Remembering the Lord your God

Stroking Pastor Ronald recently concerning the things that had been taught and emphasized. Who brought up your theme of this year of remembering the Lord your God in the days of your youth. And as I sat and listen to prayers and other references to our brother who has gone on to be with the Lord after where we would consider a long life, I thought it rather interesting and ironic that there is this infhensis on young people living their lives in a certain way, and there is also this reminder of what's on the other side of that. Because the way that we as believers come to a place in our life where the things that have been said today can be said of us is that those of us who come to faith as young men and women remain faithful to God throughout whatever life he gives us, so that at the end it could be said that we have lived well. But that doesn't begin sometime later on. For the young Christian that begins today, It begins now. The decisions that we make today are the decisions that shape who we become. The way that we choose to live our life today is what shapes what our life in the future becomes. That is not to be said that if you are here today and you wasted your younger years as a Christian, that it's all over for you, and that there there's no hope God can and does redeem. Amen. However, if you are here today and you are forty or fifty or sixty, and you made a profession of faith when you were in your teens or in your twenties, and you've wasted the years between now and then, you would be the first to say that you are reaping what you have sown, and that you wish you had lived differently. You wish that you knew then what you know now, or you wish that you acted then upon what you knew then, so that you would not have to have experienced what you have experienced up to this point. And so in essence, this is for all of us well. In thinking about young people, our attention is usually drawn to one of a couple of places. She's. Among them is the first chapter of the Book of Daniel, Well, the first few chapters of the Book of Daniel. I want us to look at Daniel chapter one, at Daniel chapter one, Daniel chapter one, and we'll begin there. And verse one. I want us to get to the scene that begins there in Daniel chapter eight, where we see this first act of resistance from Daniel and Hannah and i Ah, Michel and Azariah. But before we get to that first act of resistance, it's important to have a foundation to undergird us, and so we begin in verse one. Those first two verses set the tone for the rest of the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is one of the most beloved books in the Bible. The Book of Daniel is one of the most partially preached books in the Bible. And I say partially preached because people who preach the Book of Daniel time at the time, if anybody preaches the Book of Daniel, they only preach the first six chapters of Daniel. They do not preach the last six chapters. Of the time, if the pastor has preached anything from Daniel, it's the first six chapters, not the last six chapters. Why. Because Daniel is one of the most beloved books in the Bible, it is also arguably the most difficult book in the Bible to interpret. In the last half. The last six chapters of Daniel are hard, They are difficult, they are confusing, Daniel is the book where we have part of the book written in Hebrew and part of the book written in Aramaic, and then we go back to Hebrew. And for a number of reasons, the Book of Daniel is difficult for us to interpret and for us to work through. And so it's rather ironic that the first part of the Book of Daniel has some of those beloved and memorable scenes in the entire Bible. But in fact, you meet people all the time who are named Daniel. You also meet people who are named Shadrack or me Shack, and I'll say something about that momentarily, but you meet people all the time with those names because of how much we love this book. But ninety percent of the time you ask people about the second half, and most people haven't even read it because you start reading in chapter seven and you get to all these symbolic things happening, and then by chapter eight your head starts hurting and you just sort of move on to the next book. The kita understanding the Book of Daniel is understanding these first two verses. Let's just look at them. In the third year, the reign of Jehoakim, King of Judah, Nemica Mezrac, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoakim, king of Judah, into his hand were some of the vessels of the House of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. This is setting the tone giving you the theme of the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is about a battle of cultures and the battle of gods. The first part of it we see this battle of cultures, and it is a battle between the culture of Babylon and the culture of Israel. Initially, it seems in human terms as though Babylon has the upper hand. However, we know that the prophets have warned that God was going to use Babylon to chastise Israel. It was no secret that the Babylonians or the Chaldeans would come. It had been told. They had been named by name as the nation that God would use, this bloodthirsty nation that was huzzaring there in the north, and so it was no surprise that they would come. There was no surprise that God would use them to chastise Israel. And for those who have a problem with that, usually the problem is why would God use an ungodly nation to chastise his people? The question is where was he going to find a godly one, a man somebody. Why does God use sinful people in order to accomplish his roll? Stop? Where is he going to find unsinful people? If God gets rid of all sinful people tonight, none of verse is here tomorrow. Not a one you fought, said and did things on yesterday for which God should have killed you in your sleep last night. But he did it. That's called grace, Amen, that is the grace and mercy of God. And so whoever God was going to use as a nation to bring judgment upon Israel, it was going to be a pagan nation, because the only nation that wasn't a pagan nation was the nation of Israel. Everyone else worshiped false gods. Second thing you need to understand is, according to the worldview of the ancient Near East, any battle, any war, was a war between gods, And so before a king went to war with another king, he always consulted his prophets and his oracles to see if he would have the upper hand, and when they went into battle, it was understood that these people's God were fighting for them, and these people's God was fighting for them, and whoever won had the more powerful God. And this is why when you defeated people, you brought from their treasury things into your treasury, so that you could put those things in an inferior position in your treasury, because it was symbolic of their gods bowing down to your gods. So this is why Nebucha Mezzar took these things into his treasury. It was symbolic of the victory of their gods over the God of Israel. Ironically, Israel was thought to be inferior because unlike all of the nations around them, they only had one God. Poor little Israelites, only one God, perhaps dead as to believe this is why they were so to defeat, because they only had this one God. What happens when this God gets tired? What happens when this God needs to rest? No wonder our gods defeated your gods, or correction, your God. And in the rest of the book of Daniel, what you see is nebek Nezzar putting himself up as God, competing with God as God, requiring worship of himself and of God, showing at every point that although He allowed his people to be defeated by Babylon, it was not because he couldn't do better. He is still God. And by the way, we need to know that today, when circumstances in your life do not go away that you think they ought to go, it is not because God slumbers or sleeps, or because there is anything more powerful than God. God is sovereign and he is in control. Look at the text verse two, and the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hands. Why why did Babylon defeat Israel? Because God gave Israel into his hands. This is why does not Jesus say the same thing on the cross, No man takes my life, but I lay it down. He could have called myriads upon myriads of angels, and yet he did not listen. Sodom and Gomar were reduced to rubble two angels. He could have called thousands. Two angels can be used by God to overturn in twin cities. What can a thousand angels do coming to the aid and the defense of their maker and creator as he hangs there on a tree, and yet Christ humbly vows himself and dies because it is in his father's plan. Even so here Israel defeated by the Babylonians and taken off into captivity, because it is in the Father's plan, so much so that the prophets told them how to respond when they were taken into captivity, what to do when they were taken into captivity. In fact, when the Temple is dedicated in Chronicles, one of the things God says, and by the way, this is why Daniel prays three times a day facing towards Jerusalem, because he says, if I allow you to be taken into captivity, I will remember the prayers praying toward this place. So Daniel is praying toward Jerusalem because he is remembering the promise of God at the dedication of the Temple, where God said, I'll carry you off into a foreign land. You remember this place, you remember this temple. Don't forget your God. I'm still God. Don't be a lot of other people who believe that if they're carried off into a foreign land that their God is no longer God. Because they're right in one sense, they're wrong in the sense that their God was never God. Therefore it's wrong to believe that their God is no longer God. But in another sense, don't you believe that way? Because our God is God and there is no other than the first six chapters of the Book of Daniel all of that. By the way, the second half of the Book of Daniel is all about that as well. God makes it very clear. In fact, God gives a picture of what he's going to do in history and of the nations and empires that he's going to raise up according to his plan. It's quite fitting that we had Revelation twenty two read for us, because ultimately, at the culmination of history, it is God saying, I have done what I declared to do, and now I am doing what I have promised Verse three. This is where it gets interesting, and this is where we see one of the cardinal errors that we make in interpreting the Book of Daniel, or at least this part of the Book of Daniel. Usually, when we talk about Daniel and hand An Eye, Michiel and Azariah, in fact, we don't even talk about Hannahai, Michelle and Azariah. We talk about shad Raknishak and Bed Nigo. But when we talk about them, we talk about them as though they were brought in when they were small children. The three Hebrew boys. But we tell the story about three Hebrew boys as though they are small children when they are brought in. I'm nothing could be further from the truth. Look at verse three. Beginning verse three, then the king commanded ashpronize, the chief Eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youth without blemish of good appearance. Listen to this, skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the King's presence and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. This was not small. These would have been college graduates. These would have been young men in their twenties. These are young men who have already demonstrated their skillfulness through the Israeli educational system. If you will not that it was a system. They'd been trained in the Israeli or the Israelite worldview. They were well educated, and because they were well educated, they were basically brought to a graduate school to learn the language and the culture and even the religion of the Chaldeans, because they had already proven themselves to be the elite of the elite in their culture. These were not small boys. These were young men, well educated, well trained young men. Why is this important? This is important because the fact that they had already been educated and already had a full orbed worldview and a full orbed understanding of things is key to understanding this battle between two cultures. They have been fully unculturated as Hebrews, they have been fully educated as Hebrews, and now they were about to receive the education of the Chaldeans. This is critical to our understanding. It's also critical to our understanding of the way that they respond. It's critical to our understanding of the way that they incorporate their worldview. Here are young men who lived in the ancient nereiast and as I've already said, in the ancient Nearies, the way the world around them worked was that if you were defeated, it was because your God is not as powerful us other people's gods, and so you become digested. And yet these young men, in the midst of their defeat, having heard from the prophets that this was coming, knowing fullwell that they were under the discipline of God. Never bow down to the foreign gods, never give in to the foreign gods, and they never compromise to the foreign gods. So young man who graduates from college, he's grown up in the church, made a profession of faith early on in his life. When he graduates from college, he wants to be successful and so puts his resume out there and eventually finds himself a job. When he finds his job, it becomes evident early on that there is a certain culture here at this company. And in discovering this certain culture here at this company, he also understands that certain aspects of the culture at this company would require him to either number one, compromise some of the things that he has claimed to believe, or number two, perhaps not be viewed as highly by his colleagues and maybe even jeopardize his future and this possibility of advancement. Daniel is not just the theoretical book. Young men and young women face these kinds of things all the time. Every day. There is some young man, some young woman, some young Christians somewhere who is facing a worldview that says this is the superior worldview. This is the worldview that dominates this place where we live. You will come and subject yourself to this worldview, or you will be punished in one way or another. And unfortunately you and I know that, for the most part, young people begin with small things and the next thing, you know, they're compromising in big things and they're justifying themselves. Why because I had to do it in order to get ahead, and of course ahead is what God wants for me. Right verse five. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate some of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of the time they would to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hannon, Miamichel, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. This is important. The tribe of Judah is the tribe of the promised seed. The tribe of Judah is the tribe that would ultimately bring forth Jesus. The tribe of Judah is the tribe that will eventually be used by God to fulfill his promise in Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. Your ruses here he will crush your head. The one who will crush the head of the snake will come from the tribe of Judah. Men, we're all from the tribe of Judah. You see, if the tribe of Judah is cut off, then that means the promise of God is cut off. And so in a sense, the message of the Book of Daniel is that God is not going to cut off his promise. That even though Israel goes into exile, God is aware that they are in exile. He is with them while they're in exile, and that he will bring them out of their exile. This is the message of Jeremiah twenty nine that God will ultimately bring his people out of their exile. And here we see this in this small mention that they are from the tribe of Judah. There is a lion who is going to come from this tribe, a lion who is also a Lamb. And it is important to remember this. Go ahead with me, if you will so, go go with me to Jeremiah Jeremiah chapter twenty nine. We know that Israel was sig sieged in the five nineties, but ultimately didn't fall to forty to UH five eighty six. There was a pre exile period Jeremiah twenty nine to one. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the Prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exile, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebka Nezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. So Jerusalem is still there, it's just under Babylonian rule. The whole thing hadn't fallen yet. They're not all gone yet. First he took the elite of the elite in various areas. This was after verse two. King Jack and Aiah and the Queen Mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Ilasa, the son of Shafan, and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon to Nebka Nezzar, King of Babylon. It's said, thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem, to Babylon. Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they and they bear sons and daughters multiply there. And do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel. Do not let your prophets or your diviners who are among you deceive you. And do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name. I did not send them, declares the Lord. What were they prophesying? Just a short while, and it's going to be over. In the previous chapter Jeremiah twenty eight, there's a prophet who breaks the yob that Jeremiah has that was symbolizing, you know, the exile that they would experience just the years is going to be over. Later on, God sends Jeremiah back to this prophet. Jeremiah says, you lied and God's going to kill you. And that's exactly what God did. He killed it. What was the lie that this will all be over in a short while. So now Jeremiah saying, don't listen to those prophets. Don't listen to those prophets. If you just believe, if you just old harm, if you just have faith, all you eat is faith. If you just have faith, uh uh, faith wan face this one. You need to have faith in God, not faith in faith. And if you have faith in God, then you believe what God says, and what God says is you are going to be here about one hundred and fifty years. This was Jeremiah's message to the anxieties. You're here for the long haul. But the message here that we find in Daniel, just by this mention of the fact that they are of the true of Judah, is the message that God will purge his people, but he will never destroy them. Amen. God is mindy to save and he is faithful. Back in our text, and the chief of the eunuchs gave them names. Remember the theme this is the battle of two cultures and the battle of two gods. Daniel's name means God is my judge, Hannanayah's name means God is gracious, Michel's name means who belongs to God, and as Auriah's name means God is my peace. Notice the names Dan L, hannah I, yah Misha L, Asari, yah L, and Yahweh. These people are named for their God. This is where their names are derived from. Their names are part of their culture, and their names are part of their religion. Their names speak to who they are, and their names speak to what they believe. The naming of children is important amen and generally regardless of where you are in the world. There are only a few ways that people pick the names for their children. Some people pick the names for their children bay solely own their family, and you find the names for your children in the names of your ancestors in order to demonstrate that you are keeping up the line of your ancestors. It's one way that we name our children. Another way that we name our children is that we name our children in accordance with where we live and in accordance with our surroundings, in accordance with those things that are important to us. And then oftentimes we name our children in order to put a stamp on them, to remind them for the rest of their days who God is. I'm not saying that it's never correct to give your son or your daughter a name that reminds them of their family. It's important. That's the providence of God. Who you are and where you come from, that's the providence of God. I'm not saying that it's never important, not saying that it's never okay to give your child a name that has something to do with your culture or your surroundings. But I am saying that it's a mark of the people of God that we have a tendency to give our children names that remind them of who God is. Look in the next verse, verse seven, Chief of the units, you gave them names to Daniel, he called Belfa, Shazzar, and Anaiah. He called Shadraq, Michao, he called Mishak, and Azeraih he called abd Nigo. These names, too, were names that were theological in nature. Abd Nigo means servant of Nego or servant of Nebo. This is one of their gods. So the names that they gave them were designed to demonstrate what we see in the first two verses. This is a battle of gods. This is a battle of cultures. Their names that they were given were names that pointed to Yahweh, to Elohim. The names that they were given after they were taken into captivity were names that pointed to the Battylonian gods. And I think it's ironic that when we talk about the young men in this story, Daniel is the only one that we refer to by his covenantal name. The other ones, we actually join the Babylonians in insulting them by calling them something other than their covenantal names. That is ironic. It's also ironic that Christians, in every culture I've ever been in, they won't name their children Belta Shaster. They'll name him Daniel, but they will name him Shadrek, and they will name them Mishek. I think it's because when we read the story of their defiance and when we read about them not going into the fire, that they are referred to as Shadrek and Mishak and abd Nigo. And I think it's because of that that we think fondly about those names. And I understand that in light of that particular story, But it is Iraq, is it not? Because if someone came up and said, this is my son. What's his name? His name is Belta Shazar. We'd go what hut whatever? Huh you sure you don't mean Daniel. They would just really mess with us, you know. But then someone comes up and he says, here's my son. His name is Shagrat. Oh, that's great. We don't say, well, don't you mean Hannadayah? This is my boy Mishak. It's that one of the most famous black preachers in America ever does appreciated by the name of s. M. Lockridge. His name is Shagraq me Shaq Rockridge. But again, we do this because of the story, not because of what we find here. Yet our tendency to do this must not lead us away from a proper understanding of what's going on here. There is a battle between two cultures, and there is a battle between two theologies. There's the culture of the Babylonians and the culture of the Israelites. There's the theology of the Israelites. The God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob Yahweh Eloheim, and these boys whose names point to Yahweh and point to Eloheim, these boys who are from the tribe of Judah, whose name means praise. So essentially, when you read this in the Hebrew, it is the boy God is my judge, the boy God is grace, the boy who belongs to God, the boy God is Peace, all of whom from the tribe God's praise are renamed a conquered boy who's now named after our gods. You read those first few chapters, you see the golden statue being set up, and it all goes back to here. It's very important to understand that these young men hold on to their identity in spite of the fact that their names are changed, that they don't give up their identity, their identity as part of the covenant community, their identity as part of the people of God. This is their identity. This is who they are. Young man, young woman? What is your identity? Is your identity your covenantal identity or are you working to have an identity that is accepted by the culture at large. Does your identity say I am part of the people of God? Or are you fighting with every fiber of your being to say my identity is the hip hop culture? What is your identity? What are you known by? What are you marked by? In our culture? It is common now to see people, but their entire churches. There are entire churches in the United States where you could go to and they're filled with young people. And you walk into these churches and you see people with ear gauges. You know, the ear gauge. It's not an ear ring. The ear rings that's gone, that's longer, that's you know, that's conservative now, you know, no, no, no. The ear gauge is these little rings that they put in their ears. And actually they get it from over here. And then you put a bigger one in there, and a bigger one in there, and a bigger one in there, until that lobe that's circle in that lobe becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. There are tribes over here to do that. They're tribes where I come from, that do that now. And they call themselves Christians. And they'll have a ring through the lit a ring through the nose, and they'll have tattoos all over each arm, and they'll have tattoos on their head or on their face. They'll have their hair colored certain colors, and they'll have the mohawk or the phone off. They'll have all this stuff and they'll walk them into church and if you look at them with any little other than approval, they look at you and say, it's pure legalistic. I'm just trying to reach the culture. This is what's happening where I live. You walk into church certain places and there are young men walking around with their pants sagging all the way down where it shouldn't be sagging, and amazingly, it'll be held there by a belt. What is this? This is the attempt of young people to identify themselves with the culture at large. Listen, I'm not saying that we ought to dress fifty years behind the times. But what I am saying is that when there are aspects of our culture that are intentionally degrading, it's disgraceful for a young man to walk around with his showing. It's disgraceful. It's disgusting. Pull off your pants. Underwear are important, but I don't need to see them. Even grown men in my culture wearing hats. I don't mind a hat, but if you have a hat and there's a bill on the hat, it goes right here in order to shield your eyes from the sun. If it's over here, you're trying to make a statement, and it's a statement that's rooted and grounded in a culture that is antagonistic to what we know and believe as Christians. If we're marking and degrading our bodies, literally distorting our bodies, if we're doing this, and especially when these things come from cultures that are pagan, this originates from a pagan culture. This originates from a pagan culture. This originates from a pagan culture. And when we are doing this, we are saying something. Listen, when they had their names changed, it was because they were captured and taken off and changed, not because they said hey, hey, I'm with you. They were forced to do this again. This doesn't mean that we have to be fifty years behind the times. But there are some things that are contemporary and modern and tasteful. And there are other things that are contemporary and modern, and they are rooted and grounded in a culture that is basically thrown the middle finger at the world. And that's not what we ought to be known for young people. That's not what we ought to be chasing after young people. That's not what I ought to define us young people. And to the older people in the room, don't sit there looking all high and mighty because you had some stuff in your day. I can't say, amen, yose ouch. They change their names in order to rob them of their culture, and they change their names in order to insult their god. This is the book of Gango. Now look at verse eight. Finally, he wants to give him this food. But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore, he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, and the chief fled away. That's the story of Daniel's life. God gave him favor, and the chief of the eunuch said to Daniel, I fear my lord, the king who assigns your food and your drink, For why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age. So you would endanger my head with the king. Then Daniel said to the steward. Notice what the steward said. You will endanger my head. He'll kill me. I'll lose my job, He'll kill me. Daniel's a slave, he's a conquered slave who serves a conquered god. And he's huming to this chief eunuch, and he's saying, please, don't make me defile myself. Change my name. Fine, but don't make me defile myself with this food and this drink. This man's life is in danger for you, listens to Daniel. So the steward took away their food. So I'm sorry, test your servant verse twelve. For ten days, let us be giving vegetables to eat, water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servant according to what you see. So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. Here's the irony. There are these people who have what's called the Daniel diet. Do the Daniel diet, you know, if you want to lose weight and be fit and trim, to the Daniel diet. And the end of ten days they were fatter. Then Calvin addresses this issue, and it makes a point that there's a question raised here, but why is it that Daniel felt like whatever they were eating was going to defile him? Ultimately, we know that to the pure, all things are pure. There are no foods that are forbidden. To us, we give thanks, and if we can get thanks for it, we eat it. But for whatever reason, Daniel felt like this was a bridge too far and that he needed to take a stand. We don't know why. There are a number of possibilities, and rather than to guess as to why, let me just make some observations. Number one, when he said just give us vegetables and water, this was not the Israelite diet. The Israelites were not vegetarians. Secondly, there's nothing again the Israelites ate meat. There was nothing wrong with meat. Then there's nothing wrong with meat now Amen, Hallelujah, praised the Lord past the meaty go kill eat. Secondly, we know that whatever Daniel was doing, he was doing it because his conscience would not allow him to participate, and that he risked his life rather than to violate this conscience. Certainly, we know that whatever Daniel did here, it was not something that was long term that later on in his life. We don't see this necessarily as a pattern. So there's a point here. What's the point. Let's keep reading and I'll tell you verse seventeen. As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Neverkanezar and the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hanna, and Ayah, Michael and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king, and in every manner of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. And Daniel was there until the first year of king. Science we start off with what a conquered people and apparently a conquered God, And we end up with what we reject your culture in terms of the food you eat and what you drink. And as we reject your culture, by the providence of God, we're better off physically than your people. We were educated in a culture that is different than your culture. We don't know your language, we don't know your literature, we don't know your science. But at the end of three years, because we had a foundation of a biblical worldview, whenever we learned from you, we knew better than you because our God is God. The message here is not that you can forsake God and go and embrace another worldview and still be okay. The message here is that if you have a biblical worldview, and you're rooted and grounded in that biblical worldview, even if you're forced to learn things that are contrary to that biblical worldview, your foundation is based on that which is true. So you will be better off than those who reject God. Why because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That's the message here. And the other message here, as I've alluded to earlier, is that God will preserve his people and everyone along the way. We see this in this book weishe itd Here. God preserved Daniel and Hannah, Andiah and Michiong and Azariah, even in this small way. He gave them favor, and he preserved them. Why Why did he do this because they were superhuman young people. No, because they are a part of the tribe of Judah, and the tribe of Judah will come through this trial. Why because God will save his people through the lion of the tribe of Judah. Therefore, the tribe of Judah will survive. It is because they are connected to the covenant people of God. They are connected to the redemption of God. They are connected to the promise of God. This is why they survive. Young people, hear me, do buy the lie. Don't buy the lie that says you need Jesus Christ to save your soul and to set you on the right trajectory so that you end up in heaven. However, you don't need Jesus Christ in your everyday life. Don't buy a lie that says you're a sinner who needs to be saved and you need to repent of your sin and cling to the Christ so that Christ can make you whole. And then what you need to do is lead Christ aside, go pursue the world so that you can have success there, and then take Jesus up again just before you die. That is not the Christian life. The Christian life is this. Christ is my all and all. He is my Savior, He is my Lord. I am a sinner who is an enemy of God, and as an enemy of God, God's grace came to me. When I understood God's grace. I embraced this by faith. I trusted in Jesus Christ as the Lord and savior of my life. He saved me and changed me and transformed me. But not only did he do that, but he brought me to a place where the image of God was reawakened and restored in me, so that every area and aspect of my life came under the lordship of Christ. I took every thought captive to obey Christ. And whatever it was that I learned, I learned it so that I could take it to obey Christ. Everything that I lived, everything that I received, it was that Christ might gain the glory. Everywhere that I walked, everyone with whom I came in contact, it was so that Christ might gain the glory. And when there was a choice to be made between acknowledging the Christ of my life and denying him in the hopes of advancement, I acknowledged Him even when it cost me. And at the end of the day. Even my enemies had to acknowledge that I was ten times better because of the Jesus in me than those who were willing to do and say anything and live any kind of way just to fit in. This is the message of Daniel, that we serve the God who is over all of history, and therefore we do not compromise even in the small things, because everything that God is doing in our lives is part of his redemptive plan, not just his plan to redeem me, but his plan to use his redemption of me as part of his greater redemptive work. You see. Ultimately, this comes down to us recognizing young people that we don't just live to acquire things. We live to bring glory to God. We don't just live to win friends and influence people, live to advance the Kingdom of God. We don't just live to be known and revered and respected. We live to make God known and revered and respected. We don't live for the praise and applause of men. We live to give all praise and applause to the One true Living God. This is the message of the first chapter of Daniel, then the second, and the third, and so on and so on and so on. Why Because this is the message of christian This is the message of redemption. This is the message of the Christian life. So you do not compromise when you're young person, put your Christianity down, live like the world, to please the world, and all of a sudden one day later on in your life, when you know that it's about to be over. By the way, we don't know when it's about to be over. You never know when it's about to be over. People can see you at a conference on Monday and then hear that you died on Tuesday. Amen. So if we don't know when it's going to be over, who do we think we are? That we can live our lives a certain way and then later on decide to pick up holiness and righteousness again, and beside that if you have any inclination to live that way, If you have any inclination that I will go ahead and pursue the world now, but then later on in my life I will pick up Christianity and live that life. There are two things wrong with that. Number one, you do not believe in the sovereignty God, and number two, you're unconverted, for you don't know my soul. Listen any soul that would say, I want Jesus to save me so that I can live for me as long as I possibly can, so that I can please my flesh, so that I can love the world. And then when I'm tired of that, and when I feel like I might be coming towards the end of my days, then I'll pick this profession back up again. And so anyone who can think like that is uncoverted. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. All things have passed away, new things have come. If you're in Christ, you try to go back and feet on the world, and it makes you sick to your stomach. There is a God. He is the only God. He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, who is the God and father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He is God, our Savior. He is God, our redeemer. He is God of all and over all. He is God, who is and who was, and who is to come. And when we are His we recognize this in every area, aspect and square inch of our life. Does pray, Gracious God, our heavenly Father. We bow before you today in humble acknowledgment of your sovereignty and humble acknowledgment of your greatness, In humble acknowledgment of your majesty, confessing to you our tendency and our desire to pursue the praise of men at the expense of our profession of faith. Grant by your grace that we might love truth, love righteousness, that we might love it more than our very lives. Grant by your grace that those here under the sound of my voice who have not yet come to repentance and faith would embrace Christ, that they would see that the line of the tribe of Judah is their only hope. Grant by your grace that sinners would see their sin, but that more importantly, they would see the Savior, that they might flee to him, that they might run to him, that they might cling to him. Father, I pray for the one who has been deceived, the one who has acknowledged outwardly the truth of this gospel, and yet inwardly has pursued the love of the Grant by your grace that the world might see in us not a group of people who desires its love, but a group of people who are so satisfied with your love, that we will shun the world, and yet grant that we might love those in the world enough to share the Gospel with them. As one beggar would tell another beggar where he has found bread, Raise up a generation of young people who are peculiarly yours, that the world might know that there is a God in Israel, and that his people are a peculiar people, a royal priesthood, that they are set apart for his praise, and that they proclaim His glory throughout the earth pread. These things we pray in Christ name Amen a