Daniel 9-1-23 Learn to Pray like Daniel

Prayer is important, so today we’ll see what we can learn about prayer from Daniel.

If you asked most people who Daniel was, they would get it wrong.  They would focus on the peripherals, the externals, the nonessentials, the unimportant, the little things.  They would say things like, oh, he was a Jewish captive who became third in command over the most powerful empire in the world.  YAWN!

That would be missing the important things like who Daniel really was.

He is referred to three times in the book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel was appointed by God to explain to the Jewish people who had been taken captive to a foreign country the reasons why God had them taken captive, which was their continual rebellion against the ways of God.

In chapter 14, God tells Ezekiel (Ezekiel 14:14):  even though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, by their own righteousness they could only deliver themselves,” declares the Lord GOD.

And then again in verse 20:      even though Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, as I live,” declares the Lord GOD, “they could not deliver either their son or their daughter. They would deliver only themselves by their righteousness.”

Noah, of course, is the one man God thought worthy of saving when He destroyed the whole world by a flood for their evil.  And then God saved his immediate family as well.

Job was the most righteous man in the world in his time, who the devil singled out as needing some severe testing in order to prove if he was really worthy of that title.

And then there is Daniel.  Everybody knew who Daniel was, but in God’s eyes, he was one of a very small group of people.  One of the most righteous persons who ever lived it seems.  And that says a lot considering those people who didn’t make the list.

God didn’t mention Abraham, the one to whom God made a covenant that would bring salvation to the world. 

He didn’t mention Moses, the man who talked with God face to face.

He didn’t even mention David, a man after God’s own heart, who wrote most of the Psalms in the Bible.

The Bible is not shy about talking about a person’s foibles, to put it mildly.  Abraham, Moses, and David all had foibles, if you want to call them that, and the Bible talks about them.  Not so with Daniel.

Then in Ezekiel 28:3, Ezekiel was prophesying against the ruler of one of the major cities of the region.  Most scholars believe that this prophecy was likening that nation’s king to Satan.  And God said to this king:

               3      Behold, you are wiser than Daniel; There is no secret that is a match for you.

Now we all know of people who we think are really smart, even wise.  But God judges wisdom by a whole different standard than we do.   

The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  (Job 28:28; Ps 111:10; Prov 9:10; 15:33; Eccl 12:13)

Now if somebody was told that they are wiser than Larry, you’re not saying much.  But when God says that this man was wiser than Daniel, you know that Daniel’s wisdom was legendary. 

Besides all this, three times in the book of Daniel, Daniel is told that he is highly esteemed by God. 

The angel Gabriel, the same angel who in the book of Luke came to Mary to announce that she would bear the child Jesus, came to Daniel after Daniel had prayed this prayer and told him that he is highly esteemed by God.  That word ‘esteemed’ doesn’t quite do it justice.  The word is preciousness, and the word is emphasized.  It is put first in the sentence.  Many languages use word order to emphasize things.  We can do that sometimes in English, but not always.  And the word is a plural form, which can also be used for emphasis.

Gabriel told Daniel, Preciousness are you. 

I think this is the only time that that word is used of a person.  Usually it speaks of a person’s valuables.  One German Hebrew lexicon translates this as Liebling, like you would say to your little granddaughter.  My grandmother used to call me Schatze, which is like treasured one, or treasure.  Which is a close equivalent for this.

When God gave the Ten Commandments and said, Do not covet, this is the word He used.  Something you want so much you want to take it from somebody else.

Now it is true that, as far as we know, the first time Daniel was called this was after his prayer here, so some might think that he didn’t know how special he was to God when he prayed this.  But prior to this, Daniel had had supernatural revelations from God where he could see and interpret dreams that other people had had.  This had to have been more than just subconscious impulses.  He wouldn’t have gone as boldly as he did before kings, unless he was fully certain that God had spoken to him.

   

In Daniel 9:23, after Daniel had prayed the prayer that we are going to look at, the angel Gabriel came visibly to Daniel in answer to his prayer. 

Now why did we spend so much time talking about what kind of person Daniel was, both in God’s eyes and in the eyes of other people?  Because in Daniel’s prayer, he spends most of the time confessing his sins.  And these weren’t sins that he actually committed himself.  They were the sins of his people, the sins for which God had judged them. 

Daniel’s prayer lasted 15 verses, and he confessed his sins in 12 of them.  That’s 80% of his prayer.

Daniel’s nation was in ruins.  It had been conquered by a foreign power and totally decimated.  Daniel read in the book of Jeremiah that this was to be only for a limited time, and God would then restore the nation. 

So Daniel prayed for his country.  I don’t think a lot of Christians pray for their country or even get involved in politics.  They think the Bible puts a big wall against that: Caesar and God. 

But something has changed here.  We don’t have kings and Caesars anymore.  We have representatives.   That means that there are people in government who represent us.  They are there to see that my interests affect the policies that my country enacts.

Well, my representatives in my state and Congress all support abortion.  It doesn’t matter that I didn’t vote for them.  They represent me.  They speak in my name.

If Daniel confessed the sins of the Israelite people as his own sins, all the more Christians who have representatives who vote for, pay for, and stand up for things that Christians find appalling and abhorrent should confess before God the sins of our people. 

It doesn’t matter that I didn’t vote for them.  What am I doing to see that somebody truly does represent my interests? 

Our country is like an enormous table where everybody is invited to sit down together and decide the best way to run our country.  Actually, the table is too big, so we choose people to sit in for us. 

It’s absurd for Christians to let the heathen decide what to teach your children in school, how to deal with crime, poverty, and immorality.  You give way more money to the government than you give to church or other Christian organizations.  Shouldn’t you care how they spend your money?  Talk about stewardship!

If a man like Daniel prayed for his country, feeling responsible for the sins of the country, how much more should Christians feel in some ways responsible for the sins of our country? 

The Bible says to love your neighbor as yourself.  I feel like we spend more time, money, and energy on people we’ll never meet, in places we’ll never see, for causes for which we will never see the outcomes than the people who live and work right around us.  We say it’s because those others are more needy, when the bigger reason is probably that we feel so inadequate to reach out to those close by.

The first step is prayer.  And Daniel shows us the way here.

Numbers 14:11-20 Learn to Pray like Moses

Some of the parts of the Bible that you really want to study are the prayers.  Most of these are found in the Old Testament, though the prayers of Paul will make a good study.

You will want to imitate them when you pray.  They all share the same characteristics, but I will not teach them all together, just talking about these characteristics.  Each prayer deserves a separate treatment, even when they overlap and repeat the other prayers.  They are that important.

Today I want to talk about a prayer of Moses. 

Moses’ mission in life was to take the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and to bring them to a new land that God had promised them.  They were now on the edge of entering that land. 

But there is a problem.

I don’t want to go into the whole thing here.  We will have lessons on that later on.

 

But the people are in a life and death situation.  God was about to abort the mission.  The life of the Israelite nation was close to being done.  We have all known people who have died way before their time.  I will not make judgments here about their lives.  We simply don’t know what was going on in their lives.  And there are other reasons why people die too soon.

And, besides, we’re talking here about the people who are doing the praying for them.  And certainly these principles of prayer relate to any prayers that we make.

The story is found in Numbers 13 and 14.  The prayer begins in Numbers 14:13.

In verse 11, “The LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst? 12 “I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.”

And then Moses responds to God.

He bases his prayer around 3 themes:

1)         God’s Name

13 But Moses said to the LORD, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought up this people from their midst, 14 and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, O LORD, are in the midst of this people, for You, O LORD, are seen eye to eye, while Your cloud stands over them; and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. 15 “Now if You slay this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say, 16 ‘Because the LORD could not bring this people into the land which He promised them by oath, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.’

If God were to judge the nation and end them, what will the nations say?  How would that look to God’s reputation?  What would that say about God?

I first got cancer in 1996.  I say first got cancer, because I got cancer again in 2017. 

The doctors wanted me to start chemotherapy right away.

I didn’t want to.  I had young kids, and I told them that when they had problems, they should pray about them and God would help them.  If I just jumped into getting treatment, what would that say about God?  Oh, yeah, God can help me with the small stuff, but something really big, no point asking God.  Just go right ahead and do what they say.

That just didn’t sound right to me.  So I asked the doctors to hold off and test me again in a few months, and let’s see what happens.  That started a very interesting time in my Christian life.  I felt like God was speaking to me constantly about things, things I should do, and in a few months, I called them back to be tested again.

They did the tests again, and they came back normal. 

The point is that I had a reason behind my prayers.  A reason that had to do with God’s Name.  Is God the One who wants us to call on Him in trouble and will He deliver us, or not? 

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God’s Name be hallowed. 

This is the same thing here.  It’s not the only way God’s Name is hallowed, but it’s one.

Moses made the case before God, like a lawyer in a courtroom, he made the case that if God were to end the nation of Israel, it would shame the Name of God before all the nations.  They were watching.  They knew what God had done to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt. 

If God were to destroy the nation in the wilderness, what would the nations think?  Either that God couldn’t do what He said He would do, or God didn’t really intend to do what He said He would do.

When you pray, are you able to make a case before God why He should answer your prayer?  Is there a promise somewhere in the Bible that would make God look bad if He didn’t answer?

I know a lot of Christians won’t like this.  A lot of Christians today are afraid to take a Bible passage and say that this is a promise that God has to keep.  I say, if the Bible doesn’t mean what it says or says what it means, then why are we reading it all the time or preaching sermons on it every week?  If it doesn’t mean what it says or says what it means, then why didn’t God say what it means or mean what it says in the first place?

How are we to understand the Bible then?  We can’t all go to seminary.  We can’t all learn Hebrew and Greek.  We can’t all buy a library of all the latest Bible dictionaries and commentaries that tell us all the latest in Biblical scholarship.

Most of us are just ordinary people trying to make it through life.  So can we understand the Bible or not?

When you pray, can you think of some reason why God should answer your prayer, based on what it says about God, how it would make God look?  Moses did, and He knew God face to face.

2)         God's Purpose

The second theme that Moses built his prayer around was God’s purpose.

God said He was going to bring the Israelites to a Promised Land.  If He didn’t, it would be like God didn’t or couldn’t keep His Word.

I think Christians need to look at their lives and ask what they are living for.  Do you know what God’s plans for your life are?  We won’t know all the details.  I don’t think God wants us to know all the details.  We might not want to go that way if we knew where it will end up.

But we should have a sense that we are on the path He wants.

Do you see a purpose for your life?

If you were to find your life in a life-threatening situation, can you approach God and make a case for your life?

When I had stage 4 cancer two years ago, and the doctor said this treatment is just a band-aid, I never for a second thought I was going to die.  Why?  I hadn’t done anything with my life.  I knew I had a purpose I hadn’t fulfilled yet.  What is that purpose?  I’m not sure completely.  I have some ideas, but it’s certainly a lot more than what I have done so far in my life.

Your purpose in life doesn’t need to be something glorious or magnificent.  It can something as simple as taking care of your family or teaching Sunday School.  But you should have a sense that you are doing what God wants you to be doing and that your life has meaning.

And then thirdly

3)         God’s love and mercy

17 “But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, 18 ‘The LORD is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’ 19 “Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”

Moses here is taking God’s Words to him and repeating them back to God.  Today we would call that praying Scripture.  We quote the Bible back to God as we make our case to Him.  We take God’s words to us and are essentially saying to God, did you mean this or not?

God, didn’t you say such and such?  Psalm such and such says this.  You said in such and such passage that such and such.

Here Moses focuses on God’s lovingkindness and mercy.  God had forgiven the people before and why should this be any different?  You said that You were slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, so according to the greatness of your lovingkindness, forgive them, just like You already have done before.

When you pray, think of past times that God did something and if God did that then, why He should do it again.

In 2007, I saved my son’s life.  Well, God did.  It was clearly a miracle all the way around.  I believe God has a purpose for my son far beyond the mere extension of his life.  God didn’t spare his life just so he could live an ordinary ho-hum life.  I believe God has plans for him.  And if I ever needed to, I would refer back to that when I pray for my son.

When you pray, and I mean now the big ones, not the ‘God, can you find me a parking place,’ you need to make your case like a lawyer.  Gathering reasons why God should answer your prayer.  Does God need to be convinced?  I suspect it could be more for our sakes than His.  But I’m just reporting what the Bible says and what it all seems to mean.  In those tough times, don’t just keep begging God for an answer.  Tell Him why He should. 

And God then said to Moses.  20  “I have pardoned them according to your word;

According to YOUR word, Moses. 

Moses knew God face to face.  Don’t argue with Moses here.  Just pray like Moses prayed.

Seeing Prayer in a Whole New Way

I came across this passage while I was doing my regular Bible reading, and one word and one passage made me go back and study them in a little more depth.  I spent a week researching and thinking about it, and it changed my whole thinking about prayer.

You’ll want to have your Bible open for this one and follow along.  If you’re watching this on video, pause it, and get your Bible.  The passage is Luke 11:5-13.

Just before this passage, one of the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.  And He does. 

That tells me that prayer is something that needs to be taught.  Imagine two identical people in identical circumstances.  One was taught how to pray, and one wasn’t.  And they both prayed about the same thing.  Would there be any difference in their outcomes?

If there isn’t, then why would Jesus think it’s important to teach them how to pray?

Jesus began by teaching them the Lord’s Prayer, which I covered in part in another lesson. 

Then Jesus gives an illustration to make a point about prayer. 

He begins by asking a question.  The first problem in this passage is knowing what the question is. 

He begins in a way He often did.  He asks: which of you? 

The tendency here is to see the question as: which of you has a friend?  And we forget that Jesus is still asking the question.

The question actually extends from verse 5 through verse 7.   

 “Which of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight.

Imagine that you say to him: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; ⁶ for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; ⁷ and he says back to you, ‘Don’t bother me; the door is shut and my kids and I are in bed; I can’t get up and give you anything.’

This is the question that Jesus is asking.  Imagine that this happened to you.

The thing is that nobody would say that in the Middle East. Nobody would turn away a friend with that kind of request.  We today, in the West, side with the man who was sleeping.  It’s the middle of the night.  This would cause too much commotion. 

But that would have been unheard of then.  The people would have said, What?  Nobody would say that!

Throughout the Middle East, as far back at least as the time of Abraham, 2,000 years before Christ, even until today, hosting guests is a sacred thing.  And in places like the Middle East, back then at least, people traveling at night was common.  Way too hot during the day. 

The man’s excuses were phony baloney excuses that Jesus made up to show the ridiculousness of the whole thing.  So this is not meant to be understood as something that any man would have said.

Verse 8.  So of course, the man will get up and get him whatever he needs and not even because he is a friend.

And here is the second problem in the passage.

The man will get up and give him whatever he needs, not because he is a friend, but because of his ἀναίδειαν (ah-nai'-dee-on). 

The Greek word here has been a point of discussion and debate for a long time.  What does the word mean, and who is it referring to?  Does it refer to the man who was sleeping or the man outside asking for help?

The word does not mean persistence.  The man did not get up and give the other man whatever he needs, because the man was annoying him.  It doesn’t say that the man outside started beating on the door, refusing to leave until he got what he wanted.  He merely called to his friend.  His friend knew what the need was.  The excuses he gave were just the phony ones that Jesus gave to show the ridiculousness of the man even thinking that he wasn’t going to give the guy what he wanted.

The word means shameless, doing something that isn’t proper.  Some scholars, actually a few, argue that this applied to the man who was sleeping.  If he didn’t get up, the whole town would hear about it, that he didn’t get up to give someone who had guests the help that he needed, and he would be shamed. 

But the other scholars think that those few are stretching the word beyond what they should.  And I agree with them.  The shamelessness was the man coming in the middle of the night.  He knows the man is sleeping, but he thinks nothing of coming to ask for help.  That’s what friends do.

And Jesus says: of course, he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

Now some think it’s important to note that the man wasn’t asking anything for himself.

He had guests, and these things are entirely for them.  Other people.

You notice too in the Lord’s Prayer, everything is: give us, give us, and not: give me, give me. 

But notice too:  it’s not: please may I have this, if it’s not too much of a problem.  It’s simply, give us, forgive us, lead us not, deliver us.  It’s the talk of extreme familiarity.  No please, or even a thank you.

But then Jesus gives them the application of the story: Luke 11:9–13 

⁹ “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ¹⁰ “For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.

The words, ask, seek, and knock, are in the Greek present tense, which should be understood as continual actions.  Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking.

Which is why a lot of scholars think the parable is about persevering in prayer.

I don’t think so anymore.  I don’t think He’s talking about asking for the same thing over and over.  I think He’s talking about constantly asking God for things.  Constantly praying.  About everything.  Flooding heaven with your requests. 

And Jesus goes on: “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? ¹² “Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?

Of course, God will give you what you ask for.

Now I have prayer requests that I have had for decades, with no apparent answer in sight. 

Maybe that’s why. 

I never stopped to believe that God had answered my prayers.  I just kept thinking He hadn’t, so I kept praying about them as if He hadn’t.  I don’t know.  But maybe that’s why.  This is all new for me now, though I have heard things like this before.

I know this raises all kinds of questions that we can’t answer today.  But I think we’re making progress. 

An illustration that comes to mind with me on this is professional baseball.

There are 162 regular games in the season.  If you lose one, you can’t fuss over it, because you have another game tomorrow probably.  Don’t keep score of answered prayers and unanswered prayers.  Just keep praying, expecting God to give you what you ask for.

Some people I’ve read about keep a prayer journal with their requests and the date they prayed for it.

I’m suggesting that you’re going to have far too many prayers to write down, far too many to keep track of, and far too many to even try to remember.

Keep praying, about everything, expect God to answer them, and act accordingly, with appreciation, thanksgiving, and praise, even before you see any answers.

  

I Samuel 17 Another Look at David and Goliath

The story of David and Goliath is one of the most well-known stories in the Bible.  So well-known that nobody wants to teach on it any more.  They figure everybody knows the story so well, they’ll just tune out when you try to teach it.  And besides, there’s nothing more to be said about it.  So we leave it for our youngest children in their children’s Bibles, because there is action and a good story.

But I don’t think most of us know the whole story.  We know the plot of the story, but I think we miss some of the important connections.  I want to focus on 3 parts of the story that I think most people miss.

1)         David’s past

Many of you know this part, but I wonder if you’ve put all the pieces together.

The prophet Samuel came to Bethlehem to anoint the new king of Israel.  He knew it would be one of Jesse’s sons, but he didn’t know which one. 

When he saw Jesse’s oldest son, he thought that this had to be the one.  And God spoke to his heart and told him, no, it’s not.  I don’t look at a person’s outward appearance.  I look at their heart. 

So he went through 7 of Jesse’s sons there, and God didn’t pick any of them.

So Samuel asks if there is another one.  Ah, yes, the youngest.  David.  He’s out tending the sheep.

David’s tending the sheep, because he’s the youngest.  Apparently the other brothers weren’t needed there.  They had more important things to do.  Like having lunch with the nation’s prophet.   The youngest of them could handle the sheep. 

Later, David is visiting the Israeli army camp when Goliath is challenging Israel to send their best warrior out to face him one-on-one.

When nobody was willing to challenge him, David said he would do it.  Why was David so confident?  When he was tending the sheep, he had killed a bear and a lion to protect his sheep.  He figured God would protect him here too.

David didn’t learn what he needed to learn in soldier school.  He learned what he needed to learn to kill Goliath while doing the things that nobody else wanted to do, unimportant things around the house.  Or you could say, the family business. 

They didn’t think David was important enough to attend the luncheon.  They didn’t flip to see who would watch the sheep.  David was the youngest, so he got all the jobs nobody else wanted.  And God took those experiences and made David a fit vessel for His service.  God was watching and knew David’s heart.  David was called to the meal and anointed king over Israel.

God prepared David for His service in ways nobody would have expected.  Moses spent 40 years tending sheep before God called him.

2) 2^nd part        The army’s presence

So the Philistine and Israeli army are standing on opposite hills while Goliath is challenging them to send out their champion.

This went on for 40 days, until David arrived to bring food for his brothers and their commander.  David hears the challenge, and their king lets David approach the Philistine adversary.

So where is God in all this?

If David had been there the first day, this would have ended a month and a half earlier.  Why didn’t God do something earlier?  Why didn’t God intervene? 

In rare cases, God will act unilaterally, like when He destroyed the Assyrian army overnight while they were sleeping during the time of Hezekiah. 

But generally God uses people.  He doesn’t make them do anything.  David believed that God would deliver the people through him.  He had seen what God had done in his life previously by protecting him from the bear and the lion when he was watching the sheep.  Israel was God’s sheep, and this Philistines was just like that bear and lion seeking to destroy God’s flock. 

But for 40 days, nobody was able or willing to face Goliath, and nothing happened in that time.  God was perfectly fine with waiting until David came along.

I wonder how many of us are waiting for God to change things, and He’s waiting for somebody to rise up and face the challenge. 

Was it God’s will for the Philistines to continually harass and oppress the Israelites, or was it God’s will to overcome them? 

It was God’s will for them to overcome them, but He was perfectly willing for them to go through all this until such time as someone would rise up and face it in God’s Name.

3) 3^rd part         The future’s prospects

In II Samuel 21, it tells of 4 other giant-sized Philistine warriors who were killed by David’s soldiers, including one of David’s brothers.

Once people saw what could be done, others thought they could do that too.

They, and people today, need to see and hear of other people doing things for God or with God, or overcoming tough circumstances for them to believe that they can do the same things or that things will work out for them too. 

Once people saw David kill Goliath, other soldiers thought, hey, I can do that too.  God will help me just like He helped David.  This is all for the same cause.

If David and these other Israelites had not believed that God wanted them to get victory over their enemies, they wouldn’t have.  Too many Christians, I believe, don’t know what God wants, so when Goliaths appear in their lives, they don’t know how to respond.  They may pray for God to deliver them, for God to remove this giant, and God is waiting for somebody to face the giant, believing that this giant will fall before them.

And while I was reading all this over, I felt like I’m talking to myself here.  Like there are things I must do.  Maybe you will see Goliaths in your life as well.

Psalm 50 God’s End of the Bargain

There is a phrase that occurs about 33 times in the Bible in one form or other.  It is the phrase where God is speaking, and He says: I will be God to you.  Or to them.

This occurs mostly in the Old Testament, although twice in the New Testament the Old Testament is quoted, showing that this phrase applies to Christians as well.

Most of the time, when the Bible talks of our relationship with God, it’s about things we are supposed to do:  Love your neighbor, love one another, put off the old man, put on the new. 

And that’s OK.  God is self-sufficient.  He got along quite well without us before He created us, but we often don’t know the heads from the tails in how to live our lives, we need direction.

The trick is that too often we see these commandments from God as burdensome, an unattainable standard that’s no point trying to keep. It only fills us with guilt and depression when we can’t live up to them.

But that’s for another lesson, but we need to see God’s commandments as the manufacturer’s owner manual, telling us how this thing works.  God created life as we know it, including human life.  He knows best how we function, and we need to see His commandments, not as arbitrary, make-work, stay busy kind of activity, where we are graded on how well we conform to the rules, but actions that we take by which we can and will thrive.

But it’s only fair to ask if God has made clear to us what we can expect of Him.  We constantly insist that Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship.  Well, you can’t have a relationship with somebody if you don’t know what you can expect out of them. 

We say that God is sovereign.  He can do and He does whatever He wants.

But if that means we can never know what He’s going to do, then we don’t know Him at all.  Isn’t that the point of the Bible?  If the Bible is just to tell us how to be saved, He could have given us a gospel tract.  But He gave us this thousand page book to teach us about life.  And Himself.

I mentioned that 33 times in the Bible God says something like, I will be God to somebody.  And about 20 times He says what that means.

I want to look at one of those times.  Psalm 50

Verse 7 God says: Hear, O My people, and I will speak;  O Israel, I will testify against you;

I am God, your God.

The next six verses He essentially tells them that there is nothing really that they can do for Him, so to speak.  What do you give to the person who has everything? 

But then in verse 14, He tells them what He does want:  14    “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving And pay your vows to the Most High;

Thanksgiving is music to God’s ears.  The Bible says in Ephesians and I Thessalonians about giving thanks always. 

Now I admit, that has never been easy for me.  Several years ago, I had to quit work when I got sick.  I’m still not 100%.  But not working, it was very easy for me to look back on my life, and I wasn’t happy with a lot of what I saw.  I thought surely as a Christian, a lot of things would have, should have been different.

But since that time, God has taught me to be thankful.  Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.  And I told Him and keep telling Him, I don’t understand that goodness, but  I want to.  But He is good, and I say it.

Then He says to pay your vows.  That basically means, all those things that you told God you would do, do them.  Those promises to follow Him, You know what you’ve said.

And then God tells them, us, what His part in all this is. Verse 15       Call upon Me in the day of trouble;  I will deliver you, and you will honor Me.”

Call upon Me in the day of trouble. 

The Greek translation for the word ‘trouble’ here is θλῖψις, thlip-sis, which in the New Testament is the common word for tribulation.  Call on me in the day of tribulation, and I will deliver you.

Christians are all too familiar with the concept of tribulations.  The question that Christians always have is: what do we do with them?  Or, what does God want to do with them?  Do we live with them, or will God remove them at some point?

Here God says that He will deliver you from them.  Now deliverance doesn’t always come as soon as we’d like or even the way we’d like. 

Some say the death is sometimes the deliverance.  And I would say, be careful with that. 

In the Old Testament, they didn’t have a richly defined theology of an afterlife.  They never said you’ll die and be with God and everything will be all right.  You died, and that pretty much was it.  There were hints that there would be a resurrection of the dead, but the dead were dead until then. 

Nobody would have seen death as the deliverance out of their tribulations.  Job would have seen it as a deliverance FROM his trials but not OUT OF them. 

Now I’ve had stage 4 cancer and then later a test came back that said I had fibrosis of the lungs.  Now there’s nothing they can do for fibrosis.  They give you 5 years.

Now my tests are all clear.  I never thought for a second I was going to die from any of this.  Someone may say I am just stubborn and living in a dream world.  If I’m stubborn, it’s because I know what the Bible says.  If the Bible doesn’t mean what it says, why are we reading it, and why are we supposed to read it?

Someone’s going to say that they knew somebody who really believed that God was going to do something, and He didn’t.  And this person died.  And I can tell you stories in my own life of things just like that.  Where I expected things that didn’t happen.  I could write a book on disappointment with God. 

But don’t you dare choose to believe something different from what seems like a very clear passage of Scripture.  I would rather believe that God was going to deliver Goliath into my hands and died trying than to stand on the sidelines, afraid to enter the battle.  We’ll talk about that in another lesson.

But like I will say a lot in these lessons, we can’t answer every question in five minutes.

God says that He will deliver you.  Don’t look around to see if God is delivering your friends out of their tribulations.  This is between you and God.  Start giving thanks, and do the things you said you were going to do.

Call upon Him in the day of tribulation, and He WILL deliver you.

Psalm 34:19 says:     Many are the afflictions of the righteous,  But the LORD delivers him OUT OF  THEM ALL.

The word ‘afflictions’ here is that same word ‘tribulations’ again.  Many are the tribulations of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

15 again           Call upon Me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you will HONOR Me.

And how do we honor God?

The last verse of this psalm tells us: He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me.  And so we’re back again to thanksgiving.

We give thanks before the troubles, and for that, He delivers us FROM those troubles, and then we thank God again. 

So if you want to take away anything from this lesson, start giving thanks to God.  Whether you feel like it or not, whether the circumstances look like it or not. 

If you want to take something else from this lesson too.  When the Bible says something, believe it and stop trying to look for reasons why it might not mean what it looks like it says.

Ephesians 1:15-18 Even better than going to heaven

This lesson could change your life.  Or not.

You can’t really predict when change will come in your life.  You can’t force change.  People make resolutions all the time, and most of them fail.  Why?  Because they weren’t ready for change. 

When you think about the fact that God created the world, you have to examine the world that He created.  You have to ask why He created things the way He did.  Well, at least I do.

One thing I think about a lot is the idea of families.  God created Adam and Eve as adults.  Why would future generations depend on the actions of other people?  Why create new life through sex?  Why does it take so long for a child to reach maturity?  Most animals reach adulthood in months or a maybe a year at most. 

And, of course, you realize that God didn’t give human beings the ability to control reproduction.  Humans developed that, and very late in human history.  And it turns out that when humans control how many children they’re going to have, it’s a lot fewer than what it seems God had in mind. 

It’s like God wanted people to go through things they never would choose to go through on their own. 

It seems too that God’s priorities are far different from ours.  Forget the part about how people can’t afford to have a lot of kids today.  That’s for another lesson, and one on politics.

But throughout all of history, from the time of creation in the Garden of Eden, almost every family was a large one, and that meant that almost every woman was primarily raising families for much of her life. 

Now I’m just making observations here and trying to think about what they mean.

It’s like family and having a family is the most important thing in the world in God’s eyes.  And why would that be?  And what are these things He wants us to learn? 

Now this lesson is not actually about families as such, but there’s a connection.  Which I will tie together at the end. 

This lesson is still a work in progress.  I’ve been a Christian most of my life, and I’m just learning this stuff now.

Let’s begin in Exodus 19.  Moses had just delivered the Israelites out of Egypt where they had lived in slavery.  Moses was to lead them to a land that God had promised for them. 

Then God told Moses to say these words to them:   5   Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;  6  and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

God told them that if they kept this covenant with Him, three things would happen to them: 1) they would become God’s own possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.

”

I want to focus here on what it means to be God’s own possession.

The Hebrew word is סְגֻלָּ֔ה (s^e-gool-lah'), which would refer to a person’s private treasure.

We meet the idea again in Deuteronomy 7:6      “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession (to be a private treasure people) out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Again in Deuteronomy 14:2      “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for His own possession [to be a private treasure people] out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Deuteronomy 26:18      “The LORD has today declared you to be His people, a treasured possession, as He promised you, and that you should keep all His commandments;  19      and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made, for praise, fame, and honor; and that you shall be a consecrated people to the LORD your God, as He has spoken.”

Psalm 135:4      For the LORD has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel for His own possession [for His private treasure].

Now Christians who are familiar with these passages might say, well, that’s all well and good, but God is talking about Israel here, the nation.

Have you never read Ephesians 2:11–19?

11 Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, . . .  12 that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one . . .  so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross,  . .  18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household,

And then Ephesians 3:3   by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.   4    . . . when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,  5    which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;  6    that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,

I don’t want to get into all the questions of the relationship between Israel and the Church, but one of the new things that happened in the New Testament in relation to the Old Testament is that the Gentiles are now brought into the Israel of God.

I Peter 2:9 says     But you [emphasized] are A CHOSEN people [this is not a generic use of the word ‘people’.  These are people all related to each other in some way.  Some translations say race.], A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;     10      for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY.

Peter is quoting what God said to Israel in Exodus 19.  All those titles that God gave to Israel, speaking of His unique relationship with Israel, he applies to the Church.

In another New Testament passage, Titus 2:11, Paul says:     For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,  12      instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,     13      looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,    14      who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. 

That last phrase ‘people for His own possession’ is an exact quote from Exodus and Deuteronomy.  We, the people of God, the Church, Christians, are God’s own private treasure.

One more passage: Ephesians 1: 15      For this reason I . . .     16      do not cease giving thanks for you, making mention in my prayers     17      that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

          18       that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

It’s not OUR inheritance that Paul is praying that we see, but the riches of the glory of GOD’s inheritance.  You can find numerous passages in the Old Testament where Israel is called God’s inheritance.

So what am I getting at?

We are used to seeing salvation as something that God does for us.  He saves poor miserable sinners like ourselves, because He is so loving and full of mercy.  And that’s true.

But we also need to look at this from God’s point of view.

We are His private treasure, His inheritance.  We bring joy to God.

Now this is where family comes in. 

Family is God’s way, one of several, but probably the biggest way, to teach people about love, both in giving it and receiving it. 

We talk about the greatness of God’s love in Jesus dying for us.  And that is an enormous demonstration of that love.  But it doesn’t convey to us the enormous delight that God has in His people. 

We’re not like a bunch of strangers who were rescued from a sinking ship and brought safely to shore.  We are God’s children who bring joy to God.  Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, who was constantly looking to see if his son would finally return home. 

We need to see ourselves in God’s eyes as we see our own children and try to picture the enormous love that God has for us.  I have found this to be one of the hardest lessons to learn, and I suspect that is one of the main reasons why God placed such an emphasis on family throughout all of human history.

Hopefully you know what love is, either through the love you have received from someone else, like your parents, or the love that you have for someone else, like your children, or grandchildren.  But hopefully someone.

God wants you to know His love now.  It would be a shame to have to die and go to heaven to learn of this.