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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Lessons From the Life of A King

Marshall McKenzie

A Conversation For the Ages

Father in heaven, we thank You so much that You desire to converse with us.

And so much so that You left all of heaven to live among us, to have conversations that were transformational, not just informational.

And Lord, I pray that this evening your spirit will guide our thoughts as we study your word.

Lord, as we open its pages and flip through on our phones, may you truly be glorified in all that we do.

We thank you so much for your many blessings.

We're gonna look at a familiar passage from the book of Daniel.

But we're gonna look at that passage a little bit differently than many times we have looked at it before.

When I mention Daniel chapter 2, most people think of what?

And by the way, I ask questions and I look for responses.

So when you look at Daniel chapter 2, most of the times when you've studied Daniel chapter 2, you tend to look at what?

Okay, prophecy, the image, which helps us understand the prophecy.

And we kind of jump to the prophecy, and we miss contextually what really gives force to the prophecy.

So we're not just going to look at Daniel 2, 3, but we're also going to look at Daniel 4.

And we're going to look at it contextually.

We're going to look at it systematically.

It's actually about God and His desire for the conversion of a king.

And many times we lose that fact when we look and we jump directly to the prophecy first.

And there's a lot of life lessons within those passages of Scripture that help us understand the urgency of the prophecies that come in their context.

Now we're going to look tonight at Daniel 2, and we're going to start by looking at a conversation for the ages.

Tomorrow, we're going to look at a convicting witness, and then we're going to move to the conversion of a king.

And There's a process that God is taking this king on for his own benefit.

For his salvific benefit that he may be saved.

You know the story so I'm not going to read through all of it.

There are certain passages we're going to highlight, but I want you to notice something in Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel chapter 5, by the way, contextually is about who?

It really goes back to who he is and what he's become.

And it's interesting that after the hand comes out and writes, he can't understand it, and so Daniel is ultimately brought into his midst.

And I want you to notice what Daniel has to say to Belshazzar.

Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Keep your gifts for yourself, or give your rewards to someone else.

Daniel knew this kingdom was coming to an end.

He says, however, I will read the inscription to the king and make the interpretation known to him.

O King, the Most High God, granted sovereignty, grandeur, glory and majesty to whom?" So this is interesting.

He doesn't go right to Belshazzar, but he's going to bring up the experience of who?

Notice he goes on, he says, "...because of the grandeur which He bestowed on him, all the peoples, nations, men of every language feared and trembled before Him.

Whomever He wished, He killed, and whomever He wished, He spared alive, and whomever He wished, He elevated, and whomever he wished, he humbled.

But when his heart was lifted up, his spirit became so proud that he behaved arrogantly, he was disposed from his royal throne, and his glory was taken away from him." Now Notice, he goes on, he says, he was also driven away from mankind, and his heart was made like that of the beasts, and his dwelling place was with the wild donkeys.

He was given grass to eat like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until he recognized that the Most High God is ruler over the realm of mankind.

And that He sets over it whomever He wishes.

And then it says, verse 22, You, His Son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, even though you..." What?

And it's interesting that Daniel points out the life of his grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, and says, listen, look at all the things that happened to him, and this was an example to you.

You knew all this, but you did not humble your heart.

Belshazzar knew what we're going to study this weekend.

It matters about what you do with what you know.

He knew everything that happened to Nebuchadnezzar, but he didn't do anything with that knowledge.

So in this series this weekend, believe it or not, we have a choice.

We're going to learn some of the things that Belshazzar had learned in relationship to how God specifically dealt with Nebuchadnezzar.

And we're going to be in the same place that Belshazzar is by the end of it.

What are you going to do with that information?

And So, to me, this helps me understand personally why Daniel 2, 3, and 4 are so important, not just prophetically, but just in how God is going to deal with a pagan king.

Now, I want to share something with you really quick.

And that is, sometimes we look at some of these stories in the Bible, and we think, well, God was dealing with a pagan king, so it's only pagans that He deals with this way.

You know, We kind of do that in our minds.

We kind of separate how he deals with a Christian versus how he deals with somebody that isn't a Christian, that doesn't even know the true God.

And yet, you're going to find time and time again, God, sure, He varies things a little bit, but there are many key principles that he uses in approaching Christian, Gentile, doesn't matter, he uses these principles.

And the first principle I want to talk to you about is conversation.

All of us have conversations on a regular basis.

Whether we're at the grocery store, whether we're visiting parents like we just did over the Fourth of July weekend, we had lots of conversations.

God loves to have conversations with people.

And God's Conversations, though, are transformative.

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Series

Lessons From the Life of A King

A Conversation For the Ages

Transcript

Parent Series

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