Sermons by Rev. Joel Lynn

               Today we’re continuing in the book of Daniel. And Daniel chapter 4 shares a lot of similarities to Daniel chapter 2. In both the king dreams a dream the needs interpretation. And both times none of the king’s wise men, magicians, enchanters, or diviners could interpret the dream, but Daniel could. As we said before, there are questions about this world that none of our wise men can answer, not scientists, not phds, some answers can only be answered by God and those God speaks through. And then this dream also is similar in that it is trying to teach King Nebuchadnezzar that his kingdom is not as great and glorious as he thinks. The first dream showed that the empire of Babylon would one day fall and be replaced by other kingdoms. But this dream was a little more pointed, it focused in on how Nebuchadnezzar’s own reign was about to be taken from him, at least for a time. And we’re going to be focusing a lot today on the type of punis...

               Today we’re continuing in the book of Daniel. Last week we looked at King Nebuchadnezzar who continually failed to learn his lessons in humility despite being witness to God’s miracles and power. Today we’re focusing further in on some of the Israelites who were living within Babylon, specifically Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego, or as Veggietales cleverly shortened for us: Rack, Shack, and Benny. And we want to look at how they are responding to Nebuchadnezzar’s command of trying to force all peoples to bow down and worship his golden idol.             And their response is simple: we will not bow down. A simple response, but a profound, countercultural response. For there are so many who bow down to the idols of their age. Some bow down because they are ignorant. They somehow fail to see the ways in which the values of the age in which they live contradict the values of the...

               Today we’re in the book of Daniel. And we’re focusing in on the character of King Nebuchadnezzar, who was a great and mighty king by human standards. He was the longest reigning king of Babylon and the Babylonian empire. He led military victories over Assyria, Egypt, and Jerusalem. But in Daniel chapter 2 we discover that for all his might, he had clear limits. There was a dream that he dreamed that troubled him and that he longed to understand, but he was not wise enough to understand. And even with all the forces under his control, he could find no one who could understand. And Nebuchadnezzar was kind of smart here in that he didn’t just ask for an interpretation of the dream from his wise men, he asked first for them to tell him what his dream was. For anyone can make up some random interpretation of a dream to seem smart, but only those with real understanding could know what the dream was without being told. If they could dis...

     Daniel was an exile, an Israelite living in Babylon, and not by choice. The Babylonians had conquered Judah and Jerusalem and they deported the majority of the people to live in Babylon. And Daniel faced many difficult decisions in his life of whether to conform to the rules of the Babylonians or whether to stay set apart and holy.             Daniel’s first test came when he was being prepped to be a servant of the king. And during this period he was to be fed meat and wine. But Daniel knew that if he ate these things he would defile himself. The text isn’t clear as to why exactly this would defile Daniel, but my best guess is that it is because some of the meat that was being served was probably from unclean animals such as pigs that Israelites were not allowed to eat. And so Daniel asks for vegetables and water instead. And the risk that he is informed of is that if due to this vegetarian diet Daniel ends up i...