February 10, 2011

Read Daniel 2:24-43

Daniel stands before the king and tells him the dream that he had. God had revealed the dream to Daniel together with its interpretation. Daniel shares that interpretation with the king.  In all the Daniel commentaries you can read of the history of the region as each successive kingdom came in fulfilment of the dream.  You can read of the Medo-Persian empire (that began with Cyrus the Great), the Greco-Macedonian empire and the Roman empire.  What matters is not that the empires came and went. What really matters is that God revealed the truth to his servant.

If we are to make a stand for our God, if we are to impact the world we must be ready and willing to see the revelation of God (ie His Word, the Bible) as infallible truth. Far too many people are explaining away the bits of the bible that they don’t like or find hard to believe.  If we were to group together the various schools of thought negating the bible we’d find that there is no longer any eternal punishment in ’hell’.  The virgin birth never really happened. Miracles all had common sense explanations.  The bible is not inspired by God but simply the  reflections of different people in different stages of life and history. Creation never really occurred. It’s just a myth or story that need not be believed. And finally, there is no literal second coming of Jesus to gather the elect from the four corners of the world.  The moment we start picking and choosing which bits of God’s revelation we believe or don’t believe we have negated the gospel and made a mockery of our God. We put ourselves above God and ultimately we are sitting in judgement of Him calling him a liar at those points where we choose not to believe Him.  Are you audacious enough to call God a liar? Me neither!

Jesus summed up what our attitude should be to the Word of God. In John 17:17 during his High Priestly Prayer he stated ‘Your Word is Truth’.  The Bible is God’s word given to us. His Word is truth. We do well when we sit under its authority and humbly apply it to our own lives rather than sit in judgement of it, picking the bits we do and don’t want to believe.

Prayer:

þ Sadly there are many churches in our world that don’t believe the bible or accept it as the Truth from God. Pray that these churches will be granted repentance quickly. Pray that the Word will be faithfully preached in your congregation week by week, with the power and unction of the Holy Spirit.

þ Pray for the work in the bible colleges in Myanmar. The Reformed College and Grace College need continuing funds to run properly. They need materials for the students, text books and the like. Pray that God will provide. Pray that we see the students being fruitful in their weekend work in local and new churches. Ask God to grant repentance and faith to many in this land.

þ Pray for the work of Mustard Seed Orphanage. Pray that we’ll see God providing all they need to care for their orphans, widows and disabled members. Pray that many will come to Christ for salvation.