Northside Church - Sydney
EXPATS Week 3: Kingdom Hope
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Before you ask, yes, it is back. It is back. I have had it confirmed chatting to one of our Northside young adults who works for Target, SodaStream is making a comeback. I know. I know. Praise Jesus. And why this is so exciting for a guy like me, because if you're from my era, my vintage, as a kid, you're always stuck with this bland stuff called water. And it was always every kid's dream and ambition to be able to turn their water almost like Jesus did something that came into this beautiful stuff called Coke. And if only we had a SodaStream, we'd be able to infuse into our drinks, fears and a freshness and a power and an effervescence into our drinks, it was a mystery, right? It was a mystery. How? Where did this stuff come from? Now, as we continue this series called Expats, we have been coming to see throughout the Bible that it's part of God's plan that he takes his people and he goes and plants them into often hostile or indifferent types of territories as far as faith in him comes. And so he calls those people to live lives that are distinct and the question that keeps popping up for all of us is if we read through this is, well, how does that happen? How do I live a life that allows me to remain calm in the face of a boss who might be a bully? How do I stay bold in the face of ridicule? How do I exhibit radical generosity when everyone out there seems to be for themselves? How do I muster the courage to even share my faith with the person next to me? The thing that God gave me this week is that it's probably not just about following the example of a mighty man like Daniel. And after last week's example in Daniel, chapter one, he stands up to the great King Nebuchadnezzar. I'm thinking, who really, really does that in their faith life, right? We struggle with this sort of stuff. And so I thought tonight, this passage, and you're really what it's saying to us is you need a spiritual fizz. You need spiritual effervescence. You need spiritual power. You need the God that is the great soda stream to inject that into your life. Somehow I'm going to get that out of this Bible passage from the Old Testament. You watch. If you want to read with me, it's going to be Daniel, chapter two, verses 27 through 2, 35. And basically what's happening here, it's a couple of years on from the time in which Daniel decided not to eat the King's food. Remember it wasn't because there was no explicit rule about not eating the food. It was because he just felt he was going to be crossing a line. Now he said another point in which he feels like he's going to have to cross a line. The King's had this incredible dream, doesn't know what it means, and in walks Daniel. The King asked Daniel, all so-called Belchers are, are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it? Daniel replied, "No wise man in chantum, a magician, or diviner can explain to the King the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries." And he has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that pass through your mind as you lay on your bed are these. As you were lying there, a king, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. And as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I've got greater wisdom than the other living men, but so that you, O King, may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind. You looked, O King, and there before you stood a large statue, an enormous dazzling statue, awesome in appearance, and the head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly out of iron and partly of bait clay, and while you're not watching a rock was cut out, but not by human hands, it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them, and then the iron and the clay were bronze, and the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer, the wind swept them away without leaving a trace, but the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. Now you might be wondering too tonight, why have I got a mentos on my chair? Are you trying to tell us, Sam, that we've all got bad breath or something like that? Am I trying to facilitate a bit more conversation at church? No, I want you to do an experiment for me a bit later on, but we'll get into that in a minute. First, we've got to understand what his dream is about, don't you have those sorts of dreams all the time, big golden statues? And really when I came to this passage tonight, as you approach the book of Daniel, you can think of it this way, why don't we take these amazing Bible characters and look at how they show us how to live our lives. And part of what I saw through this passage, this is not so much a passage about two characters, Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel, as it is a passage about two kingdoms, two kingdoms, the kingdom of man or humanity and the kingdom of God. In other words, the kingdom of bland is like the kingdom of man, and then you've got the kingdom of pop, which if you're American means soda, and that rhymes with God, so that's as close as I'll get to it, but you get what I'm saying, is that nothing overly hermeneutical and what I'm saying tonight, it's just, it rhymes. But what did the dream mean when we first look at the kingdom of man or the kingdom of bland? You see many interpreters look at this passage and they try and interpret it in all sorts of different ways. Oh, the dream meant all these things, they try and piece it together. Yeah, you know, each of the bits of the statue was a certain empire, the Babylonian Empire and the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire, and they sort of match everything backwards and say that they're all these empires that would fall and this was what God was predicting and we saw that Rome fell to the Christians and therefore this is what he was prophesying. That's a bit too difficult for me, I think it was simpler than that. In fact, I think the first thing is Nebuchadnezzar knows it's simpler than that. Look at his reaction to the dream, a couple of verses 2, 5 and 12 from this passage, in the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams and his mind was troubled and so he couldn't sleep. Then in verse 5 he says, "If you don't tell me what my dream was, I'll have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble." 12, this made the king so angry and furious that he ordered the execution of all the wise men in Babylon. You know what this guy needs? A chill pill. He needs 500 milligrams of Chalaxan. If there was such a drug, why was this guy so anxious? Why was he flippin' out? Why was he goin' crazy? I'll kill all these wise men's. I think it's because of many of the dreams more obvious than we think. You see, it's so obvious that the king already knows what it means. You know, what's the dazzling figure? Let's have a look through here. Verse 32, "The head of the statue was made of pure gold. It's chest and arms of silver, it's belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet partly of baked clay." You see, the dazzling figure from this dream, it wasn't the real dream that Nebuchadnezz Nebuchadnezzar had. You see, if you want to go and flick through the book of Daniel, you'll see that he had a much bigger and grand dream, a dream that he would build a statue like this. He would build a figure that would see him as glorious and marvelous in his great colossus that would stand across the plains of Babylon and exercise his wonderful power. He'd already had a dream and it was a dream of his kingdom, the kingdom of bland, the kingdom of man, and don't all of us in some way before we come and meet God have dreams like that. We come here and we dream of all the great things that we're going to do in our lives and all the great successes that we're going to have and all the things that we're going to do and the great things that I'm going to study and we start building these statues in our lives. You see, the overarching story of the Bible all the time is that people in the kingdom of bland are always building statues. I mean, what about the person who's obsessed with working out at the gym all the time and how they look at a building? Muscles know they're building statues of beauty and self-reliance. What about the person who's obsessed with what everyone else thinks about them? They're building statues of reputation. What about the person who is obsessed with money and what their bank account looks like? You know what they're doing? They're building a statue of security, financial security. Family God, we're always building statues. We've all got the same sort of dream. So while our dreams are not that much different from Nebuchadnezzar in quality, they are in quantity. He just had big dreams, but it's the same stuff as his. So yet, you know, this king dreams of building a statue. He was rich in powerful, probably one of the top 10 in the history of powerful men and yet something as small as a dream still upsets him. Why is that? It's because his dream breaks into his life and it says, "Your life ain't as solid as you think it is." Breaks in and says, "Look at it, this silly rock comes down, verse 34, "It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and it smashed him." He's saying, "Your statue looks great at top with his gold and head, but it's flimsy, it's fragile, it's built on feet of clay." You see now why he was so anxious? Get why he was flipping out, he needed to chill out. You see, what God was saying to Nebuchadnezzar in his dream and what he's saying to us is that when you build your dream on anything other than him, you're going to get butterflies. You know, that sick, sort of, nauseous feeling, you know, like you're going down a roller coast at 24 hours a day. You ever had that sense of anxiety and churning inside and nervousness and now biting feeling. When you build your dream on something other than God, that's what happens. That's the telltale. So, can you see why he went off the deep end? You see, because what we worry about and often how often we worry often reveals who we think is really in control of the world. And when we think we're in control, then things start to feel a little flimsy. Nebuchadnezzar was trying to build his own kingdom and the first, for the first time, this mighty king realized that he wasn't the ultimate king, that this dream had broken in. And there's a house that I'll put it. He was trying to soda pop, soda stream his own life. He was trying to inject in this power and this effervescence and this life into his life through his dream and through the statue and he just knew it doesn't quite work that way, right? So, the question for us tonight is which kingdom are you building as your foundation? We sort of worry in the Christian life about what we do and how we do it and how we live the lives of faith as unbelievers, as believers in an unbelieving world. And really the question is, are you secretly building a statue for yourself? Who's the one that you'll look dazzling at the end of your life's works? You know, is it going to be you or is it going to be God? Why are you doing what you're doing? And so here's the many of the dream that is, it's really the question, is your foundation in the kingdom of land, in the kingdom of man, in, in, in, in, in, in sort of self-stature building, everyone's building someone's kingdom, are you dreaming about your own? That's the kingdom of man. And then we come to the other kingdom, you see, that's what we see here in the Bible. What are Michael Jackson and God having common? They're both the king of pop. And Holy Spirit revealed here tonight, guys, and don't blame me, I'm just a messenger. Look, that is God is the great soda string, guys. God is God is the one that has the power to inject his life and his power and this effervescence into your life. And that is the second kingdom of the story and it's symbolized by the rock. You know, verse 35 and 44, but the rock that struck the stretch, struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. And in the time of those kings, the God of heaven, this is in verse 44, we'll set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end but it itself will endure forever. You see, the kingdom of God is a bit like the coke and the spotter, right? You see, first and foremost, look, I don't know about you, but did you ever wonder where these bubbles come from as a kid? It was always a mystery, it always kept me so entertained when I go around to a family do or Christmas and I would watch these things float out of the middle of nowhere and I'm thinking, how did it get there? Before I went and did science class and just realized it was carbon dioxide. But aside from that, to me at the time it was supernatural. It was different, it was a mystery, and in verse 34 he says that it was a rock that was cut not by human hands, in other words, this kingdom that God is talking about is something that is not of this world. It's like these mysterious bubbles that just pop up all the time. It's from the outside, a power from the outside that is infused into the world around us. The other thing and the reason why the kingdom is a bit like this coke bottle here, this kingdom of pop is that the very power within it is not that valuable. Like if you haven't heard, we've got a problem called global warming at the moment. And really that's a result of an excessive amount of carbon dioxide in the air. And when I did science class, these bubbles are carbon dioxide. So why don't they just tell people to just make a whole heap of fizzy drink and where the whole problem is going to be solved? You see carbon dioxide is free, it's free, it's not a value and it's the same way that God's kingdom works in this world. It's not flashy, it's not fancy, it's not easily visible and tangible. It's not of any value. In fact, Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom." This free, non-flashy, run-of-the-mill power. Now look at the progression biblically, let me get a biblical for you if you can't handle the pop analogy here. The progression, the gold, the silver, the iron, the clay, can you see the various ways in which the various value of these metals were coming down in the dream. And so even iron and clay would have been mixed together, it would have been some value when getting that mixed together. But this rock, rock does nothing, just came out of nowhere. And so God uses the dream to show us that his kingdom is not in anything that this world has as far as value and flashiness is concerned. So it's supernatural, but it's also not that valuable by the world's standards. The third one is that it grows over time. It says, "But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. And in the time of those kings of God, a heaven will set up a kingdom that will be never destroyed or left on other people." It became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. It means the kingdom has already begun, even in Daniel's time, and it starts to grow. It starts to grow. And so what we get there is that the now, but not yet of the kingdom, we hear that all the time in the various gospels and in Paul's theology, there's now, but not yetness. And look, understanding the now, but not yetness of God is absolutely critical if you're going to be an effective believer in an unbelieving world. And here's why. It's got to do with hope. And Christian hope is not whimsical, it's not wishful thinking, but it's an assurance and conviction. You see Christians. I don't know if you've noticed Christians in your life that are going through hardship and pain, but they seem to have this incredible, unique resource to be able to deal with the hardships and the suffering and the trials and the things that they're hitting them and thinking, "How the heck are they getting through that?" It's because Christians in their God, they see that their future, the love of God and the righteousness of God and justice and right relationship and peace and power, they see their future. Christians know their future has broken into their present. They see that in relationship with one another and in the church and they know that their Kingdom of God is now, but it's not quite yet, it's got to grow. That's what the rock was saying before, and what does it mean for us to we just sit back and enjoy? I mean, just let the Kingdom do its thing. What does the now, but not yetness mean? I mean, like if I shook this bottle really up like this and then I went and twisted. Why are you guys getting so nervous? You see, nothing's happened but there's power now, there's power not yet, there's power now but there's power not yet, you see, until something comes in and changes the whole system and catalyzes and unlocks and realises that potential, we live in the now, but not yet, and we can experience the power of the now in that regard. And so, look, you've been wondering, what is this mentos all about? Any of you who are sort of under the age of 25 and at university probably have done this so far, but it's a little thing called the mentos experiment. And that's going to be by charge to you is go and look this up on YouTube because I'm not going to demonstrate it for sake of my job here and as a team member with a church that is a conference centre, but apparently if you go and drop a mentos into a Coke bottle, Diet Coke even does it even better, the whole thing explodes. It just, it goes nuts, the stream goes way up into the air, myth busters even did it, so it's real, it's factual, it goes to be through it all, so I'm preaching it, I'm preaching truth here tonight, but you see, what does the mentos do? The mentos acts as a catalyst, as a trigger for this unimaginable untapped power and resource. And so what it's saying to us tonight is that there is a power in the kingdom of God, but it needs a catalyst. And so that's what the gospel is, what's why I call it tonight, the gospel according to the mentos experiment, because God is a great soda stream and they're back, you know, so he's obviously given it his blessing and he's infused the world around us with a supernatural and an unexplainable and an intangible and a non-valuable power, the world is just infused with it. And then he goes along and he drops his son into the mix. Jesus Christ, the great mentos began, a catalyst, like a mentos in the diet coke bottle, the whole place began to explode, the lame were walking, the blind could see and the sick were healed, you know, and it wasn't just about his miracles, it wasn't. What was his message? You know, believe in me for the forgiveness of sins or do your duty and maybe God will bless you or live hard or pray hard or you better be good. Just because no, it was because his message was no repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. God is so to stream the world. This incredible untapped power is right in front of your face, he's saying the kingdom is now, it's here, this mysterious effervescence is right in front of your face and you don't even know it. In that sense, anyone who calls themselves a Christian is the great catalyst, is a mentos in the diet coke bottle that is the world around us and that is he calls you and I tonight church to be a catalyst, a catalyst for love, a catalyst for love in a world that can be so self-centered, a catalyst for peace in a world that can seem to be at each other's throats so much, right? The catalyst for patience when in a world that's got an appetite and for instant satisfaction and gratification, that's our hope, that's our kingdom hope. That we may witness all the good things of God progressively emerging as a powerful reality in the lives of a sister or a workmate or a friend that we want to see, just come to know that in a new and a fresh way. It's the kingdom of pop, the king of pop, it's powerful but it's not yet. It needs a catalyst to unlock that and God calls you into that tonight. Let's finish with a reflection on how this whole thing ends. You see in verse 47, the king said to Daniel, "Surely your God is the God of God's and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries for you were able to reveal this mystery." Then it goes on a couple of verses later, listen to this, this incredible declaration by Nebuchadnezzarie then, a couple of verses later, chapter 3, "King Nebuchadnezzar then went and made an image of gold, 90 feet high and 9 feet wide and set it up on the plane of Dura in the province of Babylon." You see that? The dream was this incredible shot across the bow of Nebuchadnezzar, so much he says he fell prostrate in front of Daniel and said, "Your God is the God of all gods and yet he was impressed but it was not enough to convert his heart." What it shows to us tonight guys is you can still get new information about God and it not impact your life. You can still think God is amazing and incredible and it doesn't impact your life. You can still think he is amazing but it won't change you why or at least in Nebuchadnezzar's case, the dream of the statue was more dazzling and it got the better of him and he built it anyway and so guys, his story is a shot across our bow to night. You have a choice, a choice in the kingdom of land or the kingdom of pop and I'm going to ask you tonight, are you statue building, are you building your kingdom of God's kingdom? And if you're asking, well how do I know whether I'm doing that or not, I'm trying to be a good Christian, I'm trying to live the life, look, in simple terms are there butterflies? Deep down is there a nervousness and anxiety, a restlessness in knowing that what you're building your life on is just flimsy and fragile and clay-like. Guys, if you have got that feeling, I'm not going to prescribe you Chalaxane or any other form of drugs in that sense, I'm just going to ask you tonight to go and take it with you and to have a Mentos. If you haven't already eaten it, who's already eaten it? They're all the unspiritual ones, there's the life application for the message tonight. Hey, I'll give you another one, but go, go out into the world and be the Diet Coke Mentos bottle experiment this week. Be a catalyst for change into the unimaginable, untappable power of God in that sense and watch it unleash around you. Your job this week is just to catalyze a potential energy that it's in a hand in the kingdom of God through prayer, through humility, through a holy spirit. Your job is to recognize that the real battle that's taking place in this world is not non-Christian versus Christian, but kingdom versus kingdom. It's bigger than us guys, it's way bigger than us guys, and as Christians that gives us incredible confidence that God is the one at the helm in all of this. But I also speak tonight to the friend here that is just checking all of this God stuff out. You see, so does stream. You see that ad from the 80s and you think, "I want a bit of that, I want to be fizzy on the inside, I want effervescence, I want power in my life," you know, that can be available to you in the same way that it works in a world that can work in your life. You've just got to drop a mentos into your life, you've got to drop the original spiritual mentos in your life and that is Jesus Christ. By asking him into your life through faith, through prayer with us at the back of the auditorium this evening, do you want that, do you want that power that's available to you? How do we live as believers in an unbelieving world? How do we muster up the courage, the stay true with bosses that bully us around? How do we stay true and muster up the courage to share our faith with the person next to us? It's not just about following the examples of Dan Hill, but to understand through the power of God, the great soda stream that it is power we need, we need spiritual fears, spiritual energy, spiritual mysteries, spiritual effervescence, spiritual power. May you experience that week through his power in the Holy Spirit, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that every time we come to your word, our minds are taken to a picture that is just far beyond us, Lord. Father, we recognize tonight that we have stepped into, as we've seen in the baptisms tonight, into the greatest adventure that anyone could ever step into. In that sense tonight, Father, we help each and every one of us recognize our role and our responsibility as catalysts for change in our world. Father, may we rest in the confidence that need not be in our own strength, but Father, you have primed this world through your kingdom, and you're at the ready, Father, to unleash your love and your mercy and your grace and your power, each and every one of our places, whether it be at home or at work, in the school ground, in the university, in the neighborhood. It's just got to be a faith journey, Father, we've got to ask you to open up those opportunities for us this week. It's the only way it's going to happen. Father tonight, for those that want that fear, that energy, for those that are feeling down, lacking that power tonight, whether they call themselves a Christian or they yet to experience that power in their life, Father, it is pray that you might meet them tonight through your Holy Spirit. They might get your kingdom in a new and a fresh, tangible way. Be with us this week, Father. Empower us, power us through your Holy Spirit. We pray these things now in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm in.