This week, Matt Larson wraps up our series in the book of Daniel, but looking at chapters 10 through 12, which is one big vision together. This whole book has been a big faith builder in us, and we're so grateful that God led us to teaching through it as we began this season of quarantine.

This week, Matt Larson preached from Daniel 9. Daniel read and understood from the book of Jeremiah that Israel’s captivity was ending and repented of Israel’s sins. We see that God sent Gabriel to Daniel to give him a message and timeline of when He would send the Messiah and ultimately He would put an end to sin.

On Sunday we continued through chapter 8 of Daniel, where God gives Daniel a vision showing future events of Israel and the surrounding kingdoms in great detail. Daniel had already been given a great vision of God’s coming kingdom, but now he had to add to his understanding that Israel would go through an even harder time than their current exile.

Paralleling our situation, we know that Jesus promises a great redemption at his coming. Throughout the scriptures He also warns us that in this life we will suffer. He tells us this so that we won’t just survive it, but that we would grow in faith and holiness.

This week in the book of Daniel, we transitioned from the narrative of Daniel’s life to the apocalyptic portion of the book. While in our culture, the apocalypse refers to the end of the world, in the scripture it means to unveil or to reveal. Here in chapter 7, YHWH is revealing to Daniel through a series of visions, kingdoms that will arise in the future and giving Daniel hope in the future of God’s everlasting kingdom

This week, Matt Larson teaches through Daniel 6, where we see the famous story of Daniel in the lions' den. What we see from Daniel is a life that is consistently pointed towards faithfulness to God. One of the things that Daniel teaches us is that the fruit of the Christian life is in being the people of God. The fruit is God’s to determine and distribute. Our place is to honor God, live faithfully and trust that he will use our stories to advance his kingdom.

This week, Matt Larson preached through Daniel chapter 5. In his pride, Belteshazzar took the vessels of the temple and drank wine from them. Doing this, he was declaring that he was in control and not God. A hand appeared and wrote a message on the wall that no one could understand. Once again Daniel was called upon to interpret and he declared that the Lord was judging Belteshazzar because of his pride and he was killed that night. In this passage, we continue to see Daniel’s faithful service to God and God’s sovereignty in dealing with mankind.

In our fifth week in Daniel, Garrison Wash preached through chapter 4, where Nebuchadnezzer tells us his story of how God stripped him of everything, so He could learn that God is in control. He invited us to lift up our eyes to see what God is doing in us and in our world through this time.

This week we open Daniel 3 to study faith and why it has power... because the God that we place our faith in is able and good.

In chapter 2 of Daniel, we see that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and asked for interpretation of it. Because Daniel continued to trust in God, when the call came to him, Daniel was able to give it. Though he was threatened with death, Daniel was faithful to give the king the interpretation that God gave him. Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was temporary and God would ultimately replace it with his kingdom. When we are faithful, God gives us the opportunity to be more faithful and strengthens us to live by faith.

This week we continued into our second week of our Daniel series. We saw that though he was a young man, Daniel heard from the Lord and made the decision to be faithful in his time of exile and not defile himself with the ways of Babylon. God blessed Daniel and his friends for this and gave them wisdom beyond their natural ability. In the same way, we must learn to hear from God on how to be faithful in this time of our “exile” and our country has shut down.