Minority Report #1 - God’s Unseen Hand

Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund kicks off the message series "Minority Report" teaching from the Old Testament book of Daniel to illustrate how God can still be at work in a person's life even in times when it seems like His presence is not seen.

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Message Transcript

So, there are times in life where you will end up finding yourself in the minority, you'll have a minority opinion. Now, sometimes you might do it just because it's kind of fun to be the person who has the contrarian view to everybody else. You may be with your in-laws and they're saying, "That's white," and you're like, "No, it's ecru." You're just being that person. But there are other times where you will be in a minority because you really believe something, and you say that is something that I cannot let go. When you find yourself in that place and people all around you have a different take, it requires courage and confidence to say I know that what I'm saying here, I believe that what I'm saying here is right and that it matters. Well, there are a lot of places where people have found themselves having a minority opinion.

Let me just give you two examples. In 1996, Apple was having a board meeting, the company. They were about to be acquired by a company called Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems was going to buy Apple, And the whole idea was that if the sale went through, that the founder or the CEO, not founder, but the CEO of Microsystems, Sun Microsystems said, "I'm going to kill the Apple brand." He said this in the board meeting, "And I'm going to go with Sun Microsystems as our brand because I think it's better." Gil Amelio who tells the story about this in his book that came out in 1998 an autobiography of the era said, "I was shocked at the hubris of this man." Because he said, "I knew that although they were in a better financial position and we needed their resources, that the Apple brand was stronger and better and would live better than Sun Microsystems."

He said, "But I went ahead and listened to the rest of the pitch," and he said, "When I finally checked out is when he wanted to buy our stock at a discount." Apple stock was selling at $28 a share in 1996. Don't you wish you had bought some? They wanted to pay $23 a share. He said, no, no, I was expecting an offer actually that would have been $30 or so a share. He said famously his line in the board meeting was, "I can't get behind this at all." In time, the rest of the board who was all in favor of what they thought was a done deal, Sun Microsystems is going to acquire Apple got killed because one man said this is not going to be good for Apple. Here's why that's significant. You would have a Sun phone, not an iPhone, if that had been the case, well maybe. Maybe you wouldn't even have an iPhone. Maybe everything would be different.

Because one person had the courage of his conviction and the confidence to speak about it, it changed the trajectory of a company and a lot of our lives in some way, shape, or form. Let me give you another one. When Tom Brady was drafted in 2000 to the New England Patriots, the consensus opinion in the NFL was that he didn't belong on an NFL roster. In fact, there were only two teams that I'm aware of that had him on their draft board. Some people would say he's gone on to become one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. Notice how I put that, one of the greatest, not the GOAT, just one of the greatest. But what happened was that most of the teams said he's not worthy of being even considered. The New England Patriots drafted him in the sixth round. The other team that had him on their draft board was the New York Giants.

There was a scout who worked for the Giants who gave him a grade in the fourth round. When his time came to be drafted, when they were drafting in the fourth round, they needed a potential quarterback at the time. He said, "Why don't we draft Tom Brady?" Everyone else in the room was like he doesn't belong in our team, he won't make it. Fifth-round same thing, sixth-round same thing, sixth-round The Patriots take him. Now imagine how that would have changed the course of football history if Tom Brady had become a New York Giant rather than a New England Patriot? It took courage and confidence for that scout to say it. It matters when you're in the minority if you're right or wrong if what you say is right or wrong. But what if I said to you when it comes to matters of faith, that you can always know that if you're in the minority that you're right. Because I believe that that's what we begin to see here in the book of Daniel.

Now, Daniel is the account of Jewish people going into exile. Exile's one of those words that you might hear in Bible study, the exilic period, the post-exilic period, and all of this. Here's what the exile was. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, where the Jewish people lived, one sacked it basically, and then took all of the young people, all of what would in our day be college-age and young professionals who showed promise. And said we're going to take all of you back to Babylon, where you're going to be schooled in the things of Babylon so that you become Babylonian in essence. This is what the Bible refers to as the period of exile. There was about a two-month journey from when the people left Jerusalem till they got to Babylon. Imagine being on a two month forced hike into an unknown future? That's what this was, where they were being taken into another place, another land.

Today we live in a time in our own country where a lot of people say everything that's going on is deeply concerning. I don't disagree with that. There are some deeply concerning things happening in our country. But this was catastrophic for the people. The reason that this is significant is because in order to understand the book of Daniel and to understand its message for us today, we need to understand the context and what was going on here. Now, there's a temptation sometimes when we read the Old Testament, to read it and to read it a little bit like one of Aesop's Fables. What I mean by that is to say here's what Daniel and his friends did, I should do the same thing. Or here's a bad example I shouldn't do that. What happens when we read the Old Testament like one of Aesop's Fables is we pull lessons that we think are good for us, but we may miss the grander lesson. In other words, there may be an example to follow, but the point of Daniel, the book of Daniel is not that we dare to be a Daniel. Any of you remember that old song?

It's not dare to be a Daniel, try to become like Daniel. It's ultimately about God and what God has done. When you see what God is like in the book of Daniel, then you know what God is like in our day, and it allows you to say this is what it means for me where I am today. What you have is you have Daniel and his friends being taken into exile, and here's what the book of Daniel in chapter one teaches us. That is it teaches us that God's hand was never off of the situation that these people were in. In fact, that God's unseen hand was at work. Let me show you. Verse two, it says, "And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the articles of the temple of God. These he carried off into the temple of god in Babylonia, his god in Babylonia, and put in the treasure house of his god." Here's what you have, you have these people being carried off, which the Israelites would have read and said this is horrible, this is one of the worst events. All of our best young people are being taken into exile.

Now they're saying not only that, but this king has taken the articles that would have been sacred to us and he's using them to extol his god instead of the God. In other words, they would've felt like it was sacrilegious. What you have here is you have this, but notice what the author of Daniel does. He says it was God who gave them into his hand. He doesn't let us say this was just a random event, this was just something that happened. He ties the event of exile to the hand of God. In other words, what was happening then was not beyond the hand of God, and what's happening now is not beyond the hand of our God. What comes next is an enculturation of these young men who were taken into exile. The way that you see this in verse four and following is first they were isolated from their people, from their country.

Then they were indoctrinated in all the arts and literature of Babylon, and then their identity was reshaped. The reason I say this is the point of the names. The Hebrew names that they were given and then the Babylonian names. When you read the chapter, you see they had these names, but they were given these names. What was happening is they were reshaping their identity. You have isolation, you have indoctrination, and then you have the reshaping of an identity. What that is, is it is the path of enculturation. You know what that sounds like in our day and age? College. Get somebody isolated, give them a new way of thinking, reshape their identity, that's what's going on here. But notice again, that in the midst of this God's hand is seen. In verse nine it says that Daniel decided not to defile himself with food and that he had favor from the hand of God.

Now again, to read this we have to understand the context just a little. The people of that day who would have gone into exile were at the whim of the people who ran these reorientation programs. In other words, when he went to this person and said, "Look, I don't want to eat the food." What was happening was he wasn't just negotiating something. This man could have said, well, okay, I'm just going to kill you and move on with some other young Hebrews who have come from Israel. This was a substantial step, and the point of the text is that God gave them favor with this man when they went with this request. That God was at work even in ways that they couldn't see or understand. God continues to work and I'll come back and talk about the food in a little bit. Then verse 17, after this trial period, where then there's shown that after eating only vegetables that they were healthier than eating the king's food, they rise to positions of prominence in the Babylonian empire. It says, "God gave them favor." God caused them to have understanding.

What you have three times in this chapter is you have a statement about God that God's unseen hand is at work even in things that we don't like, things we don't see, things we can't understand that God is doing something that we may not see. Christians have long called this idea providence or the sovereignty of God. Here's how the Heidelberg Catechism defines it. A catechism used to be and still is the kind of thing that parents teach their kids, and then kids memorize answers. Heidelberg is one of those classic ones from years ago, the reformers, but here's what it is question 27. "What do you understand by the providence of God?" This is what the kids would memorize to say to their parents, "The almighty, everywhere present power of God, whereby as it were by His hand He still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them, the herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty. Indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand."

The definition of sovereignty Heidelberg Catechism, the book of Daniel is that God is at work in ways that we may not see or understand. But that, that is something that changes how you live, because that's not the majority opinion. Now some of you may say, well, I'm not sure that I want to be in the minority. That might be one of your challenges with faith is you say, look, I just to get along with the culture that I live in and I don't want to be in the minority. But all through the Bible, the people of God were always a minority. If you go back to Genesis, you see this when God called Abraham in Genesis 12 from Ur of the Chaldeans. That he was going to be called out and be a distinct person in a new culture. You see it with Joseph in Genesis 39 through 50, where you get this whole story of his account, and being used as a minority in Egypt. You see it with the people coming out of Egypt in the Exodus. You see it in the exile that the book of Daniel's about.

You see it in the New Testament with verses that say very pointedly that if you are a follower of Jesus you will be at odds with the culture in the world in which you live. You may say, look, I'm not sure that that's what I want, but what I hope you'll see from understanding what the book of Daniel is about, that when you trust yourself to the minority view that God's at work in ways that we may not see or understand, that it will actually work out better for you than simply saying I'm going to choose my own path here. Here are two assertions that I think we can draw from Daniel one, that I believe will help us when we say I believe the unseen hand of God, the providence, the sovereignty of God. That will help us navigate our difficult situations with courage and confidence. Here's the first. That is because of God's unseen hand, we can say where I am is not an accident. Because of God's unseen hand, we can say where I am is not an accident.

Here's what that comes from is again, just this phrase in verse two, that the Lord delivered Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into the hands of the Babylonians. If you're a Jewish person reading that, that would be shocking. You would say, how would God deliver the king of Israel into the hands of the king of Babylon? That makes no sense. But that's exactly what we get. Here's what the majority tends to think, in our culture, but not just in our culture also sometimes in the church. That is that the events of this world, even if there is a God who's at work are basically random. Because events are random, therefore there's no significance to what's going on around us. But the minority view is this view, the minority report is this idea that God is at work, and that what is happening in our lives is not an accident. Where you are, where I am is not an accident. Now I would guess that in saying that there are two basic reactions to it as we hear it. Some of us hear that and we feel a sense of comfort and confidence because we say isn't that wonderful.

There's a God that's at work in everything, and so where I am is not an accident. But I would also guess that there's some of us who hear that and we say that doesn't feel very good. Because where we are today is in a place where we say that's not a place I would choose to be. Where I am is not what I want to tie to God's fatherly good hand in my life. Let me just give you an example. I mentioned earlier that I ended up getting this worldwide pandemic virus over Christmas. Well, I was actually being super careful leading up to Christmas and being super careful for a couple of reasons. One is I wanted to get through all the Christmas Eve services without having to quarantine. I did not have any non-CDC-defined contacts with anyone outside of my family. I was you're staying six feet away, I'm masked, I'm not talking to you, the whole thing. But I had another reason for doing that.

Not just because I wanted to get through Christmas Eve, but because my son, my oldest son who's married and lives in Chicago was going to visit for four days right after Christmas. If you have a son or a daughter who's moved away, you know how whenever they come home it is a major event. How you reorchestrate your life to facilitate that moment. In our mind it's like our son's going to be home, his wife's going to be with him. This is going to be awesome. I'm saying I'm not doing anything with anybody. I'm showing up, I'm doing Christmas Eve services, and I am socially distanced. Somehow, and I really don't know how I got the virus. Do you want to know what my internal reaction was? There's a little bit of come on God, couldn't you throw me a bone and let me have four days with my son? Really is that... In the big scope of things that's small. I get it, me missing Christmas Eve, missing a few days with my son is not a big story.

But internally I had a moment where it was like God if you're in charge of all things, why wouldn't you just let us have four days with my son? If you've got a story right now where there are some big things going on in your life, and you're saying this is not to my liking. There is a tendency and a temptation to say I don't like the idea of a sovereign hand of God. But here's why this is important, because understanding that there's a sovereign hand of God at work in your life, actually can produce something in you in the midst of being in a place that you don't like. Here's what the Heidelberg Catechism says. Question 28 that comes after 27. Again, this is what parents had their kids memorize. "What does it profit us to know that God created and by His providence upholds all things?" What good is it to say God's in charge? This isn't an accident, where I am is not an accident.

Listen to the answer. "That we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creatures shall separate us from His love since all creatures are so in His hand, and without His will, they cannot do so much as move." I love that. Do you know what they're saying in essence? Because God is sovereign, when you find yourself in a place you don't like, adversity, you can be patient. When you find yourself in a place of prosperity, a place that you like, you can be thankful because you're saying it's God that's worked to bring this about. When you face uncertainty, you can say I can have confidence because God is working in ways that I may not see or may not understand here today. Here's what this means. It means that wherever you are, you can say this is not an accident. If you're in a school that wasn't your first choice, you're in a dorm situation where you say how did I end up here with this person? I would never have chosen this.

But you can say it's not an accident that I'm here. If you're in a work situation, where you say where I am is well below my capacities, this is not the place I would have chosen, I could be doing so much more. That where you are is not an accident. If you're in a marriage that you say this is not where I thought I would be, this is not the kind of marriage that I thought I would have. It's not what I planned. It's not what I envisioned for myself. You can say this marriage is not an accident. It means if you find yourself single and you wish that you weren't, and you've been striving to say I want somebody special in my life. You've tried to orchestrate it, and you watch people who don't seem to be maybe as together as you are, connect with somebody. You're thinking come on God, you can say being single is not an accident right now. It means if you have wished and longed to have kids, and they haven't come, you can say this is not an accident that I don't have kids right now. It means if you have kids and you didn't want kids, that you can say it's not an accident.

It means that if you find yourself sick and not just sick for two weeks, but maybe in a place where there's health complications, then it started to dominate your life. That you can say where I am today is not an accident. It means if you find yourself in a place financially where you have an abundance, or you have scarcity, you can say it's not an accident that I'm here today. If you find yourself in a place where it seems as if you're finding much of life to be obscure, or you're thriving in being well known you can say it is not an accident, it is by the hand of God. Do you see how that can make a difference and can help you to say I can be patient in adversity, I can be thankful with prosperity, and I can be faithful with uncertainty because I know that God's providence is working. It's His unseen hand, it's a minority position, but it changes the way you live. Some of you may say, look, again, I'm not sure I want to be in the minority.

But maybe even the reason you're here today, watching online today is because God has orchestrated a situation in which you are hearing this for the first time and understanding how God wants to relate to you. That's the first assertion, where I am as not an accident. But secondly, because of God's unseen hand, you can say, what I do is not irrelevant. This is where we get this food situation in the middle of chapter one. The young men went to Babylon, and when they got there, they begin this process of learning all of the Babylonian literature. They don't draw any lines, they say fine we'll learn it all. We'll learn the language, we'll learn the literature. All of a sudden it comes to the food, food that was what was the king's food. They said no, no, no, we're not doing the food. Now, scholars, commentators have debated why this is. Some have said it was because of trusting the king's food. Technically the food that was offered was not against the kosher restrictions.

But I think the best explanation is right in the text because it says Daniel decided not to defile himself with the food. To defile oneself in that culture meant to do something that was against your understanding of what God wanted. That's what it was to defile themselves. There was something in the food that Daniel and his friends believed would defile them. Whether it's because it was offered to idols maybe before it came to them if it was something to do with where it was in the king's service. But what they did is they risked their life basically by saying we will not eat this food, in order to put themselves in a place where they said we won't defile ourselves. Pretty substantial moment in their lives. What they understood, what they were doing is they were choosing to say, I will not see my life as being irrelevant. You see the majority in our day, every day has always believed that if things are random and if it is such then it really doesn't matter what I do.

So what I need to do in life is I need to take care of me, whatever that means. But the minority view is to say what I do is not irrelevant, it actually matters. What we see with the food for them and for any age is that if you're in a minority, if you're a person of faith living in a dominant culture that doesn't believe or think what you think, that what will happen is in someplace, whether it's food or something else, you will be put in a place to either say I will assimilate into the cultural values that are around me and adopt those values as my own and become enculturated. Or I'll choose to withdraw from culture, and say I don't want anything to do with it because I'm concerned. But the idea of saying what I do is not irrelevant is the idea of saying if God is at work and He can give favor even when I choose the hard thing, then I can trust that God is at work even in ways that I may not see or understand.

Just to give us a more full understanding of this in the book of Jeremiah, which was also written in this exilic period or about it, we get a statement about how God wants His people to handle exile. This is Jeremiah 29 beginning in verse four. It says this, "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and settle all down, plant gardens eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number, do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you too will prosper. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty says the God of Israel, do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you, do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have.

They are prophesying lies to you in My name, I have not sent them declares the Lord." What does God say to the people in exile? He says I want you not to withdraw, not to fully assimilate, but I want you to live for the good of the place that you are. In other words, when you're in the minority, I want you to live for the good of the majority. I want you to plant gardens and marry and have kids and multiply, increase. I want you to pray to God for the prosperity of the city. What He's doing is He's saying I want you to engage in the culture in which you live in such a way that you have a positive impact in it on a consistent basis. In other words, what you do is not irrelevant with the place that God has placed you. You may feel like where I am is the last place, and there's no good that can come from it. But it is possible, in fact, it isn't just possible it is true that God has placed you there, at least for now, not as an accident, but with a calling that is bigger in your life than you may understand.

That is to bring prosperity and goodness to that place through pointing people ultimately to Jesus. There's a Jewish writer who coined a phrase that I like, his name is Jonathan Sacks, he died recently. But in an essay, he coined this phrase creative minority. He was referring to the Jewish people, not writing from a Christian perspective. But he was basing it on some of these same ideas in Jeremiah 29, Daniel. The idea of the Jewish people always being a persecuted minority. He says, "Our call is to be a creative minority." That regardless of the cultural situation in which we find ourselves, to say how can we creatively contribute to the good of the world that we're in? In that, he said, "Our calling is not to be angry, not to be fearful." What struck me about that is the history of the Jewish people would tell me that they have good reason to be angry and fearful. What he is writing about is he's saying you know what? Our calling is to say even if everything around us is going poorly, we're called to be a creative minority.

Somebody after the earlier service this morning told me that the Jewish people evidently account for two percent of the world's population, but have 24% of the Nobel prizes in our world. In other words, the creative minority has said we are going to bring good to the world. Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way, he said, "The hope of the world is still in dedicated minorities. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been in the minority. It would take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the committed majority." You see the call, the idea of saying what I do is not irrelevant is to say God has called me to be part of a creative minority. To say if I'm in a minority, it isn't just to hunker down and withdraw or to assimilate into culture. But to say I'm for the good of what's around me. In doing that to recognize what we see in Daniel one, that God's unseen hand was still at work giving favor to these individuals who chose this.

Now the problem is, that sometimes what we end up doing is we say, well, what I really want is not to be for the good of the world but for me. What I'd like is I'd like God to help me have a better life. That's just natural. But what that is ultimately is a practice of religion where we say, I'll do good so that God will give me good. I'll do things so that if they're good enough, then God will reward me with some things. It misses what Daniel one is actually showing us, and that is when we understand God's unseen hand, it doesn't move us to say I'm going to do something so God will do something, but it says because of who God is, because of His character, I can trust Him. Therefore, what I do is not irrelevant. Therefore, it matters what I choose.

In the place that you and I live we have even a greater reason for that confidence because we've seen the goodness of God as expressed in Jesus Christ. Going to the cross on the behalf of those of us who cannot earn our way with God, being able to say it's God's perfection not my goodness in Jesus Christ. It's the perfection of God in Jesus Christ, not my goodness that puts me in a place where I can have right standing with God. Because of that I can trust Him with the details of my life and say He is at work right here right now. Hey, here's what this can mean. If you find yourself dating, and maybe you're dating somebody and that person is somebody, for now, makes you feel good about yourself for a little bit, but you say I know this isn't really got any long-term potential. When you understand God's unseen hand, you can say I'm not going to potentially miss out on something God has for me by just playing around to feel good about myself today. Instead, I'm going to trust myself to the unseen hand of God.

You see it isn't I obey to get something, it's because of God's goodness I can choose to obey. It's radically different. Maybe you find yourself as a young adult in the party scene, and all of the people around you are partying. You know that sometimes it's excessive and unhealthy, and you find yourself saying but if I step away from it I won't have any people to run with. But the truth is, that if you say I know what's good and I know what's right and I can choose to say what I do is not irrelevant, God's unseen hand has proven to be trustworthy in other ways and I can trust Him even in this. Maybe you find yourself at the beginning stages of your career, and you are in a place where it seems like everyone in order to get ahead is cutting corners. You say if I don't cut the corners I'll lose my job, I'll lose my chance for advancement, I'll never get where I want to go. But if you understand the unseen hand of God, you can say, what I do does not find its way to the place of irrelevance. In other words, what I do is not irrelevant.

You see this is real worship, when we say I can trust a God that I can't always see how He's working. I can say where I am is not an accident, what I do is not irrelevant because God is at work. Let me ask you, where are you today? I don't mean where are you? You're at Orchard Hill or watching Orchard Hill in some form. What I mean is where are you in life? Can you affirm that that's not an accident today? That God has called you to be a minority, a creative minority in a place with a purpose? That what you do is not irrelevant. This changes the script from saying, I'm just here hoping that my life will go well, to I have a grander purpose and God has called me to something more. What you're able to do then is say I'm patient in adversity, when things aren't going the way I want them to. I'm thankful in prosperity when things are going the way I want them to, and I am able to be faithful in uncertainty because I know that God is working.

That's how we live with courage and confidence with all the uncertainty around us. Confidence in the providence, the sovereignty, the unseen hand of God. One last comment, and then Grace has a beautiful song for us to end our time together. But if you're here and you say, you know what, I'm not sure where I'm at. The way that you can relate to this sovereign God is by acknowledging your sinfulness before Him saying I don't deserve His goodness, but it's because of Jesus Christ and His substitutionary death for me that I can enter into a relationship. What that will do is it will change your priorities.

Because you'll be able to say this God's unseen hand is for me, therefore I can live with confidence and courage even if I'm in the minority. You can do that today right where you are by simply saying God I know that I've been sinful, but I trust Jesus as my savior, and I want to be a part of the people who bring creative, good change to this world. Father, we thank You for Your word and just how as we unpack it and understand it, how it changes the ways that we think and feel. God, I pray today that as we reflect on Your unseen hand, it would indeed give us courage and confidence for whatever we face. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.