God Is Our Father

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Transcript:

Daniel chapter 6 this morning. We’ve talked for the last few weeks, and again this morning we will, and next week, about the relationship that we have to God. Because I start out this way, the same way every week, but we don’t have always the same people with us, so I’m going to continue to do so.

Whether we realize it or not, we have a relationship to God. Christians have become fond of saying over the last few years that Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with God. But Christians are not the only one who have a relationship to God.

It’s just a difference in what the relationship is. You know, God can be a total stranger to somebody. That’s a relationship.

I meet people all the time who are total strangers, never seen you before, probably never see you again. You’re a stranger to me, and yet we have to interact as strangers. There are acquaintances.

A lot of people sit in church year after year after year after year, and God is an acquaintance to them. They know some of the stories. They know a little bit about God.

They may have cracked a Bible a time or two. They’ve heard things from the pulpit. They know a little about God, but as far as knowing him, as far as any closeness there, there’s not.

Their relationship is that God is an acquaintance. God can be an enemy. We don’t like to think about God in these terms, but the Bible says that friendship with the world, to be following the sinful practices of this wicked world, is to be the enemy of God, is to be enmity with God.

Romans chapter 5 verse 1 says, because of what Jesus Christ has done, I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but because of what Christ has done, we have peace with God. Well, we can’t have peace with God because of what Christ has done if we didn’t have peace with God before. We were enemies of God.

And to not be in Jesus Christ, to not have our trust in Jesus Christ, is to be an enemy of God. That’s the relationship, and not because God is hateful or vindictive or anything. It was we who rebelled against him.

It was we, it was the human race that declared war on God 6,000 years ago in the Garden of Eden. So there are all sorts of relationships that we can have to God that are not necessarily ideal, that are not necessarily what we want to have. And when we as Christians talk about a relationship with God, there are certain aspects of that, there are certain ways that God desires to relate to us and that we should relate to him.

And we’ve talked about God being our creator, and certainly he’s our creator, whether we recognize it or not, whether we’re believers or not. He’s our creator. I’ve seen the, they used to sell a bumper sticker at Mardell, I never bought it, but they used to sell a bumper sticker that says, God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Well, you can take out that middle part, God said it. It doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not. You know, I don’t have to believe that two and two is four, but it’s true whether I believe it or not.

So God is our creator whether we regard him as such or not. That’s our relationship to him and his relationship to us, but we ought to act like it. And so there are certain things that we, certain ways we relate to him because he’s our creator.

We talked about God being our king, and God is our king. Again, whether we realize it or not, and one day everyone will realize it and everyone will admit it, unfortunately for many though it will be too late but God is our king and we should regard him as such he relates to us in that way and as believers we should live lives that are characterized by this recognition that he’s our king that we live in subjection to him and obedience to him we talked last week about God being our friend and God is our friend as as Christians as as believers in Jesus Christ God is our friend now I want to be very careful and tried to be very careful last week in saying that because there are some churches even that just teach God as your friend.

I may have mentioned to you, watching the video a few years ago and just being appalled, the children’s service at a church in Australia, one of the big mega churches, I can’t remember which one, but the woman who was leading the children’s worship service did an altar call, an invitation at the end, and was getting these children to pray and was trying to get them saved and was telling them Jesus wants to be their best friend. If you want Jesus to be your best friend, raise your hand and pray this prayer after me, Jesus, come into my life and be my best friend. And I thought there’s something missing out of that presentation.

It was not the gospel. And I know, I know I’m the cranky old preacher, sorry, but that’s just the way it is. There was something missing from the gospel presentation.

Folks, Jesus as our Savior is our friend. And he is what the Bible calls the friend who sticks closer than a brother. He’s more than just our friend, though.

And so I want to be very careful on that in telling you that God is our friend. He is, but he’s also more than that. We shouldn’t just focus on that one.

Today I want to talk about God being our Father. God being our Father. And this one is a little more comfortable for us to think about because we hear all the time, God is the Father.

Or we hear about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Being a Father is one of the attributes of God that we’re more comfortable with. And yet the world also refers to him as their father when that’s not necessarily the case.

We are not born God’s children. You’ll hear the phrase, all God’s children, whatever. And you fill in the blanks there.

People say it different ways. I know there was a national politician before my time. I want to say Spiro Agnew, but don’t quote me on that.

Nixon’s vice president who used to talk about the brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God as though we were all God’s children, and we were all united in this way. Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible doesn’t teach that we are all automatically God’s children. We’re all automatically God’s creation just by being here, but we’re not born God’s children.

We are reborn God’s children. We’re adopted God’s children, as we may get into in a little bit, but just by virtue of existing, God is not automatically our father in that sense, and yet as believers, God relates to us a father. This morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, He’s not your father in the sense that we’re talking about, but He very easily can be by putting your faith in Jesus Christ. We’re going to look just very briefly at part of a story from the book of Daniel, story that we’ll finish up this morning, and then look at a few other scriptures and be done for the morning.

Not that I’m trying to get it over with, Brother Shank. I have heard people say that too. Well, let’s go in there and get this over with.

Why’d you even come to church this morning? But in Daniel chapter 6, starting in verse 1, it says, It pleased Darius, or Darius, however you want to pronounce it, to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom. And over these three presidents, of whom Daniel was first, that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage.

And what we see from history and in the Bible is that the Persian Empire, these are the Persians we’re talking about, their empire was so huge, was so massive, that really one person could not control everything. One person couldn’t keep everything under control. And so they would delegate to what the Bible here calls princes.

It depends on how you translate it. Some historical references refer to them as kings. it was as though they would take over these other kingdoms, because it wasn’t just the whole empire was made up of Persians.

You know, they would have taken over, well, they took over Israel, so they’ve got the Jewish kingdom under them. They had taken over the Babylonians. They’ve got the Babylonian kingdom under them.

They’d taken over different Arab groups, different Turkish groups, and they might have had their own king beforehand, their own leader. And so it was nothing for the Persians to say, okay, you can stay in charge of your little kingdom in certain areas. Okay?

It’s kind of like what is supposed to be the relationship between the states and the federal government. Okay? States, you’re sovereign.

You have your own leadership, and you have control over most of what goes on, except for we as the federal government are going to say we have control over defense, over foreign policy, a few other things. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. It doesn’t always anymore.

But that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Well, that was kind of the way it worked here. Okay, you can control your people as long as you keep them in order, as long as you pay, as long as you send me troops, as long as you pay your taxes to me, that sort of thing.

You had the emperor, you had the Shah, King Darius at the top of it. And so he would set up, he had these 120 princes or kings, however you want to look at it, who were over different parts of the kingdom. But then he also had these three presidents or advisors who would go out and they would be sort of the kings, the Shah’s eyes and ears over the rest of the kingdoms. And they would go around and visit these kings or princes in their areas and see what was going on, make sure everything was okay, and that the Shah, that the emperor, was not being cheated.

Does that make sense? And Daniel was the first, he was the foremost of these three people. So he was pretty high up in the empire, in the hierarchy, answered only to Darius himself.

Then this Daniel, verse 3, this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes because an excellent spirit was in him and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. And looking at some of the commentaries on this verse, some of the people who’ve written on it, they say, well, it wasn’t talking about his religious spirit, his virtue, because one of them said, because of a pagan king wouldn’t have cared about that, wouldn’t have cared how devoted he was to the God of Israel. It’s talking about his Conscientiousness, his spirit of the way he did his job.

Okay, that makes sense. Here’s why I tell people all the time. Use commentaries as a resource, but be careful about buying into everything they say.

Why would he have been so conscientious of his job, of all the pagan kings and presidents? It’s because God had put him there, and because he was doing this as a service first and foremost to God. Like the Bible says, do things not as unto other men, but as unto the Lord.

When we work our job, we’re supposed to work like we’re not working for a human boss, not that we don’t respect them. But we don’t do our work as though we’re serving a human boss, but as we’re serving the Lord. In the raising of our family, we don’t look at it as we are taking care of them for their sake, but as we’re doing it for the Lord.

Does that make sense? We do all things as unto the Lord. So I think when it says he had, because of the excellent spirit that was in him, yes, it was this conscientiousness and this efficiency and this integrity in the way he did his job, but there’s a very good reason why that was there, is because the Spirit of the Lord was with him.

Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom. But they could find none occasion for fault, for as much as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Okay, so they saw him.

They saw how well he did his job, and it’s going to make them look bad. They were jealous of the favor that he had with Darius, and so they wanted to bring him down. and sociologists today call this the crab mentality.

Evidently there are species of crab that you can put in a bucket and they can climb out just fine. They can climb out but they will never escape from the bucket because as soon as one tries to get to the top of the bucket, the other crabs pull it back down. And they call that the, I think they call it the crab effect, but they refer to it to certain communities, different groups of people.

This is what I see going on here. Instead of being inspired by Daniel’s performance and saying, hey, we can do just as well too. We want the king’s favor.

So we’re going to work hard and earn it. They say, well, look at him and how well he’s doing. Let’s drag him down.

And so they devise a plan and say, we’ve got to find a way to get rid of Daniel. But as they looked at him, as they took a close look at his life, they realized there was nothing that they could say about him. There was no accusation that they could make and say, well, he did this.

Well, he did that. Well, you don’t know what he forgot to do. Or king, he’s involved in this.

There was nothing they could say, nothing they could do. And it says neither was there any error or fault found in him because he was faithful. Then said these men, verse 5, we shall not find any occasion against this Daniel.

And it repeatedly throughout this passage refers to him as this Daniel or that Daniel. And you can almost hear the hatred that these people had for Daniel. Then said these men, we shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.

And that was not saying, well, sure, he keeps the king’s law and does good things, but when it comes to his God’s law, he’s a slacker. And we know from the New Testament, nobody can keep the Old Testament law perfectly. But Daniel was a man of exceptional integrity.

Not to say he was perfect, but he was scrupulous about trying to keep God’s law. What that means is not that he was a slacker when it came to God’s law, but they knew the opposite was true. He was so purposeful about keeping God’s law that that was the only way that they were going to find any cause against him was if they could put God’s law at odds with the law of the kingdom.

And so in verse 6, These presidents and princes assembled together to the king and said thus unto him, King Darius, live forever. They were sort of sucking up here. We want you to live forever.

You’ll notice that they say that to all their kings throughout the book of Daniel. All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors and the princes, the counselors and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute and make a firm decree. We’ll go into it in just a minute what the firm decree and royal statute is.

But you’ll notice they said all the presidents of the kingdom have consulted together. Well, there were three, and one of them was not consulted. On top of that, you’ve got all the princes.

I seriously doubt that 120 princes all met together, because certainly the king would have gotten wind of that and thought, ah, rebellion. All the governors, the counselors, the captains, everybody’s talked about it and we’ve all gotten together. Be leery any time somebody says, well, everybody says, or we’ve all talked about it.

You know what? We hear that with rumors out in the community. I hear that in church, not this church.

but I would hate right before or after a business meeting, and I can say this here because I’ve never been to one of your business meetings, I would hate right before or after a business meeting, somebody would come to me and complain about something or someone and say, well, we’ve all talked, and everybody is saying. Okay, whenever I hear we’ve all talked or everybody is saying, what I take that to mean is you’re telling me. You’re the one who said, because, you know what, be very leery any time somebody says we’ve all talked.

The king did not heed that wisdom. And they came and said, everybody has talked about it. We’re all on board.

This is what we all think should happen. That whosoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for 30 days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Okay, that sounds strange to us, but obviously it sounded reasonable to him.

For 30 days, nobody can ask anybody anything. That means nobody could pray, nobody could ask. One of the commentaries did say the other day that a slave couldn’t ask a master for anything or vice versa.

I don’t know how anything got done. Pass me the salt, please. No, no, you’ve got to talk to the king.

I don’t understand how that’s even practical, but it obviously sounded like a good idea to the king. Nobody for 30 days can ask anything from any god or man. Now, they did not.

They were clever. They did not go to the king and say, nobody can ask anything from the God of Israel. Because I think then the king would have smelled a rat.

The king would have realized, oh, they’re out to get Daniel. But they included themselves in this. They weren’t able to pray to their pagan deities either.

And what this is, is taking all of the petitioning, all the prayer, all the worship that was due in their minds, these other gods, these other deities, and putting it on the king and saying, we can only ask you. And I’m sure the king thought, that sounds pretty good. I’m finally getting the respect and admiration that I deserve.

And if they would do this, during the 30 days, they’d be cast into the den of lions. So they said in verse 8, Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing, that it be not changed according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Okay, so two things here.

First of all, they already had it written out. This was well planned and well thought out and ultimately well executed because they came to the king and they already had the decree written out and said, we just think you’re so great, we want to do this. All we need is your signature.

So put it on this piece of paper, and they would have these decrees for 30 days or whatever that could not be changed once the king put his signature and a seal on it. Wherefore, King Darius signed the writing and decree. He fell for it.

In verse 10, now this is where we get into the part about God being our father. Because Daniel knew that the decree was signed, and yet it didn’t change his interaction with God. We know what kind of man that Daniel was.

We know what kind of relationship Daniel had with God. And we can see that there’s this connection, there’s this intimacy between God and Daniel that wasn’t going to change just because of a stupid piece of paper. In verse 10, it says, Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he was not ignorant.

This wasn’t an accident. Daniel said, Oh, I didn’t know. Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed afterwards, because we have every reason to think if he’d caught wind of it before, he had enough influence with the king, He probably could have stopped this.

But when he knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house and his windows being opened in his chamber toward Jerusalem. He kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime. He went into his house with the windows open and prayed.

And I was taught as a child that him going into the house and having the windows open was an act of defiance. He was putting it out there and daring them to enforce it. daring them, he was showing them, hey, I’m going to do this regardless.

Folks, I don’t think that’s what he was doing. As I look at some of the, I’ve looked at pictures of some of the old archaeology that they found in that area, and it didn’t seem like all the houses had these big windows like we have today, but they probably have one up at the top of the wall, a small little window where you could probably see out of and see up, which is fitting for what he’s doing, to let ventilation in, but it wasn’t necessarily a window like we would think of today. And so for him to go in and have the window open is not necessarily putting on a show because we know also that God doesn’t condone that either.

He condemned, Jesus condemned the Pharisees and the scribes for going out and ringing a bell and saying, hey, we’re going to pray, listen to me and listen to how well I can pray and all the big words I can throw out and how long I can go. God has no respect for that sort of thing. And yet God never calls Daniel out for his display.

What I see here is something much more quiet, something much more intimate, where Daniel just simply goes about what he’s been doing all along already. He goes into it. You know what?

If he wanted to put on a show, if I wanted to put on, hey, it’s the prayer show, I’m not going to go into my house, even with a big window, open window, where everybody can see me, because not that many people are going to see me. My house does have a big front window, and I could very easily open the blinds, open the curtains, go sit in the living room, and put on the prayer show if I wanted to. And I live on a fairly busy street, but still not that many people are going to see me.

If this was me, and I’m just putting myself in Daniel’s space, and saying if I was going to go put on the prayer show and say, you can’t stop me, I’d probably, there and more, go down to 19th Street and I-35, where you’ve got all the highway traffic, plus people at Walmart and Chick-fil-A and wherever else, busy, busy intersection, and go out in the middle of the street and stop traffic can get on my knees in the yellow line and say, there, you see me, everybody look at me, I’m doing it, you can’t stop me from praying. Okay, I’m not saying that’s a good idea, but I’m saying if he was going to put on a display, why go in your house and do it? I believe Daniel simply was going about what he’d always done and having a conversation with his father.

And he went into his house and he opened the windows. Now, he’s not trying to hide anything, but he’s not putting on a show either. He’s not in a situation where he says, I’m going to go into the innermost part of my house, close all the windows, close all the curtains where I’ll never be found out.

He’s simply going about what he’s always done. And he opens the windows here toward Jerusalem because they would pray toward Jerusalem. And he got on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did before.

That word aforetime means before. What I see here is a very humble man who’s simply spending time with his father the way he did all along. And then these men assembled, verse 11, and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God.

They came into his house and found him doing what he was doing. Because they knew, if there’s anything we can count on, it’s that three times a day Daniel’s going to be in there praying. And they came near and spake before the king concerning the king’s decree.

Hast thou not signed a decree that every man shall ask a petition of any God, that every man that shall ask a petition of any god or man within 30 days save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. They didn’t come in immediately accusing Daniel because they knew the king loved Daniel and he’d probably try to find some way out of it. They said, didn’t you sign this decree?

And when he says yes, the king answered and said, the thing is true according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altered not. Yes. Then they answered and said before the king that Daniel, that Daniel, which is of the children of captivity, that Daniel.

You know, the Jew, they didn’t care for the Jews either. The captivity of Judah. Regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day.

You know, that Jew, that Daniel, he’s in there and he’s praying three times a day and he’s not listening to you or obeying your law. And the king, when he heard these words, was sore, displeased with himself. He realized that he had messed up and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him.

And he labored until the going down of the sun to deliver him. All day he spent trying to figure out a way to get Daniel out of the predicament. And we’re going to leave off there and come back next week and talk about his experience in the lion’s den.

But I want to focus this morning on Daniel and how he could not be dissuaded from spending this time with his father. And it is because Daniel was a child of God. Daniel was a believer in God and his promises.

And God is a father who desires regular contact with his people. God desires to have regular contact with his people. Do you realize that?

This was three times a day that Daniel went in and prayed. Three times a day. And sometimes we’ll hear of people who, you know what, we live in a country that depending on the poll you look at, somewhere between 78 and 84% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians.

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but that can’t possibly be true unless we’re using the word Christian differently. This would be a much different country if that was the case. But a lot of people consider themselves to be Christians, and their prayer life consists of once or twice a year maybe if they’re really in trouble and need something, they go talk to God.

How close are you going to be to somebody that you talk to once or twice a year? If I talk to my children once or twice a year, I wouldn’t feel like their father. If I talk to my father once or twice a year, I wouldn’t feel like his son.

And God is a father to his people, and he desires this closeness. He desires this regular contact with us. God desires to know us and for us to know him.

There’s got to be a relationship there as a father. And I realize that’s hard for some in our society to grasp. Because I’ve said for years that it’s a big responsibility that God has given men, that he allows us to be called by the same name that he uses for himself.

And what I mean by that is not that we are worshipped as God, certainly not. But I mean that God calls himself a father and allows us to use the same name with our children. I think most men do not realize what a tremendous responsibility that is.

because children from an early age, when we tell them that God is our father, they relate that to their earthly father. And too many times, and some of you in this room may be in the same situation where you didn’t have an earthly father who reflected what our heavenly father was going to be or should is. And many people, I’ve read things where people have talked about having to come to terms with this idea of God as father and realize what that really meant because based on their father, that sounded distant to them, or that sounded like a frightening thing, because there are too many fathers who are absent from their children, or too many fathers who are abusive toward their children, or in some way, guys, even the best among us are going to be an imperfect reflection of what this is supposed to be.

But we have the tremendous responsibility of representing to our children who God is supposed to be to them. If I can say that and it not sound idolatrous in in any way because I don’t mean it that way. But so many people in our society don’t understand this idea of God as a father because human fathers have tainted what that is supposed to mean.

God is a father who desires regular contact with his children. He desires this closeness that Daniel obviously had. He would go and talk to him three times a day.

I talk to my parents all the time. Even before I moved back, I talked to my parents all the time on the phone. Four hours away, and I was on the phone with them at least six or seven times a day.

Just not even about just big stuff. Hey, how’s your day going? What’d you have for lunch?

You know, just talking to each other. I’m with my kids every day, talking to them, knowing about them. That’s, and again, I don’t hold myself up and say, hey, I’m the perfect representation here because I realize I’m not.

Most days I feel like if they don’t end up in therapy, it’s going to be a miracle. But that’s just a little glimpse of what God wants with us, with His children, with those who believe in Him, those who trust in Him. It’s not just a situation where He saves us and then, yeah, I’ll see you in heaven in about 50 years or whenever.

God wants a father-child relationship with us. and it’s not a healthy father-child relationship if there’s not regular contact. And that’s why it was so vital that Daniel would be three times a day on his knees.

It’s not as though God would only meet him three times a day. Yes, Daniel, I will meet you at breakfast time, at lunch time, and dinner time, and other than that, you’ll have to make an appointment. It didn’t work that way.

You know, the Bible tells us to pray without ceasing in 1 Thessalonians. We can pray any time, and God stands ready to listen to his children. But that’s why it’s so important that Daniel made the effort and said, I’m going to spend time with my father because that’s what the father desired.

God is not just a father who desires regular contact with his people, but God is a father who shares an unbreakable bond with his people. Daniel faced serious penalties for spending time with his father. We’re not talking the same kind of penalties that we face that maybe people are going to make fun of us or maybe the IRS is going to investigate us.

we’re talking the same kind of penalties that people around the world today are facing where people are thrown in prison or killed and Daniel really was facing a capital crime here that don’t you spend time talking to God don’t you pray to your father or we’re going to throw you into a den of lions you know what I think a lot of us I’m not saying we would stop but I’m saying a lot of us would probably pause and think about the the implications of that do I really need to I really need to pursue this? Do I really need to move forward with this? God knows what’s on my heart.

Maybe I’ll just take 30 days off prayer. And I would like to think we would say, no, this is right. We’re going to do it anyway, regardless of the cost. But Daniel realized what we need to realize, that the bond between him as our father and between us as his children is unbreakable.

It is an unbreakable bond. The law could not break the bond between Daniel and the father. The lions, as we’ll see next week, could not break the bond between Daniel and the father.

All of those mocking people who turned him into the king could not destroy the bond. See, the bond between a father and a child is supposed to be a lifetime thing. That’s why when talking about eternal security, I like to refer back the idea that once we’ve really been born again, once we’ve trusted in Christ and really been conver

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