Daniel 1: The Setting and the Situation

Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship with the church body of Eastern Hills to those of you in the room and to those of you online. I’d like to take a second and say thanks to those who serve on our Safety & Security Ministry. They are the first faces people meet when they arrive on campus on Sundays, they make sure ice melt is put on slippery spots, and they they help protect our vehicles while we’re in here during the morning.

If you are visiting with us today, we would like to know that you are here this morning, and so we’d ask you to take a moment during service and fill out a welcome card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. We want to be able to thank you for your visit, and find out if you have any questions or if you need any prayer. You can get the card back to us in one of two ways: you can drop it in the offering boxes by the doors as you leave at the close of service; or better yet, you can bring it down to me when service is over, because I would love to meet you and give you a small gift to say thanks for your visit this morning.

I just have one thing to mention before we get into our study this morning.

Announcements

LMCO ($26,164.12) In our video we’re about to see, you’ll hear about the Graham family and their experience in Kuwait at the time of the Gulf War, and how God worked during the Week of Prayer during the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering in 1990 to involve millions of believers in their experience.

LMCO Video: “Can I Trust You?”

Please pray and ask the Lord how he would have you give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this month. We’ll take it through the month of January.

Opening: Why Daniel?

I’m really excited to kick off our next sermon series this morning! We’re going to begin a verse-by-verse look at the book of Daniel beginning today, and if the outline and plan stay the way they are now, we will cover the entire book by September 1. I know, September seems like forever away, but I believe that this study is going to challenge us in perhaps some surprising ways. I landed on preaching through Daniel as I was praying and studying in the early part of last year, and I was reminded about how similar Daniel’s context was to our own (something I’ll explain more in a minute). This means that the book of Daniel has a lot to teach us about what it means to live a life of faith, and to walk with God in the midst of temptation, difficulty, and persecution.

And not only that, but the book of Daniel has a lot to say about the ultimate victory of God. The book is called Daniel, and was written by Daniel, and has Daniel as its central human figure. But make no mistake: the hero of the book of Daniel is God Almighty, Yahweh, the One in whom Daniel has placed his faith, and who then empowered Daniel to do the things that the book records.

My goal for this series is to help us connect the dots of the Scriptures to see where they connect with Daniel, as we seek to deepen our understanding of the Lord and His work, and to strengthen or restore our faith, or even to call us to faith for the first time as we see the thread pointing to Jesus running through the book. We have an exciting path before us!

So let’s dive in at the very beginning. Let’s open our Bibles or Bible apps and stand as we are able in honor of God’s holy Word as we read the first seven verses of Daniel:

Daniel 1:1–7 CSB

1 In the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. 2 The Lord handed King Jehoiakim of Judah over to him, along with some of the vessels from the house of God. Nebuchadnezzar carried them to the land of Babylon, to the house of his god, and put the vessels in the treasury of his god. 3 The king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility—4 young men without any physical defect, good-looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive, and capable of serving in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the Chaldean language and literature. 5 The king assigned them daily provisions from the royal food and from the wine that he drank. They were to be trained for three years, and at the end of that time they were to attend the king. 6 Among them, from the Judahites, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. 7 The chief eunuch gave them names; he gave the name Belteshazzar to Daniel, Shadrach to Hananiah, Meshach to Mishael, and Abednego to Azariah.

PRAYER (Trust, and pray for Christians in Nigeria who have been facing extreme persecution since just before Christmas—over 140 killed)

Knowing biblical history and how it ties together is a big help in understanding Scripture. Because of the organization of our Bibles, we might forget where things fit in the overall timeline of Israel’s history. The book of Daniel is kind of far removed in our Scriptures from the history books of Kings and Chronicles, and so we might have a hard time placing him in the frame of the overall narrative of the Bible.

The story that the book of Daniel contains actually starts well before Daniel comes onto the scene of history. Way back in the book of Genesis, we find its beginnings (we read about it this week in our church Bible Reading Plan): Founded by the great hunter Nimrod just one generation after the great flood, the city that would be called Babylon (also referred to as Babel) began to worship themselves, forgetting about God and instead trying to make a name for themselves through the greatness of the city. At the time, everyone spoke the same language, so collaborating was easy, and thus the work progressed to create the great city of Babylon. But the Lord came down and frustrated their designs for their own glory by confusing their language so they would not understand each other, and thus, they were scattered. The word “Babylon” actually means “confusion.”

We don’t really hear much about Babylon as a city or nation after that until 2 Kings chapter 20. During the reign of King Hezekiah over the Southern Kingdom of Judah (the Northern Kingdom of Israel had fallen in 722 BC), he became deathly ill, and cried out to the Lord for healing. God heard his prayer and healed him, however, the Prince of Babylon at the time sent a gift and get-well note to Hezekiah, and the King of Judah foolishly showed the Babylonian envoys all of his wealth and treasure. After that, Isaiah the prophet (yes, the same Isaiah as the book of Isaiah) gave him this prophecy:

2 Kings 20:16–18 CSB

16 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: 17 ‘Look, the days are coming when everything in your palace and all that your predecessors have stored up until today will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the Lord. 18 ‘Some of your descendants—who come from you, whom you father—will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ ”

This prophecy was given in about 700 BC. For nearly a century, this message lay dormant. Judah went through a couple of largely terrible kings: Manasseh and Amon, followed by probably the best king since David: Josiah. Josiah’s successor (Jehoahaz) reigned for only three months, and then his brother Jehoiakim became king in around 609 BC.

Shortly thereafter in 605 BC, the nation of Babylon attacked Jerusalem, beginning the fulfillment of this prophecy, as we see in 2 Kings chapter 24:

2 Kings 24:1–2 CSB

1 During Jehoiakim’s reign, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked. Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years, and then he turned and rebelled against him. 2 The Lord sent Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against Jehoiakim. He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord he had spoken through his servants the prophets.

Babylon would attack Jerusalem again in 597 BC, and then the Isaiah prophecy would be completely fulfilled in 586 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar brought about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and carried away all remaining wealth from the city.

So with that backdrop of history in mind, we need to connect a couple of other dots. First: Daniel and Jeremiah were contemporaries. According to Jeremiah 1, Jeremiah began prophesying during Josiah’s reign, and prophesied until the fall of Judah in 586 BC during Zedekiah’s reign (and afterwards, the book of Lamentations). Daniel almost certainly knew who Jeremiah was given how much trouble Jeremiah got in with Jehoiakim and the rest of the officials of Judah. However, Jeremiah was substantially older than Daniel, so he likely didn’t know the much younger man. But both of them lived through the various stages of Judah’s defeat, and much of Jeremiah’s prophecy relates to the things that Daniel was experiencing, and even includes Daniel himself as part of the collective of captives in Babylon.

Ezekiel and Daniel were also alive at the same time, and both were in Babylon at the same time, though they were exiled in different waves (Daniel in the first, and Ezekiel in the last) and were in different spheres of Babylonian society. Daniel and Habakkuk were also alive at the same time, but it’s doubtful that they would have known each other. Habakkuk’s prophecy came shortly before the Babylonians’ first attack in 605 BC.

But collectively, the testimony of the history books and the prophets is that Israel went into captivity because of their sin. They refused to listen to the prophets who warned them. They failed to obey the Lord’s instructions and admonitions. They forgot the truth of who God is and who they were as His chosen people, set apart to be different from the nations around them in order to point those nations to God. So God had to bring about their punishment and correction, and He used Babylon to do it.

But the first thing that we see as we step into the book of Daniel is that God is God, and:

1: God is sovereign over our circumstances for His purposes and glory.

As I said in my introduction, we have to keep in mind that God is the true hero and focus of the book of Daniel. Throughout the book, we see how God speaks to Daniel, how He provides in miraculous ways, and even how He puts things in motion so that His glory is revealed. These actions that God takes in Daniel likely looked as if God had somehow neglected His people or that He let His glory be tarnished by defeat. I mean, the Babylonians came in and sacked Jerusalem and took away the best and the brightest in the land. Even God’s temple was not exempt, as the Babylonians took some of the valuable gold utensils and vessels and put them in the treasury of the Babylonian god Marduk. It seems like God was powerless to stop them.

But what we see in the first few verses of our focal passage is that yes, Nebuchadnezzar did come and lay seige to Jerusalem, but we also see that it was God who “handed over” King Jehoiakim and Jerusalem to him because of God’s purposes in correcting His people:

Daniel 1:1–4a (CSB)

But how could the capturing of the young noblemen, probably teens, and their being carted off to Babylon be for God’s glory? How could that fulfill His purposes? We have to remember that God sees the big picture, takes the long view. And what God knew is that Jehoiakim would fail to turn to God, and that he would continue to rebel against Babylon. God knew that Jehoiakim’s son Jehoiachin would be the next king, and that he would commit the same evil as his father had done, and then he would surrender to Nebuchadnezzar and be taken into captivity in the second wave in 597 BC, along with ten thousand others. And God also knew that Nebuchadnezzar would install Jehoiakim’s brother as king and change his name to Zedekiah, and that he would continue to lead Israel away from God, ultimately rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, including the burning of the Lord’s temple, in 586 BC. You can see all of this in 2 Kings 24-25.

Still, you might be wondering: “Bill, how does all of that show God’s glory and purposes? It sounds like everything that happened was bad.” You’re right. It was. But when Jerusalem was destroyed, where were the best and brightest of Israel? They were alive, safe, and well taken care of in Babylon. Where were the articles from the Lord’s temple? Secure in the temple of a god who isn’t real, ready to be returned to Jerusalem when the time came (See Ezra 1). God knew the best place to keep those people and those things safe was in Babylon, because he knew the kings of Israel would continue to refuse to repent and follow Him, and that the destruction of Jerusalem was coming as a result. God used Israel’s enemies to provide the survival of the remnant of His people.

There’s a great passage in Jeremiah that helps us see God’s perspective on this and the plans He had for the future. It’s found in Jeremiah 24:

Jeremiah 24:4–7 CSB

4 The word of the Lord came to me: 5 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Like these good figs, so I regard as good the exiles from Judah I sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. 6 I will keep my eyes on them for their good and will return them to this land. I will build them up and not demolish them; I will plant them and not uproot them. 7 I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God because they will return to me with all their heart.

You see, sometimes our circumstances aren’t what we’d like them to be, but if we believe that God is sovereign and that He is good and that He loves us, then we can trust that even the most trying of circumstances can have profoundly positive outcomes in God’s timing and plan—even if the outcomes are not what we want them to be. We can trust that God’s intended outcomes are better. Our outer circumstances are not an indicator of God’s love for us.

Don’t believe me? Think about Jesus for a moment.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was completely sinless, and yet He was punished for our sins:

1 Peter 2:22–25 CSB

22 He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth; 23 when he was insulted, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

This is the message of the Gospel. It’s only through Jesus’ sacrifice that we can be saved. He died in our place so that we could be restored to a relationship with God. And if we believe in Him, trusting in His sacrifice for our salvation, trusting His wounds to heal us, surrendering to Him as Savior and Lord, then we will be saved.

If Jesus’s outer circumstances during His earthly minstry are all we look at, then from our perspective, it doesn’t very much look like God the Father loves His Son. God let Him be arrested, tried, tortured, crucified, and killed. But we would be so wrong to think this based on those circumstances! Yes, God loves His Son. But He also loves us, and it was only Jesus who could take our place, because only He could be perfect so we could be saved. It was love for us that put Jesus on the cross, so that we could return “to the Shepherd and Overseer of [our] souls.” Do you see how God sees the big picture, and we usually don’t?

And God decided in His sovereignty to allow His people to live in Babylon, even telling them to thrive there:

Jeremiah 29:4–7 CSB

4 This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Find wives for yourselves, and have sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. 7 Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.”

God told His people to thrive in Babylon. And that hasn’t changed, because like the captive remnant of Israel, we live in Babylon—a land of confusion—even today. We are called to live in and thrive in and pray for the world in which we reside. But Babylon is not neutral. The broken and dying world is not a passive, disinterested observer. Instead, we must recognize that we are in the midst of a spiritual war at all times and in all places. The evidence of the book of Daniel is that the Babylonians tried very hard to press Daniel and his friends into a very specific mold: they tried to make them into Babylonians, not Hebrews. We see that same thing today:

2: Babylon wants to press us into its mold.

Just as the Hebrew people were chosen by God in order to be set apart in order to point the world to God, so we are called to the task of reflecting the light of Christ all around us (Matthew 5:14-16). The world in which we live is certainly hostile to Christianity, just as Babylon in the days of Daniel was hostile to the Jews. In fact, it was Nebuchadnezzar’s plan that the young men he captured would learn the Babylonian language, would read Babylonian literature, would serve as Babylonian officials in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, as we see in verses 3-7:

Daniel 1:3–7 CSB

3 The king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility—4 young men without any physical defect, good-looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive, and capable of serving in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the Chaldean language and literature. 5 The king assigned them daily provisions from the royal food and from the wine that he drank. They were to be trained for three years, and at the end of that time they were to attend the king. 6 Among them, from the Judahites, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. 7 The chief eunuch gave them names; he gave the name Belteshazzar to Daniel, Shadrach to Hananiah, Meshach to Mishael, and Abednego to Azariah.

The goal was to make these Hebrew boys into Babylonian men, because if they could be entrenched in the society, the structure, and the pleasures of Babylon, they would be less likely to revolt. We can see four ways in which Nebuchadnezzar attempted to conform Daniel and his friends to Babylonian ways. These are some of the same strategies that we face as the world attempts to press us into its mold:

A: Isolation

The first method that Nebuchadnezzar used was isolation. For the Hebrew people, their life was centered around faith, family, and community. Their religious teaching and practice was a daily part of life and permeated both family and community interactions. By being taken away to Babylon, they were separated from the people and practices that shaped their perspective and their priorities. Nebuchadnezzar hoped that through isolation, their faith would fizzle.

For us, being a part of the gathering of the body of believers called the church is supposed to be a priority for us. We should be engaged in building relationships with our brothers and sisters—our family—in the church. We are to come together to be taught the truths of Scripture, encouraged to live a life that honors God, and challenged to forsake our sins. And collectively, we should teach those things to our children and to the children of our church family, to raise up future generations of the faithful.

Remember what the Bible says in Hebrews 10:24-25:

Hebrews 10:24–25 CSB

24 And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, 25 not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.

The truth is that we need the church, and the church needs us. But sometimes we’ll come up with any excuse we can find to avoid gathering together on Sunday morning. This is the world’s tool of isolation at work.

Three ways our modern Babylon leverages this tool against us are: busyness, shame, and conflict. First, busyness: Our schedules, or our kids’ schedules, are so jam-packed that come Sunday, we just have no energy left to engage in church life. Or worse, our schedules are so packed that we have to choose between church participation and something else.

Next, shame: We fall into sin. Maybe even habitual, serious sin. And that sin and the fear of being found out or confronted by it leads us to withdraw from those who care about us and would want to help us if they only knew what was going on.

Finally, conflict: We experience conflict in the church, or hear of conflict in the church, and we are disappointed by other believers’ behavior or failure. So we decide that it’s time to leave the church because it’s full of hypocrites, or at least to find another church without conflict (spoiler alert: that church doesn’t exist, but if it did and you found it, you certainly shouldn’t join it, because you’ll only mess it up).

No! We need each other. And we need to be actively engaged in the life of the church family if we’re going to avoid the trap of isolation.

B: Indoctrination

The second method that Nebuchadnezzar used to try to press the Hebrew teens into the Babylonian mold was indoctrination. The boys were to be “suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive, and capable of serving in the king’s palace…[taught] the Chaldean language and literature,…[and] they were to be trained [in these things] for three years, and at the end of that time they were to attend the king.” (4-5) Three years of that stuff. That’s like getting a bachelor’s degree without taking summers off. So basically, these young men were sent to the University of Babylon in order to retrain their minds to think more like Babylonians, and less like Hebrews. This came down to a question of worldview.

In the book of Ephesians 4, Paul writes about the change in perspective that should take place in our lives as we grow in our relationship with God through faith in Jesus:

Ephesians 4:20–24 CSB

20 But that is not how you came to know Christ, 21 assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, 23 to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

If we know Jesus, we should “take off” our old way of living because it’s corrupt, “be renewed” in the spirit of our minds—changing the way that we think about and see the world—and “put on the new self,” which means we strive to be like Jesus. This means that for the Christian, our worldview should be defined by Jesus, not that we try to reframe Jesus so He fits into our worldview.

The world is constantly trying to indoctrinate us into its false thinking. Look at social media, or entertainment like television and movies. Consider the news. Shane Pruitt tweeted just yesterday:

“One of our biggest problems is that a lot of Christians are being discipled by the nightly news more than they are the Good News.”

—Shane Pruitt (tweet, 1/6/24)

We should know what’s going on around us. But if we are more influenced by what’s happening in the world than by the eternal truth of the Word of God, then we are out of balance. And parents, make no mistake: The world wants to indoctrinate all of us, including our kids. If we will not shape our children’s worldview, someone else who doesn’t love them gladly will.

C: Compromise

Thirdly, Nebuchadnezzar offered to these young men the best food and drink in Babylon—the same food and drink that the king himself enjoyed. Not only were they not living like slaves, they were in the lap of luxury— provided for in ways that even the common Babylonian populace weren’t. They were asked to compromise. As we will see next week, Daniel and the boys refused this food because it was unclean. But a part of this offer to them was about seduction: if they could start to live like Babylonian royalty, they wouldn’t be very likely to want to stop living like Babylonian royalty. After all, they were going to serve as officials in the king’s palace. So what if they ate some rich food?

Sinclair Ferguson, in his commentary on Daniel, wrote this about the temptation to compromise for the sake of comfort:

“High living very easily masters the senses and blunts the sharp-edged commitment of young Christians.”

—Sinclair Ferguson, The Preacher’s Commentary Series: Daniel

Babylon wants us to compromise on the life of faith. It wants us to give in and give up. But compromise is a slippery slope. We start with just a little, maybe in what we watch or listen to or read, or in what we talk about or in our honesty or in our integrity, and we eventually become comfortable in that. Then we can step just a little bit farther, and a little bit farther, until we’ve gotten so far off course that we are far from God, and our sin has overtaken and controlled us.

Instead, the Bible tells us that we need to make NO provision for the flesh:

Romans 13:14 CSB

14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

We’ll look more at this part next week.

D: Confusion

The fourth way that Nebuchadnezzar tried to conform the Hebrew boys in into the Babylonian image was through confusion. It’s what “Babylon” means. Certainly it is reasonable to think its also something that it does. And Nebuchadnezzar did this by changing the boys’ names.

Daniel thankfully recorded the four Israelite boys’ Hebrew names. Each of their Hebrew names was a name that honored God (which we can see in the “El” and “Yah” endings):

Daniel: “God is my Judge.”

Hananiah: “God has been gracious.”

Mishael: “Who is what God is?”

Azariah: “The Lord has helped.”

But now, they were given new names—Babylonian names—so that instead of hearing praise to their God every time someone said their name, they heard praise to or request to a Babylonian god:

Daniel—Belteshazzar: “Bel protect him.”

Hananiah—Shadrach: “The command of Akku.”

Mishael—Meshach: “What is what Akku is?”

Azariah—Abednego: “Servant of Nebo.”

Not only that, but day after day, they would not only have to hear these statements about false gods attached to them, but they would have to say them as well, every time they introduced themselves. The goal was to get them to forget where they came from, and who the One True God is. If they could think like Babylonians, they would then live like Babylonians.

The evidence that we live in a type of Babylon is all around us. Confusion is the flavor of the day. Societally, we’re confused about a great many things that we used to be completely certain of. Years ago, our culture abandoned the idea of absolute truth, and now it is our feelings that determine not just what is true for us, but what everyone else must think is true as well, because if we think it’s true, then it must be true.

So we’re confused about when life begins, about the fact that there are only two genders, about God’s intent for sex and marriage, about the importance of real relationships, about the role of our government, about the importance of money, about what should be taught in education at all levels, about what justice really means, about how to steward the environment, about what is best for our health, about what patriotism looks like and acts, and ultimately, about what is true and what is false. In many ways, our Babylonian culture today calls evil good, and good evil, thus pronouncing a curse upon itself according to Scripture:

Isaiah 5:20 CSB

20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

How do we avoid falling prey to the wave of confusion that threatens to engulf us? We remember our true identity in Christ, and we remember the purpose that He has given to us to be lights in the darkness. We resist conforming to the lies around us, and we instead submit ourselves completely to being transformed by having our minds renewed, as Paul said to the Romans:

Romans 12:1–2 CSB

1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

This is our true worship. This is how we can learn and know the will of God. This is where we escape the confusion of our Babylonian culture.

Closing

Throughout the book of Daniel, people refer to him as Daniel, not as Belteshazzar. This shows the impact that he had through how he lived his life of faith. He stayed true to God in the midst of Babylon, trusting in God’s sovereign plan and provision for his life, and resisting the pressure to conform to the culture around him, even at great personal risk at times, as we will see later in the study. Daniel’s faith was in God, and that was not going to change.

What about you? Have you ever trusted God, believing that Jesus died so you could be forgiven of your sins, and that He rose again so that you could have eternal life? Have you surrendered to Him as your Savior and Lord, turning from going your own way? This morning, you’ve heard the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Will you believe it? Surrender to Jesus right now where you are, believing in what He has done to save you. And in a moment, the band is going to come down and play a song of invitation. If you are trusting in Jesus this morning, we would love to celebrate with you as a church. Would you just come and let one of us know you’ve trusted Christ today? If you have questions about salvation, please come and let us know that as well, so we can set a time to sit down and talk. If you’re online and you’ve surrendered to Christ this morning, or if you have questions about salvation, shoot me an email at bill@ehbc.org.

Church membership

Prayer

Giving

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Gen 11:27-12:20; Ps 7)

Pastor’s Study tonight

Prayer Meeting Wednesday

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Let’s read our benediction passage together out loud this morning, as a challenge to one another:

Ephesians 5:15–17 CSB

15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.