Let us focus on thanking God for His sovereignty that inspires our hope, peace and power for daily life. Worship our awesome God together and see how knowledge of God's unstoppable purpose, goodness, and power enables us to live confidently and thankfully in uncertain times.
Let us focus on thanking God for His sovereignty that inspires our hope, peace and power for daily life. Worship our awesome God together and see how knowledge of God's unstoppable purpose, goodness, and power enables us to live confidently and thankfully in uncertain times.
It is good to worship the Lord with you this morning. If we've not had a chance to meet, my name's Dwight, I'm one of the pastors here at Westtown Church. As a church we have just finished a sermon series on the book of Nehemiah and this morning we're going to begin a three week sermon series from the book of Daniel that is going to focus on how we can derive hope and peace and strength for the uncertainties of life by resting in the reign of our sovereign God who controls all things for the good of his people and for his glory. And we're going to be talking about the whole issue of conflict and struggle and difficulty in life. And I know that there's a certain sense where we might prefer that God would make everything go really well in our lives, that there would be no problems, there would be no difficulties, that we would have everything that we desire and that things would just run smoothly all the time. Now, that's pretty much a description of heaven to a certain extent. We know that isn't going to happen here in fullness, but let me ask you a question If your family was going to pick a movie to watch or you were going to pick a book to read.
Speaker 1:Would you be inclined to watch a movie or read a book where the characters in the book always got what they wanted, that they faced no problems or difficulties and that things were always rosy? It would be a bit boring, wouldn't it? Now, when folks make movies or they write books, there's always a sense of conflict in the book or the movie and there is always some sort of resolution within the story as we experience it. And if that's true in literature, why should we bristle against it? If God, our Creator, seeks to write episodes of conflict and strife within our lives, that he might bring about a greater sense of our trusting and looking to him and all things you know, if you were to look at some of the characters in the Bible that are known for enduring conflict and suffering Joseph who, as a teenager, his brother sold him to slavery, and Job, who had his 10 children and all of his belongings taking from him, and a matter of moments those two guys immediately come to mind. And if you were to ask them in mid-story hey, would you like to exit stage left here? I think both of them certainly would have said yes. In fact, we know Job would have said that because in Job, chapter 3 and Job, chapter 10, he says it would have been better if I had never been born than to endure all this trouble and difficulty that I am facing. But if we would fast forward, if we would have an opportunity to imagine ourselves in glory speaking to Jacob no excuse me speaking to Joseph and Job, and we were to ask them was it worth it? I believe that they would both say, without hesitation absolutely. I think they would honestly admit that they would have preferred not to endure the difficulties and hardships that they did, but they were grateful that the Lord didn't grant them that wish and, in fact, that they went through it.
Speaker 1:So we're going to look at the topic of conflict and strife in life and how that aligns with the sovereignty of God. Now, when we talk about sovereignty, what do we mean? Well, we mean that God's in control, that he reigns as king over all things, and in the book of Daniel, three things come into prominence God's wisdom is far superior to earthly wisdom. It is the best. God knows what is right. The second thing is that God and his power is able to bring about his will, that there's nobody we're going to see a big famous king, not even a big, famous king is going to be able to thwart the purposes or the power of God, and that leads to the last thing that we see in reference to the sovereignty of God is that God's purposes will prevail. In Jesus Christ, we know that we're on the winning side right, even though we may face struggles and hardships and difficulties in this life. Scripture tells us that we are more than conquerors through Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us. And so when we talk about sovereignty, and we especially look in the book of Daniel, these things are in mind wisdom, power and success, or the assurance of success.
Speaker 1:And so we're going to look at the book of Daniel. We're going to be in chapter two. It is a long chapter. I read the whole thing in the first verse, first service. That was a mistake.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to summarize the first part of the of the of what's happening in Daniel, chapter two. And what we see happening is that King Nebuchadnezzar has this very troubling dream, and so he brings together all the wise people in Babylon at the time the wise men, the sorcerers, the enchanters and he issues them this challenge you tell me what I dreamt, then I'll believe your interpretation of what I dreamt, and if you fail to do it, I'm going to tear you from limb to limb. Well, that didn't go over so well as you can imagine, and they're all worked up, they, they plead back and forth with the King that what he's asking them to do is absolutely unreasonable, that no other King has ever asked this, that it can't be done. And the King says Prepare to meet your maker in essence. And so he sends out people to begin gathering up the wise people in Babylon to kill them. Among those people are a young Jewish boy who had been taken into captivity in 605 BC. He was a young nobleman by the name of Daniel, along with his friends Shadrach, meshach and Abednego, as we know them. And they are about to be included in this execution. And so Daniel speaks to the leader of the army as to what's going on. He clues them in everything is happening and he says go tell the king that we'll tell him his dream and give him the interpretation of it. So we're gonna pick up in verse 17,. It's still a long chapter where we begin reading.
Speaker 1:Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, meshach and Azariah, his companions Shadrach, meshach and Abednego and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said blessed be the name of the God of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what it is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. To you, o God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter.
Speaker 1:Therefore, daniel went to Ariach. He was the captain of the guard whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him do not destroys the wise men of Babylon, bring me in before the king and I will show the king the interpretation. Then Ariach brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation the king declared to Daniel, whose name was Belt the Shazzar are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen in its interpretation? Daniel answered the king and said no wise men, enchanters, magicians or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in your bed are these. To you, o king, as you lay in bed, came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me not because of any wisdom that I have, more than all of the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king and that you may know the thoughts of your mind.
Speaker 1:You saw, o king, and behold a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you and its appearance was frightening. The head of its image was a fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out, but not by human hands, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold all together were broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them could be found, but the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream.
Speaker 1:Now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, o king, are the king of kings, to whom the Lord of heaven has given the kingdom, the power and the might and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beast of the field and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all. You are the head of gold. Another kingdom, inferior to you, shall rise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth, and there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because of iron, breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw, the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, shall be divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it. Just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay, and as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with the clay. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdoms be left to another people. It shall break in pieces in all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. Just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain and its interpretation is sure.
Speaker 1:Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him. The king answered and said to Daniel truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a reveal of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery. Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. Daniel made a request to the king and he appointed Shadrach, meshach and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon, but Daniel remained at the king's court.
Speaker 1:Now there's a great contrast that is taking place here between Nebuchadnezzar, who was a king of Babylon. His territory had extended among the greatest of ancient kingdoms. He was exceptionally wealthy from all the taxes that he brought in. He was a king that was heavily involved in building. In fact, one of the wonders of the ancient world is credited to him the hanging gardens of Babylon. He was a man of extraordinary wealth, of great power and great influence, contrasted with a Hebrew slave, a young boy, probably in his teens, who had been taking captivity under King Jehoiakim, who was king under Judah at 605 BC. Daniel served until the third year of Cyrus in 536 BC.
Speaker 1:We know from chapter 10, verse 1. And so here you have, the most powerful man of the known world at that time, dependent upon a Hebrew slave. The king reigns, he has power, he has riches, he has success, but we find him troubled and sleepless. In the first three verses we find him irritable and cranky, making unreasonable demands upon people, for them to tell him what his dream was and then to interpret it. And we find him angry and hostile, threatening their lives to tear them from limb to limb. And then there's Daniel, a young man whose life is threatened, but yet he's not worried, he's not undone, but he relies upon a king who is greater than Nebuchadnezzar himself, and this is how he responds, and reliance upon the wisdom, the power and the assurance that God provides.
Speaker 1:What are we to make of all of this? Well, we should remember, first of all, that this is not a contest between Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel and his friends, but rather it is a conflict between the systems of the world that oppose God and whose wisdom and strength will prevail. So what are we? The conflict raises some very important questions of life right? How do we know what is true? What wisdom or philosophy are we going to follow? Who has the strength and the character to bring about their plan, that it would succeed and prosper to the benefit of all?
Speaker 1:Well, from this passage Daniel's reliance upon God's sovereignty we learn two primary ways that we can give thanks to the Lord, and the first is this that when we realize that God is wise and in control, we will be able to be thankful. I imagine that at some time in our work history that all of us have worked with somebody who was in control and had great power but was very unwise. And sometimes they may give us unreasonable demands and expect unreasonable performance. It's one thing to have the power, it's another thing to have the wisdom to go along with it. In God we find both, Not only his extraordinary power and in control over all things, but he is a God who is wise without limit, and so that gives us great assurance that God is controlling the affairs of all that exists. And chapter two, for instance, in verse 20, daniel was praising the Lord.
Speaker 1:Verse 21, he credits God with things that happen in life. God changes times and seasons. God removes kings and sets up kings. God gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He addresses the king, the most powerful man in the known world at the time, not as the one who achieved that place of his own efforts, but because the sovereign God of heaven placed him there Verse 37,. You, oh, king of the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power of the might and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them. Verse 44,. And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom. You know, as we think of world powers and great civilizations of the past, and what's happening in the present is that the people that rule have been placed in power, ultimately at the sovereign direction of Almighty God, and even the despots have been placed there to achieve a particular purpose that God has for the world, in such a way that God is without sin and in such a way that people willingly do the sinful acts that they do.
Speaker 1:Here abounds with a great theme that the Lord Almighty is in control of all things. And Isaiah 46. We read of the Lord in verse 10, that he is the one who declares the end from the beginning and from the ancient times, things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish my purpose, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken and I bring it to pass. I have purposed and I will do it. And Psalm 47, we are invited to sing praises to God because he reigns over the nations. In Ephesians, chapter one, we have one of the most sweeping declarations that God reigns and his control over all things, where we read that the purpose of him, that is God's purpose, who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Now we chafe at that right. We wanna be the captains of our fate and our souls. We feel like we wanna be these autonomous creatures that can call the shots and dictate the course of our lives and their outcomes. That's the ancient rebellion in the garden, where we wanna become wise like God and we wanna become him.
Speaker 1:Sinclair Ferguson captures Nebuchadnezzar's in the world's hostility to God's control. So well he writes, when these pagan intellectuals casually remind him that they and he were human and not God's. Nebuchadnezzar flew into a rage and reacted in a way that is reminiscent of the words of the 19th century German philosopher, frederick Nietzsche, who said that if there is a God, how can I bear not to be him? Nebuchadnezzar's conflict was the conflict of everyone. He was ill prepared to allow God to show himself to be the God and Lord of all history. He was unwilling for God to be the God and Lord of his life, either as a king or as a human. What haunted him about his dream was that God was saying in it Nebuchadnezzar, your kingdom may be great, but it will fade. It will fade, it will decay. Only the kingdom that I build will stand and last forever. It will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
Speaker 1:Now, in contrast to Nebuchadnezzar or Nietzsche or humanity, struggle with who is in control and who should remain in control was Pastor James Boyce, who pastored 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, pennsylvania, in May 2000,. He was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, and so he wrote a letter to his congregation explaining his diagnosis, and he said to them should you pray for a miracle? Well, you're free to do that. Of course, my general impression is that the God who is able to do miracles and he certainly can is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place. So, although miracles do happen, they are rare by definition.
Speaker 1:Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glorifying himself in history and you say where in all of history has God most glorified himself? Well, he did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn't by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have done so. God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It is not as if God somehow forgot what was going on and something bad slipped by. God is not only the one who is in charge, but God is also good. Everything he does is good. If God does something in your life, would you change it? Well, if you change it, you'll make it worse and it won't be as good.
Speaker 1:So, in addition to seeing that God is wise and in control, the statement about God being powerful and good leads us to our next point that when we embrace that God is powerful and good, we will be thankful Now, just like it's so important that God is not only powerful and in control, but he's also wise and he knows what he's doing. And, admittedly, there are times that we can't figure that out. That's why we need this next part as well, because God is not only powerful, he's good. Now let's take, for instance, if God was only good but he had no power, of what value would he be to us? It would just be this sort of sentimental well-wisher who would desire to help us but lack the power to do so. On the other hand, if God was all powerful and yet he was not good, we would all shudder beforehand. But because he is both powerful and good, we know that his will for us will come to pass and it will ultimately be for good, even though we cannot understand at times what is happening in the present.
Speaker 1:We see this in the way in which God responds to the prayer of Daniel in his friends in chapter 2. Verse 18, Daniel tells his friends to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery. Verse 19, we read immediately that the mystery was revealed to Daniel. God answered his prayer because he is a merciful God. And then verse 21,. To you, o God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom, and might you see, the Lord meets our needs According to his wisdom, according to his goodness, according to his power and at his timeline. We see that God is both powerful and good.
Speaker 1:The prophet Nahum it's a very little book in the Old Testament, and in the midst of a passage of speaking of God's judgment and the world against sin, we read this extraordinary verse about God's goodness. The Lord is good, a refuge, and the day of trouble he cares for those who trust in him. I memorized that verse in a different version. That's why it's different than what's on the screen, but what a tremendous source of hope that when we face trials, when we face uncertainty, when things certainly don't make sense to us, what we can rest in is that, although we can't figure it out, god's will is good and he will bring it to pass.
Speaker 1:In chapter two of Daniel, we read this in verses 44 and 45. And the days of those kings, the God of heaven, speaking of the kingdom that God is going to bring, and the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. Nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. One day, what is right will be made right. Just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand and that it broke in pieces. The iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, a great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain and its interpretation is sure. What's with this statue? What is with the gold and the silver and the bronze and the iron and the mixed clay?
Speaker 1:Daniel's revealing to Nebuchadnezzar that what his dream is portraying are future kingdoms that are going to succeed Nebuchadnezzar. His is the head of gold, but after him will come the kingdom of the Medo-Persians, and then after them the Greeks and after them, ultimately, the Romans. And at that time, at God's appointed time, he, as Galatians 4 tells us, sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law. And it is through Jesus Christ that the kingdom of God will succeed and prevail, and that all who oppose him will be put to shame, as scripture says. This is what the angel revealed to Mary in Luke, chapter one, verse 30 and 33, well, telling her that she would bear a son who would be the deliverer of God's people. The angel said do not be afraid, mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, and he will be great and will be called the son of the most high and the Lord. God will give to him the throne of his father, david, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.
Speaker 1:I Don't know what struggles or difficulties you may face personally or individually. They may be extraordinary and Severe, that they may be tempting you to question the goodness or the power of God and his purposes in your life. I can't tell you why God may be permitting you to go through particular trials or difficulties, but what I can assure you of in Scripture is that God is too wise to do anything wrong and he is too good to do anything bad. Continue to keep your eyes focused upon him, ask him to strengthen your faith where it is weak, and remember that in Christ we will prevail. I Don't know why it is that God works the way he does in certain congregations of people and you might be wondering, you know, looking at West Town's history, recent history, what is it that God's trying to do with previous pastoral transitions, with a bridge that is is crumbling, it's. It's like this Statue its feet are clay and an iron at the same time. And you're wondering what is God doing and why is it taking so long for West Town to find its next pastor? And what's happening with staff transitions and music transitions and all of those things?
Speaker 1:We can become anxious, we can question the people that are involved in making decisions. There are all sorts of ways that we can respond to that from a human perspective. The challenge for us, of course, is to keep our eyes on the Lord and remember that he is wise and, even though he's going a direction that we may think is bizarre, in our individual lives or in a congregation of life, we we can take confidence in knowing that he knows what he's doing, that he has the ability and the power to bring it to pass, and it will ultimately be for the good and the prosperity of his kingdom, and upon that we can hope and rest. Let us pray together.