The Story - Chapter 18

The story in the scripture that we have been using this week out of the book of Daniel, some of you have been reading that and talking about it already, is really a part of a great story, a picture in the Old Testament of what God is doing. In the very beginning, God came to Abraham and said, I want to make a contract with you. If you will do the things that I ask you to do, I will bless you. I will give you guidance in all the things that you do, I'll provide for you, I'll protect you, and I will give your life value. I will make you a blessing to all the people around you. In this process of making Abraham's descendants a blessing to all the world, each one of these stories that we see are a part of that great picture that God is trying to accomplish, what his plan is. And what he wanted to do through the people who were his own, he said, if you will live the way I tell you, I will bless your life and you will know that I am the Lord. Then he said to them, as a result of that, all the world around you will know who I am. They'll look at your life and they will see that something is happening in your life that is different than theirs, because I am providing for you, I am protecting you, I am giving you, making your life a great blessing to the world, and people will see that something is different about you. So they will know something about me. This whole story of the Old Testament is a way by which God is trying to reveal to the world through human beings who he is like, what he's like, and who he is. Each of these stories that we read are a reflection on the consequence of this great covenant that God made with his people. This story is somewhat different. God had established the people of Israel, drew them up out of Egypt and brought them to the land of promise and said, now this is the place I want you to live because I want you to get rid of all the obstacles around you. Everyone who worships foreign gods will be killed and driven out. And you're here in this isolated place so I can work with you and teach you exactly how I want you to live, and you will begin to live the way I tell you. And all of my blessings will come to you and everyone will see the fullness of my promise and everything that I am. But they would never do that. Constantly they compromised the commitment that they'd made to God. Israel and the northern group became so bad, so much like the world around them, God said, I can't see any promise for you anymore. And he destroyed the ten tribes of his people Israel, never to be seen and heard from again. 130 years he worked with Judah, those in the southern part. Finally the time came when he said, there's no hope for them. And he called for the death penalty on the nation. They believed that the city of Jerusalem was God's place to live and it was holy. And they honestly believed that it would never be destroyed. They believed that the temple that was built where was a symbol of God's presence with them could never be destroyed. They felt safe because of these two things. God announced the death penalty, destroyed the city of Jerusalem, tore down the walls, burned it, and destroyed the temple. All the stuff inside of it was carried away, it was burned. Everything that they thought was a symbol of God's presence with them was taken away. The story in Daniel is a story of two, of four young men who were taken out in this time of captivity. It was common whenever one nation would invade another to carry away some of the people who were promising and say, okay, now you come in our country and we'll use your skills. They were not prisoners like we'd think of people being in prison. They could have jobs, own land, have families, make an income. But they were foreigners, outsiders. They were never citizens in the place in which they lived. You know what that's like. There was always that feeling that these people don't belong here. They're not one of us. So here these four young men are carried into this land far away. Teenagers, really. We assume that because of knowing how long Daniel lived, 101 years old, some evidence says. And we know that he served 70 or more years in the foreign land, so you kind of add that up and it puts him in the teenage years. Now he had good parents. We don't know who they were, but he had good parents. They had taught him what the Bible said he should do. He knew the law and what God required. He comes into this land, strange place, doesn't know the language, doesn't know anybody, ripped apart from his family. You can imagine how terrifying that would be for a boy his age. And then he gets there and they say, we have great plans for you. We want to put you in training to make you one of the leaders of our nation. All of a sudden, instead of going from an enemy of the nation, he's now invited to become a part of the leading group of the nation. The great temptation for a wonderful, powerful future stands before him. One problem came. They said, well, we're going to give you all the training that you need and you will eat with the king's table, the food that he's provided. But Daniel and his friends knew what the Bible said. In Leviticus chapter 11, when God is telling the people of Israel, now when you go into the land of promise, I want you to live differently. I want you to know and reflect that I, your Lord, am different. And I want everyone who knows you to say these people who are Jews are different. So to reflect your difference on the outside, I'm going to ask you to wear different kind of clothes. I'm going to ask you to eat different kind of food. I'm going to ask you to keep different kind of schedules. All of these differences, when your neighbors see you, will say these people belong to Yahweh God who is different. Now the word the Bible uses for different is holy. I want them to know that I am holy and they will know that I am holy because of the way you live. Now here is one of the things that I want you to do. Every time you sit down to eat, I want you to remember there are only certain things that you can eat because I tell you I want you to eat these. All your neighbors can eat whatever they want but not you. You've made a covenant with me. You said we give ourselves to live in obedience to you and this is one of my requirements. All of this chapter he talks about the things they're not supposed to eat but he says do not defile yourself by any of these creatures. Now he doesn't mean by eating something that he says they shouldn't eat that they have become sinful. What they have done is disobeyed and any action of disobedience defiles them spiritually. So do not defile. This is chapter 11 of Leviticus beginning with verse 43. Do not defile yourself by any of these creatures. Do not make yourself unclean by means of them or be made unclean by them. I am the Lord your God. Exalt yourself and be holy because I am holy. Do not make yourself unclean by any creature that moves about on the ground. I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. Therefore be holy as I am holy and you will be holy as I am holy by eating the food that I tell you to eat prepared the way I tell you. So every animal was to be killed, all the blood drained out of it in a very careful way before it was edible. And some animals they could not eat like pork. So here they are in a foreign country and the king is going to give them his meat. Prepared the way God said it should be? No. Is it going to be only beef and chicken? No. So they face this great dilemma but they are in a foreign land. No one is going to know. They are teenagers with a great opportunity ahead of them. But one thing sticks in their mind. We have made a covenant promise to God. That's the story here. It's not that they wanted to be vegetarians. They wanted to be holy and faithful. It required them to say to the king, no we cannot eat your food. How could you do that? Well they believed something. If you are faithful to me and you do what I tell you to do, I will protect you and I will provide for you. These teenage young men clung to the promise of that covenant that God had made years ago with Abraham. And they claimed it for their own. This was not a matter of eating. It was a matter of holy and righteous commitment to the promises of God and the demands of God. This is what I require of you. Everyone around you will know that you eat differently. Well the story turns out great. They said to the man that they negotiated with, let us eat our own food for a little while and then at the end of the time you can see what happens. They had such confidence in God that they really believed that at the end of this trial period God would show them as being superior. Now the king wanted everybody to eat their meals. He thought that was the secret, the vegetarian meals. It wasn't. The secret was the power of God to make them different. God demonstrated Himself because they took this risk of saying, will I obey the king who has captured me or will I obey the Lord? In the book of Ezekiel when the prophet was telling that the nation of Israel would come to destruction and they would all be exiled, in that book 56 different times Ezekiel says that all the bad things that are happening to the people of Israel are so that they might know that I am the Lord. The punishment came so that they would be able to experience firsthand the great and mighty power of God. We don't know if these four young boys knew any of their friends who had been carried out with them. They seemed to be isolated, alone, with no support. There was no priest to help them. There was no temple to go to. There was no book to be able to read. They were just there from the memory of what they learned but they clung to that with the passion and confidence that God would keep His promise. Now we see these men separated from their homeland, separated from their family, separated from their religion, had one thing. We have pledged to live in obedience to God and we believe if we do that our lives will be rescued. And so they were. The story that's told, the three major stories that are used in the book of Daniel, powerful stories they are, but they all revolve around this very issue. For whenever the three men went on to be leaders in the nation and they were executives, now you can imagine what happens. Here's Jewish people moved into this foreign country, they don't even speak the language well, they have an accent, they're a different color, they're a different kind of people, but all of a sudden they're rising in the hierarchy of the government, replacing citizens of Babylon who would have those high-paying, powerful jobs. You can imagine the jealousy that comes from that and it didn't last very long before they began to look around and say, these guys are out of place. Friends were not easy to make for them because they were not citizens of the country and they didn't act and live like everybody else around them acted and lived. Nebuchadnezzar had a problem. He was a great king that conquered a lot of nations. He brought Jews in, he brought other people from other countries in, and he had a nation filled with different people who had different gods, different beliefs, different lifestyles and different natures. One of the ways the ancient world, well it's still true in our world, that a country tries to unify itself is to have one great thing that binds them together. And throughout history and throughout the Bible you'll find that one of the great unifying forces of every nation was the king who was in charge of both the politics and the religion. If you have somebody who's in charge of the politics and someone else in charge of the religion, the religious fervor is always greater and somebody wants to do for God and if God asks them to do something contrary to the king they'll obey their god instead of the king. So every one of these religions, these great conquerors tried to make people follow their own religion. That's what Nebuchadnezzar did. He wanted to unify his country. If everyone will bow down to the same religion and if I can be the ruler, and many of the ancient kings thought of themselves as descendants of the gods, that way it gave them spiritual power as well as political and military power. So his scheme was common to the ancient world. I'll build a great statue of myself, I'll bring all the people here and say when the time comes I want you to kneel before this great statue and pledge allegiance to me. I am both the political and military and spiritual leader of this nation. The problem is for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego they could not say we will obey you Nebuchadnezzar over our god. The demand was given to them to abandon their god for political unity of their nation and for their jobs. The time came. The great statue was placed there. The king said anybody who doesn't bow to this statue I will throw in a fire. You know why capital punishment was given for this crime? Because it was treason not to do it. I don't know of any nation in the world that doesn't have capital punishment for treason. It wasn't merely a spiritual issue for the king. It was for these three young men because their god had preference over all political alliances. He was asking them to say Nebuchadnezzar has more authority over my life than Yahweh God. They knew what the bible said. They knew what the ten commandments were. The very first one you are to have no other gods before me or ahead of me or in my place. The second was you are not to make any statue that represents who I am. They were in a place of spiritual crisis. What can we do? They had to ask themselves is the covenant really true? You see I think the first story is important to all the rest of this book. They had already experienced something of the power of God. So when they came to this event even though it wasn't as big as the first one they had seen God's mighty powerful act in their lives. And I will tell you something it is really difficult to live the Christian life unless you have experienced the power of God. How can you make choices that are going to be difficult for you if you are not sure that God is going to keep His word? He kept His word the first time. And now in this new situation it was not a matter of simply losing, excuse me, it was not a matter merely of losing their job opportunities. This was a matter of losing their life. One of the things you will find about working and living with God is often times the demands He places on you get bigger and heavier, more demanding and more risky. You know why that is? Because He is trying to develop your faith. If you go to someone and say I would like to become a strong person they might take you in and look at your arms and say here lift these 10 pound weights and see if you can lift those 10 times. If you do that then the next time they say okay how about 12 pounds and they keep doing that until you lift so much that you can't lift anymore. They build your strength until you can lift powerful strong things. If God wants to develop your trust in Him He will put you in situations that become more and more risky if you fail. So here they are now, not a risk of their future job but a risk of their very life. The time comes, the instruments play, everyone bows with them. Their enemies have been waiting for this. They report them. They may have thought you know we can get by with it but it didn't work. Their enemies made sure they didn't get by with it. So you know sometimes when you try to serve God and you think well nobody is going to know if I don't. God soon makes sure that we don't get by. They are called before the King and He is now the scripture says furious about this. You know why He is furious? They have said we have someone to rule our life who is more important to us than you the King. This is treason. So He stands before them in this fury. He heats the furnace up. He has someone come to throw them in and even some of those die. The fire is so hot. They are bound but they get in the fire. They walk around. Bindings are burned off. He sees this in amazement at what He has discovered. He brings them out again and their clothes do not even smell of fire or smoke. It is not just that God rescued them from death but He said to the King there is nothing in this world that you can do to my people. And He said to these three men you have no reason in the world to fear any king no matter his power no matter the threats that they make to you. The power of the Lord was demonstrated through their lives. So the King declares the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is greater than anything we know. We want everyone in the whole nation to recognize the power and authority of God. Remember what God said I have set you aside so that all the world might know who I am. And that came to pass. The story is not about these three guys. It's about God revealing Himself to the world and His power and His authority and His ability to keep His promises to His children. And suddenly in the middle of this pagan place even the King who wanted to present Himself as a great God had to say this God is greater than anything in the world. I want everyone to recognize Him. Why did He want that? He didn't want that God to be angry with Him. I want to get on His good side. Now we don't know if He became a follower of God but He certainly became someone who feared this God. Daniel wasn't involved in that and we don't know exactly why. But he didn't escape the story. As time went on Daniel rose from one place to another in a great place and soon the Medes and the Persians took over the kingdom, the Babylonian kingdom, and Darius was the new king. He was so pleased with Daniel he was ready to make him Prime Minister, that is the ruler of all the nation under the King. You can imagine now the resentment and bitterness that comes in this political division. When people are fighting for the presidency of our country they say nasty things about each other. They dig up all the dirt that they can. That's exactly what they did on Daniel. They came to Darius and said you deserve to be recognized as the most powerful man in all the world. Why don't you make a law that says for 30 days no one can ever pray to anyone but you. He thought they were trying to unify the nation behind him. They had another thing in mind too. They wanted to get rid of a political rival of theirs in Daniel. They knew what Daniel did. He prayed every day. He prayed three times a day. He opened his window so everybody could see him praying. He wasn't afraid or ashamed of that. The law was passed. Daniel just went home and prayed just like he had always done. Nothing changed for him. The punishment was that he would be thrown into the lion's den. The King didn't want that to happen. He never intended this to occur but he couldn't change it. Daniel is thrown in all night long. King worries about him. He's afraid he's going to be eaten. This guy that he sees as the leader of his nation, he could depend on. Daniel was a straight guy. He told the truth and he lived the truth and the King wants that for someone at his right hand, especially in a climate where there's so much infighting going on. He goes down and Daniel is safe. He throws the guys that have put this together. Before they and their family hit the ground, the lions are so hungry now because God has kept them from eating Daniel that they devour them immediately. That's done to let us know that the lions didn't eat Daniel not because they weren't hungry. It was because of the power of God to say no to lions who are hungry and they stop. The covenant promise of God that I'm going to protect you could not be more clearly demonstrated than in this picture. God to helpless people who simply did what they were told to do by God found that God stepped in in circumstances beyond their control and did something that no human in the world could do. Now what God asks of us is to say, I accept you Lord as the ruler of the universe. I accept you as the Lord of everything around and I personally yield myself to you. When a person comes to become a part of our church, we put them in the baptistry and I ask them to tell us what Christ is to them and they say, Jesus Christ is my Lord. This is the term that Ezekiel used 56 times. I want you to know that I am the Lord and the word Lord means the boss, the ruler, the king, the ultimate authority of the world. So when a person stands in this baptistry and says, Jesus Christ is my Lord, what they're saying is I'm going to do everything God tells me as best I can. No matter what the apparent consequences might be, I'm going to live like these people. What God wants in it is for that person to begin to live as God directs them and their friends say, you sure have changed. You're not the same person you used to be. I had a friend one time who came back to Great Ben after he'd been gone years in a class reunion. He was sitting down talking to someone who had been in his class and they were having a good conversation. This is a lady and she said, well, I really enjoyed talking with you. You know, in high school you were a real jerk. He came to find Christ. His life was changed. Now the opportunity he had was to say, I'll tell you why I'm different. This is what God expects of all of us. He expects us to live life in such a way so that people will look at us and say, you are different, different than me, different than people around, even different than you used to be. It may not be that you change from a wicked criminal to an ordinary nice person, but it means that God transforms you to be like himself. From wherever you are, he begins there and begins to transform you. Simply this way. You read the Bible about what God says you should do, then you say, okay, God, I'm going to put that in practice. And day by day, moment by moment, God begins to change the way you think about things, change the values that you hold, change the things that are important to you. You don't ever have to live against what you want. You just suddenly find your desires changed because you're reading the scriptures, you're listening to what God says is true, and you are open to God's direction in your life. That's the transition God wants to make. Now he says, what I want from you is all the people who work with you, I want them to know you're different. I want your family to look at you and see that there is something different about you. I want your friends to see that. And what I want to do is to show my character, my nature, in your life. That's what I want. His goal is to transform the world, the whole world, starting with the people you know. And he does that because you've entered into this contract with him. I will live in obedience to you, putting into practice in my life the things you tell me that are right, allowing you to take out of my life the things you say that are wrong. And as we live this life day by day, people will begin to observe that there's something different. One time we had a lady visit our church, she fell out of a car and I called her after she'd come and said, we're glad to have you, why did you come to our church? And she said, I work with the lady who started going to your church, and she's so different, I said, I've got to go to that church and see what makes her so different. That's what God's goal is for all of us. It may not be that dramatic for you, but I will make you this promise, if you will let God control your life, he will change you, and the change in your life will influence others. That's his goal from the very beginning. I want you to be holy as I am holy, that they might know who I am. He's trying to reveal himself to the world, and he's doing it through us. And all of these things come when you make choices that are difficult and hard. Sometimes they'll be impossible it seems, sometimes they'll be terrifying, sometimes they'll be simple. But as you consistently keep the promise you make to God, in this baptistry, Jesus Christ is my Lord, I'm going to let him tell me what to do and I'm going to do it. When you keep that promise day after day, then God is able to reveal himself and begin to influence and change the people who know you. That's his goal. Your story will not be written in the Bible like Daniel's, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but it's written in God's book. It can be written in one of two ways. It can be written like the nation of Israel, or Judah, and God says, you're such a disgrace to my name, I've wiped you off the books. Or it can be like Daniel and his friends, and a story told over and over, and the lives of people changed. What God does for all of us in the world is calls us to say, I want you to be a part of this great transformation of the world that I'm involved in. I want you to be a part of it. Here's my deal. I'll make a contract with you. If you will trust me enough to say, I give my life to live in obedience to you, to read what you have to say, to take it as the instructions for my life, and I'm committed to live in obedience to what you tell me, no matter what happens, then I will guide you in all the choices of your life. I will provide every need that you have. I will protect you from the things that will crush you, and your life will be a blessing to those who know you. That's what God's promise is. I wonder if you can say that you have made that commitment to God. Can you point to a time in your life in which you said to God, from now on, this moment on, I'm going to listen to you and make it the priority of my life to live as you tell me. I don't mean join the church, or come to the front, or be baptized in the water, take communion. I don't mean any of that. I mean inside of yourself you say to God, I want to live day by day doing what you tell me is right. I can't do it without your help, but I believe like these guys in the Bible, that if I try, you will make it possible. You've never done that. God opens the door of his kingdom right now to you. He wants you to be like Daniel. He wants you to be like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ordinary people who made the right decisions because God told them to, and it changed the world around them. Would you bow your heads please for a moment? When you get up every day, is your first thought, what does God want for me? Or what do I want to do today? This tells you something about yourself. Do you come to make choices? Do you make choices based on what you want, what you enjoy, what's fun? Or do you say, God, what do you want me to do? This marks a difference between someone in covenant relationship with God and someone who's out there on their own. What I'm inviting you to do today is to change that, to say to God, beginning at this moment, I want to make a contract with you. I give my life and its future to you, to live as you direct me, and I trust you to care for me. I'm going to fail you, but I'm never going to stop trying. You make that promise to God in your life? If you haven't, would you make it now? How do you know what God wants? Suddenly inside of you, in your mind, you think, well, I ought to do this. I ought to make that promise to God. You may even feel like, I ought to go up there and tell this man, this woman, the promise I've made to God, and ask them what to do next. You may even feel like, this is something that I want my life, my family, and all my friends to know. Don't be afraid of those thoughts. Those are thoughts from God. He's guiding you, just like these guys. He's waiting for you to say, I'll do it, no matter how scary it is. I can tell you, every one of these guys were scared when they faced these choices. All of us are. But do you trust God, or trust your fears? Father, I'm asking for each of us that you would tell us this day, in this moment, what you want from us. We want to live in obedience to you, so tell us exactly what you want. I ask, Father, that if there are hesitations or fears that come up, that you would assure us that you're going to give us everything we need to be victorious and successful in this life. In the name of Christ, I ask this. I'd like you to ask God now, what do you want me to do? I want to ask the pianist to play. I want to ask you to think about what God's asking. If you know that he wants you to make him a promise, and you feel this urge to come and talk to me about that, or to talk to Marla, this is your time to do it. The God of the universe is discussing your life with you. He wants to save it. Amen. Amen. Marilyn, Meredith Ramsey has asked to speak with you just for a moment. Come on up, Meredith. She grew up in our church, and all the things that we try to teach young people. We don't all live all those things that we want to do, but she wanted to share with you something that she's experienced in living with God. So, first off, I'm up here to, I guess, thank God for all of the undeserved blessings that he has given me lately. You guys know about some of them, and some of you don't know, but, well, first off, I had Lennon in, well, now it's 2014, so 2013. I had Lennon in March, and she was healthy, and that was just a blessing, and then I got a teaching job, and in October or November, I started the process of buying a house, and everything with that has gone smoothly, and I haven't had to do anything, and there haven't been any bumps, and then in December, Brock and I got engaged, and we're going to get married, and so God has definitely blessed me within the last year, and then, also, I've been wanting to tell all of you for a long time, just, I'm going to probably start crying, that I'm very thankful for all of the support and love that you have shown me. You know, I've made mistakes, and you guys didn't, you still loved me anyway, and that's very, I appreciate that very much, and you love Lennon and I, like we're your own, and you guys are my family, and I love you guys very much. God does take our lives, however we live them, and the choices, some of the choices you made were not good in your life, but like David, you recognized those, and you turned around and started the right direction, and there's no greater example we have than people who have made choices that are bad, and then make choices that are good and faithful to God. We're thankful for you. Would you stand, please, for a moment of prayer together? You have the ability, Father, to turn around our lives, even if we start in the wrong direction, and we stop and say, wait a minute, I want to go a different direction. You can make a new life for us. Merit us a living example of how you do that. We're thankful for a family of believers that support, encourage, and help people who are trying to live this life of faithfulness to you. I ask, Father, for every person who's made this promise to live in obedience to you, that they would discover this life of God's blessings. He does this, I know you do this because you want to show the world you're generous, loving, and kind, and that you save and change us. So may that happen in every one of us who made this promise to you. Dismiss us in your grace and mercy and peace, and let the words you've spoken to us today never leave us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.