Building faithfully in broken kingdoms | Pastor Will Hawk | 12 April 2026

We start a new series in Daniel by tracing how God’s people end up in Babylon and what it means to live faithful lives inside a broken kingdom. We wrestle with God’s discipline, the pain of paying for sins we didn’t choose, and the hope that God never wastes sacrifice because he did not waste his Son. 

• why the church turns to the Book of Daniel now and what faithfulness can look like in a fractured culture 
• the storyline from creation to exile and the warning against wanting the best of God and the world 
• Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, and the pressure to treat God as one option among many 
• the core theology of Daniel: one God over all places, all times, and all power 
• why God oversees discipline needed for good ends 
• suffering reframed as God removing goodness rather than simply adding pain 
• a clear picture of hell as the absence of God’s good gifts 
• Manasseh, leadership sin, and why judgment can be appropriate 
• the reality of paying for the sins of parents and rulers we did not pick 
• God never wastes sacrifice and God never wastes faithfulness 
• how Daniel’s story echoes Jesus through Psalm 22 and the promise of hope 

If you want to learn more about the MidTree story or connect with us, go to our website HERE or text us at 812-MID-TREE.

Transcript

Scripture Reading And Opening

unknown 0:46

Hi.

Will Hawk 0:47

Hey, how's it going? I'm here as backup.

Sharon Moore 0:49

Oh, thank you. Yeah, you got it? Thank you. You need anything?

Will Hawk 0:52

Just let me know.

Sharon Moore 0:53

Would you like to do it?

Will Hawk 0:54

No, I'll do it in a minute. I'll do it. I'll go a lot longer too.

Sharon Moore 0:58

Okay. Um, please turn in your Bibles to Daniel chapter one, and we're gonna be reading verses three through five. And if you don't have a Bible, there's a pew Bible in the front of you. Looks like this. If you don't have a Bible, you can take this one, it'll be our gift to you. Then the king commanded Ashbazaz, Ashbanaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility. Youths without blemish, of good appearance, and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace, to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a daily portion of food that the king ate and the wine that he drank. They were at to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. This is the word of the Lord.

How Israel Reached Exile

Babylon And Its Gods

One God In A Thousand Gods

Why God Disciplines His People

God Never Wastes Faithfulness

Hope Through Jesus And Psalm 22

Responding In Worship And Prayer

Will Hawk 2:04

Amen. Thank you, Sharon. I'll take it from here if that's good with you. Yep. Good to go. Hey, uh, a couple of quick things. Uh, by the way, where's Tim? Tim, I saw you moving during prayer. Where'd you go? You were moved. I saw you. The reason Tim was moving during prayer is he realized we were starting a new book of the Bible, and I have a few of them tucked up here. So if you are the few and the proud and the bold and you didn't grab one and you want to go ahead and come up, I probably got about 20 of them up here. If you want to come, we'll have more of them next week. The the shipping company just got us as many as they were able to. We'll be starting in the book of Daniel, obviously, today. Thank you, Sharon, for reading. And as you guys grab this, can I just give sort of a general thank you? As uh as a church planting pastor, Easter is a very big, we're out on this side, and sorry, Yan. Amen. Hey, you know what? Hey, hey, hey, hey, by God's providence, I got one left. Yeah. How about that? All right. Um, I just wanted to tell you guys thank you. Thank you so much for showing up and serving in such a a big way on Easter. One of the neatest things that happened is we had someone, I can't remember who it was, uh, they went to Natalie and they said, Hey, I'm here as backup. If you need help in kids' ministry, I'm here. And Natalie was like, No, like we have not only all of our rooms filled, we have backups for our rooms filled. And then he was like, Okay, cool. So Josiah overheard the conversation, and Josiah was like, hang on, man, like there's gotta be a place. Walked all the way up and down both halls, couldn't find a place for the guy to serve, and so he came in and probably heard the sermon twice. So sorry about that. But like, what a huge praise God for you guys showing up early, parking in inconvenient spots, uh, loving on people, putting in lots of hours just from me to you. Thank you for caring so much about our king and our God and our savior to put in time and sweat and blood and tears. Thank you. It's a huge blessing. So uh as uh as I you guys grab your Bibles and I get you all of that info, why the book of Daniel? Well, a couple of reasons. One, we always try to go New Testament, Old Testament, New Testament, Old Testament. I try to pick different genres of scripture. So if we're looking at wisdom literature, I'll try to look at a narrative because we have so many folks. In fact, I was just talking with two families. This is their last Sunday. They're PCSing into different parts of the world. As much as we can, if we have folks for six months or three years, we want to give them a wide grasp of all of the scriptures. What has been really, really cool, weird of the Lord more than any other time in the eight years that uh Midri has existed. Like I picked Daniel months ago. But people kept coming up to me and being like, Will, can I tell you this weird dream I just had? And in my heart, I would just smile and I was like, they don't know. Like, they don't know all of these people talking about odd dreams and weird dreams and what did God mean by this dream. And of course, Daniel is an interpreter of dreams. And so if that is you, or if that begins to happen, just know there's zero surprise from me as we get ready to dive into that in the book of Daniel. I I think we're gonna see two things. We're gonna see how we can build faithfully in a broken kingdom. If you feel like the world's broken, if you feel like your job is broken, if you feel like your city's broken, if you feel like your government's broken, your family's broken, your extended family is broken, God's word has a lot of encouragement for you to be able to build faithfully. And so that's what we're gonna dive into. If you want the notes from today's uh sermon so that you can follow along, grab your phones, take a picture of the QR code, I'll leave that up for just a minute. So that's did Easter thank yous, did books, gave you guys notes. All right, now the fun part for me begins. I'm looking, we're pretty good. All right, sweet. If you missed it, you missed it. All right, how do we get to the book of Daniel? Most of you got to the book of Daniel one of two ways. You flipped a little too far to the right, then you came back, you went a little left and you had to keep going. Some of you went to the table of contents to get there. You are allowed to use your table of contents. If you used what we call the cheater tabs, does anybody know what a cheater tab is in the Bible? Okay, that means you are memorizing scriptures and uh having to flip to them quickly. That is allowed as well. But the way we get to Daniel is from two different ways this morning. Uh, we get to it through human history. I'm gonna give it to you in about 60 seconds, and then I want you to see the heart of God as we turn to Daniel chapter 1, verse 1. Get ready for a slide that is far too small for you to appreciate. All right. Here is the timeline that leads us into Daniel. I know that you can't read that whole thing. I was planning on zooming into it anyway. So in human history, we start with creation. Adam, Adam and Eve, God creates, and everything is beautiful. They, of course, sin, and because of that sin, they're kicked out of the garden. God turns to them and he makes them a promise, Genesis 3.15, that a savior is going to come. In addition to offering them the promise of a savior, he gives them Abraham, who is going to be the father of many nations, which means, don't miss this, God's promise to his children was always expected to expand to all people that God has created. And so he gives them this promise in Genesis chapter 12. Well, God's people don't do great, they rebel, they get put in slavery in Egypt. You read about that in the book of Exodus, and Moses leads them out of captivity and into the promised land, hands over the baton to a young, really impressive guy named Joshua, whose book we read not that long ago. And they walk into what we call the promised land because it was a land that God guaranteed they were going to have long before they got there. Well, they need people to lead them, so God establishes judges over them. He is king of kings and lord of lords, so they have a different structure than the rest of the nations. And in judges, you get all of like the weird, gritty, bloody, gross passages in Scripture. That's where I would turn if I got bored at church when I was a kid. Judges and Revelation, because there's something crazy always happening in both of those books. And Revelation had a dragon in it. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me, this book is amazing. So that's how Will operated when he was a kid. But the judges have all kinds of mess in them as well. And so God's people look around and they're like, man, look at how Assyria's doing. Look at how all these people are doing. They've got this impressive dude with a wide chest and a long sword and a loud voice. I want a king like them. I want to be like every other nation. Hard paws on human history. This is one of the most cataclysmic realities in human history and in scripture, where God's people basically said, We want the benefits of God and we want the benefits of the world at the same time. That's what happens when the kingdom all of a sudden begins to divide. We want a king, they get a good one in David, and then it begins to fall apart. Solomon takes over the kingdom, is divided. God sends prophets to warn his people. You're turning your back on me, you're running from me. You want good stuff from me and good stuff from the world. You don't trust me to be good enough. And after all of those warnings, they end up in exile, sent back away in a place called Babylon. And that is where we find Daniel. Now that's the human history of it. I can give you the heart of God even quicker, though. The heart of God is summarized in two verses in 2 Chronicles chapter 36. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently. What is going on? Hang on, time out. I can fix it. Okay. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers because he had compassion on his people and on their dwelling place. Even though they were rebelling, even though they wanted the quote, best of both worlds, we want to have a God who loves us, and I want to sleep around with whoever I want to sleep around with. I want a God who's going to provide, and I want to get drunk on the weekends. I want to be able to do everything I want to do, and then I want to run to God and get all the goodness that He offers, and I want to proverbially live across the fence. And God says, Man, I've warned you like so many times, and I haven't warned you angrily. I've warned you like a father. I've spoken to your fathers as their father, like a grandfather to you, over and over with compassion. I care about my people, I care about the place that I had promised for them, flowing with milk and honey. I want you to be blessed. Three-letter word, capital B, and it changes everything. But they kept mocking the messengers of God. It's funny whenever I read this, because in today's day and age, being a pastor tends to come with a little bit of respect. People want your wisdom. They want you to be the one who prays for them. They want you to speak into their marriage and into their business and into their decisions. They want you to go to the Lord for them. And I look at how many years and decades and centuries. If I had been born a messenger of God's people in a different age, it could be that people don't show up and they're not excited to get a Bible journal. Everything I say, they just yo, you're an idiot. Every time you preach, every time you pray, all you hear back is, I don't think so. Not even close. They kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy. That sounds harsh. The reason it sounds harsh is it is harsh. And if you are a kid or a parent, you've been here before, I don't know what it is about the fourth time you don't make your bed. I don't know what it is, but at that point there's no remedy. I don't know what it is about the sixth time you get in an argument with your brother over the PlayStation. I don't know why I was able to make it through five, but uh as soon as it gets to six, that's it. We're ripping it out of the wall, we're throwing it out the window because there's no remedy left. You just won't learn. Okay? You apply it however you want to apply it, but every one of us know sometimes you get to a point where you say, I've got to do something. When the Bible talks about God being long-suffering, I don't know if you know this or not, it's one of my favorite little wordisms from scripture. The word long suffering means long of nose. Have I taught y'all that before? No, maybe what it means is if you've ever looked at your kid and gone, that is medium. Okay? God is long like long suffering before the exhale. But when we get to this place in 2 Chronicles chapter 36, God looks at his children, he says, You've made your bed, it's time to sleep in it. What's done is done, and the consequences must come. And so, what are those consequences? It's exile to a place called Babylon. All right. Bonus points to the camp store for anyone who can tell me the king of Babylon at this time. Starts with an N. Nebuchadnezzar, one of the funnest like names in all of the Bible. Okay. If you didn't know that, that's completely okay. The church is not a place to show up to show you know everything. It's a place to show up because we know we don't know everything. Nebuchadnezzar is one of the most arrogant people in all of Scripture. Thomas, quick conversation. I think Nebuchadnezzar goes to heaven at the end of the story. What do you think? Okay. All right. Two folks who preach very frequently. You want to know what's crazy about Daniel? I think every main character makes it in the end. Every main character makes it in the end. Nebuchadnezzar is the most arrogant person you are going to find in the Bible up to this point. Okay? But there was a reason. This is the kingdom of Babylon. And it may not look like much to you. It may not look like much on the screen, but this kingdom was in its day the biggest city the world had ever seen. When in chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar walks out on his palace, this would be where he was. He's walking about his palace, he's looking across this entire city, beautiful city. The Euphrates River cuts right down the middle of it. All kinds of trade, all kinds of opportunity. He looks and he says, It's sort of like uh Tom Hanks when he finally gets a fire going. Uh what was the name of the movie? Castaway? Look at what I have created. And then God's like, and you're done, right? That's how it's gonna play out in the chapters ahead. Understand, from a human perspective, it made all the sense in the world for Nebuchadnezzar to think he was a big deal. He was the biggest deal the world had ever seen. But can I show you something really neat? What's really neat is this city of Babylon had a number of gates. You've got the Marduk gate, the Zababa gate, Enlil gate. I don't know what's so great about Enlil, but they put in a second one over there. You've got the Psalmist Gate, and you've got the Adad gate. Every one of those is a doorway to a god from different cultures. In other words, the city was surrounded as a pantheon of gods from all different types of people groups. Enlil was a Sumerian lord of the wind, Zababa was a war god, Urus was a war god, Samas was an Akkadian sun god. Why am I giving you all of this? Well, I I want you specifically to understand this particular god. This was Marduk. He was the supreme god of Babylon. If memory serves, I believe his gate faced the east as the sun rose, which for them in that day was a very big deal. A pantheon of gods. His temple, by the way, looked about like this. It was absolutely massive. In the back, if you're looking at the temple, this is called a ziggurat or a ziggurat, depending on what your teacher said in the seventh grade. Um, if you look at the temple back right, that high city wall would have been the palace that Nebuchadnezzar walked around when he looked out on his city and claimed how great he was. Of all of the incredible feats that Daniel and his friends are known for, and they're known for a number, interpreting dreams and being incredibly wise, the faith that led them into the fiery furnace and fearless into a pit of lions, of all of their great feats, their faith in a single God over all regions and lands and time, doing as his as he desires, may be the greatest theological gift that the book of Daniel gives us. It would have been so easy for them in this day and age to say, I guess our God, our regional God, has departed from us. I guess we'll pick one now. But even though they were displaced from their family, from their friends, from their food, from their culture, from their music, from their language, from everything they knew. Just imagine for a moment being picked up and dropped in the middle of China and being like, go. You're like, I don't know where anything is, I don't know what to eat, is this poisonous? Is it not? I can't talk with anybody. Here's the bathroom, which is the first thing you learn in every foreign language if you're actually going to a foreign land. Like they're just dropped there. And one of the greatest gifts theologically they give to us is they stand there and they say, Well, I guess God's here too. He is the same God yesterday, today, and forever. The theology of Daniel and his friends was simply this there is one God, one. That is it. There, we may be in a city with a thousand lowercase G gods, but there is one. And he is God over all creation. That means he is omnipresent. He is God in all places and all times. He has all knowledge. That's what we call omniscience, which means he knows my past, my present, my future, my thoughts, my motivations, and everyone else's as well. And he has all power. He gets to choose what he does. He has all autonomy and rule and decision-making capacity. And when you add these three things together, let me now bring you into the theology of the book of Daniel. These people can be in the worst situation you can imagine, and they can stand there and they can say, I must be here for a reason. If God truly is the capital G God over all places and all times, past, present, future, knowing my thoughts and motivations, limitless autonomy and power, then wherever you are, you are at his pleasure. You are by his will. All the typical little rivalries that you would see in the lowercase G gods, like siblings arguing over who's gonna get what seat at the table, God stands in stark contrast to. And to that we find the beginning of the book of Daniel. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, this is the way the Bible gives you a date because this is how they dated their calendar. They didn't pick a year and then a month and a day. They said, Who is in charge at this point and how long has he been there? Why? Because the thing that affected your life most was not whether it was spring or summer or daylight savings time. It was who's in charge. Because whatever they think, whatever they believe, whatever they do dramatically affects me. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, by the way, this would be 600 years before the first Christmas. 600 years before Jesus shows up. If you just need a timeline, six centuries and Jesus will appear. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord, eyes on the screen if you don't mind. Here you go. Here's my people. Here are my kids. It doesn't say that Nebuchadnezzar had great military prowess. It doesn't say that his siege was so impressive. What it says is the God over all things in all times in all places with all power and all knowledge looked at all of his kids and said, Here you go, Nebuchadnezzar. My people want to live as though I'm one God among many. Show them what that looks like. And he invites Nebuchadnezzar to come and take his people to get what they acted like they always wanted. That's exactly what happens. You've made your bed, it's time to sleep in it. What's done is done. And Nebuchadnezzar took God's people from God's place with God's stuff, and he put it in his city, the museum of the gods. We read about this in 2 Kings with a little more detail. In his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years. This would be the king over God's people. Then he turned and rebelled against him, and the Lord sent against this would be the king of uh God's people, Jehoiakim. He sent against him bands of the Chaldeans. But it wasn't enough for his people to say, God, you're enough. So he had to send the Syrians, then the Moabites, then the Ammonites. This is a shorter version of the 10 plagues that you read in Egypt. Hey, is your heart soft yet, Pharaoh? Nah. Send the frogs. Okay, is your heart soft yet? Nah better send some darkness. How about some hail? How about some locusts? And every one of these names that you see is God looking at his kid and giving them a spanking because he loves them. Not because he wants to hurt them, but because he wants to see their hearts turn. He wants to see them realize what the world offers is never sufficient. Is that enough, son? Is that enough, son? And over and over again, he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord, which he'd already told them as he had spoken by his servants, the prophets. In the event that it wasn't clear, this is why I covered this up. Surely, without a doubt, all of these things came upon Judah at the command of the Lord. This was not the Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, or Ammonites just saying, Let's go grab a little bit of land. It looks so pretty over there. This is God working in the heart and the mind and the inclination of evil actors to do his own good divine will. Now, when I read this, let me tell you what many people may be thinking. And it doesn't matter if you've come to church for four minutes or for 40 years, why would God be opposed to his people in such a harsh way? Why? If he truly is all good, all powerful, can't he just show them enough of his goodness so that they turn their back on the world? Follow-up question. Has that ever worked for you? Okay? There is something about the human heart and the sin that is tucked into us where we constantly believe the same lie that the enemy used in the garden when he basically said, Does God really want your best? Are you sure that what is good for God is good for you? Why would God be opposed to his people in such a harsh way? Now, I fully expect when when I get to the end of this in a bit here to end in a very encouraging note. But I need you to go back to being a child for a moment. I need you to go back to being a child, playing with the proverbial baseball in the backyard that your dad told you not to play with in the area he told you not to play in when the ball goes through the glass window into their bedroom. I did this literally. This is not a parable for Will. I can still see the metal swing set with the metal slide that burned the back of your thighs every time you used it, anytime after April. I can see the window. I remember what happened when I threw the ball, and long before it happened, like Curry just turning and knowing, I threw the ball and I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that was it. That was it. I'd been warned a million times before. So I need you to go there. I need you to be the child for a moment because when you do, here's what you will realize in God's caring discipline over his children. God, this is what I tried to make very clear to you, oversaw their discipline. He made sure it was this far and no farther. I want it to just be the Chaldeans. Guys, does it really have to be the Ammonites too? Do I really need to do that? He tried to use as little pressure as possible to bring about the benefit that was required, and they were lovingly warned. God sent his very best to them with words that he had filled them with and inspired to turn these hard hearts that believed we can have the best of God and the best of this world, and that will be the best life. Verse 2, the Lord sent verse 3 at the command of the Lord. God himself oversaw their discipline. And according to verse 2, they were lovingly warned. The other thing I would have you realize is they experienced the removal of God's goodness. In our lives, we talk like this. How are you doing? Man, some bad stuff has happened. I'm going through it right now. In this case, what you're actually seeing is not God bringing bad stuff, it's God removing good stuff. He had given them protection. Then he just slid it back a bit. He had given them provision. Then he just slid it back a bit. Sort of like a parent who gets tired at Pop Tarts that are only half eaten, or a soda that is only half drank. And you say, All right, time for water. It's not like water's bad for them. You're just taking away what could be an even greater blessing until they begin to learn. God's children did not experience just the presence of difficulty, but the absence of goodness. By the way, if you want to understand what hell is like, this is the way to best understand it biblically. It's not God saying, let's stoke the fires hotter, as though it was the fiery furnace. It's God saying, every command I give them, which is for their good, they keep thinking they know better than I do. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna remove, I'm gonna give them the very thing that they want. They want a life devoid of my influence. Hell is not an increase of darkness so that you can taste it, or flames that are hotter so you can feel it. It's what happens when a good creator, look at the windows behind me in front of you, removes all of the green trees. It's what happens when there are no butterflies and birds singing. It's what happens when the light that he provided is no longer provided. It's what happens when music goes away and laughter goes away and good tasting food goes away and friendship goes away and love goes away. Hell is not the presence of a million difficult things, it's the absence of one good one. The one good one. What they experienced was God removing goodness, not bringing badness. And finally, their punishment was justified. It made sense. Now, listen, I've been heavy and I am now at the heaviest part of the sermon. So if you're like, dang, Will, it was Easter last week, like, chill out of it, man. We still got plastic eggs and chocolate and wrappers. All right, give me one more second and then we'll shoot up. Okay? Everybody good with this? But it's gonna get bad first. Their punishment made all the sense in the world. Manasseh was the king over them. He was the last king and the worst king of God's people. He was the nail in the coffin. He was the one that the people of God followed. And I just want you to see this. Whatever I'm about to read, the Bible's saying a whole lot more came before this. All right? Whatever I'm about to read, the Bible's saying there's a whole lot that came after this. But in the dead center of God's people's rebellion was a king named Manasseh who shed blood. But he didn't just shed blood, he shed innocent blood. And the Bible could have just said that, but it doesn't. It says that he shed much innocent blood, and that would have been enough, but it wasn't enough for the Bible. He shed very much innocent blood. This is the Bible getting all the adjectives in because the teacher said, you need four if you want to pass in great. Except God intended for you to read every one of these things. And as though you needed a picture, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other. Now, when I tell you that, don't forget there was more that came before it, and there was also some beside the sin that he made you descend. As goes the king, so went the country. As goes the father, so goes the family. As goes the leader, so go the followers. He made Judah to sin so that they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. His dad, Hezekiah, had stepped in and completely revolutionized the nation, turned them back to their God, caused them to fall in love with his word. But in this one move, he builds up idolatry, he brings back fortune tellers instead of people praying to God. He puts altars to gods in God's own temple, and he takes his own kid and sets them on fire, trying to get the good will of the gods. And he was probably not the only one. You see, God became to Manasseh, and God became to his people one God among many. And he said, if this is really what you want, let me show you what it actually looks like. You see, if God drove out the nations for such sins, how's he going to respond when his own children commit them? It's one thing if you have spend the night company and they like track mud all in the house and they eat a bunch of food and they don't say thank you. It's one thing if you have somebody visit that like come over and hang out and they're doing all kinds of stuff. But if it's the child that you're responsible for, the expectations are much higher. So if God is going to punish the sins of people who do not know him well, how's he gonna respond when his own children commit them? And children will pay. Now, I'm about to start bringing this up. I feel like by your eyeballs and faces, you need this right now, okay? Let me bring you up in what I think is a very pastoral way, and I want you to begin pondering this before we go into response and prayer. Some of us may be paying for the sins of the fathers, mothers, and rulers we did not pick. Listen to what I'm telling you. Today, you may be paying for the sins of your dad, and you had nothing to do with the decisions he made. The sins of your mom, and you were not there to offer wisdom, you may not have even been born yet when those decisions were made. Rulers, you didn't pick. Get as political with this as you want because Daniel is a political passage of Scripture. It will affect children. The king commanded Ashbonaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel. I've conquered this people. It wasn't even tough. It's almost like they were handed to me. So here's what we're gonna do, because I like to have a city that has the best of all cultures. Verse 4, I want you to go find youths without blemish. Find the ones that have a good appearance, skillful in wisdom, the ones who are knowledgeable and understanding, competent. I want you to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans. Why the Chaldeans? They were like the sorcerers and the wise men. He's like, the really smart guys, teach them their stuff. The king assigned to them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, the wine that he drank, and they were going to be educated for three years. Do you know what Daniel did to deserve this? Anyone want to give me a word? Nothing. What about Shadrach? Nope. Meshach, nope. Abendigo, nope. They're dealing with the sins of their fathers, they're dealing with the sins of their mothers, and they're dealing with the sins of their rulers, and they didn't pick any of them. Now, if you feel like there are parts of your life of which that is true, might I encourage you? You may be paying for the sins of your father, mother, or ruler that you didn't pick, but God never wastes your sacrifice and faithfulness. This is the second great lesson. Not only that God is the one God, capital G over all things, but that God refuses to waste the faithfulness and the sacrifice that you give to Him. By the way, the Bible doesn't say this, but when we look at the text here, because they are considered youth and because they were educated for three years, my guess is Daniel was somewhere between the age of 13 and 20. We're talking about a youth kid, all right? We're talking about the nation of God's people being led by a 14-year-old. So if you're in this room and you're like, I feel too young, why am I in here right now? Here's why. Because even when your mom and your dad fall short, God has high expectations for you. And that doesn't change whether you're 14 or 40 or 84. God never wastes our sacrifices. By the way, if you want to see something really cool, check this out because what you're gonna see is sacrifice. He looks at Daniel and he says, I want you to bring some, not all, a representative. This is what a sacrifice was. A sacrifice was always without blemish. And here the king goes fattening them up. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abendigo, they are sacrifices. And God is never going to waste that. Secondly, God never wastes our faithfulness. Let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good. Are you suffering today? I'm sorry. What I would really be sorry for is if you're suffering and you doubt that God is faithful and good, that would be the real lamentable reality. Are you dealing with the sins of your dad? You're dealing with the sins of your mom? You're dealing with the sins of someone who made a decision in your job that completely affects you and you have no control over it. I'm sorry. But I would be more sorry if you felt like God was out of control in that. If you felt like you had just randomly appeared there instead of God knowing all things in all times with all power, entrust your soul to a faithful creator because some of us might be paying for the sins. But just like Jesus, Daniel and his friends are able to resist temptation. Listen to this list I'm about to give you. All of this is true and they resist temptation. All of this is true and they display wisdom. All of this is true, and they save the lives of the people around them. All of that is true, and they're willing to die for their faith. All of that is true, and every one of them walk out of a tomb just fine. Daniel walks out, not a scratch from a lion. Shadrach, Meshach, and Aminigo walk out of a fiery furnace, and the Bible says they don't even smell like smoke. And Jesus walks out of a tomb intended for death, but offering life. God never wastes our faithfulness because he didn't waste his sons. You want hope and you want encouragement? The question isn't why would God be opposed to his people in such a harsh way? The question is, why is he so opposed to his son in such a harsh way? That's the big question. Why? Well, the words that we remember Jesus uttering on the cross are these. Remember that when I read it to you. My God, why have you forsaken me? Why is difficulty so difficult? I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It's melted within my breast. Might Shadrach, Meshach, and Abinaga felt that way? What would they have been praying as the soldiers made the fire hotter and hotter? My God, my heart is like wax. It's melting within my breast. Yet I will believe that you are good and faithful. My strength is dried up. My tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. Now we're moving to someone else who walked out of a tomb. They have pierced my hands and my feet. It would take a thousand years to see that play out. I can count all my bones. They stare, they gloat over me, dividing my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Do you want to know what Daniel might have been praying the night before he went into the lion's den? Something that for him was 400 years old. Save me from the mouth of the lion. Unbelievable. One psalm, three groups who all walk out of a tomb. Why? Because God makes no mistakes. Russell Moore, thinking about Christ on the cross, looking at his body being beaten so bad, and looking in the eyes of his mother who is looking on, says this. The lack of broken bones there at the cross was assigned to Jesus because there was a promise, not one bone would be broken. Along with the face there of his mother, that whatever happened, listen to me for your own life. Whatever happened could not go any further than God's purposes. And that God's purposes are good. How can we get to such an incredible place just doing an overview of the book of Daniel? Figuring out how he just came to this book other than looking in the table of contents? Because God is good and he's faithful and he's always good and he's always faithful. And it has been his great desire to show you this that his purposes are good, even in the brokenness you find yourself in. You see, God himself didn't just oversee their discipline, he oversaw his own sons. And we are lovingly warned. Don't despise the Lord's instruction, my son. Don't loathe this discipline. The Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights. And in Christ, we experience not the removal of God's goodness, but the return of it. We look at our lives and we can all of a sudden say, Hey, we were once foolish and disobedience, led astray. We were slaves to various passions and pleasures. But when the goodness and loving kindness of our Savior showed up on the scene, and for some of you it showed up on the scene at a high school retreat, and for some of you it showed up on the scene in a college dorm, and for some of you, it showed up on the scene in a marriage counseling office as tears were hitting the floor. And for some of you, it may be appearing right now. That all of the brokenness that you have walked through has been intentional to walk you not through something but to something, to his own son. And our punishment is justified. The word means appropriate. It was appropriate for Manasseh to get punished the way he did. It was appropriate for God's people to be led astray. But the word justified also talks about our salvation. That if we ask for the forgiveness of our sins, Christ says, I paid for it anyway, receive it, you become appropriate. You become justified. God looks at you and sees his son and says, Now, my child, you are made right and you are appropriate. Jesus steps in, and just as sin makes judgment appropriate, Christ makes sinners appropriate. And all of a sudden, everything changes. Keep playing, you got 45 seconds left. I cut this from my notes, but I just can't. Daniel doesn't talk about it, and 2 Kings doesn't talk about it. But in that same group of people that was pulled away was a man whose name was Ezekiel. You don't see it in the story. But all of a sudden, Ezekiel becomes the one who begins to share the message of hope with God's broken people. And what's beautiful about it, he's the one who says, Dry bones, can you live? And then God's like, I'm gonna give him life, I'm gonna give them breath, I'm gonna restore to them the joy of knowing me. None of them even knew that the messenger of hope was right in their midst. And my hope is for you today, that would be the case. That you would realize that there is a message of hope in every mess you find yourselves in, and it is worth you hearing. Because it doesn't end with save me from the mouth of the lion, it ends like this. I'm gonna tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I'm gonna praise you, God, one God, capital G, God, over everything else. Because you didn't despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted. When you saw me in my affliction, you didn't turn your back on me, you turned toward me and ran toward me. You've not hidden your face from me, you have heard me when I cried to you. God, all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the Nations will worship before you because kingship belongs to the Lord and He rules over the nations. We're going to respond to God's word, and there are a number of ways that we do it. I'm going to pray over you in a minute. You're going to stand and you're going to sing. The ushers are going to pass a basket. If you want to give God an offering out of thanks, there are going to be a number of us praying on the porch, and you don't have to come to the porch to pray. Here's all I care about. Can you know and believe that in all of the difficulty you find yourselves in, it is intentional and it is loving by a faithful God who wants to use it to lead you into a land of hope and promise. I give you a few questions to think about, but I'd like to pray for y'all this morning as we get ready. So if you would go ahead and stand, let me say a prayer over you, and then we will sing and pass the offering and pray together. Father, it is my great desire that we would be a people who recognize when we are chasing after lowercase G gods, that we would be a people who can have enough wisdom that you give us that the difficulty in our lives, especially the difficulty we didn't even bring, that we not throw our hands up and just yell, unjust, unfair, but we look at a cross and say, that's truly what is unjust and unfair. And yet Christ went to it because he loves me. He stepped to it because he desired me. When I turned my back on him, he refused to turn his back on me, and he came and put his hand on my shoulder and drew me in. Father, would you draw us in to you today? May we be a people who have a lot to sing about, a lot to praise you for. Would you fill our mind with your thoughts and our heart with your spirit that we can respond appropriately? In Jesus' name. Amen. Take a look, think through the questions, and Bennett will lead us. I see she's ready.