Sermon - December 28, 2014 - The Story Week 23 - Jesus' Ministry Begins

An announcer for a college basketball game was commenting on the skills of a player. The announcer shouted, “He’s scary good!” When we see professionals who accomplish outstanding athletic plays we often say, “Who is that guy?” or “How can he do something like that?” This guy is scary good, it probably true in every profession. There are some who are just that good, that smart, that good at what they do that it looks like it comes so easy for them.

When Jesus Christ came into public ministry, people made these kinds of statements:

Who is this?

How can He have such wisdom?
How can He do that?
How did He stop the wind and calm the seas?
How did He heal that person?

Jesus Christ was, indeed, scary good.

They had never seen anyone do anything remotely in the realm of the things Jesus was doing. They had never heard anyone teach with the authority that Jesus taught with. They never saw anyone so kind and so bold. Jesus was scary good and was unlike any person they had ever seen.

Please open you Bibles to Matthew.

Matthew 3:16-17

“¹⁶ After Jesus was baptized, He went up immediately from the water. The heavens suddenly opened for Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on Him. ¹⁷ And there came a voice from heaven: This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him!”

I have been part of a fair number of baptisms and I have yet to see a response like this. The heavens opened up and a voice bellows from the heavens, “This is My beloved Son. I take delight in Him!”

If Jesus really is God’s son, then why did He need to be baptized?

Baptism is something that we as sinners do. It is an act representing the cleaning we have received from Jesus. But here Jesus wades into the water to be Baptized, He was born in a common womb, raised in a common village, in a common profession, and now He the Son of God steps into a common river. He steps into the waters of the Jordan River and tells John the Baptist, that it is right for us to do this. It is the way for ‘us’ to fulfill all righteousness.

Being baptized was another way for Jesus to identify with us, after all He is 100% human in addition to being 100% God. Jesus was showing that all who accept Him should be baptized. After all He came to earth to show us how to live our lives.

From baptism to wilderness, from the waters of the Jordan to the desert sun, Jesus was tempted. During his 40 days in the desert Jesus in essence reenacted the temptation from the Garden of Eden.

Matthew 4:1-11

“4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. ² After He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He was hungry. ³ Then the tempter approached Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

⁴ But He answered, “It is written:
an must not live on bread alone
but on every word that comes
from the mouth of God.”
⁵ Then the Devil took Him to the holy city, had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶ and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written:

He will give His angels orders concerning you,
and they will support you with their hands
so that you will not strike
your foot against a stone.”

⁷ Jesus told him, “It is also written: Do not test the Lord your God.”

⁸ Again, the Devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹ And he said to Him, “I will give You all these things if You will fall down and worship me.”

¹⁰ Then Jesus told him, “Go away, Satan! For it is written:

Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only Him.”

¹¹ Then the Devil left Him, and immediately angels came and began to serve Him.”

Every person on the face of this planet has wondered about the origin of evil. How do we explain evil? Why do people do the things they do? Where do our angry words and hurting hands come from? How about our hateful hearts, what caused them to be this way?

If we trace evil to its source we will find the devil. According to scripture, satan is not a myth, or some crazy idea. Satan is real and he is looking for ways to separate us from God, he is the great divider.

The devil is a divider, a separator, that is his mission, to divide us from God. If you see communities divided, families splitting, hearts divided, it is the work of satan. When you see people who are separated from God, you see the work of satan. Think back to Genesis when the snake approached Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Satan succeeded in separating Adam and Eve from God and in the verses we just read Jesus is asking for a rematch. This time around the rematch is with the perfect Adam, or the second Adam.

I can almost imagine Jesus telling satan, ‘I know what you did to my friend Adam and his wife Eve. Come give Me your best shot.’

Jesus did not give an inch. Satan tried but got nowhere. Every time Jesus speaks, He speaks about God and satan was unable to create a wedge between Jesus and God. Every time Jesus is challenged by satan, Jesus talks about God, talks about living on the Word of God, and talks about the Lord your God. Jesus is so focused on God and doing His will that satan cannot break through. Jesus is strong in His relationship with God.

Satan came to divide, and he tempted Jesus to take matters into His own hands. Jesus doesn’t fall for it and during this ultimate showdown between good and evil; heaven and hell; right and wrong; Jesus and satan, there is one clear victor. Jesus wins and satan runs away with his tale between his legs.

The devil tried to take Jesus out by giving his best punch, but Jesus didn’t even blink. Jesus won, and was scary… Jesus was scary good!

Later we find Jesus being confronted by the devil through the religious leaders of the day.

You might be surprised that some of satan’s best followers on earth are religious leaders. We see it throughout the Bible. Pastors, priests, rabbis, and religious leaders throughout history have been attacked and tricked by satan. They are his number one target. That is true today and was true when Jesus walked the earth as a man.

There was something like 6,000 religious leaders known as Sadducees or Pharisees. Many of these guys did not like Jesus and were out to get Him. Jesus said they cared more about the praise of men then they cared about the praise of God. Jesus’ teaching was different and they were scared and became angry and jealous. So they decided to get back at Him.

Luke 6:6-11

“⁶ On another Sabbath He entered the synagogue and was teaching. A man was there whose right hand was paralyzed. ⁷ The scribes and Pharisees were watching Him closely, to see if He would heal on the Sabbath, so that they could find a charge against Him. ⁸ But He knew their thoughts and told the man with the paralyzed hand, “Get up and stand here.” So he got up and stood there. ⁹ Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you: Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do what is good or to do what is evil, to save life or to destroy it?” ¹⁰ After looking around at them all, He told him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. ¹¹ They, however, were filled with rage and started discussing with one another what they might do to Jesus.”

‘what they might do to Jesus’ is also translated as ‘how they might kill Jesus’. The religious leaders of the day wanted Jesus’ head.

Jesus just performed a miracle right in front of their eyes and they want to kill Him? Witnessing a miracle like that should cause a different reaction. Applaud Him, thank Him, worship Him, why not find every person around with a similar issue and bring them to Jesus? Satan had already separated these religious leaders from God and they completely missed what Jesus was doing.

Not all the religious leaders of the day were separated from God. One example we are given is a man, a Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus.

John 3:2-16

“² This man came to Him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one could perform these signs You do unless God were with him.”

³ Jesus replied, “I assure you: Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

⁴ “But how can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked Him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”

⁵ Jesus answered, “I assure you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ⁶ Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. ⁸ The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

⁹ “How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.

¹⁰ “Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied. ¹¹ “I assure you: We speak what We know and We testify to what We have seen, but you do not accept Our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about things that happen on earth and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about things of heaven? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. ¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life.

¹⁶ “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Nicodemus a high ranking leader of the Pharisees came to Jesus and admits that Jesus must be from God. There is no other explanation for all the miracles that Jesus has performed. Nicodemus sensed there was something different about Jesus and wanted to understand His teachings better. By the sounds of it Nicodemus was surprised by what he heard.

Jesus told him that he needed to be ‘born again’. This is obviously not something anyone would have understood back then. I wonder what was going through his mind. Probably something along the lines of ‘I could not control my first birth, if a second birth were possible, how would I have any say over it.’

Maybe as Nicodemus pondered these things and listened to Jesus talk he would have realized that Jesus was not just saying you can have a second chance, but a whole new birth. Essentially Jesus was offering to do spiritually what his parents did for him physically. Being born again by the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life would mean that he was part of the family of God.

Jesus was not offering a mulligan or a second chance, He was offering a miracle, a new birth! This is where the rubber meets the road, where God’s Upper Story and our Lower Story collide.

A miracle happens when a person accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they are given a wonderful gift and become a new creation. At that moment in time the old sinful self dies and the new ‘born again’ creation replaces it.

2 Corinthians 5:17

“¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.”

We may look the same, and for some time we probably sound the same. But at that exact moment an incredible gift has been given, a gift of a new eternal life with God.

Why would God do something like this?

John 3:16

“¹⁶ “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”

As we have seen on our journey through the Bible, God Loves You and He wants to spend forever with you!


God Bless and Happy New Year!

Robert

Sermon - December 21, 2014 - Merry Christmas - The Story Week 22 - The Birth of The King

Merry Christmas!

We have all seen Christmas pageants with the little boy who comes in as Joseph dressed in a bathrobe and sneakers. He anxiously taps on the door to the inn and the innkeeper, dressed in a toe-sack robe answers, indicating that there is no room in the crowded inn. The innkeeper looks at Mary, shrugs and Joseph and Mary are turned away.

But what if…what if there is an interruption in the Story? What if a voice calls out to the innkeeper asking him if he knows who he is turning away? Does the innkeeper really want to be known through history as the one who turned Jesus away? But we can’t change the scene can we? If we did, so much else would change, too. No angels singing in the sky. No announcement to shepherds to look for the Savior in a manger.

John 1:14

“The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

‘The Word became flesh’

The Greek word for Word is Logos. About 500 years before Jesus’ birth a philosopher by the name of Heraclitus from Ephesus made this famous statement. “You cannot step twice into the same river.” By the time you step into a river and then step out of it, and enter again, the river has changed. It’s the same way with life, it is always moving, always changing.

Plato once said, ‘some day there will come forth from God a logos, a Word, who will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain.’

300-400 years latter John writes these words.

John 1:1-3

“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created.”

John is placing Jesus in the beginning. He is letting everyone know that Jesus Christ did not begin in Bethlehem. Jesus has existed as long as God has existed. This was a new thought back then, as long as God has been, Jesus has been.

How did God create the universe, ‘with words.’ He would say ‘Let there be’, and there was. John is saying, do you know who is saying ‘Let there be?’ It was the Word, the voice of Jesus speaking. Paul would later support this by writing.

Colossians 1:15-16

“¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him.”

Think about it, we have spent 21 weeks reviewing the Old Testament, did Jesus’ life begin in Bethlehem?

When Abraham gave an offering to Melchizedek, some scholars say he was giving an offering to a manifestation of Jesus.

Was it Jesus who was wrestling with Jacob and made his hip come out of its socket?

When Joshua fell on his face and worshipped the one who called Himself the commander of the armies of the Lord, was it Jesus?

In the fiery furnace who was the 4^th guy with Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego?

Jesus with Abraham, Jesus with Joshua, Jesus with Jacob, Jesus with Daniel’s friends, and now Jesus with us. Jesus, the Word, became flesh and made His dwelling among us. He isn’t part man and part God, not ½ man and ½ God, He is 100% man and 100% God. He is at once fully man and fully God. So pure, that He could be born of a virgin.

Luke 1:34-35

“³⁴ Mary asked the angel, “How can this be, since I have not been intimate with a man?” ³⁵ The angel replied to her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”

What a perfect beginning for the earthly ministry of Jesus. He was divine enough to enter a womb entirely on His own, yet He was human enough to have no room in the inn.

His father, Joseph, was just a regular guy. He did not have any clout, very little cash, no strings to pull, and no friends to call. Jesus, the maker of the universe, the One who invented time, the One who gave you the breath you just took, was so humble that His parents could not get a room in Bethlehem. Even though His mother was obviously pregnant and ready to give birth, there was no room for them. How humble is that for a beginning?

Jesus is humble enough to know what you’ve been through this week. Humble enough to know what keeps you awake at night. Humble enough to know the hunger pains of every child who goes to bed without dinner. Humble enough to understand the prayers of the sick, the homeless, the rejected, and depressed.

Our Lord Jesus does not sit around watching us saying ‘I wish they would get their act together.’ He remembers the pain of a hungry belly and the chill of a cold night. He knows the story about how his parents were turned away and rejected when in need.

The Word became flesh. He entered our world to feel what it was like to be you and me. He truly knows what it feels like to be cold, hungry, beaten, and crucified. Jesus is God who became flesh.

How did the world respond to the God who became flesh?

John 1:10-11

“¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was created through Him, yet the world did not recognize Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.”

The innkeeper wasn’t the only one who turned away Jesus, just the first. Wouldn’t you love to talk to the innkeeper and find out what he was thinking? Why put a pregnant woman in a barn with animals? Couldn’t he find some place in his inn for them?

Maybe he thought it was too crowded already. After all with the census going on, there were a lot of people heading to Bethlehem. The town was jam packed as was probably every inn in it. He may have been thinking if I let them in and she gives birth I will have a horrible mess to clean up. Letting them in and the birth of the baby will most definitely wake up everyone and that will upset my customers who have already paid me. Maybe it was just too late and the innkeeper was already in bed and did not want to get up.

Heck, maybe the innkeeper looked at Joseph and Mary and thought they were nothing special so he decided not to trouble himself. After all they were humble peasants not wealthy royalty. It could have come down to them not having enough money to pay for the room and the innkeeper not wanting to give them a break.

In the Book of Luke it tells us, ‘there was no room for them in the inn.’ Bethlehem was crowded.

Even now, the world is still so crowded that Jesus is pushed away. The demands of life get in the way. Crowded with things we need to do and crowded with things we wish we had not done. Crowded with headlines which may make our hearts, spirits, and minds feel overwhelmed. There are also deadlines, phone lines, and long lines, full itineraries, full schedules, jam packed lives, and even concerns over our waist lines. Crowded, our lives are packed, our calendars are full, and our list of responsibilities continue to grow.

Mary and Joseph knocked at the innkeepers door and Jesus comes in the midst of our crazy lives and knocks on the door of our hearts. Too often our response is I don’t have the time, my life is too busy, I have kids to shuttle around, a job that keeps me busy, a spouse who needs me, doctors appoints to keep, homework to do, house to clean. I don’t have the time with all these responsibilities. Life is crowded and what the innkeeper did not realize and what we need to get into our hearts, minds, and spirits, is the fact that Jesus Christ does not come into our lives to complicate them, He comes to simplify them.

Your life is already complicated enough. The presence of Jesus in your life does not make things complicated; it is the absence of Him in your life that adds the difficulty. When we invite Jesus into our hearts he brings Love and Peace, not a long list of things for you to do.

Jesus does not come into your life telling you what you have done wrong and what you need to do to get your act together. He comes into your life because we cannot get our act together on our own. He comes not with a to do list, but a list of things that He has already done for you.

2 Corinthians 5:21

“He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Jesus comes knocking with your sins forgiven, because He dies on the cross and received the punishment for your sin. Every sin you have every committed or will commit, Jesus has already paid the price for them.

Jesus’ list of things He has already done for you is His Christmas gift to you.

John 14:27

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Your heart must not be troubled or fearful”

Jesus has given us peace beyond our understanding to take away our troubles and fear.

John 15:11

“¹¹ I have spoken these things to you so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

Jesus does not want us being dragged down, He has given us joy.

John 15:12-13

“¹² This is My command: Love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.”

The Love of Jesus is complete and He laid His life down for us.

Romans 6:23

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The most important gift Jesus has given us is that He paid for our sins and given us eternal life. This gift allows us to spend eternity with Him!

Jesus is offering these gifts, all you have to do is let Him in to your crowded life. Don’t be too busy or too full to let Him in. It is never too crowded or too late to open the door to Jesus.

It is never too late to invite Jesus into your life. We don’t have to clean up our act first. It was not too late for Abraham at 100 years of age, not too late for Moses after 40 years wandering in the desert, it was not too late for Jonah running from God, it was not too late for Saul of Tarsus who persecuted Christians, it was not too late for Peter who denied Jesus, or for Thomas who doubted.

It is not too crowded and it is not too late to meet Jesus, the Word, our King and Savior. He came to earth as a little child for every single one of us so that He could give us the gifts of Peace, Joy, Love, and Salvation.

Merry Christmas and God Bless!

 

Robert

PS. We are back on The Story please read along with us. Chapter 23 is next.

Sermon - December 14, 2014 - The Story Themes of the Old Testament

On June 1^st we began a journey through the Bible using The Story. We spent 21 weeks going through the Old Testament and I continued to be surprised at how fast it went. We have taken a short break from it, but I wanted us to spend some time reviewing some of the key themes we have seen.

It has been a bit so I want to start with a reminder that as we go through The Story we are reminded of the Lower Story and the Upper Story. The Lower Story is the things we deal with on a daily basis. It is the choices and decisions we make. The Upper Story is God’s big plan, tied to His supreme passion of wanting to spend eternity with us and how it works out in our lives.

In Genesis we saw that God created everything in the universes.

The opening verse, Genesis 1:1, introduces us to the Story’s main character: God. 

Genesis 1:1

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

See God is not something man dreamt up or He is not something that can be explained through evolutionary theory of a ‘big bang’. God is the main character of our Bible’s and as it tells us right here He existed before time, He always was, The Creator, and a God with a plan.

God created everything out of nothing. He created order and wonder out of chaos.

Day 1 –Light and Dark

Day 2 – Sky and Water
Day 3 – Land
Day 4 were the Sun, Moon, and stars
Day 5 was the birds and creatures of the sea
Day 6 was all of animal kind and human beings

Genesis 1:27

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

The crowning accomplishment of all creation was God’s core passion, and that is that people were made in God’s image. In God’s opinion all of creation regardless of how remarkable or beautiful we say it is dulls in comparison to you. God’s sees you as His ultimate creation.

God’s supreme passion is to be with us at all costs.

Think about that for a moment. The God that existed before anything else, the God that existed before all of creation, the God that existed before the creation of the universe, the God that already exists in a loving community as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wants to spend time with you. You may not feel like God is with you, maybe you wonder if He has forgotten all about you, but Genesis 1 tells us something different. There is not even the slimmest of chances that God has forgotten or overlooked you. His supreme passion is to be with you at all costs. The entire Bible is about God’s passion of being with you.

God created you to be with you!

Adam and Eve were essentially given a choice and as we know, they chose to eat of the forbidden fruit and to turn away from the life that God had created them for. God’s vision to be with His ultimate creation was ruined. He had to take His plan to the next step and begin the process for restoration. The rest of The Story, the rest of the Bible is about God’s pursuit to get us back.

The life of Joseph, the son of Israel, is a great example for how God works in the Upper Story while we are living in the Lower Story. Remember Joseph was the favoured son of Israel and had a simple life of reading scrolls and hanging around Mom and Dad while his brothers were out tending the fields and herd. Life for Joseph went from great to real bad.

He was kicked over and over again. His brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery. He ended up as a slave in Egypt. When things started looking up and going good, he was falsely accused and ended up in prison. He was lucky he did not end up dead. He helped out a fellow prisoner and was forgot about. Joseph had every reason to be angry at the world and God. Instead we find that Joseph continually honored God and God blessed him for it.

Joseph was sold into slavery.

Genesis 39:2

“The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, serving in the household of his Egyptian master.”

Joseph was thrown into prison.

Genesis 39:21

“But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him. He granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.”

Joseph was summoned to Pharaoh.

Genesis 41:15-16

“¹⁵ Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said about you that you can hear a dream and interpret it.” ¹⁶ “I am not able to,” Joseph answered Pharaoh. “It is God who will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”

God blessed Joseph and he became the number 2 man in Egypt and that is when we see how the cruddy stuff that Joseph lived through in the Lower Story was paving the way for God to work in the Upper Story. After all of the hardships Joseph ended up exactly where he needed to be to save his family and the new nation of Israel.

The story of Joseph reminds us that God is at work in all the details of our lives to accomplish His purposes.

Romans 8:28

“We know that all things work together for the good for those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.”

Knowing that God is working in our lives even when things seem to be crumbling around us, allows us to honor Him and remember that we need to look to the Upper Story and see what God has in store.

Remember God loves you and He wants to spend eternity with you!

Daniel and his three friends showed us a couple of very important things, we need to keep our Christian identify and we need to have faith. Remember they were strangers in a foreign land like we are foreigners in the world we live in.

1 Chronicles 29:15

“¹⁵ For we live before You as foreigners and temporary residents in Your presence as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.”

We are strangers in a foreign land where violence is on the rise. You can’t watch the nightly news without hearing about something horrible happening.

We are strangers in a foreign land where greed seems to impact everything around us.

We are strangers in a foreign land as morals and ethics continue to deteriorate and people don’t worry about who they hurt.

We are strangers in a foreign land where over 1 million babies are murdered each year through abortions.

We are strangers in a foreign land where faith is no longer important, and many people Christian and non-Christian think there are many paths to heaven.

These things seem pretty foreign to me.

1 Peter 2:11-12

“¹¹ Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and temporary residents to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you. ¹² Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that in a case where they speak against you as those who do what is evil, they will, by observing your good works, glorify God on the day of visitation.”

We are strangers in a foreign land and we need to learn how to live in this foreign land and continue to retain our identity and to be seen as the Children of God. Peter tells us to ‘abstain from fleshly desires’.

Part of the Babylonian strategy to force captured people into their society is to separate them from their people, change their names, and train them in Babylonian culture, history, language, ethics, morals, and religion.

It started with something as simple as food. Part of changing their culture was to give them the best food and wine from the kings table. At first glance it sounds like the king is being a good host. The problem was that food and wine from the kings table would have been offered to pagan altars. Daniel and his buddies did not want to eat or drink food or wine that had been offered to idols. To some that is worship and to many it would have been viewed as accepting the idol worship. They requested a special diet and God blessed their health, which allowed them to avoid the king’s food. Daniel and his friends continued to live as strangers in Babylon.

Then we see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being threatened to be thrown into the blazing hot furnace because they would not bow down to the statue of the king. Instead of cowering to the threat they had faith and spoke boldly about the power of the One True God.

Daniel 3:17-18

“¹⁷ If the God we serve exists, then He can rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and He can rescue us from the power of you, the king. ¹⁸ But even if He does not rescue us, we want you as king to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up.”

Talk about having faith! They say plainly that our God can rescue us from the fire and from you Nebuchadnezzar. They had faith that would get them through just about anything that this world can come up with. What did God do, He honored that faith and protected them.

Then Daniel would not stop praying to God and was thrown into the lion’s den. King Darius was so upset with this that at first light he ran to find out if God protected him.

Daniel 6:20-22

“²⁰ When he reached the den, he cried out in anguish to Daniel. “Daniel, servant of the living God,” the king said, “has your God whom you serve continually been able to rescue you from the lions?” ²¹ Then Daniel spoke with the king: “May the king live forever. ²² My God sent His angel and shut the lions’ mouths. They haven’t hurt me, for I was found innocent before Him. Also, I have not committed a crime against you my king.”

Daniel was faithful to God and God was faithful to Daniel. Daniel and his friends showed the world that being strangers in the world is not a bad thing as long as you have faith in God. We to can live as strangers in the world, with the presence and power of Jesus Christ. With His help we can be ‘in’ the world, but not ‘of’ the world.

Through our journey through the Old Testament we have seen many, many things.  I think these examples remind us of the common themes.

God Created You to be with You!

God Loves You more than anything and He wants to spend eternity with You!

Live for God not the world!

Trust in God every day!

I am looking forward to us re-starting our journey next week, Christmas Sunday with chapter 22 The Birth of The King!

Thanks for Reading - Merry Christmas!

Robert