Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026 | John 20:24–31

Have you ever gotten news so good — or so bad — that you just didn’t know how to react? News that doesn’t register at first. The cheers or the tears come eventually. But in that first moment, your brain kind of just… stalls.

That’s the room we walk into on Easter morning. The news that your friend, your teacher, your Messiah — the one you watched get nailed to a cross three days ago — is somehow alive. The tomb that was full on Friday is empty on Sunday.

Turns out people react to that news in all kinds of ways.

The News Alone Doesn’t Change Anyone

John 20 plays out across a single day. The tomb is found empty, the word starts spreading, and we get to watch how Jesus’ closest people process it one by one.

Mary Magdalene hears the tomb is open and assumes somebody stole the body. She’s outside the tomb weeping, confused, grief-wrecked. Peter and John sprint to the scene, see the grave clothes folded and left behind, and believe… something. The text tells us they didn’t yet understand the Scripture. And the rest of the disciples — twelve hours after hearing from Peter, John, and Mary that the tomb is empty — are still huddled in a locked room. Afraid.

Here’s what John is showing us: the news of the empty tomb, on its own, doesn’t change anyone’s life. An encounter with the risen Jesus does.

Mary hears that the tomb is empty and she weeps. Then she turns around and sees Jesus — and she runs to him. The disciples get the report from three eyewitnesses and lock themselves in a room. Then Jesus walks through the wall, shows them His hands and His side, breathes on them, and they go from terror to joy. It’s not the information. It’s the person.

Give Thomas Some Credit

One of the disciples wasn’t there when Jesus appeared to the group. Thomas — called the Twin. And when the others tell him what happened, he draws a line in the sand: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

We’ve been calling this guy Doubting Thomas for two thousand years like it’s some kind of character flaw. But I actually think there’s something worth honoring here. Thomas isn’t trying to be difficult. He’s trying to be honest. He knows that if he’s going to spend the rest of his life as a witness to the resurrection — and he will, eventually, die for that testimony — he can’t build it on secondhand information. He needs his own encounter.

You can’t live on someone else’s experience with Jesus. You just can’t. Borrowed faith runs out. Thomas knew that.

For eight days, he’s the only one of the eleven who hasn’t seen Jesus in person. And then Jesus comes back. Wounds and all. He walks straight up to Thomas and says: here, put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.

Thomas doesn’t even touch the wounds. He just sees Jesus and the words come out: “My Lord and my God.” The most direct confession of faith in the entire Gospel of John.

Written for the Rest of Us

After this, Jesus says something that hits different for those of us who never got to be in that room:

“Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

And then John, who watched all of this happen and wrote it down, tells us exactly why he wrote what he wrote:

“These signs are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)

The Thomas story isn’t a footnote. It’s the point. John wrote it for every person who never touched those wounds, never heard that voice with physical ears, never stood in that garden on Sunday morning. He wrote it for you. So that you could read it and believe. And by believing, have life.

Life in His name.

Do You Believe?

So I want to ask you that directly, because John is basically asking it directly: Do you believe?

Maybe you’re where Thomas was for those eight days — you know people who are all in on this Jesus thing. You’ve been around it. You’ve seen what it does to people’s lives. And there’s some part of you that’s genuinely hungry for it to become real for you. Not their story. Yours. The moment where it goes from intellectual possibility to personal conviction. Where something in you cries out, “My Lord and my God.”

If you’re not there yet, I want you to know something: there is life waiting for you. Not a problem-free road. Not easy answers. But in Jesus’ name, there is a depth of love, joy, peace, and belonging that you simply cannot find anywhere else. That’s not a sales pitch. That’s what John staked his life on.

And if you do believe — I want to ask you a harder question.

Are You Someone’s Encounter?

The news of the empty tomb didn’t change anyone. The encounter with the risen Jesus did. Which means the people around you who don’t yet believe aren’t primarily waiting for better arguments. They’re waiting to run into Jesus. And they’re most likely going to run into Him through you.

Are you living in such a way that the people around you are encountering the risen King through the Holy Spirit inside of you? Are you going beyond just telling them the tomb is empty? Are you showing them, with your actual life — with your words and your actions and the way you treat people — what it looks like to have been raised with Christ?

Thomas needed to see the wounds. The scars. The real, physical evidence that something terrible happened and Jesus came through it alive on the other side. The people around you who are still waiting to believe? They may need to see yours. The places where you were broken and God showed up. The sin you’ve been freed from. The grief you’ve walked through and didn’t walk through alone.

If the people around you don’t believe yet, it may be because they haven’t met Jesus in person. And you might be the closest thing to that they’re going to get.

Do you believe?

Then live like it.

Good Friday | Luke 23:35–43

There are two criminals flanking Jesus at Golgotha. Two men, same sentence, same view, same agony. And yet they walk away — if you can call it that — in completely opposite directions. Not because their crimes were different. Not because one had lived a better life. It all comes down to one thing: what they believed about the man hanging between them.

That's the Good Friday question. It's the only one that matters.

The Scoffer

The first criminal follows the crowd. The religious leaders are mocking Jesus — "He saved others; let him save himself" — and this man joins right in. Then the soldiers take their turn. He echoes them too.

His demand is blunt: Prove it. If you're the Christ, save yourself. Save us.

Here's what I want you to notice, though. There's a difference between asking a question and demanding proof. If you genuinely want to know something, you ask. You wait. You stay open. But when you demand proof, you've already written your verdict. You're not investigating — you're performing. You're staying safely on the side of the crowd, parroting the people in power, making sure you never have to risk being wrong about the man dying next to you.

That's not skepticism. That's self-protection dressed up as skepticism.

And it's a posture a lot of people still take today. Not angry atheism, necessarily. Just... distance. Detachment. A kind of permanent I'll believe it when I see it that conveniently never gets tested because you never actually look.

The Believer

The second criminal is something else entirely.

He rebukes the first man. "Don't you fear God? We're getting what we deserve. This man has done nothing wrong." That's a lot of things to say out loud, in public, in the last hours of your life. He's confessing his own guilt. He's declaring Jesus innocent. And then he does the thing that stops me every time I read it:

"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Think about what he's looking at when he says that. He's not watching a coronation. He's watching an execution. The man he's calling a king is bleeding and barely breathing. There is no throne in sight. There is no army. There are no crowds cheering.

And yet this man — this criminal, this nobody — looks at the crucifixion and sees a crown.

That is one of the most remarkable acts of faith in the entire New Testament. He sees a throne where everyone else sees a defeat. He sees a king where everyone else sees a corpse. He has nothing to offer. No track record, no religious credentials, no time left for a redemption arc. Just a belief, spoken out loud, in the worst possible moment.

Jesus responds immediately: "Today you will be with me in paradise."

This man died an earthly criminal. He lives in heavenly paradise. Not because he earned it. Because he believed it.

The Man in the Middle

But Good Friday isn't really about either criminal. It's about the man between them.

The innocent one. The righteous one. The one who had nothing to answer for and everything to give.

At the foot of that cross, every person who has ever lived faces the same choice those two men faced. You can scoff — treat the whole thing as a relic, a myth, a story for the credulous and the desperate. That posture usually looks a lot like the first criminal: following the culture, echoing the voices in power, never risking being wrong.

Or you can humble yourself.

You can admit what the second criminal admitted — that you stand guilty. That whatever you've done with your life, you have fallen short of the God who made you, and you know it. And then, in that admission, you can look at the man on the middle cross and see what that dying thief somehow saw: the only one who can do anything about it.

There's an image I keep coming back to on Good Friday. The night Israel left Egypt, death itself moved through the land. And the only protection was the blood of a lamb — painted over the doorpost of each house. Death passed over every home marked with that blood.

The cross is that doorpost. Jesus is that lamb. His blood is the only mark that makes death pass over us.

Which means the invitation of Good Friday is this: claim it. Not because you've earned the right to. Not because you're good enough. Because he was, and he isn't holding it over you — he's holding it out to you.

The prayer of that second criminal is, I think, the most honest prayer a person can pray:

Remember me.

I believe in you. I have nothing to offer. I simply believe.

I believe I am a sinner who has earned death.

I believe Jesus is the Son of God who unjustly bore the cross on my behalf.

And I believe the only way I can stand before God is if the man on the middle cross — the one who died and rose again — says I can.

So qhat do you believe about the man in the middle?

This message was part of "Life in His Name," a series at Beacon Church in Elk Point, SD.

Every great story has characters who never quite get their due.

Everybody loves the story of Frodo taking the ring to Mordor — but they forget that Samwise Gamgee is basically carrying the whole thing on his back. Everybody cheers for Batman but glosses right over the fact that Robin, Alfred, and Commissioner Gordon are constantly saving his bacon. We’re enamored with Luke Skywalker and conveniently forget that R2-D2 saves the day at least once in every single film. Palm Sunday has some of those characters too.

Everybody knows the triumphal entry. It’s one of the most cinematic moments in all four Gospels. There’s Jesus, obviously — He’s sort of the point. There are the disciples who had faith to follow through on a strange request. There’s the donkey — bless him, doing his level best. There are the crowds waving palms, the Pharisees scheming in a corner, the whole spectacle. But before any of it happens, there’s a quiet little exchange in Luke 19 that doesn’t get nearly enough airtime. Two people who don’t even get names. All we know about them is this: they own a donkey that the Lord needs.

The Weirdest Errand in the Bible

Imagine two strangers walk up to your car in a parking lot and start opening the door. You’d have questions. Understandably. But imagine they just look you dead in the eye and say, “The Lord needs it.”

Which Lord? For how long? Is He borrowing or keeping it? Why this one specifically? Doesn’t He have His own?

Luke doesn’t tell us whether the owner asked any of this. What we know from the parallel passage in Mark is that they just… permitted it. They said okay. No drama. No negotiation. The disciples showed up, said the one thing they’d been told to say, and the owner handed over the reins.

Which raises the question: would you?

If you found out the Lord needed something you have, would you hand it over, no questions asked, just because “the Lord needs it”?

Which Lord?

The word here is kyrios. It means the one in authority. Master. King. Lord. Boss. The one you answer to. And here’s the interesting thing: the owners of the donkey were also called kyrios (kyrioi)— the “lords” of his own animal. So when the disciples show up and say “the kyrios needs it,” the owner already knows they’re not talking about a random Jewish teacher or some local official. They’re talking about a kyrios who outranks the kyrios of the donkey itself.

They understood who they were dealing with. And they handed it over.

Now here’s what wrecks me about this story: Jesus actually needs that donkey. Zechariah 9:9, written 500 years earlier, says the Messiah will come riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey — one that has never been ridden. Not any donkey. That donkey. If the owner says no, there’s no triumphal entry. Not in the way it was supposed to happen. There’s only one way to do this thing right, and it runs through that unnamed person’s steed.

The Lord needed it.

What Does “Needs” Mean When It’s God?

This is the part that gets me every time. Needs? As in, the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator of the universe cannot accomplish this particular thing without a borrowed donkey from a person whose name we don’t even know?

Yes. Apparently. Or at least — He chooses not to.

And I think that’s the whole point. God doesn’t need us the way we need water or sleep. But He chooses to work through us. He planted His Spirit inside of us and commissioned us to make disciples and teach people to obey everything He commanded. He asked us to carry His name and His Kingdom into places He’s sending us. That’s not because He couldn’t think of another way. It’s because He wanted us to have a part in it.

The Lord needs your life. By virtue of the Great Commission, I can say that with complete confidence. He needs it.

What the Lord Needs From You

The life you lead? The Lord has need of it.

The words you speak? The Lord has need of them.

The things you own? The Lord has need of them.

Your position at work, the relationships you have, the skills you’ve built, the platform you’ve been given however big or small — the Lord has need of all of it.

The children you’re raising? The Lord has need of them too. Not to scare you — but to free you. They’re not ultimately yours to control. They’re His. And He’s got plans for them that you and I cannot fully see.

If there is something in your hands that you think you own, that you think is under your control, that is fully under your lordship — I’m here to serve notice that it belongs to a different kyrios.

Two Things This Requires

The Palm Sunday crowd did something remarkable when Jesus rode in. They took the garments off their own backs and spread them on the road. They waved palm branches — a well-known symbol of surrendering to royalty. All of that started with one unnamed person handing over one specific donkey.

Two things made that possible.

Submission. You have to actually believe He is Lord. Not Lord in a bumper-sticker sense, but Lord in the sense that He has authority over you and over everything in your life. From that submission flows the humility and the willingness to live differently than everyone else around you.

Surrender. Once you’ve submitted to His Lordship, you hold everything open-handed. Any gift, any amount of time or energy, any training or skill, any item or investment — it’s His. When He asks for it, you don’t negotiate. You hand over the reigns.

The owner of that donkey probably got his animal back later that day. But what stayed with him — what I hope stayed with him — was the knowledge that when the Lord needs something, you don’t withhold it. When the King asks, you say yes.

Our all-powerful King could accomplish whatever He wants without us. And yet He keeps asking. He keeps sending. He keeps saying “go, and I’ll meet you there.”

Why would we hold anything back?

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | March 15, 2026 | Daniel 9:20–27

On October 1st, 1932, Charlie Root — pitcher for the Chicago Cubs — stands on the

mound at Wrigley Field. The count is 2-2. His opponent, the mythical Babe Ruth, raises his

bat and points it toward the centerfield wall. The Cubs fans have been heckling the Babe

relentlessly through the first three games of the World Series, and now he is defiantly

calling his shot. With a runner on base, he is declaring — in front of everyone — exactly

what is about to happen next.

Poor Charlie. He probably thought he’d be a hero. He wound up, put a little extra oomph on

that fastball. And the Sultan of Swat — The Colossus of Clout — lived up to every

nickname he ever earned. Crack. Deep over the centerfield wall, right where he pointed.

Nearly a century later, baseball fans are still arguing about whether it actually happened.

But the Babe himself said it was true. What a moment of prediction. Now let me tell you about a better one.

God called His shot 476 years in advance

In Daniel chapter 9, while Daniel is fasting and praying and confessing Israel’s sin, the

angel Gabriel arrives with a message. And what Gabriel delivers — the prophecy of the 70

weeks — is so precise, so specific, so mathematically verifiable that historians who can’t

accept it being true simply declare it must have been written after the fact. It wasn’t. But

let’s look at it.

Gabriel tells Daniel that 69 “weeks” (understood as weeks of years — 69 × 7 = 483 years)

will pass from the command to rebuild Jerusalem until “the Anointed One, a ruler” arrives.

The command was given by Artaxerxes to Nehemiah in 444 BC. Run the math — 69 × 7

years × 360 days = 173,880 days from 444 BC — and you land within days of Nisan 10, 32

AD. The day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while the crowds waved palm

branches.

Luke 19 records that Jesus wept over Jerusalem on that exact occasion and said, in

essence: “If you had only known, on this day, what would bring you peace.” Jesus was

aware that He was the fulfillment of a specific timeline that had been running for nearly five

centuries. Babe Ruth called one pitch. God called the shot that would end all sacrifices,

atone for all guilt, and bring in everlasting righteousness — 476 years before it happened.

The question the prophecy answers

Here is what Daniel was asking when Gabriel arrived. Not, “can you give me a prophetic

timeline?” He was asking the same things we ask when everything falls apart:

• What is God’s plan for a people who are exiled and destroyed?

• What is God’s plan for a world that is war-torn and worn thin?

• What is God’s plan to rescue my family from the depths of our sin?

Gabriel’s answer, essentially: Jesus. Jesus is the plan. After 70 weeks, the prophecy says,

God will finish all rebellion, end all sin, atone for all guilt, bring in everlasting righteousness,

confirm all prophecy, and anoint the Most Holy. Whether you read the 70th week as

entirely historical, entirely future, or — as I think the text requires — both now and not yet,

the center of all of it is the same: the Anointed One. The Christ.

Now and not yet

Many ask if this 70th week is fulfilled in history or still stands as a future prediction of events to come. To answer that, I think we should look at what the text says will happen after the 70th week. If that’s all fulfilled, it’s historical. If there’s something yet to come in those areas, it’s futuristic. Ask yourself:

• Is rebellion finished? The Now: Yes — Colossians 2:13–15 says spiritual rebellion

has been dismantled at the cross. The Not Yet: Romans 3 and Revelation 20 remind

us sin is still active and the final defeat hasn’t come.

• Has everlasting righteousness arrived? The Now: Yes — 2 Corinthians 5:21 says we

are made the righteousness of God in Christ. The Not Yet: Romans 8:22 — we are still

groaning and waiting for the full revelation of His Kingdom.

• Have all prophecies been confirmed? The Now: All Old Testament prophecy finds

fulfillment in Christ. The Not Yet: We are waiting for Jesus to return per New

Testament prophecy.

I believe that this 70th week - like Jesus’ kingdom - is a both now and not yet reality. It is both settled in history and pointing forward to what will be.

The point is not to pick a lane and defend it aggressively. The point is that Jesus is both the

already-accomplished and the still-coming answer to every question humanity has ever

asked about evil, suffering, sin, and what comes next. Don’t let the eschatology arguments

distract you from the main thing. The main thing — the only thing that actually matters — is

that Jesus always was, always is, and always will be the plan of salvation

Before the foundation of the world, Jesus was the plan (Ephesians 1:4–5, Revelation 13:8).

Not plan B. Not a contingency when everything else failed. The plan. The eternal plan. The

one that began before Babylon was built, before Abraham was called, before Daniel was

thrown into exile. Right now, He’s our only access to God. He’s the way, the truth and the life. And it will always be so. There is no other name by which we may be saved.

So here’s the challenge I want to leave you with.

• Tomorrow, when you see the news and feel the familiar anxiety rising — remind

yourself: He is the plan.

• When your way gets difficult, remind yourself: He is the Way.

• When people around you insist that truth can’t be known, remind yourself: He is the

Truth.

• When the world feels like it’s careening toward its own destruction, remind yourself:

He is the Life.

This prophecy wasn’t given to make you obsess over timelines or sharpen your end-times

framework. It was given so that when everything around you looks like chaos, you would

know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has been in control all along. That He called

His shot centuries in advance. That the Anointed One who came the first time is the same

One who is coming again.

Babe Ruth called one pitch and baseball fans are still in awe about it ninety years later. God

called the shot that would change everything about everything. It already happened. And

the reverberations will continue echoing into eternity.

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | February 23, 2026 | Daniel 8–11

Most of us hear the word “revelation” in relation to scripture and our brains go to the last book of the Bible. We think four horsemen, 666, dragons, a whole lot of intense imagery and very strong opinions. The Greek word behind it — apokalypsis — is where we get our English

word “apocalypse,” and we’ve collectively decided that apocalypse means “the end of the

world.” So naturally, anything described as “apocalyptic” gets filed under future scary

end-times stuff, and we assume the main point is to decode the timeline. But that’s actually

backwards.

The first words of the book of Revelation are: “The revelation of Jesus Christ.” The goal

isn’t to predict the sequence of events at the end of time — it’s to reveal the person at the

center of them. Similarly, this section of Daniel — chapters 8 through 11 — is not primarily

a geopolitical roadmap. It’s revealing the God who is good even when the world is twisted.

It’s revealing the need for a Savior and the God who provides that Savior at an immense

cost.

The weight of revelation

Chapters 8–11 are dense and detailed prophetic visions. Rams and goats, little horns,

desecrated temples, wars between kingdoms north and south. Much of it has been

historically fulfilled with startling precision. But here’s what I want you to notice above the

prophetic content: what these visions do to Daniel.

• He falls on his face, terrified (8:17).

• He is overcome, sick for days (8:27).

• His strength leaves him, his face turns pale (10:7–11).

• He is filled with anguish (10:15).

• His strength is gone; he can barely breathe (10:17–18).

Receiving these revelations isn’t exciting for Daniel. It isn’t exhilarating. It’s crushing.

Which, when you think about it, makes sense. Any genuine glimpse of divine reality is too

much for a human being to carry. We weren’t built to hold that weight alone. Any sliver of

His glory is more than we can manage. And that’s the key insight of this section: the weight

of revelation is carried through intercession.

Carrying the weight of revelation through intercession

The literary structure of Daniel 8–11 is doing something intentional. Before the major vision

in chapter 11, we see Daniel praying, fasting, and mourning for three weeks. After the

vision in chapter 8, we see him immediately grieving and interceding over Israel’s sin.

Before and after the heaviest revelations — prayer. The author is making an argument: the

only way Daniel can receive and carry what God is showing him is by continuously bringing

it back to God through intercession.

Here’s something I’ve noticed in my own life, and I wonder if you’ve felt this too:

when I pray mostly about my own needs, my own worries, my own situation, I often walk

away heavier than when I started. But when I shift to interceding for someone else — for

our church, for our city, for a friend going through something hard — something shifts. My

spirit rises. I pray with more clarity and fervor than I could ever muster for myself.

What Daniel’s intercession actually looks like

• It cost him something. Fasting, mourning, burlap and ashes. He denied himself

things he wanted because prayer was something he needed. Intercession that costs

you nothing probably isn’t carrying much weight.

• It was consistent. Not one long extended prayer session every few months. A

sustained rhythm over decades. Consistent over time beats intense but sporadic every

time.

• It was painfully specific about sin. He confesses specific rebellion. He didn’t pray

about their sin; he prayed about our sin. He owned the corporate failure as his own.

• It was rooted in who God actually is. He calls God “faithful and loving” (9:4), “merciful

and forgiving” (9:9), “glorious” (9:19). He intercedes from a posture of trust in God’s

character, not a posture of trying to earn God’s attention.

What feels heavy right now?

Here’s the invitation of this text: bring it to God. A person who’s wandering? A conflict that

won’t resolve? A war you can’t stop thinking about? A broken system? Your finances?

Your future? Your family? The move isn’t to analyze it more. The move is to go to God with

it — specifically, honestly, consistently, from a posture of trust in who He is.

Cast your cares on Him, because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). The yoke may still be

there. But giving it to Him makes it lighter. And here’s the encouragement that wrecked me

when I read it in Daniel 10: even when it takes time — even when the answer feels delayed

— God had dispatched the answer from the moment Daniel began to pray.

“From the first day that you set your heart to understand... your words have been

heard.”

The answer is on its way. Keep praying.

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | February 9, 2026 | Daniel 6

Does your prayer life pose a threat to the enemy?

I don’t mean that in a smug, Christian-cliché kind of way. I mean it as a real, honest

question. Is the way you pray the kind of thing that registers? That makes a difference?

That would require legislation to stop? Because that’s what happened to Daniel. He prayed

so consistently and so seriously that the only way his enemies could neutralize him was to

make prayer itself a capital offense. Let that land for a moment.

The paradox of upward mobility

Daniel is an old man by Daniel chapter 6 — probably around 70. He has outlasted multiple

kings and multiple empires. He has served in Babylon from the time he was a teenager,

and every single ruler he’s worked for has ended up promoting him. Not because Daniel

was the best politician. Because, as verse 3 says, there was an extraordinary spirit in him

— the Hebrew is ruach yattirah, a surpassing, exceptional spirit. His colleagues couldn’t

find a shred of corruption or negligence in his work. So they went after his prayer life.

Think about the contrast here:

• While Daniel’s enemies were networking, he was kneeling.

• While they were building alliances, he was building altars.

• While they were managing their image, he was managing his soul.

His advancement wasn’t from political savvy. It was spiritual alignment. His prayer life gave

him clarity, integrity, and effectiveness that no amount of political strategy could replicate.

Here’s the paradox of the Kingdom: The way up is down. Winning is dying. Leading is

serving. The way to upward mobility is bowing in prayer.

73,000 prayer sessions

Verse 10 says that even after the decree was signed — that praying to anyone but the king

was punishable by death — Daniel went home and prayed as he had always done. As he

had done previously. That phrase is the key. This wasn’t a panic response. This wasn’t a

new religious fervor sparked by crisis. This was rhythm. This was discipline. This was

just another tuesday.

If Daniel prayed three times a day from around age 15 to age 80, that’s approximately

73,000 prayer sessions. Seventy-three thousand times, he bowed low. In the mundane. In

the ordinary. When nothing dramatic was happening and no one was watching and prayer

was just the next thing on the schedule. So when he hit the bottom of that den — when the

stone was rolled over the entrance, when no human being could help him — his soul knew

what to do. His faith didn’t have to improvise. It had been forged in 73,000 quiet mornings

and tired evenings and unremarkable afternoons. There’s no shortcut to that kind of faith.

You build it prayer by prayer.

The resurrection pattern

What happens in Daniel 6 is stunning when you see it: Daniel is the victim of a conspiracy,

lowered into a pit in the ground, a stone seals the entrance by royal decree, no man can

save him — but in the morning, there is a voice: “My God sent his angel and shut the lions’

mouths.” The stone is rolled away. Daniel emerges, alive. His enemies are cast into the

very death they thought they had trapped him in.

About 560 years later, another faithful Jew would be unjustly condemned. Thrown into a

tomb. A stone would seal the entrance. A king’s official seal would make it final. And on the

third day, early in the morning: “He is not here; he has risen.” Daniel’s lion’s den wasn’t just

a miracle story. It was a preview. God was drawing a picture of what He was going to do

through His Son.

It’s time to get serious

We need to stop playing at prayer. I say that as someone who has genuinely struggled to build a consistent, intentional prayer life. It is not easy. It is not glamorous. Nobody’s going to give you an award for it. But if we are living for Jesus in Babylon — and friends, that is exactly where we are — the lions are hungry. The decrees will be signed. The enemies will conspire. And in those moments, a casual, occasional, crisis-driven prayer life will not be sufficient.

• Start small, but start today. Pick one time. Set an alarm. Find a spot. Open your

Bible. Get on your knees. Talk to God. Not because you have to — because you

desperately need to.

• Pray with your windows open. Daniel didn’t hide his prayer life when the decree was

signed. He opened his windows toward Jerusalem and prayed anyway. Let your faith

be visible.

• Trust the God who shuts lions’ mouths. You might not see results right away. Keep

going. Because God is building something in you in that prayer closet that cannot be

shaken.

Find your upper room. Open your windows. Get on your knees. Watch what God does.

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | February 22, 2026 | Daniel 4–5

In 1920, the poet William Ernest Henley wrote these famous lines at the end of his poem

“Invictus”:

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

As a statement about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of hardship — beautiful. As theology — total train wreck. Because “master” and “captain” are

words reserved for people who actually have comprehensive control of what they’re

steering. And I don’t know about you, but I have not mastered my life. Our whole cultural

operating system runs on the belief that self-determinism is the ultimate human aspiration.

And yet a modest amount of honest self-reflection reveals the obvious: I am not the captain

of this vessel. Life just... happens.

Henley writes that his head is “bloody, but unbowed.” And I find myself wondering — if he

had bowed his head, or better yet his knee, to something greater than his own ability,

maybe he would have avoided that knock to the skull in the first place. So many of us are

unwilling to deviate from our self-obsessed directions in life that we run headfirst into all

kinds of trouble.

Two kings who thought they had it figured out

Daniel chapters 4 and 5 give us two stories about two arrogant kings who were absolutely

convinced they were the masters of their fate. Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful ruler in

the world, looks at his city and says: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my

mighty power?” God’s response is immediate and humbling: “The kingdom has departed

from you.” For seven years, Nebuchadnezzar loses his mind and lives in a field like an

animal.

Belshazzar — his successor — throws a lavish party, breaks out the gold cups stolen from

God’s temple in Jerusalem, and uses them to toast his idols. And in the middle of the party,

a disembodied hand appears on the wall and starts writing. The Bible is genuinely wild

sometimes.

Mene, Tekel, and Parsin

The words on the wall are Aramaic. Daniel translates them, and they are ruthlessly

pointed.

• Mene — God has numbered your days. He knows the number of hairs on your head,

the number of days in your life, the number of times you’ve fallen short and every

moment in between.

• Tekel — You have been weighed and found lacking. Romans 3:23: “All have sinned

and fall short of the glory of God.” This shouldn’t make us try harder. It should make us

acutely aware of how desperately we need a Savior.

• Parsin — Your kingdom is divided and is over. Every human empire cracks. Families

fracture. Churches split. Nations divide. The arc of human empire is always the same:

rise, confidence, arrogance, collapse.

Mene, tekel, parsin. It’s written on the wall of every human project that runs on

self-sufficiency. This is not just an indictment of two ancient kings. It’s the verdict on every

human empire. On every version of human self-determination. On every castle we build

and every throne we occupy.

But there is a King whose days are eternal

Sandwiched between the two stories of humbling and downfall is a small, easy-to-miss

poem. It’s Nebuchadnezzar, after seven years in the field, after his sanity has been

restored, after he has finally bowed his knee. He worships the Most High. He declares that

God’s days are eternal. His justice is true. His kingdom stands undivided and absolute.

This is the antidote to mene, tekel, and parsin.

• We worship the One whose days are without number. Our days are numbered — His

are not. He was before the beginning and He will be after the end.

• We worship the One whose judgment is perfect and true. We don’t worship karma or

a cosmic balance sheet. We trust true justice to the only One who is Himself righteous.

• We worship the One whose Kingdom stands undivided. His Kingdom — the one

Jesus purchased with His own blood — will never crack or crumble or be overthrown.

The invitation

Friend, the King has looked at your heart and the work of your own hands to run your own

life, and the verdict is the same: mene, tekel, parsin. He knows the number of your days.

He knows you’ve fallen short. He can see the cracks in the walls of the little kingdom

you’ve built for yourself. But the story doesn’t end at the wall.

This isn’t a King who came to power by sword or strategy. He came by a manger and a

cross and an empty tomb. He leads by washing feet. He touched lepers, healed the

untouchable, welcomed the outcast. And He is inviting you — right now — to stop trying to

be the master of your own fate and let the actual Master take the wheel.

Will you bow before the writing on the wall convinces you that you had to?

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | January 18, 2026 | Daniel 2, 7

We are living in objectively the safest, most prosperous era of recorded human history, and we are enjoying being alive less and less.

A hundred years ago we’d just come out of one of the deadliest wars in history and were

marching straight toward another. A thousand years ago, average life expectancy hovered

somewhere between “younger than your parents expected” and “oh no.” (35-45 or so) And yet somehow, in 2026, with more comfort and convenience at our fingertips than any

civilization has ever had — we are anxious, exhausted, and convinced the whole thing is

about to collapse.

I’m not immune. I look at the news most days in a state of genuine bewilderment. I don’t

know if I should be angry at the politicians or the people resisting them. I don’t know if

America is the hero or the villain. I don’t have clean, uncomplicated feelings about basically

anything happening in the world right now, and the craziest part is that most people seem

to have extremely clean, uncomplicated feelings and are baffled that I don’t. I feel like the

world is ripping itself apart. And if I’m honest — the Bible agrees with me.

Beastly kingdoms devolve and devour

Daniel chapters 2 and 7 cover the same ground from two different angles. In chapter 2,

Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a massive statue made of different materials — gold

head, silver chest, bronze belly, iron-and-clay legs. In chapter 7, Daniel has a vision of four

terrifying beasts rising out of a churning sea. Both are describing the same thing: the

sequence of world empires between Daniel’s time and the arrival of the Messiah. Babylon,

Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome.

But here’s what the author wants you to feel, not just know: these kingdoms devolve. They

go from gold to iron-and-clay. From majestic to monstrous. The lion gets its wings ripped

off. The bear is told to devour flesh. The leopard has four heads. The fourth beast is so

horrifying Daniel can barely describe it — iron teeth, ten horns, devouring everything in

sight.

History is not progressing toward a golden age of human achievement. Earthly kingdoms

are not getting better. They’re getting more beastly. More consuming. More fragmented.

Every human empire eventually devolves. And every human empire eventually devours —

its enemies, its citizens, its own resources, its future. Sound like anything you’ve read in

the news lately?

When Daniel saw these visions — the beasts, the fourth beast, the little horn — he was

terrified. Pale. Thoughts racing. He had a physiological reaction to the reality of what he

was seeing. Daniel had the same kind of existential terror that we often see when we look at the news and see empires warring across the world today. What could He hope in? How could he go on being faithful in exile? All seemed lost.

But then — the Son of Man

Here’s where it gets good. Because in the middle of all this beastly imagery, Daniel 7 pivots

and you see something else entirely.

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one

like a son of man...”

He is given authority. Honor. Sovereignty over all nations. Every race, every language,

every people will bow to Him. And His kingdom — unlike every beastly empire before it —

will last forever. It cannot be consumed or divided or devolved. Jesus took this title for

Himself repeatedly in the Gospels. He was saying: I am the one Daniel saw. I am the stone

cut without hands that will shatter the statue. And He shall reign forever and ever. Yes, earthly kingdoms devolve and devour, but we must live in light of an eternal Kingdom that saves and restores.

Living in light of the Kingdom means:

• Stop sliding into the devolution of political tribalism. The kingdoms of this world are

not going to be fixed or domesticated — they’re going to be dismantled and brought

under the authority of Christ. Investing all your hope in the right political outcome is

investing in a beastly empire.

• Live submitted to His Kingdom right now. Not just intellectually but practically. How

do you treat people who disagree with you? Who do you spend your resources

serving? What does your schedule say about who you think is really in charge?

• Pray with the same seriousness Daniel did. He remained wise and resistant in the

face of tyranny. He rejoiced in God’s wisdom and deliverance (Daniel 2:19–23).

The world feels like it’s falling apart because — in one sense — it is. Beastly empires

always do. This is not a new problem. It is not a uniquely modern crisis. Babylon felt this

way. Rome felt this way. Every age has felt this way.

But here is the word that cuts through all of it: there is a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.

There is a King whose reign will not end. And the Son of Man — who came the first time in

humility and a manger — is coming again in glory and clouds and final, comprehensive

authority. The beasts don’t get the last move. He does.

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | February 1, 2026 | Daniel 3, 6

Where is God when His people are suffering? Where is God when a marriage feels like it’s

one argument away from falling apart? When the kids are struggling in ways you can’t fix

with a hug and a prayer and a good night’s sleep? When the bank account is running out

and the bills keep coming? When the diagnosis looks devastating and the doctors don’t

have good news?

Because that is not a theoretical question. That is the cry of every human heart under

pressure. And the people of Israel — Daniel, his three friends, the whole exiled community

— would have been screaming the same question. God’s own prophets warned that exile

was coming. But warning didn’t make the flames any cooler. Sometimes it feels like the

Father has gone out to the garage, shut the door, and left the kids alone in the house.

A tale of two furnaces

Daniel chapters 3 and 6 are intentionally designed as mirror images of each other. Both

stories follow the same pattern: a king makes a decree demanding total loyalty, jealous

rivals sell out the faithful, one or three refuse to comply, a miraculous divine rescue

happens, and the Babylonian king ends up worshiping the One True King. This isn’t a

coincidence. It’s a deliberate argument: no matter the king, no matter the era, the same

God keeps showing up for His people.

In chapter 3, Nebuchadnezzar builds a gold statue — 90 feet tall — and commands

everyone to bow when the music plays. This is his dream from Daniel 2 literalized and

inflated. What was symbolic has become compulsory. Bow, or be burned. And three men

— Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — look at that statue and say no.

Furnace faith

Their answer to Nebuchadnezzar is one of the most remarkable statements of faith in all of

Scripture:

“Our God is able to save us. We believe he will. But even if he doesn’t — we will

not bow.”

That’s not theoretical faith. That’s furnace faith. The kind forged in genuine relationship

with God, not just belief about God. Note what they don’t do. They don’t organize a protest.

They don’t write an op-ed. They don’t explain their theological reasoning to the king. They

just draw a line: This is what we will not do.

The king heats the furnace seven times hotter. The guards die just getting close to it.

These three men are thrown in — and then Nebuchadnezzar stands up and squints into

the fire. “I see four men walking around in the fire.” Was it an angel? A pre-incarnate

appearance of Christ? The text leaves it tantalizing open. But here’s what it says loud and

clear: God is present. He is in the fire. The flames did not disappear. But His people were

not alone.

The golden statues of our day

These stories aren’t just history. They’re a mirror. Every era has its golden statues — the

things that demand your bow, your allegiance, your ultimate loyalty.

• Partisan tribalism. When your political team becomes the thing salvation hangs on.

Refusing to bow looks like having the courage to critique your own team as honestly as

the other.

• Wealth and achievement. When your worth gets measured by your performance,

your title, your platform. Refusing to bow looks like redefining success as obedience,

not accomplishment.

• People-pleasing. When being liked becomes more important than being honest.

Refusing to bow looks like accepting misunderstanding without becoming mute.

• Comfort and convenience. When sacrifice has no place in your spiritual life. Refusing

to bow looks like costly obedience — the kind that actually shapes you.

We cannot bow to God and comfort. We cannot serve Christ and political saviors. We

cannot worship the King and also worship money. The fire doesn’t care about your ability to

compartmentalize.

The promise

Here’s the promise God doesn’t make: you will not go into the fire. Here’s the promise He

does make: you will not face the fire alone. Three stood in refusal. Three were arrested.

Three were thrown in. But four stood in the flames.

Where is God when His people suffer? In the fire with them. Where is God when they

weep? He weeps with them. Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you

forsaken me?” so that you and I never have to. He is the only person in history who

experienced genuine God-forsakenness — and He did it on our behalf. Because of that, no

fire you face will ever be faced without Him.

So this week — when the fire gets hot, when the situation feels impossible, when the

furnace is seven times hotter than it should be — the move isn’t to pray for the flames to go

out. The move is to ask, God, where are you in this? Because He’s in there. He’s already in

there. And He’s not going anywhere.

Beacon Church | Pastor Ben Miller | January 11, 2026 | Daniel 1:2–2:3, 12:13

Magnus Carlsen is the greatest chess player alive, and it honestly doesn’t seem fair to the

rest of us.

I went down a YouTube rabbit hole a while back and stumbled onto a clip of Magnus —

blindfolded, facing the back wall of a room — while ten Harvard-educated lawyers sat lined

up behind him, each in front of their own chess board. He would call out his move for Board

1. Then Board 2. All the way to Board 10. Each opponent would call out what they played

in response, and Magnus — with no visual, no notes, just the vast supercomputer behind

his eyes — kept track of all ten games simultaneously. And won. Handily.

No matter how complicated the puzzle, Magnus could see all 320 pieces at once. Now,

forgive the wildly obvious overspiritualization that this preacher cannot help himself from

making — but if Magnus Carlsen can keep track of ten simultaneous chess games

blindfolded, how much more could an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God keep track

of His plans for His people? That’s the foundational premise of the book of Daniel. God has

good plans for His people. Even in Babylon. Even across centuries. Even into eternity.

God is the one actually moving the pieces

One of the most striking things about Daniel chapters 1 and 2 is how many times God is

the subject of the verb. The author wants you to notice it.

• God gave victory to Nebuchadnezzar (1:2)

• God caused the official to show favor to Daniel (1:9)

• God gave the four young men knowledge and unusual aptitude (1:17)

• God gave Daniel the ability to interpret dreams (1:17)

• God gave Nebuchadnezzar the dream about the future (2:45)

And what does Daniel do while God is orchestrating all of this? He remains faithful. That’s

it. He doesn’t scheme his way to influence. He doesn’t network his way to the top. He

doesn’t compromise his values to survive. He just stays faithful. And God positions him to

speak to the most powerful king in the world.

Chapter 12 is the end of the book — Daniel is now an old man, and he gets this promise:

You will rise to receive your allotted inheritance at the end of the age. In other words: stay

faithful. Resurrection is your inheritance. The arc of Daniel’s entire life is: God has plans.

Remain faithful while you wait for fulfillment.

What remaining faithful actually looks like

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about faithfulness: it’s not passive. Remaining faithful in

Babylon is an active, costly, countercultural choice. Daniel’s model shows us three

dimensions of what that looks like.

1. Faithfulness requires resistance.

The path of least resistance in Babylon is to compromise. To participate in the “little” evils.

To decide that this one thing isn’t a big enough deal to fight over. Daniel disagrees. He

draws a line in the sand over his diet. Not because Daniel has strong feelings about keto.

Because he knows that the thing you’re unwilling to resist grows into the thing that owns

you. James 4:7 says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” The resistance isn’t how

we earn salvation — it’s how we honor the salvation we’ve already been given.

2. Faithfulness positions you for Kingdom impact.

Matthew 25:21 — “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many

things.” Four teenagers eat a different diet for ten days, and at the end of it they are “ten

times healthier and more capable” than everyone else in Babylon’s training program. God

honored their faithfulness in the small thing with influence in the big thing. Want to change

the world? Get serious about remaining faithful in the ordinary, everyday,

no-one-is-watching stuff. And watch how God fills you with the gifts and clarity for just the

right moment.

3. Faithfulness means resurrection is your inheritance.

Daniel remained faithful because of a forward-looking hope. He was living toward a

Messiah who hadn’t come yet. He didn’t get to see the whole game board. He saw a sliver.

And yet he remained faithful. We live on the other side of the resurrection. We don’t have a

hope of a resurrection — we have a living hope in a risen Christ. 1 Peter 1:3–5 says that

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have been born again to an inheritance that is

“imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” That’s our inheritance. Not the house. Not the

401k. Not the career. The resurrection.

So what’s your line in the sand?

Here’s the question I can’t shake: What is Babylon asking you to compromise right now?

For Daniel, it was food he knew he shouldn’t eat. For his friends, it would later be a statue

they refused to bow to. When you become aware of that thing — the invitation isn’t to

perform faithfulness for an audience. It’s to quietly, firmly draw a line and say: The living

hope of Christ is too valuable to waste on this.

Maybe it’s a besetting sin you keep cycling through. Maybe it’s a compromise in your

integrity at work. Maybe it’s the content you consume that you know isn’t making you more

like Jesus. Whatever it is — the God who sees Magnus Carlsen’s ten chess boards at once

also sees your specific situation. He has plans in it, through it, and beyond it. Your job isn’t

to figure out all the moves. Your job is to remain faithful until fulfillment.

Babylon gets treated like a history lesson. Ancient Mesopotamia, buried under sand, only

relevant if you’re really into archaeology or end-times charts. But what if I told you Babylon

isn’t a relic — it’s a recurring pattern? One that shows up in the opening chapter of

Scripture, in the closing chapter of Scripture, and — if you’re being honest — in the apps

on your phone right now?

We’re starting a journey through the book of Daniel, and before we go anywhere, we need

to understand the world Daniel lived in. Not because ancient Near Eastern history is a

great conversation starter (though it kind of is), but because Babylon is the backdrop of

Daniel’s whole story — and in a lot of ways, it’s the backdrop of ours too.

Babylon’s origin story is actually your origin story.

You have to go all the way back to Genesis 10–11 to see where Babylon starts. There’s a

guy named Nimrod who builds the city of Babylon in the region of Shinar. And then his generation decides to build a tower that reaches to the sky. Not because they needed better cell reception. But because they wanted to make a name for themselves. They wanted to create their own gateway to godhood.

Sound familiar? That urge to build, to achieve, to accumulate, to be significant — that’s not

a 21st century problem. That’s the human problem. And God’s response was to scatter

them and then, two chapters later, to call one man named Abraham out of that very region.

Out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Out of Babylon’s zip code.

The redemptive story of Scripture begins with a call out of Babylon. And here’s the thread

that follows: exile happens, God calls a remnant out of Babylon. Jump to Revelation 18,

and Babylon is still standing — still a “great city,” still chasing extravagant luxury, still

“sinning up to the heavens,” still proud, still glorifying herself. And in verse 4, there’s a

voice from heaven saying: “Come out of her, my people.”

God is still calling people out of Babylon. He always has been. And Babylon has always

been calling people back in.

What does Babylon look like today?

Babylon isn’t a city you can Google Maps. It’s a posture. An orientation of the human heart

toward self-made greatness, comfort, status, and control. If you need a description, here’s

a few:

• When we’re captivated by influencer culture and celebrity and what other people

think of us — welcome to Babylon.

• When comfort quietly becomes more important than holiness — welcome to

Babylon.

• When we chase the feeling of luxury — the upgrade, the bigger house, the nicer car

— more than we chase transformation — welcome to Babylon.

• When we crown ourselves king of our own lives — welcome to Babylon.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: most of us have done all of those things this week. I know I

have. Babylon isn’t just out there — it’s in here. *points to human heart...* The pull of Babylon is internal. It’s the voice that says you deserve this, you’ve earned this, you’ve got this.

Daniel understood this. He lived in literal Babylon — an empire built to make you forget

there was any King other than Nebuchadnezzar. And yet he refused to let Babylon rewrite

who he was. The first thing we see him do in chapter 1 is fast. In a culture of excess, he

opts out. He refuses the king’s food. That’s not just good nutrition. That’s a declaration: I

am not of this place.

The way out

God doesn’t just want you to survive Babylon. He wants better than Babylon for you. Better than the status you’re chasing, better than the comfort you’re hiding in, better than the false sense of freedom Babylon is selling.

And He’s made a way out. It’s not a 12-step program or a new year’s resolution. It’s a

person. The book of Daniel is not a survival guide for exiles — it’s a signpost pointing

forward to a greater King. A Messiah who would not conquer Babylon by becoming

impressive, wealthy, and powerful, but by laying his life down. At the cross, Jesus dealt

Babylon its fatal wound. He defeated sin and death and the lie that we can save ourselves.

So here’s what walking out of Babylon looks like in the real world — the same thing Jesus

said in Mark 8:

Deny yourself.

You know why one of the first things Daniel does in Babylon is fast? Because Babylon is

literally trying to feed him its version of success. And he says no. Deliberately.

Consistently. Not because food is evil, but because he knows what you feed grows. What

are you feeding?

Pick up your cross.

The cross was an instrument of death that gave life to others. Jesus calls us to live that

way — spending ourselves in service to others instead of building empires of

self-preservation. Who are you spending your life to serve?

Follow Jesus.

This one is active and ongoing. Not “follow a moral code” or “follow the rules.” Follow a

Person. Where is He going today? What does He want you to do right now?

Every small step of obedience is a step out of Babylon and toward the Kingdom of God.

Babylon is loud and convincing and very well-funded. It knows what you want and it’s not

afraid to offer it. But there is a King whose Kingdom is worth far more than anything

Babylon has ever built. And He is calling you to come out of it and follow Him into

something that actually lasts.