Doug McMasters: If you don't know where Daniel is, just Isaiah, jeremiah, lamentations, ezekiel, daniel, you get into some of the other books Hosea, joel, amos, obadiah, jonah, micah, nahum, habakkuk, zephaniah Haggai, zechariah, malachi.
Doug McMasters: You've gone too far.
Doug McMasters: Yeah, before we get past the first verse of the book of Daniel, we're brought into a realization that there's some deep drama going on in the nation of Israel, a drama that pervades the whole book.
Doug McMasters: Look at verse 1.
Doug McMasters: In the third year the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it.
Doug McMasters: And if that wasn't foreboding enough, all we have to do is read verse 2.
Doug McMasters: The Lord handed King Jehoiakim of Judah over to him, along with some of the vessels from the house of God.
Doug McMasters: Nebuchadnezzar carried them to the land of Babylon, to the house of his God, and put the vessels in the treasury of his God.
Doug McMasters: This is a pretty distressing situation that we enter into.
Doug McMasters: It's like opening up a movie and instantly the music has that foreboding tone to it.
Doug McMasters: This is Jerusalem sacked, surrounded, king deposed, some of the contents of the temple stripped away and, to top it off, carted off hundreds of miles away and set up in the temple of a false god, to the satisfaction of this idolatrous king.
Doug McMasters: This was seen as a great victory by Babylon, not only over Jerusalem, but over Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: This was a common practice in the ancient Near East.
Doug McMasters: A victorious army would go in and they would plunder the temple of the vanquished nation that they were fighting against and they would take away the symbols of that defeated God and put it into their temple as a trophy.
Doug McMasters: This was seen as not only the failure of the King Jehoiakim, the failure of the armies of Jerusalem and Judah, but also the failure of the God of the people.
Doug McMasters: In the next 20 years or so, successive waves of people will be deported from the land of promise to Babylon in captivity, the early stage of which we'll look at here in the next couple verses, in which some of the choicest young men, men of wealth and education, nobility, are brought to Babylon and indoctrinated in the ways of Babylon to serve their king.
Doug McMasters: Just think about this for a minute.
Doug McMasters: The first three or four verses were introduced to siege, were introduced to overthrow, were introduced to defeat, were introduced to death.
Doug McMasters: Destruction and captivity Surrounding the people of Israel for generations have been powerful empires that have held sway over their daily activities, not just the Babylonians, but in times before this, the Assyrians, and present times, the Egyptians, and a little bit later on we'll hear about the Medes and the Persians, to say nothing of the smaller kingdoms around, all of them threatening them as their enemies.
Doug McMasters: And here they are beginning to find themselves, pulled out of their land, the land of promise, and brought into Babylon and sitting there under an idolatrous nation, with their king's, their Lord's goods, set up in the temple.
Doug McMasters: What kind of message would these people need to hear, and what kind of message can we gain from what they were getting communicated to by Daniel?
Doug McMasters: Some people would think that there's nothing really here for us to learn.
Doug McMasters: I mean, this is something that happened 20, you know, thousands of years ago.
Doug McMasters: This is something that happened in faraway places, in a culture that's completely different than ours.
Doug McMasters: This is something that happened to the people of the Old Testament, the people of Israel, under a different covenant, an exile of which is the end and the culmination of hundreds of years of neglect and apostasy.
Doug McMasters: This is more than just a temporary backsliding of a person for a month or two.
Doug McMasters: This is centuries of apostasy.
Doug McMasters: Well, the answer to the question of the people of that day is an answer that we need in our day, and Daniel provides it not only for them but also for us.
Doug McMasters: And the question they most would have wanted an answer to is this Is God in control in this situation?
Doug McMasters: That's the big question of Daniel.
Doug McMasters: Just think about all that they've faced.
Doug McMasters: Wouldn't that be a very quick question to your mind?
Doug McMasters: If that's what you were facing, daniel would say to them, just as he would say to us if he were to speak to us with an answer yes, in spite of all of these circumstances that you're seeing in this situation, which is most dire, god is in control.
Doug McMasters: It's a message that they needed in this century, in the 6th century BC, and it's a message we need in the 21st century AD.
Doug McMasters: Before we look at the answer that Daniel gives, just for a moment, let's kind of introduce ourselves to the setting and to the writer of this book.
Doug McMasters: In the first chapter of Daniel, we're given a distinct understanding of the sort of boundary markers of time of the book of Daniel.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 1.
Doug McMasters: We're given a time marker there In the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim.
Doug McMasters: This is how people marked time back then.
Doug McMasters: And then take a look at verse 21 of the same chapter.
Doug McMasters: There you'll see, daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.
Doug McMasters: This is how people did their calendars back then the year of the reign of this king, the year of the reign of that king.
Doug McMasters: That's how they marked it and it's still how we mark out understanding ancient Near East history and Egyptology and all of that.
Doug McMasters: We still mark it by the years of the reigns of the kings, and so in our dating system what we have is somewhere between 605 BC down to 539 BC, and Daniel is a part of all of that time.
Doug McMasters: Daniel 10.1 also marks out just a little bit of a deeper move into the reign of King Cyrus.
Doug McMasters: It says in Daniel 10.1, there's a reference to the third year of King Cyrus, and the end of chapter one is the first year of King Cyrus.
Doug McMasters: So this sixth century, 604, all the way down to 537,.
Doug McMasters: What happens in this time period?
Doug McMasters: Well, just prior to it, we learn of the fall of Assyria.
Doug McMasters: The fall of Assyria, the empire that brought down other nations and the empire that stole away the people out of the northern tribes of Israel, is now itself brought to dust.
Doug McMasters: The king of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, led the empire of Assyria toward its end, and by 605 BC, around the time that verse 1 happens here, assyria is gone, fulfilling the prophecy of Nahum, chapter 1 and verse 8.
Doug McMasters: But he will completely destroy Nineveh with an overwhelming flood and he will chase his enemies into darkness.
Doug McMasters: Whatever you plot against the Lord, he will bring it to a complete destruction.
Doug McMasters: Oppression will not rise up a second time, for they will be consumed like entangled thorns, like the drink of a drunkard and like straw that is fully dry.
Doug McMasters: Assyria is toast, literally gone, and the rise of Babylon is something that happens.
Doug McMasters: The beginning of the book of Daniel coincides with Babylon's rise to ascendancy on the dust of the Assyrian Empire and under Nebuchadnezzar, babylon grows and grows in strength until it reaches the zenith of its power.
Doug McMasters: Nebuchadnezzar makes an incursion into the area of the Levant and Palestine, as we call it, from his command center in Syria, and he's trying to push Egypt out of the control of the region.
Doug McMasters: And happens to run into this little group of people in Judah and this king in Jerusalem that's looking to Egypt for help and so decides to take action against them, and he does so in three successive waves.
Doug McMasters: We think about the exile happening to the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
Doug McMasters: It happened in three waves.
Doug McMasters: It started here with Daniel, as we read about in verses 1 and 2, around 605 BC, but there was another one in 597 BC, about eight years later, and then 10 years after that is a larger wave of people removed from the region.
Doug McMasters: After Nebuchadnezzar's death, however, babylon starts its slow slide into oblivion.
Doug McMasters: There's a number of regents that aren't named in the scriptures.
Doug McMasters: There's one that's mentioned, belshazzar, who's a co-regent with Nabonidus, his father and we learn a little bit about him of a particular party that he wanted to have one night.
Doug McMasters: On the horizon of the end of the Babylonian empire are the Persians, a developing power, beginning in the middle of the sixth century to rise up in its strength and finally destroying Babylon in 539 BC.
Doug McMasters: 539 BC, an important date because when the Persian power came in, they changed the whole way that they looked at those captives of exile.
Doug McMasters: The Babylonians removed the people of Israel from the land and the Persians thought it best to resettle them in the land.
Doug McMasters: So that's what's going on in this whole time period.
Doug McMasters: Daniel, whose name means God, is my judge.
Doug McMasters: We don't know much about him other than he's probably from some royal or noble descent, as it tells us here in verse 3 of chapter 1.
Doug McMasters: The king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility.
Doug McMasters: Young men without any physical defect, good looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledge, perceptive and capable of serving in the king's palace.
Doug McMasters: He was obviously possessed of a lot of abilities.
Doug McMasters: He was from a noble background, perhaps even a royal background, and in his early life he's trained up with some others that we know by Shadrach, meshach and Abednego, whose names were originally Hananiah, mishael and Azariah.
Doug McMasters: In that first deportation of the people, they're trained to enter into the service of the royal court of Babylon.
Doug McMasters: Daniel is renamed Belteshazzar so are the three men that we just mentioned and Daniel is brought into the recognition of the king when he's presented to him in chapter 2, by exercising a particular gift of being able to recollect and interpret the dream of the king and a reward for which he was granted to be the ruler over the province of Babylon and the chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.
Doug McMasters: Now we're not told the details of Daniel's life for about 30 years.
Doug McMasters: Daniel goes quiet for quite a while.
Doug McMasters: We jump to the next chapter, but there's decades going on in between these chapters and it seems to be that Daniel is kind of forgotten by others, that Daniel is kind of forgotten by others and it's not until he comes into the recognition of Belshazzar or Belshazzar, rather, in Daniel, chapter 5, that he is restored back to some of the prominence that he had before.
Doug McMasters: He interprets the handwriting on the wall that disturbed the feast of Belshazzar and because of that ability to read it, to interpret it and to give the implication and sense of it to Belshazzar, belshazzar deems him to be the third greatest in the empire.
Doug McMasters: Think about that.
Doug McMasters: Belshazzar's a co-regent with his father, nabonidus, who's been away from Babylon for 10 years, and so he's saying well, there's my dad, there's me, and then there's you, daniel, the third greatest in the empire.
Doug McMasters: But that night the empire comes to nothing, it's completely destroyed.
Doug McMasters: He was the third greatest of an empire that lasted for a few more hours.
Doug McMasters: Who's the third greatest of an empire that lasted for a few more hours?
Doug McMasters: But after the fall of Babylon, darius ascends to the throne and makes him, in chapter 6 and verse 2, this he says to him Darius decided to appoint 120 satraps over the kingdom, stationed throughout the realm, and over them three administrators, including Daniel.
Doug McMasters: Because of that place of prominence that Daniel was in, he faced the jealousy and the envy of others who were put in places of influence, and they didn't want him to gain any more control than he had.
Doug McMasters: So they persuaded the monarch to pass a decree forbidding anyone, for 30 days, to offer a prayer to anyone except the king himself.
Doug McMasters: And because of his disobedience to that, daniel was thrown into a den of lions.
Doug McMasters: And yet the Lord miraculously delivered him and again he was raised to a high post of honor.
Doug McMasters: As we read at the end of chapter one, daniel survives this whole season of exile.
Doug McMasters: He lives to see his people beginning the restoration to the land.
Doug McMasters: Think about that the whole movement to the exile, from the first wave of being ripped out of the land to the first people beginning to enter back into the land.
Doug McMasters: Daniel saw it all and though he wasn't one of the ones we don't know, but probably not one of the ones to return to the land, the heart was for his people and his prayer was for his people, and he prospered through it all, despite the troubles he faced.
Doug McMasters: And it's no wonder then why Ezekiel mentions him in Ezekiel 14 and 28, and mentions Daniel as a pattern of righteousness and a person of wisdom, of exceedingly great wisdom.
Doug McMasters: So let's go back to that question In the middle of all of this trouble, is God in control here?
Doug McMasters: How did Daniel answer that question?
Doug McMasters: We said he answered it by yes.
Doug McMasters: But how does he answer that question?
Doug McMasters: Well, he answers it with a two-pronged approach.
Doug McMasters: He answers it with stories and visions approach.
Doug McMasters: He answers it with stories and visions.
Doug McMasters: It's kind of an odd mashup of literature here, narrative stories and apocalyptic images.
Doug McMasters: Daniel provides us with six gripping stories of God's providence, but he also gives us five mystical visions and he puts them together in order to impress upon all of our senses that God is in control For our benefit.
Doug McMasters: The chapter divisions are quite useful.
Doug McMasters: They kind of give us a little bit of the cycle.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 1, daniel and his three friends at Nebuchadnezzar's court.
Doug McMasters: Daniel two is the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's dream that Daniel is able to interpret.
Doug McMasters: Chapter three the three friends in the fiery furnace.
Doug McMasters: Chapter four Nebuchadnezzar's pride taking a fall.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 5, belshazzar and the writing on the wall.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 6, daniel in the lion's den.
Doug McMasters: So those six stories move through the six chapters quite cleanly.
Doug McMasters: The next ones in the visions are not far from that either Chapter 7, the vision of the four beasts.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 7, the vision of the four beasts.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 8, the vision of the ram of the goats.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 9, Daniel's prayer of repentance.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 10 to the very beginning of chapter 11, the vision of a heavenly messenger, and then the rest of 11 and 12, visions of the scope of the end of history.
Doug McMasters: 12 Visions of the Scope of the End of History.
Doug McMasters: Why this quizzical mashup of literary forms narrative literature, apocalyptic literature?
Doug McMasters: Well, the historical stories talk about how the people of Israel, particularly Daniel and some of the others in the court, like his three friends, are able to navigate the tricky waters of the Babylonian royal court.
Doug McMasters: Any of us who have paid any attention to kingly histories, particularly in Britain or somewhere like that, we know that it's always about somebody killing somebody else to rise in ascendancy.
Doug McMasters: There's always some sort of political intrigue and family rivalries going on, and in the midst of all of that, these people would be no different.
Doug McMasters: Daniel and his friends are trying to navigate how to walk with God in the middle of all of that, and these stories show us how they did.
Doug McMasters: These stories tell us that, in the middle of all of that morass.
Doug McMasters: God is in control.
Doug McMasters: But these stories have their limits.
Doug McMasters: Get us into the nitty gritty details of certain situations, but those situations are happening in a big context.
Doug McMasters: We don't see the big context when we're literally looking into the fiery furnace.
Doug McMasters: There's something bigger going on.
Doug McMasters: These lessons that we learn in the first six chapters are important, but they have their limitations because of their immediacy and their narrowed scope.
Doug McMasters: And that's why we have, at the back end of Daniel, these apocalyptic visions.
Doug McMasters: They take us beyond the minute stories and they help us to see that God is in control.
Doug McMasters: Yes, not only of the details, but of the movements of humanity.
Doug McMasters: These stories will give us comfort about the very moments of our life, but they also will give us comfort about the sweep of human history.
Doug McMasters: Well, let's focus a little bit on these six stories, and predominantly on these six stories.
Doug McMasters: What we find in these six stories are six simple stories of faith in the middle of opposition, faith under pressure.
Doug McMasters: We follow Daniel, we follow his three friends as they're forced to leave their homeland, israel and to settle into the Babylonian Empire in the king's palace, and what we find is that at every turn they're faced with challenges.
Doug McMasters: Each chapter seems to bring a new challenge, just like chapter one.
Doug McMasters: The choice is compelled to learn foreign ways in preparation of serving that government, this government that's made a hostile incursion into their country and is surrounding the capital city, looming dangerously over the place where they were born.
Doug McMasters: But every time a new challenge comes, we find God's people rising to meet that challenge by the enablement of God.
Doug McMasters: And so in the midst of these first six chapters, we see some responses from the people.
Doug McMasters: There's three of them.
Doug McMasters: I want to note the first response that we find is a submissive dependence upon God's help.
Doug McMasters: Let's go back to chapter one for just a moment.
Doug McMasters: These men who are taken Hananiah, mishael and Azariah and Daniel Azariah and Daniel are given the names it tells us in verse 7, of Belteshazzar, shadrach, meshach and Abednego.
Doug McMasters: One's identity was often discovered in one's name.
Doug McMasters: I talked to Ethan this weekend and I asked him.
Doug McMasters: I said do you have a name for your son yet?
Doug McMasters: Are you waiting?
Doug McMasters: And he said it'll be coming, because I think in his understanding and culture a name and one's identity are important and you don't know that until the child is born.
Doug McMasters: We had a lady come to our church this morning who was from Nigeria and I was talking about Lola and Lola's sister and when her sister had a child, a Ramey day, royal and I went to the house and they had a naming ceremony and they had seven names for that little boy.
Doug McMasters: Can you imagine doing that in kindergarten Write your name down, especially when it's a rainy day.
Doug McMasters: Right, seven names, but each of them was significance In our day.
Doug McMasters: We kind of lost that in a lot of our United States society, but in this culture that was very, very important, especially when the name of God was imported or implanted into your name Daniel, right, el Elohim God.
Doug McMasters: Mishael right El Elohim, god, mishael right.
Doug McMasters: You hear the name of God in there.
Doug McMasters: Now they're given Bill, protect the king Belshazzar, from Yah is my help.
Doug McMasters: From Azariah to now servant of Nabu Right.
Doug McMasters: They're given the names of gods, other gods.
Doug McMasters: Their identity, their religious identity, their personal identity, their national identity, has been stripped away by this renaming process, away by this renaming process.
Doug McMasters: Not only has that been done, but they've been given a foreign education, a curriculum to learn a new language to speak, and perhaps even been made eunuchs in order to serve in the king's palace.
Doug McMasters: These men have had their gender wiped away, their religious identity wiped away their personal understanding, wiped away their national allegiances, ripped apart, their language taken away.
Doug McMasters: But notice something in Daniel Every one of those we don't find Daniel and his three friends bucking against.
Doug McMasters: There's not a single mention of them saying I'm Daniel, not Belshazzar.
Doug McMasters: Daniel, not Belshazzar.
Doug McMasters: You don't hear that at all.
Doug McMasters: You don't hear them at all chafing under all of this complete remaking of their person, until we get to this odd point where Daniel says I'm just going to eat vegetables and not feast at the king's table vegetables and not feast at the king's table.
Doug McMasters: And this is why I've labeled this first response submissive dependence, because there's a submissiveness to this overpowering, dominating culture that they've been brought into, that they move into, that has radically changed them.
Doug McMasters: However, there's something where they stop, and we find in verse 8, where Daniel resolves not to defile himself with the royal food and wine.
Doug McMasters: Why did he stop there?
Doug McMasters: And not when his name was changed, not when his language was changed, not when his national identity was changed, not when his religious markers were changed and not when his very body was marred to be one of the servants of this king.
Doug McMasters: Why did he stop there?
Doug McMasters: That leads us to the second point, not just a submissive dependence in the face of this opposition, but a supplied wisdom to face this opposition.
Doug McMasters: Daniel has gone through this whole process their minds and their bodies being prepared for the Babylonian court, including their diet.
Doug McMasters: And here's the point, I think If they were to prosper, if they were going to be the regal displays of the courtly servants of the king, who would get all the credit for it?
Doug McMasters: Right, the Babylonians, of course, because they would look healthy, they would be strong and vigorous, they would be wise, they would be good-looking men, they would be the Babylonians' bragging points whenever other royalty would come in to visit.
Doug McMasters: But if they could be strong and healthy and vibrant, with shining faces and skin on a diet of vegetables, only God could give them that and I say that as a very strong meat eater.
Doug McMasters: Only God could give them that.
Doug McMasters: Only God could give them that the purpose was not necessarily for the king, but for Daniel and his three friends to recognize God was taking care of them, to keep them from believing that their physical appearance was due to the credit of the Babylonian diet, that God was going to watch over them.
Doug McMasters: You see, the diet was private, not a public affair.
Doug McMasters: Daniel goes in and he asks quietly not to have to partake of the diet.
Doug McMasters: This is not something he does as a grandstanding moment, sort of a drawing the line in the sand kind of thing with the king.
Doug McMasters: This is a quiet thing that he does.
Doug McMasters: There is that submissive dependence, mingled with these evidences, that he was given some wisdom to know when to walk in to the situation and draw the lines, even though, quietly.
Doug McMasters: They didn't stage any food strikes, they didn't make any public proclamations of their intentions.
Doug McMasters: They simply asked for permission not to partake.
Doug McMasters: And while the king thought he was in control of the world, that he was able to develop these men into the fine examples of what they were, the reality is, is God's doing it?
Doug McMasters: God's in there doing it.
Doug McMasters: Why do we know that?
Doug McMasters: Well, take a look at verse 1.
Doug McMasters: In the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim, king Nebuchadnezzar, babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it.
Doug McMasters: Notice verse 2.
Doug McMasters: The Lord handed King Jehoiakim of Judah over to him.
Doug McMasters: Now take a look at verse 9.
Doug McMasters: God had granted Daniel kindness and compassion from the chief, from the chief eunuch.
Doug McMasters: Take a look at verse 17.
Doug McMasters: God gave these four young men knowledge and understanding in every kind of literature and wisdom.
Doug McMasters: Babylon thinks it's the big, big empire, but God's doing all the work, and what these men needed is not just dependence and submissiveness in the middle of this opposition, but they needed wisdom to know when to stand up and when not to stand up, when to keep quiet and when to speak.
Doug McMasters: We live in a society today that is increasingly oppositional.
Doug McMasters: We need to be not simply the roaring, raging opposition every time something bad happens that we don't like.
Doug McMasters: Pretty soon we're just going to be that buzzing noise of traffic that you hear outside your house, that you don't hear anymore because it's constantly happening.
Doug McMasters: We need to seek dependently the wisdom from God in order to speak in appropriate moments when our voice and only what we have to say can put God on display.
Doug McMasters: So Daniel and his friends endured all of this cultural assimilation and yet were able to know when to draw the line of distinction.
Doug McMasters: Yet we're able to know when to draw the line of distinction.
Doug McMasters: There's one thing else we learn here in all of these six stories not just submissive dependence and not just supplied wisdom in the face of this opposition, but a surpassing steadfastness to the end of it.
Doug McMasters: Daniel is the prophet of the exile.
Doug McMasters: Like I said, he spans the entire period of it.
Doug McMasters: And one commentator put it this Daniel outlasts his conquerors.
Doug McMasters: Isn't that good?
Doug McMasters: So this message here in Daniel provides us with encouragement.
Doug McMasters: It provides us with hope that those who've been alienated from the land are going to be, if they look to God, dependently, if they look to God for wisdom, if they look to God for strengthening, that they will be able to endure all of that and even find themselves prospering in the midst of all of it.
Doug McMasters: That God is up to all of this.
Doug McMasters: He meets all of this with all the resources that they need, and his power over human intentions is seen time and time and time again in all of these stories, and that's why we find Daniel 1 to 6 so encouraging, right.
Doug McMasters: That's why even children learn these stories from a young age, because they speak of all of this ability that God grants his people.
Doug McMasters: And so I'm going to pull the last part of Daniel into the next part.
Doug McMasters: I want to share with you four big lessons from Daniel, four big lessons.
Doug McMasters: One of them we just said God is in control.
Doug McMasters: God is in control.
Doug McMasters: When we read the first six chapters of Daniel, we have to be careful that we don't get moralistic.
Doug McMasters: Be a Daniel, you know right.
Doug McMasters: Singing that Sunday school song which ruined everybody's theology, you know about.
Doug McMasters: Be Daniel, don't be this, be that, you know.
Doug McMasters: But that kind of song and that kind of teaching removes the focus from where it belongs Not on Daniel, not as example, but on God.
Doug McMasters: Not on Daniel, not as example, but on God.
Doug McMasters: The purpose of these texts are not necessarily to teach us how to behave, so much as it is to tell us where to look in the middle of times of trouble.
Doug McMasters: Daniel's a revelation about God, about God being in control.
Doug McMasters: It's a revelation of who God is and how he acts on our behalf in the middle of troubling times.
Doug McMasters: There's all these characters and we can focus on the characters Nebuchadnezzar, belshazzar, darius, cyrus, daniel Shadrach, meshach and Abednego Daniel, shadrach, meshach and Abednego.
Doug McMasters: We can look at all of that and the political intrigue, but all of it is really to reveal God to us, that God is in control here and that his sovereignty is not just some abstract thought, but his sovereignty gets into the real details of life and gets into the real details of our life.
Doug McMasters: He's in control, he's in control, he's in control.
Doug McMasters: Nebuchadnezzar powerful man, made Jerusalem bow deposed.
Doug McMasters: A king deposed.
Doug McMasters: Another king took away the people in three successive movements, took the temple vessels, set them up as his own, claimed his God to be the champion.
Doug McMasters: From a human perspective, it looked like he really was in control, but the narrator, daniel, rips off the facade of human history and shows the reality of God in control of all of it.
Doug McMasters: The Lord delivered Jehoiakim, not Nebuchadnezzar's might.
Doug McMasters: The Lord delivered him.
Doug McMasters: These little phrases peppered into these stories tell us that it's God, not Nebuchadnezzar.
Doug McMasters: It's God, not the education.
Doug McMasters: It's God who does it all.
Doug McMasters: And when you read chapter 2, it gets rolling with esteem behind it.
Doug McMasters: Daniel 2.17,.
Doug McMasters: The mystery was revealed to Daniel and Daniel praised the God of the heavens.
Doug McMasters: Verse 20, may the name of God be praised forever, for wisdom and power belong to him.
Doug McMasters: He changes the times and seasons.
Doug McMasters: He removes kings and establishes kings.
Doug McMasters: He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.
Doug McMasters: And then, when he's able to speak to the king, he says the God of the heavens has given you sovereignty and given you power and strength and glory.
Doug McMasters: You didn't gain it for yourself, nebuchadnezzar, in the days of the kings.
Doug McMasters: The God of the heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed.
Doug McMasters: You will not rule forever, god will.
Doug McMasters: Verse 45, the great God has told the king what will happen in the future.
Doug McMasters: You've been given some understanding, you've been given some power, you've been given some control, but he owns it all.
Doug McMasters: He is in charge, owns it all, he is in charge, and the king himself, in verse 47, acknowledges it.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 2.
Doug McMasters: Your God is indeed God of gods, lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries.
Doug McMasters: Since you were able to reveal this mystery, I have to acknowledge that Nebuchadnezzar himself says.
Doug McMasters: I have to acknowledge that Nebuchadnezzar himself says and if you read chapter 4, it's quite possible Nebuchadnezzar actually repented.
Doug McMasters: The second big lesson we learn not only is God in charge, but God cares for his people.
Doug McMasters: Yes, god is all powerful, but he's meeting a people who have suffered, and they've suffered in several different ways.
Doug McMasters: They've suffered that sort of sin, of shame, or the suffering of shame that comes because of your sin, where you've looked back and you see the ruin of your own actions in your life, no-transcript, and you realize you're living in the consequences of your iniquity.
Doug McMasters: These people were doing that.
Doug McMasters: They knew why they were in Babylon and not Jerusalem anymore.
Doug McMasters: They had heard, finally, the prophet speaking to them If you don't repent, you're going to be ripped out of the land.
Doug McMasters: The curses of the law are going to come upon you.
Doug McMasters: Well, now it has.
Doug McMasters: And so they're suffering by remembering those good old days when God was delighted in, when they delighted in Him, when they were in His midst and His presence was among them, when they were in his midst and his presence was among them and they suffered under the toil and labor of being essentially enslaved to the Babylonians to do their bidding.
Doug McMasters: And they were suffering because they were now, just as Daniel is finding, constantly in the middle of situations in which their walk with God was put under pressure.
Doug McMasters: And in the middle of all of this suffering of soul because of sin and the body because of their enslavement, they're finding out in these stories that God does still care for them.
Doug McMasters: He'd ripped them out of the land, but he hasn't forgotten them.
Doug McMasters: The third big lesson here is that God will supply what you need.
Doug McMasters: God is in control, god does care.
Doug McMasters: God will supply what you need.
Doug McMasters: Daniel and his three friends are brought into that regime of training, of complete reorientation of their person to be servants of the Babylonian court.
Doug McMasters: But God gives them what they need to be successful in a situation they can't change.
Doug McMasters: He gives them the wisdom they need, gives them the knowledge they need, gives them the sense of welcome and mercy of those that are places of influence to where they're not destroyed.
Doug McMasters: He gives them a bestest coated suits to face the fiery furnace.
Doug McMasters: He gives them a sewing kit to sew up the mouths of the lions.
Doug McMasters: He gives them everything they need.
Doug McMasters: In the middle of these situations, daniel is brought before some strange writing on a wall saying interpret it.
Doug McMasters: He's brought into the presence of the king and says tell me my dream and tell me what it means.
Doug McMasters: Well, I can't read your head.
Doug McMasters: What's in your mind?
Doug McMasters: God gives him the ability to understand what's inside that dream and what it actually means.
Doug McMasters: God gave them everything they needed.
Doug McMasters: And the big fourth lesson is that God wins and so do his people.
Doug McMasters: God wins and so do his people.
Doug McMasters: And this is where the last half of Daniel comes in.
Doug McMasters: We've seen God interacting in his control and God interacting in his care and God interacting in his supply in the middle of tiny situations.
Doug McMasters: But what happens when you zoom out?
Doug McMasters: What about the sweep of human history, not just my life.
Doug McMasters: God's helping me out, but is God in control of everything?
Doug McMasters: The answer in Daniel 7 to 12 is yes.
Doug McMasters: Yes, he is and he's going to win.
Doug McMasters: And we walk straight out of all of these stories that we're enjoying and very familiar with and we step into this bizarre, strange world of beasts and writers and numbers and days and weeks.
Doug McMasters: What is all of this?
Doug McMasters: Well, it's kind of confusing.
Doug McMasters: Yes, it's also very complex.
Doug McMasters: A child could understand the stories of the first six chapters, but biblical scholars still puzzle over the last several chapters.
Doug McMasters: And partly because apocalyptic literature is very foreign to us we don't normally communicate in this style at all.
Doug McMasters: Apocalyptic literature is like poetry.
Doug McMasters: It's full of metaphors, it's full of similes.
Doug McMasters: It's full of similes, it makes points by the way of analogy and it makes points of connection, but it doesn't give us the totality of every little detail that we'd like.
Doug McMasters: It paints with broad strokes, with sweeps of color, in order to give us a sense of things, but not an answer to every fine line of detail.
Doug McMasters: The images speak truly and accurately, but they don't speak with minute precision in the ways that we'd like it to do.
Doug McMasters: It preserves a sense of mystery and complexity and helps us understand that God knows, god is in control and God wins.
Doug McMasters: Even if we don't understand it, when we read these last chapters, we can understand some themes.
Doug McMasters: We can understand the horror of human evil that's very apparent in here.
Doug McMasters: We can understand that there's a war beyond just what we see on earth, that's cosmic in its activity.
Doug McMasters: We can understand that repentance and deliverance are tightly connected to one another.
Doug McMasters: We can understand that our troubles have only a short duration and an end and that there's a time of deliverance in the future that's promised.
Doug McMasters: And we can understand that God's people ultimately, will enter into the victory that God brings.
Doug McMasters: Those are the themes that we learn in the last chapters of Daniel.
Doug McMasters: And so, in the midst of this confusing literature with all of its complexities, there is ultimately the comfort that God wins, and so do his people.
Doug McMasters: Whenever we use the term apocalyptic, what do we think of?
Doug McMasters: What do you think of when somebody says, boy, that was just apocalyptic, right?
Doug McMasters: Well, you think of something cataclysmic.
Doug McMasters: It might be astronomical, it might be this meteor that's coming, this asteroid that's going to crash into the earth, right?
Doug McMasters: You think about a nuclear holocaust, perhaps?
Doug McMasters: Right, you might think of a pandemic, right.
Doug McMasters: You might think of Ragnarok, right?
Doug McMasters: You know you're going back to sort of Viking sort of cosmic battles.
Doug McMasters: Apocalyptic the whole worlds are destroyed.
Doug McMasters: These gods are fighting one another.
Doug McMasters: When you think of apocalyptic, you think of death and destruction.
Doug McMasters: And so when we talk about apocalyptic literature, often we think, boy, it's dark and dour and troubling and full of all of death and despair.
Doug McMasters: But when you read Daniel and when you read Revelation, there's actually joy and there's actually optimism, there's actually triumph in there, because what is brought to an end are the enemies of God.
Doug McMasters: What is brought to final destruction are all those who oppose God who sits on the throne, and the Son who reigns forever and ever.
Doug McMasters: And the Son who reigns forever and ever See, revelation and Daniel tell us that there's going to be an end of human opposition, there's going to be an end to the oppression of God's people, there's going to be an end to the spiritual warring in the heavenly places against God and there's going to be a celebration of God's victories over all of these things.
Doug McMasters: That is what it's telling us.
Doug McMasters: And so the stories of the first six chapters tell us, despite what we see, god is in control, god cares, god will supply what you need in the middle of it all and you'll win, and you'll win.
Doug McMasters: And in Daniel 7-12, you get the same repeated lessons on the larger scale the sweep of human history.
Doug McMasters: God is in control, god cares.
Doug McMasters: God will give you everything you need and he will win, not just the, but the war, the war.
Doug McMasters: And that's why, in Daniel, chapter 12, it ends with these verses at the very beginning At that time, michael, the great prince, who stands watch over your people, will rise up.
Doug McMasters: There will be a time of distress such as never has occurred since nations came into being until that time.
Doug McMasters: But at that time, all your people, who are found written in the book, will escape.
Doug McMasters: Many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life and some to disgrace and eternal contempt.
Doug McMasters: And those who have insight will shine like the bright expanse of the heavens.
Doug McMasters: Those who have insight will shine like the bright expanse of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars, forever and ever.
Doug McMasters: God's people win, even over death itself.
Doug McMasters: So here's Daniel.
Doug McMasters: Despite what you see, despite all of these things, god is in control, god cares.
Doug McMasters: God will give you what you need in the middle of your difficulties, and God wins.
Doug McMasters: Amen, amen, let's pray, father.
Doug McMasters: Thank you for the book of Daniel, thank you for the lessons that we need, lessons that you've given God's people now for well over 2,500 years.
Doug McMasters: Lord, we rise up generation after generation in need of these same lessons, and we thank you that you are faithful to us to have it before us constantly, you that you are faithful to us to have it before us constantly.
Doug McMasters: Lord, we often think that our generation is the worst, that the situations that we face are the greatest harm that humanity's ever had to endure, thinking that the opposition is crushing.
Doug McMasters: Lord, your word here tells us that it's just another round of the same story of those who seek to shake their fist at you.
Doug McMasters: And that, in the middle of this, until that day comes when, ultimately, you will put all enemies under the feet of Christ, you are in control, as you are the one directing every movement and none of it taking you by surprise.
Doug McMasters: And that, in the middle of it all, you'll give us the wisdom that we need as we dependently look to you.
Doug McMasters: That you'll give us, father, the resources that will supply us day by day, and that, ultimately, even though the moments don't seem to look victorious to us.
Doug McMasters: The day will come when all of us will stand and shine in your eternal kingdom, by your mercy and grace in Christ, and we thank you for that Amen.