We Need to Be a Work to Do a Work

Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for that music, Cindy. I had a way a long time to hear that, which was supposed to come before Wayne a few weeks ago, or a few months ago now, I think it has been, and do that, and to not make it that day. And so, very, very nice. It's good to be with you here in Shelbyville today. I started to say Louisville, but we're a little bit out from there.

And Debbie and I are glad to come down here. As I was telling some of you, we are without a congregation at this point in our time. We're in kind of the transition between Indianapolis and Cincinnati. We said goodbye to the congregations in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis last month, and made our goodbyes there. But we haven't moved to Cincinnati. We will do that next month. We have a house that we bought there, and we'll close on that and move over to Cincinnati next month, and they will be the proud owners of two homes. I don't know how we're going to handle that.

Maybe once a month, we'll go back to our Indiana home and camp out in it or something, just to have a weekend getaway, I guess, or something like that. Mr. DeCampos mentioned that the Council of Elders meetings, and I want to make a comment about that, and something else regarding the winter weekend. First of all, quite a bit to hear about Beyond Today and the Bulletin, but at the winter weekend this year, we are going to be doing something a little different.

We're going to have one morning, I think it's Monday morning, during the weekend between 10 and 12, we're going to do a taping of three Beyond Today television programs in one of the rooms there. It's kind of a symposium room, and we'll do a live taping before a live audience. We haven't done that before, before an audience at least, and Gary Petty did last March down in his congregation in San Antonio, but the others of us haven't done that. So we're going to take advantage of that, and those that are visiting the weekend, we'd like to see a production of the Beyond Today, at least in that setting, can do so, and we'll see how that works and have audience shocks.

And reactions in that way to be a part of the final programs. So keep that in mind, those of you that will be going there if you'd like to take part in that. There's so many activities at the winter weekend, there's something for everybody, all just a different source of interest. Also, I just want to comment on the recently completed Council of Elders meetings. We met for four days this week, and the Council of Elders is the governing body of the United Church of God.

Twelve of us that sit in that responsibility. We had a very busy week. We took about a day and a half this week of this particular meeting, and we devoted ourselves to kind of an examination of our strategic plan, which is an involved document that basically lays out a plan for the church, the media, and other aspects of the entire operations of the United Church of God, the very formal presentation. We've been working off of this for three or four years now, and we needed to kind of examine this plan with all that has happened in the last year or so.

There's just a need to look at it. The strategic plan doesn't deal with doctrine, doesn't deal with our teachings, except as they are translated into our media effort and the congregational care and the organization. But we wanted to, in a sense, embed some scriptural principles into the plan beyond what we had. And so we identified, we have a set of guiding principles.

We have some positioning statements that are part of this, that are the Council's responsibility. It took us a day and a half to kind of work through additions and material to put in there that make it more of a living document for us to work from in the administration, the Council, and really others who produce media content and sermons in the ministry for the church. So we will be finishing that up in our next meeting in February. It'll be part of what goes to the general conference for ratification at our annual meeting.

But it was a very helpful process to do that. Also, we made another major decision, at least to go forward, with another phase of study for a home office expansion there at the facility in Cincinnati, or Milford. And that's part of the letter that I think was handed out to you as the letter from Mr. Rhodes, the chairman of the Council. So we basically authorized further detailed drawings and plans by the architect and cost estimates so that we can look at that finally in February and make a decision as to whether or not we want to go forward with that. It would involve more or less a doubling of the space that we have.

And the original driver for this is the television studio and the need for a larger media center to produce Beyond Today. And that will be a part of this, but in doing so, it's just as logical to go ahead and plan for other growth and expansion and also expand the facilities for the Ambassador Bible Center, as well as for the congregations in Cincinnati. And so what we would do if this goes forward is create a larger meeting area that would seek 400 to 500 people.

And it would also be a feast site for the United Church of God. So it would serve multiple purposes, but one of the things that we said that we would like to see as part of that is to make Cincinnati a permanent feast site. And the members could meet right there at that facility and come and enjoy the feast site there in Cincinnati. So those are some of the thoughts and ideas that are moving forward with that part of the idea of expanding the home office. So I hope we can do so.

We'll let you look at our income, the budget, and the plans for that. We feel that it's feasible for us to do it this time, and we'll move forward. If you have any more questions about anything that I may have generated, I'll be glad to answer those afterwards and spend a little bit of time with you doing that. But other than that, that's about all that is there. I have two items here. I started giving sermons off my iPad in recent weeks. I'm going to be working with that, but I've changed and added a scripture coming down here to Carr, so I didn't have time to add that in.

So I have my old technology, which is the printed word to also at least begin with here. So I'll move between the two. I was in this bulletin and comments that Mr. DeCampos and I made about the work of the church in preaching the gospel of the kingdom, which is a very important part of the church and our efforts. I'd like to shift our focus in the time that I have with you here this morning and help us to remind ourselves that as we do the work of God, whatever part we may have in doing that, all of us are supposed to become a work.

And that sometimes is neglected or maybe forgotten in our efforts to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, to see and rejoice over and pray for, advances in the church and to work. And all of which are important, regardless of what walk of life any of us in this room have come from. The fact that you and I are sitting in this room today on this Sabbath, worshiping God in this service is because the gospel was preached at some point, in some manner, and we heard it.

You and I heard it. Our parents heard it. Someone else heard it. And we responded to that. So the preaching of the gospel is a scripturally important topic. But also the work that God is doing is individually within us. That work that Cindy was singing about that does lie beneath the inner person that we are and become over a period of time. I'd like for you to turn over to Ephesians 2, and I wanted to read a verse from which this very important principle is drawn.

Ephesians 2. We begin in verse 8, a well-known verse that is known by, I'm sure all of us sometimes use to try to do away with the law of God because it talks about grace in verse 8 of Ephesians 2. It says, First sin is an important verse because Paul the Father is not complete until you read through verse 10. Because Paul then goes on to say, We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So the thought is completed in that we are the workmanship of God saved by grace, but God is working with us and there are internal changes that God's Spirit Christ in us is to make. And that those works are defined by the law of God and the teachings of righteousness, which flow from that. No question. But essentially what Paul is saying here is that we must become a work. We must become a work.

A few years ago a minister, one of our ministers made a statement in one of our conferences and he said, But before we can do a work, we must become a work. What did he mean by that? Well, you can take several layers of meaning from that. But one which is very obvious is that, as we're told here, this is the idea that it's taken from. We are God's workmanship created in Christ for good works. In other words, works of righteousness, kindness, love, gentleness, peace, the fruits of the Spirit, every scripture that you like to turn to, but to find becoming a work of God, a living example of God's grace, God's presence within our life, we must become a work before we can do a work.

It's almost like saying, you know, before you want to tell people how to live, you better sweep your own front porch. As my mother used to tell me from time to time, when I was growing up, one of her savings, I used to thought my mother was a very wise person in many ways. I thought she'd just pull these statements out of thin air, and I later realized, you know, she got them from someplace else, and everybody else heard these statements from their mother or dad.

My mom used to say, you know, you've got to sweep your own front porch before you go sweep somebody else's. That's true. That doesn't mean you can't and shouldn't do the work. But, you know, keep your front porch clean. Clean a work before you do a work. And it's a true statement. How do we do that? There are so many different ways, as far as we were taught by the sermonette, to fine-tune our conscience. Keep it gentle. Keep it keen. Keep it malleable. There are many examples for us to turn to.

I want to share with you three examples from one man's life that I've been thinking about in recent weeks and studying about, actually for quite a long time, to illustrate exactly what we're talking about, becoming a work before we do a work. One of the heroes and individuals and examples I look to in the Bible, a great deal. I find myself going back to this man's life story as much as anyone else's, and that's the prophet Daniel in the book of Daniel. What I'd like to do in my time with you this morning is to look at three vignettes from the life of Daniel, three stories from his life that we are all familiar with, and draw certain lessons that I think can stand every one of us in good ways to become this work that God tells us that we should become through Paul here.

We've all, no matter what our place within the body of Christ, must understand that if we're going to do anything, whether it's being an example to someone, whether it is teaching someone in a word or deed about any point of God's way of life, we've got to be right internally.

We've got to be yielding ourselves to God and to His vision and His leadership. No matter what level we find ourselves engaging and participating in the work of God, we've got to remember that we must always yield ourselves to God and be led by Him. In other words, we must become a work before we can really effectively do the work of God wherever we need that opportunity. It's our example for teaching through whatever it might be. I think in Daniel's life there are several examples. We're going to have time to go through all of it this morning.

But let's go into it for a few minutes and you can go ahead and turn over to Daniel. I'll turn there just in case my iPad goes off. I think I've got enough juice stored up in it to go for the remainder of the time. What do we go to here? About two o'clock? Three o'clock? Is that when you wind up here in Shelby Hill? Just kidding. My stomach growls too at a certain time. You can turn to the first chapter of Daniel and I'm already there with my electronic version of the things. Let's look at first in chapter 1 of Daniel, which is the opening of where we find Daniel.

There's three friends who have been taken to Babylon. Daniel and his friends were Jews, caught up in the captivity of the nation of Judah during the time of the Babylonian invasion. The demise of that last remnant of Israel that was in Jerusalem, they were transported to the city of Babylon. It was there that Daniel spent the rest of his life. He survived several regime changes, palace court intrigues that were aimed at him and others. That's why his story is so fascinating because of what he had to go through.

He was a young man at the time that he was taken and carried into the land of Babylon away from his home, probably his family, along with a few friends. We find in the first chapter of Daniel that he and others are being, in a sense, interviewed for some very key positions in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. We find that they were young men of verse 4, in whom there was no blemish. They were good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge, quick to understand. They had the ability to serve in the king's palace and to learn all the language and literature of the Chaldeans. So these were, in a sense, the best and the brightest.

High SAT scores. They were pulled from the cream of the Jewish group that were brought along. They were singled out. When they got off the train that brought them to Babylon, they went into the right-hand lane. Who knows where the others went? But they went into the right hand, and they were shown into a different track here.

You can get a resume, really, here, of these individuals. They were sharp, alert. They were quick studies. They were able to pick up things and to learn the language of Babylon. The king was smart enough to realize, I need these men. I need to use them in my efforts to the ends of my mission and purpose here. So they were put through a force of training. They lasted for some time here. At the end of which, they were going to serve before the king. Among these were the sons of Judah, Daniel, Han and I, and Mishael, and Eriza. They were given different names.

In verse 8, we find a statement that is made about Daniel, which really sets the tone for him in the story throughout the rest of the book. Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with a portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank. It is part of this training program that they were going to be immersed in. This was a complete immersion program in their preparation to be used in a sense the State Department of Babylon, at the highest government levels, and various departments and ministries of the court.

They were going to go through a program. We find that it even came all the way down and involved their daily allotment of food and what they ate, and just taking part in the entire culture of Babylon. Daniel said, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going that far. We find him cooperating because he says, look, he devises a plan. He says to the eunuch that's in charge of him, he said, look, I fear my lord the king.

I respect him. I know what we're involved with here. I'm not going to escape. We're not going anywhere. We're going to go along, but we're going to go along on our terms. He's appointed your food and drink. He said, why should he see your faces looking worse than the young men who are your age and endanger my head before the king?

Daniel devises a test. He says down in verse 12, test us for 10 days. Give us a vegetarian diet. Let us eat water, eat a vegetarian diet, and just water. No strong drink, not even wine, and our own diet. Then look at us after this period of time and see what we look like.

Now, what was this all about? Well, you look at this at different levels. He said he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies or with the wine. Some commentators will say that they would have been served on clean food, according to the biblical scriptures. And they weren't going to do that. That could very well be part of the diet there. How do you explain the wine? Because wine is okay. It's likely that there was unclean food there that they wouldn't eat. But it was also just as likely that it was probably highly rich in terms of a high-fat diet. Maybe they wanted low carbs. I don't know. If you've got enough diet these days that you can get into, sometimes you have to be on certain diets for heart or diabetes. I float around on a high-carb diet myself to keep diabetes at bay in my own life. But they were going to control their intake. And it could just as well have been the scriptural dietary principles as just understanding that, hey, we're not going to go this far into the Babylonian culture and get caught up in this whole way of life to the point of even drunkenness, drinking too much and living this way. We'll go vegetarian for a period of time. And what this really does speak to, I think, is whether it was unclean food, which I'm sure is part of it, but I think it was beyond that. Daniel and his men, because when you see the rest of the story down to verse 15, at the end of the ten days, their features appeared better in fatter and flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king's delicacies. And so they took away their portion of the food, and they then were basically allowed to go their own way. What this, I think, shows is Daniel's respect at this point in time for the legacy, for the heritage in which he had been raised as a Jew, as an Israelite, now finding themselves at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, this man whose armies had destroyed their way of life, raised the city of Jerusalem, completely destroyed what they had been familiar with, and deported them into this strange land. Daniel had been raised a certain way, according to the Scriptures, the way of God, you could say.

He grew up in the church, and now he found himself away from home. And everything turned upside down, where it had been just as easy for Daniel and his men to say, you know what? We're on our own now. I don't need to be tied down to all those ways that my parents taught me, and the temple's gone, and that way of life is over, and I might as well make the best with this new country, this new way of life, and succeed here.

And to do so, I'm just going to adopt all of their customs. I'll forget all of those Old Testament laws, all of that way of life that I grew up with and learned. Didn't do us any good, but what happened? All these things could have gone through his mind. But Daniel had internalized the spiritual aspect, and I truly think it was the spiritual way, apart from all the physical exterior ceremonies of the temple, and priesthood, and sacrifices, and everything else that he literally saw and watched there in the temple. He'd internalized, he'd understood that there was something, if I can use the term, beneath, that was anchoring all of that, and it was a relationship with God, and it was all bound up in this way of life that he'd been raised.

There was something to it, and he didn't throw it off. I've been in the church since I was age 12. I'm 60 years old this year. Long time. I've learned a lot of things. I've seen a lot of things happen in the church. I learned certain things when I came into the church, and I still believe those things. I don't eat pork to this day. I observe the days of unloving bread, let's say.

I put the leaven away during that period of time. I do those physical things, but I understand that there are spiritual reasons under all of those that are far more important, and they lead me to understand. I go right down the list of all the various things. The Sabbath, the Holy Days, the tithing, whatever you want to talk about, the distinctive outward manifestations we have as our way of life that this applies to. Over the years, any one of us can be tempted of various ways to throw it all off and say, well, you know, I'm tired of that.

Or, I've done this long enough. Or, it doesn't matter. Especially every time we go through a spiritual challenge within the church in a time of upheaval, sometimes people, I see it every time, people say, you know what? It doesn't work. I'm tired of this. There is no God, even. In this recent crisis, I had some members basically leave, not to go with any other group, but to leave God.

And the question, their faith was challenged, and they don't know if this is all true here, and this is where they came to. Those things happen as you go through either the church challenges, or we go through our personal challenges, with health, changes in our life, whatever. This way of life can stretch on for a long period of time. And we'll always be challenged in our faith. And what I admire about what we learned here, in this first story with Daniel, is his respect for his heritage, his respect for his legacy.

He wasn't going to compromise on it. Not even when he was away from home, and everyone else around him, and the path to success in this new world that he was in, was to throw off everything that he had learned, and to adopt all of the customs, teachings, ways, and full life of Babylon. He didn't do it. There will be voices, there will be times, there will be people, there will be ideas that will come into our life over the years that will say, it's okay to do this.

You don't need to do that. It's time to move on. Is this really true? However it comes into our life to challenge our faith, and you can find yourself in a moment of, well, maybe there is something to that, or you find yourself a bit weak, and you have to step back, find out where you're anchored, and in Daniel's case, he was anchored in a loyalty to God that went far beyond anything that was outward, and he had a respect for what he had learned.

Now, we, at various times, it's amazing to me what we have to contend with in the Church, not just over the last couple of years, but over the last 25 years or so. The challenges that continually hammer at the walls and the doors of the faith of God's people, the ideas and the various subtleties with which ideas will continue to creep in, whether it's... A lot of times it is over so much of the things that define us as a Church and are distinctives about the Sabbath, the Holy Days.

People get caught up in ideas about new moons. They get caught up in ideas about physical aspects of our way of life, and want to take it too far in a legalistic fashion, or want to throw it off completely. You know, I started talking about food here. As I say, I have not knowingly eaten a piece of pork since I was 12 years old. I said, knowingly. I'm sure that I have ingested my share of it over the years without knowing, but I've never sliced that ham or fried that pork chop.

I did miss those pork chops for a while. And I don't do it... And I realize that by not doing it, I'm not earning anything. It doesn't earn me anything. I don't do it for all the reasons that are scriptural. And I won't go into all that. It's not my purpose to get into that subject here. But the physical things, they have their place. And we understand that God has given us a revelation to know what to hold onto from the Old Testament, to bring into the terms of a new covenant Christian, and what... We don't slaughter cows and goats out here.

But there are reasons to hold onto the teachings that are there. Clean and Unclean Eats is one of those that are very important to our faith. Daniel and his friends here, they understood that there's more to it than just the external. And they had a deep respect for that, and that helped lock them into a loyalty and a relationship with God.

Really, Daniel looked up rather than around. He looked to God and not to man or to money or to status. He wouldn't bow down in his life to lifeless idols and worship it. And you and I wouldn't even dream about bowing down to an idol, or putting an idol up in some shrine in our backyard to some concept of deity. We wouldn't think of doing that. Our challenge of idols today is a lot different. Our idols can become money, power, status, celebrity, self. Those are the idols that we have to deal with in our modern world. But Daniel had that plus many, many more as part of the life that he was called to.

So Daniel here learned a lesson of integrity to his heritage and to the legacy that he had been taught. Now let's turn to Daniel 5. I want to go to another story that we have here in Daniel, this chapter. I know I'm skipping over others, but we don't have that much time.

In Daniel 5, this is now toward Nebuchadnezzar's left of the scene. He's died, and his son named Bel-Shazzar is king. This is the story of Bel-Shazzar's feast and handwriting on the wall here in Daniel 5. The time of Babylon and this power was coming to a close. We have this fascinating story here that is told beginning in verse 1.

This is part of the loot that they had stolen and brought with them and kept at this point. They drank wine, verse 4, and they praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, and ironwood in stone. They were going on and using these vessels that had been sanctified for a holy purpose within them. They were doing this in verse 5.

A boisterous party, a thousand people, a lot of noise, big room, huge room. They dug up this part of the palace in Babylon today. What was it? Babylon. They're in the modern nation of Iraq. And it was a huge, huge room. And out of this room there came a hand and began to write across the wall, a disembodied hand. Now, some of them probably thought they were seeing things because they were drunk and hallucinating and going on. But they began to realize after a while that what was being written across the wall, indeed, was real. Something was taking place there. And it frightened them. The king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other. He began to lose it, as we say in our phrase today. And he cried aloud, bringing the astrologers, the Chaldeans, the soothsayers, all these people who could read the stars, read the tea leaves, lift your hand and tell your future, and all of these magicians to help us understand what's taking place here. And they told him, when they came in, whoever reads this writing and tells me its interpretation shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around his neck, and he'll be a third ruler in the kingdom. Well, they could not read the writing or make known what it meant. It was Greek to them. The Greeks were yet to come on the long way away, but it was unintelligible.

And so, verse 8 and 9 tells us, he was greatly troubled, his countenance was changed, as lords were astonished. And then his wife, the queen, came in, or piped up at this point, because the words of the king and the lords came to the banquet hall, the queen spoke, saying, O king, live forever. Do not let your thoughts trouble you, nor let your countenance change.

There is a man in your kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy God. And in the days of your father, life and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found to him. And your king Nebuchadnezzar, your father the king, made him chief of all these people that you've now called in, these magicians and astrologers and soothsayers.

Inasmuch as an excellent spirit, knowledge, understanding, interpreting dreams, solving of riddles and explaining inignments were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Abeltashazzar let him be called, and he will give the interpretation.

And so here we find, years later, several decades probably, having passed, other episodes we skipped over Daniel's discourses with Nebuchadnezzar and the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, the time of Nebuchadnezzar's years of insanity when he was removed from the throne for a period of time, with a new regime, with a new department head, whether it's a department head, head of an organization, or king or president, they always bring in their own people. And in this case, Daniel had been kind of shifted aside. He had been marginalized. He had lost his office next to the corner office. You know how it is in businesses? The corner office is usually the head office for the president, CEO of the organization, and the pecking order within the business is determined by how close you are to his office within the system, on the same floor, how close. Well, Daniel had lost that. He lost his key to the executive washroom. He had been forgotten by others that had come on. And yet, this woman, the queen, remembered him, understood him. And what she says about him in verses 11 and 12 is quite interesting. Again, the resume of Daniel stood the test of time among these people. She said, he has the spirit of the Holy God, and in the days of your father, he had light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods.

You know, when you're going through a time of stress or trial, you have a friend, a parent, a mentor, a pastor, someone that you can go to to help you sort it out.

You've got a gym, whoever that person might be in your life. Someone that can, you know, kind of cause the light to come on. Oh, yeah, that's what I need to do.

Okay, I'll just be patient. This too shall pass. And you have a good conversation. You have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea. You sit down with somebody and you pour yourself out.

You kind of sort through your frustrations, your problems, your needs, whatever with somebody. And they are the one that you go to. And they kind of help you kind of right your ship, your own personal ship.

You know, when you have someone like that, they give light and understanding and wisdom. Like the wisdom of the gods. This is how they looked at Daniel. We know that he had the wisdom of God. But she recognized this.

And if you have someone like that, you've got someone you want to hold on to. And you don't ever want to let that person go. It could be your mother. It just could be anyone in our particular life that we go to in that way.

And don't ever get to the point where you don't have someone or you're so proud or you're so far from God or a right balance of wisdom that you can't go to somebody. Or you won't. Whatever comes in your life.

And everyone needs that. I come to a point over the events of the last several years. I came to a point one day and my wife said, you need to go talk to somebody. I said, yeah, I do. So I did.

We ministers have to talk to somebody, too. And none of us are exempt from needing someone with a little bit of light, understanding, and wisdom in their lives who can help us to kind of just sort through and talk to you.

Daniel was this man because he had an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding.

What Daniel's life and what's important for us is that, again, this is his resume of his life. It really flows from what we read there in Chapter 1 where he would not compromise himself.

Years earlier in his youth, on the principles, the values, the law, the teaching that he had been given were a part of him and he just wouldn't let go.

You know, we have a way of life that we learn in the Church of God. It is unique. It is distinctive. We do things that are different. We keep the law of God. We keep the Sabbath and the Holy Days.

I mentioned foods and those things. All of those are these distinctive elements of our way of life.

I say to us all that we've got to always understand why we do those things. It's the why that really you have to dig deep to get to.

And understand that by doing those things, it establishes a relationship with God by which the work in our lives is done.

As we keep the Sabbath not in a legalistic way to earn anything, we keep the Sabbath to worship God, to worship Him on holy time.

And it's a no-brainer for someone. You know, when the Sabbath comes, your life is all ordered to where you're having to bring the Sabbath.

You're having a thudge on the Sabbath. You're having a compromise on it by what you do.

And you're not even so much worried about those other things because, I get your life is just you're in tune to where you know what you do on the Sabbath, how you're going to use the Sabbath day.

Or why you're going to go off to the Feast of Tabernacles.

That it's, you know, it is all the good things that we like about the Feast and the highlight of the year.

But we, you know, at the heart of it, we know that we're going to come before, we're going wherever we may go, whatever physical location, because we are told by God to come before Him at His appointed feasts.

And we go there because we want to come before God and learn what God has for us at that point.

And those people, experiences from the Bible at that particular year and where we are.

You know why we do it. It's the why. It's the benefit that we get from it.

Someone gave a sermon at the recently that they were telling me about and their point was well made that keeping the Sabbath has benefits.

Living this way of life has benefits and it's important that any of us be able to articulate those benefits.

Not only to ourselves, but to someone who asks you, why do you do this? Why do you keep the, you know, why don't you go to church?

I mean, there's an Adventist church or maybe a church of God's Sunday or another group of Sabbath keepers right around the corner here.

Or there's a good Sunday church. Why do you travel an hour? Two hours in some cases.

Why do you do these things? Well, we'll go through our reasons for it.

Well, God, you know, supports commandment. Yes, it is. And God commands us to do it. Yes, He does.

It's a sign between God and His people. Yes, it is.

But you know what somebody, you know what people are really asking when they ask you why you do that?

They want to know, what do you get from this? What's your benefit? That's the bottom line. That's really what everybody we're all looking for. What do I get for this?

You get more money? You get a higher job rating? You get a piece of the line?

You get a contentment? You get a centering and an ordering in your life that impacts all the rest of your life?

What are the benefits? You hire onto a job, everybody wants to know, what's your benefit package?

Insurance, vacation, working is calm. All the benefits. You go to the HR and they lay it all out for you.

They tell you, look, this is your benefits. Okay, I'll go to work here. Pretty good package.

What's the benefits of God's way of life? Daniel had it all figured out.

That's why it was said of him that he had an excellent spirit and knowledge and understanding.

In his case, it led to the ability to solve these riddles and enigmas and interpretation of dreams.

That was his life. I personally don't look to interpret dreams because of living this way of life.

I'm not looking to solve any riddles. Nobody's called me in to consult on handwriting on the wall yet.

Although I can read this story and I can learn certain things from it.

I think that today we and our nation and many other nations, that the handwriting is on the wall for this world.

There is a day of reckoning. That's another story. I'm hoping to talk about that in a seminar at the winter weekend.

When you go down to verse 17, before then, Balthazar basically has Daniel standing before him.

If you can read this writing and make it known to me, I'll put a chain of gold around your neck.

Verse 16, and you'll be the third ruler in the kingdom.

Verse 17, Daniel answered and he said, let your gifts be to yourself. Give your rewards to another.

He wasn't interested in that. That was not the benefit that he wanted from his audience with the king.

It's always nice to be called in to the president's office or the CEO's office or your supervisor's office and get a little FaceTime with that person, isn't it?

And sometimes if you're looking for just for power, position, status, or whatever, sometimes people will turn those relationships to their own benefit.

What they say, how they handle themselves, what they take out of that particular session.

And Daniel wasn't impressed with any of them. He said, you keep it all to yourself. Give your rewards to another.

I'll tell you what the handwriting says. I'll make known to you the interpretation, but you keep all this to yourself. Daniel was not interested in things. He was not enticed by that.

And he went on and he told them, he gave the interpretation of this and the remainder of the example here.

He told it, he rehearsed with Belshazzar, the story of Nebuchadnezzar.

And how Nebuchadnezzar had been lifted with pride, verse 20, he was hardened in pride.

His glory was taken from him for a period of time to learn that, down in verse 21, that God rules in the kingdom of men.

And God appoints and takes down, lifts up, whomever he chooses.

So the flattery of money, the position that Belshazzar offered didn't tempt Daniel. He said, keep it. Keep your money to yourself.

He had learned by watching Nebuchadnezzar that pride can harden one's heart.

There's a lesson from this. There's a lesson from this.

Integrity can be bought, or cannot be bought, integrity cannot be bought. Integrity is something that is built over a lifetime, episode by episode, season by season in your life.

Integrity cannot be bought. And you can't sum it up in an instant when you need it. It's something that you build and cultivate, protect and develop over a lifetime.

But it can be sold in a heartbeat. Daniel could have sold himself at this point and let himself get caught up in the offer that Belshazzar made, but he didn't do it.

He said, you keep your money to yourself. He was not interested in that. That is a work of an individual devoted to God and attempting to live a holy life.

He was not enticed by things, and he was not enticed by pride.

What Daniel had learned as he had watched Nebuchadnezzar, again, was how pride can harden one's heart toward God and toward things.

One of the lessons that we should learn from that is to not let our heart get hard, either toward God, toward man, because a hard heart is difficult to soften.

It's difficult to soften, and that is something we never want to let ourselves fall into.

How we handle things, how we handle position, opportunity, whatever power we may be given, whether it's within a family as a parent or supervising five people or fifty people.

How we handle that will go a long way toward the type of integrity and character that we develop.

Well, the story of this handwriting on the wall, without getting into all of its interpretation, really it led to the fact that time was up. That was the bottom line.

Three times up, Bill Schaser, you and your people have been numbered and found wanting.

And in fact, in that night, as the story goes on, the Persians were at the gate, and they came in and destroyed Babylon overnight, just like that.

And that is a major lesson for us to learn, certainly, prophetically.

I happen to believe we're kind of in a moment like this in our world right now. The handwriting is on the wall.

So many things could happen so very quickly, almost overnight, to usher in the prophetic fulfillments that the Bible talks about at the time of the end.

And to be watching some of these things, I don't know... Most people, I hope some of you are at least aware of what's taking place in Europe right now with the monetary crisis that's going on over there.

I find myself watching it and being interested in the reactions by all the pundits who describe what's taking place because the European Union has been going through an economic crisis, much like we've gone through, threatening to disrupt their entire union, their entire plan.

Some of our American observers who watch it say, well, you know, they'll sort it all out, or it's not going to impact us, or they say that they deserve it to fall apart because of their form of governments and they've run up these depths and it's not going to impact us.

You have a whole stream of thought in that way, and then you find an occasional wise voice that realizes that what is taking place over there right now is something far greater than just a monetary crisis.

And I find certain voices that have a certain wisdom to realize that it is a complete realignment of power.

And as one high-up Foreign Service official wrote something I read a few days ago, he basically said Germany is waging war in Europe just by economic means.

And they're accomplishing what they never did accomplish under Hitler, under Bismarck, or any past historic regime.

And that it is going to completely overturn the European order, put them in the driver's seat, and relationships are going to probably develop with Russia and China that are going to realign much of the power politics of the world and the United States is going to find itself on the outside looking in.

Great Britain made the decision Thursday and Friday not to go along with what is going to become a new European organization to deal with the crisis, and Great Britain has opted out.

These are things that we saw would happen 30-40 years ago, as Europe was even building up.

And now they are taking place, Europe is going to become marginalized, certain European funders say, well, Europe doesn't need Britain, that's not the point.

It's what's taking place on the continent that is important.

And again, the wisdom of just looking at the basis of what the Bible says and what I feel God has revealed to the servants down through the decades about the world, about prophecy, and how the times of the end will shape up.

Just stick to the most trunk of the tree matters, and you will have wisdom and understanding.

And I think that there is a basis for that today to help us understand and overlay the events that are taking place in the news right now.

I find the other wise men and astrologers of our world, they don't understand it. They just don't understand it.

And the average American is not even interested. Those that may be interested don't understand what's taking place.

So, the story of the handwriting on the wall is very interesting and very important from that point.

Let's go to one more story of Daniel, Chapter 6. This is the time of the Persian Empire.

Daniel was an old man by this time, and he has survived the regime change, the hostile takeover by the Persians.

And we're at the time of Darius the King, and he has set over the kingdom about 120 high-level managers to cover the kingdom, in verse 1 we're told.

And over these three, there are three that are on top of whom Daniel was one, that the satraps or these managers would give account to them, so that the king would suffer no loss.

So, the king has kind of set up an organizational structure. Daniel is one of the top three under him, and he distinguished himself.

And we're told in verse 3, again, his competence has stood at the test of time through the decades, and he stands out because in verse 3 there's an excellent spirit in it.

God's spirit has a way of, even in the midst of people that are unconverted, cut off from God, not interested in religion, one who has God's spirit can still prosper, endure, and God can show his works through them.

That's what was happening with Daniel. And because of this, it created some problems, because there was jealousy and rivalries, just again, politics.

Verse 4, the governors and satraps, these other department heads and ministers and underlings, they all sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom.

But they could find no charge or fault because he was faithful, nor was there any error or fault found in him.

And these men said, we will not find any charge against this Daniel, unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God. Quite a statement.

Now, what does that mean? It means he had integrity. He was honest. He showed up on time. He didn't steal. He punched his card. He didn't fudge on his tongue card.

Didn't steal from the supply store. Didn't have any deals going on under the table. All these things that happened, he wasn't interested in that.

Greed was not his operative mode. And they said, we'll not find any charge unless we find it concerning the law of his God or the way of God.

In other words, they were going to have to contrive something, which they did. And so they made up a law.

That for 30 days, that if you petition any other God or man other than the king, you'll be cast into a pen of lions.

So they made a law specifically designed to trap Daniel as he was a man keeping the law of God, keeping the way of life. And they knew this would be a trap. This is how they designed a way to trap him. And the penalty would be thrown into a den of lions.

So this is a famous story in this chapter, Daniel and the lion's den.

Verse 10 tells us that when this particular resolution was passed, the writing was signed.

He went home and in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days.

Daniel's habit and way of life was to pray three times a day with his window open to Jerusalem.

So they knew that, and that's why they designed the law of the day, because that's the only way they could trap him. And they knew, Daniel being a man of habit, integrity, faith, that he would continue to do that.

And it would be like, you and I, I guess, in whatever company business we worked at, that they wanted to get rid of you. The only way they couldn't find any charge of embezzlement, you had all your sick days still intact, you hadn't called in on Blue Monday, or there was nothing that obviously could get you forward. So they designed a new policy or new rule within the, place it in the handbook, that if you don't come in at eight o'clock the next Saturday morning, you will lose your job.

Something to that equivalency would be what happened. And you decide when, come eight o'clock that next Saturday morning, that you're going to be getting ready to go to worship God and sat for services. And you're going to show up. And this is the equivalent of it. So he prayed, Daniel did. And, you know, you can look at this. Daniel was up in his years at this point in time. He was not a young man.

And he could have been tempted to compromise his integrity with, you know, saying, you know, I've done this all my life and, you know, if I don't pray today, God will understand my life's at stake. My whole future, my retirement package is at stake. So God will understand if I don't talk to him. But he knew what was up. He knew his stakes and he knew what he had to do. And so he fell down knowing that they were watching him with surveillance cameras.

And they found him praying, verse 13, verse 11, and making supplication to God. And they had him. He looked at the king. The king realized he'd been trapped by this decree. And they threw him in the lion's death. The king sealed it up with his own ring in verse 17, and they waited. The king looked back and wrung his hands and worried. The laws of the Persians were such that not even the king could reprimand a law that had to be carried out. Daniel was now in the lion's death, and he spends the night there.

How many of you have ever been around lions up close and personal? I know you have. You have? Cadence? Have you? At the zoo? You can go to the zoo and you can see a lion. As many of us have done, they are an impressive cat. Big cats to watch. And they, one time I remember in Chicago, we were at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. We walked into the lion house, and the lion was roaring at that time.

The lion house is one of these, like most of the zoos, big cavernous type of building. And that roar just rolled around in there, and it magnified it, and it was scary. It was frightening. I remember, like, a while. You know, the hair stands up in the back of your neck. I had the opportunity to see a lion in the wild without any bars outside of the zoo. Eleven years ago, we went to South Africa, which is where we first met, the Campos.

We were on a safari in Kruger Park, the big game park in South Africa. And we happened to run across a pride of lions who had just killed a giraffe in the road. And they were eating it just off the side of the road. And it was like a parking lot. There were tour buses and cars that had come to see, watch this. We had to kind of work our way, those that were driving us at the time. George and Kathy was another couple there. But finally, after a while, we got angled right up with our van to the side of the road.

There was a little ditch. And just beyond that is where three males were gnawing on this baby giraffe. And we were as close to those lions as probably from here to the folks on the back row here. That's how close we were. About a really convenient spring for lions. You just, you know, correct it. You roll the window down. And, I mean, there's no bars, there's no gates, there's no keepers.

They're right there. And we rolled the window down. Rolled the window down. I had my camera up. I was filming all of this. And after a while, I realized there's something between me and that lion. If he really, if I moved too quick or irritated him, boom! Just like that, he could come through the window.

And, you know, you put the window back up like that. They are an impressive creature. They're fascinating to watch in that situation. They are a very powerful animal. Daniel was in a room full of them all night. And after I saw the lion in the wild, I never have read this story in the same way since then. Because I asked myself, what was he thinking? What was he doing? Did he sleep?

Did he, you know, just keep his eyes locked on them all night long? Did he pray? Well, I'm sure he did all of those things. He was probably frightened. He was prayerful. I doubt that he slept. I wouldn't, would you, in a room full of lions? It was a night that probably the longest night of his life. Next morning, when they opened the door, whole king lived forever. Daniel was alive. And he went through a whole period here of the rest of the story, honoring God, both the king and the people that had set up the trap. They got thrown in there and they weren't protected. They were eaten in the story. And the king praised God, recognized something very important was going on here, that this was a special man. And Daniel, we're told in verse 28, continued to prosper during the time of the Persians. There's a spiritual lesson from this, many, but let me give you one. Because I think the only way Daniel got, he got into that then because of his integrity. He wouldn't compromise. And the only way he lived through the experience and through the night was by prayer and by his relationship with God. And God's certainly his protection. And the large lesson for you and I to learn is to realize that this relationship, this presence of God in our life, prayer for Daniel was not something that he just did to fill time, to get it in for the day and to be able to go on and say, well, I pray. Prayer was like breathing. It was like drinking water. It was like eating food and being nourished by it and enjoying it. Prayer was Daniel's strength and his might. He was lifted when his mind was on God. And God's signs and God's wonders, the aspect of all of life, was something that Daniel looked at and he saw God in every aspect of life. Going back to again to chapter one where he made a decision not to compromise himself even on the matter of food and drink from the King's table, Daniel looked up rather than at the around. He looked at God. And as he went through his life, he saw God's signs and his wonders in heaven and in earth. And that's what was the power that delivered Daniel from that particular episode. I believe that was a literal event. And this was not a gimmick. This was not a trick. Daniel saw God every day in his life and in the life of this world.

That's the benefit that obedience to God, of all the distinctive aspects of it, had brought Daniel to. He knew God was with him when he went to work, when he was at home, when he traveled. He grew in confidence with each experience, with each episode of life, with each challenge through each season of his life, through his young years, his young adult years. We all go through various seasons of life. We're young, we get married, we have children, we raise our children, we watch them go off, we come empty nesters, we move into the senior years, and you enjoy life, or you move into your golden years. Sometimes we say they're not so golden because of health or other challenges. And yet, through whatever happens, we are drawn to God. And whatever happens isn't always the way it's supposed to turn out, or the way we think it might turn out. You and I live this way of life, and we have to do so recognizing that we have to take everything that comes at us. Whatever consequences as a result of decisions we make, good and bad, whatever happens to us because of circumstances beyond our control. You see, Daniel, he wasn't in control of everything that happened. Chapter 2 where Nebuchadnezzar had this dream, and he was going to kill everybody because he couldn't get the answer to this dream. And Daniel said, oh boy, wait, hold on just a minute. Let's pray about this.

The action was beyond his control, but his one action was to go to God. And God gave him the insight. He went to the king, and he told him the dream, this big image that he had you remember. Daniel's reaction to something beyond his control was to go to God.

He couldn't control the actions that people had designed against him, as in the case of these men who made up this policy that you couldn't pray. He had no control over that. He did have control over how he reacted to it. And that was just to continue going to God. And so, through all the seasons of his life, he maintained a steady loyalty, faith, integrity. He had not compromised by the trappings of wealth and power that were around him. He hadn't blind himself with wealth and money. He didn't have offshore accounts in the Persian Gulf, which wasn't all that far away at that point. He didn't even know there was such a thing as oil in those days. He was sitting right on top of one of the biggest fields that you could ever have right there in Iraq.

He didn't know anything about that. But as he went through the seasons of his life, he kept growing it in grace and in knowledge of God. God was a very real presence. How else do you survive a close encounter with the den of lions? How else do you maneuver through the minefields of politics and intrigue of people who are out to get you, like he did? How else do you get through that? How else do you come to a point where you say, No, I will not reach out and take this. I'll leave that money, wealth, a plate of food, and I will choose this course because I know it's better and it will lead to a better result.

Except that you have a relationship with God and you grow in confidence in that. Daniel had time to think through every one of those. He came to a point where, when you go on from the story here with Daniel, and we'll have the time to go through all that, but after this episode, Daniel has some of the most powerful revelations given to him, and he continues to have these dreams, and an angel comes to see him and deliver a message from God, and he gets into the really ripe episode of his life, if you will. That would have to be for another sermon. But all of this was merely prelude for some of his greatest experiences that we find recorded in the remainder of the book.

And so, the years of obedience pay off, and that's what we have to understand. So, you see in the story of Daniel, a man that did the work of God as it was in his time, as a prophet, as a witness, and as a key individual in some of these events, at the very heart of the beast, Babylon, Persia, and this power that he resided in and was able to maneuver in. And through it all, he did the work of God, but he did the work of God because he had become a work. And you go back to Ephesians 2 and verse 10. Again, let's just close by going back there.

Ephesians chapter 2.

Verse 10. Paul writes that we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

God is going to do his work, and to the degree he uses us or any other instrument that he chooses, we must become first a work of righteousness through Christ in us.

And if we do that, then God can do whatever he plans to do and tends to do as far as his work is concerned today in our lives.

But let's learn this lesson through Daniel and some of the lessons of his life and examine ourselves accordingly.

Let's be a work as we prepare ourselves to be doing the work of God.