises of your name may your song be thought through us
may we bring the world to the nations from the earth to the peoples of the earth to the world
tell the whole world the power of your name may your song be thought through us