Oh man, have you ever woke up and wondered how did I get here? I used to try to take my kids camping. I eventually got them in Boy Scout so I wouldn't have to do that anymore, but I used to try to take them camping and one year I took them in January because I promised them that I would and true to my word I took them camping and there's two things about January. One is it gets dark really early and two is it's cold. I don't know if you'll go know those two things, I clearly forgot them. So I'm taking, I'm getting the kids ready, I've got a tent, I've only got three sleeping bags even though there's four of us and one of them is three years old I'm thinking he'll keep me warm, I'll just keep him right here. And so we stayed outside so dark and then we got in the tent, we played around a little bit, you know we'd made our little marshmallows and all that stuff and so then we kind of bed it down for the night. Now you need to know this if you are in a sleeping bag with a three-year-old you don't get to move. I mean he's here like you're close, there's no moving and if you were sleeping on the cold hard ground and you don't move you wake up paralyzed on one side of your body and so I thought I had a stroke, I mean I woke up, I was in so much pain, couldn't move my arm, couldn't feel anything in my legs, felt a whole lot of pain in my hip and I'm sitting there going this is the worst idea I've ever had, I can't move, my kids are all asleep, I can't move, I'm listening to the wind, with through the tent, I'm like what, what? And so I was so kind of distraught, I got out of the tent and I went and got in my car and I'm sitting there going it's probably like three in the morning I don't know what to do and so trying to figure out what to do I turned the key to just turn the heater on so I can think the clock in my car comes on it's 9 p.m. I had made it a whole two hours and so then I knew what to do I warned my car up I quietly went into the tent picked up each child one at a time put them in the car they never woke up drove home put them in their beds they never woke up I got in my bed where I was toasting and warning about 10 30 that is how you camp if you're a Jones so the next morning we get up and I'm making pancakes like I always do in Saturday mornings and one by one the boys all did the same thing they came in they smelled the pancakes and then they went wait a minute this is not where I went to bed how did I get here how did I get here that's a that's a great question I think there's always times in our life when in a much more serious way we just want to go where am I and how did I get here the the luminaires had a song wrote a song the lead singer of the luminaires had a car accident last summer and he bowel writes he probably should have died from it but Lord preserved him him his wife and she kind of woke up from it before he did and she started asking him over and over where are we here's kept her saying he kept saying I don't know where we are but we'll be all right sometimes that's what life feels like where are how did I get here a friend of mine woke up in the hospital after it didn't think suicide and failing what am I doing here that's where the Lord found him a student I ministered to at the University of Tennessee years and years ago he was meeting with the campus minister and he said you know I grew up in the church but I've kind of left that I'm out slept with eight different girls this this semester alone and the campus minister kind of got angry and he said what makes you think you're getting away with that and he said oh no I'm not getting away with it I woke up in a girl's bed this weekend I didn't know her last name he said all I could keep thinking was how did I get here how did I get here it happens to us all sometimes it's completely normal but we still ask ourselves those questions right your parent you walk into the living room you see four kids and you think how did that happen what am I doing here 18 years later you walk into the living room there's no one there how did that happen where am I what do I do now it happens as a result of our son that happens as a result of just life I've I've grew up in the 80s when the worst thing you could possibly be caught doing was selling marijuana or using marijuana there was it we do just say no it was everywhere it was on the back of our basketball teams warm-ups just say no that we would chant that before every game now I can't drive down any street in Tulsa without seeing a marijuana dispensary I'm not I have no opinion about that I'm really dumb very confused but it's different and it makes me say to myself how did I get here I think I live in a different place a different time like everything's different and those are very real questions I'm not pretending that their questions are real questions and these questions are answered for us in a lot to a large degree to a large degree our answered for us in the book of Daniel we're gonna stay in the book of Daniel this summer and Daniel is a real person that's the first thing to learn right if you grew up going to vacation bible school and Sunday school you know the story of Daniel on the lines then and he's such a happy little cheerful guy and he's just always getting delivered and always winning he's actually the only figure in the bible who never sins besides Jesus we can talk about that later but um he he's a real person he's a real person who lived through a siege of his hometown which a man he was almost starved he's a real person who is kidnapped taken in chains away from his city and his family and his people and he was taken to one town and then they because he was among the the best and the brightest of the group was taken all the way into Babylon and you have to think he woke up in Babylon over over again saying how did I get here I don't know these customs I don't know this language I don't worship this God I'm this is how did I get here what am I supposed to do I think if you haven't ever asked yourself that question you're going to and what I want you to see is no matter where you are God is with you God is for you and he wants you to serve the people that you are around he is with you he's for you and he wants you to serve please stand as we read the first chapter of the book of Daniel in the third year of the reign of your help hook him king of Judah never can never king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it and the Lord gave you hook him the king of Judah into his hands with some of the vessels in the house of God and he brought them to the land of Shinar and to the house of his God and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God then the king commanded Ashwin as the chief unique to bring some of the people of Israel both of the royal family and of the nobility used without blemish of good appearance skillful in all wisdom and doubt with knowledge understanding and learning and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and the language of the caldians the king assigned them a daily portion of food at the king aid and the of the wine that he drank and they were to be educated for three years and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king among these were Daniel hand in eye a mishail and as a riot of the tribe of Judah and the chief of the unix gave them names Daniel he called belt to Shazaar and hand in eye he called Shadrach mishail he called mishak and as a riot he called the bednego but Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine the king drank therefore he asked the chief of the unix to allow him not to defile himself and God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the unix and the chief of the unix said to Daniel I fear my Lord the king who assigns your food and your drink why should he see that you're in worse condition than the youth or of your own age so you would endanger my head with the king then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the unix had assigned over Daniel hand in eye mishail as a riot test your servants for ten days let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink and let our appearance and appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you and deal with your servants according to what you see so he listened to them in this matter and he told them for ten days and at the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter and flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food so the steward took away their food in the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables as for these four youths God gave them learning and skill and all literature and wisdom and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams and at the end of the time when the king had commanded they should be brought in the chief of the unix brought him in before Nebuchadnezzar and the king spoke with them and among all them none was found like Daniel hand in eye mishail and Nazaria therefore they stood before the king and in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all of his kingdom and Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus that's part of the reading of God's word all men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field the grass withers and the flowers fall but not God's word God's word stands forever you may be seated when you wake up and you don't know where you are I want you to remember God is with you he is for you and he wants you to serve what what am I doing here that's the first question he asks right what am I doing here he's in Babylon how did I get here and that's a great question and you have to kind of sit with the answer a little bit Elizabeth Elliott was a woman who cried out of college married her her boyfriend her the love of her life Jim Elliott and he died in an emissions moment he was trying to spread the gospel in central America and he was killed pretty quickly her heart was broken but the Lord brought her another man who had husband her and he she loved him and loved and married him and not long after he she married him he was diagnosed with cancer and died and she said this she said when you wake up and everything in your world is falling around you and everything is different ask yourself what has not changed what has not changed God is there God sees me he knows me I think it's fascinating the way they describe this look at verse one in the third year of the reign of Jehovah King of Judah Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it how did Daniel end up in Babylon King Nebuchadnezzar it was his fault it was his plan he basically sacked to the city now he took him a while he went back three times before the city was completely destroyed this time he just took a few things from the temple Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city and not but and looking to give us to and the Lord gave Jehovah King of Judah into his hand God was there this was not a travesty of of God's people being destroyed and God being asleep at the wheel he knew what was happening he was sovereign over this event he was with them he saw it he was part of it he gave them that that's a hard lesson but it's important it's important because we see both this this working of man's responsibility in God's sovereignty man God didn't destroy Israel himself but he gave Israel to Nebuchadnezzar he was active in it he was active in it do you recognize that do you recognize that that God is part even of your your worst days do you see that he is he's there he's keeping his word in this case and in Israel's case he had told them in Leviticus 23 and in Isaiah 39 both times and in Leviticus he said if you worship idols and look to other lands to save you I will give you into the hands of those other lands and and Isaiah is the story of Hezekiah the king one of the most righteous kings Israel ever had you ever had and he said but but hezekiah was being staged by the Assyrians and he was scared instead of calling out to the Lord he reached out to the Babylonians and he said if y'all will come we will pay you with gold and silver and the Babylonians came and saved them and God sent Isaiah to him to say you shouldn't have done that you know better than that I would deliver your lands into that Babylonians hands God keeps his word that's weird it's hard to take comfort from God keeping his word when he's keeping his word and punishing his people but it's important to see he doesn't abandon his people he disciplines them he doesn't abandon them he's there with them and because he was there with them they could call out to him God hasn't changed he's with them
and a teacher and seminary named Derek Thomas and he was preaching in a church that he didn't know anything about that he seminary professors get invited to do that a lot he just kind of came in for the day he preached a sermon on God's sovereignty God's being ordaining whatsoever comes to pass he didn't know that on the third row was a family whose teenage daughter had been killed in a car wreck two weeks before he was distraught when he found out after the sermon how could I preach something so cold and you know academic at a time when they needed to be pastored and he really was just kind of at a loss and he got a letter from them two weeks later and the letter said we want you to know your sermon was the only word we heard of comfort everybody tried to comfort us by saying God wasn't in this and and that was no the God was here to heal them but but wasn't part of the accident and I want you to know that the idea that God can't stop a car accident makes him absolutely useless you were the only one who comforted us the God was in it and we can trust him to heal it and we know that we know that from last weekend we all celebrate God being there on eastern raising Jesus up from the dead but he had to be raised up from the dead God was also there on good Friday when every disciple must have lost their faith when every one of them must have felt like God had abandoned them he was there and because he's there we can trust him to heal us and because he is there we know that he's going to use us and he has not abandoned us and therefore we have to be careful not to abandon him that's the second point when we're living in Babylon when we wake up here in this world we are all Christians in Babylon we're in the dispersion that's why I had Josh read that text right we live in the dispersion we are not in a Christian city county state country or world yet all those things are coming after the return of Christ but not until then and until then we have to live as strangers in a strange land and the first sign we see of how to live in a strange land is this Daniel resolved not to defile himself he was offered the king the food and the wine of the king the delicacies the good stuff
and he said I might go need it it's really interesting all the commentaries you read say we don't know why he decided he decided not to eat it it's not clear that it would have been a sin to eat it maybe because it was pork and and Jews didn't eat pork maybe because it had been offered to idols but every commentator says we really don't know however I think I know now if I were you I'd be very skeptical of this theory but Psalm a proverbs 23 he says this when you sit down to eat with a ruler observe carefully what is before you put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite do not desire his delicacies for they are deceptive food do not toil to acquire wealth be discerning enough to desist I think Daniel knew this proverb and I think he knew that by by fattening them up on the best food and by deadening their senses with the best wine the king was sucking them in and he didn't want to be assimilated there was no out there was clearly no sin at least we're not told that there was a sin involved it was just him wanting to be different him saying I didn't have a choice whether not to come here but I'm not going to become one of you and we all have those times when we live in the world the way the world gets us is not by just confronting us with obvious sins not like somebody with the gun your hands is shoot the world gets us by putting us to sleep at least in south Tulsa right it's it's the comforts of the things that surround us and the the the riches the toys they're always just out of reach that make us one of them I had them I lived in Mississippi during the MCI world-com scandal if you don't remember that if you were young in 2002 they the miss MCI world-com was found guilty of fraud to the tune of 11 billion dollars and that was in 2002 and 11 billion dollars is a lot of money and I didn't know anybody worked there but I knew my one of my good friends was the lawyer who ended up representing the controller the controller is kind of head-accounted he's the one who signs off on everything that's done and he's a Christian he loves the Lord you know it went to R.U.F. Bible studies at the old minutes it's like everybody else he really and he believed he's not like you know fake Christian like he believed the stuff he's a good guy and he said that you know he got into world-com and it wasn't that they were tempting him to do anything wrong was very ethical company but they just kept giving him the stuff you know hey I mean they were making billions of dollars and and you know the CEO and the CFO would offer him trips to their beach houses or all of them trips to all over the Caribbean or wherever he wanted to go and and they had the homes and they were encouraging him to buy the homes and they had the cars and they were encouraging him to have the cars and they don't they never tempted him to send they just always enticed him to enjoy the wealth that God has provided and then one day they called him into the office and they said this is what we are going to do we are going to start counting these loans as assets and he said but that's the opposite of what we're supposed to do yeah that's what we're going to do we're going to make our books look better than they really are so people keep buying our stock so all those loans are now assets but they're not this is what we're going to do and he did it and he went to jail for it you see the the world the world doesn't present its true face to you until you're deep in it it just puts you to sleep it just deceives you you know what Jesus said I was out last last year last year yesterday sorry yesterday I was out in the yard weeding it weeding the yard why would you have to weeding yard who planted the weeds I don't know I didn't like why do you have to do this but dandelions all the junk is in the yard I'm pulling it out all day long and I'm thinking about when Jesus is teaching about weeds or he's teaching about seed the the word of God falling on the good soil fertile hearts and the seed grows and it's strong and produces good plants but the ground also produces thorns and thistles and weeds and they choke the good the good soil out they choke the plants out there's nothing wrong with the heart the heart was good they just had weeds in it and you know what Jesus says those weeds are the deceitfulness of wealth the cares of the world deceitfulness of wealth that's a big message for us in South Tulsa isn't it because wealth deceives us I preached on wealth about once a year and I always quote John Jacob Astor who was a millionaire back in the 18th century and he said that the care of five million dollars that was a lot of money back then he said the care of five million dollars is too much of a burden for any shoulder to carry everyone of us we say I think the same thing don't you let's give it a shot I think my shoulders are stronger than that the deceitfulness of wealth it's wrong with wanting it you know and you don't do some of your thinking I don't have to worry about that I ain't got no wealth to deceive me they possible pulses those who desire to be rich fall in the temptation and a trap in many senseless and harmful desires to plunge people into ruin and destruction how do we live in a world how do we live in a place we wake up in a feel like a stranger hey we resolve not to defile ourselves we're going to be different we're going to resolve not to defile ourselves now some of you are worried at this point you don't think you think it's too late you're already defiled what can you do now and maybe you're feeling ashamed or you're feeling dirty and if you think it's too late for you I need you to know something you don't know Jesus if you think it's too late Jesus came for the dirty one of my favorite stories in the gospels is in March chapter one and Jesus is walking and a leper came up to him now lepers were unclean that's all you need to know about them they're un they're defiled they are defiled and if you touch them you become defiled and the leper calls out to Jesus in these heartbreaking words he says I know you can make me clean if you will if you're willing and Jesus the text is very clear he stops he reaches out and touches him he says I am willing to be clean when when Jesus touches the defiled it becomes clean he takes our defilement upon himself so that he can make us clean and if you're looking at yourself going the world is already defiled me the thing to do is not to try harder it's to recognize that he is the Jesus he is the god who cleans the dirty come to him the first thing to do is recognize where why you're there you're there in God's plan and the second thing to do is recognize what you have to stand against and resolve to not be defiled and finally we engage and we engage in a way to serve the Lord to serve the people around us God has us here for a reason and I don't know where your here is but you're here for the reason of serving the people around you I know that absolutely that's why God has you here what is Daniel do well Daniel see how many of you remember Daniel follow the advice the wisdom of a letter that was sent how many of you remember who sent the letter Jeremiah right it was a good guess right that's what I preached on last summer Jeremiah sent a letter to the people and to the people who have been taken captive into Babylon the Jews who were taken captive and he said this among other things he said seek the welfare of the city where you're sent into exile and pray to the Lord on this behalf for in its welfare you will find your own welfare seek the good of the people who are around you make their lives better use the gifts that God has given you to improve that place where you are that's why you're there God gave Daniel great wisdom and he exceeded all the other students around him him and his friends were ten times better and you know what they were ten times better at
the the studies of the Babylonians and the Caldins that means they were great at astrology and they didn't even believe in astrology that means they were great at the mythology of Marduk and they certainly didn't believe any of that but they knew it all and God put them in a place because of their hard work and because of their gifts he put them in a place where they could bless all of Babylon and they were willing to do it where has God put you are you in a place you never expected to be do you not have the children you expected or have way more children than you expected
or you you got all the spouse you can handle or you're missing one you're there for a reason God is there with you and he's especially gifting you to be where you are don't avoid engage you know what's going on right now I just find this so crazy this afternoon three people I know for sure are going to listen to this sermon one's in the state penitentiary of Arizona one's in the Oklahoma state penitentiary and one's in Florida in a federal penitentiary and they're all going to take the stuff they hear now and they're going to teach it to the prisoners around them and they they tell me about no because they tell me all the time and that crazy they all woke up Christians in prison saying how did I get here and they've all decided to not be part of the prison culture and to use their voice for Christ and and God's doing great work because of it God is where you are he's where you are and he's for you and he wants you to serve the people or around you please pray with me our father in heaven we come to you this morning and we confess our defilement and we have looked at the things the world has and the thing the world does and we instead of resolving in our hearts we've gotten lazy gone with them father we rejoice that you sent your son to cleanse us and we pray father that with the knowledge that you know where we are
we pray that you would give that same grace to us that you gave to Daniel so that we could find favor in the eyes of the people around us and so that we could serve them we pray in Jesus name amen