On Sunday, Mandy rounded off our series on Daniel, covering the final three chapters all in just over 25 minutes. If you’ve not yet had chance to listen you’ll find it here: https://youtu.be/olicvR_7pRI If you prefer to listen to podcasts then don’t forget to check out the Listen Again page here: https://www.c-b-c.org.uk/Index.asp?MainID=26240 You can subscribe so that our sermons will automatically arrive on your listening device of choice on a Monday - as if by magic!
Now that we’ve come to the end of Daniel – how did you find it? Is this the first time you’ve engaged with chapters 7-12? Have you learnt anything through the talks and home group questions? Are you going to miss the Old Testament just a little bit as we head back into the New Testament for the spring and summer terms? If you’ve ever wondered why Holiday Clubs only ever look at the first half of Daniel – now you know.
On Sunday, Mandy started with two New Testament verses:
Romans 15:4 – “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.”
And 2 Timothy 3:16 – “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”
Both of these verses flag up the importance of all of the Bible – not just the nice bits, the exciting bits or the bits that we agree with. That’s one of the reasons why we follow the cycle: Old Testament, Gospels, rest of the New Testament – during the autumn, spring and summer terms respectively here at CBC. The Bible is a big book and we could quite easily have avoided preaching on Daniel 7-12 altogether.
Part of our vision here at CBC is about discipleship – about each us growing as disciples of Jesus, becoming more like him and seeing our lives transformed. Hopefully a part of that process means that we are less intimidated by passages of the Bible such as Daniel 7-12.
So, how do you react when you come across passages like these – whether here in Daniel, or in Revelation or maybe something from Ezekiel?
One of the problems we have is that modern life does not really equip us for reading the Bible properly. If you’re anything like me, life is lived far too fast and we’ve been trained, since school, to read as quickly as possible to extract the knowledge that we need in order to answer the question that has been set – in the minimum amount of time. And we fall into this trap with our Bible reading. We scan the verses looking for the nugget of truth that God wants us to know for today – and we may even use Bible notes because they’ll give us the answer without us having to think about it – and we can be done and dusted within 10 minutes. Tick the box. Move on. Repeat tomorrow.
Please don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against Bible reading notes. They are incredibly helpful, and a resource that I often recommend people use. And of course, when used properly, 10 minutes is never enough.
Preaching, or offering to lead a Bible study at Home Group, is a great way to get to understand the Bible better. Something about the thought of having to talk about a passage or answer questions on it tends to focus the mind. And the process involves reading the passage through lots of times, writing down lots of questions as you read, praying for God’s guidance and wisdom, finding links to other parts of the Bible and writing down a few thoughts. Then, if you’ve got a study Bible or similar, you might want to read what other people have said. You never know – you might actually find the answers to some of the questions you wrote down at the beginning.
So, the next time you come across a passage that you don’t understand, put your Bible down, go and make a cup of coffee, and then settle down with your Bible for a bit longer than normal. Pray – asking to meet God in the passage. And then read it through slowly a few times. I’m not promising you’ll be any the wiser at the end of the process but why not try it and see what happens.
