SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our family service this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We will begin with a passage from the book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: In this passage, the king, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has had a dream.
SPEAKER_00: And in this dream there was a large tree, the animals and birds were nourished by it.
SPEAKER_00: But then a watcher and a holy one came and said to cut down the tree.
SPEAKER_00: But a stump was left.
SPEAKER_00: And so Nebuchadnezzar has called Daniel to give him an interpretation.
SPEAKER_00: And Daniel gives this interpretation.
SPEAKER_00: This is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decision of the Most High, which reaches on my Lord the King.
SPEAKER_00: And they shall drive you out from man, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field, and they shall make you to taste grass as oxen, and they shall tinge you from the dew of the heavens, and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High has dominion in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he desires.
SPEAKER_00: And whereas they said to leave the stalk of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be steadfast for you.
SPEAKER_00: From this you shall know that the heavens have dominion.
SPEAKER_00: All this came on Nebuchadnezzar the king.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of twelve months he was walking on the palace of the kingdom of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: The king answered and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the strength of my security and for the glory of my honor?
SPEAKER_00: While the word was in the mouth of the king, there fell a voice from the heavens saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is said, The kingdom has passed away from you, and they shall drive you out from man, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field.
SPEAKER_00: They shall make you to taste grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High has dominion in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he desires.
SPEAKER_00: In that hour was the word consummated on Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven out from man, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was tinged with the dew of the heavens, until his hairs were grown as the eagles, and his nails as the birds.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Reading further from the Gospel of Luke, part of chapter five.
SPEAKER_00: And having stepped into one of the ships, which was Simon's, Jesus asked him to launch out a little from the land, and sitting down he taught the crowd from the ship.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.
SPEAKER_00: And Simon, answering, said to him, Master, having labored through the whole night, we have taken nothing.
SPEAKER_00: But at your saying I will let down the net.
SPEAKER_00: And when they had done this, they enclosed a multitude of many fish, and their net was breaking, and they beckoned to their partners in the other ship that they should come to take some with them, and they came and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.
SPEAKER_00: And Simon Peter, seeing this, fell before the knees of Jesus, saying, Go out from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: For astonishment encompassed him, and all who were with him at the catch of the fish which they had taken.
SPEAKER_00: And likewise also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were companions with Simon.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said to Simon, Do not fear, from henceforth you shall catch men.
SPEAKER_00: And bringing their ships to the land, they left all and followed him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Reading finally from the book Divine Providence, part of number three hundred twenty-one.
SPEAKER_00: It is owing to a law of divine providence that a person should think as though of himself, and act prudently as though of himself, but still should acknowledge that he does so from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It follows, therefore, that someone who does think and act prudently as though of himself, and at the same time acknowledges that he does so from the Lord, is human, but not someone who affirms in himself that everything he thinks and does originates from himself, and neither is someone human who, knowing that wisdom and prudence originate from God, still awaits influx.
SPEAKER_00: For the first becomes no different from an animal, and the latter no different from a statue.
SPEAKER_00: It is apparent that someone who awaits influx is no different from a statue, for inevitably he must stand or sit motionless, his hands hanging down, his eyes either closed or open without blinking, not thinking or breathing.
SPEAKER_00: How much life does he have then?
SPEAKER_00: It is also apparent that someone who believes that everything he thinks and does originates from himself is no different from an animal, for he thinks only with his natural mind, which the human being has in common with animals, and not with his rational spiritual mind, which is the truly human mind.
SPEAKER_00: For the rational spiritual mind acknowledges that God alone thinks of himself, and that people think from God.
SPEAKER_00: Here end our lessons.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We just read a story about King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Now, at the time of the story, Babylon was the most powerful city and the most powerful empire in the world that the people knew.
SPEAKER_00: And as king of it, as far as he was concerned, Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful person in the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: If he said to do something, it had to be done.
SPEAKER_00: And they had conquered the land of Judah at this time.
SPEAKER_00: And so people of the children of Israel, Shadrach and Meshach, and Abednego and Daniel had come to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: They were captive in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And King Nebuchadnezzar knew that Daniel could interpret dreams.
SPEAKER_00: So King Nebuchadnezzar has this dream.
SPEAKER_00: It's a strange dream, and he doesn't know what to make of it.
SPEAKER_00: He dreams there's this big tree and it grows really tall.
SPEAKER_00: Birds come under it and they're fed by it, and animals take shelter under it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful tree.
SPEAKER_00: But then a holy one and a watcher come and he hears them saying that he will be cast out and eat uh grass like an oxen eats grass, and his uh nails will grow long like a bird's talons, and his hair will grow long like feathers.
SPEAKER_00: They don't say who they're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And the tree will be chopped down, but a stump of it will remain.
SPEAKER_00: So, Nebuchadnezzar is confused, and he knows this means something.
SPEAKER_00: So he calls Daniel and says, Daniel, what does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: And Daniel tells him, Well, this is about you, this is gonna happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: You are gonna end up sort of uh not really knowing who you are or where you are, and you're gonna go out, you're gonna live outside, not in your beautiful palace, you're gonna be wet with the dew in the morning, your nails are gonna grow long, until you realize that everything you have is from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So, twelve months pass.
SPEAKER_00: And King Nebuchadnezzar is going out for a walk.
SPEAKER_00: He's looking around at Babylon, saying, Is not this great Babylon which I have built?
SPEAKER_00: Talking about, I am the best, I am the greatest.
SPEAKER_00: And instantly he hears this voice This is going to happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, he he goes out, and for uh seven times, it doesn't say how long these times are, but for some amount of time, he he doesn't live in a palace, he lives in the grass and he eats grass like an ox does, until he realizes even he, the most powerful king in the world, is nothing without the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Everything he has is a gift from the Lord, could be taken away in an instant like that.
SPEAKER_00: So this story teaches us something.
SPEAKER_00: Throughout the Lord's Word, when we hear about Babylon, it's also it's actually the same word as the Tower of Babel.
SPEAKER_00: It's an image of people trying to make themselves the greatest, even greater than God.
SPEAKER_00: They want to rule over everything, they want to be worshipped.
SPEAKER_00: And even if we're not like that, we do have something in us that wants to be the greatest at something.
SPEAKER_00: And this can start out as a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, in the dream, the tree was a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: It can start out good.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine you really like playing basketball, and you realize, hey, I'm pretty good at this.
SPEAKER_00: And you enjoy playing with your friends, you can pass to them, you uh work well as a team, you are um scoring scoring a lot of points, and you realize this is this feels really good to be really good at this sport, and I can help my teammates and I can really make something good happen.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you like cooking, and you realize, hey, I can I actually have a pretty good knack for this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to not just need to read a recipe, I can actually cook pretty well.
SPEAKER_00: I really like doing this, and people like the food I'm making for them.
SPEAKER_00: This is really good.
SPEAKER_00: All that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: But what can happen is it can turn into saying, I'm gonna be the greatest.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of thinking I'm gonna use my basketball skills to help my teammates, or I'm gonna use my cooking skills to feed the people I care about, it's I'm gonna be the best basketball player ever.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone's gonna know it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be the best cook ever, and everyone's gonna tell me how great my food is.
SPEAKER_00: And that can become what drives us so we can shift from being driven by wanting to do what's good for others to just being the greatest myself.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what it means to not have the Lord build the house.
SPEAKER_00: We're now focused on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We're not saying, what does the Lord want from me?
SPEAKER_00: We're like, what can I do to be the greatest?
SPEAKER_00: We start maybe being selfish, we get upset, and then something happens that is devastating.
SPEAKER_00: We we lose a game and we realize we're not as good as we thought we were.
SPEAKER_00: We get injured and we can't play anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Or someone doesn't like the food we cook for them.
SPEAKER_00: And if all we've cared about is being the greatest, that can be make us feel hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm not the greatest basketball player ever, and that's my only goal, then everything's hopeless once I realize that's not going to happen for me.
SPEAKER_00: But there is good news, because remember, in the dream, there's that stump that's left.
SPEAKER_00: There's still something good there, still something that can be worked with.
SPEAKER_00: Because we can take almost exactly the same actions, the hard work and practice, the trying to do as well as we can, but do it from the Lord, and that makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: The other story we read from the New Testament: there were some fishermen, and they'd been fishing all night, working really hard to fish, and they'd been casting their nets in and drawing them in, nothing all night long.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord comes into their boat and says, Go out into the deep and throw your nets in again.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly the same thing they've been doing all night long.
SPEAKER_00: But they say, Okay, we'll do it.
SPEAKER_00: And they go out and they do it, and they can't even bring in the fish they have.
SPEAKER_00: There's a world of difference between doing things on your own and doing things from the Lord, even if it seems like you're doing the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And in this particular case, what happened next tells us part of why this is the case.
SPEAKER_00: The fishermen come back and they don't say, Yes! Now we know we're gonna fish with the Lord, we're gonna bring the Lord with us every time we go fishing, and that's gonna make us the greatest fishermen of all time.
SPEAKER_00: No, they leave their nets behind.
SPEAKER_00: They say, the Lord says to them, Come with me and I'm gonna make you fishers of people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have you use your skills, but they're gonna be for bringing people to me.
SPEAKER_00: And if they'd built the house themselves, if they were all about, I'm gonna be the best fisherman, they wouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: But because they're now saying, I'm gonna do what the Lord says, wherever that takes me, they're willing to leave that behind and come to something better than they could have imagined.
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing can happen for us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we love playing basketball, and that's a wonderful thing.
SPEAKER_00: And we do it putting the Lord first, saying, What does the Lord care about here?
SPEAKER_00: Building the house with the Lord is acting from the Lord's love and watching the city from the Lord is using the Lord's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: And so we think, well, what's good here?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's good is I'm learning to love other people.
SPEAKER_00: What's learning is I'm good is I'm learning to be a good teammate.
SPEAKER_00: What's good is I'm learning to have grace when I lose.
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning to try hard.
SPEAKER_00: That's what matters.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we do get injured or we do get old, and we can't play as well as we used to be able to play, that's not the end of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because that was never the point in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: The point was seeing where the Lord's gonna take me next.
SPEAKER_00: And so maybe we take some of these skills we learned in basketball and we use them in some completely different arena in life.
SPEAKER_00: We become a teacher and we work with other teachers well and work with students well.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever it is, we don't know what that place is going to be.
SPEAKER_00: But when we let the Lord build the house, we don't have to worry about what that place is going to be.
SPEAKER_00: Our life is going to take all sorts of twists and turns, but we can trust that the Lord is leading us to a good place.
SPEAKER_00: And so the verse after this verse that says, Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it, meaning that it doesn't do any good, then it says, It is vain for you to rise up early, to stay up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be anxious.
SPEAKER_00: And when we know that whatever I do, the Lord's gonna use it for something good.
SPEAKER_00: We can let go of the anxiety about doing it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if I'm not the greatest player ever.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if I'm not the greatest cook ever.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's gonna use it for something good.
SPEAKER_00: For so he gives his beloved sleep.
SPEAKER_00: When we learn to work not from ourselves, but from the Lord, we can work hard and do so in a way that is still refreshing and rejuvenating and life giving.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the Lord wants for us to build that house, to guard that city with us.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.