Who Are You | Worship His Majesty - Daniel 5 | October 13

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Good morning. Daniel 5, the writing on the wall.

Many years later, Belshazzar gave a great feast for a thousand of his nobles,

and he drank wine with them.

While Belshazzar was drinking the wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold

and the silver cups that his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

He wanted to drink from them with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines.

So they bought these gold cups, taken from the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem,

and the king and his nobles, his wives, and his concubines drank from them.

While they drank from them, they praised their idols, made of gold,

silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

Suddenly, they saw the fingers of a human hand writing on the plaster wall of

the king's palace, near the Lamser.

The king himself saw the hand as it wrote, and his face turned pale with fright,

his knees knotted together in fear, and his legs gave way beneath him.

The king shouted for the enchanters, astrologers, and fortune-tellers to be brought before him.

He said to these wise men of Babylon, whoever can read this writing and tell

me what it means will be dressed in purple robes of royal honor,

will have a gold chain placed around his neck.

He will become the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

But when all the king's wise men had come in, none of them could read the writing

or tell him what it meant.

So the king were even more alarmed, and his face turned pale.

His nobles too were Shkagan.

But when the queen mother heard what was happening, she hurried to the banquet hall.

She sensed Belshazzar, Long live the, don't be so pale and frightened.

There is a man in your kingdom who has within him the spirit of the holy gods.

During Nebuchadnezzar's reign, this man was found to have insight,

understanding, and wisdom like that of the gods.

Your predecessor, the king, your predecessor, King Nebuchadnezzar,

made him chief over all the magicians, enchanters, astrologers,

and fortune tellers of Babylon.

This man, Daniel, whom the king named Belshazzar, has exceptional ability and

is filled with divine knowledge and understanding.

He can interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve difficult problems.

Call for Daniel, and he will tell you what the writing means.

So Daniel was brought in before the king. The king asked him,

Are you, Daniel, one of the exiles brought from Judah by my predecessor, King Nebuchadnezzar?

I have heard that you have the spirit of the gods within you and that you are

filled with insight, understanding, and wisdom.

My wise men and enchanters have tried to read the words on the wall and tell

me their meaning, but they cannot do it.

I am told that you can give interpretations and solve difficult problems.

If you can read these words and tell me their meaning, you will be clothed in

purple robes of royal honor and you will have a gold chain placed around your neck.

You will become the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

Daniel answered the king, keep your gifts or give them to someone else.

But I will tell you what the writing means. your

majesty the most high god gave sovereignty

majesty glory and honor to your predecessor nebuchadnezzar he gave him so great

that people of all races and nations and languages trembled before him in fear

he killed those he wanted to kill and spared those he wanted to spare.

He honored those he wanted to honor and disgraced those he wanted to disgrace.

But when his heart and mind were puffed up with arrogance, he was brought down

from his royal throne and stripped of his glory.

He was driven from human society.

He was given the mind of a wild animal and he lived among the wild donkeys.

He ate the grass like a cow, and he was drenched with the dew of heaven,

until he learned that the Most High God rules over the kingdoms of the world

and appoints anyone he desires to rule over them.

You are his successor, O Belshazzar, and you knew all this, yet you have not

humbled yourself, for you have proudly defied the Lord of heaven and have had

these cups from his temple brought before you.

You and your nobles and your wives and concubines have been drinking wine from

them while praising gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood and stone.

Gods that neither see nor hear nor know anything at all.

But you have not honoured the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny.

So God has sent this hand to write this message.

This is the message that was written. Many, many, tekel and parsin.

This is what these words mean.

Many means numbered. God has numbered the days of your reign and has brought it to an end.

Tekel means weighed. You have been weighed on the balances and have not measured up.

Parsin means divided. Your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

Then, at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was dressed in purple robes.

A gold chain was hung around his neck, and he was proclaimed the highest ruler in the kingdom.

That very night, Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, was killed,

and Darius the Medi took over the kingdom at the age of 62.

Come in. Thank you, Sally.

It's interesting as she was reading, there's that part where Daniel's like,

keep your riches. And then at the end, he still gets closed in the riches, right?

Let's pray, God, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for truth, that you are absolute truth and that we can trust you absolutely.

We just pray that you would speak to us today through your word,

that we would have ears that are listening, Lord, eyes that see you,

that we have a heart that understands and that a heart that doesn't just,

see what we want to see and what we already are prone to believing,

but a heart that is receptive to all the ways that you want to challenge us

and change us to be more like you, to reflect your glory into this world and

to be your hands, your feet, your mouth,

and to do all the good that you have already apportioned for us in advance to do, Lord.

I just pray that we would have hearts to walk fully into that,

not holding on to anything that we desire, but clinging fully onto desires of your heart, God.

Just pray that you would make our desires, your desires.

And we just pray that we would see, we would see heaven come to earth,

Lord, that we would see your glory in our lives and those around us,

as you are just changing this world for you and for your glory.

And so we work for that. We wait for that. We long for that.

And we pray, Lord, amen. Jesus come. Amen.

So look, we've been working our way through the book of Daniel.

We've been trudging through this life in exile thing.

And I don't know if this is true for all of you, but sometimes it's hit a little

too close to home, but I guess that's kind of the point.

I woke up the night before last, I was thinking about this the other day and

Kanan likes to come into our room pretty much every night.

And what I literally said to him was something to the effect of,

what are you doing in my room coming into my bed?

So I just felt like, oh no, I'm never going to be there.

So it's too close to home at times. So why don't we take a step back?

Why don't we fast forward about 30 to 50 years and we look to what happens on

the other side as the Israelites are finally allowed to return to Jerusalem

and rebuild? This is Ezra chapter 3.

Ezra 3 · chapter mention

If you'd like to follow along, if you have your Bibles, if you don't have a

physical Bible, there are some at the end of each row.

And there's this familiarity that comes through flipping through the pages together.

And I know that one thing that we lose with technology is the ability to remember

where things are in the Bible, because we're not used to finding those books.

But this is Ezra chapter three.

Just a quick, quick backstory to get us how we got to this point is,

so Nebuchadnezzar conquers the kingdom of Judah, and that's when he takes Daniel

and the boys to exile into Babylon.

And so then another 20 years or so, it passes from that moment till Jerusalem is actually destroyed.

Fully destroyed. The temple is completely reduced to rubble.

So there's about 20 years after Daniel's pulled into the exile that Jerusalem

is destroyed. The temple is in utter ruin.

And then 50 more years pass.

50 more years pass from that point when during this time we see Nebuchadnezzar's death.

We see several other people. It's not recorded in Daniel, but historically speaking,

several other people try and take control.

They only last maybe a few years, if that, probably all less than a few years.

And then his grandson, Belshazzar, who we are introduced to as sort of his son

in this, but it's the second in command. His.

His son ruling in the terms of kingdom, in the terms of rules.

So, his grandson, Belshazzar, ends up in power for a number of years before

the Medes and the Persians, we just heard, finally take control.

And then after these 70 years, that's when Ezra and Nehemiah are granted that

special favor to return and to rebuild.

And so, there's these 70 years. The Medes and the Persians, by the way,

are the silver torso, the silver chess piece that show up in Nebuchadnezzar's

dream all the way back in chapter two. So that's the Medes and the Persian.

And then the book of Ezra and Nehemiah are during this time period of rebuilding.

And Ezra is a bit like Daniel in the sense that the book isn't really about

the man to which the book is named after.

So like Ezra doesn't even show up in his own account until halfway through the

book, but he's there. He's there the whole time and he's recording history.

Ezra is basically recording the history of the return from exile.

And this is what he writes in chapter three.

I'm going to skip a little bit, but I'll try and let you know if you're following along.

In early autumn, when the Israelites had settled in their towns,

all the people assembled in Jerusalem with a unified purpose.

And the verse eight says that the construction of the temple of God began in

mid spring during the second year after they arrived in Jerusalem.

And then down to verse 10, when the builders completed the foundation of the

Lord's temple, the priests put on their robes and took their places to blow their trumpets.

And the Levites, descendants of Asaph, clashed their symbols to praise the Lord,

just as King David had prescribed.

With praise and thanks, they sang this song to the Lord. He is good.

His faithful love for Israel endures forever.

Then all the people gave a great shout, praising the Lord because the foundation

of the Lord's temple had been laid.

But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first

temple wept aloud when they saw the new temple's foundation.

The others, however, were shouting for joy and the joyful shouting and the weeping

mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far in the distance.

So the temple is destroyed. It lay in utter ruin. There's nothing left there

but rubble as they began to build this foundation.

It's not a site too dissimilar from what we see around us right now, right?

Mountains of debris as people try and clean up, put back together pieces of

their past and prepare for rebuilding.

It's not too dissimilar. It's a site full of these mixed emotions.

There is a mourning for a past that can't be returned to.

By the same time, there is the way forward to an uncertain future, right?

It is sort of an uncertain mix of emotions.

So, we can ask the question, why were these older men weeping?

Keep in mind that, as I mentioned, about 50 years has passed before from the

destruction of the temple to this time period.

So, we're talking about people who are younger, teenagers who are now in their

50s, 60s, 70s, who are rebuilding alongside of Ezra and Nehemiah.

And they had seen what the temple looked like. So, some people might say that

they were weeping because they finally have a second temple.

They were rebuilding at last. There would be a temple again that they're weeping in this gratitude,

this gratitude to see the second temple, expressing these deep emotions alongside

all those who are rejoicing, who are shouting and crying out for joy,

that they're weeping in this deep emotion.

There's also some that would say that they're weeping because they remember

that they saw the beauty of the first temple and they remember what it was like.

And so there's this distress that the fact that the second temple isn't going

to be anything like the first, that it's failing to measure everything.

That they were weeping because the first was so much better than the second.

You can almost imagine that through the tears they were saying to each other,

you should have seen the temple that Solomon built. I saw it. I was there.

I saw it destroyed. I saw the destruction. I witnessed the fire.

I still remember Solomon's temple.

The temple was so magnificent. You wouldn't believe the majesty of it.

So they could have been mourning the rubble that was still left behind,

even as they built the foundations of the second.

Haggai was a prophet during this time, so you may be familiar with the book of Haggai.

He wrote to Zerubbabel, the character that we see in Ezra, the word of the Lord,

and he says, Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?

How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?

So Solomon, the context.

Solomon would have spent something in our modern equivalent,

like three to $5 billion building this temple.

He would have invested quite a bit of money into it.

It was designed, as we know, to convey the awe of the holiness of God in all of his glory.

That it was built to communicate something about his majesty.

That's what the temple was designed to communicate.

And we're told, so when we're told that these men were weeping,

It is left ambiguous for a reason.

People can feel more than one thing, of course. They wept for a lot of reasons.

They shouted for joy because there was a temple and they wept for the majesty that was unrealized.

So, it's ambiguous because humans are more complex.

And so, characters in this narrative are more complex as well.

They are people after all. They're not just made up entities that can only feel one emotion.

They knew that it would not be the same as the splendor of the first.

They knew it would fall short.

And they also wept because they finally got a temple again.

It is for both reasons. So Ezra is describing these mixed feelings as they were

experiencing the glory, the majesty of the past, present, and future temper.

Whatever would it become, whatever it would become, and the second temple would

become great again, but this time for different reasons, as God himself would

become man and Jesus would enter to its gates and he would teach in its courtyards.

So the temple would be great again, but for whatever it would become,

whatever it would become, there was

now a majesty that was lost as its new foundations rose from the rubble.

There's a majesty that was missing. In more than 2000 years later,

in our modern times, the Israelites are still mourning. They're still crying.

There's an entire festival, Tishbav, which is about mourning the loss of the

temple, originally the first temple, but now both temples.

And so it's a three weeks ending in this time of mourning.

The Talmud teaches them that whoever mourns for Jerusalem will merit seeing its joy.

So there's this tradition, there's the wailing wall, there's a tradition of

mourning over the temple in Jewish culture, even to this day.

And it's a loss, it's that loss of majesty, which is a funny word, majesty.

It's certainly more familiar to generations past to those people who would,

especially of monarchies, who would say things like your grace,

your greatness, your highness, your majesty, your majesty, right?

Because it's their majesty, it's not ours. So, you say your majesty.

Sally might be more familiar with this. She comes from a country that still

has a monarchy, but maybe you

can explain to us why you say your majesty because we don't understand it.

But majesty indicates greatness, right?

Greatness and sight or sound that is also wonderful.

It's bigness that is beautiful. It is an imposing side, a size,

an imposing size, which is viewed as with delight.

It's an imposing power, which is realized as attractive.

In an article on majesty, David Mathis writes, dominion and lordship are more technical and prosaic.

Majesty rings more poetic with the awe of worship.

The word captures not only greatness, but also goodness, both bigness and beauty,

awesome power together with pleasant admiration.

It is a fitting and appropriate term for God who is above all the majestic one.

So God is not only great, but he's good. He is good in his greatness and he

is great in his goodness.

He is not only big and strong and imposing and indomitable and omnipotent,

but he's also beautiful and attractive and stunning and compelling.

It's glorious. He's the majestic one who delivered Israel through the sea and

he delivers us through the cross.

He is the majestic one. And so we say with the psalmist, on the glorious splendor

of your majesty and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. Psalm 145.

So Nebuchadnezzar uses this word majesty, only he kind of uses it a little bit

incorrectly as we see from the last chapter and also from this chapter as well in Daniel,

that Nebuchadnezzar says in the last chapter, as he looked out across the city,

he says, look at this great city of Babylon by my own mighty power,

I have built this beautiful city as my royal residence to display my majestic splendor.

Is this not the great Babylon which I have built by my power and for the glory of my majesty?

So he's using the right word, but he uses it in the wrong way with the wrong focus.

Something that we've learned over the weeks and chapters of Daniel,

something that we've seen demonstrated, something that we see that Daniel,

Shadrach, Meshach, know to be true, know to be of absolute truth.

And that is God, his name, and his reputation are sacred.

That he alone is the most high God. He alone is the majestic one who's worthy

of all honor, all glory, all power, all praise.

Worship his majesty.

Something we have seen to be true in those in exile.

And so Belshazzar's sin is pride, like his grandfather, who saw his own majesty,

who worshiped his own majesty, the apple doesn't rot far from the tree, right?

Belshazzar's sin is pride, obviously, just like his forebearers.

We just read the account of Nebuchadnezzar in chapter five.

And also here it's retold because there's a generational sin that's taking place

where the son faces the same option as the father, only he faces destruction

because these are two sides of the same coin. These are two sides of the same coin.

It's the same story. Both kings are presented with the same opportunity to humble

themselves, to be humbled for humility, one looks up, Nebuchadnezzar is restored.

We asked last week, where are you looking? The other is condemned to destruction.

Verse 18 reminds us as Daniel retells this story and he calls him your majesty.

Interestingly enough, your majesty, the most high God gave sovereignty,

majesty, glory, and honor to you, predecessor and Nebuchadnezzar.

So the majesty of God is such that he is the one who also gives majesty.

He made him so great that people of all races and nations and languages trembled before him in fear.

But when his heart and mind were puffed up with arrogance, he was brought down

from his royal throne and stripped of his glory.

He was driven from human society. He was given to the mind of a wild animal,

and he lived among the wild donkeys.

He ate grass like a cow. He was drenched with the dew of heaven until he learned

that the Most High God rules over the kingdoms of the world and appoints anyone

he desires to rule over them.

He says, you are his successor, O Belshazzar, And you knew all of this,

yet you have not humbled yourself, for you have proudly defied the Lord of heaven

and have had these cups from his temple brought before you.

So yes, pride was his sin, but not only pride.

In his pride, he devalued the God of heaven by drinking from the cups of the

temple that bore his name and that communicated his majesty, his glory.

They drank from them and they praised created things. Their idols made of gold,

silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. So sin is the desire.

Sin is the desire to satisfy the eternal craving for God that is stamped onto

us with material things.

Let me say that again so it makes more sense maybe.

Sin is our desire to satisfy the eternal craving for God.

This eternal craving for God that has been stamped into the hearts of each and every one of us.

Sin is a desire to satisfy that eternal craving, but with material things rather than God herself.

This is to satisfy our eternal craving for God. It's taking something that is of some value.

It is of some value to us, and it is elevating to the point of absolute value.

That it is exalting the relative.

And at the same time, sin is also taking what is of absolute value.

God himself is taking what is of absolute value, and it is just casting it among everything else.

Casting him amongst the rest of our treasures, that it is relativizing the absolute.

It's not treasuring God above all else, but simply casting him among other things

that we may or may not treasure.

And so we have already been introduced to these cups in Daniel chapter one.

It's almost like a foreshadowing, a foretaste, if you will.

It says in chapter one, during the third year of King Jehoiakim's reign in Judah,

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

And the Lord gave him victory and

permitted him to take some of the sacred objects from the temple of God.

So Nebuchadnezzar took them back to the land of Babylonia and placed them in

a treasure house of his God.

So the cups of the temple are placed in the treasure house.

They are given that much value that they are placed amongst the other treasures,

but only as a proof of the superiority of Nebuchadnezzar and his gods,

that they are treasures, that they are prizes won in their military campaigns.

Right? They were not the treasure themselves.

They were just simply tossed among other treasures. So they did have relative

value, but only as much as they served those ends.

But God is absolute.

There's a difference between what is relative and what is absolute.

God is absolute. Absolute means highest.

It means most. It means the final degree. Absolute.

Absolute truth, absolute value, absolutely good, absolute everything. God is absolute.

So the question for us today is, does God hold absolute value in your life?

Does God hold absolute value in your life?

This is an honest question. I'm honestly asking you. I'm not just asking this

question for dramatic effect.

I really want you to survey the depths of your life and answer that question for yourself.

Is God of absolute value or do you treat him as just one of the other things

that you may or may not treasure?

Is he of absolute value or just one of the treasures in your life?

And I hate to tell you that if God is just something that you treasure along

with other things, if he is not what is of absolute value, then I'm also willing

to bet that you are the kind of person that sincerely worries about what you're gonna do for eternity.

Like, what is heaven going to be like? How are you going to spend your time?

Because the reality of heaven is that he's not a prize, but he is the prize. He is the treasure.

That's the reality of heaven is that God is the treasure, that he is absolute God, absolutely.

Because here's the thing, our culture loves to take what is of absolute value

and demote it to just being of relative value.

Our culture can't stand it when something is presented to be of absolute value.

Anything that is absolute is dangerous.

So they love to take what is of absolute value and demote it towards just something of relative value.

And relativism may be, for many people, in their opinion, the safest place to stand.

It's the safest place for them to stand. There's no absolute truth.

All paths lead to God. Everything is sacred. You do you.

Don't take a stance.

Like Belshazzar, like Nebuchadnezzar, we as humans are so often self-centered.

We want what we want when we want it.

And so, we're willing to justify anything by any means necessary to get it.

And that is a danger of relativism. It's a danger of relativism that it's a

convenient posture to take that helps us justify what we want.

And so, what it also does is provides us with an escape from any sort of serious self-reflection.

Don't resist, compromise. This is the message that Daniel and the boys were battling constantly.

Don't stand up for what you believe in.

Compromise, and then you'll be able to do some good in the world.

Compromise, and you'll still have your positions of authority,

and you'll be able to make good things happen.

Don't stand up for what you believe in. This is especially attractive when it's

presented as tolerance and openness to what other people may believe if it's different from you.

But the thing is, and we all know, and if we haven't experienced yet,

you may, is that it's very easy to be open and intolerant until what someone

believes affects how you live.

And then it's met with that it's unacceptable and unfair.

So, that's very easy. But that is a danger of relativism, but it's not the danger

of relativism in my opinion. what is most dangerous, the thing that is worst

about relativism is that this is how we treat God.

We approach God, we approach the absolute with the same heart posture.

We have the same heart posture in our understanding of the absolute.

And so, what we do is we conveniently build our preferences.

We conveniently build even our own theology around anything that happens to

align with whatever we already want to do.

We build our preferences and our theology around whatever aligns with whatever we already want.

Your heart and my heart will always find a way to justify this.

Whatever we believe or say we believe about truth, your heart and my heart will

always find a way to justify our sin.

We try to remake God in our own image. And the thing is, is that we are blind

to how we do it. We don't even know that we're doing it.

And so we can sit here and hear that this is the way that we treat God.

And we can easily say, I don't do that.

That's somebody else's problem. But the problem with our hearts is that we don't

even realize that we're doing it.

We don't even realize that we build our lives around these things to justify

our preferences and desires.

And we use the Bible and we use absolute truth to say that we are in the right,

but we are conveniently just changing the rules. So there's this.

Interesting encounter in Matthew chapter 22. I'll just read it for us.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Starting in verse 15, Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Then the Pharisees met together to plot how to trap Jesus into saying something

for which he could be arrested.

They sent some of his disciples along with the supporters of Herod to meet with him.

Teacher, they said, we know how honest you are. You teach the way of God truthfully.

You are impartial and don't play favorites.

It seems like they're buttering up. Now tell us what you think about this.

Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

But Jesus knew their evil motives.

You hypocrites, he said. Why are you trying to trap me? Here,

show me the coin used for the tax.

When they handed him a Roman coin, he asked whose picture and title are stamped

on it. Caesar's, they replied.

Well then, he said, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what

belongs to God. His reply amazed them and they went away.

There's several things happening here. Most obviously for Jesus to have spoke

in support of these unlawful taxes of Rome would have been to heap these burning

coals upon the suffering of the Israelites who were oppressed already.

So they're trying to trap him. But even more insidious than this is that on

the Roman coin, yes, there is the image of Caesar stamped onto it,

but also there's an inscription that lays some amount of claim to the divinity of the Caesar.

And it also reinforces his religious authority.

So there's this inscription stamped into the silver of these coins.

And in fact, the Roman denarii is referred to as the tribute penny.

Pay your tribute, your homage to worship the Caesar through these taxes.

So, this is not a question about tax.

It's so much more than that. This is a question about allegiance.

Who do you belong to? And Jesus, of course, so masterfully flips the question

back on his would-be entrappers.

He says, whose image is stamped on the coin?

Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. If it's his, give it to him.

And then he asks the question, whose image is stamped on you,

okay? He implies the question.

Whose image is stamped on you?

God has stamped his image on every single one of us.

So give to God. Give yourself completely to God, for you were dead and now you

have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.

Give to God what is his, if his image is stamped upon you.

So it's a question of allegiance. who do you belong to?

Is God absolute in your life or is he just one among the many?

Is he absolute in your life?

When Jesus is arrested for what can only be described as anti-state political

activism, that's what they could get stick.

Pilate asks him the question, are you a king?

To which Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world.

So he's essentially saying, Yes, if it were, my servants would fight to prevent

my arrest by the Jewish leaders, but now my kingdom is from another place.

So where does your allegiance lie? Is it with the world and its institutions

to some country, political view, ideology?

Or is it to God who alone is sovereign?

If you know who God is, you'll know who you are and you'll know what to do.

You'll know your purpose.

That's the identity reality of Daniel. Daniel is all about identity and that's

what we've been talking about this whole time.

Will you give him ultimate value in your life and honor him as such?

Will you submit to his absolutes or will you relativize him to justify your

life or whatever it may be?

The world sees absolutes as dangerous.

Will you live a radically dangerous life?

That word radical used to mean something that it doesn't anymore, unfortunately.

I'm a person who really wants to believe that words have meanings and so that

meaning shouldn't change.

But I'm beginning to realize that maybe Stoltis was right when he said that

words don't have meaning, people have meaning.

So, words are empty containers that people put into them what they want.

So, we have to listen carefully to what a person, what meaning a person is putting into their words.

Radical used to mean pertaining to the root, of the root.

As Vince Lombardi said in 1961, one, gentlemen, this is a football.

And now every single preacher that's ever existed has put that into a sermon for some reason.

It's our American culture, I suppose. And now I've done it. Probably the first

time I've ever referred to football in a sermon.

It's the fundamental. It's foundational. It's of the root. Jesus is called the

root of David and the root of Jesse.

It's going back to the root, to the source. That's what radical used to mean.

Colossians 2 says, and now just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord,

you must continue to follow him.

Let your roots grow down into him and let your lives be built on him.

The only way to fight relativism in your life is for every present and future

growth, letting all present and future growth be determined by the root of Jesus.

Any other way of life is arbitrary and inconsistent.

Any other way of life, apart from following the root of Jesus,

it's just arbitrary and inconsistent because it follows the desires and the

preferences that we justify.

Worship his majesty. God, his name, his reputation are sacred.

He alone is the most high God. He alone is the majestic one worthy of all honor,

all glory, and all praise. Worship his majesty.

Will you dare to live radically dangerous lives?

That's a hard question. Christians are dangerous.

Do you know that? Christianity says, you have no power over me because I belong

to a kingdom that is not of this world and I submit to the king.

That's what made Nebuchadnezzar so mad with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

That's why his face turned. That's what made him so bad.

That's why many rulers of this age feel Christianity as a threat.

This is what we saw with Daniel when he said, Belshazzar, you can keep your riches.

Christians can't be bought and they can't be threatened.

Christians are ambassadors of another kingdom. And so we have another king,

not another country, but another kingdom.

So whenever ideologies demand loyalty that God alone holds, that only belongs

to the king of kings, then Christians won't obey.

Christians are dangerous. Christianity

says that in God is found absolute truth, that Jesus is right.

And if Jesus is right, that must mean that the world apart from Jesus is wrong.

What a dangerous idea to say and to believe that humans, that we as humans could be wrong.

How audacious is that? To believe that another person and what they believe is wrong.

But truth is not relative. A day is coming when God will judge the world,

not according to some human ideology, but according to his eternal righteousness.

Everyone will be held accountable for how we use the breath that God has given us.

Everyone will fall on their knees and indeed their faces before Jesus.

Christians are dangerous.

Christianity says that our ultimate identity doesn't come from within ourselves,

but it is given to us by our creator.

That if you know who God is, you will know who you are and you will know what

to do. You'll know your purpose.

That if you try to hang onto your life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for the sake of God, you will save it.

What a dangerous idea. That's a dangerous idea.

This question, the question, which dangerous idea has the greatest potential

to change the world for the better?

This question was asked in 2013 to the panelist of the Festival of Dangerous

Ideas, which is apparently a thing.

Y'all are going to the Renaissance Festival. Festival of Dangerous Ideas might sound cooler.

And there's a British journalist who was on this panel, Peter Hitchens,

who he's the brother of the famed atheist Christopher Hitchens,

who passed away not so long ago, but he had an answer for the crowd.

He said that the most dangerous idea in human history and philosophy remains

the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead.

And that is the most dangerous idea you will ever encounter.

It alters the whole of human behavior and all responsibilities.

It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which

there is justice and there is hope.

And therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope.

Alters us all. If we reject it, it alters us as well.

It is incredibly dangerous and it's why so many people turn against it.

So obviously Peter Hitchens, he was an atheist like his brother for a while.

They were both grown up and brought up in the church, I believe.

And he realized and turned once again towards Jesus before he made this statement.

The most dangerous idea is that believe that Jesus is the Son of God and rose

from the dead because you have to respond to that in justice and work for hope.

Daniel says to Belshazzar, you have honored the God who gives you the breath

of life and controls your destiny.

So God has sent his hand to write this message.

The message is essentially you have been weighed, you have been measured,

and you've been found wanting, which is everyone loves a good quote from the movie A Knight's Tale.

So you've been way you've been measured and you've been found wanting.

How will you be found? Will you be found tossing God amongst some set of treasures

that have some value in your life, that are of some relative value?

Or placing him on the throne of your heart as absolute, absolute truth,

absolute value, absolute God, absolutely.

Will you be found placing God in his position of absolute value?

Does God hold absolute value in your life?

I'm gonna read this from 1 John as we wrap up our time.

This is 1 John chapter three. This is how we will know that we will belong to

the truth and we will reassure our hearts before him.

Whenever our hearts condemn us, our God is greater than our hearts and he knows all things.

Friends, if our hearts don't condemn us, we have confidence before God and we

receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commands and do what is pleasing in his sight.

Now, this is his command that we believe in the name of his son,

Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us.

The one who keeps his commands remains in him and he in him.

And the way we know that he remains in us is from the spirit he has given us.

And if we stand in pride, elevating ourselves and relativizing God, that we will be humble.

But if we lower ourselves in some false humility, some divine depression,

he will elevate us to the place of truth, that we will live in absolute truth

of knowing the depths of our brokenness and the depths of our beauty.

That we will serve God absolutely. That we will set apart the name of God as holy.

That God would have supreme value in our lives.

We would worship his majesty. So don't let God lose glory.

Don't let him lose majesty in your eyes.

Elevate him to the place where he alone belongs of absolute value.

Don't relativize him. Justify our lives and our preferences.

Submit to his authority and live radically dangerous lives for his kingdom. Amen.

Thank you for listening to mountainside churches podcast we hope you found inspiration

and encouragement in today's teaching to learn more about our church stay connected

or partner with us visit mcboon.com.

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