God Is Our Creator

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Transcript:

And turn with me, if you would, please, to Daniel chapter 1. Daniel chapter 1 this morning. When we think about it, we really have some form of relationship with every person that we come into contact with.

Now, we don’t always think about it in those terms because, well, they might be a stranger, but that is our relationship and nothing else. I go into the bank. I have a relationship with the people in the teller line.

It’s a business relationship. There’s somebody who really doesn’t like me. They’re my enemy.

We have that sort of relationship. With my kids, I have the relationship of father and son or father and daughter. We have some kind of relationship to every person that we come in contact with that we deal with, whether it’s a close relationship or not.

See, we don’t think about it in those terms because we think relationship means close, but it really just means the way we relate to each other, whether it’s strangers, enemies, acquaintances, business partners, whatever it is. we have some sort of relationship with everybody we come in contact with, really maybe even the people we don’t come in contact with, which is what brings me around. There is a point to that.

If you’ve read in the bulletin this morning, I wrote in there how we hear and sometimes use, and I know for a fact I’ve used the phrase, that Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with God. And I stand firmly behind that in one sense. That has become a good thing to say when Christianity is presented or misinterpreted really as a set of rules that we have to follow.

A lot of times religion, the way we think about it, is just a set of rules, do’s and don’ts, and there are some do’s and don’ts in Christianity. But in Christianity, we don’t earn God’s acceptance through do’s and don’ts and a list of rules to follow as opposed to all the other religions of the world. In Christianity, the whole point of it is that we can’t do enough to earn God’s acceptance.

So in that sense, it’s really not a religion. It’s not about don’t do this, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t gamble, go to church every Sunday, put your hand over your heart every morning. It’s not a list of do’s and don’ts in that sense.

So I stand firmly behind the statement that Christianity is not a religion. It’s a relationship. Now, that phrase itself has also been misused by people who say, why do you not belong to a church?

Why do you not do this? Why do you not do that? Oh, because it’s a relationship.

Well, that doesn’t mean that that lets us off the hook from doing the things that God told us to do. There’s a balance to be found there. But just saying that Christianity is about a relationship with God or a relationship with Jesus Christ isn’t quite enough because, as I’ve already hit on, there are all sorts of relationships.

And we can say that and never really give pause to think about what that means when we say Christianity is about my relationship to God. Well, I guess my question for you, and you don’t have to answer this out loud, but maybe think about it yourself. If you want to think about it and deal with God about it while I’m preaching and ignore me, that’s fine.

Or maybe think about it on the way, I’d much rather you hear from God this morning. Or think about it on the way home. Sometimes think about this question, what is your relationship to God?

Are you His child? Are you a total stranger? Are you an enemy of God?

Now that one’s pretty harsh, but we can read through the book of Romans and see that from our birth, because of our sin nature, We are born in the enemies of God. And not because God is hateful, but because God’s our king and we rebelled against him. What is your relationship to God this morning?

Do you trust him as your savior? Is he your best friend? And by the way, he can be more than one of these things.

He can be our savior. He can be our best friend. We’re going to look today and the next few weeks, Lord willing, in the book of Daniel, at some stories that involve Daniel and what they can teach us about our relationship to God, the relationship that God has to us and the relationship that God desires to have to us as believers, what God wants to be to us.

Because we can have any number of relationships, but what are some of the things that He wants to be? And I was looking through my notes this week, some different things I’ve done in the past, because I like to plan messages ahead of time. I hate it when I try to mix two words at once.

I like to plan messages ahead of time, at least the topic, because sometimes that’s the hardest part for me to come up with. And I was looking through some notes this week and came to some things that I wrote down last summer. At the church in Arkansas, we did our own, instead of buying a vacation Bible school program, we did our own from scratch.

And the VBS director said that there are two things that I want to do. She said I want to teach the kids about a relationship with God because, she said, it needs to be real to them. And she said, and then the ladies who are in charge of decorating want to do something with Babylon.

And I thought, well, how can I incorporate, as the one who’s coming up with lessons, how can I incorporate those two things together? And so I started looking at the book of Daniel and realized it fit. There were things in the book of Daniel that teach us about our relationship to God.

And I’m not giving you recycled VBS lessons. I put these topics together and told the teachers, now you’ll have to come up with your own points. and I was going to be teaching an adult class, and that never materialized.

So I started, again, last week taking the topics, the five topics from the book of Daniel and putting together. So y’all are hearing new material, but started putting the messages together on how the book of Daniel demonstrates some things to us about our relationship to God. And the first one I want to talk about, the one I want to talk about this morning, is that God is our creator.

Now, this is one that, whether we realize it or not, he is our creator. That’s one of his relationships to us is that he’s the one who made us. And it’s sort of, you know, I sort of think about it along the lines of what my mother used to say to me, still does at times, and something that I say to my children.

My mother used to tell me when I was a child, I brought you into this world, and anybody can finish that sentence, and I can take you out. I brought you into this world, and I can take you out. Now, I assume she was always joking.

I know I’m joking when I say it to Benjamin and Madeline. But there’s some seriousness to the thought, I brought you into this world and I know what’s best for you. You know what?

I see things that they don’t see. And even though I am nowhere near knowing everything, let’s just clarify that right now. A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago, you just know everything.

I said, no, that’s just a rumor my mother started. I am nowhere near knowing everything. But I have a little bit more life experience than my children.

I know just a little bit more than they do. I see things that they don’t see. And you know what?

As their father, I brought them into this world, and I know what’s best for them. I know what they should and should not do. And God, not comparing myself to God here, but I think God talks about himself in terms we can understand and relate to so that we’ll understand better his feelings toward us and his relationship toward us.

And he is, quite literally, the one who brought us into this world, and he knows what’s best for us. We’re going to start reading. We’re going to go through really all of Daniel chapter 1 and look at the story and then pull some points out and we will be finished for the morning.

But starting in verse 1, it says, In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, into Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his God, and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his God. So what’s happened?

Ahoyakim has been on the throne and king of Judah for three years. God has been for a long time promising the people of Judah that if they did not turn away from their idolatry, that he was going to send them into captivity, that he was going to send the Babylonians in to take them over and get their attention because of their idolatry. So much in the Bible ties together back into the sin of idolatry.

And he told them, he warned them, he gave them opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. That’s what Jeremiah preached about. That’s what so many of the other prophets preached about.

If you don’t turn from the idolatry, God is going to send the Babylonians in to punish you. And so finally, the hammer fell during the reign of Jehoiakim. Now, the Babylonians came in and attacked several times and took over various parts and took various people back to Babylon.

This is one of those. And it says that he came and took some of the people and he came and took some of the vessels of the house of God. Now, this always puzzled me until just recently.

If God is mad at them for idolatry and for their false worship, why would he allow the vessels and things that are used in the worship of him in the temple, why would he allow those to be carried off to Babylon, to be used in the pagan temple of some false god? And then it dawned on me, they were not just worshiping idols in the high places. A lot of times they were engaged in false worship in the temple.

These things had been defiled and polluted when people came in and said, We’re going to give God false worship. We’re going to worship God half-heartedly using these vessels. And it was as if God, I think here, as if God was showing them, this is what you’ve been doing all along.

You’ve been using the things that were supposed to be dedicated to the worship of me. You’ve been using them to worship other things. And so why not let them be carried off into the pagan temples and reused?

And the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the king’s seed and of the princes. children in whom was no blemish but well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. So he said, we want you to take, he speaks to the head of the eunuchs and says, I want you, now that we’ve taken over Judah, I want you to get the best and the brightest. I want you to get the smartest. I want you to get the best looking.

I want you to get the kids from the best families. And we’re going to carry them back to Babylon, and we’re going to train them up and use them in our service. Not necessarily as slaves, not like slave labor, but we’re going to put them to work in the royal court.

They’re going to be the scientists. They’re going to be the astrologers. They’re going to be the wise men.

They’re going to be in these leadership roles. And we hear about that sort of thing today, and they call it a brain drain. Well, this is the original brain drain.

And you’ll hear about that on the news. We’ll have people complain. Well, they graduate high school and then they move off to Texas.

Or people in Canada, all the famous people move to America. Okay, that still goes on today. They had a brain drain here and they said, we’re going to take all the best and the brightest and we’re going to bring them back to Babylon for our use.

And the king appeared unto them, appointed unto them, a daily provision of the king’s meat and of the wine which he drank, so nourishing them three years that at the end thereof they might stand before the king. So he’s putting them in a training program and he’s saying, I mean, this sounds like a pretty good deal. You’re going to eat what the king eats. You’re going to drink what the king drinks.

And your job is to eat and drink and to learn and to be trained, and then in three years you’re going to come and serve the king. And even then, I mean, you get to stand around the court and be one of his wise men. This doesn’t sound like a bad deal. I mean, if you get away from the whole pagan idols and being taken away from your family part, that’s bad.

Now among these were the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Now we’ll see in just a minute. Well, unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names, for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar, and to Hananiah of Shadrach, and to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abednego.

So we know them more commonly as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Those weren’t their real names. As a matter of fact, if I were them, I probably would be upset that all the believers today would call us by those pagan names.

Their names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And they were there with Daniel. And we’re not talking about the fiery furnace today.

That’ll be later on in the month. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore, he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.

So Daniel got it in his mind that, okay, this is not a good idea. I’m not going to defile myself with this stuff. And when I had the people teaching this lesson to the kids about God knows us, God’s our creator, and speaking from this story, some of the kids got mad because I was already hearing stories that they would have snack in children’s church or they would have snack at Awanas, and some of the kids would complain about things in their cafeteria, and apples now being served with Happy Meals, and they were complaining about the President and the First Lady and all the healthy eating initiatives.

I’m going, y’all are six. Y’all are six, and you’re down there complaining like, you’re complaining about the President and the First Lady. You sound like the deacons.

So they were already complaining about the health food. I said, please do not make this lesson about healthy eating. Not that healthy eating is a bad thing, but that’s not what this is about.

It’s about God knowing us. The problem here wasn’t that Daniel looked at the food and said, well, that meat, that’s too fattening, or it’s not good for our carbon footprint eating beef. It wasn’t any of those things.

It was that the meat, first of all, was a lot of times unclean according to the Jewish law, and what was clean often was not slaughtered in accordance with the Jewish law, or all of it had been offered to idols at some point. The wine, there was not a problem here for them to drink wine. Evidently, they did that back in their day.

But the problem with the wine was that it had been offered to idols. And so when he says here, we don’t want to defile ourselves, it’s not just that he’s saying, oh, that food doesn’t fit with my diet. He’s saying, why would we go and eat pork or shellfish or whatever it is that God has told us not to eat?

Why would we do that now? Or maybe it is a cow, but there were very specific rules about how you were to prepare your meat in order for it to be clean. I don’t know if this is a rule that they were violating, but it seems a good point to tell this story.

You know, there were certain rules in the Old Testament like you couldn’t eat part of a live animal. That just sounds to me like common sense. It would be cruel. And every time I read that in the Old Testament, it reminds me of the story where the farmer’s going on and on about this pig that pulled him, and I’m not going to tell the whole story, But it goes on and on about this pig who saved his life, pulled him out of a fire, fixed his car.

I mean, you just never, all the wonderful things the pig had done. They said, well, why does the pig only have three legs? And the farmer told him, well, a pig that good, you eat slowly.

Evidently, he had taken a leg off the pig. Somebody told me that in Arkansas. They just thought it was hysterical. But it reminds me of that when I read the prohibition in the Old Testament on parts of animals that, you know, you can’t eat anything from a living animal. That would be cruel.

And so there were certain practices that they weren’t able to be involved in, even for the clean animals, and certainly not the sacrificing to idols. And so Daniel said, we’re not going to participate in this. Why would we leave our homeland and turn our back on our God just for the king?

And so he requested. Now, I notice here that he doesn’t go into the head of the eunuchs and start demanding, you’re going to let us do this, and you’re not going to make us do this. he requests that they be allowed not to defile themselves with the king’s meat and his wine.

Now God had, verse 9 says, Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. Now that doesn’t mean anything weird there. That just means the guy in charge had a fondness for Daniel.

And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king who hath appointed your meat and your drink, for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort? Then shall you make me endanger my head to the king. So what he’s saying here is, Daniel, I would love to do you this favor.

I would love to grant you this request, but you see, I’m worried about the king. The kings of Babylon had absolute power over their subjects, and especially their servants. And he’s saying here, if I’ve been ordered to give you this food, and I don’t give it to you, and when you stand before the king, you’re in poor health, you’re pale, you’re sickly, you’re spindly, you’re all of these things.

And the king’s going to start asking questions about why. And when I tell him, quite literally, it’s going to be my head on the chopping block. He said, you’re going to make me endanger my head to the king.

Then said Daniel to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had said over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, prove your servants. And a lot of times in the Bible, when we see the word prove, it means test. Test your servants, I beseech thee, ten days, and let them give us pulse to eat and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat the portion of the king’s meat, and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.

So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. So Daniel said, okay, I understand the difficulty you’re in, but I also know this is what God has said is best. So if you’re that worried about it, just put us to the test for ten days. He said, instead of the three years, that’s fine.

Ten days, give the four of us just pulse and water. And pulse, evidently, is some kind of mixture of vegetables. Just give us that and water.

And then at the end of the ten days, compare us to the people who are on the king’s diet and see what happens. And so he consented. He allowed them and said, okay, you’ve got ten days.

And at the end of the ten days, their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in the flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat. In their day and age, we would look at the word fatter and take that to be a negative thing. But in their day and age when people didn’t always have enough to eat, to be heavy and look, or not heavy, but to look well-fed was a good thing.

That’s why you’ll see paintings from the 1700s and kings and princes, they always insisted on being painted to be a little heavier than they really were because to look well-fed was a sign of your prosperity. So when it says here that they looked fairer and fatter in the flesh than all of the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat, It’s saying they were healthier. They were doing better physically than the ones who ate what the king ate.

Now, that shouldn’t work that way. I’m sorry, that should not work that way. Typically, you eat all vegetables, you become a smaller person.

You eat Whataburger and Chick-fil-A like I do, you become less of a smaller person. You become the opposite. But that’s exactly what happened here.

They became bigger and stronger and healthier, not as a result of eating the vegetables. It wasn’t the vegetables. It was that they did things God’s way, and God blessed them for that.

And thus, it says in verse 16, see, it worked out. They ruined the fun for everybody in verse 16. Thus, Melzar took away the portion of their meat and the wine that they should drink and gave them pulse.

I don’t know. I’m assuming that means for everybody, because if I was the guy in charge of how the servants looked, I would want to make sure that they all look strong and healthy and do the same thing. But he took away the wine and the meat and gave them these vegetables and water.

Verse 17 says, As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the end of the days that the king had said that he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed with them, and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore stood they before the king.

And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, the king inquired of them. He found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in his realm. And Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus.

Okay, so the outcome here is that they were allowed to continue to do things God’s way. God had told the Jewish people for thousands of years up to Daniel’s day, there is a way that I want you to do things, and not just because I’m an ogre, but because it’s what’s best for you and what brings me the most glory. But you’re to do it my way because it’s best for you.

And they did not want to turn their backs on that, and so they went through this contest. And God blessed them and God prospered them so much that the people who were in charge over them said, you can keep going the way you’re going. And because of that, from verses 17 to 21, God continued to bless them. It said that he gave them knowledge and skill.

He gave them learning and wisdom. And that made Daniel able to understand visions and dreams. And that saves his neck later on. When they finally came in to see the king, they stood before King Nebuchadnezzar among all the wise men and all the magicians and all the astrologers.

And these four men stood out from all of those and impressed the king so much that he began, anytime there was a difficult situation, he began to inquire of them. And folks, that was God who made a name for them. It was God who worked in their situation.

And God did that because they honored him and did things his way. You say, what does all of this have to do with God being our creator? Well, the most obvious thing to me was, okay, God designed us so he knows what we should and shouldn’t eat.

But again, this is not about healthy eating. This is about God being the one who brought us into this world and knowing what’s best for us. Just like I brought my children into this world and I know what’s best for them.

You brought your children into this world and know what’s best for them. Although they get up to be about 30 and think they don’t have to listen anymore, right? You still know what’s best for them.

God brought us into this world and he knows what’s best for us. Whether it was from David’s. .

. David’s been dead for about 300 or 500 years by the time this comes around. from, I said David and I lost my train of thought, I’m sorry, Daniel, from Daniel’s approach to these people, you know, God tells us a certain way to act, a certain kind of attitude to have, especially around authority, and Daniel did that, or from not eating certain things, not being involved in pagan worship, all of these areas, God had spoken in his word and his law and said, do things my way, and it seems like everything that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah did in this story was contrary to what our human wisdom would tell us to do.

No, we would want to eat the heavy meat and whatever else was provided to us. We would want to, if we didn’t want to do that, we wouldn’t say, may I please, we would say, don’t you know God said, and this is what I’m going to do, because this is what I want to do. And we would go in and start making demand.

And everything that they did throughout the story, everything they did throughout the story, seems counterintuitive. It seems to go against our grain as human beings, what we think is best, what’s normal for us to do, and yet God who created us and God who knows what’s best for us had said in his word certain things to do, and they followed that, and it worked out well for them. God blessed them.

Now, I won’t tell you in this message this morning that every time we do something right that we get a reward. For a long time, and I don’t know why I thought this, I don’t recall ever being taught this in church, but as a child, I thought God worked off a system of punishment and reward, and And he does judge and he does exact justice and he does reward us eventually. But I kind of thought the world operated as though you do something good and get a cookie.

Not literally a cookie. Or you do something wrong and God zaps you. And then I read my Bible a little more and grew up a little bit and realized that’s not how the world works at all.

I quote the verse all the time that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. And depending on where you are in the growing season, the rain can be a good thing or a bad thing. So, in other words, good things happen to good people and bad people, and bad things happen to bad people and good people. I think I said that all right.

But there is something to be said for the idea that following godly principles brings blessings. It brings blessings. And God, God knows us.

As we think about our relationship with him, we need to remember that he knows us, he designed us, he brought us into this world, and as such, he knows what’s best for us. Even when we’re listening to his instructions and saying, God, that doesn’t make sense at all. Surely, wouldn’t it be better for me to go and eat the king’s meat?

God, surely, wouldn’t it be better for me to go in and start making demands? After all, it is for a good cause. Folks, God designed us.

God created us and knows what’s best for us, even if it doesn’t make sense to us. In verse 6, first point of the message this morning, as our creator, God knows each of us. As our creator, God knows each of us.

It lists in verse 6 these four men’s names. And I’ve already shared with you that for the most part, Christians today have forgotten the identities of three of them. We think of them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

I don’t see a name-by-name list of everybody. I mean, there are lists of people who went away in the captivity and people who came back. But I don’t see a name-by-name list of everybody who was taken.

Certainly not in the book of Daniel. We don’t think of things that way. We look at people in groups a lot of times.

And I’m trying to think of a way to explain what I’m talking about. Well, we assume things about people based on groups. We assume, oh, you’re a Democrat.

You must think this way. You’re a Republican. You must think this way.

Oh, you’re a cranky old Baptist. I am a cranky old Baptist. You must be for this or against this. Oh, you have kids, so you must.. .

You know, people make assumptions, and we’ve lost a lot of times the idea of people, or I feel anyway, that we’ve lost a lot of times the idea of getting to know people as individuals. And I know, I promise, I’m not trying to get you, trying to talk politics and get you one way or the other. But you all know by now that I’m involved in political things and try to discuss things with people.

They just assume that you feel a certain way because of some demographic category you fall into. Oh, you’re Democrat, you’re Republican, you’re white, you’re brown, you’re whatever. You make so much money or so little money.

You must think this way. And people will make assumptions all the time. And I say, no, I’m an individual. I’m a person.

And I think for myself. And I read God’s word. And I apply it.

And you can’t just assume. I mean, everybody is different. And the reason for me saying that, the world likes to group everybody together and look at generalities.

And we’re all a number. We’re all a social security number. We’re all an account number.

They don’t want to know your name. Folks, God looks on the individual. And in a world where we are a social security number or a set of demographic groups or a target audience, God created us. Even in the midst of a big crowd like the exiles taken to Babylon, God knew those poor men by name.

God created us. He knows each and every one of us. He knows our names.

He knew us before we were born, knew us when we were conceived, and knew everything about us. No one loved us anyway. It may seem like such a little thing, but sometimes I read through things in the Old Testament or even in the New Testament where it gives lists of people and think, why in the world does God list all these people?

Why in the world does God list these censuses? It’s a hard word to say. In the book of Numbers, why in the world does God list all these generations of genealogy in the book of Matthew?

Why is all this begetting and begetting in there and so and so begat so and so? Why is all of that in there? Well, first of all, there’s the historical value of it.

But also it reminds me that even though we know nothing about these people and we may not care anything about the names in between the big names, God sees and knows the individual. And God sees and knows each of us. And when you think about your relationship to God and think about him as the creator, folks, that ought to cause us to put him up here where he belongs in our minds and realize that he’s up here and how mighty and how powerful he is, that he was able to speak the universe into existence, that He was able to speak us into existence from nothing and design how we came about. And yet, in spite of that awesome power, He’s also a God who’s personal enough that He knows our nam

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