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August 4, 2020 6:00 am
Pastor author and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
We are living in this sense of having already been made new in Christ, and yet knowing that one day will be made totally knew this already said, knowing that we belong to him, and nothing can separate us from God and the favor of God is honest and yet we might be in a culture where people around us don't understand Pastor Alan Wright another message of good news that will help you see your life for no hold. I'm Daniel excited for you to hear the teaching today. In the series called Daniel is presented in an older church in North Carolina.
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More on that later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan Wright verse 14.
So he listened to them in this matter and test them for 10 days at the end of 10 days. It was seen that they were better and appearance and fatter, and flash, and in this case, fatter flesh is actually a positive term not appealing to this case it where it was fatter and flash that all you who ate the king's food so the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables ask for these four youth God gave them learning and skill and all literature and wisdom and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams at the end of the time when the king they commanded that they should be brought and the chief of the UNIX brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar and the king spoke with them and among all of them. Nine was like Daniel Hannan I am Michelle and Azariah. Therefore, they stood before the king and in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom, and Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus is an extraordinary thing. They got here because the Lord did not have, of course, to allow Jerusalem to be overrun by the Babylonian Empire, the tax and at all throughout the Scripture says God was overseeing this. This is part of the discipline of the Lord, and he didn't have to. He could adjust not allowed Babylon he he he wasn't off of his throne. God was still in charge and and yet he allow them to be eggs out and he didn't have to let Daniel Biggs out, but he allowed him to become a stranger in a foreign land. And while there we have the book of Lamentations we have we have the prophecy of Jeremiah. We got Ezekiel's text. All this going almost to exile.
We got is a will point to later. Psalm 137. We can see the heart of the exiles, but what God chooses a highlight in his word is Daniel who is a favored foreigner who is exiled as part of the discipline against his own people. And yet, while there he is unbelievably favored and promoted. He's he's protected he's provided for those with them.
In Revelation, and then he's actually promoted in the foreign court.
How how interesting guy can be easily prevented him from even being in exile, but instead he he lets them go and promotes a monastery could easily keep me change I recommend you go out of the fiery furnace, but instead he's with them. He could keep Daniel out of the lion's den, but instead he chooses to be with Daniel and shut the mouths of the lion so so this is not really a new concept is just it is it is something that is pervasive throughout God's word that he takes someone who is going to go to an uncomfortable place to be surrounded in an unfamiliar setting, and yet be favored by God. In that context is something about the way of God that the heat starts with with with Abraham who calls up out of his homeland takes into a new land. Promises of this land is your to be a blessing, but Abraham goes replace she's not comfortable is not his only Joseph the whole story. Joseph very similar to Daniel story is that he is sold into slavery and to Egypt and while he was there he is subjected not only slavery but also to incarceration, and yet he is promoted while slave and promoted while he's in the prison and openly promoted to second command of all of Egypt. He's a Farnese, a favored foreigner Moses. Moses little baby of the Hebrew baby and only way he was not.
Slaughter was.
He was put out to the Nile River old basket and the Princess of Egypt comes and rescues her from the now and and he's raising the Egyptian court is he just raised right in the lap of of of the luxury of the Egyptian court and all the Egyptian ways. He's a favored foreigner, but he still Hebrew and when he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew, he he he so identifies with his own Hebrew brother that he he himself he he kills the Egyptian and then Moses lives in exile in Midian until God brings him in back into the very place he was raised once again as a foreigner, but now favored by the anointing and signs and wonders of a supernatural miraculous outworking of God, but which he saves his people that David was for a light that David was out in the fields unlikely candidate to be king. So much so that Jesse's father didn't even bring them into the lineup for Sam to look at what Sam was going north the new King and end the losses only is not any of them incident don't go look on outward appearance.
Lord looks on the heart. David is appointed the new kingdom of Israel.
But before he ever gets on the throne. Saul, the 14 chases him and David lives in exile for a long period of time hide in the caves of adult with a ragtag group of men is a species is a favored exile and the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah date they speak to to the people of Israel, that they will experience exile, but they say comfort, comfort my people because of fear not the boards with you and always point to restoration.
This is really beloved one of the ways to understand the holes of the Bible.
That is a story of creation of exile and restoration. It is the story of God, who created Adam and Eve in his own image and he walked with them in an un-interrupted intimate fellowship in the garden of Eden until Adam and Eve sin and their sin and rebellion, caused them to be cast out from the garden to the east of Eden where now they were like exiles from the actual home and visit.
This sense of not being in your ultimate home or ultimate paradise. This is hidden in the heart of every man or woman that there is something that is forever rest in us and to we rest with God himself. And so there's a great longing that's in our hearts.
You see right from the beginning of that that man and woman are exiled from their actual paradise.
Actual home. But as soon as they are exiled. What you see, God is at work from the beginning right from the moment that he slays that the innocent animal in order to make skins to cover the shaman nakedness of Adam and Eve right from that moment of that shed blood. The goes all the way through the Passover lamb, and the blood of the Hebrew door base during door poster the Passover to the crimson thread that hangs down from from from Rahab the harlot's house in the shambles in the midst of Jericho through the thousands upon thousands of turtledoves and rams that are offered at the Temple in Jerusalem all the way through the prophets, prophecies, to the point that it comes to the to the to the shed blood of the Lord Jesus himself at Calvary that God was weaving a redemptive plan of restoration for the exiles and so the story really is understood in this way, that is like sin entered the world. We are exiled from God but God has a restoration plan in our hearts along for God and the people of God are those who have seen though we are not citizens of this world that through the gift of Christ, we are able to become citizens of an invisible kingdom and not only citizens in that invisible kingdom, but we are made to be errors within that kingdom. And not only heirs but co-heirs with Christ the Lord himself that the son who is exalted to the right hand of the father. We in this invisible kingdom are positioned with him in the heavenly we have been reckoned as righteous and therefore we are princes and we are princesses in this invisible kingdom. And so we live.
Of beloved and this and this sense of knowing that our citizenship is actually in heaven. And so we are like exiles in the world and we live in a dynamic tension and we happen to be at a season and a moment in the history of this particular great country in which we have seen that there been many changes around us. That might make us feel all the more like were foreigners and our own, our own culture, but the point of all this is the site.
It has always been. Thus, this world as it is now is not our ultimate home, our ultimate home is a new heaven and a new earth. And so we are living in this incredible dynamic of the already and the not yet. We are living in the sense of of having already been made new in Christ, and yet knowing that one day will be made totally knew this already sense of knowing that we belong to him, and nothing can separate us from God and the favor of God is honest and yet we might be in a culture where people around us don't understand or appreciate talent right will have more teaching moment from today's important series. It's shocking how quickly American values have changed.
Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview. Everything has changed so much that maybe you feel like a foreigner in your own culture.
I was a Christian supposed to live in a post-Christian world we fight against it. We decide our light in the midst of it. We pull away from it. These are the same questions that faced a young exile named Daniel in Babylon 600 years before Christ.
Though he was an alien God showed the young man favor when you make your gift to Alan Wright ministry today will send you Pastor Alan's eight messages on Daniel of favored foreigner in an attractive CD album on a USB thumb drive for through digital download is our way of saying thanks for your partnership. You may feel like a stranger in this world is God should favor to gain his farmland God's grace is upon you today. Your gift today will only help you walk in the grace of God during these troubling times will also help someone else.
This ministry is only possible and prayerful support listeners like you when you give today will send you today's special offer call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 or come visit Pastor Alan.org today's teaching now continues here once again is Alan Wright.
I just think that it's appropriate to understand the nature of the Babylon that Daniel lived in and the sadness of that Babylon is not just ancient history.
It's the stuff of today Saddam Hussein sought to one point rebuild the ancient Babylon, which has its ruins in the suburbs of Baghdad and Baghdad in today's Iraq. This is Saddam it's restarted imprinting his name on the bricks the way Nebuchadnezzar had back originally and it comes from the Greek form of the original arc Akkadian name Bob Lou which means the date of God in whom Richard John Neuhaus said poignantly, both literally and figure leak. Babylon has been the gate through which many gods have entered history.
It is a it is exile is a place where the first thing you actually have to do is be honest about where you are beloved.
This is very important in life is very important in life. To be honest about the situation you find yourself in.
We have many hundreds of people that assemble on on a Sunday morning like this. We have people aware of very different places in life is is one of the great challenges of of of of bringing a relevant word for the people God because people.
Some people are walking to the valley of the shadow of death. Some people on the mountaintop and everything in between.
And one of the things that we are invited to do as Christians in this is one of our giant secrets is because we know and are assured of our home with God.
We can be real about the situations we face now is actually those that are uninsured of an eternal home that can't be real about the pain adversities and the eventual death that we experience in this world so the first thing is not rush past the sense of exile that these people felt. You have to imagine it. I I invite you to just imagine with me what that was actually like that they were the favored people of God, chosen out of all the peoples of the earth to represent God on earth is there all the promise that the Torah law the promises of God for all the prophecy they have the temple.
They had a life of worship and first starting with with Syria that comes in 722 but then this the Babylonians. They come in in three waves and just start laying bare the city and deporting them one after the other valves upon thousands upon thousands snatched away from their homes and their homes are destroyed to get. You gotta think about this. This is what they're experiencing and then the temple is raised, it is it is demolished. The thing that is most holy to them in the center of their life or communal life is is put to rubble. Solomon's Temple and all of its glory. Put to rubble and there deported to Babylon.
How are they feeling. I say how they're feeling that the feeling like the book of Lamentations there feeling like Psalm 137 by the waters of Babylon. There we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our liars. They put in their instruments aside, their music, their joy there delaying it aside for there are captive for three required of the songs and our tormentors mirth sing sing this one of the songs of Zion to the Babylonians are coming around their sick you want to pick up your guitar and play slow song from when you're songs are used to seeing and feeling singing verse four how should we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land. If I forget, yo Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it skill, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. I do not remember you if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy is this is earthy and this is real.
This is in the Bible because this is this is this is what good Christians say this is what they were feeling. This is what the exiles were actually feeling verse seven. Remember Lord against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said Leah barely bear down to its foundation. Oh daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall he be, who repays you with what you've done to us. Blessed shall he be, who take your little ones and dashes them against the rock is not nice talk is not as not a happy song but it is what they're feeling because they've they've been they've been robbed of everything that they knew that was precious to them and and and the Lord, the Lord's allow desk and you could just know what is going on with this part of it at the heart of it, can you just see the message that is underneath the promises to the prophets of the comfort of the Lord in the presence of the Lord in the promises of restoration of the Lord. The restore their fortunes to have compassion upon the promise and promise and this is not the way it is always good to be but is allowing them to experience the feeling of exile, allowing them to experience some of the feelings of what it is to be separated from that which is precious because this is the human dilemma. Sin has caused a separation from God. We all apart from Christ are exiled from God and when we identify what it really feels like to be separated from our home that puts us in touch with our great great longing for ultimate home with God forever. He's giving them a sense of picturing that you're going to have to rely upon something other than a physical temple in these vessels and all of these things and you you you can have to discover God in the land of your exile is an inward tension that they feel and exile as is its is already in at its not yet in its is not comfortable so uncomfortable when your next is to just no longer surrounded by the familiar and people are buying into your belief system. Just because you say so or just because it's popular and you struggle between want to run away from it somehow are wanting to fix it or wanting to strike out against it or choosing to bless them and point to God.
It is, it is a dynamic tension it is. It is something is hard to describe but I tell you who has done this and describe the picture of the reality of being citizens of the kingdom of heaven, while also in this earthly realm.
And that is CS Lewis in his in his Narnia stories because what they are there stories of these kids that back in London are just kids and nobody pays much attention they just kids, ordinary kids, but when they stumble through the wardrobe into the snow laden forests of Narnia. They enter into a land of magic the kingdom. Where is been prophesied that they will have thrown sick care parallel they will be kings and queens in Narnia and so the stories go up there great exploits and how they conquer the white which and how all the animals in the forest pay great homage to these little children because their kings and their queens in Narnia, there comes a time in which they are escorted back into their old world and at the end of the lion the witch and the wardrobe when they are out riding their horses and speaking to one another. The way kings and queens speak and then they notice a lamppost and have a vague memory of it and Lewis right before they got 20 more. They notice that they were making their way, not through branches but through coats and next moment. They all came tumbling out of the wardrobe door into an empty room and they were no longer kings and queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy and their old clothes. It was the same day the same hour on which they had gone into the wardrobe to hide Ms. McGrady in the visitors were still talking in the passage, but luckily they never came into the empty room and so the children were caught in that would've been the very end of the story. If it hadn't been that they felt they really must explain to the professor wife four of the coach of the wardrobe were missing and the professor was a very remarkable man didn't tell them not to be silly, or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story know he said I don't think it be good to try to go back to the wardrobe door to get the coach you won't get in Narnia again by that route nor the codes be much used United at what's that, yes, of course, you'll get back to Narnia again some day.
Once a king and Narnia. Always a king in Narnia. There we are there we are. When you accept Christ, will you feel this or not.
This is what happens you are born anew supernaturally and there's a great shift in the whole cosmos about where you are positioned spiritually you are reckoned as the righteousness of Christ. In that sense you are not only made his child, but you are positioned with Christ as if you had lived a meritorious life and your citizenship is permanently eternally forever with God in heaven and hell and right in today's teaching Christ are exile.
It's shocking how quickly American values of changed suddenly most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview. Everything has changed so much that maybe you feel like a foreigner in your own culture. I was a Christian supposed to live in a post-Christian world we fight against it. We decide our light in the midst of it.
We pull away from it. These are the same questions that face the young exile named Daniel in Babylon 600 years before Christ.
Though he was an alien God showed the young man favor when you make your gift to Alan Wright ministry today will send you Pastor Alan's eight messages on Daniel of favorite foreigner in an attractive CD album on a USB thumb drive or through digital download is our way of saying thanks for your partnership. You may feel like a stranger in this world is God should favor to gain his foreign land.
God's grace is upon you today. Your gift today will only help you walk in the grace of God during these troubling times. It will also help someone else. This ministry is only possible and prayerful support listeners like you when you give today will send you today's special offer call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 or come visit Pastor Alan.org hello are you saying as part of today's teaching from the book of Daniel that the gospel if we get it and let it sink in. Is great for us, but the culture around will still be confused and oblivious to the freedom we are experiencing, exactly, and Daniel such a good picture of this that there are ways in which God will show you favor even in the midst of a culture that doesn't know the Lord. And yet, if we expect that the culture around us is going to get it when they don't know the Lord then we're going to wind up both frustrated and mystified. I think instead we're in the world not of the world and people around us will react in a move right if you only caught part of today's teaching.
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