SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
5/6/2013 8:56 AM
My Worship Time Focus: True Faith
Confronts the Challenge PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Daniel
3:1-12
Message of the
verses: We begin today the study of
the third chapter of the book of Daniel, a chapter that is probably familiar to
many people as it tells the story about three young Jewish men who would not
bow down to an idol, but decided in their hearts that God was the only God they
would worship even if it meant they had to die in order not to worship an
idol. The question that I must ask
myself is what can I learn from this chapter to cause me to walk more closely
with my Lord? The first thing that I
need to learn from this chapter is to stay away from idols, and some may say
that we who live in the 21st century America do not have any idols
to which I must reply that we probably have more idols available to us than
they had in the time when Daniel penned his book. I know we don’t bow down to worship wood or
gold images like they did in that time, but we still have idols that we
worship, for an idol is anything that comes between a person and God and God
hates idol worship more than any other sin.
How can I make that statement? “1
Then God spoke all these words, saying, 2 "I am the LORD your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself
an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or
in the water under the earth. 5
"You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your
God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on
the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to
those who love Me and keep My commandments (Ex. 20:1-6).” We see in verse five that God is a “jealous”
God, and when we first look at this word we may get the wrong idea about
it. We know that it is impossible for
God to sin and therefore His jealously has to be sinless, and of course it
is. I am reading a book that is entitled
“The Joy of Knowing God,” and it is another book on the attributes of God. The author has a chapter in the book about
the attribute of God’s jealously and states that as people we are more than
likely to be jealous in a sinful way, desiring something that we do not have,
or wishing that we could be like another person and have what they have, but
God’s jealously is for who He is. We
read in the book of Exodus where Moses has come down from the mountain with the
Ten Commandments and sees the children of Israel in gross sin and it is because
of Moses’ jealously for what the Lord is jealous about that he deals with the
sinfulness of the children of Israel even killing many of those who would not
repent of their sinfulness. Moses was
jealous for the Lord, and this is something that we as believers should be
too. God is jealous when people worship
other gods, and because it is true that man has to worship something that if he
is not worshiping the One True God he will invent other gods that fit what he
wants to worship. The god Baal was a god
that was made up by man to suit his own purposes and one way to worship Baal
was to have sexual relationships, to have intercourse and so they would have
temple prostitutes in the temples of Baal in order to worship this god. Thus we see that man makes a god in his
image.
We can see this progression of man making idols to
worship and God giving them over to the worshiping of these idols in the first
chapter of the book of Romans and verses 18-32.
Man makes the idols in their own image and worships them and because God
is holy and hates sin He allows man to reap the consequences of their false worship
of their man made gods. The result is
that in the end when people or nations follow this downward spiral that is seen
in these verses that they or the nation will be destroyed because they have
followed the worship of these manmade idols.
This was the introduction to this chapter which is about
idol worship which is one of the main themes of the chapter, but it is also
about three brave young men who refuse to compromise, not unlike what we saw in
the first chapter of Daniel when these three young men along with Daniel took a
stand for the Word of God and for the God of the Word and did not compromise
their faith to which God honored and allowed them to be victorious in their
stand.
Who is behind what happened in this chapter of
Daniel? We know that it is the devil who
is behind this and the devil who is behind idol worship, for his desire has
always been to be worshiped. There is
always going to be a conflict between those who worship the true God and those
who worship false gods or idols, and that conflict is played out in this chapter
of Daniel along with being played out around the world each and every day. The good news is that God will defeat the
devil and those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ will be on the winning
side, for the victory has already been secured at the cross, and one day all
who have put their trust in Jesus Christ will be with Him forever in heaven.
Let us just begin our study of Daniel three by looking at
the first three verses of the chapter. The
Heart of the King (vs. 1-3): “1 ¶ Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of
gold, the height of which was sixty cubits and its width six cubits; he set it
up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. 2 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent word to
assemble the satraps, the prefects and the governors, the counselors, the
treasurers, the judges, the magistrates and all the rulers of the provinces to
come to the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.
3 Then the satraps, the prefects and the
governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates and all
the rulers of the provinces were assembled for the dedication of the image that
Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that
Nebuchadnezzar had set up.”
Recently, in the past several years I have looked at the
book of Daniel in different settings, of which one was in a Sunday school
class, and one of the things that I wondered about was the relationship between
the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had in chapter two and the idol that he made in
chapter three. I do believe that they
are connected and I also believe that Nebuchadnezzar was a man with a very
large head; I mean he was very proud of what he has accomplished in life. We will see how this plays out in the next
chapter.
Nebuchadnezzar’s reason for building this statue was not
only because of his pride but as Dr. Wiersbe explains “He wanted to make sure
that his people were loyal to him and that there would be no rebellions.” If the people had a religion that all must be
a part of then they would be faithful to Nebuchadnezzar who has become the
object of their worship.
As far as a ninety foot statue it would have to be hollow
having gold overlaying it, for there was not enough gold in the entire kingdom
to have a solid statue 90 feet high and 6 feet wide.
The names of the officials are listed in both verse two
and in verse three who were to come and who came, and to some it did not seem
to be necessary to list them two times in fact in the Greek translation of the
OT it is only mentioned one time. John
MacArthur thinks that the reason that they are mentioned both times shows the
fact than none of them had the courage not to attend this celebration that is
none of them objected except three Jewish men.
I wish to make one more comment about the music that was
played at this religious celebration and that comes from a quote that Dr.
Wiersbe includes in his commentary and is from the English poet William
Congreave who wrote “Music has charms to smooth a savage breast,” and then Dr.
Wiersbe goes on to say “but music also has power to release the savage in the
breast. Music can be used as a wonderful
tool and treasure from the Lord or as a destructive weapon from Satan.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: In John
MacArthur’s message on these first three verses of Daniel three he spent the
majority of it talking about idols and listed idols that we worship now in our
country. I stated that we probably have
more idols to worship than were available in Daniel’s time and so it is very
important that I ask the Lord to search my heart to make sure that there are no
idols in my life, and then listen to the Spirit of God as he reveals any to me
so that I can repent of them.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Pray more effectively for God to send His Holy
Spirit upon our land to produce a much needed revival.
Memory verses for the
week: 2 Cor. 5:17-18
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all
these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave
us the ministry of reconciliation,
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
Question: “Abraham was 100 years old and
Sarah was 90 years old.”
Today’s Bible
Question: “Which Old Testament prophet
predicted that Christ would be born in Bethlehem?”
Answer in Tomorrow’s SD.
5/6/2013 10:14 AM
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