Sunday, May 9, 2021 AM

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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim Pastor of Sunnyside Baptist Church OKC "The Principal Thing"

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Music 🎵
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Good morning!
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Good morning! Welcome to Sunnyside Baptist Church, and happy Mother's Day to everyone in attendance.
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Real quickly, we just want to honor our mothers. If you are a mother, grandmother, great -grandmother, and you're able to stand, we would love to see you, to notice you, and to honor you this morning.
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We are so thankful for the mothers, and the grandmothers, and the great -grandmothers, and people who are motherly towards us.
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In our lives, we are so thankful for the influence that you have in our homes, among your children, your grandchildren.
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Thank you. A few announcements as we get started this morning. There's a little bit of a typo in the bulletin.
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There is no evening service tonight. So, because it is Mother's Day, we want you to be able to spend time with your family this afternoon and this evening.
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So, no evening service tonight. This Wednesday, we'll have dinner at 545 here at the church, and then at 630,
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Bible study, prayer meeting for the adults, TAG for the kids. And then, looking ahead, for the young adults, we have truth group in the evening service.
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That's on May 23rd in the evening. And then, May 30th, the last Sunday of the month, we'll have the
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Lord's Supper in the morning. And then, flock groups. It'll be good to meet with flock groups again.
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What that is, is each member has been assigned a particular elder to be a part of a flock group with.
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And typically, we will meet in those elders' homes for that evening.
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So, again, that's on May 30th in the evening. Our fighter verse for this week is in Colossians.
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Colossians 3, verses 1 and 3. If then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
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Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
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Just a reminder, for kids that participate in TAG, we're going to have an open TAG night on Wednesday, May 26th at 6 .30
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p .m. You're welcome to invite any friends or family who want to come and watch. And as those kids share what they've been learning in TAG, and then we'll have a short dessert fellowship after that.
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Nursery's been covered for June already, but we do need volunteers for July. So, if you're able and willing to serve in the nursery during the month of July, they'd appreciate that.
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Operation Christmas Child Giving is still going on, so the donation box is out there in the foyer. And then summertime is quickly upon us, and with summer comes baseball.
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So, we've got on Saturday, July 24th, there at the Oklahoma City ballpark where the
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Dodgers play, it's faith night there. So, we have purchased 50 tickets. They're available for $5 a piece.
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If you would like to come as a church together, we can go to a baseball game. So, that's Saturday, July 24th.
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All right, any other announcements before we get started this morning? We are going to worship together.
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Before we start worship, we're going to have a time just for prayer, prepare our hearts for worship this morning, and then after,
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Michael will lead us in prayer. Oh, God of mercy, we come before you today.
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I want to thank you for particular mercies in protecting and watching over us.
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We thank you for preserving
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Caitlin and Christian and their car wreck this week, and Brother Joe and his, and many others who have had close calls and needs.
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And then, Lord, you provide. You know our needs before we even ask.
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And we find ourselves in weakness after weakness as you show us that it is you who are our refuge and strength, that your name is a strong tower, and we may run to you and find our safety in you.
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We know, Father, that had things been different, and if things turn out differently,
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Father, we know that you are still good. We know that you are gracious and powerful and holy in your sovereignty, and we give you the praise.
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We thank you that you extend to us the grace that we need in the times that we need it.
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And we ask here today that as we sing your praises and pray together and hear your word read and your word is preached, that you would provide all that we need to worship you, that you would stir us up from heart to mouth, from the inner man to the outer man, that you would stir us up as those who fear you and rejoice in you, that our repentance from sin would be a true and godly repentance full of true sorrow and brokenness, that our faith in Christ would be growing and strong and vigorous and obvious, and that you would be glorified in our midst, not because we are strong, but because you are, not because we are worthy, but because Christ is.
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And this is what we pray together in Christ today, looking to him as our
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Savior. Amen. Would you stand with me for our call to worship?
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Our passage this morning is found in Psalms, chapter 63. We'll be reading verses 6 through 8.
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Read with me together. When I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings
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I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me.
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We're going to sing the chorus, Thy Loving Kindness, and then right after that we're going to page 267.
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Come, Thou Almighty King. Thy loving kindness is better than life.
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Thy loving kindness is better than life.
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My lips shall praise Thee, the same
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I bless Thee. I will lift up my hands unto
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Thy Name. Thy loving kindness is better than life.
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Thy loving kindness is better than life.
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This glad hour,
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Thou Almighty God, Thou only
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Great One, in great need of me.
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Scripture reading for this morning will be in 1 John, chapter 5, verses 5 through 21.
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1 John 5, 5 through 21. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the
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Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ.
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Not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the
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Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the
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Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one.
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And there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three agree as one.
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If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God which he has testified of his
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Son. He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself. He who does not believe
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God has made him a liar. Because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of his
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Son. And this is the testimony. That God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his
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Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the
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Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the
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Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And that you may continue to believe in the name of the
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Son of God. Now this is the confidence that we have in him.
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That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him.
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If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask.
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And he will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death.
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I do not say that he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin.
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And there is sin not leading to death. We know that whoever is born of God does not sin.
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But he who has been born of God keeps himself. And the wicked one does not touch him.
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We know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.
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And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true, in his
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Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
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Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. Would you pray with me?
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Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for sovereignly working in all of our lives,
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Lord. We thank you for blessing us and for drawing us into your
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Son, Jesus Christ. During this time, Lord, let us keep our focus on him.
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Let us submit to your word, Lord. And in this coming week, may we continue to abide in your
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Son, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray. Amen. Amen. You may be seated.
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Our next two songs are going to be in our little black hymnals, hymns Modern and Ancient. Page 83,
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Merciful God. And then page 40, God of the Ages. Selfish in thought and uncaring in deed, foolish in fear and ungrateful.
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Spirit of God, open our hearts.
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May love emerge from forgiveness.
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Cause us to yield and return to the mercy of God.
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Merciful God, oh, how bountiful you are.
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Faithful to keep us from falling.
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Oh, guide our ways with your fatherly heart.
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Growing our faith in each testing.
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God's legal test from old to new.
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Fondest remains of your glory.
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Amen. Let's go to the
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Lord. Prayer together. Father, I thank you for this day. I thank you for the many mercies you have already given to us.
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And I ask that as we turn our attention to your word, that you would grace us with hearts that desire to hear.
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Hearts that desire to obey. That you would bless us and shape us according to your perfect and gracious will.
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Lord, we give you the glory. And we ask that you would grow us in our faith. We ask that you would grant us wisdom as we follow your son,
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Jesus Christ, our savior and our sovereign. It's in his name that we pray.
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Amen. Please open your Bibles with me to the book of Daniel.
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Daniel is a book that is both dearly beloved and dearly argued.
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But we remember Daniel for a lot of reasons, especially growing up the stories that stick with us about Daniel and his friends.
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And then the images that come to us from this book. The book of Daniel will be our focus from here until the
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Lord knows when. And there are some things that we need to talk about as we get started here in verses 1 and 2, and just as the book as a whole so that we will be afforded help as we move along.
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The book of Daniel was written, unsurprisingly, by Daniel. And that is a very controversial thing to say.
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You didn't know I already started controversy, but I just did. Saying that Daniel wrote the book of Daniel in his own lifetime.
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He had a very long life, lived into his 90s. And almost all of it was spent in exile, away from his homeland where he was raised, from which he was taken as a very young man.
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He was taken from his homeland around 606 B .C., and he served in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus.
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Over the course of many decades, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he wrote faultless historical accounts of difficult times and intricate dreams.
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This was written by Daniel both in Hebrew and in Aramaic, different parts of it.
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Parts of it in Hebrew, parts of it in Aramaic. Aramaic is basically it uses the
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Hebrew alphabet with different words. And it was a neighboring language, a partner language, but it was very different.
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Daniel, we have located in our Bibles, and you may have in your mind the picture on the wall, the
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Sunday School classroom wall of the different books of the Bible and what section they're in. We locate
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Daniel in the major prophets. We call it one of the major prophets because, well, it is 12 chapters long, a lot longer than some of the other ones, and we tack it in there at the end of the backside of Ezekiel.
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But it's located differently in the Jews' Old Testament.
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When the scribes compiled the scriptures of the Old Testament, they put it into three sections, the
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Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Kethuvim, the law, the prophets, and the writings.
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And you'd think that Daniel being a prophet would get stuck in with the Nevi 'im, the prophets. But in fact, it's located in the
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Kethuvim, in the writings, after you go through Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and then you find
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Daniel in there with the writings. Why?
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I think one reason is that Daniel is a book full of riddles. Daniel is a book full of riddles, real -life riddles that Daniel and his friends faced, riddles of statecraft in which life and death were often on the line, apocalyptic riddles in the fabric of dreams and visions that displayed the rise and fall of empires.
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And so Daniel is a book of riddles in which wisdom triumphs over all.
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This is not to say that Daniel or his friends, that their lives and their times were not historical or practical or really happened.
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They, of course, did. They most certainly did. And what we read in Daniel compels us to grasp tightly to wisdom, because we need wisdom for the times in which we live.
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And all the treasures of wisdom are in Christ. As you read through Daniel, you read about some things that, had we lived through them, if we were to live through them, it would be very jarring, it would be traumatic, it would be very difficult.
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And yet, when we read through the book of Daniel, I know some of you just finished doing that, there are a lot of beautiful arrangements going on in the book, in the things that happen.
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There are a lot of chiastic structures, we've talked about that before, parallels that move inwardly like concentric circles.
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One, for instance, chapter 2 contains a dream about four world empires humbled before Christ.
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So also does chapter 7 include a vision of four world empires humbled before Christ. The fiery furnace of chapter 3 is answered by the lion's den in chapter 6.
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The confronted Nebuchadnezzar who repents is paired with the confronted
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Belshazzar who does not repent. That's just one structure among many in the book of Daniel, some larger, some smaller.
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But when we walk away from that, we see what? We are learning what? That even though these are difficult events, that there are problems and complexities, that God is the one arranging it all according to his beautiful plan.
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Something that we need to remember in our time. Daniel is, I think, as all of scripture,
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Daniel is very appropriate for the times in which we live. I'm going to read verses 1 -7 this morning, and I invite you to stand with me to hear the word of the
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Lord. Daniel chapter 1, verses 1 -7.
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In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
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And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with some of the articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his
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God, and he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God. Then the king instructed
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Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good -looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the language and literature of the
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Chaldeans. And the king appointed for them a daily provision of the king's delicacies and of the wine which he drank, and three years of training for them, so that at the end of that time they might serve before the king.
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Now from among those of the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
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To them the chief of the eunuchs gave names. He gave Daniel the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach, and to Azariah Abednego.
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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Pilgrim's Progress has been cited as the very first English novel.
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It has never been out of print since the 1600s. It's in 200 different languages.
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And what John Bunyan wrote in Pilgrim's Progress was, of course, in many ways, universally applied to the experience of the
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Christian. And in some ways, it was very particular to his own experience in England.
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There's a scene in Pilgrim's Progress where Christian is going through a valley where he sees the carcasses of many who have been killed.
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Nearby is a cave. Now these carcasses are very old. They're just bones. But next to this area, this very grim area, the valley of the shadow of death, he sees a cave.
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And inside the cave are two giants. One is named Pope, and the other is named
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Pagan. And as Christian passes by, it is noted that Pagan is dead and harms the travelers no more.
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And Pope is so old and feeble that all he can do is smile at the pilgrims as they go by and bite his nails.
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And so John Bunyan is mocking with a holy zeal the paganism that once ruled the
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Isle of Britain, that has now been destroyed and gone away.
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He also mocks the feebleness of the Catholics who had tried to take over and take away the rights of the worshippers and so on.
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He says he's still around, but he's limited. Later on in the second part of Pilgrim's Progress, when the next batch of travelers come through this area, there's a new giant who's taken over the cave.
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His name was Maul, and he was the representative of the
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Anglican Church, who had taken up the persecution left off by Pagan and Pope.
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So John Bunyan says Pagan is dead. Pagan is dead. He can't harm the pilgrims anymore.
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He can't attack the Christians anymore. He's long gone. Well, brothers and sisters, we live in a time much like the time of Daniel, a time of Pagan rising, a time of Pagan rising.
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We live in the midst of a paganism that has taken firm hold of our culture in which we live.
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Paganism at its heart is simply oneness. Everything is one and everything blends together,
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Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. But materialism is also paganism. Materialism not technically in the sense of he who dies with the most toys wins, but materialism in the sense that there either is no god over us or it doesn't matter if there is a god.
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It only matters that there's one matter and who has it. Materialism is simply, it matters that everything is of one matter, of one substance, and it matters who has it.
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Currently, the paganism is being expressed that what matters is that there's one matter and it's not equally distributed.
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That's the expression of paganism currently in our culture. Paganism is certainly what goes on in Daniel's life.
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Paganism, the pagans come, the pagans take him, the pagans win, and he is immersed in paganism there in Babylon.
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And the crises that we look at today are all tied in with pagan rising in our world.
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And because despair is the mantra of paganism, notice that pagans, no matter how much they succeed, they are always in despair.
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No matter how much power they gain or how much material they have or how much sway they have or how much bandwidth they claim or how much volume they project, they are always in despair.
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There is never actually any salvation. There is never actually any healing for the planet.
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There is actually no justice to be had for the oppressed. No matter how much they aim at what they aim at, there is actually no way to succeed.
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And so there is always despair after despair after despair. This is classic paganism.
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We live in a world that is, in one sense, so shattered into all of its little categories, and yet the key is that it's all supposed to be one.
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That means that there's nothing outside of it. So there's no one to come in and save it. This is despair.
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Daniel was ripped out of his homeland and taken to Babylon, where there was a God for every aspect of the world that you encountered.
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There was a God of the rivers, a God of the moon, a God of the sun. There was a God of this season and a
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God of that season. There was a God of storms. There was a God of fertility for the ground, fertility for your animals, fertility for your wife.
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There was gods for all every aspect of your world in which you lived. And if you wanted any help with any kind of problem that you had with your field or whether the weather was going to work out or how your livestock was doing, or if you wanted to go to war, whatever it was, you had to go to that particular god or goddess and ask the priests for insight and offer sacrifices to those priests at those temples to gain the favor of that particular god or goddess so that you would succeed.
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Today we call them experts. In a world where postmodernism has taken hold and everybody has their own truth and nobody can have an objective sense of reality, all that's left is going to the experts in every particular field and nobody is allowed to speak upon the field except for those experts.
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You must go to the gods and their experts to receive any kind of authoritative information about anything, to make any decisions at all.
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We live in a world of pagan rising. When considering the problems of our day and their intertwined complexities, when we're looking at the concerns for stability and peace and liberty and so on, it is clear that as Daniel we face riddles beyond our ability to solve.
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Riddles beyond our ability to solve. And so the principal thing we need is wisdom.
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We need the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God which is treasured up in Jesus Christ.
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We need the wisdom of God that begins with the fear of the Lord. The principal thing that we need as we face pagan rising, as we face tyranny and tyrants, as we weather the chaos of empires rising and falling, the principal thing to get is not
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Bitcoin, bullets, bullion, or bunkers, though each has a limited utility.
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The principal thing is wisdom that begins with the fear of the Lord. And that priority is made evident from the very beginning of Daniel.
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For Daniel is a book that is more than a collection of morality tales and enigmatic predictions.
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Daniel is a book in which complex riddles of God's kingdom, both problems and prophecies, are resolved in God's wisdom.
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I want you to imagine Daniel, a young man, spending time with his parents, spending time with a local scribe.
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I want you to imagine Daniel and those brief years that he had in his homeland, being trained by his parents and by those who were concerned for him.
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Daniel before he was immersed in paganism. Imagine Daniel hearing this read to him.
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Proverbs 4, verse 1. Hear, my children, the instruction of a father, and give attention to no understanding, for I give you good doctrine.
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Do not forsake my law. When I was my father's son, tender and the only one in the sight of my mother, he also taught me and said to me,
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Let your heart retain my words. Keep my commands and live. Get wisdom. Get understanding.
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Do not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you.
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Love her, and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing.
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Therefore, get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Exalt her, and she will promote you.
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She will bring you honor when you embrace her. She will place on your head an ornament of grace, a crown of glory she will deliver to you.
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I have no doubt that Daniel heard that before he was taken away to Babel.
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Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom. We live in a world like Daniel's, one of pagan rising.
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One in which the victories of paganism are tantamount to the validity of paganism.
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The reason why paganism abounds is because paganism is right, is moral, is true.
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But we're called to resist. We are called to resist. And our analytical tool for resisting paganism is the wisdom of God in Christ.
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We will look at everything that we encounter in this world of pagan rising through the fear of the
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Lord. Through the wisdom of God in Christ. So in chapter 1, verses 3 through 7, we see a pagan power play.
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We'll look at that. And then in verses 8 through 21, we see a godly battle plan.
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And we'll look at that. But first, this morning, we're going to look at a sovereign shake -up in verses 1 through 2.
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A sovereign shake -up. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
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And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with some of the articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his
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God. And he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God. Let's consider, first of all,
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God's timing in this shake -up. He's obviously the one who is in charge. He's the one who's operating here.
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Let's think of the timing first. We hear about the king Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim was the wicked son of good king
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Josiah. Remember, good king Josiah. His son, Jehoiakim, was wicked. And he was a collaborator with Egypt.
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And Egypt and Assyria had made a treaty, an agreement, to push back the armies of Babylon.
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They would resist the onslaught of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. Something that God said would be impossible to stop,
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Jeremiah 25. Jehoiakim resists the preaching of Jeremiah.
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When Jeremiah says, God has given everybody in this whole region to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
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Do not resist. God has put him in charge. To resist Nebuchadnezzar at this point would be to resist the will of God for this region.
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Don't do that. But Jehoiakim still resisted. And when Nebuchadnezzar defeated
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Pharaoh Necho's army at Carchemish, as they had gone to relieve their Assyrian allies, he then sweeps south through Judah and he lays siege to Jerusalem.
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This is the first of three Babylonian sieges against the city. The second came during the three -month reign of Jehoiakim's son,
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Jeconiah. The third siege came at the end of Zedekiah's reign.
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Zedekiah was the brother of Jeconiah, who was also wicked and evil. Three sieges. In the first two,
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Nebuchadnezzar took some stuff and took some people. And then in the third one, he destroyed the city and wiped it out.
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And that was the cataclysm of 586 BC. What we're being told here is that Daniel's story happens 20 years prior to the third siege, the destruction of Jerusalem.
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20 years before Jerusalem was destroyed, Daniel was taken to Babylon.
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For 20 years, Daniel served there and labored there as a believer in God.
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We're also being told that the world is not explainable merely in terms of human kings and earthly kingdoms.
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We can't explain the course of history and explain international politics and explain world events simply by noting who did what after this thing happened over there.
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Notice verse 2, the Lord gave
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Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand. You see, Daniel is making sense of his own tribulation, his own turmoil, his own deportation.
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Why am I here in Babylon? How did I get here? Why am
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I here? Why did I get ripped out of my homeland? Why am I being emerged in paganism?
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Why do I have to fight every day to worship the one true God? Why am
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I suffering like this? And he looks back at what happens and he says, God did it. God gave
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Jehoiakim and the city of Jerusalem and me into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.
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And I'm here today because of what God did. God was doing something. It was his timing.
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It was God's work and he was working his will. God gave
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Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. Because Nebuchadnezzar was
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God's beast. His dog, who came when he whistled and attacked where he pointed.
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Sikkim. That's the way Nebuchadnezzar is described in the biblical text.
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God owned him. God used him. God was glorified through it.
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So Daniel evidences wisdom. He begins with the fear of the Lord and he's saying, okay, here's how
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I'm going to look at what happened to me. It's not that pagan rising means pagan is true.
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God is at work. God is judging. God is moving forward his promises.
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The Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand. Nebuchadnezzar's victory is God's act of judgment upon a wicked nation.
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And in fact, the capturing of young nobles, such as Daniel, and his being brought to Babylon to serve the pagan king, was precisely promised to Josiah's great -grandfather,
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Hezekiah. Isaiah 39 verses 5 through 7. Hezekiah, later on in his reign, was full of pride.
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He should have been full of humility and gratitude for God extending his life, but he was full of pride. And an emissary from Babylon came.
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And Hezekiah couldn't wait to show him all the wonderful things that were in his realm.
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And so he took the emissary from Babylon on a tour. Unbeknownst to him, the emissary was making a shopping list for the next generation.
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And the prophecy comes from Isaiah to Hezekiah. Chapter 39 verses 5 through 7 of Isaiah.
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Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and what your fathers have accumulated until this day, shall be carried to Babylon.
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Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And they shall take away some of your sons who will descend from you, whom you will beget, and they shall be eunuchs in the place of the king of Babylon.
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Such was the arrogance of Hezekiah's final days, and the horrific evil of Manasseh's days, and the continued rebellion against God of Josiah's descendants, that we see that God's staged judgments upon the land, and the cities, and its people, and its kings, all proven justified.
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In his timing, it was shown as good. So, to understand what comes later on in the book, we have to rightly comprehend the background.
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These introductory matters, that Daniel was ripped from his home, which would be destroyed in a couple of decades, that he was taken to Babylon, all as part of God's timing to bring judgment upon Judah.
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But Daniel also was taken there, along with Ezekiel, to prepare a people.
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To prepare them to give interpretation of God's word, to further reveal the word of God to the people, so they would know that the
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Lord is God, even if Jerusalem lays in ruins. Our analytical tool for resisting paganism is the wisdom of God in Christ.
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If Daniel didn't say this, if he didn't know this, then what would he conclude?
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Other than, I guess I gotta be a Babylonian now. I guess
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I'm here to do whatever Nebuchadnezzar wants me to do. Whatever he says goes.
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But he interprets the events of his time in view of who God is, and then that gives him the direction for the rest of his ministry.
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Looking at things from God's point of view. Now, it's clear what the pagan empire intends for Daniel in verses 3 -7.
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We read that. It's very clear what the agenda is. It's called assimilation.
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It's called assimilation. Everybody must think the same, speak the same, do the same.
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And if you don't think, speak, and do the same, you're intolerant.
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That's pretty funny. Paganism always, oneness is the prime objective.
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Oneness is the metaphysical essence of paganism, and oneness is the morality of paganism.
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Everybody must assimilate. Paganism rising imposes terrific pressure upon believers to assimilate to this weight of momentum, to the gravity of history.
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Look, this is the way things are. You have to change. You have to alter what you use to say and how you use to read the text.
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You can't read that anymore. You can't say that anymore. You have to assimilate. You have to change.
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But wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord and the sovereign shake -up in Daniel, his timing, his right will being done, and the sovereign shake -up in which we currently live is according to his timing.
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God is still on His throne. God is still in charge. And so when we see pagan rising, we behold not the validity of paganism, but we behold the sovereign working of God.
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And we trust that His gracious smile remains behind the clouds of a frowning providence.
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That's two -ism, not one -ism. Paganism is one -ism. Everything is one big heap.
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And it's all one matter. That's why you can change A into Z and boy into girl and do whatever you want because it's all one.
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So it's all fungible. Two -ism says there's creator, then creation. There's God, and then there's not
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God. That there is objective truth.
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And then there's all of us trying to figure what in the world is going on. The details of a sovereign shake -up, you may have noticed, are ever in flux.
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What we think about things today is different than what we thought about things three months ago as far as the details are concerned.
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We're always in our mortal limitations seeking to grasp the complexities of this week's crisis in light of the year or today's news in light of the decade.
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None of us can. Swept along like a twig in a torrent, we need to remember not only who mans the floodgates, but who binds the two hydrogen atoms to the one oxygen atom in every molecule of the wave.
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Whatever this is in which we live, it is according to the Lord's timing. We can trust
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Him. We can trust Him. Consider, of course,
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God's timing in the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. How in the fullness, when the fullness of the time came,
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God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. According to the timing of the
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Lord, Jesus Christ came, and He lived, and He suffered, and He died. The third day,
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He was raised, and He walked with His disciples and taught them, and then
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He ascended to the right hand of the Father. Consider that it was all according to the
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Lord's timing. And that was the greatest sovereign shake -up in all of history.
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In fact, it's what all of history is about. It defines history. The biggest shake -up of all, that God took upon human flesh and suffered and died in our place, and was raised from the dead the third day.
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Now, that's a shake -up. And it was all according to God's timing. And if we can trust
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Him there, we can trust Him anywhere. Consider God's purpose.
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What is He up to? When we read that the Lord gave
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Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and that Nebuchadnezzar also took with, after defeating
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Jehoiakim, he also took some of the articles of the house of God.
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And this means that he took utensils, and he took some artifacts, he took some dishes, he took some consecrated, very costly items from the temple.
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Now, Nebuchadnezzar was accustomed to this. When he would roll in with his mighty army and defeat some minor nation, he would go to the temples of that minor nation and go inside, and he would grab the gods out of the temple.
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There was gold and silver, you know, these precious things. And he would grab them, and he would cart them back to Babylon.
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And he would stick these idols, these gods and goddesses, in the treasure house of his god.
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And his point was what? Well, Marduk and Nabu have triumphed again.
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And all of these small little gods, they have been proven minor and weak.
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And now they are in service to the great god Nabu, or the great god Marduk. That was his point.
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When he gets to the temple in Jerusalem, he looks around and says, what's with all the dishes? Where's the little, you know, horned little demon -looking things with the sapphire eyes?
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All you have is dishes? Cups? He grabs what he can.
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And he takes that to the treasure house of his god. And his point is like, well, these guys are not really great idol makers of their great god who is in this temple.
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But the point he's still making is this. Yahweh must be a minor god because I've defeated him.
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And I've taken his precious things out of his temple, and I've put them in the temple of my god.
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And thus, he is diminished, and I am victorious. Right?
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That's the story that Nebuchadnezzar thinks is true. What's God's purpose in that?
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Why does God take such an obvious L? Why does he lose here?
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He gives his king into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. He gives his precious items into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.
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Not only that, but look at Daniel and his friends. They were taken as living vessels.
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They went and grabbed the best of the best young men. Nebuchadnezzar says, okay, just like these utensils come to my god's house, you all come to my house.
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You're going to serve me now. You're not going to serve Yahweh and Jehoiakim. You're going to serve
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Marduk and Nebuchadnezzar. And you're my possession now. Okay, you're the brightest of the bunch, the best looking of the bunch, and so I deserve the best.
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You're coming with me. And we're going to repurpose your service from the Lord to paganism.
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You're going to learn our languages. You're going to learn our literature. You're going to learn our philosophy. You're going to do things our way.
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You're going to assimilate. So that's what's going on with Daniel.
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Why does it look like God is losing? It's like the winning football team taking the trophy from their rival and storing it in their own trophy case.
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But with actual metaphysical importance. Dale Ralph Davis comments that the pagans would at this point be singing praise
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Marduk from whom all blessings flow. Why would God allow that?
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Why would God allow that? Such an obvious victory for the enemy.
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But one thing is for sure. By the end of the first chapter of Daniel, God will triumph over Babylon.
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And Daniel will be one of his principal witnesses to that victory. Look down at verse 21.
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Very last verse. Chapter one of Daniel. Thus, Daniel continued until the first year of King Cyrus.
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King Cyrus the Persian, who succeeded Darius the
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Mede, who came after the destruction of the
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Babylonian power structure in the fall of Belshazzar. After Nebuchadnezzar.
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So, Daniel lives to see the defeat of the
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Babylonians and the complete and utter reversal of verse two.
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Verse two, where he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his
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God all of these articles from the house of Yahweh. You see, the first year of Cyrus, according to Ezra chapter one.
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Cyrus issues a decree for the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.
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And he not only went and collected every last holy article that Nebuchadnezzar had plundered and placed in the house of his
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God. But Cyrus gave it back to them with a receipt. You can read the receipt for yourself in Ezra one.
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Not only did he give it all back to them, but he also gave them the wealth of the nations in his empire to rebuild the temple and rebuild the city.
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So, who defeated who? For Cyrus is
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God's instrument as well. We read in Isaiah.
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Cyrus is God's instrument to do exactly what he wants him to do.
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So, what looked like a humbling, shameful defeat for the Lord actually turned into the defeat of the enemy and the conversion of pagan emperors.
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Like Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. What is that?
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It's a well -established pattern. I'll give you a particular example.
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The Jews were very unfaithful in the days of Jeremiah.
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They worshipped many idols. So also were the Jews in the days of the judges.
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Worshipping idols. They were canonized. They were very much paganized. And during the days of the judges, early on in 1
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Samuel, we have a story of the Philistines taking the ark captive.
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You may remember that the sons of Eli treated the ark of the covenant like some good luck charm, like an idol.
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And they brought it into battle when they shouldn't have. And the Philistines won the day and they took the ark of the covenant captive.
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And where did they take it? Into the house of their God, Dagon. I mean, the
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Gath Tribune the next day said what? Dagon best Yahweh. It was obvious to them only what happened when the ark of the covenant was placed in the temple of Dagon.
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The next day the priests come in and Dagon has fallen flat on his face before the ark of the covenant.
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Just like Nebuchadnezzar would fall flat on his face before the Lord, declaring him to be sovereign and good and holy and true.
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Well, they put Dagon back in his place. This won't do. The next day, Dagon is down again and his head and hands are cut off.
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Executed. Just like Belshazzar was, who did not repent before the glory of the
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Lord. And then the ark of the covenant is returned to the children of Israel with great spoils.
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Gold upon gold, given back with the ark. What is that pattern?
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Happens more than once. What is that pattern? Abram, fleeing famine, goes down into Egypt.
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Goes down into Egypt where his wife is captured and things are going bad.
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But then he comes out with the spoils of Egypt. Israel, Joseph, Israel's son
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Joseph and his other sons, they all go down into Egypt. Down because of the famine. Down because of betrayal in Joseph's case.
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But then the nation of Israel comes back up out of Egypt. Plundering it as they go.
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Spoils. What is this pattern? It's death and resurrection. Death and resurrection.
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In shadow and type over and over again. Death and resurrection. The going down. The great defeat.
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Oh, the ignominy and the shame. Oh, how the pagans triumph. How it looks like the forces of evil have won.
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But then the great reversal and then out comes God's son, God's servant,
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God's seed. And he comes out with great spoils. God's purpose.
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God's purpose. So whereas paganism goes on and on monotonously crying out despair, despair, despair.
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Our analytical tool for resisting this is the wisdom of God and Christ. We believe it in the gospel.
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We see it again and again throughout the scriptures. Now, along with Daniel, where Daniel really was in, you know,
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Daniel chapter 1, as he is immersed in paganism and things are not going well.
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We can still, in such times, live by faith. We cannot always tell how
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God will work all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. But thankfully, his ability to do that is not dependent on our capacity to comprehend it.
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We can trust that God has a purpose that is for our good and for his glory in every sovereign shakeup that we experience.
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And that's wisdom. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word.
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I pray that you would help us as we consider the message of Christ in Daniel. And that you would grant to us this wisdom.
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That we would respond to the things that are going on around us by fearing you first, thinking of you most and foremost.
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And that we would respond in wisdom, in faith, trusting in you. Thank you for hearing our prayers and thank you for loving us.
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Thank you for bearing with us in our smallness and our weakness. We pray these things in Jesus' name.
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Would you stand with me for our song of benediction? We're going to sing the chorus of Forever Jesus.
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For all my days
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I will sing my praise to the King, Forever Jesus.
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May the love of the
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Father and the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. We are dismissed and happy Mother's Day.