(8.23.26) Sermon | The Story of Daniel, Week 2 | Gabe Dean

Well, good morning.

If we haven't met yet, my name is Pastor Gabe, and I am the youth pastor here at Generations Church.

I've been here for a little a little over three months.

So I started at the beginning of summer, and let me just tell you the youth group has had a ton of fun this summer.

We've been able to go on different trips.

Um, we've gone to camp.

Um, I've been able to grow with the youth, uh, connect with them, and it's just been a great time.

Um I truly believe, and this is why I'm a youth pastor, I believe that the role of a student is not that they are just the church of the future, but that they are the church of today.

And so I believe that God has a plan for each and every one of them, and I believe that they have a role in furthering the kingdom of God.

And so I'm excited to see the ways that God uses generation students.

Well, today we are gonna begin in our series on Daniel and the character of Daniel and his life.

Um, but to begin, I want to kind of just share a little bit about myself and a time in my life when I didn't have all the answers to something that was going on.

If you don't know already, um I'm one of two things.

I'm one, I'm the oldest of four brothers, and I'm two, I'm a pastor's kid.

That meant that growing up, the only question that I got was, hey Gabe, are you gonna be the next pastor in the family?

And guess what my answer was?

Absolutely not.

I absolutely did not want to be the next pastor because I knew everything that went into it.

I knew that what pastors did, and I wanted nothing to do with the life of a pastor.

But if you know God, you know that sometimes God has a sense of humor.

And that sense of humor is that I'm a pastor today, and so I'm so very blessed by generations and in the ways that you have already loved on me.

Well, back in 2024, um, when I gave my life to Jesus, I was um I was 20 years old, and that's really when I felt God call me to ministry.

See, God, he was doing many different things in my life, and a lot of the things in my life began to change.

My circumstances changed, my college changed, my job changed, my friends changed, the relationships I had in my life began to change.

And in the midst of all this change is where God called me to ministry.

See, Jesus, he did a lot of things in my life to let me know that a pastor is what he was calling me to do.

He placed people in my life, he placed passions on my heart, students.

And he placed visions on my mind to let me know that a pastor is what he was calling me to do.

One of the first memories that I have of Jesus calling me to be a pastor comes from a time when I was at home with my mom and her friend, and at this time I was sitting on the couch and they were talking about jobs and careers and apparel that you wear at these jobs and careers.

Um, at the time I was attending Mime University, um, and I had decided that I was transferring to Mount Vernon Nazarene University, but I didn't know what my major was gonna be.

Because my first two years I just did gin edge, my major was undeclared.

Um I didn't know what I wanted to do in life.

Jesus was still working on that part in my life.

Now, this conversation is going on between my mom and her friend, and mind you, I'm there on the couch, but I'm not really listening.

You know, I'm there, but I'm not.

I've scrolled on TikTok and Instagram reels.

And have you ever been there?

You're in the conversation, you can hear what's going on, but you're not at the same time.

And so that's where I was.

And in the moment, an image was placed in my mind.

It was the image of a youth pastor, and it was the youth pastor at my dad's church, and and I didn't really know the guy all too well.

Um, I didn't, he wasn't my youth pastor, but an image of him was placed in my mind.

I had a lot, a lot, a lot of uncertainty in that moment, right?

I asked God why, like, what the heck, God, like why did that happen?

Like, what's going on here?

Like, you know, I said absolutely not all those years ago, like why now.

At the time it was a mystery why this image was placed on my mind, but but really at the time I didn't know that this was the early stages of how God was calling me to be a pastor.

So even in that moment, when I was uncertain, when I had a bunch of questions, God was certain and God had the answers to those questions.

Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and the way that he was going to do it.

I want you to think of times in your life where you may be uncertain.

Times in your life where there may be unknown in your life.

Maybe you're uncertain about a work situation and whether or not you're gonna get this promotion that everyone is talking about, or whether or not you're gonna have to travel for your job.

Right?

There's a lot, a lot, a lot of unknown.

Maybe it's a health situation, and you're unsure that you're gonna need that surgery or not.

Or maybe you were like me, and you're unsure, you're uncertain about your future and what holds.

What are we supposed to do when we don't have the answers?

Well, last week uh Pastor Patrick began a series of Daniel and his life, and he took us through Daniel chapter one, and in Daniel chapter one, we we learn how Daniel stood firm in being faithful to God, and Daniel chose obedience over joining in with the culture around him, right?

Instead of eating the food that the king um had ordered, they ate and drank only vegetables and water.

And so he chose to stand firm and being obedient to God.

And so today I want to dive into Daniel 2, starting in in chapter 17, uh, chapter 2, sorry, verses 17.

Um, but before you turn there, I kind of want to give us some context just because there's a lot going on in Daniel chapter 2.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Pastor Patrick gave me a hard, a hard chapter, I will say.

Even the week that he's gone, of course, I get the hard one.

Well, at the beginning of chapter 2, um, it begins by telling how there's a king, King Nebuchadnezzar.

Anybody heard of King Nebuchadnezzar?

Right?

King Nebuchadnezzar, he has a dream.

And this dream, he's not able to interpret.

And so he was troubled because he was not able to interpret this dream.

He didn't know what this dream was about.

He was troubled.

And so he turned to the experts of that time.

The experts were the magicians, the enchanters, the astrologers, these people who were supposed to be experts in supernatural hidden knowledge.

Even though they were experts, they admit that no human can do this.

No human can interpret the dream of the king.

No human is capable of doing that.

And so this is where Daniel is inserted into the story.

The king decides to execute, order an execution on all of the wise men.

And guess who one of those wise men was?

Daniel.

And so we're going to begin in Daniel chapter 2, verses 17.

Daniel 2:17

If you would like to stand in reverence to the wording of God, we will start in Daniel 2, verses 17 through 28.

Daniel 2:17–28

It says, Then Daniel returned to the house and explained the matter to his friends, Hananiah, Meshah, and Azariah.

He urged them to play for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision.

Then Daniel praised the God of heaven and said, Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever.

Wisdom and power are his.

He changes times and seasons, he deposes kings and raises up other.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.

He reveals deep and hidden things.

He knows what lies in darkness and light dwells with him.

I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors, you have given me wisdom and power.

You have made known to me what we have asked of you.

You have made known to us the dream of the king.

And so in this, we find that true wisdom is found only in the one true God who rules over all.

Right, Daniel, he cannot do it by himself.

In this life, we literally cannot do it by ourselves.

What is this it that I'm talking about?

I'm talking about life.

We cannot live life on our own.

We need God because God, because true wisdom is found in God.

And guess what?

Like a lot of you, like me, I've tried to live life on my own.

And guess what?

It just didn't work out the way that I wanted it to.

We need God.

Wisdom is not found in these people in the story, right?

The people that the king turned to, the magicians, the enchanters, the astrologers.

Wisdom's not found in the false gods that people serve and the gods that they were serving back then.

Right?

True wisdom is found in the only true God.

And guess what?

That true God is connected to us today.

When I was in college at Mount Vernon Nazarene, um, I took theology class.

Um, and theology class, it was alright.

You know, I'm not I'm not the smartest um pineapple, but um I'm not the smartest, but theology class was alright.

Um, and one thing that we learned in theology class was that God isn't a God who who made the earth and made the people and made everything, and then he went off to his own little planet over here and said, go figure it out.

No, God is a God that is connected with us.

Jesus is a God that is connected with his people and he lives among them.

Because Daniel and God are connected, Daniel knows that God has the answers to this mystery.

The mystery of the dream that the king had.

So Daniel returns to the king, and the king is all excited because he's like, Are you able to tell me what my dream was about?

And Daniel responds like this He tells the king that no wise man, no enchanter, no magician, no diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.

There's a God in heaven who knows things that we do not.

Right?

Going back to the image of the youth pastor that was placed in my mind, right?

There was a lot of unknown for me.

There was a lot of questions I had, right?

A lot of uncertainty, a lot of what-ifs, because I felt unqualified.

This vision that I had was a mystery.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.

In my life, I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily say that I listened to all the advice that that my dad gave to me just because um when I was a teenager, right, I was a defiant teenager.

I thought that parents didn't know anything, and so um I didn't I didn't listen to my dad all that well.

Um but when I came to my senses and I and I gave my life to God, there was a little bit of advice that I listened that came from my dad.

And it was something that he always told my brothers and I, he said, go turn to Jesus in every moment, whether it's good or bad.

And so I remember when this image of a youth pastor was placed on my mind.

I went before God because maybe he had the answers to what this mystery was.

And I remember the times that I went before God were the times that he kept revealing more and more to this mystery.

Daniel, he was he was probably a little bit more scared than I was because there was a chance that he could die.

But he had confidence in his God because God's plans are perfect.

I remember that I was scared because I didn't have all the answers to every single question that I had.

Let me tell you, I had a ton of questions as to why God had to call me to be a pastor.

But in those moments I was also confident because I knew that God had a perfect plan for this mystery and that he was going to work it out.

Proverbs 3, 5 through 6 says this.

But submit to God in his ways, in his wisdom, and he will work it out.

Trust in the Lord, trust that Jesus is who he says he is.

Trust that God does have a plan for that specific mystery in your life.

For Daniel, he had so much confidence in God that he was truly unshaken.

Even when death was an option for him.

And so as we close, I want to invite the band back up here, but I also want to ask you a question.

When life becomes uncertain, when there's unknown in your life, how are you going to respond?

Are you gonna respond like the king, right?

When questions came for the king, for the dream, he responded with anger, he was furious, and he was anxious.

Or are you gonna respond like Daniel?

He responded in a better way.

He responded with going to God before God and turning to God when times were uncertain.

He responded in prayer.

In our lives, we don't have all the answers to all of our questions.

There are times in your life, there are times in my life when the unknown is going to hit.

And guess what?

There's a known in my life, there's a knowns probably in your life right on this Sunday.

But the good news is that our confidence isn't in knowing everything.

Our confidence is knowing the one who does know everything.

This one that I'm referring to has a name, and his name is Jesus.

If you haven't met him, Jesus loves you and he's a plan for your life.

Would you pray with me?