Week Commencing 11.4.2021

Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 11^th April 2021.

Daniel, A Man Who Would Not Compromise

Hymn

To him shall endless prayer be made,
and princes throng to crown his head.
His name, like sweet perfume, shall rise
with every morning sacrifice.

People and realms of every tongue
dwell on his love with sweetest song,
and infant voices shall proclaim
their early blessings on his name.

Blessings abound where’re he reigns:
the prisoners leap to lose his chains,
the weary find eternal rest,
and all the sons want are blest.

Let every creature rise and bring
the highest honours to our King,
angels descend with songs again,
and earth repeat the loud. Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNjdpdiK24I

Prayer

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Father we thank you that Jesus shall reign, that your Kingdom is coming, and we can stand on the promises in your word in full assurance of all that you have said will come to pass and Jesus is coming back to reign over this world and will bring righteousness and justice to this world.

Forgive us our sins and help us to forgive those who sin against us and not to hold resentment and anger against them, or to want revenge, but to forgive them in the same way you forgive us – completely.

We pray for your mercy on our nation and acknowledge that we have turned away from you and obedience to your commands and we intercede on behalf of our nation. We pray for peace and unity in this land and a turning back to you that the forces of evil which seek to disrupt and destroy will be restrained. We pray for our Queen and government that you will give them wisdom in the difficult decisions they have to make. We pray that in making those decisions they will look to you for guidance rather than relying on human wisdom. We pray for deliverance from this pandemic and for all those caring for those suffering from it. Give comfort to those who mourn the loss of loved ones.

 Now as we turn to your word open our hearts to receive what you would teach us from it today, and challenge us to respond to it. As we look at the example of Daniel may we have the boldness he showed in standing up for what is right and refusing to compromise when it comes to obeying Your word.  In Jesus name. Amen

Hymn.

Give Him the glory, and honour His name 

He reigns on high, enthroned in the heavens 

Word of the Father, exalted for us 

We have a hope that is steadfast and certain 

Gone through the curtain and touching the throne 

We have a Priest who is there interceding 

Pouring His grace on our lives day by day 

We come to Him, our Priest and Apostle 

Clothed in His glory and bearing His name 

Laying our lives with gladness before Him 

Filled with His Spirit we worship the King 

O Holy One, our hearts do adore You 

Thrilled with Your goodness we give You our praise 

Angels in light with worship surround Him 

Jesus, our Saviour, forever the same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6WnLnaQUes

Reading: - Daniel 2:31-45: -

³¹“You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. ³²The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, ³³its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. ³⁴While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. ³⁵Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

³⁶“This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. ³⁷You, O king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; ³⁸in your hands he has placed mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

³⁹“After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. ⁴⁰Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. ⁴¹Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. ⁴²As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. ⁴³And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

⁴⁴“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. ⁴⁵This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy.”

Sermon

I have recently read through the book of Daniel in the Bible again, and it occurred to me that in over 75 years of regular church attendance, I cannot recall ever hearing any sermon on Daniel himself. I’ve heard about Daniel in the lion’s den, the fiery furnace, and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream but nothing about Daniel himself and his faithfulness to God in the face of tremendous trial and opposition. Yet there is so much we can learn from this book and of Daniel that is relevant to our lives today.

Daniel was taken captive when the Babylonians conquered Israel and was taken back to Babylon probably in chains. Put yourself in that sort of situation and imagine how he must have felt. But he was a righteous man of princely lineage who was determined to honour God and not to allow himself to compromise to the world in which he found himself, or be compromised by it. Because of his faithfulness to God and determination to worship and obey Him, God blessed him. He was promoted into service of the king and became a trusted advisor to the king. This led to jealousy by others who were determined to bring him down which ultimately led to him spending a night in a den of lions. But through it all he continued to worship and obey God and refused to compromise to the world and in this, he is an example to us today.

As I was thinking about this, I was struck by the accuracy of his interpretation of the dream God gave to Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel chapter 2. This has led me down a different path to the one I had planned to take for this sermon.  King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that troubled him but like many dreams, when he woke up, he could not remember it! So, he called for his wise men and demanded the impossible. They had to tell him his dream and interpret it, but when they could not, he ordered that they all be executed and that would include Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar was a despot. When Daniel heard about it, he asked for an audience with the King and pointed out the unreasonableness of the King’s commands and that only God could reveal the dream. He then went home, called together friends and prayed about it. During that night God answered that prayer and revealed to Daniel the dream and the interpretation.

All this took place nearly 3000 years ago and today with the benefit of hindsight and historical records, we can look back and see if the dream was true and the accuracy of the interpretation

The head of gold represented the Babylonian kingdom, known as the Neo-Babylonian Empire lasting from 626 BC to 539 BC and became the most powerful state in the world after defeating the Assyrians.

This fell to the Persian empire, (559 BC – 331 BC) in 539 BC and is the chest and arms of silver,

This in turn became part the Grecian empire under Alexander the Great represented by the belly and thighs of bronze.

This was followed by the Roman Empire, the legs of iron.

Each empire ruled much of the known world at that time and was headed up by a king or more accurately a succession of kings.

The coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, actually led to the breakup of the Roman Empire. It was the start of the breakup of these powerful empires or kingdoms. One of the many factors that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire was the rise of this new religion – Christianity. Christians believed in one God whereas the Romans believed in many gods and had adopted many of the gods from Greece but they also saw the emperor as a god. This faith in the one true God weakened the authority and creditability of the emperor.

Notice in this dream that each successive empire was inferior to the previous one. It went from gold, silver, bronze, iron to a mixture of clay and iron. Notice also that in the Roman empire there are two legs. In AD 287 Constantine split the empire into two parts, the west ruled from Rome and the east from Constantinople and this led on to the Roman Catholic church dominating the west and the Orthodox church the east.

In each case this prophecy talks about a kingdom suggesting one king, or centre of government, until we get to the feet where we read in verse 44: - In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.

We are living in the in the time of those kings, in other words many different governments and centres of government and although there have been attempts to amalgamate centres of government or build empires there is still much division and attempts to break up what is united. Clay and iron do not mix and we read: - the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

We live more than ever in multicultural societies, and because of differences in culture, colour and creed there will be inevitably be conflict and division, because everyone thinks that they are right or superior to the other person. To some extent we all have our prejudices so we have race laws and anti-discrimination laws to counter the divisions. The latest slogan – black lives matter – of course in one sense is true but the truth is, ALL lives matter.

We read in 2 Peter 3:9: - God is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. – God’s love is not dependant on your race, culture, or colour.

One of the first songs I learnt in Sunday school 75 years ago was: -

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world

Red and Yellow, Black and white, all are precious in His sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

The fact is regardless of our colour, culture or creed, regardless of our past, sins or failings, we are loved by God. God loves you and me and because of that love, God sent His son Jesus to pay the penalty for every sin for every one of us regardless of our past, every sin is covered by the blood of Jesus if we repent, confess and seek forgiveness. But God has given us a free will and we have the choice as to whether we believe Him or not and where we end up for eternity is up to the choice we make.

The first verse I was taught is John 3:16: - “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. – That word whoever excludes no one.

The amazing thing is that this dream, this prophecy of the future was given by God to a heathen king who had no knowledge of God nearly 3000 years ago. God had already put His man, Daniel, in place to provide the interpretation of the dream. Daniel had refused to compromise his faith, for which God had honoured him so he was in a position to be able to go to this king and not only reveal the dream the king had forgotten but give the interpretation that we can look back on and see has come true in every detail down through the ages. What greater proof do we need of the reliability of God’s word revealed to us in the bible?

We can look back at this dream of this image in Daniel and see that it was not a story or a myth for if so, how could every part to date have come so true with such accuracy over so many years? This gives us the assurance that whatever God has said will come true, His word is absolutely reliable.

We are now living “In the time of those kings”, the time when those feet of part clay and part iron are going to be struck by the rock that is going to be cut out, not by human hands, and will strike those feet of clay and iron and destroy the whole image and the wind will blow it away.

What does this mean, who or what is this rock? It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

What is described in this dream of a rock being cut out without human hands is in fact a picture of the return of Jesus Christ to reign on this earth. He will set up a Kingdom that will destroy all the governments of the world and He will reign over the whole world and every knee will bow to Him. He will reign in righteousness with justice, there will be peace, and He will restore the world to the world God intended for us to live in when He created it.

Jesus said In Matthew 24:44: - So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

In Luke 1:31 we read when the Angel came to Mary he said: - You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”

In Revelation 11:15, we read what is yet to happen: - The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:  “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” So, the kingdoms of the world are going to be replaced suddenly with the Kingdom of God.

How and when will it happen? Suddenly and probably when we least expect it. Revelation 1:7: - Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him.

1 Corinthians 15:51, Paul writes: - Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” – What does this mean?  It means we get a body that can never die, it cannot be destroyed.

This is why Jesus said “You must be ready” And again whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. We will live forever in a kingdom where God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” To quote Revelation 21:4.

But He also said: - whoever does not believe stands condemned. What happens to them?

Matthew 25: 31-34, tells us: - ³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. …

⁴¹“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels….  ⁴⁶“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Revelation 20:10, tells us what that punishment is: - ¹⁰And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

^….5If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life; he was thrown into the lake of fire.

This is why Jesus died on a cross because God does not want anyone to perish in that fire but He has given us a freewill and the ability to choose which He will not violate. He has made the way but it is up to us if we choose to take it. We have seen, in this one example, from this passage in Daniel that God’s word has been proved to be accurate and reliable to date, so why should we have any doubts as to the reliability of what is yet to come?

The Bible teaches us that God keeps records and there are eight references to the book of life, the last are in Revelation 20: 12-15: - And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. ¹³The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. ¹⁴Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. ¹⁵If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

The question I leave you with is: - “Is your name written in the book of life?”

How can it be written there? By believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who died on a cross to take the punishment for your sins.

The promise of Acts 2:21is this: - everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ And that includes YOU, but time is running out if Jesus comes today, where will you spend eternity? Have you called on the name of the Lord? You can make this hymn your prayer right now.

Hymn

I praise Thee, Lord, for cleansing me from sin;
Fulfil Thy word and make me pure within;
Fill me with fire, where once I burned with shame;
Grant my desire to magnify Thy name.

Lord, take my life, and make it wholly Thine;
Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine;
Take all my will, my passion, self and pride;
I now surrender, Lord, in me abide.

O Holy Ghost, revival comes from Thee;
Send a revival, start the work in me;
Thy Word declares Thou wilt supply our need;
For blessings now, O Lord, I humbly plead.