Three on Daniel
Like many people I grew up with the stories of Daniel – the staple diet of Sunday Schools around the world. We still have my books – The Braggy King of Babylon as we read before… – books I loved as a kid – you can see how well loved they were! But I do wonder – why we keep promoting them as kid’s stories. Because they’re not at all! In any other context they would be ‘M15+’. They sound like front-page news stories – the big headline-attention-grabber stories. Imagine the news reader at the news desk – tonight in the news…
- Four Men caught in raging house Fire – Religious freaks condemned to die by ruthless warlord!
- After a year of destruction and border skirmishes with thousands killed, the nation faces disaster once again – witness the King’s harrowing vision of impending doom!
- A ruthless kingdom faces the writing on the wall – Babylon falls as party officials and celebrities party into the night!…
- And in sport tonight… little known Israel, struggling to make headway in the competition, takes on the might of the Babylonian Warriors… without their star backline Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego – tonight’s match should be a fiery killer… we’ll be right back!
Exactly how are these kids’ stories. If you’ve ever wondered what value they are to us more than 2500 years on… well… they are stories that tell us about God saving his people – stories that tell us about belonging to God in the hard stuff of life – in the midst of danger and trouble. And they aren’t stories invented to help kids understand but rather truth and history written down to help Christians understand.
Over three sermons we’re going to pick the pearls from Daniel – I’ll leave you to read the rest of the book – and I’m not even going to start at the beginning – but rather to pick up the stories we are so familiar with – assuming we have ever been to Sunday School or Scripture classes, or indeed picked up a Christian book for the kids or grand-kids – these stories will be familiar. But how often have we really considered what is going on – beyond the childlike wonder at the lion’s den or the raging furnace.
Daniel 3-5 – Courage under Fire
PDF – Daniel 3 – Courage under fire – 2012
MP3 – Daniel 3-5 Courage Under Fire 2012
Daniel 6 – The Lions
PDF – Daniel 6 – Lions – 2012
MP3 – coming – had a failure of recording equipment that day
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