955 - Les Feldick Bible Study - Lesson 2 Part 3 Book 80 - Daniel Part 2 - 3

https://lesfeldickbiblestudy.com Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 2 * PART 3 * BOOK 80 DANIEL – PART II - 3 Daniel 2:1- 4:25 All right, it’s good to have everybody back from their break. We’re going to jump right in where we left off in Daniel chapter 3 and verse 6. And those of you watching on television, again, we always like to remind you that we’re independent. I’m not associated with any group. And, yes, I’m just a cattle rancher. It is baby calf arriving time. I love my ranching, and I love the cattle, but I love this even more. It kind of amuses people that I’m a cattle rancher and still doing what I’m doing with the Word of God. But God has seen fit to bless us with both sides of the coin. Hasn’t He, Honey? And we do love our ranching. When we are out in these cities—like all week in Florida last week—my, what a joy to drive up our hill to the ranch! So, we just praise the Lord for everything. As always, we want to thank you for your letters, your prayers, and your financial help. We just couldn’t do it without you. God is so good to the ministry. All right, Daniel chapter 3 and we’ve been talking about this horrible image that Nebuchadnezzar raised out there on the plains of the Euphrates Valley. No wonder Daniel would rather go to the lions’ den as fall down and worship such a vile, immoral image. All right, verse 6, Nebuchadnezzar puts out a decree. Daniel 3:6-7A “And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth (this image) shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. (Okay, I’m sorry. I said lions’ den. This is into the fiery furnace, first.) 7. Therefore at that time,…” At the time when the decree goes out through the whole empire that everyone now has to pay homage to this image that’s been raised by ole Nebuchadnezzar. Now like I showed you, three score cubits—that’s 60 and 30; that’s about 90 feet tall. And six cubits across, so it’s quite a humongous thing. Verse 7: Daniel 3:7a “Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of…(I’m not going to list all the music.)…and all kinds of music, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped…”Now I know that not everybody from every nation was there. But like we saw earlier, it was their governmental representatives. It’s just like when we have a big deal in Washington, whether it’s the funeral of an ex-president or like on inauguration day. Everyone on earth sends representatives. I think that’s what we’ve got pictured here. It isn’t that everybody on earth was there, but all their representatives, all their government wheels. Daniel 3:7b-8 “…the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. 8. Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, (Now remember what the Chaldeans were. They were the top dogs of all the soothsayers. They were sort of a little click all their own.) the Chaldeans came near, and accused the Jews.” Now don’t lose sight of the fact that the Jews had been taken out of their homeland several years previous to all this. They’ve now been relocated to the country of Babylon, which is present day Iraq. All right, so these Jews, not just Daniel and his three friends, but probably multitudes of them, were not taking part in bowing down to this image. Now, I think it bears repeating. In one of our previous programs after we started the Book of Daniel, there were two reasons that God used Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians to invade and defeat the Israelites and take them captive to Babylon for seventy years. The first one, you remember, was they had not kept the seven year sabbatical. This meant that from the time they went in and occupied the land under Joshua, they were to let the productive part of Israel, that is the farmland and the orchards and what have you, to lie fallow every seventh year. It was called the sabbatical year. But they never did. For four hundred and ninety years they never kept a single sabbatical. So what did God say? I’m going to get it! So He uprooted them, and the land lay utterly desolate and unproductive for 70 years. But the other major reason for God dealing so drastically with Israel was they had fallen so far into idolatry—unbelievable—in spite of all the warnings. Now, let’s go back where we left off in the last program. I’d been debating whether to go back and finish that or not. But let’s go back to Deuteronomy chapter 7; because, you see, this is so intrinsic in our understanding of how God does, or why God does, the things that He does. Well, it’s not because He was unkind or that He was ruthless. But He had to control the behavior of the human race some way or other. #LesFeldick #BibleStudy #Bible