The Rest Were Hardened - Part 6

Right now I'm reading Daniel. Well, Daniel is a book all about the sovereignty of God, right? And so you've got these four or five statements. God lifts up kings and he puts down kings. He brings the king Darius against the others and they fall and he comes up and I mean sovereignty is everywhere, just moving nations around. Daniel's the one who's communicating all that sovereignty to the sovereigns on earth. And it says, they got this decree that anybody who prays to any God but Darius will be thrown in the lions' den. And you've got this sentence, when Daniel heard the decree, he went up as was his custom and knelt down in front of the window. Where'd that come from? That's crazy. That's suicide. Unless he really believed what he'd been preaching. God puts up kings. God takes kings down. God shuts fiery furnaces. God shuts lions' mouths. My prayer is that even if you can't see it, the wrestling with and the embracing of God's absolute sovereignty over all things, including your will, will sustain you in times when almost everything else is saying, this will only be a catastrophe. So don't walk with God here. Rather you'd be able to say, no, you're sovereign. You're able. No matter whose will seems to be opposed against me, you can triumph. Nothing can stand in your way. No human will can trump your will. I tell you, I think there's going to come into your lives, sooner or later, experiences where you're going to need that confidence. And I think, I pray, I hope that this truth, as difficult as it may seem, will be a means of God's making you strong. Oh, that God would grant us to make, as Peter says, our calling and our election sure by loving indiscriminately all peoples, and I say especially the Jewish people. The Jew first, and also to the Greek, stands yet today. If you have any contact with the Jewish people, if you know any Jewish friends, love them with all your might. Lay down your life for your Jewish friends, that they might come to Christ and be saved. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we as a church, in five services this weekend, tremble before your sovereignty. We tremble with confidence that we have been made your own because there has been awakened in us a love to Christ and a trust in Christ. And we have seen the gospel, not as foolishness, but as beauty and glory, our life, our righteousness, our redemption, our wisdom. And I pray now, that as we close in song, everyone would see it. Would you take the blindness away? Would you take the deafness away? Would you cause the table no longer to be a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a retribution, but may every good thing in our life send us up to you in thanksgiving and not become an idol to us. And oh God, may we not bend our backs under legalism, trying to impress you or work for you or perform for you, as though we could do anything to commend ourselves to your sovereign electing grace. Oh God, grant, I pray, that instead we would simply receive and that we would make much now of your great grace. A grace that is greater than all our sins.