Sermon Snippets: Daniel 1

Psalm 19

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

 

Those verses describe in poetic ways that God's creation communicates truths about God's character. The rest of the Psalm describes how God's Word does that too and how God's Word can bless us as we apply it to our lives.

 

But I'd like to focus on this idea of how nature reflects who God is. Many people these days - Christians and non-Christians alike - describe how they feel close to God when out it nature. It's not sufficient to only spend time in nature to commune with God, but our world does portray God's creativity.

 

Consider these examples:

• The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west in a predictable fashion.
• The North Star can be used as a guide if all our technological instruments fail when sailing or flying.
• The "Old Faithful" geyser will erupt either 65 minutes or 91 minutes depending on how long the eruption lasts.

 

What do those features of nature communicate about our God?

 

They reflect his reliability and faithfulness. God can be counted on; He is dependable.

Daniel knew well of the faithfulness of the Lord. Chapter 1 can seem to be an exaltation of Daniel's own faithfulness, when in reality it's more a magnification of God's faithfulness.

 

God gave Israel over to the Babylonians (vs.2).

God gave Daniel favor in the heart of his overseers (vs.9).

God gave Daniel and his friends superior wisdom and knowledge (vs.17).

 

They were facing extremely difficult circumstances, but God still came through for them. And He would continue to do so for the next seven decades.

 

I imagine the introductory verses of another Psalm resonated in their hearts whenever they reflected back on God's working in their lives:

 

Psalm 46

¹ God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.

 

God is faithful and we will not fear.

Sermon Snippets: Daniel

In the early days of Facebook, there were all kinds of games and apps and quizzes you could take while you were wasting your time on that social network. Wait a second, who am I kidding, there are still plenty of those things out there, but I remember taking a survey via Facebook and based on my responses, it compared me to a Bible character. Interesting right?  Who wouldn't want to be compared to a saint from the Bible?
When I finished that survey, I was rated similarly to Daniel.

I think there were a lot of positive attributes that were listed that this quiz determined were true of me and which made me like him. But my admirable character qualities are not why I bring this up. I bring this up because for our next sermon series, we will be going through the book of Daniel.

And for all his positive personality traits and his fine example, Daniel should not be our focus in the book of Daniel.  When properly read and interpreted, the book of Daniel shines a bright spotlight on God. Specifically, it directs our attention on God's sovereignty over people, world empires, and all of history. It points us ahead in the biblical account to the coming Son of Man and anticipates the day still-future when

"the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed...it will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever." - Dan. 2:44

This is a beautiful part of Scripture that encourages us in our despair, motivates us to faithfulness, and spurs us on with hope for the future. Even so come quickly Lord Jesus!

Music Mondays - Worst Christian Music Videos of All-Time

There are plenty of things within Christian culture that make me shake my head. Along with lame t-shirts and self-help books disguised as spirituality, Christian Music Videos have to be right up there.

There are good Christian music videos out there, and soon I will do a top 10 best list. But when you combine the comparitive lack of money invested with the generally lower quality of production and music (both in comparision to the music industry at-large), often the results are cringe-worthy.

So with this post, I will be ranking the worst, most cringe-worthy Christian Music Videos of all time. Here, in short, is my criteria:

Each video had to be from a well-known Christian artist. After that, I ranked each video based off of four categories, dated fashion (out of style haircuts, clothes), annoyance level of the song, strange-ness of the video concept, and how irrelevant the artist or group is now. Fashion (Fash.), Annoyance (Annoy.), and Video Concept (VC) were all ranked 1-10, with the higher the number, the worse it is. Artist Irrelevance (Art.Irr.) was on a scale of 1-5. This had a smaller scale because I felt like the more 'dated' a video, the more likely the artist is no longer popular and I didn't want to double-penalize some nominees. So each total score is based off of a range between 1-35.

So below is my countdown with scores and a brief explanation.

Honorable Mention:

Jesus is a Friend of Mine by Sonseed.

This doesn't make it because the cut because this group was never a well-known Christian artist in their time. But had they been, this would have scored a perfect 35. When I say "cringe-worthy" this really defines the term.

10. Jesus Will Still Be There by Point of Grace

Admittedly, this is a biased pick. I had to have a P.O.G. song on this list because they were the bane of my existence in high school, thanks to Word of Life Summer Camps constantly playing their music and the girls in our youth group celebrating them like the Beatles.
Their major infractions come with the areas of fashion and video concept. Are these women trapped in dungeon somewhere - is that the subliminal message being communicated here? Because it would really fit the theme of the song and the director should be considered a genius.
Total Score = 17 (Fash.- 5, Annoy.- 3, VC- 5, Art.Irr.- 4)

Sermon Snippets - Father's Day Edition

"But his delight is in the law of the Lord., and on his law he meditates day and night." - Psalm 1:2

As a pastor, it's so personally satisfying to be able to study and teach God's Word on a daily and weekly basis. I can't imagine doing anything else.

But I am not immune to getting stuck in a rut or being bored by routine like anyone else. This week's passage of Psalm 1 challenged me along these lines. A blessed man is one who "delights" in God's Word and "meditates on it day and night".

The latter part of that can lead to boredom, and make Bible study a drudgery and a chore. What's crucial is the idea of delighting in God's Word. One finds pleasure in it when one realizes that it's not the amount of chapters read or verses memorized, but the communion with our Holy and Glorious God.

Sunday is Father's Day and we're going to examine Psalm 1 from the perspective of what makes a good father. There are certain things a godly father won't do but the key thing a godly father will do per this Psalm is delighting in God's Word and making it his central focus.

A father who requires legalistic demands of his children to read God's Word is better than a father who neglects the spiritual training of his kids altogether. But even better is a father who invites his children to share the life-transforming power that comes when we encounter the God of the Universe within the pages of Scripture.  A father who delights in learning and applying God's Word will make a naturally powerful impact on his family. And isn't that what we all want?

Music Mondays

This video brings a smile to my face for a couple of different reasons.

Kevin Max is the new lead singer of Audio Adrenaline. Audio A was a favorite band of mine in high school, while KMax was the quirky member of dc Talk. I'm a little cynical when it comes to a lot of bands trying to keep going with new personnel, but this pairing was different. It just fit.

The foremost reason this brings a smile to my face is the message of the song and the connection they have to an orphanage in Haiti founded by the original lead singer of the group. It reminds me of an orphanage a good friend of mine started in the Philippines. I've had the privilege to visit it and it is special work they do, rescuing children and babies from certain death. It's truly fulfilling the call to love the least of these.

Music Mondays

I dug out one of my old mixed CD's from college, this was pre-iPods when it was all the rage to have friends with a legal or illegal program on their computer that would find any song you wanted and burn it on a cd for you.

It's crazy that even 10-12 years later, I still know what song comes next when one is ending. The very last song on one of the CD's I aptly marked "#3" was the following song.

This video is from 16 years ago and the song itself is 25 years old. It is amazingly relevant, heartfelt, and convicting. I wanted to learn to play the piano because of this song. I never did, but It made me want to learn just so I could play and sing this song. What a glorious desire and poetic prayer. It's one of a handful of songs I want played at my funeral.

Video first and then the lyrics and a bonus after the jump.