The Word This Week #22

The Word This Week #22
December 25, 2011
Sunday, PM
Shining In the Darkness

      In Jeremiah 24, the Lord shows Jeremiah two baskets of figs, one good, and the other very bad. The good figs represented those that followed God, and the bad figs were those that did not. Jerusalem had become so steeped in idolatry, that God had left the city:
(Ezek. 10:3-4, 11:1, 23).
      In Daniel 1 we read that Daniel was a prince, living in the king’s house in Jerusalem, and was taken captive to Babylon. The king of Babylon chose Daniel with three other young men to live in the king’s palace, and learn the customs and language of the Babylonians.
 The king of Babylon desired these Hebrew captives to be fed from his own table. This was the best food and drink that Babylon had to offer. The king of Babylon wanted Daniel and the other Hebrews to look to him for their sustenance and for their survival. Daniel and his friends refused the king’s food and drink. Daniel 1:8 states that Daniel “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank…”
      The Babylonians gave Daniel and these three other young men new Babylonian names.The word ‘name’ means ‘nature’. The Babylonians wanted to change the very natures of who these young men were. They wanted them to forget their Hebrew heritage and the God they believed in, and become immersed in the customs and religion of Babylon.
      Babylon was a very dark place spiritually. God sent the ‘good figs’ there as captives to shine the light of God into this spiritually darkened place. Daniel’s firm stand for God lasted through the reign of four kings. His influence lasted over hundreds of years, even to the advent of the Messiah, and worked to preserve the life of God’s Son during His sojourn in Egypt.
       God has placed us in an ever darkening world to act as lights for him, and to influence the lives of others for him by maintaining a firm  determination not to become defiled with the attitudes, customs and things of this world, even though they may seem pleasant.
     Just as Daniel’s separations prepared the way for God’s Son, by virtue of his influence, what happens today prepares us for tomorrow.