Please stand as we recite the Shema together.
The Shema
Shema Israel,
Adonai elohenu-Adonai echad
Ve’ahavta et Adonai eloeikah,
B’khol levavkah,
Uve’khol naphshekah,
Uve’khol m’odekah,
Ve’ahavta I’re’aca comocha. Amen.

Hear O Israel!
The Lord is our God – the Lord Alone.
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart,
With all your soul,
And with all your might,
And love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.

Thank You, Lord, for Your Life and Truth. We ask that You would accomplish everything that You intend for us in our time together as Your People. Amen. Please be seated. 
2 Sam 17:14, Then Absalom and all the men of Israel said, "The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel." For the Lord had ordained to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel, in order that the Lord might bring calamity on Absalom. 
	We are in the midst of our deliberation on the fact that the wisdom of God is so far beyond the most skilled and learned plans and schemes of humanity. He rules and overrules everything that we try to put into place through the greatest of our imaginations and our manipulations. What man can conceive with the most educated and engineered wisdom is as nothing in the face of God’s Omniscience and Omnipotence in action in full accordance with that which He has designed. No counsel of human origin can stand the test of God’s scrutiny in the outcome of what is always in the plan and purpose of His eternal ordination.  
	Such was fully in evidence in this morning’s passage, as has been considered. We move ahead with some of the manifold times when God intervened and set aside the most powerful of human intention with but the merest of His divine effort. Please open to Isaiah Chapter 37, verses 15-20 with the recounting of King Hezekiah’s prayer to God to deal with the plans of Sennacherib. This powerful monarch of Assyria had so vilely and fully plundered nations far greater and vast than the tiny nation of Judah.
	Isa 37:15-20, And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord saying, "O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, who art enthroned above the cherubim, Thou art the God, Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth. "Incline Thine ear, O Lord, and hear; open Thine eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to reproach the living God. "Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated all the countries and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. "And now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou alone, Lord, art God." 
	Please note the tenor of this prayer. Hezekiah set before the Lord the fact that all the nations heretofore had been overwhelmed because they put their hope and their trust into those gods made by the counsel and hands of humanity. They were not the True and Almighty Creator of Heaven and earth, The Only Living and True God in whom the nation of Judah had placed its confidence. The salvation of Judah from the hands of such an all-powerful nation would show to the entire world the fact that Jehovah, Alone, is the True God unto whom all men should bow in fealty and in adoration. 
	Hezekiah asked the Lord to intervene, not just for the sake of the people of Judah, but in order to show the Omnipotent Sovereignty of The Lord. This would be in order that all would see and acknowledge that the God of the Hebrews, Jehovah, Yahweh, was and is and ever will be the only True and Faithful and Omnipotent God and Sovereign over every nation formed by the hand of men. 
The Lord fully answered this prayer with the response that is detailed in verses 33-38 of this chapter. Isa 37:33-38, "Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, 'He shall not come to this city, or shoot an arrow there; neither shall he come before it with a shield, nor throw up a mound against it. 'By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come to this city,' declares the Lord. 'For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake.'" Then the angel of the Lord went out, and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, all of these were dead. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and returned home, and lived at Nineveh. And it came about as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons killed him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place. 
God reigns now and evermore, no matter how powerful and dominant a man-made political entity may be. The Prophet Isaiah brings this to the forefront in Isa 45:5-9, as God speaks forth this truth in the very plain language of the human tongue. There can be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the reality that God reigns in all the realms of the human habitation on this earth.
	Isa 45:5-9, "I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these. "Drip down, O heavens, from above, And let the clouds pour down righteousness; Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, And righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created it. "Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker — An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, 'What are you doing?' Or the thing you are making say, 'He has no hands'? 
	The reality is in place in this declaration of the Lord God Almighty as to how foolish and fruitless it is to try to circumvent what Jehovah has designed and put into place. Humans can make the most horrific of plans. We have devised the means to destroy this entire earth many times over as determined in how our most powerful devices could utterly devastate this planet with multitudenal ferocity. Yet, through it all, there is only One True Lord God Almighty Who is the only One to determine the length of humanities’ stay on this earth.
	We are so stupid, as human beings; to make things that we worship as our gods, turning our backs on the Only One Who has existed from before He ever put the ages of ages of eternity into place. He has His plan in full operation, and nothing that man does will ever catch Him by surprise or derail His purpose nor defeat what He has ordained to take place. All that we, as humans can ever do, is search to know the One Who created us as He has made Himself to be freely found by those who would deign to seek Him. 
We will never, in any form or fashion, despite our propensity toward death and destruction, defeat His so Great Love as He works in the hearts of even those who do not yet know and honor Him. Despite the every plan of man, God rules and reigns supreme! He causes those campaigns of the human society to work to His bidding Alone. Nothing can stand against Him and nothing can serve to do anything other than bring to the forefront the fact of His Sovereign will to be accomplished. 
This leads us directly into the New Testament and what we are told by the Apostle Paul in Romans, Chapter 8. We are looking specifically at verses 28-30. These are that beloved passage upon which we fully stand in the power of God no matter what is happening in the world around us. This is the definitive statement of the power of God in the spiritual realm, the physical realm, the financial realm, the emotional realm, the philosophical realm, the religious realm, the imaginative realm, the scientific realm, the every realm of our experience as the created humanity who walks on this earth. God is in charge! He rules and overrules completely and absolutely! Nothing is beyond Him and nothing is too personal for His touch of grace and mercy and healing and love.
Rom 8:28-30, And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. 
	As His children, chosen by Him and redeemed by the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son, we have a most wondrous and miraculous expression of His love in action in our lives. While we must always be careful in this walk that we have on this earth, never taking it for granted or flaunting it the way the power of this age does, we have an assurance that even if we make a mistake in our behavior or attitude or conversation, God will cause even that to work together for His plan to be fully realized in our lives. 
	This is by no means a “get out of jail free card,” in any measure. We often find that it is in the consequences of our actions, and God’s gracious discipline brought upon us because we did disobey or put forth our expression of selfishness, even that works for our benefit in the process of learning to respond without protest when the Lord makes known what we should or should not do. All things do work together for good as God makes sure that His will is always done in the lives of His people, no matter what! 
Even the schemes of those who are working against us will never prevail. Their every attempt will actually only add to the will of God being accomplished in the face of all animosity and anxiety and malice and fear. It all will only bring forth God’s glory in our lives.
	The Apostle further expresses the fact that God rules and overrules even the wisest of mankind’s schemes and plots. Please open to 1 Cor 1:19-25, wherein we find the manifest wisdom of God making a complete and utter shamble to any supposed astuteness and intelligence of this age. No matter what man may try to do, it will always have to be brought to the place of God’s will being done, no matter what! God rules supremely and Omnipotently as the plans of man crumble in the dust and the forgetfulness of human history.
	1 Cor 1:19-25, For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 
	This is the truth in which we walk on this earth. There is that bedrock assurance that God will always bring to the fore His story, His so great love and redemption, His so wondrous and marvelous Hand directing the very footsteps of men and of countries. All will accomplish what was always part of His design in the unfolding narrative of just how much He desires a living relationship with the ones whom He created to know and to worship and to fellowship with Him in all His glory.
	The Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor 3:18-20, goes on to declare the reality that the wisest of men is nothing in the grand arena of God at work. God will use the wise and He will use the foolish in order to bring into place the divine design of the ages before even eternity was put into place. The greatest of thinkers only shows forth the foolishness that man exhibits when one tries to outthink the Lord God Almighty. There is no veracity of humanity which can even begin to consider the breadth and the depth and the awesome truth of God in His creation of life. We need to come before Him on bended knee with acquiescence to His tremendous glory and honor and praise in our every consideration of how great and mighty are His works.
	1 Cor 3:18-20, Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, "He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless."
	The Apostle Paul details another great and marvelous truth upon which we can stand when everything around us seems to be chaos and strife and utter foolishness from the government to the local schoolyard. When we see the manner in which God rules and overrules and brings His shalom to the disheveled manner of our walk on this earth, we can rejoice in the fact of Phil 1:6. It is The Lord’s promise for all of us who are in Jesus Christ and partakers of His kingdom in complete and steadfast operation, right now and forevermore.
	Phil 1:6, For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. 
	Our hope and our wisdom is set in the person of Our Savior and Our Lord. We know that He has us all well in hand. He is working and ordering the manner of our sojourn as His ambassadors in a foreign land. That is exactly how we are to view the citizenry that surround us. We present to them the reality of what the kingdom of God is like in our lives, in order that they would see and recognize that He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. 
He will be acknowledged as such as recounted in our final passage of this morning, Rev 19:11-16. Please turn to it in order to add our hearts and our voices resoundingly and vibrantly to this fact of all eternity,
Rev 19:11-16, And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True; and in righteousness He judges and wages war. And His eyes are a flame of fire, and upon His head are many diadems; and He has a name written upon Him which no one knows except Himself. And He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood; and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. And from His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may smite the nations; and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS." 
So be it and amen and amen!

This morning’s benediction is 1 Peter 2:9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; Amen.