Last week I spoke from second chronicles about the rediscovery of the law in the temple just a few years before they went into captivity. I want to continue in that same direction today. Like Josiah’s day, the church has been captive to non-biblical ideas and ways of doing things for a long time – since long before I was born. I believe God is beginning to prepare some of his people for the task of rebuilding the body of Christ so that when the nation we live in is finally judged for its iniquities there will be a remnant of the people of God whose faith is built upon the whole word of God and who can demonstrate enough wisdom in the midst of the foolishness that surrounds them that they will be able to lead the people in righteousness in every area of life.
I’m sure you’ve heard me pray for God to give us eyes to see. We can’t move in the things of God unless we see them. God could be moving in people’s lives right next to you, even in your own family but if you don’t have the eyes to see it you will miss what God is doing. I want to show a short video that will demonstrate how easy it is to miss what is going on right in front of you. Now if you have seen this video before don’t say anything to ruin it for everybody else.
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php
So, what is it going to take for you to see the gorilla of what the Holy Spirit is doing here, now in our midst? You can live for years without seeing it but once you do you can never go back to seeing things the same way again. I have tried several times to watch that video and not see the gorilla like the first time but I can’t do it, I can’t go back to the way it was.
It was the same way for me with the understanding of the Sovereignty of God, with the law of God, with the moving of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives. Once I got a glimpse of a new way of seeing things I couldn’t go back again. That is a part of what it means to begin to think Christianly in every area of life.
In my own life, I did not begin to understand the importance of the law of God until I was 25 years old. I had never even considered that the law of God was meant to be applied to my life before that. I certainly never thought of it as the path to life. I couldn’t see the gorilla because I was too busy looking at other things. When I saw the gorilla of the law my life was changed forever because I could no longer go back to the scriptures and look at them the old way again. My eyes had changed. Scientists call that a paradigm shift. Something clicked in my head which allowed me to see that the law applied to me, that it was meant for my good and I had to repent of despising God’s word and learn to embrace it.
You see when I was younger I had a passion for God. I hungered after God. I wanted God to do things but I wanted God to do things on my terms. I wanted to play the god game using my rules. And my rules were that the law didn’t apply: That the Old Testament wasn’t for me; that repentance just meant asking for forgiveness; that becoming more like Christ didn’t mean giving up doing the sin that I loved so much. You see I didn’t want to be set free: I just want life to be easy and the trip to heaven to be cheap. But the truth is life isn’t easy and getting to heaven is anything but cheap – it costs your life. You have to die on the cross. You have to take up your cross and die daily. If you don’t die to you, you don’t get to heaven.
You can be saved and still be a mess. In fact, you should be a mess at the beginning of the journey just like a newborn baby is a mess when he or she comes out of the womb. There is a lot of cleaning up and growing up to do from the time you’re born until the time you arrive in the presence of God the father.
Seeing your true condition can be a precursor to repentance and change. I had to come to grips to what I was really like and how messed up I really was before I became willing to change. It was another gorilla that I had to recognize. I had to make another paradigm shift so that I could view reality more fully and live in keeping with the truth of reality.
I want to go back to second Chronicles today and begin to develop this theme some more. We read last week that during the time of Josiah the church rediscovered the law. Josiah had a heart for God early on in his life which is kind of weird because he didn’t come from a good Christian family. You can read about the evils of his daddy and his granddaddy in chapter 33 of 2nd chronicles.
And yet in spite of his family life, early on Josiah begins to have a heart for God. Verse three of chapter 34 tells when he was 16 years old he began to seek the God of his father David; and by the time he was 20 he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the graven images that were throughout the land of Israel, or in reality throughout the church, because Israel is a type, a picture of the church. He has a passion for God even without the scriptures. Remember up to this point the law has been lost and that was all of the word of God there was. So in some sense he is working solely by the unction of the Holy Spirit here. But then at the age of 26 God uncovers the word of God for him, the law is found and when he hears it for the first time he tears his clothes in mourning for the condition of the church.
But, even though Josiah had a heart for God, when trouble came knocking on his door he was still too young and too unfamiliar with the path of life to have acquired biblical wisdom. I can finally admit this on the brink of fifty looking back on my own life: Having a heart for God doesn’t keep you from the consequences of being stupid and acting like a fool. God calls us to wisdom and very few of his people make it there. Josiah’s lack of wisdom cost him his life. He rushed into war to protect his nation against the very words of God. He died in the process. And yet God used him to lay a path for those who would come after his death.
Some time in the 39 years between the death of Josiah and the fall of Israel to Bablyon, probably about midway through those dark times, Daniel is born and his parents or somebody raise him with the knowledge of the law, and to be humble before God. From what I can gather, Daniel was somewhere around 14 when what we read in Daniel chapter one was written: 1 During the third year of King Jehoiakim’s reign in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 3 Then the king ordered his chief of staff, to bring to the palace some of the young men of Judah’s royal family and other noble families, who had been brought to Babylon as captives. 4 “Select only strong, healthy, and good-looking young men,” he said. “Make sure they are well versed in every branch of learning, are gifted with knowledge and good judgment, and are suited to serve in the royal palace. Train these young men in the language and literature of Babylon.” 5 The king assigned them a daily ration of food and wine from his own kitchens. They were to be trained for three years, and then they would enter the royal service. But Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods. 9 Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel. 10 But he responded, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has ordered that you eat this food and wine. If you become pale and thin compared to the other youths your age, I am afraid the king will have me beheaded.” 11 Daniel spoke with the attendant who had been appointed by the chief of staff to look after them. 12 “Please test us for ten days on a diet of vegetables and water,” Daniel said. 13 “At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king’s food. Then make your decision in light of what you see.” 14 The attendant agreed to Daniel’s suggestion and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his three friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who had been eating the food assigned by the king. 16 So after that, the attendant fed them only vegetables instead of the food and wine provided for the others. 17 God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams. 18 When the training period ordered by the king was completed, the chief of staff brought all the young men to King Nebuchadnezzar. 19 The king talked with them, and no one impressed him as much as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the royal service. 20 Whenever the king consulted them in any matter requiring wisdom and balanced judgment, he found them ten times more capable than any of the magicians and enchanters in his entire kingdom. 21 Daniel remained in the royal service until the first year of the reign of King Cyrus.
Now too often we make what Daniel did about eating healthy and not consuming alcohol but to do so is to miss the point. What we consume with regard to food and drink only defiles us if it breaks God’s commandments. In the time before Christ some foods were considered by God to be unclean. And they remained so until Christ atoned for their uncleanness on the cross. What Daniel did was obey the law of God that was in effect at that time. He refused to eat those things which would defile him in God’s eyes. This passage is not about the evils of desert verses the holiness of vegetables or liquor verses water. It is about honoring God in the midst of pagans. It is about choosing to think and act with the wisdom of God instead of the foolishness of men.
Daniel trusted the word of God. He trusted God. He trusted God enough that he was willing to have his captors put him to the test. Daniel was also wise enough at this young age to have compassion on others. He doesn’t want to see his guard punished for not doing what he was told to do. So he offers to let God prove himself to the captor’s satisfaction.
Notice how he acts toward his unbelieving boss: He says please. He puts the ball in his court. “Please test us for ten days and then see how we look compared to the other young men. Notice that Daniel doesn’t pray about this. You don’t need to pray about whether you should obey the Law of God or not. It is God’s will that you walk in obedience, period.
Daniel understood that God was big enough to make people do and see what he wanted them too. He knew that God would honor the keeping of his word. He trusted God to actually DO SOMETHING. So he wasn’t afraid of putting the ball in his boss’s court. He knew that God determines the outcome and he trusted God enough to believe that even if the outcome didn’t fit into his own preconceived notions it would be ok.
How many of us trust God that much? How many of us trust that no matter what happens in our lives we can rest in the fact that God has our best interests at heart? Or are we quick to say ‘do your will oh God’ and then even quicker to hold a grudge against God when his will doesn’t match up with our will. How many of us in here have a grudge against God right now? We say we trust God but do we?
Daniel trusted God enough to give the control over to an unbeliever. Test us and then do what you want. He didn’t try to manipulate the decision. He didn’t try to bribe anybody. He didn’t do anything except offer a suggestion and then wait on God to do what God was going to do.
How long until we give up being in charge and let God do what he is going to do in our lives? How long will we keep singing: I did it my way?
Well, God comes through for Daniel and he and his friends are allowed to follow after the commands of God. That is a big deal and again we miss the point if we think that what Daniel is asking to do is just eat healthy. No where in scripture are we commanded to eat healthy and live. We are commanded to obey God and live. We must remember that we are free in Christ Jesus to do anything, except sin. Daniel is laying the ground work for obedience to God in the midst of a pagan land, nothing more and nothing less.
He is sent to public school for three years to learn the ways of the Babylonians. He learns their language, he learns their ways. I’m sure he was taught about their gods but his education had already been laid upon the foundation of the law word of God and so he understood that all the facts that he was being taught were created by the only true God. The language he was learning was created by God because of man’s rebellion at the tower of Babel. He learned new facts from the right perspective and so he could understand them rightly and apply them in a godly manner.
God blessed his obedience and he served in leadership in a pagan government, altering the course of that nation, and leading its leader to direct conflict with God for around 70 years when the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians or the Iranians as we know them today.
What is the point of all of this? Simply that the nation we live in, the bosses we have, the rulers that are over us are not in control of anything. They are not the determiners of our lives, or our well being. God is. Our calling is to obey God’s word, all of it, and walk humbly with our God regardless of the circumstances that surround us. We are in the mess we are in today because we have refused to walk in obedience to the commands of God.
We must remember that God keeps his word. He breaks those who break his commands. He honors those who keep covenant with him and if you are in Christ Jesus he is going to do whatever it takes in your life to soften your heart until you are willing to humbly obey him. Even if like Josiah’s grandfather he has to put the enemies hooks in you until you repent. Don’t think for a minute that you can fake God out, that you can manipulate him to do what you want. He knows the condition of your heart better than you do. He knows the games you play to keep up appearances to your family and community and he is not amused. There are two choices: Fall on the Rock and be broken to pieces, or have the Rock fall on you and turn you to dust. It is a life or death decision.
I plead with you to make today the day you start being honest with God and with yourself and humbly bow your heart before him. The times we are in are life and death. There is no playing around we must begin to prepare now for the times ahead that we may be wise in our day of testing and not foolish in our passion for the Lord like Josiah was.
Let’s close with prayer. Most Holy Father: Have mercy on us please. I beg you to change our hearts. Open our eyes that we might see things from your perspective. Give us eyes to see the gorillas in our midst. In Jesus name we ask these things. Amen.
Hear this warning from the book of Second Chronicles chapter 33: 10-13 10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they ignored all his warnings. 11 So the Lord sent the commanders of the Assyrian armies, and they took Manasseh prisoner. They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon. 12 But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. 13 And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. So the Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!
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