<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

East Ridge SDA Church

Steven Grabiner

Scared or Prepare

Let's turn to the scripture reading, the book of Daniel.

And some of you, when you heard Barry read the scripture reading, some of you were like, wow, we're going to dive into Daniel 11.

And some of you were like, oh, I hope we're not going to dive into Daniel 11.

So we're not going to go through a full detail of Daniel 11.

If you're interested in that, let me know and we can have a study sometime.

But that's not my main focus this morning.

But in Daniel 11, we do have this little tiny picture in the verses that we looked at, Daniel 11 verses 32 and 33.

I'm reading from the New American standard, slightly different than the English standard version, from which Barry read, by smooth words he will turn to godlessness those who act wickedly toward the covenant.

But the people who know their God will do what?

They'll be strong or they'll display strength.

So the people that know their God, even though there's this conflict around them, they are going to take action.

And then verse 33, those who have insight, those who have understanding, those who have insight among the people will give understanding to the many, yet they will fall by sword, by flame, by captivity, by plunder for many days." Now what we just see in that little tiny microcosm, small part of Daniel 11, and we're going to come back to Daniel 11 in a moment, we see this conflict and then we see the people of God.

And the people of God, no matter what's going on around them, are able to continue to share.

They have insight, They're able to communicate understanding to others, people of God, the ones that know their God, they display strength and they take action.

So that's a really important point that I want to draw out of this chapter.

We're going to come back to it momentarily, but I want to ask a question.

And really the basic question is, as Christians, how should we be living in our current climate in the United States or in the world in general.

There's a variety of concerns in our country, right?

Fortunately, it seems to be lessening, but we're still in the midst of it.

We've had perhaps the most rocky presidential transition since Rutherford B.

Hayes, and if you don't know about that you can go look that up later.

We've had the storming of the Capitol and we've got a vaccine and people have all sorts of different opinions on that as they do about masks and a variety of other things.

It's almost like we're all in a big movie theater and we're watching the same movie on the screen, but we're really seeing 2 different movies.

It's like the same things are up there, but we're interpreting them very differently.

And so the question really is, how does a Christian make sense of all this?

And I really wanna answer this question in 2 main ways, what we shouldn't be doing and what we should be doing.

So again, Daniel chapter 11, let's jump back to the earlier part of Daniel 11.

Daniel 11 in the first couple of verses, And let me give you just this overview, very high, 40, 000 foot view of this chapter.

So Daniel 11 in verse 1, it says, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I arose to be a protection to him.

Verse 2, I tell you the truth, behold 3 more kings are going to arise or stand up in Persia.

Then there will be a fourth king who will gain riches more than all, and as soon as he becomes strong, he will arouse the empire against the realm of Greece.

Verse 3, a mighty king will arise or stand up, and he will rule with great authority and do as he pleases.

Most commentators see in that verse, in verse 3, a representation of Alexander the Great.

Verse 4, but as soon as he is arisen, his kingdom will be broken up and parceled out to the 4 points of the compass, not through his own descendants, not according to his authority or his sovereignty, excuse me, for his sovereignty will be uprooted and given to others.

The angel sees a king, king of, he mentions Darius, there's some questions about who that is.

And then he sees these other kings coming up in Persia and then he sees this other king arising.

Most people see this as Alexander the Great.

And when Alexander the Great dies, his seed, his descendants don't take over the kingdom, but generals do.

And they divide the kingdom into 4 parts.

2 of the parts really won't interest us today, but 2 parts that do interest us are the rule over Syria and the rule over Egypt.

And the rule over Syria is portrayed in Daniel 11 by this phrase, the king of the north, and the rule over Egypt is portrayed by a king called the King of the South.

And the first, the most part of Daniel chapter 11 is talking about these battles back and forth between these different kings up until around verse 20 and then it transitions a bit.

If you're an army and you're going from Syria to Egypt, or if you're going from Egypt to Syria, what land do you have to pass through?

You have to pass through where God's people are.

And that is the main point I want to extract from this chapter.

Now I'm going to leave away the historical details, but the king of the north and the king of the south are continually fighting and who is caught in the middle?

The actors may have changed since Daniel's day, But the truth of the matter is today there are still opposing evil forces.

King of the North, whatever you want to call it, King of the South, whatever you want to call it.

And as you read through Daniel 11, sometimes the king of the north wins and sometimes the king of the south wins, but always God's people are in the middle.

And I can imagine some Israelites thinking, oh we like the king of the north better, and some Israelites thinking, no I like the King of the South better.

The truth is both of these kings are really not interested in the kingdom of God.

And that is part of the larger point of the book of Daniel, which is that God is going to set up a kingdom.

And the question for us is, do we want to be part of that kingdom?

We look around us in our world today and we see all sorts of different things happening and different changes, But you and I need to be focused on the fact that God's people will always be caught in the middle of different warring evil forces.

And the key thing for us is to be looking for the kingdom of God.

So let's go a little bit further here, chapter 12, chapter 12 in verses 1.

So skipped a lot of historical prophecy on purpose, not my intention this morning, but in chapter 12 in verse 1 it says, now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of his people, will arise, will stand up, will begin to rule.

And Michael, we know from many different places, is a symbolic prophetic name for Jesus.

But then Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people.

King of the North comes, who's guarding God's people?

King of the South comes, who's guarding God's people?

And So for us, you know, no matter what player is on the scene in the world, political player, no matter which way winds of politics or oppression seems to be moving, who is guarding God's people?

And it's vitally important for us as we think of the time we live in, as we think about being looking forward to the second coming of Jesus, the title of the sermon is Scared or Prepared.

I used this title quite a number of years ago and I had a different title and Vivian insisted that I use this title.

So the concept of the title clearly is that we don't need to be scared about what's happening around us, but we do need to be prepared.

And as we look forward to the second coming of Christ and we see things moving in our social world and our political world and things begin to shift or unravel, Michael, Jesus, is standing guard for his people.

And part of the way he stands guard over his people is he says, sin can only go this far.

He acts as a restrainer on evil in this world.

As much as evil increases, we need to realize Michael Jesus is standing guard for us and he is restraining, He is holding back evil so God's people can become more and more like him.

So I'm going to keep coming back to this theme, but as I said, part of this sermon today is what we should be doing in these unsettled times and what we should not be doing.

Well, let me share a little bit about what we should not be doing.

There is a vast difference between grounded in biblical prophecy, And what I mean by that is Seventh-day Adventists is a church born out of prophecy.

We understand passages in the book of Daniel, and we've studied, not that it's exclusive to Seventh-day Adventists, but it's been part of our DNA, part of our, so sorry, I just got an interesting text that, I'll talk to the person later.

Back to Menu

Scared or Prepare

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine