Sunday, February 27, 2022 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church worshiping together this morning. Though the seasons obviously change, God never does, so it's a good thing to remember. As we get started this morning, we'll look at a few announcements.

Lord willing, our week looks fairly regular. We'll come back tonight at 530 for our evening service, followed by Truth Group for the young adults in the church after the service tonight. Looking ahead to Wednesday, we'll have the meal at our regular time, 545.

And then at 630, prayer for the adults and tag program for the kids. And then looking ahead to the end of next month, end of March, March 27th, Lord's Supper in the morning, and then Truth Group that evening.

Just want to remind you, if you can help out with Truth Group at all, just by providing for a meal of about 20 or 25 people. Again, the church will reimburse you for that. If you can provide your receipts, doesn't have to be anything fancy, but that would be much appreciated.

There's a link in the bulletin to sign up for that. Operation Christmas Trial continues to go on. You can put your donations in the box out in the foyer. And then lastly, received a text message just asking for the church to pray for the Hall family, particularly Pat and Quentin.

Quentin, his health has been declining in recent years. Many of us know that, but he's fallen a couple times over the course of the past few weeks, and has also tested positive for COVID. So he's getting medical treatment for that right now.

Pat's a little bit overwhelmed. So she's just asking for no visitors, no phone calls. But a card of encouragement would be very much appreciated for Pat and for Quentin, and continue to hold them up in prayer as well.

Any other announcements this morning? Okay, before we start to meditate before worship this morning, I wanna read our fighter verse for this week. Comes from the Psalms, Psalm 103, verses 15 and 16. As for man, his days are like grass.

He flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. Jerry will pray for us after we're finished.

What you have to say to Michael, thank you for him and for his preparation. What you have to say to each one of us. Thank you again for today and our time together.

Amen, good morning. Good to see all your bright smiling faces this morning. There we go. Some of you didn't get that. Would you stand with me as we have our call to worship? This is from Psalm 75, one through five.

We give thanks to you, O God. We give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. And I point, I will judge with equity. When the earth totters and all its inhabitants, it is I who would keep steady its pillars.

Salaam. I say to the boastful, do not boast. And to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not lift up your horn on high, or speak with haughty neck. We're gonna be singing in your Psalm's Hymnal 75B.

To you, O God, we render thanks. At times, I said lift up. Hymnal 267. Come, almighty King.

Reading this morning is from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 17. Oracle, concerning Damascus. Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city, and will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aror are deserted. They will be for flocks, which will lie down, and none will make them afraid.

The fortress will disappear from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus. And the remnant of Syria will be like the glory of the children of Israel, declares the Lord of hosts. And in that day, the glory of Jacob will be brought low.

And the fat of his flesh will grow lean. And it shall be as when the reaper gathers standing grain, and his arm harvests the ears. And as when one gleans the ears of grain in the valley of Rephaim. Gleanings will be left in it, as when an olive tree is beaten, two or three berries in the top of the higher bough, four or five on the branches of a fruit tree, declares the Lord God of Israel.

In that day, man will look to his maker, and his eyes will look on the Holy One of Israel. He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the ashram or the altars of incense.

In that day, their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the wooded heights and the hilltops, which they deserted because of the children of Israel. And there will be desolation. For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the rock of your refuge.

Therefore, though you plant pleasant plants and sow the vine branch of a stranger, though you make them grow on the day that you plant them and make them blossom in the morning that you sow, yet the harvest will flee away in a day of grief and incurable pain.

Ah, the thunder of many peoples, they thunder like the thundering of the sea. Ah, the roar of nations, they roar like the roaring of mighty waters. The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but he will not rebuke them.

And they will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm. At evening time, behold terror. Before morning, they are no more. This is the portion of those who loot us and the lot of those who plunder us.

That is the oracle concerning Damascus, the word of God. Let us pray. Father, I thank you and I praise you for your great love and your mercy, for your word so readily available to us in our own language that we might read it and study it and meditate upon it and come to know you in a deeper way.

What a blessing it is to have your word. And Father, what a blessing it is to know.

That the nations are yours and that you.

Are the father of mercies and the God of all comfort and you are our Savior. Through your son, the Lord Jesus, the one who has shed his own blood in our behalf and brought us to yourself and the one who ever lives to make intercession for us, the one who is our advocate day by day, I thank you and I praise you for your son, the Lord Jesus, our Savior.

In his name I pray, amen.

Amen, you may be seated. Our next two songs, hymn number 56. I heard the voice of Jesus say, and on the last verse, we'll move to the chorus of Softly and Tenderly. And then the fourth verse of Softly and Tenderly.

If you'll watch the screen, you'll be able to worship. Jesus say come unto me Lay down thy weary. I came to Jesus as I was weary I found in him a resting place. He made me glad, Jesus

What a blessing to gather together in our house. The Lord has given to us to gather in as a family in Christ. Let's pray together. Father, I thank you so much for your provision in our lives. We thank you for the way you care for us, the way that you love us, the way that you have shown your faithfulness time and time again.

We thank you that you draw us to yourself and reconcile us to you by the person and work of your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, for whose glory we live, under whose reign we walk. We thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit that you have not left us orphans, that you have bestowed upon us another comforter, that we may always abide with you and you with us as we, by your word, live and think and worship in agreement with you by the power and the graciousness of your Holy Spirit.

We ask here today that you would bless our time of communion, that you would nourish us and strengthen our faith and help us to truly abide with you and to commune with you today and with one another in the love of Jesus Christ.

And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Daniel chapter 9. Daniel chapter 9, we're going to be reading verses 11 through 19. We're reading verses 11 through 19.

Daniel has humbly set his face toward God to confess the Lord's glory and to confess Israel's shame. He confesses the Lord's goodness and he confesses Israel's sin. He's praying because he's been reading in Jeremiah and there is this promise of 70 years that after 70 years, God will regather his people back to the land and the worship of the Lord will be restored as the temple will be rebuilt.

Isaiah promised that, Jeremiah prophesied that, Ezekiel prophesied that, and now Daniel is praying accordingly. Daniel is in his latter years. He has been in exile for decades. And in this moment, he is a bit like Simeon, watching for the consolation of Israel, looking for the comfort of his people in the keeping of God's promises.

And so Daniel makes his prayer. He confesses the situation according to God's word and then he makes his request known to the Lord. An excellent pattern for all the saints of God. Well, I'm going to read verses 11 through 19.

I invite you to stand with me as we read the word of the Lord by his Spirit through his prophet Daniel. Beginning in verse 11. Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law and has departed so as not to obey your voice.

Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us because we have sinned against him and he has confirmed his words which he spoke against us and against our judges who judged us by bringing upon us a great disaster for under the whole heaven such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem.

As it is written in the law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God that we might turn from our iniquities and understand your truth. Therefore, the Lord has kept the disaster in mind and brought it upon us for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice.

And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and have made yourself a name as it is this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all your righteousness, I pray, let your anger and your fury be turned away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain, because of our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers.

Jerusalem and your people are a reproach to all those around us. Now, therefore, our God, hear the prayer of your servant and his supplications and for the Lord's sake, cause your face to shine on your sanctuary, which is desolate.

O my God, incline your ear and hear, open your eyes and see our desolations and the city which is called by your name, for we do not present our supplications before you because of our righteous deeds, but because of your great mercies.

O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act. Do not delay. For your own sake, my God, for your city and your people are called by your name. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

So as we listen further to Daniel's prayer, I hope you can sense the great hope that he has in God. That although God's perfections are serving to expose the sinfulness of Israel, David is still looking to those perfections knowing that God is good.

He sees that God is their only Savior, that God's mercy is what they need. They need the Lord in his mercy to restore communion between himself and his people. So as we listen to Daniel's appeals to God, we hear that he asks for God's mercy, for God to keep his promises, not because he and the people of Israel have done really well, and not because of their righteous deeds, but Daniel prays and says, God, for your own glory, for the sake of your own name, please restore us.

Please have mercy on us. Please turn your anger away from our covenant-breaking, our unfaithfulness. So we see that Daniel, in his confession, where he confesses the way things are according to God's own standards, that he prays according to God's own motivations, that he asks for God to act based on that which motivates God, which is, as Daniel states, God's own glory.

So Daniel is praying, but he's praying God's priority list, not Daniel's priority list. And that's what you call godliness. That's what you call godliness. When our lives, our vocabulary, our values, the ways in which we live, indeed, our own affections, reflect that of God.

That's what godliness is. When we truly reflect who God is as those made in his image. Well, in Daniel's old covenant prayer, he is praying about the return to a city named Jerusalem and a mountain named Zion and a gathering of the people from the nations back to the promised land.

And he is praying, and we recognize that these shadows to which he clings, these shadows belong to Christ himself. That although Israel is full of shame for her covenant breaking, Daniel offers praise to God for his covenant faithfulness and makes supplication for covenant renewal.

And he's basing all of this on the fact that God keeps his promises. That God is true to his word. What God has promised, that he performs. And this is true in the shadows of the old covenant, and it is true in the Savior of the new covenant.

God, what he has promised, that is what he performs. He is faithful to the covenant, and he shows everybody that God is faithful to the covenant through Jesus Christ. So that is the faith of the saints, both old and new.

So in verses 11 through 15, in this old covenant prayer of Daniel, he is giving praise for God's covenant faithfulness, that God keeps his promises. He always follows through on what he says, that he keeps his promises for the glory of his own name, that he loves his people because of who he is and not because of who they are.

And Daniel gives praise to God for these truths. But I would have us make a genuine accounting of Daniel's situation. We need to see the saint, Daniel, in his distress. He is fasting in sackcloth and ashes.

He is praying toward the shattered debris of God's worship center. He is under the tyrannical threat of Darius's new regime, and he's confessing a mountain of Israel's sin and shame. Yet, he praises the Lord.

Despite all of that, where it might seem like praise is not the appropriate way to go, he praises the Lord. He gives praise to God for God being faithful to his word, for God being righteous in his works, giving praise to God for his merciful kindnesses and giving praise to God for his glorious name.

There's a lot that Daniel could be upset about, and indeed, he is troubled about. But praise is the proper response of the saints in distress. That when the fear of the Lord has so captured our hearts that our very sighs are filled with praises to God.

Think about the saints of the Lord in distress like Daniel, but giving praise to God, praising him for who he is. Think of Hannah in distress. David under fire. Isaiah besieged. Mary bewildered. How do the saints respond?

With praise to God. No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none besides you, nor is there any rock like our God. I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me, but you have saved us from our enemies and have put to shame those who hated us.

In God we boast all day long and praise your name forever. He is the first. He is also the last. Indeed, his hand has laid the foundations of the earth and his right hand stretched out the heavens. He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

This is the way that the saints pray under duress, in distress. This is how the saints pray. And as we come to the blessed meal today, let us not fail to praise our host, for he prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies.

We are not harried and we are not afraid. Our brothers and sisters today gather in Iran and North Korea, in Russia and in China, in the Ukraine and in Canada, defying tyrants to bow the knee to the one Lord by the one Spirit as one church, and praise will be given to the name of God.

Is there wickedness rampant? Yes. Is there moral compromise and false teaching abroad? Absolutely. But we are defiant before a defeated enemy, and we gather to feast in the victorious grace of Christ and to praise him as our king.

I commend to you today the sweet flavor of praise in the face of bad news. What is our first response to bad news? Click the next link? Do we go doom scrolling? What do we do in the face of bad news? Share it with someone else, because misery loves company.

What do we do in the face of bad news? What's the first thing we should do? Do you know the comfort of hallowing God's name? Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. What a comfort that is.

There's little else like it when you subordinate all the concerns of your life and even despise them as slight and unimportant to make a priority upon praising the name of God, considering his greatness, his power, his sovereignty, his authority, his character, and his nature.

Setting apples of gold in placements of silver, praising the name of God. This is what Daniel is doing in his situation. He praises the Lord. He gives honor and glory to God, showing how wonderful the Lord is.

And I commend to you the specific praise, which Daniel has in this prayer, that of honoring God for God's truthfulness. He always tells the truth. He always comes through on his word. We live in the information age.

Have you noticed that this worldwide deluge of information has not changed the deceitful heart of man? Though there's more information now than ever, the heart of man has not been fundamentally changed.

Technology is not our savior, and tyrannies are not our damnation. Fear the Lord. Fear the Lord. And praise Him. While every man may be considered a liar, God is true. God is true to His word. We see this in Daniel 9 -11 -12.

This is what Daniel says. As he confesses the sinfulness and shame and the failure of Israel, yet he, by contrast, praises the faithfulness of God. Yes, verse 11, all Israel has transgressed your law and has departed so as not to obey your voice.

Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us because we have sinned against him. And he has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our judges who judged us by bringing upon us a great disaster.

For under the whole heaven, such has never been done. That's what has been done to Jerusalem. Daniel is not denying what has happened. He's not saying lies like, oh, we are undefeated. No, they're pretty well defeated.

He's not saying, we still have the city in our hearts. No, the city's in ruins. Right? He's not overstating his case. He's stating it as God states it, as God sees it. He's using God's terms about the situation, but he is still praising the Lord, for the Lord has been faithful to his word.

So Daniel is confessing the sins and the situation of Israel, but he praises God for the way in which God has proclaimed his word and performs his word. In his confession, Daniel makes sure to say that God has provided his word abundantly and he keeps his word completely.

So notice that God's word is proclaimed. We see the language where Daniel says to the Lord, your law, your voice, and how do these manifest? Through the law of Moses, the servant of God, who wrote down what?

The words of God. He says to the Lord, his words of the Lord, his words, which he spoke. So we have here a praise to God that his words come through his servants to God's people. In the earlier part of the prayer, we've already heard Daniel pray about the prophets through whom God spoke.

Here he's talking about Moses. And what was this curse and oath in the law of Moses that the Lord has poured out upon them? Well, it was that while God would bless his people if they kept the covenant, he would curse them if they did not.

If they broke covenant with him, he would curse their fields, their flocks, and their families, and he would subvert their nation and he would cast them into exile. That was his promise, and that's what he had done.

Notice that God manifests his law, his voice, and his words through his prophet Moses. That through men like Moses, God spoke. It wasn't merely that Moses spoke about God or that prophets as men of God spoke, but that God's voice came through Moses and the prophets, that God's words, his own words, were written down through them.

Peter later on tells us that it was Christ through his spirit in the prophets mediating God's revelation, that the words of God come to us through the word of God, by the spirit of God. And so the praise goes up to the Lord for this provision of his word, that God throughout the generations continually provided his word to this frail people.

Now, he never changed. He never went away. His people, generation after generation, lived and died and lived and died. And the generations passed, but God remained the same, and he provided for his frail, temporary people his everlasting word.

How did he do that? Well, yes, through the prophets in the scriptures, but then how did he continually provide it to them? He established education in the family that parents would teach their children his word.

He established religion in the society that Levites would copy his word down and then read it to the people. He raised up priests to mediate his holiness and kings to mediate his authority and prophets to mediate his truth.

The priests were to serve by the instruction of the word. The kings were to rule according to their very personal copy of the word, and the prophets were to take up the word of God and preach it and apply it.

So God is to be praised for proclaiming his word. Not only is God's word the standard for the people of God, God's word is also our sustenance. To say it even stronger, those who are made in the image of God, all people, those who are made in the image of God, his word is our standard.

The word of God is the standard for the image of God and our sustenance. Those made in God's image who do not live by the bread of God's word are not alive. The dead don't eat bread, but the living do.

And the scriptures tell us that God brings us to new life by the imperishable seed of his word and then gives us his word that we may feast on it and feed on it and be nourished on it. Daniel is a great example here where we see that he can only make sense of the world in which he lives.

He can only make sense of the times that he is experiencing according to the word of God. We are in the same condition today. We can only make sense of the world in which we live. We can only make sense of the experiences we have by the word of God.

Everything must be seen through the lens of God's word and his covenant faithfulness that he always keeps his word and that he is always good. That is manifested through the light of the world and the light of the word, Jesus Christ.

Now, this is good news because in a pagan world, a pagan culture in which we live, in a pagan culture awash in witchcraft where lies are the medium of exchange and propaganda is the arbiter of decency, in this dry and thirsty land, God offers to us this bread and this cup.

He offers to us his son, Jesus Christ, who gives us understanding of God's word, while the paganized agitate for a tyranny of uniformity where everybody must think and say and do the same. Diversity is only skin deep.

While the paganized are agitating for a tyranny of uniformity, the saints all across the world and all the various cultures turn our backs upon those things that we would claim to be our glories, turn our backs on those things that we would claim to be our merits, and we turn to Christ together and we come to his table and we find his liberty in unity.

It's no wonder that the devil wants to shut down the preaching of the word and the sharing of this meal. It is here that we see God's promise of freedom from sin's death, freedom from sin's guilt. We see freedom from sin's damnation.

It's here that we rejoice in the communion that we have together with Christ. The word is provided and the word is proven. As we read verses 11 and 12, we see that not only is the voice of God, the word of God proclaimed, provided, but it's also proven.

We read, therefore, the curse and the oath have been poured out on us. Verse 11, verse 12, he has confirmed his words by bringing upon us a great disaster. God didn't just say it. He actually performed it.

Daniel confesses that Israel has not been faithful, that whatever promises they had made to God, these had been broken. But God, by praiseworthy contrast, kept all of his promises. He did exactly as he said he would through Moses and the prophets.

And he brought about this unique and terrible disaster in the destruction of Jerusalem, showing everyone that he was true to his word. God was not exaggerating, you see. He was not exaggerating when he warned Israel again and again and again how he would destroy them if they broke covenant with him.

He was patient. He was long-suffering with his rebellious people and generation after generation, they took advantage of his long-suffering patience and his merciful delays to continue to profane his name.

But in the end, he proved his word. I mean, how long was it between what Moses wrote, as we read in verse 11, and what God did to prove his word through Moses? How long was that? Well, from Moses to David, 400 years.

David to Jeremiah, the prophet, that's another 400 years. That's 20 generations. 20 generations being considered from the time that Moses oversaw the building of the tabernacle to the day that Solomon's temple was laid waste in Jerusalem.

800 years. And it was another 50 years after that that we now find Daniel praying this prayer. Yet God proves his word true. No matter how long the time span between when he says it and it happens, God proves his word true.

You may consider between the time of Moses and the time of Daniel, how many changes had occurred in politics? How many changes had occurred in culture? How many changes had occurred in language? How many changes had occurred in technology?

Between Moses at Sinai and Daniel in Persia? A lot of differences. And yet, God's word is proven true. How often through all of this had false teachers discounted the ancient text in light of present realities?

The false prophets of Ahab's day, the false prophets of Zedekiah's day, or the false prophecy countered by Elijah and Jeremiah. When those false prophets said what they had to say, it sounded true. It sounded relevant.

It sounded ratified by the experts and echoed by the masses. And however, God's word still was proven true. Every generation the devil keeps hissing, you will not surely die. And it's a lie every time.

God's word is proven true. He poured out his curse and his oath upon the unfaithful mediator of the old covenant destroying the temple. Just as he said, God poured out his curse and his oath upon the unfaithful mediator of the old covenant destroying the temple.

But God also promised that he would rebuild it, and Daniel's praying about that now. The word of God is not like the words of men. God is not a man that he should lie, but he promises that he performs.

What good are all the declarations of men? You want to talk about inflation. What good are all the declarations of men? Promising all kinds of salvation by the state. Salvation by technology. Salvation by revolution.

They are a den of vipers. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Let God be true, though every man a liar. When you look here to the table, and you think of the bread and the cup, you are reminded of Christ's body broken for us.

His blood shed for us. What God has promised, that he has performed. God's word is proven, as his curse and his oath are poured out upon the faithful mediator of the new covenant, a temple destroyed and raised three days later.

He is our new Jerusalem to whom we gather, the mountain into which all the nations are gathered in peace. Behold, behold his sacrifice to cover our shame. Behold his propitiation to establish God's justice.

Behold his expiation to remove our guilt, his atonement to end our exile, his adoption to reverse our fatherlessness, his redemption to emancipate our slavery, his life to raise us from death, his light to dispel our darkness, his bread to satisfy our hunger, and his drink to quench our thirst.

The word of God became flesh and tabernacled among us, so that all of God's promises in Christ are yes, so that we may be his amen. We give praise to God who proves his word. He is true to his word, and he is faithful to his covenant in Christ.

What we do today is of most significance. Yes, the world is in a mess, but has that really changed? Dearly beloved, there's another crisis, another anxiety, more people for us to pray for and intercede for.

Go to the Lord who provides all good things. This is not a waste of effort today. We come here to praise the Lord because he is true to his word. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for who you are, that you are good and true, that you always keep your word.

Help us to praise you even when we're sorrowing. Help us to praise you even when we're frightened. Help us to praise you even when we're disturbed. And let us know the comfort of hallowing your name, clinging to your son, our Savior.

It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Our communion hymn is from 178, verses 1 through 3. O sacred head, now wounded. O sacred shame, now scornful. With thorns thine own as more thou deadly.