Sermon Central
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Who Gets The Glory?
Contributed by Stephen Belokur on Aug 31, 2016 (message contributor)
Summary: There are great accounts of victory in the Bible. Some of the favorites are found in the opening chapters of the book of Daniel. We tend to see Daniel, Shadrach, Mechach and Abednego as heroes, but Who is the real hero in the Bible?
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God IS Glorious!
Just listen to these verses!
Psalm 8:1 NIV
“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory in the heavens.”
Psalm 108:5 NIV
“Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let Your glory be over all the earth.”
1 Chronicles 29:11 NIV
“Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is Yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; You are exalted as head over all.”
Romans 11:33-36 NIV
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?
“For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.”
All honor and glory and praise belongs to the LORD! Amen? Amen!
This past few months I’ve been hearing a song on the radio called "I Will Trust In You" by Lauren Daigle and the words of the chorus really caught my attention:
Let’s listen to that song … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXMPNXXnCls
We hear the words
“When You don't move the mountains - I'm needing You to move
When You don't part the waters - I wish I could walk through
When You don't give the answers - As I cry out to You
I will trust - I will trust - I will trust in You.”
We think, Wow, I want that kind of trust!!!
When I don’t see the miracle, when I don’t have the strength, when I don’t hear the answer I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in You!
We think about that kind of trust and we say, “I want to have that kind of trust in the LORD, right?”
We see examples of trust in the OT:
Briefly describe the accounts from memory of the following events (but DON’T tell the king’s response of praise)
Daniel recounting and explaining Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the 90 foot idol in Daniel 3
Daniel and the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4
Daniel in the lions’ den in Daniel 6
In all of these we see miraculous events taking place.
All of these take place in the presence of pagan kings who worship idols
In all of these we see the same sentiments as we find in the song played earlier,
“I will trust … I will trust … I will trust in YOU!”
In all of these events Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were honored by the king.
But, for whom did the king reserve his highest praise?
Daniel 2:47
Daniel 3:28-29
Daniel 4:3 & 4:34-36
Daniel 6:19-22 & 6:26-27
In these accounts and in all of the accounts where we see the hand of God at work it is the LORD who is the hero, NOT THE PERSON!
John 15:7-8 NIV
“If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to MY FATHER'S GLORY, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.”
What would it be like if our highest goal in life was to glorify God?
What would it be like if we set aside our ambitions and our wants and our desires and the glory of God became our greatest desire?
Just think about sleep, something as simple as sleep?
What if we slept for the glory of God?
What if we slept as much as we needed so that we would have the energy to accomplish what the Lord had in store for us that would bring glory to Him?
And, what if we slept no more than we needed so that the time to be used to glorify God would not be wasted in sleeping away the day?
What if we bracketed our times of sleep with prayers of desire to glorify the Lord?
That’s just one small example but what if the same degree of conscious engagement with the LORD was applied to every part of our lives?
Would the LORD be glorified?
Just think about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, exiles from Judah in a foreign land. We see these great stories of the Lord being glorified through their faith and obedience but there may have been years, even decades between these events.
They lived their lives according to the Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” in a spiritual sense.
Year after year of devotion to the God of Israel …
Year after year of honoring the king of the conquering nation …
