Living Water Community Church

Episode 173: Daniel 11:21-35 The Detailed Portrait of an Antichrist

All of the precision in how the prophecies play out point to the precise nature of God’s knowledge and control over the events which are yet to come to pass. We can trust a God who has a plan and is bringing all He plans to pass. All of history centers on the promise of the coming man who will crush the serpents head. The man who will establish a kingdom which will never end. The man who is not only the Messiah but also God’s only beloved Son. We continue to work through this really precise prophetic declaration by the angel of the Lord. We don’t serve a God who only has the big picture in mind. He is not just fixed on the big points of history. He knows all the details and all of those details work together to exalt the person and work of Jesus for eternity. This means our hope rests not in blind faith or not yet fulfilled promises. Our faith rests in our faithful God who sent His only begotten Son to be our substitutionary sacrifice. He paid the penalty for our specific sins so we would never have to pay that penalty. He died in our place so we would never have to die the second death. He lived a righteous and holy life so we could be made righteous and holy in God’s sight. All of history is truly His Story.

Episode 172: Worship: What we are required to know in order to worship (Part 5)

We will continue to look at an additional fundamental aspects of God’s nature. As worshippers these things help us to worship Him properly. Isaiah was prophet who had ministered during the time of king Uzziah. Notice how the opening verse here takes place in the year king Uzziah died. Uzziah was mourned by the people as a great king even though toward the end of his reign he had become prideful and ultimately died of leprosy for his prideful acts. Given the context of king Uzziah’s death Isaiah going to the temple was probably to seek comfort and wisdom in a time of national and personal grief. Instead of comfort Isaiah has a life altering vision.  The vision begins in verse one with I saw the Lord. The word translated as Lord is the word Adonai and it is used to refer to a sovereign or king. The picture this is painting is the king is dead but Isaiah is confronted with the fact there is still a king on the throne. The ultimate king of Israel has not stopped being king. He is sitting on a throne which is high and lifted up.

Episode 171: Daniel 11:1-20 God Knows Everything Everywhere All The Time

We worked through the first part of Daniel 11. It seems very much like an interesting prophetic passage with lots of what appears to be generic odd indecipherable references. Yet as the angel declares these things and we look in history at what took place it becomes really clear the angel of the Lord was declaring for Daniel things which quite literally came to pass. On top of this the things which happened all happened in sequential order following the order laid out by the angel. There are declarations in here which match up with kings daughters who were married off for potential alliances. In both cases what appeared to be a power move was either cut off by the death of the princess or the queens loyalty changed from her father to her new husband. Both of these things are clearly prophetically declared to Daniel. There is even a reference to a king who essentially does nothing significant. The section we looked at wrapped up with the story of Antiochus III. He conquered Egypt gave his daughter to the Egyptian king with hope of her extending his power of Egypt but it did not work out this way. Antiochus then began to conquer the coastlands here he encountered the growing might of Rome. Ultimately he returns to his own land where he dies not at the hands of an enemy but of an angry mob. His son arises to rule but ends up being poisoned by a man he appoints to collect tribute for Rome from the people. All of the precision in how the prophecies play out point to the precise nature of God’s knowledge and control over the events which are yet to come to pass. We can trust a God who has a plan and is bringing all He plans to pass. All of history centers on the promise of the coming man who will crush the serpents head. The man who will establish a kingdom which will never end. The man who is not only the Messiah but also God’s only beloved Son.

Episode 170: Luke 2:25-35 Marveling at the Incarnation

I want us to look at our main passage today as a starting point for exploring the what is essentially a event we should never come to feel like we completely understand. On the one hand it is simple to explain. God entered into our world and became one of us. On the other hand the implications of that statement should arrest our thoughts. Why? Because we are human. Because we can perceive our own limits. We should marvel at what God did. We know if we put too much of anything into our bodies they essentially overload and die. Too much water and you drown. Too much heat and you die of dehydration or burning. Too much cold and you freeze to death. Too much electricity and your heart seizes up and you are electrocuted. The list could go on and on but I think you get the picture. So think about what the incarnation is putting before us. God the maker of the universe. The one who called our thermonuclear sun into existence with the word of His power on the fourth day and not only our sun but every sun and and every expression of power in the universe. The God whose power was not diminished in any way by the act of creating the universe entered into the womb of a young woman and became a holy embryo. He appeared to be a normal man but He contained within Himself all the power to sustain the universe. God entered into our world and became one of us just doesn’t do justice to the magnitude of what took place. It is the greatest hero story in the history of the world and it is true! Jesus contained within His human frame more power than all the suns in all the galaxies in the universe.

Episode 169: Daniel 10:1-21 Essential and Dependent Agents of Jesus

We worked through chapter ten of Daniel which is really the first part of the section which ends in chapter twelve. In the last chapter we saw an amazing testimony to the reality of spiritual warfare. Daniel had been fasting from meat and wine and other delicacies for three weeks. He describes himself as in mourning. There is an angel which appears to Daniel and the contents of his message tell us Daniel must have been mourning over his fellow Israelites who were in captivity. The angel starts out by describing how he had been delayed by the prince of Persia for twenty-one days. Michael had come to help and this seems to be the reason this angel finally got through. The scene we see play out between this angel and Daniel sounds very much like the scene between Paul and Jesus on the road to Damascus and also has aspects of the meeting between Jesus and John at the beginning of the book of Revelation. Is this just another angel or is this the appearance of a pre-incarnate Jesus. If this is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus it tells us something of the nature of spiritual warfare. There must be great power on display in the heavens. There appears to be a recognition of authority over regions on the earth, because he talks about the prince of the kingdom of Persia and the kings of Persia withstanding him. This doesn’t mean these beings are more powerful than a pre-incarnate Jesus but it would simply mean there is a regional right they were asserting which God Himself recognized, and these beings as angels had to work through. This also tells us God will do whatever it takes to get to his own and to respond to their prayers. This angel’s appearance is majestic and magnificent. Daniel’s response is to be undone and unable to speak or respond. The angel’s touch is enough to strengthen Daniel and remove his guilt before the angel. Again these actions seem to be pointing to this being a pre-incarnate manifestation of Jesus. The angel tells Daniel he is going to tell him the message he came to deliver and then return to fight the prince of Persia and how when he goes the prince of Greece will come. I personally believe the angel speaking here is a true Christophany.