SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/25/2023 9:38 AM
PT-9 Intro to Daniel
In today’s SD we continue to look at the
introduction to the book of Daniel through the second sermon that John
MacArthur preached in 1979. No, things
have not changed as the Word of God stays the same all the time, and once again
this sermon will be broken up into small “bites” so that you will not have to
read too much at a time. I hope that
many will read these SD’s as they are more up to date than tomorrow’s
newspapers and will show you what God has planned for our world.
“God's Man for a Time of Crisis, Part 2
“Tonight again, we come to the book
of Daniel. And I am anxious to finish our introduction tonight so that we can look
forward to getting into the book. “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim
king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto 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.”
“Man faces the inevitable course of
sin throughout his history and that is the constant cycle of decaying societies.
We are all aware of it, it’s been going on since the Fall. The cycle of
corruption buried nation after nation while new ones rise from the rubble and
become the rubble for the next cycle. Historians like Arnold Toynbee and Ibn
Khaldun, Italian Vico have given to us plenty of information on the cycles of
history, the rise and the fall of nation after nation after nation after
nation.
“It’s inevitability in human
society. And I really believe in many ways we are seeing in our own nation the
decay and the corruption that leads to destruction. (Preached in 1979) You would have to say, in looking at the history
of America, that we’ve reached the peak and we’re on the way down to the
inevitable rubble that happens to every society that follows the decadent
cycle. About three weeks ago in the September 10th edition of Time magazine,
there was an editorial on decadence (depravity) in America written by Lance
Morrow. I want to draw some thoughts from that editorial because it speaks so
pointedly to the issue.
“Listen to what he says as he begins
to write. “It was partly the spectacle of western decadence that aroused the
Ayatollah Khomeini to orgies of Koranic prescription. Alcohol, music, dancing,
mixed bathing all have been curtailed by the Iranian revolution. If Iran has
driven out its monarch and given itself over to a purification that demands
even the interment of its beer bottles, then by what logic, what punishment and
what purification would be sufficient for America? The Ayatollah residing in
some American consciences would surely have to plow under not just the beer
bottles but an uncomfortably large part of U.S. society itself.”
“Americans face what Morrow calls “a
physical violence and spiritual heedlessness that makes them wonder if the
entire society is on a steep and terminal incline downward.” Now, he defines
decadence from the Latin decadere, to fall down or away, hence to decay. He
sees this decadence as having something to do with death. In fact, he calls it
a terminal decadence. He suggests that decadence is a collection of symptoms
that might suggest a society exhausted and collapsing like a star as it
degenerates toward the white dwarf stage.
“Now, to be decadent is not just to
be corrupt in Morrow’s definition and the definition of history. To be decadent
is to be terminally corrupt. And if America is decadent, then there is a
terminal element in this decadence. In other words, it zeroes in on death. Our
country has some terrible symptoms of decadence. There’s no question about it.
Our music, our entertainment, our pleasure madness, our incredible materialism,
our self-indulgence, our wild economics all speak of a decadent society.
“In the article, Morrow suggest that
there are some signs that we might see as indications of our decadence. For
example, the Aspen, Colorado fan club that grew up two summers ago to celebrate
murderer Ted Bundy with, among other things, T-shirts that read, “Ted Bundy is
a one-night stand.” Or the work of photographer, Helmut Newton who likes to
sell high-fashion clothes with lurid pictures of women posed as killers and
victims or trussed up in sadomasochistic paraphernalia. One of his shots shows
a woman’s head being forced into a toilet bowl.
“He talks further about other
things, such as the Viennese artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who decided to make a
modernistic artistic statement by amputating inch-by-inch his own reproductive
capacity while a photographer recorded the process and made it as a work of
art. The list would have to mention Keith Richards, a member of the Rolling
Stones, who by one account in order to pass a blood test to enter the United
States for a concert had a physician drain his entire supply of heroin-tainted
blood and replace it with transfusions from more sedate citizens.
“Some of the sadomasochistic and
homosexual bars in New York and San Francisco would indicate to us an amazing
amount of decadence. In a less specialized realm, disco and punk songs like
“Bad Girls” and “I want to be sedated” have a decadent ring. In fact, the
entire phenomenon of disco, says Morrow, has a certain loathsome glisten to it.
Some might list Tiffany’s $2,950.00 gold ingot wrist watch or a pair of
$1,000.00 kidskin and gold shoes or a $1,900.00 dog collar, which you could buy
at Harrods in London, or Zsa Gabor’s $150,000.00 Rolls Royce with its leather,
velvet leopard interior. And so it goes.
“Society, says Morrow, fattens its
children on junk food and then permits them to be enlisted in pornographic
films. The nation is sub-divided into a dozen drug cultures, the alcohol
culture, the cocaine culture, the heroin culture, the Valium culture, the
amphetamine culture and combinations thereof. Legal abortions and the pervasive
custom of contraception suggest a society so chary of its future that it has
lost its will to perpetuate itself. And so says British Christian author
Malcolm Muggeridge, “What will make historians laugh at us is how we express
our decadence in terms of freedom and humanism. Western society,” he says,
“suffers from a largely unconscious collective death wish.”
“Now, in all of this, what he is saying
is that we are decadent and our decadence has built into it a death wish. It’s
a terminal disease. Nations normally don’t recover from this. In fact, the
cycles of history are starkly repetitive. And I was fascinated in reading
Morrow’s article to note that while he was discussing the cycles of corrupting
nations he only had one nation as an illustration of breaking the cycle, only
one nation that really rose from its own ashes. And strangely enough, he said
it was the nation of Israel, Israel.
“God’s people, Israel, came to
decadence, to destruction and to death. And yet, because of the covenant of
their God, they rose from their own ashes to live again even in this very day.
How did Israel break the cycle? How did Israel overcome the corruption? How did
they get the way they were even becoming so decadent when all the while they
had the trust of the Scriptures, the Word of God? What is the story of Israel?
How did it collapse? And how was it restored? Well, frankly, that story is part
and parcel of the life of Daniel. Daniel became God’s instrument in the time of
Israel’s destruction. And Daniel became, in a very real sense, one of the tools
of Israel’s rise again.
“As we look at the book of Daniel
then tonight, I want us to see it in terms of the decadence of a dying people,
most particularly the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah had been destroyed by
Daniel’s time, not so much by outward enemies, although they finally did the
mop-up operation, but mostly because of internal corruption. Judah became affluent
and materialistic. Judah worshiped false gods. Judah had a religion that was
external and not internal. Judah had a nation of liars who knew not nor told
the truth. Judah felt everybody around them owed them something. Judah began to
trust in illicit alliances and increased technology.
“There was a general apostasy among
their political and religious leaders. They pulled the mask over their eyes and
said there was peace when there wasn’t any peace, tried to kid themselves into
thinking everything was fine when it really wasn’t. And God swept in for a
terrible judgment and the nation was taken captive by the Babylonians. And that
was the time for Daniel, God’s man for a crisis.
“Now as you look at the first two
verses we’re going to look at five points.
We’ve covered two; we’ll cover three more tonight: the places, the period, the
person, the punishment and the purpose. These five inter lap – intertwine and
overlap and so we’ll kind of interchange our thoughts as we go. And I want you
to note the tragic decadence in the nation of Judah that led to their captivity
and how Daniel fit into that picture. And you’ll see it as you go.”
11/25/2023
10:00 AM
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