Sermon on the book of daniel
The third element is mutual interdependence.
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Then, we see that humanity is created male and female, equally the image of God. There is light and dark, the waters above and the waters below, the sea and the dry land, the vegetation and the living creatures. The second thing life requires is equality. True love is not selfish, but looks out for what is best for the other. Life thrives when it is in the proper environment. We don’t create life, we simply are creative with the life that happens around us. The universe is a dynamic system that is constantly unfolding and life persists, even in the most desperate situations.Īnd, life is a gift. The driving force and purpose for creation is life. Like the Bible Project’s picture told us, we draw the purpose for creation from Genesis 1. He calls it God’s Preferred and Promised World, and I think it will help us understand the Promise. This sketch is a variation on one of my profs, Pat Keifert’s, version of Law and Gospel. So, I felt that I had to share it with you. I’ve been soaking in that question all week and an image kept flooding my mind. This begs the question: What is the promise? We said, “Don’t Rush the Promise” because our theme for the whole year is “God’s Promise for Everyone.” It seems like the darkness is overpowering the light and that the beasts are winning. The second reason is that it often seems like God’s promise is taking too long. When the beast of consumerism threatens to suck the meaning out of this season, we can take a deep breath, and slowly move through Advent. One, because Advent is a season of slowing down. We chose this theme for a couple reasons. Our big theme for Advent is “Don’t Rush the Promise.”
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I think the answer lies in one key word: Promise. So, what does that look like for us? What are the beasts that surround us, and how do we find hope? When we don’t act this way, and think that we are God, then we become Beasts. These images are drawn from the creation story of Genesis and the Psalms. One of the key images that the story of Daniel uses is the preferred way that humans should behave, as created in the image of God. He is thrown into the pit of lions to die. Then, here in chapter 6, Daniel is set up by a cruel interdict that makes it illegal to pray to God. In chapter 3 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego won’t bow down to the statue of the King, so they are thrown into a fiery furnace, but they survive and are exalted. In chapter 1 they are coerced to violate their dietary laws. He was continually challenged to betray his own convictions and conform to the ways of Empire.ĭaniel and his friends find themselves in three similar situations. Instead I want to highlight a couple pieces.įirst, Daniel was taken from his home in Jerusalem as a young man and forced to become trained as a Babylonian scholar and government official. It is 8 minutes long, and I was tempted to just show it for the sermon today. The Bible Project has created this chart and a wonderful video that walks through the whole story of Daniel and really helps to make sense out of the imagery used in the book.
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#Sermon on the book of daniel full#
The book of Daniel is full of powerful stories and really freaky visions. That is the situation in which Daniel finds himself in our text today. I don’t know what your particular situation might be. You ask, “Where is God in all this? Where is hope?” And you feel like you have done everything according the way you thought God wanted you to do it. It is like you are surrounded by forces that are beyond your control that threaten to harm you either physically or emotionally. Watch the Sermon Videoĭo you ever feel like you are stuck in a hopeless situation? This sermon looks at the story of Daniel in the lions’ den in Daniel 6:6-27 and asks how we can find hope in our own lives when we feel like we are surrounded by beasts.