Daily Bible Reading, Week 38

Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches special Monday Morning Coffee podcast on this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right. With look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it further and better work the applications into our daily lives . Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And, he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, September the 18th. I'm Mark and I have my Bible open and my notes ready to talk about daily Bible reading. I don't have sermon notes because, because I did not preach yesterday. Yesterday was Silver Sunday and it was just wonderful. I love themes Sundays like that. I love bringing in some guest speakers that can really bring the word of God with power because they have some expertise and understanding in that area. Really appreciate our guys yesterday, Ricky, Jess, and Leon. Just a really fine Sunday, if you were not there, you need to go and listen on our Facebook page or on our website just christians.com. You can listen to those sermons. They will help you young or old, no if ands or about or no if ands or buts about it. That's a little hard to say on a Monday morning, isn't it? Grab some coffee, grab your Bible. Let's get it over to Daniel chapter five. Let's get this podcast going. Let's get started. So it's Monday and we're reading Daniel chapter five verses 22 to 31 . And as I looked at my notes and I'm working through this, I realized I ran way over Friday. Friday's reading was just through verse 21 and I just took it all the way to the end of the chapter and gave you all the notes for that. I'll just go over a little bit of that. Once again, our reading begins in verse 22, down through verse 31, and the emphasis here again is that be Shaar needs to know that the most high God rules the kingdoms of mankind and sets over it whom he will. That's Friday's reading, verse 21 . So I guess on Friday since I talked about Monday's reading on Monday, I could talk about Friday's reading. Here it is, then God in whose hand is your breath? Verse 23, sovereignty of God all over again has said this. Meaning , meaning take all a parson, which means quite simply put to be numbered, meaning means numbered or counted out. Al means to weigh in a parson or Paris means to divide. And the idea is you've been weighed in the balances and you have been found wanting Beal shaar , you get an F, you failed and your kingdom is brought to an end In that very night verse 30, Beal Shaar , the Chaldean king was killed. We get a new empire then or new ruler ship . Darius the mead verse 31 receives the kingdom, the Babylonians are over and it's the mito Persian empire now that will in fact be running everything and it becomes the next great empire. The Persian empire particularly will rule for several hundred years. I mentioned on Friday that the Persians diverted part of the river you freights that ran under the walls of Babylon and that's how they gained entrance into the city of Babylon. Es tells us about that they conquered this great city that thought it was invincible, it was not. God said it would be brought down. Guess what? It was brought down. And in Daniel chapter six, we begin with the Persian empire. We'll start Daniel six tomorrow on Tuesday. See you then. Welcome to Tuesday and welcome to Daniel in the lion's den. Daniel chapter six verses one to 10 is our reading for today. Let me remind you once again, this is not a children's story and in fact Daniel is not a little boy. He is an old man by now and has seen the empires change. Now under the Persians, he is given an important place. Verse three, distinguished above all the other high officials. Wonder here if there's some jealousy working and maybe even some racism. Look at verse four. They couldn't find any ground or complaint because he was faithful. No error or fault was found in him. I wonder, like I said, if these, if the problem here isn't some racism thinking this Jew is above us, that could be a problem. We're gonna talk about racism on October the first as part of the unzip series. Racism is nothing new. It's been around a really, really long time. So then we get some flattery going on here. Really, really not a good situation at all. When kings get flattered, they ought to pay careful attention because somebody's just trying to manipulate them. But Darius is manipulated verse nine, and he signs this prohibition against any kind of praying, I would say a couple of things. Then verse 10, when Daniel knew the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had his windows in his upper chamber, open toward Jerusalem, got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he had done previously. This is an important place in the book of Daniel . The book of Daniel talks about God's people being oppressed and persecuted and harmed and it is advancing the idea that even though God is sovereign, that does not mean that God's people always have an easy go of it. That's gonna be very important in the time between the testaments when Judaism is ferociously persecuted by the Syrians under Antiochus epiphanies. We'll see some of that in the visions that the book of Daniel contains. What do you do in those situations? Do you give up on God? What's Daniel going to do? He's enjoyed so much success. He has not assimilated into Babylonian culture and become a Babylonian, but will he abandon God? Now it seems that we ought to notice a thing or two about his praying here in verse 10. Morning and evening offerings, the time of the morning and the evening offering would be the usual time for prayer. So three prayers seems to be a little extra standing is the usual posture of prayer. So kneeling would show some extra humility and having a special place to pray might be a little unusual that might say something about Daniel's wealth and about how uh , how rich his house is, how much luxury he lives in. So Daniel six, one to 10 is our reading for Tuesday and it makes us think a little bit about what we would do in that situation. In that circumstance, what would you do? What would I do? We know what Daniel did. What's going to happen next? We'll read more of this on Wednesday. Welcome to Wednesday. Today we read Daniel chapter six, verses 11 to 20. This is the meat of the story because it puts the emphasis on God. I'm afraid sometimes when we tell the story of Daniel and the lion's den, we're all about Daniel when really in Daniel chapter six as we see today, it's all about God. These men came by agreement verse 11 and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. And then there is some of that racism that I was talking about yesterday. Verse 13, Daniel who is one of the exiles from Judah pays no attention to you. This is reminiscent of the charge against Shadrach , Meshach , and Abednego. They don't respect you King. So the king is just distressed. Verse 14, where is he going to find someone like Daniel? Daniel is such a wise man and to lose him over this kind of petty jealousy and manipulation would be very painful. But look at the emphasis. Verse 16, may your God whom you continually serve deliver you. It's not about Daniel, it's about the Lord. And then of course the king has him put in the lion's den. Verse 18, no diversions were brought to him. That's an unusual term. It could mean entertainment, it can mean concubines. So the king is just beside himself. Sleep flees from him at daybreak. Then verse 19, he comes to the den. Verse 20, oh Daniel, servant of the living God has your God whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the lions. It's about the Lord. I'm impressed with Daniel's praying. You should be impressed with Daniels praying. We should all be impressed with the faithfulness of Daniel. But it's not about Daniel being faithful, it's about God delivering. That's what this is about. God has delivered Daniel. I'll cheat a little bit and get some of tomorrow's reading. That's what Daniel says in verse 22. My God sent his angel. The Lord is the one who delivers. And that's the focus in our reading today. See you tomorrow as we complete Daniel chapter six, Daniel and the lion's den. Or maybe God saving Daniel and the lion's den. See you on Thursday. Daniel chapter six is what we are completing today. It's Thursday. We read Daniel six verses 21 to 28. And again it's all about the Lord my God. Verse 22 sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth. They have not harmed me 'cause I was found blameless before him and also before you King. I have done no harm. So God delivers his servant. We're delighted at that and we need to hold on to that truth. The king is glad. Verse 23, these men who manipulated him, they are executed. And so Darius then begins and makes a great decree beginning verse 25, about God, this is like what Nebuchadnezzar did. And now Darius is doing the same thing. People should fear and tremble before God. Verse 26, he's the living God. His dominion shall be to the end. His kingdom shall never be destroyed. Sovereignty, the power of God is being emphasized once more, God is praised because he is alive. He is shown that by the way he intervenes in human history, his rule is eternal and will never end. And because he caress for his people, he saved Daniel from the power of the lions. Verse 27, A God who is as strong and powerful as this might be a God who just shrugs his shoulders and says, I don't care about those little specks that are walking around on that piece of dust out there in the cosmos. No Daniel's God, the one true God. Our God has power and might he is alive. He rules and he cares and saves and delivers. God is the hero in Daniel chapter six. See you tomorrow. We start something really different in Daniel, as will be in Daniel chapter seven tomorrow. See you on Friday. It is Friday and you made it through the week. Today we begin a entirely different section of the book of Daniel. We start the vision section of Daniel. Daniel. Seven to 12 contains a number of interesting and exciting visions, many of which have parts that are puzzling and hard to discern everything and work everything out with. It's a , it's not an easy section of the Bible to read, but we're gonna focus on sovereignty. We're gonna keep looking at the main message of the book of Daniel. And that's important because these visions will cover some time for the Jews when God doesn't seem very sovereign. The time between Malachi and Matthew is a time when the Judean nation, the Judean province, is under the boot, under the heel of various different competing powers and they kick Judah around like a football and the people get kicked around and persecuted. And in fact, some of those rulers, one particularly tries to exterminate Judaism entirely. Where is our all powerful God when this is going on? That would be a very natural question to ask. And that is the question that apocalyptic literature seeks to answer. Daniel Ezekiel and especially the book of Revelation major in these kinds of visions that try to reassure God's people at a time when they need comfort, when they need to be reminded that God is in control, that God is sovereign. This is crisis literature. Apocalyptic literature is not written when everything's going well. Instead, it's written to deal with the trouble sometimes when people are being persecuted for their faith . And apocalyptic literature always has the same message. The complete confidence in God's eventual triumph is the main message. An apocalyptic literature like this, God always wins. You know, the end from the beginning. So you need to stay with the Lord, be faithful unto death. Don't give up. It may look like the devil's winning. The devil is not winning. So as we look at Daniel chapter seven, while reading verses one to eight, this is in the first year of Bel Shaar , the king of Babylon. This is 5 56, somewhere around in there. He was a co regent with his father Naus . Uh , somewhere about this particular time. And there is tremendous correspondence between this second vision, but I'm sorry, between Daniel chapter two and the vision there. And this vision here in Daniel chapter seven, both set forth for kingdoms and everything ends with the establishment of God's kingdom. That's what's important here. We see the first kingdom, a lion, verse four, that's Nebuchadnezzar. And there's some artwork from Babylon. I'm thinking about the Ishtar gate that has yellow lions like this. And then there's a second empire, and that's the mito Persian empire. Another beast. The second one, verse five, like a bear raised up on one side, that's a, that's an alliance. The MEO Persian alliance was, was a little out of balance. The Meads and the Persians. Uh , the Meto side of that was not as strong as the Persian side of that, which goes on to dominate the world for a long period of time. Has ribs in its mouth. What's that about? Mm , probably not sure about that one. Commentator contains eight different interpretations. We have to be careful not to try to make too much of everything, try to focus on every detail and decide we're gonna find a historical correspondent for that. This is the Meto Persian Empire. Very strong empire, but it's destroyed. Verse six, by the leopard fast rising Empire, Alexander the Great and the Greeks, they just cover the earth and win the earth or the then known world, if you will, in a lightning campaign. Alexander conquers the world, but of course he doesn't get to enjoy that conquest. He dies and his empire is divided among his four leading generals. And out of that, then comes verse seven, this fourth beast. Terrifying and dreadful, exceedingly strong. We don't know here who that is, but it's a frightening beast. And we want to know more about that beast. And we will, as we continue in Daniel chapter seven on Monday, if you have to look ahead a little bit, just look at verse nine and notice God is on the throne. The beast is terrible and terrifying, but this beast is not in charge. God is. And we'll see that on Monday. So thank you for listening to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast. If you like what you're hearing, I hope that you have subscribed or followed the podcast so that it will download automatically. Please give us a review. Please tell others about the show. That helps us, helps more people get in their Bible, stay in their Bible 'cause they understand what the Bible says. So until next week, I hope that your coffee is delightful and your Friday is wonderful and that the Lord will be with you today all day. I'll see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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