Introduction to the Book of Daniel
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Well, good evening.
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Are you excited about digging in the book of Daniel?
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I tell you what, I have had a great time this week
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digging in, reading, studying the book of Daniel.
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In fact, I've had such a good time tonight, this week, we're gonna have to relegate our time tonight to an introduction to the book of Daniel, okay? But I tell you, this introduction really sets the stage for what we'll be looking at for the next long time, okay?
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I'll try not to make it too long,
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but we're not going to short sheet the word of God, okay?
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Let's begin with the word of prayer.
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Our heavenly Father, it is so exciting
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to open the Bible and to study.
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It's so exciting to study a book like Daniel
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that has been so influential throughout Christian history.
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And I pray, heavenly Father, that you would fill me with the Holy Spirit tonight.
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I pray you would help me to teach the word of God with accuracy, and I pray you'd help me to teach it with clarity.
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I pray, Lord, that you'd speak to our hearts tonight,
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that you would really give us a good framework
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for launching into this study of the book of Daniel.
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Father, I'm so thankful for Daniel and his three friends
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who were so godly and so committed to you. What an example they set for us.
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So Lord, teach us great and wonderful things out of your word,
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that the principles of your word really settle in our hearts and use it, Lord, for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.
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So what's the first thing that pops into your mind
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when you hear the book Daniel? What do you think about?
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(Congregation Chattering)
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(Congregation Chattering)
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The fiery furnace, the lion's den, right?
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We think of visions and prophecies, angels and demons, handwriting on the wall. All of these things pops into our mind, and they are legitimate parts of the book of Daniel.
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I love what O.S. Hawkins said about Daniel the man. He said, "The story of Daniel is the story of a man who understands our challenges.
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It is a story of someone who is confronted
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with the same difficulties and hard decisions that we are called upon to make every day.
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You make these same decisions when you go to work,
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when you go to school, when you go to a friend's house, when you go to a family reunion, you have to make some of these same decisions because it's all about pressure.
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It's about the pressure that was placed upon these four young Hebrews who were parachuted in, you might say,
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to a godless culture."
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And so O.S. says, "God took Daniel out of a comfortable culture where he had been all his life
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and placed him in a godless environment.
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There's a sense in which the same thing has happened in our world today.
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We no longer live in the midst of a culture that shares our convictions.
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We have lost the home court advantage."
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Daniel speaks to us from the pages of scripture.
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He has a lot to say to us today. He provides a lot of do's and don'ts for not simply surviving in an anti-Christian culture,
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but succeeding and truly engaging it to make a long-term difference."
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And what a quote from O.S. Hawkins. Really captures the essence of what we're looking at today.
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You know, Daniel and his friends were carried to Babylon.
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And I would say to you, I would suggest to you that we live in a modern-day Babylon.
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We live in a modern-day Babylon.
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It shouldn't surprise us that among persecuted believers in the world today, two of their favorite books is Daniel in Revelation.
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You say why?
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But because they're looking for God being the winner,
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and they're looking for the hope that the best is yet to come.
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Why is it? Why is it in our Christian culture in America today
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that we don't just absolutely love to study prophecy?
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Why is it that we aren't longing for some of the same stuff that persecuted believers are longing for in their own hearts and lives?
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I would suggest to you that we become too comfortable in America. In the American church, we've become too comfortable.
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We value comfort over commitment.
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And we shy away from the idea of paying a price for our faith.
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Now, that's not to denigrate any Christian in this room at all. It's just a fact.
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But what we're going to learn as we study the book of Daniel is how we can live in such a way
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that we can impact the culture for Christ. And our culture needs to be impacted, does it not?
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Now, why study the book of Daniel?
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Well, first, as OS Hawkins alluded to, Daniel's circumstances parallel our own.
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Think about it. From the time Daniel was a teenager, and by the way, he and his three friends were carried to Babylon in a deportation led by Nebuchadnezzar and his army in 605 BC.
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605 BC.
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And they were teenagers.
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They're 15, 16 years old.
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They're not grown men.
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They're teenagers.
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And when we study, get into chapter one,
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we're going to discover that these guys had a backbone. They had a backbone, a real thick backbone.
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And they've refused to compromise.
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And the pressure put upon them was enormous.
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Okay?
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And so from the time Daniel and his friends were teenagers, until he died, he died about the age of 90.
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So let's say 15 to 90, he served under a series of pagan kings,
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and he never had the luxury of living in a country surrounded by people who believed as he believed.
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So from this book, the book of Daniel,
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I believe that we can draw some very distinct principles for how we can live in our culture,
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in an anti-Christian culture.
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And I think that it will help us and it will fortify us to be who we should be in this time where we live.
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Now, the second reason we should study the book of Daniel is because his prophecies concerning the end times and the future may soon be fulfilled.
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And I believe, let me say this to you. We are, let's count it up, 2,600 years further along toward the fulfillment of these prophecies than it were when Daniel wrote them.
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Think about it.
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I think sometimes we in the church, we get the idea that this stuff is never going to happen. I'm gonna tell you, every prophecy in the Bible will be fulfilled absolutely and perfectly.
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You can count on it.
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Now, if that's true, and it is,
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don't you think that we should be students of prophecy?
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I remember when we first went into the new building,
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man, I was fired up. I said, I'm gonna preach verse by verse through the book of Revelation.
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And I did, I preached verse by verse through the book of Revelation.
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And do you know, some families chose to leave the church because I was preaching through Revelation.
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That's a fact.
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It's a fact. Why?
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Why do we not wanna know what Jesus and the word of God says about the future?
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Why would we wanna be ignorant when it comes to these kinds of things?
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So we're going to study, in fact, the second part of the book,
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chapter seven to chapter 12, it's basically fully prophecy.
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Now there is prophecy in the first six chapters,
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especially chapter two.
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So we're going to dig into these, we're not gonna be sensational.
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I'm not gonna try to make the Bible say things that it's not saying. I just wanna take the word of God and teach you the word of God and teach you these prophecies and show you how the fulfillment of these prophecies could be very soon.
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Now I can't predict dates, you know that. Nobody can predict the date of the fulfillment of the great prophecies of the Bible. I can't tell you when Jesus is coming,
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but I can tell you he's coming. I can tell you, as I said a moment ago, we are 2,600 years closer to the fulfillment of these prophecies you find in the book of Daniel than we were when Daniel wrote them.
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So we need to pay close attention
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to the prophecies that are included in this book.
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Now, there's a third reason we need to study the book of Daniel.
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The book of Daniel highlights the fact that God is sovereign.
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He is absolutely sovereign.
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The Bible says, and I think it's Psalm 18 verse 10, I think,
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the Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all.
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I read this morning in Psalm, let me find it.
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Yeah, Psalm 24 verse one, look at this. The earth is the Lord's and all it contains,
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the world and those who dwell in it.
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Everything belongs to him.
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He's a creator God. He created you and your mother's womb.
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He created you with your personality.
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He created you with your specific DNA.
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The Bible says, if you're born again believer
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in Ephesians chapter 2.10, that you are his workmanship.
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That word workmanship in the Greek means a work of art.
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Your work of art, you're special to him. He made you special, he's got a, the Bible said for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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God's got a purpose and plan for your life. If you're born again believer, he has specific things he wants to do in and through you to bring glory to himself.
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So the theme of the book of Daniel
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is the sovereignty of God. We'll visit that a little later in our session tonight.
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So we need to know that God is sovereign over nations.
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You know the Bible says in Jeremiah
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that God plants nations and God uproots nations.
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Have you noticed there's no Roman empire today?
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Have you noticed there's no empire in the nation of Greece anymore? These were talked about here
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in the book of Daniel and so forth, but they're not here anymore, why?
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Because God's sovereign. Do you know there's no, there are no Philistines on the earth today? There are no Hittites.
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They're not here folks. Why? Because God uprooted them and God wiped them off the face of the planet because they had become so immoral and so ungodly.
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This should be a wake up call for our nation.
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God planted this nation.
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And God has a sovereign power and authority
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to uproot this nation at any time. God has the power and sovereignty to put a ruler into place and to take a ruler out of that position.
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We'll certainly see that in the book of Daniel.
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He's sovereign over families and individuals.
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Now listen, he's in charge of the past
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the present and future.
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He never makes a mistake.
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Hey, one of the verses I'm memorizing
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is Jude 24 and 25, one of the great benedictions in the Bible.
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And it speaks to the sovereignty of God.
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Let me show it, read it to you. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling. Aren't you glad that the sovereign God is able to keep you from stumbling?
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From stumbling spiritually,
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from stumbling morally? Aren't you glad that God is able to do that?
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Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy,
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to the only God our savior,
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through Jesus Christ our Lord. Listen, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.
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That's sovereignty.
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God is sovereign.
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Now sometimes we look at the world
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and we wonder who's in charge.
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There's a lot of crazy things going on in the world today.
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People think a lot of crazy things.
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Well, I can tell you who's in charge.
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God's in charge.
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And one day, one glorious day,
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the kingdoms of this world, according to Revelation, I think it's chapter seven, the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
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The sovereignty of God.
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Well, what's the setting for the book of Daniel?
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I really threw out a net far and wide to study and get ready for this introduction. And I ran across a pastor by the name of Ray Pritchard.
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He pastored a church in Chicago for years.
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And now I think he lives in Tupelo, Mississippi.
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And Ray Pritchard put together a concise depiction of some of the contextual realities surrounding the book of Daniel. I'd just like to share some of those with you right now.
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So Daniel lived approximately 400 years after David.
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Now David lived around 1000 BC.
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So Daniel and his friends lived approximately 600 BC.
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And Daniel lived 600 years before Jesus was incarnated.
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Now when the book opens, we find Daniel and his friends being forcibly taken from their homes and families in Jerusalem and deported to Babylon.
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Now I want you to get this now. Don't miss what I'm about to say.
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Babylon in the Bible is always a symbol and underline the word always.
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It's always a symbol for an evil pagan world system.
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Always.
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We find a, just turn to Genesis chapter 11 a moment.
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This is the first mention we have of Babylon, Genesis chapter 11.
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Have you ever heard of the tower of what? The Bible.
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Look at this.
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I'll tell you how this evil world anti-God system manifested itself early on after creation. Look at it.
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Now the whole earth used the same language in the same words.
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It came about as they journeyed east that they found a plane in the land of Shinar, that's Babylon, and settled there.
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They said to one another, "Come let us make bricks, burn them thoroughly."
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They used brick for stone, they used tar for mortar. And they said, "Come let us build for ourselves a city "and a tower whose top will reach into heaven "and let us make for ourselves a name. "Otherwise we will be scattered abroad "over the face of the earth."
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In verse seven, the Lord comes down, he says, "Come let us go down there "and confuse their language "so that they will not understand one another's speech."
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So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city.
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Therefore its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth and there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. So it all started there in Genesis chapter 11, but let me tell you, it's gonna end over here in Revelation chapter 17 and 18. Take your Bible, just go with me over here to Revelation chapter 17 and 18, just a moment.
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Notice the heading in my Bible for chapter 17 of Revelation is the doom of what? Babylon. Notice 17 verse one, "Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls "came and spoke with me saying, "come here and I will show you the judgment "of the great harlot who sits on many waters
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"with whom the kings of the earth "committed acts of immorality "and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk "with the wine of her immorality." Notice verse 17 verse one, "And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness "and I saw a woman sitting on the scarlet beach "full of blasphemous names, "having seven heads and 10 horns.
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"The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet
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"and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls "having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations "and of the unclean things of her immorality. "And on her forehead, "a name was written, a mystery,
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"Bablin the Great,
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"the mother of harlots
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"and of the abominations of the earth."
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Well, I think you get the picture there. In chapter 18, the heading is, "Bablin is fallen."
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The great world system of Babylon is fallen. What a picture we have here of Babylon.
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Then that's where these guys were taken.
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That's where the Jews were deported. You think anti-Semitism started in the 21st century?
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Oh, don't fall for that lie. Let me tell you, it started a long, long time ago.
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Let me tell you, it started a long, long time ago.
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We might say it. It started with Egypt.
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When a new Pharaoh came into power
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and Joseph, a Jew, had been so instrumental in saving the entire nation of Egypt and the peoples of the world that time from a famine.
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But a new Pharaoh came to power
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who didn't know anything about Joseph.
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And the Jewish people had grown and grown and grown and multiplied and multiplied and multiplied.
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And this Pharaoh was scared of them.
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So he enslaved them.
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He treated them horribly.
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And you know, that's why God sent Moses to deliver the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage.
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There again, we see the sovereignty of God.
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So the book of Daniel covers the period from about 605 BC to 530 BC.
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During his life, God allowed Daniel to serve under succession of Babylonian and Persian rulers.
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So he went from being a deported hostage
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to becoming a trusted prime minister and counselor to some of the mightiest rulers in history.
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It's amazing how the sovereign God used these four young men with Daniel in the head.
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I've got a map here in your notes.
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You can see the extent of the Babylonian kingdom.
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I mean, it had really grown under Nebuchadnezzar.
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And then you see the Median Empire here. You see Elam.
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Elam is Iran.
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It's Iran.
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So I just wanted you to get a picture
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of the extent of the Babylonian Empire.
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Now, listen to these words. They're found in 2 Chronicles 16, verse nine. "The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that he may strongly support those whose heart is completely his."
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That's a powerful verse of scripture.
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What does the Lord bless some people more than others?
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Absolutely.
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Some people are more blessable than others, right?
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I believe there are people whom God literally pours out his blessings upon because he can trust those people with the blessings he gives them.
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He knows there'll be good stewards of his blessings.
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God's standard for blessing is not who's the best looking,
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who has the most money,
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who is more gifted or who's more deserving. No, God's standard has always been the heart, the heart.
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Why did God pick David to be the king of Israel over his brothers who towered above him in physical size?
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Why?
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Because of his heart.
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He had a heart for God.
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Now, when you see the word heart,
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you need to know that we're not talking about a physical beating heart.
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We are talking about the center of a person's life, his physical, mental, emotional, volitional and spiritual life.
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Listen to what the word of God says about the importance of a person's heart.
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Proverbs 4.23, "Watch over your heart with all diligence,
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"for from it flow the springs of life." 1 Samuel 13, 14, "The Lord has sought for himself a man "after his own heart."
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Matthew chapter five verse eight, "Blessed are the pure in heart."
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Matthew 22.37, "You shall love the Lord your God "with all your heart, with all your soul,
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"and with all your mind." All right, let's just hit a pause button just a moment.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Do you have a heart for God?
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Do you really wanna please God?
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Do you wanna honor him?
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Do you wanna grow closer to him?
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Do you want the Holy Spirit to do what the Holy Spirit's ministry is in your life and that is to conform you to the image of Jesus?
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Is that your heart's desire?
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Let me ask you, don't you want to be able to stand before the Lord one day and hear him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
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I can't think of anything better to culminate one's life than to hear the Lord say that to us. (Congregation Applauding)
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We serve a great and awesome God, a sovereign God.
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We must never, as believers, as a Christian church,
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we must never think that the world is out of control. It's not.
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I'm gonna show you in just a moment.
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The Southern Kingdom of Judah,
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of which Daniel was a part and Michelle and Azariah and the other one, I can't remember his name.
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They were a part of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
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Now remember in 722 BC,
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the Northern Kingdom had been taken into captivity
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in Assyria.
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And now here it is, 605 BC around there.
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And the Southern Kingdom is about to experience the judgment of God.
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You see the Southern Kingdom of Judah
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didn't pay any attention to what had happened in the Northern Kingdom.
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The Northern Kingdom had become immoral.
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Adolatrous.
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God sent prophet after prophet after prophet to warn them to repent.
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And they refused to repent. In fact, instead of repenting, they just went deeper and deeper and deeper into the sewer of sin.
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Now you would think that the Southern Kingdom of Judah would have seen that and refused to go down the same road, the broad road that leads to destruction as Jesus called it.
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But evidently they didn't pay any attention to it. Now there were some really good kings there in the Southern Kingdom.
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Hezekiah was a great king, godly king.
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There was a revival under Josiah.
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But as time went on,
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more of the kings of the Southern Kingdom totally ignored God.
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And the same idolatry and immorality that infected the Northern Kingdom infected the Southern Kingdom.
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And once again, God sent prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet
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to relentlessly warn his covenant people in the Southern Kingdom of Judah that judgment is coming.
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Judgment is coming. God will judge his people. That was a message. So by the sovereign hand of the Lord, the nation of Babylon was raised up to be an instrument of God's judgment.
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Now Habakkuk was a contemporary of Daniel.
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They ministered about the same time.
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And if you read the book of the prophet Habakkuk, and if you read the book of the prophet Habakkuk,
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God told him that judgment's coming.
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And Habakkuk just couldn't believe that God would use such a wicked godless nation as Babylon to bring judgment upon God's people.
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But I love the way the book of Habakkuk ends.
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Hey, take your Bible just a minute.
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What time is it?
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Oh, we got some time.
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In Habakkuk,
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chapter three,
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page 1316,
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in my Bible.
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Let me just,
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there's some verses I have marked in this prophecy.
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Here's what Habakkuk said to God about Babylon
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being used by God to judge the Southern kingdom.
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In chapter one, verse 12, "Are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? "We will not die. "You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge.
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"And you, O Rock, have established them to correct. "Your eyes are too pure to approve evil,
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"and you cannot look on wickedness with favor.
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"Why are you silent when the wicked swallow up "those more righteous than they? "And then you go over to chapter two, verse 14.
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Habakkuk says, "I'm gonna stand on my guard post, "and I'm gonna watch what's happening. "I'm gonna keep watch."
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And in verse 14,
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"For the earth will be filled with the knowledge "of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."
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You don't think that's the sovereignty of God?
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And then chapter three,
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verse two, "Lord, I have heard the report about you "and I fear. "O Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. "In the midst of the years, make it known. "In wrath, remember mercy."
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Now, I want you to look at verse 17.
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Here's what Habakkuk says at the end of the book.
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"Though the fig tree should not blossom,
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"and there be no fruit on the vines.
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"Though the yield of the olive should fail,
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"and the fields produce no food.
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"Though the flock should be cut off from the fold,
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"and there's no cattle in the stalls. "Yet, I will exalt in the Lord. "I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
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"The Lord God is my strength,
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"and he has made my feet like hind's feet,
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"and makes me walk on my high places." Wow.
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What a change from the prophet Habakkuk
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from the moment he started writing his prophecy
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until he came to the end of it.
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He realized that God has a sovereign right to judge any nation, even God's covenant people,
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by a nation more wicked than they.
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Here's a question.
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If God judged America,
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would you stay faithful to him?
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Would you?
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Could you say what Habakkuk said?
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I think sometimes we have an entitlement mentality.
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We're entitlement. Have you ever seen teenagers who have an entitlement mentality?
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You ever seen adults who have had an entitlement mentality?
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I deserve this.
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I'm gonna go there, nevermind.
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Nevermind. I'm gonna back off that one.
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All right, look at page five again in our notes. So in 605 BC,
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their army, I can just get off in a position where it's hard to recover, so I've gotta be careful.
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In 605 BC, the army of Nebuchadnezzar took captives from Israel and carried them to the great city that Nebuchadnezzar had built, and I'm referring to the city of Babylon.
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This was the first of three invasions and deportations.
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First in 605 BC. That's when Daniel and his three friends were deported to Babylon.
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And then there was another invasion and deportation in 597 BC.
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And another one in 586 BC, and in 586 BC, that's when the Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple was absolutely demolished.
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586 BC.
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So as part of Nebuchadnezzar's policy
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for dealing with conquered nations,
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he took some of the brightest, wisest,
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best-looking Hebrew young people and included them in that first deportation.
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By the way,
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critics, they're always critics who only call into question the Word of God. And there've been these critics who say there's no way that Daniel could have written the book of Daniel.
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You know why they say that? Because his prophecies came true to him,
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right down to the nitty gritty.
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They said, how could he know the future? God knows the future. God knows the future.
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You see, secular people
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wanna take a secular framework to the Bible.
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And you can't do that.
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The Bible is a supernatural book. It is God's inspired Word. It is God-breathed. (Congregation Laughing)
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So Nebuchadnezzar took Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Michelle and Azariah,
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and he brought them to Babylon.
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Now, don't you just think about that just a moment.
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Here are four 15-year-olds.
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They grew up in a Jewish home.
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They grew up in temple worship.
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They were discipled by their parents.
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And suddenly, they were ripped away from their families.
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They were ripped away from their culture, from their religion, and they were transported to a strange new land with a new language, new customs, a new political system, new laws, and a new religion.
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Can you just sort of put yourself in their place?
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They had to be overwhelmed, absolutely overwhelmed.
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John Lennox, by the way, I'm a fan of John Lennox now.
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John Lennox is a brilliant student of the Word of God. He teaches at Oxford in England.
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He's a mathematician,
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and he debates some of the most prolific atheists on the planet, John Lennox.
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And he wrote a book on Daniel, and I got it today.
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But I watched some videos by John Lennox as he talked about Daniel.
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And here's what he observed.
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He said on page five,
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"What would become of that vision
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"that God had embedded in his covenant people "if Jerusalem were to be sacked "and the lineage of David eliminated "and the lineage of David eliminated?
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"Would the promise of Messiah have to be relegated "to the bulging dustbin of failed utopian ideas?
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"What about God himself?" John Lennox said.
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"Could he, so to speak, survive such a failure?"
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How could Daniel and his friends any longer believe that there was a God who had revealed himself to their nation in a special way?
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If God is real, how could a pagan emperor like Nebuchadnezzar violate the sanctity of God's unique temple and get away with it?
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Why did God do nothing?
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As you notice the title of John Lennox's book,
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"Against the Flow,
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"The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism." We live in an age of relativism.
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What's true for one person is not true for another person.
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We live in an age where in a higher echelons of education, they're taught that there is no absolute truth
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and they're absolutely wrong.
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There is absolute truth. (Congregation Chattering)
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And to make the claim that there's no absolute truth is in itself a contradiction of what they just said.
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You hear what I'm saying?
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Look at Daniel chapter one, verse one and two.
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"In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim,
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"King of Judah," by the way, these scholars and these critics who question Daniel's authorship and the date of Daniel and all this kind of stuff, it's interesting.
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The archeologist found
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a thing that had the fact that Nebuchadnezzar
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took captives from Judah in 605 BC,
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written thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, and they just found it. Also, there's a guy that's gonna be mentioned later on in the book called Ashpenaz.
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He was the head of the eunuchs.
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He was a right-hand man.
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He was the executive pastor for Nebuchadnezzar.
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And the critics said, there's no such person in history named Ashpenaz.
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Then the archeologists found a little cuneiform thing
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and guess what was on the cuneiform?
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Ashpenaz, the leader of the eunuchs for Nebuchadnezzar.
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I'm telling you, you would be amazed
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at how archeology keeps proving over and over again the authority and the integrity of the word of God.
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So my suggestion to you,
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just believe the Bible.
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Just believe it. The core value of this church
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is that the Bible is our final source for faith and practice.
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I'm telling you what I'm not gonna do. I'm not gonna waste my time trying to prove critics wrong. I'm gonna spend my time teaching you the word of God.
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That's what I'm gonna do.
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Every once in a while I'll throw a bone to you like I did with this archeology stuff.
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Just to let you know that I'm not a dummy, okay?
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All right?
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So Daniel chapter one, verse one, in the third year. So he just nails down the time right here. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, you say, well, how do we know what that is? Because Jews kept meticulous records,
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meticulous records, genealogies.
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In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
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605 BC.
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The Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand,
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along with some of the vessels of the house of God and brought them to the land of Shinar,
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to the house of his God.
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And he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God.
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So the first thing that Daniel reveals to us, right from the get-go in his book,
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he reveals that God is sovereign.
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It's the Lord. Notice, it's the Lord who gave Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar couldn't do that without God giving him into his hand.
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It's the Lord who allowed this pagan king
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to take some of the holy vessels from the temple in Jerusalem and to deposit them in the temple of his false God in Babylon.
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What a startling claim this is.
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I've got a little saying here, to say that God is intimately involved in history, even sovereign over it, was a radical in your face challenge to the secularists of Daniel's day, but also to our day also.
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Right here in our own nation. Right here in our own nation.
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The nation of America.
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History is continually being rewritten.
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There are those who chafe at the idea that God was somehow involved in America becoming a nation.
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But God is over history.
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God is involved in every aspect of life.
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So in these verses,
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Daniel establishes in a very clear way the sovereignty of God.
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Look at Daniel chapter two, here's some examples.
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In Daniel chapter two, verse 20, Daniel said, "Let the name of God be blessed forever "and ever for wisdom and power belong to him."
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You know who he said that to?
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Nebuchadnezzar.
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Daniel chapter two, verse 37, "You, O king," speaking to Nebuchadnezzar, "You, O king, are the king of kings,
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"to whom the God of heaven has,"
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oh, you see that?
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"To whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, "the power, the strength and the glory." He said, here's what Daniel's saying to Nebuchadnezzar. Everything you got, God gave it to you.
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He gave it to you.
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You're a pagan king,
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but God has allowed you
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to be the king of Babylon and to have this power
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and to have the adulation
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of basically the whole world at that time.
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And then Daniel 4.17,
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this sentence, remember what Nebuchadnezzar did? He got so full of himself, so prideful, and one night he got out on his porch there and his massive palace,
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and he looked out over Babylon and his kingdom, and he said, "Look what I've done." I'm paraphrasing. "Look what I've done."
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And God pronounced judgment on him.
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And God turned him into an animal for seven years,
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for seven years.
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And then God restored him.
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So in Daniel 4.17, this sentence is by the decree of the angelic watchers,
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and the decision is a command of the holy ones, in order that the living may know, get this now, look at it. In order that the living may know that the most high is ruler over the realm of mankind,
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and bestows it on whom he wishes and sets over it the lowliest of men.
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Look at Daniel 5.18.
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This is Belshazzar.
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You've heard of the handwriting on the wall.
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This is King Belshazzar. You know what Belshazzar did?
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He was having a party.
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He invited all the nobles of the kingdom,
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and the wine was flowing, and the women were everywhere. And Nebuchadnezzar sent,
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and he took the holy vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had brought, his grandfather had brought from Jerusalem, and placed in the temple of his false God.
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He sent and took the holy vessels,
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and they were drinking wine out of the holy vessels of God.
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And there was suddenly a hand writing on the wall,
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announcing judgment to Belshazzar.
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Look at chapter 5, verse 18, O King, this is what Daniel said to Belshazzar.
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He said, O King, the most high God granted sovereignty, grandeur, glory, majesty to Nebuchadnezzar, your father.
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I'm telling you, from the first chapter of Daniel to the 12th chapter of Daniel, it's all about the sovereignty of God.
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Don't ever forget that God is in charge.
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David Jeremiah wrote this,
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all the ancient kingdoms of the world are passing away.
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And the kingdom of heaven is coming to pass.
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Throughout the world, the most high reigns. As this old world reels and rocks on its axis, it is good to remember that it only does so because the God of heaven lets it happen.
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All the ancient kingdoms of the world are mere illustrations of the frailty of mankind and fickleness of human government.
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They demonstrate that there's only one king.
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There's only one king who can ever rule.
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That's King Jesus.
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One day he's coming back to this messed up world.
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He's going to set up his kingdom
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and it will never again be like it is now.
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Jesus shall rule and reign forever and ever and that's the message of Daniel.
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I close with these two verses, Daniel 2 44.
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In the days of those kings,
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the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed
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and that kingdom will not be left for another people.
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It will crush and put to an end all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.
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That's the kingdom of God.
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Hey, if you're born again believer, if you've repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus as your Savior and your Lord, you are part of that kingdom.
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You're part of an eternal kingdom ruled by the perfect king, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Daniel 7 13 and 14.
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I kept looking in the night visions
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and behold with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man was coming
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and he came up to the ancient of days.
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That's God the son coming up to God the father
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and was presented before him and to him was given dominion to Jesus, was given dominion, glory in the kingdom that all the people's nations and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away in his kingdom as one which will not be destroyed.
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Oh my goodness.
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I could just have a hissy fit up here.
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Man, aren't you glad that you're saved?
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Hey, listen, if you're in this room
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and you've never repented of your sin and placed your faith in Jesus,
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I beg you, I beg you, do it tonight.
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Hey, just bow your head just a moment. If you're in this room and you say, pastor, I don't know for sure if I'm a part of the kingdom or not.
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I wanna lead you in a prayer.
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Now, just praying a prayer is not gonna save you.
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It's not gonna get you to the kingdom. Only Jesus can get you in the kingdom.
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Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through me.
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Jesus said, I am the door
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and there's no other door.
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You're not gonna go to heaven because you're good.
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You're not going to heaven because you came to a study of Daniel on a Wednesday night.
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Listen to me very carefully.
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You must turn from your sin
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and place your faith in Jesus alone.
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If you'd like to settle that tonight, just pray this prayer. Bible says this in Romans 10.13, "For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved."
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But you gotta mean it.
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Just pray something like this. You don't have to pray out loud. You can just pray in your spirit.
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Heavenly Father, thank you
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that you sent your son to save us from our sin.
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Thank you, Father, that you were willing to sacrifice Jesus to save us.
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Thank you, Father, that you raised Jesus from the dead.
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Tonight I admit to you, Lord, I'm a sinner
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and I need forgiveness.
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I need eternal life. Lord, would you hear my prayer? Would you do a work in my heart tonight? Lord, tonight, Lord Jesus, I believe that you're the son of God.
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I believe that you died on a cross for my sins. I believe that you were raised from the dead.
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And Lord Jesus, I'm willing
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to turn from living life my way.
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To put my faith and trust in you alone.
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Lord, save me.
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Forgive me.
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Give me the gift of eternal life.
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And I ask you to do it in your name and your name only, Lord Jesus.
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Amen. Now listen, if you prayed that prayer
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and you really meant it,
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I want you to come up and I want you to talk to me. Let's talk about it.
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I'm gonna ask, Gil, would you come up here just a minute and is Ed Reed here?
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I mean, the young Ed Reed?
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Oh, it's in the other class, okay.
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Brother Bob, can you come up here just a minute?
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Yes.
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Now look, we're gonna be here, we're gonna hang around up here.
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And if you wanna talk to one of us about your relationship with Jesus, we'd love to talk to you, okay.
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Thank you for being here tonight. You could be a million different places, but you chose to be here.
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Now next week, we're gonna dive into chapter one.
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This is the introduction, all right.
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I hope to see you next week. Invite somebody to come with you, okay.
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Father, thank you for our time together.
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I pray that you would take what we've studied tonight, I pray you would use it to frame up our lives and help us to be the men and women that you want us to be.
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Father, we thank you that you're sovereign.
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You are sovereign over everything and everyone. You're sovereign over history, you're sovereign over leaders, you're sovereign over nations, you're sovereign over families, you're sovereign over individuals, you're sovereign over everything, Lord, thank you.
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And I thank you Lord that one day,
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you're gonna say it's enough, you're gonna send your son
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and the kingdom of God will be consummated in Christ Jesus.
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Lord, we love you in Jesus' name, amen.
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Thank you.
