Can you picture the whole earth at peace where everyone will be of one language? God will change hearts, and in that day, people of every language will serve Him.
How many of you speak another language? Can I ask you to raise your hands if you do? Okay - more hands this afternoon than this morning. How many of you have studied another language, even just a little bit, in school? Okay; lots of hands - okay. Sometimes, you know, it's hard to express ourselves even in our own language. Probably all of us have said, at one time or another, after we've said something and it wasn't exactly what we meant to say - it came out wrong - we've said something like: "no, no - that's not what I meant." Or, "that didn't come out right - let me say that again". We have trouble even in our own native language, and even more so when we're trying to learn another language.
If you've ever studied another language, you know that trying to translate from one to another can be quite challenging - we don't always have a word-for-word translation; there are thoughts, there are figures of speech, there are expressions - they just don't translate very well from one language to another. I think I've mentioned to you before, when I was nineteen I participated on a six month program in Thailand as a volunteer for the Ambassador Foundation, teaching English in Laotian refugee camps. And while we were there, we all learned a little bit of what we called "Survival Thai", because sometimes we'd be out on our own. Very few people at that time in Thailand spoke any English, so we had to learn enough Thai to, you know, order in a restaurant, or ask for directions, or ask where the rest room was. And we found out quickly that Thai is very complicated, as some Asian languages are - not so much the grammar, but just the pronunciation, because it's a "tonal language", which means it's not only the vowels and the consonants that you have to get in the right order, but your voice has to either rise, or fall, or make a loop up or down to get the right word. And you can use the same word, but if your voice rises when it's supposed to fall, it means something completely different, which can lead to some rather embarrassing mistakes at times. I remember one time I was in a café/restaurant, ordering - tried to order a plate of peanuts - we were having a drink or something, and I ordered...in my best Thai, ordered a plate of peanuts, and they brought me a hot cup of oval-tine instead, so obviously something hadn't gone quite right with that!
Another time one of the women in our group was in a restaurant, and she asked the waiter where the rest room was, and he just turned around and walked away, which we thought, that's very rude - in Thailand they're very polite. And we were wondering, we were discussing what, you know, she said something wrong, or insulted him - or trying to figure out what the Thai was, and he came right back and put a glass of water in front of her - he thought that's what she asked for instead. And another time, I was in the one Super Market in the whole northern region of Thailand and Chiang Rai, and I had been sent on a mission to buy peanut butter for the group, because, you know, we were having withdrawal symptoms for American food, and so I asked (I'd practiced the word many times) - asked, where is the peanut butter, in Thai - and: "Ah, come with me" - so I followed him down the aisle, and I knew I was in trouble when he took me into the area with all the dish soap, and sure enough he very proudly handed me a box of steel wool, with a big smile on his face! I never did figure out what I said wrong - did I get the tone wrong; was it the wrong word? But those are some things that happen when you try to speak another language and don't do it very well.
We all probably, or many of us, have had a chance to travel to other countries. And we know that sometimes, even when people in other countries try to speak English, it doesn't always come out exactly the way they intend, either; perhaps you've had that experience before. I've a couple of signs here that were reported to be found in other countries where the local people had a pretty good command of English, but not perfect, and you could probably figure out what they meant to say, but here's what they said - (This was in a Bucharest Hotel lobby) - the sign said: "The lift is being fixed for next day - during that time we regret that you will be unbearable"! In a Paris elevator a sign said: "Please leave your values at the front desk." Sounds like quite a hotel, doesn't it? On the menu of a Swiss restaurant: "Our wines leave you nothing to hope for." Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop: "Ladies may have a fit upstairs"! This one sounds kind of ominous - this was on a tailor shop in the Armend Rhodes, in the Mediterranean: "Order your summer suit, because is big rush, we will execute customers in strict rotation"!
An advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist said: "Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists." Sign"The rendering of several Hebrew and Greek words, which usually denote a miraculous, or, at least, divine or extraordinary token of some (generally) future event" (Unger's Bible Dictionary, "Sign"). in a Norwegian cocktail bar: "Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar"! And in the Budapest zoo, the sign said: "Please do not feed the animals; if you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty" - so I guess they weren't paying him quite enough!
Well, those are some humorous signs that people have seen, where people tried to translate within incomplete command of the language, but sometimes translation problems, or communication errors, can have huge and horrible consequences. I was reading recently about something that happened during the second world war, in the campaign in Italy. In February of 1944 the allies were moving northward of the boot of Italy, and they were approaching the ancient Monastery of Monte Cassino, about eighty miles south of Rome. Monte Cassino was a monastery that had been built in the 500's, and it was a wonderful historical artifact, well preserved. And so both sides had agreed, according to the laws of war, that they would neither fortify the monastery, which was on a very commanding height, nor would it be bombarded or attacked. But of course, as the two forces approached each other they were listening in on radio communications; they had translators on both sides, trying to figure out what the enemy was doing. And at one point a German paratroop commander asked over the radio (he asked the headquarters), "Is the (and he used the German word) Ebt in the monastery?" And the response came back, "Yes, with the monks." Well, a British Intelligence Agent was listening to that over the radio, and he knew that Ebt is the abbreviation for abteilung in German, which would mean "battalion". So, he interpreted that to mean that the battalion, or the battalion headquarters staff had moved inside the Monastery for safety, and perhaps they were directing German operations from there. Well, the allies immediately recognized that the Germans had violated the agreement, broken their word, had taken refuge in the Monastery, so they ordered a bombing run, which came in and completely destroyed the old Monastery. But that had an unintended consequence as well, because of the rubble that was quite extensive, gave the Germans an excellent place with which to fortify themselves. So they dug in very tight, and during the ferocious fighting that continued around Monte Cassino for four months, some 75,000 men died, if you count casualties on both sides.
Many years later it was learned that the word ebt had not been used in the sense of the abbreviation for battalion, but it was in fact the word for abbot, and in fact the original message had asked about the abbot being in his Monastery with the monks, and the response was affirmative. So, the whole thing had been a big mistake because of translation, and who knows how many men died as a result of that misunderstanding.
Experts today estimate that there are between 2,500 and 3,500 languages extant in the world, though they will readily admit it's sometimes difficult to define exactly what a language is - where do you draw the line between the language and a dialect; where do you draw the line between a dialect and a patwa (which is a word we borrowed from the French, meaning an oral language), like the Creoles' that are spoken in the Caribbean. It was never intended to be written down - it just sort of kind of evolved on its own, and it can be different from other Creoles; so is it a language, or is it not? Those are things that linguists discuss and argue about. But there are a lot of languages in the world, and barriers created by those languages prevent understanding and communication. And if you've ever traveled for the Feast and you don't speak the language of the country where you are, you probably experienced that. You'd like to be able to talk to people; maybe you just managed to smile, and shake hands, or look friendly, or you grab someone who can translate for you, but it's frustrating - there are barriers that occur when we can't understand each other.
We actually have a blessing to be English speakers - that's one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, probably the most widely spoken if you count people who speak it second, third and fourth. We can go most places in the world and find a few people at least who will speak English. But I've wondered if you've ever thought about the fact that that's not the case for lots, and most of the people, in the world. If you speak a less known language as your language, like Luo, or Azerbaijani, or Farci, or Kazakh, or Elo Carno - those are all languages in the world - you could travel and never find another person who would even have any idea what you're talking about; it becomes a totally different proposition to travel.
Another thing that's important for us to understand about languages, and this is where misunderstandings can come from them, is that language imposes a structure on our thoughts; we think in terms of our language, and languages have particular structures. They facilitate talking about certain things, and they can make it difficult to talk about other things. If you enjoy cooking, or cuisine, and you've studied that at all, you recognize that a whole lot of our words in English, technical terms for cooking and cuisine, they all come from French. French has a plethora of words about cuisine and cooking because it's very important to that culture, and they do it very well. And we just borrowed all of their words, because they had done so well with. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to discuss some of those concepts. So the language in which we think, imposes a certain structure on the way we view the world. I've noticed in the years since I've became fairly fluent in French, that people who are bilingual in French and English, and I can have discussions with them in both languages, sometimes there will be a little difference in their personality, or the way they express themselves, or their demeanor, depending on whether they're speaking with you in French, or in English. And I'm sure that's the case in other languages as well.
Remember the case of...remember Jacques Cousteau, the French undersea explorer? You probably...I grew up watching those documentaries, and he had this thick French accent, and it sounded exotic and just out of the ordinary, and I had this vision of what Jacques Cousteau would have been like. Later on when I learned to speak French and I could hear him in French documentaries speaking French, it didn't sound so out of the ordinary - sounded like an average Frenchman. And it was just a very different thing; he could express himself differently with more ease, and it was quite a...it was a bit of a revelation to me I guess, that people can be different when they express themselves in different languages.
Seeing the divisions and the separations that have been caused by all the language barriers around the world, several efforts have been made to create and disseminate a world language. For example, have any of you here heard of Esperanto? Okay. And have you ever studied any of it - looked into it a little bit? Okay. I've given this message a few times before - there's a hand - there's usually one or two hands of people that actually tried to learn a little bit of it. Esperanto was created in 1887 and it's spoken by anywhere from a few hundred thousand to maybe two million people in the world; we're not really sure. It is a language composed of roots from different European languages, but with a very simplified grammar. The idea was to create a language that would be very simple to learn, and that everybody could learn this one language; it wouldn't replace their native language, but we'd all have a language in common in the world. So they made it very simple. Esperanto only has twelve verb endings in the whole language - that's all there are, just twelve. German has 364; English has 652; French has 2,265 - nobody told me that before I signed up for French in High School! And best of all, for all of you former language students, Esperanto has no irregular verbs! I'm sure you all appreciate that; something all language students hate!
The Universal Esperanto Association has consultative status with the United Nations. The UN thinks it would be a pretty good idea for more people to learn Esperanto, because they think it would advance the cause for world peace. So let's think about that today. Would that be a solution to lots of the problems of mankind, if we could all just speak the same language? Would we have an end to war and conflict if the barriers of language differences disappeared? Would we have universal understanding, mutual love and respect? Some people today... we hear that... it's very much in the news, it's what a lot of experts say, is that if we could all just sit down and really communicate with each other, we could solve all our problems; it's just a problem with communication - that's where our difficulties come from. We hear politicians saying things like that about the ways to dissolve world conflict: "Well, we just all need to be able to sit down and discuss it, and if we can just understand each other, it will work." Is that true? Well the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. tells us that there was a time when every single human being on earth could understand every other human being on earth; and I'm not just talking about when there was only Adam and Eve in the Garden of EdenThe land in which the Lord planted a garden for Adam to live in (Genesis 2:15). It was located at the branching of 4 rivers: the Euphrates, the Hiddekel (the Tigris), the Pishon, and the Gihon (Genesis 2:8-14). It was also the location of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life (Genesis 2:16)..
Turn to Genesis 11 and Verse 1 with me, if you would please. There was a time when there was one language for the entire world. And there were thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people, and they all spoke the same language; perhaps even into the millions. Genesis 11:1 - We're in a context of generations after the flood now, when the earth was being repopulated, and Genesis 11 and Verse 1 says:
Genesis 11:1 The whole earth had one language and one speech.
That's interesting to imagine, isn't it? You could go anywhere in the world for as far as there were people and you just walk up to someone and talk to them, and everyone spoke the same language. Maybe it had always been that way; maybe there had never been two languages, even before the flood. It's possible that there'd always just been one universal language among all people, and that they had all...they could all communicate. Everybody could communicate easily with every other person.
Well, what did they do with that unity? How did they act? What was the result of that? Did they have a paradise, was there unity? Did everything go in a right direction? Before we answer that question, let's get a little bit of background of what God had intended for them. Genesis 9 (just turn back, probably a page of so) Verse 1; here's what God told Noah and his family after they came out of the ark, following the flood.
Genesis 9:1 God blessed Noah and his sons, and He said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."
And if you look into the language a little bit, it means, spread out, cover it all; occupy the earth. Don't stay all bunched up; spread out around the world - "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And some commentaries mention that Genesis, Chapter 10, Verse 32, if you want to go back forward a little bit, seems to indicate that there was some sort of master plan that had been agreed upon by the sons of Noah - they'd agreed to sort of separate and go their separate directions in order to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Genesis 10:32 These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.
As I mentioned, several commentaries mentioned that they were going to spread out and cover different areas.
Now, let's move forward a little bit to Verse 1, which we read to start with; they all had one language. And in Verse 2 it says:
Verse 2: It came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.
Verse 3: Then they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar.
Verse 4: And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
So, this large group decided not to obey God. He had told them to spread out and replenish the earth...they said, "no, we want to make a name for ourselves. We want to establish our own identity, and we want to stay all grouped together here." They were more interested in taking in hand their own destiny than in listening to what God wanted them to do; they were, in effect, rebelling against God's instructions already, just that many generations past the flood. They wanted to decide for themselves, just like Adam and Eve had done in the Garden of EdenThe land in which the Lord planted a garden for Adam to live in (Genesis 2:15). It was located at the branching of 4 rivers: the Euphrates, the Hiddekel (the Tigris), the Pishon, and the Gihon (Genesis 2:8-14). It was also the location of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life (Genesis 2:16). - what they thought would be good for them, and not follow God's instructions.
So, they used their linguistic unity, the fact that everyone could speak the same language - they used that to thwart the purpose of God, to stand in the way and say, "no, we won't do what you're telling us to do - we've got our own plans." And if you look at Genesis 10:10 - I won't go into all the details here, but Genesis 10:10 indicates that Nimrod was the ruler of this particular group that decided to build the "Garden of EdenThe land in which the Lord planted a garden for Adam to live in (Genesis 2:15). It was located at the branching of 4 rivers: the Euphrates, the Hiddekel (the Tigris), the Pishon, and the Gihon (Genesis 2:8-14). It was also the location of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life (Genesis 2:16).".
(Let me interrupt my flow just for a moment here and open a little parenthesis, because I found something interesting as I was researching this...just briefly. If you compare the genealogies in Genesis, Chapter 10 and Genesis, Chapter 11, you can find that the lineage, the descendants of Shem, that line divided into two branches, and they're covered sort of separately, if you will. One of the branches came through one of his descendants called Joktan, and the other one through a descendant called Peleg (I'm glad we have different names for our kids now days!) The Joktan descendants were apparently the builders of the Tower of Babel; that was kind of a rebellious branch of the family. And the Peleg line, if you follow it - it goes down through different people, and you end up with Abraham. So there was a sort of a branch of the Semitic line that ended up being more obedient, or at least more open to intervention from God. That's something I hadn't seen before, so I'll close that little parenthesis - you can take that for what's it's worth - I found that rather interesting.)
So, what do we have here? We have God, who told these people that He wanted them... (they'd learned that lesson from the flood) - he wanted interior unity, spiritual unity among men, love and respect, but He wanted geographical dispersion - He wanted them to spread out over the earth. And in fact what men did was just the opposite; they wanted geographical unity, they wanted to all stay together, and they were motivated by a divisive spirit inside. They were motivated by a desire to rebel against God. They were self-centered in their thoughts and not submissive to God.
Now, let me add another thought here that comes from Josephus, the Jewish Historian from the first century. Josephus wrote about the...sort of the oral history, I guess you would say, that the Jews had in the first century: what their war was, what they thought they remembered about their history...this is not inspired by God, necessarily - not the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. certainly. But Josephus shed some interesting light often on what... sort of the oral customs about what was going on in past history, even Biblical history. This is a quote from Book 1, Chapter 4 of "Antiquities of the Jews": "Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God" - that is, to build the Tower of Babel. "He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was though his means they were made happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God if He should have a mind to drown the world again, for he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach, and he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers."
That's an interesting thought, isn't it? The Tower of Babel, if Josephus is correct, was about building a tower so high, that even if God flooded the world again, they'd be safe. They were going to protect themselves from God. This whole enterprise was about opposing God - we won't cooperate with you; we want to take vengeance on you for what you did to our ancestors. And again, if Josephus is correct, Nimrod manipulated the people that were there for his own purposes - he wanted a following, he wanted to be a great leader, and so he used the people that were there, and manipulated them, and manipulated the linguistic unity that existed. That unity was used by Nimrod for his own purposes. I guess you could say he became the first identifiable manipulative politician, and we've had plenty of those since, haven't we? You see that all the time, till we get sick of it. And we hear them in the news now - we've just gone through an election cycle, and if you're like me, you breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was all finally over. I wasn't going to have to hear somebody tell me, "You're getting a wrong deal - you need to vote for me. I'll give you what you deserve - I'll give you what you need. Don't listen to the other guy - he won't do that" - on and on it goes. That's been going on since the Tower of Babel, it would appear.
Well, what did God do? Genesis, Chapter 11, Verse 5 - continue in the account.
Genesis 11:5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
Verse 6: And the Lord said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.
They can pull their resources; they can pull their intelligence; they can pull their effort because they can all communicate with each other, so now they can do anything they want. And God apparently thought that was going to be bad (in fact, not apparently, He said it's going to be bad) - we've got to stop this; they're going the wrong direction.
Verse 7: "Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
Verse 8: So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.
Verse 9: Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth.
When God decides it is time to make something happen, it happens! And they thought they could stand up to Him, and of course, that was futile. So God introduced a separation of languages to separate people, to get them to go their separate ways, which was according to His will. If they were going to have a wrong attitude and motivation, He would just separate them, and He did that by something as simple as creating different languages.
I wonder how that happened - wouldn't that be interesting! Did they just wake up one morning and suddenly some of them were speaking a totally different language - did they know they were speaking a different language: "this doesn't sound like what I was saying yesterday" - you know. How did that happen? I don't know - it would be really interesting to know. Suddenly you've just got this whole work camp full of people building a tower, and they wake up and it's just confusion - it sounds like a crowd where everybody's trying to find someone who can understand their version of the new language that they're speaking - must have been really quite something.
Well, what do we learn from this account? I think we learn two things, at least, perhaps more. Language does have something to do with unity, because when God wanted to divide people up, and caused them to stop working together, He separated their languages. So yes, language differences are barriers to unity, and the ability to work together. A second thing we learn here, is that unity is not necessarily always good. Often times today we talk about, in our common 21st Century world, unity is sort of always good. But the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. shows that that's not necessarily the case.
Human beings can be united in a wrong cause; the only right unity, comes is if it serves God's purpose. That's when unity is good, is when it serves God's purpose; if it's guided by God's law: His law of love, of honesty, selflessness, of respect, respect for God's law, in the spirit of the letter. Other kinds of unity, human efforts of unity, usually turn out to go bad.
As I travel around the world for the Church, I end up listening to television in different countries, sometimes in the evening. Sometimes it's in French, sometimes in English; sometimes I'll try to pick out what I can in some other language, which isn't usually very much, but politicians all seem to make the same promise. You can hear the same promises in all sorts of languages, and all sorts of places, and that is, when they want to get elected: "I will unite the people." We heard that just recently, "I'm the one who can unite the American people." You hear it in Britain, "I will unite the British people"; "I will unite the French people"; "I will unite..." whatever country it is elsewhere. And people seem to automatically assume that's a good thing.
But I think the question that I ask myself, and that we should ask ourselves, is, unite us in order to do what? What are we supposed to be united to do? If you unite us, is it going to be to do something moral and ethical, or is it going to be used in a different direction? Because unity doesn't automatically mean good things are going to happen; human unity, most often, is used to do something wrong. If we study history, we learn that almost all efforts at the unification of large numbers of people, it was almost always to found an empire, and to gain power and control over even more people; that's how the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, and the Persians, and the Greeks and the Romans operated. Every time they could get a group together and conquer a little more territory, they'd enroll those people into soldiers and into the effort, and then they could go farther, and they could keep expanding and growing, and growing, and that was not a happy time.
The Nazis did that in the last century; the Communist Russians did the same thing: take, unify, take more, enroll them, take more, keep expanding, to take as much power as possible. That kind of unity becomes a cause of conflict. Edmund Burke, who was a very incisive social commentator, observer of human behavior, said this as he looked at that kind of History - he said: "When bad men combine, the good must associate also (the good must combine too), else they will fall, one by one, an un-pitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." And when you look at history, that's exactly the kind of conflict that has existed, because of human efforts at union. Unity can be a force for evil, as well as good, if it's not guided by Godly principles.
As you look at the history of language, and you look at human history, and the way that men have worked together, it's also interesting to note that language has often been used as a weapon in conflicts; language can actually become a weapon in itself. Sometimes it can be positive; sometimes it can be very negative. On the positive side, we could think of someone like Winston Churchill, who in the very dark days of World War II rallied most of the free world with his inspiring speeches. If you've never had the chance to listen to part of a "Churchillian" speech during the war years, you should...I'm sure there's places on the web where you could find little clips - I have a little collection of them at home, and I've listened to them several times. Even now, all these years later - decades later - I get a little chill up my spine sometimes, because he just had such a way with words, and he gave you courage, and you wanted to be a part of the effort to resist the wrong things that were going on at that time - the Nazis expansion.
Edward R. Murrow said of Churchhill, "He mobilized the English language, and sent it into battle." And he really did; he was wonderfully gifted. His words had a powerful impact of encouragement and boldness that gave heart to much of the free world in that very dark time.
On the other hand, words can sometimes be used literally as weapons, to wage war on one's enemies, so we can take a... perhaps not a super important example, but one I think that's very illustrative of this principle - look in Judges, Chapter 12, if you would please. This is very interesting - at least I find it very interesting - Judges 12. The Ephraimites apparently were a little bit stubborn at this time, and kind of difficult to get along with...my apologies to any who may feel they have Ephraimite origins! But the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. tells a story here. They would often sort of pick a fight with whoever was in charge of the military at that time, and demand to get special treatment. Well, sometimes it worked, but this time they messed with Jephthah, and that was a big mistake - it was the last mistake a lot of them made. Judges, Chapter 12 and Verse 1, it says:
Judges 12:1 Then the men of Ephraim gathered together, crossed over toward Zaphon, and said to Jephthah, " Why did you cross over to fight against the people of Ammon, and did not call us to go with you? We're going to burn down your house on you with fire!" - kind of blustery!
Verse 2: Jephthah said to them, "My people and I were in a great struggle with the people of Ammon; and when I called you, you did not deliver me out of their hands.
Verse 3: So when I saw that you would not deliver me, I took my life in my hands and crossed over against the people of Ammon; and the Lord delivered them into my hand. Why then have you come up against me this day to fight against me?" - Why are you picking a fight with me, I did call; you didn't come.
Verse 4: Now Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead and he fought against Ephraim. And the men of Gilead defeated Ephraim, because they said, "You Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites and among the Manassites."
So, not only did they complain about not getting invited to the war, but they started insulting them.
Verse 5: So, the Gileadites seized the fords of the Jordan before the Ephraimites arrived. And when any Ephraimite who escaped said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said, "No,"
Verse 6: Then they would say, "well then, say 'Shibboleth'!" And he would say, "Sibboleth,", because he couldn't pronounce it right.
There's some language differences - have you ever tried to pronounce words in another language, and you just...you know, you give it one try; you said, "you know, I'm not going to be able to do that - my mouth doesn't - it doesn't contort that way." You can't do it. I know when I started studying French, there were some sounds...it took me a couple of years before I could even make a passable attempt at it. The French have an "r" that's got to come from the back of your throat; we don't have that sound in English. You've got to practice a long time before you can even get close to it.
Well, that's the situation they had. They couldn't say Shibboleth, and if they said Sibboleth, that gave them away as an Ephraimite right away, and they were killed, right there; language used as an enemy. And there are other examples of that in the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. as well, where language was used as a weapon against enemies; it was used to demoralize the enemy, to make them want to give up. II Kings, Chapter 18 has a story like that. II Kings 18, where someone - we might call them a "spin master", because they had spin doctors at that time as well, who knew how to couch things very carefully, to give the impression that they wanted, or get people to do what they wanted. II Kings, Chapter 18, Verse 17 - Hezekiah and all the Jews are bottled up in the city of Jerusalem - it's about all that's left of the whole Jewish state and empire, and here come the communications experts from the king of Assyria, and they're going to try to totally demoralize the Jews, to get them to give up.
II Kings 18:17 The king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh (those are apparently titles of different officials) with a great army against Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah. They went up and came to Jerusalem, and when they'd come up; they came and stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool,
Verse 18: then they called to the king, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, - and others came out to meet them - then in:
Verse 19: the Rabshakeh said to them, "Say now to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the great king, "What confidence is this in which you trust?
And he starts going through all these things: "You know, we've beaten everybody so far; you think with your little pitiful city of Jerusalem you're going to be able to stop us - look at all these other nations we've completely wiped out - you really think you have a chance?" It was an effort of propaganda.
Then, Verse 26 - The Jewish officials up on the wall became concerned about the affect this might have on moral -
Verse 26: So Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, "Please speak to your servants in the Aramaic language, for we understand it; and do not speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people who are on the wall." (We don't want everybody to hear this.)
Verse 27: But Rabshakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat and drink their own waste with you?"
It was all a propaganda effort. See, they were talking to some people, but the intended audience was really somebody else. Again: "spin" - the way of manipulating language; the way of using it as a weapon against one's enemies.
I give these couple of examples just to point out to you the fact that language has been used for this purpose ever since the Bibles' been written. I mean it goes way back to the origins of humankind, that people have used language, and spun it, and manipulated it to get other people to do what they want them to do. It's a dishonest use, in fact, of the language. Language, which we use to communicate, can also be used to manipulate, to hide things, to give wrong impressions. It can mislead and divide people; even people who ostensibly speak the same language. We don't even always get along with other English speaking countries, do we? George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have said that the United States and England are two countries divided by a common language - interesting one to think about a little bit.
In the world in which we live today, language again, probably more than ever before in the past, is used to manipulate information. I've already mentioned the term "spin", or "spin doctors", or "spinmeisters" - they work for every political campaign; they work for every big corporation; they work for...they work in virtually every company that exists, to make sure the language is manipulated to give the most favorable light possible. And to a certain extent, up to a certain point, that's not wrong. We want to be careful on our communication, and we want to be positive with it, but at some point a line gets crossed when it starts becoming dishonest - when we're giving a false impression; we can give an impression that's not true.
Christians are under increasing pressure from people who try to manipulate language and the facts to make us look stupid, or ignorant, or hateful, or evil, because we hold to certain moral positions that are laid out black and white in the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ.. Certain life-styles, that's a term that's used now - life-style is usually a cover word for sin, of some sort - it's not always, but usually. See, we start manipulating the language - it gets changed around, and we're under that kind of pressure by people who manipulate language; and that pressure is going to increase as time goes along. It is a way to exert power over people; to manipulate them, to get them to do what you want them to do. And I've given you some examples in other sermons of how people who were in favor of different moral agendas, whether it be homosexuality or the fact that you don't need to be married, or some other sort of agenda that people are pushing, they'll couch the terms in such a way that you don't have a leg to stand on; you either agree with them, or you're an oppressive, wicked, evil kind of person. Those are the only terms that they'll allow into the discussion. It's a way of exerting power, to manipulate, just as Nimrod did with the people who were building the Tower of Babel.
We need to be aware of that; we've got to become very astute at discerning those kinds of influences. And our young people especially need to become astute at discerning that, and as parents and adults, we need to help them, because the spinmeisters out there know that if they can change the way our young people think, they'll have them, maybe the rest of their lives. If they can get them to look at the world in certain terms, in a certain moral framework, then they're going to have them for a long, long time to come; and some people never break out of that. Some times people do - later on they realize they've been had; but sometimes it takes a long time. And that's going to be an increasing challenge for us in the years ahead.
While we have proof, allow me to suggest to you, a suggestion for your personal BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. Study - I think you'll find this interesting, and I only suggest it to you for your own BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. Study because it goes beyond the framework of a sermon like this. But when you have a free moment, I would suggest you do a concordance study of three terms, and you'll probably branch out to more of them from that - you know what a concordance study is? You get your concordance out, find a word, and just look at the different things...the way it's used and what the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. says about it. The three that I found very interesting were: deceive - and you're going to see that used a lot of prophecies about the time of the end. There's going to be a lot of deception, and I'll give you a couple of examples in just a moment. Lots of people are going to be deceived; even Christians are warned, "don't be deceived"; the elect might be deceived if it were possible. You recognize some of those references.
The two other words are perceive, and it's cognates; and then discern. And you will find that those are often used, especially in the New TestamentThe 27 authoritative books of the apostolic writings: the four Gospels of Christ, Acts (a history), 21 apostolic letters and the book of Revelation. - and in the Old TestamentThose books that make up the Hebrew Bible generally accepted by Christians, Jews and to some extent Muslims. It contains a threefold division: the Law (the five books of Moses), the Prophets and the Writings. as well - for servants of God. They were people who were supposed to have perception, or discernment, and I'll give a little bit more detail about that in just a moment - I'll explain it a bit more, but if that sounds like something you would like to do, I would encourage you to do a personal BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. Study on those three words, and just find out what the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. says about them; what does it prophecy about these things? What does it say about how we should be, when you look up the words, deceive, perceive, and discern; there's a lot of relevancy to the time of the end in these words.
I believe you will find as you look through the prophecies, in fact I'm sure of it, that the closer we draw to the time of the end, the more there's going to be a risk of deception in the church - in the world certainly, but in the church in particular, because of the moral slide of the society in which we're going to have to function. There is pressure - incredible pressure coming on us from the world in which we live, and we can be affected by it if we're not careful. You also find that Jesus, in particular... on many occasions it says, He perceived, or He discerned what was going on - people who were trying to maneuver him, or manipulate him, and he perceived what was going on behind what they were saying. Let me give you an example of that: Luke, Chapter 20. And if you find this study interesting, as I did, you'll go into it and you'll find lots of examples that are very thought provoking. Luke, Chapter 20, Verse 20 - the Pharisees never seemed to learn, at least this group; they were always trying to trip Christ up with some word-play, or some trap that they laid for him, and of course, he perceived and discerned what was going on in their minds.
Luke 20:20 So they (the Pharisees) watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power of the authority of the governor.
They're going to lay a trap for him; they're going to manipulate him into saying the words that they can seize on to make him look a particular way to the authorities. Does that sound like things that the press does nowadays - we have in political debates? Oh yes! Nothings changed; the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Verse 21: They asked Him, saying, Teacher, (now what a wonderful way to introduce this question) - Teacher, we know that You say and teach rightly, and You do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way of God truly:
Well, those are great words - the words are all true, aren't they? But they didn't mean them to be true.
Verse 22: "Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (And you've probably heard explained why this was a bind - if He said, "Yes, pay taxes to Caesar", the Jewish Zealots would be all angry with Him, and He would have lost some of His following; if he'd said, "no", the Romans would have come and arrested Him because He was preaching sedition). So they thought they had him in a bind. Now what does it say about Jesus? Verse 23 - look:
Verse 23: He perceived their craftiness, - He didn't just look at the words at face value. He said, wait a minute, what's going on behind here? What's motivating this? Why the flattery? Why are they saying it this way - why this question now, at this time? He perceived their craftiness - He saw the trap that was being all laid out for Him. Of course He had that perception because He was God in the flesh. But we'll see that others had perception; God gives that as a gift to people who want that gift.
He perceived their craftiness, and He said, "Why do you test Me?" - You hypocrites, you think I don't see through what you're doing? And then, you know the rest of the story.
Verse 24: "Show me a denarius. Whose picture is it on there?"
Verse 25: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesars- and to God what is God's."
But He had to perceive what was going on; He had to look one step farther than just the face value situation that was occurring there. Jesus warned His disciples in Matthew 24 - I won't turn there - you will recognize these references. Matthew 24: 4, talking about the end time, He told His disciples:
Matthew 24:4 "Take heed that no man deceives you - why would He say that unless there was risk that it might happen?
Now, there's going to be a lot of deception around the time of the end. In fact, there's a lot of deception operating now in the world around us.
Matthew 24, Verse 24 and 25 - you're warned about false christs and false prophets who will show signs and wonders; and then He said:
Verse 24: to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect. That's Satan's goal - he wants us deceived. He wants us mixed up; he wants to swallow in lies and things that will lead us astray.
Others of God's servants in the New TestamentThe 27 authoritative books of the apostolic writings: the four Gospels of Christ, Acts (a history), 21 apostolic letters and the book of Revelation....if you do that little study yourself, you'll find people like Peter and Paul, and James and John, had a gift of discernment; they perceived things that were going beyond face value. And, as I mentioned before, the ability to spot deception, the ability to have the gift of discernment, will be increasingly important as we approach the end time. We can't just walk through life taking everything at the first degree. We have to think, "What's going on behind this? What's behind this social agenda? What is this group trying to get me to do? Why do they want me to think about it this way? Why are we supposed to change our vocabulary about this issue - what's that all about? Why are they doing that?" That's going to be important.
Today we swim in an ocean of hidden agendas; would anyone dispute that? We swim in an ocean of hidden agendas. There's so many of them out there; we trip over them all the time, and many times we don't even recognize what they are. And all of that starts with communication, and communicate starts with language. I believe, brethren, that that's something about which we should pray. I believe we need to ask God to give us the gift of discernment, perception, as well as faith to avoid the deceptions that are going to be coming; and they'll be all sorts. There'll be social deceptions, there'll be moral deceptions; there will be sexual deceptions, there will be religious deceptions. Christ warned us about all of those things already - it's coming.
Now, turn over with me to I Corinthians 12. Here's something very hopeful and encouraging - I Corinthians, Chapter 12, Verse 4. We have a passage here about spiritual gifts - these are miraculous gifts that God gives through the power and the presence of His Holy Spirit; I Corinthians, Chapter 12, starting in Verse 4.
I Corinthians 12:4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit.
Verse 5: There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.
Verse 6: There are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.
Verse 7: But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:
So, different gifts are given. God can give different gifts according to the needs of the church. And He goes through and He mentions some of them. In Verse 8 He talks about wisdom, and knowledge; Verse 9, faith and healing; Verse 10, miracles; prophecy. And then in the middle of Verse 10 He mentions a rather... a very interesting spiritual gift:
Verse 10: the discerning of spirits,
That might not seem real clear the first time you look at it - what does that mean, the discerning of spirits? Does that mean someone who got a "demon detector" and they just sort of go around - oop, there's one over there - is that what it's talking about? No, if you look into it...and please understand, I'm not making fun of the idea that there are demons out and around - there are. But that's not what this is specifically talking about here. What it's talking about here is perceiving and recognizing the spirit, or attitude, that is behind behaviors; that is behind people; that is behind speech. We need to be able to discern what's behind that - what kind of spirit is motivating that? And there are different spirits; there's the spirit of God, of course, God's Holy Spirit. We pray, and believe, and want to submit ourselves to God's will so that the speaking that occurs in our Sabbath services is guided by God's spirit. That's why we pray before services to ask that God do that.
But there are other spirits at work in the world. There is, of course, a satanic spirit; that's a spirit that seeks to mix people up, confuse them, get them to go a wrong way. And the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. shows that some people, whether they realize it or not, are in fact motivated by that kind of influence. They may not even know it. Most of the world doesn't understand all that anyway. But there's also even just something called the human spirit - the spirit in man. Human reasoning; human thought, what seems logical to people. And they can end up going down a particular road, and pushing a particular position, or agenda, and it may just be an idea that seems really good to them.
We need to develop that, and we need to ask God. I am firmly convinced that He'd give us the gift, the spiritual gift of the discerning of spirits; what is the attitude behind...where is this coming from? What's the motivation; what's the angle; what's the agenda behind this message that I'm getting, or this message that's coming at me through the press, or through school, or through people we know, or whatever it might be? It's been a snare to the Church of God in the past; these examples make it clear, when people have lacked...members of the church have lacked discernment. And it's going to be absolutely vital to us in the future to have that gift of the spirit.
Now let's look forward to some very positive promises that God gives us about a future time when there is going to be wonderful unity of language, and of heart in the world. Our Heavenly Father gives us wonderful previews in BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. prophecy about a time when all of the language differences, the barriers between people - that's all going to be erased. Isaiah 66 for example - (Isaiah 66, Verse 16).
Isaiah 66:16 For by fire and by His sword the Lord will judge all flesh; and the slain of the Lord shall be many.
Verse 18: "For I know their works and their thoughts. It shall be that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see My glory.
Tongue was an old English word for language; in fact it's the same word in French - it's still the same word. You don't say language; you say tongue in French. So there's going to come a time, after the return of Jesus Christ, when God says He will gather all nations, and all languages; people of all different languages. All those barriers and divisions that are out there now - they're all going to be dissipated. Everybody's going to come together in wonderful unity; unity among peoples of all languages and cultures.
Turn a bit farther in Daniel, Chapter 7. We'll see in a moment why this is going to be; what's the key to having this linguistic unity. Daniel, Chapter 7, Verse 13 and 14.
Daniel 7:13 " I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him.
Verse 14: Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which will not be destroyed.
All languages will serve Him. When I read that passage, I always think of the Feast of Tabernacles in International sites. Probably many of you have had the chance to keep the Feast in a site where more than one language is spoken? Well, we do that in France every year. We have the same hymn - our members listen in on head phones and they find out what page the hymn number's going to be on, and we have some people who open a French hymnal, and some people are opening an English hymnal, and we all sing together, and as you're singing you can hear some people singing in French, and some people singing in English; but it's the same hymn. And we're all singing to the same God, in worship to Him. That's what it's going to be like in the world tomorrow; the same hymns will be sung, possibly in lots of different languages - we'll come to Zephaniah in a moment if you're thinking about that...that's how it's going to be in the world tomorrow - all languages worshipping God, in unity.
This unity of all flesh will be Godly unity. It will tend toward obedience to God, and His law, and His ethics - the accomplishment of His will. It won't be pushing any human agenda. That is the key to the kind of unity the world needs; it's putting God first. Edmund Burke also said, "Whatever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man." And that's very true. The way to have unity among people is for them individually to have a unity with God first. That unity must be there first, then you can have unity among people; it can't work the other way. Unity among men passes by unity with God first.
Zechariah, Chapter 8 - Here's an interesting one - I love trying to imagine what this is going to look like in the world tomorrow, especially in the light of some of the sickening news we see in our news reports day after day, week after week; fighting in the Middle East; fighting in all different places in the world; attacks in Mumbai, India, where there's one little lone Israeli Jewish center, and it's targeted... a family, an Israeli family, is targeted by terrorists there. How does that advance any cause at all? Just blind hatred.
Zechariah 8:23 "Thus says the Lord of Hosts: 'In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you." ' "
Can you imagine something like that today? Imagine that happening in, let's say, Lebanon; Jordan; Saudi Arabia? Imagine that happening in the Palestinian territories? They're all running after some Jews, hanging onto their sleeve - "we've heard God is with you; let us come with you!" That's what it's going to be like. There'll be that kind of unity; even among people who can't...who hate each other now...want to blow each other up...blow up each other's children. There will be that kind of unity in the world tomorrow. Every language!
Now let's look at Zephaniah 3 briefly, as we approach the end here - we're not at the end yet, but close. Zephaniah, Chapter 3 - perhaps you were thinking of this passage already, where it talks about a pure language, as a prophecy for the world tomorrow.
Zephaniah 3:9 "Then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, so they may all call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord.
I will give to the peoples (plural) a pure language. This has led some people to believe that maybe God's going to sort of bestow some new language that He has been preparing as a gift for humanity - it will be pure. And everybody will have the same language; there'll only be one language on the earth. That's not impossible; it could be that. Most commentators think it means something else, and if you look at the...you study the language a little bit, it would appear probably to mean something different than that. There is not any pure language in the world today. Languages can be pure; any language can be pure. It just depends on how you use it. We were having dinner last night with some ABC students, and one of the young ladies is proficient, fluent, in American sign language, and she mentioned something that I hadn't even thought of before, that came up just in passing, that you can swear in sign language. You can say...you can communicate obscenities in American sign language. Would you ever have thought of that? I hadn't. But because, see, the obscenity doesn't come from the language itself; it comes from the human desire behind it. Any language can be used in a pure manner. The purity comes from the heart; the impurity comes from the heart that's behind the language that's being used.
We've already read that there are some prophecies that indicate, at least at the beginning of the Millennium, there'll be people with all sorts of different languages - at least at the beginning. Now maybe that gets fazed out - maybe there is just one pure language that God's going to bestow on humanity, with no curse words, and no obscenities, and no irregular verbs - maybe that's going to happen. But, it seems to me the really key part is going to be the heart behind it; a converted heart, using any language, will be a pure language - will give a pure language.
It's talking about pure usage of a language from a pure, and submissive, and obedient, human heart. That is the key to world peace. We could all sit down and all speak the same language - it wouldn't change the human heart. Once the human heart changes, the language issue will become secondary.
Remember what happened in Acts, Chapter 2? Let's turn over there - we'll just look at it very briefly - this is the last passage, in Acts 2, and then I'll have a couple of summary points before we close. Acts, Chapter 2, Verse 1 says:
Acts 2:1 It was the Day of Pentecost...it had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
Verse 2: Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
Verse 3: There appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat on each of them.
Verse 4: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
What a fascinating thing! Here is God undoing what He had done at the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel - you have one rebellious people with one language, and He said, "I've got to divide them up, and spread them out." Now He has a people speaking multiple different language, from all sorts of countries and cultures, and He brought them all together and He destroyed that language barrier; He allowed them all to understand each other. He undid the division of the Tower of Babel, at the start of the Church of God.
And he explained in the sermon that followed (Peter did) what this was. This was what the power of God's Spirit could do. Unity is possible when human beings submit to the guidance and the power of God's Holy Spirit. When you look at Verse 46 and 47 it talks about them continuing daily with one accord in the temple...there was unity and they all praised God together. That's a foretaste...that's a foretaste of what the Millennium is going to be like - what the world tomorrow is going to be like. Multiply that times a million, times a billion, and you've got the world tomorrow. That's the future that's coming this way; it's going to spread to the whole earth.
Just before we close, let me make three suggestions of things we should be doing today, as Christians, in the light of what we have just read and discussed. First of all, we need to understand that the church is composed of people of many different cultures, and languages, but that we must strive for unity across National borders and cultural barriers. That's not something you don't know - in fact, we sing it in a very beautiful hymn in our hymnal: "O God of Every Nation" - part of Verse 2 says, "From pride of race or station, and blindness to Your way, deliver every nation, Eternal God, we pray." From pride of race or station - "because I'm here where I am, because I speak this language, because my culture has this stuff, I'm at a different level than that person over there, who doesn't have all of that." That's pride of race or station, and when we sing that hymn, we pray "God deliver us from that", because as Christians we shouldn't have that attitude.
Secondly, we need to, I believe, ask God's help, and strive to keep our communication pure and honest. That will be a challenge, because we don't see that modeled in the world around us - the temptation is there to go down the same roads of "spin and manipulation" that we see on television, we hear about, that we watch on the internet, that we see at the work place. We need to keep and ask God's help and strive to keep our communication pure, and honest, not manipulative, hypocritical..."no spin" - seeking God's will and the good of others, rather than ourselves.
Thirdly, I repeat again, I believe it's very important for the Church of God, for all of us, to ask God for the gift of discernment; we will need discernment increasingly as time goes along. We need to ask God to give discernment to the church. I believe all of us who have the privilege to serve as elders in the church would appreciate the prayers of the whole church, that God would give us discernment in decisions that have to be made on behalf of the work that is to be done. That's going to be increasingly important as this world moves on toward its end.
One wonderful day in the future there's going to be perfect peace in the world. Everyone will be able to communicate freely, and in purity of heart, because God will change those hearts, and in that day, people of every language will serve Him.
