SPEAKER_00: I'd like to introduce this morning a new sermon series on the book of Daniel in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning I'm just going to do a little overview of the book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: Normally I go verse by verse through books of the Bible, but today I'm just going to do a little bit of a big picture overview to orient us to the book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: So you can turn to the book of Daniel if you want in your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read a couple verses here and there, but this is going to be getting our bearings a little bit on this great biblical book.
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your word and we ask that you would guide us in our understanding of it.
SPEAKER_00: Guide us in our desire to know you better.
SPEAKER_00: Help us through your word to encounter you, to encounter the God of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: The same God who is with us today.
SPEAKER_00: We give thanks for that.
SPEAKER_00: We ask your help.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as I alluded to earlier in the children's message, you know, there's been several times in my life where I have moved around, gone to new places, be it living in a new state, a new country, going to a new school, things like that.
SPEAKER_00: And with those experiences can come a sense of being kind of alone, a sense of alienation, a sense that, well, this is unfamiliar.
SPEAKER_00: This is strange.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't what I'm used to.
SPEAKER_00: It can feel a little bit unsettling to be in an unfamiliar place.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Daniel is a story about God's people who were in an unfamiliar place, in an uncomfortable situation, and who retained their commitment to God in spite of their difficult situation.
SPEAKER_00: We read in the book of Daniel about God's people, Daniel in particular, but others as well, who sought to follow God in the midst of very challenging circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: It can be easy to follow God when life is rosy, is it not?
SPEAKER_00: When everything is going well in life, it can be easy to say, yeah, I'll follow God.
SPEAKER_00: But when life gets uncertain, when situations get difficult, when we feel outside of our comfort zone, that's when we are really pressed to ask ourselves the question: who am I going to rely on?
SPEAKER_00: Am I going to rely on my own understanding and wisdom, or am I going to lean on God and his power and strength?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in life, God has to upset our circumstances, change up our situations, make us a little bit uncomfortable in order to get through to us, to speak to us, and to help us reaffirm our commitment to following Him.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel is a story about a group of people who went through extraordinarily difficult and unsettling circumstances, all the while encountering God through those circumstances and seeking to remain faithful to God.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Daniel actually covers around a 70-year span of time.
SPEAKER_00: It's 12 chapters long, and it covers a 70-year period starting about 600 years before the birth of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the book of Daniel begins, the very first chapter, the very first verse, it says that it begins in Old Testament Israel in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: And it says that while this guy Jehoiakim was king of Judah, there was another king from Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, who came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
SPEAKER_00: So Daniel and his contemporaries in Israel lived through a war where an invading army came, destroyed their city, and then took them into captivity.
SPEAKER_00: It says in verse 2 of Daniel 1 that the Lord delivered Jehoiakim into Nebuchadnezzar's hand.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, God was sovereign over the fact that this foreign king came and destroyed Israel and took some people captive.
SPEAKER_00: It was a difficult situation, but it wasn't something that took place outside of God's sovereignty.
SPEAKER_00: It was a challenging and trying circumstance, and yet it was perfectly within the control and the sovereignty of God.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when life gets difficult for us, it's very easy to think that God has fallen asleep in the cockpit.
SPEAKER_00: That God must no longer be in control.
SPEAKER_00: That maybe he put autopilot on and took a nap because we don't know what's going on in life.
SPEAKER_00: But God is equally in control when life doesn't make sense as much as when life does make sense.
SPEAKER_00: Whether or not the circumstances of your life make sense is not the measure of whether God is on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: God is in control regardless of the weather forecast in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And Daniel and his contemporaries were taken into captivity to this foreign country, Babylon, and it was a place where the one true God of Israel, the God we now know, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one true God, was not worshipped.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it says that Nebuchadnezzar carried off items from the temple of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The place of their worship, he took and took them into the temple of his false gods.
SPEAKER_00: It was an act that displayed contempt and disrespect for the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: It was mocking the faith of Daniel, to put it lightly.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel, I'm sure, could not help but to feel a deep sense that God was being disrespected and being dishonored.
SPEAKER_00: He was in a foreign land around people that he did not know, around cultures and customs he did not know, where the one true God that he worshipped was being mocked.
SPEAKER_00: Not an easy situation.
SPEAKER_00: A situation where it would be very tempting to say, well, I tried following Christ and this just didn't work out.
SPEAKER_00: I tried being faithful to God, but here's what it got me.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give up.
SPEAKER_00: But the circumstances in life don't determine whether we should keep following God.
SPEAKER_00: It is the character of our God that tells us we can continue to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And we may not always understand what's going on in our circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: We might not know the hand of God, but we can trust his heart.
SPEAKER_00: We can trust the heart of God even when his hand makes no sense.
SPEAKER_00: That's something that Daniel may have known at the start of this saga, but it's something that is emphasized over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Because Daniel went into a difficult situation, and yet throughout the entirety of the narrative, God is repeatedly with him, and God continually shows up in surprising and unexpected ways.
SPEAKER_00: In the midst of great difficulty, God was with Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: The captivity that took place was actually a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that Israel had gone into captivity, this was something that the prophets in the Old Testament had actually predicted.
SPEAKER_00: And it was actually a judgment upon Israel for their sin.
SPEAKER_00: In Jeremiah chapter 25, you can read about this if you want in Jeremiah 25, it predicts that Israel will go into captivity in Babylon, that they will go into exile, and that they will go into exile because of their repeated disregard for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The exile was a result of Israel's sin as a nation.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't necessarily mean Daniel's sin individually, but the nation of Israel was in a kind of covenant relationship with God where their collective wrongdoing and disobedience led to judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And so the captivity that we read about in Daniel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and a story of God's ongoing faithfulness even in the midst of this difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Now this might sound fine and well, but you might ask, well, how does this relate to us?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: What difference does this make to us in the here and now?
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't really go to bed at night worrying about going into Babylonian captivity.
SPEAKER_00: You probably don't either.
SPEAKER_00: So what difference does this make?
SPEAKER_00: How does this relate to us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we might not be in exile in the same way that Daniel was, right?
SPEAKER_00: But there are nonetheless parallels to our lives today.
SPEAKER_00: Because as followers of Christ today, the New Testament tells us that we are exiles in a place that is not our true home.
SPEAKER_00: If we are truly following Christ, then there is a sense in which we are exiles.
SPEAKER_00: We are in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to how the Apostle Peter says this in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to abstain from sinful desires which wage war against your soul.
SPEAKER_00: He calls them foreigners and exiles, and he's not talking about their passport nation or their ethnic origin.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the fact that they are Christians who are citizens of the kingdom of God, but who live temporarily here in this world.
SPEAKER_00: The experience of living as a Christian on this earth should always involve an element of uncomfortability or even unfamiliarity.
SPEAKER_00: If we feel 100% fully at home here in this world, it's perhaps a sign that we are not truly longing for eternity as we ought to.
SPEAKER_00: We should always feel a little bit of alienation, frankly, from the society that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: For this is not our true home.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Revelation prophesies about a time when Jesus returns.
SPEAKER_00: And it says this in Revelation chapter 11, verse 15: the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of the Lord and his Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this is predicting a time when heaven and earth merge into one.
SPEAKER_00: God is in complete control of everything that happens in this world and punishes sin directly.
SPEAKER_00: We live right now in a time where temporarily there is a certain amount of evil that God allows to come about.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And so the fact that God has delayed his return in Jesus Christ is a sign of his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That he is giving opportunity and time for people to turn and to come to him.
SPEAKER_00: Because when the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of our Lord, it means salvation for those who know Christ, but it also means judgment upon sin.
SPEAKER_00: There is a day coming when Christ will return, when all wrongs will be made right, and when instantaneous justice will be present.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, that is not the world we live in.
SPEAKER_00: God is in control for sure of everything that happens, but he allows a degree of evil to flourish in the here and now as he patiently waits and longs and invites people to turn to him in repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are always going to be exiles and foreigners in this world if we are truly following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because the values of the world we live in are not the ultimate values of the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: So Daniel lived in exile.
SPEAKER_00: The story of Daniel in exile teaches us about being faithful to God in the midst of challenging circumstances where maybe not everybody around us supports our decision to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: As we see repeatedly in the book of Daniel, the worship of the one true God was opposed, was challenged.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Christians act very surprised when non-Christians act like non-Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be too surprised if non-believers act like unbelievers.
SPEAKER_00: If people who don't know Christ think it's a little weird that you follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When I came to faith in Christ, I was in high school, and I had a number of my friends who looked at me a little bit cross-eyed and wondered what had gotten into me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I didn't experience anything like Daniel did, but it created an element of difference.
SPEAKER_00: It created a little bit of a sense of disconnect where they could not fully understand that.
SPEAKER_00: And that comes with the territory of turning to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That there are going to be those around us who don't quite understand the values and the priorities that structure our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel teaches us about being faithful to God in a situation where those around us don't necessarily value faithfulness to Him.
SPEAKER_00: It teaches us that.
SPEAKER_00: But the story of Daniel in exile also teaches us a really important truth about the salvation that we have in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You see, in Scripture, the theme of exile functions to teach us about our relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: The theme of exile in Scripture teaches us something about our relationship with God and how Christ has restored that relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Exile teaches us that sin brings separation from God, but Christ cures our exile.
SPEAKER_00: Sin brings separation, but Christ cures that separation.
SPEAKER_00: You know what the first exile in Scripture is that we read about?
SPEAKER_00: It's Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve, as the biblical story begins, are in the Garden of Eden and they are in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And they rebel against God by violating his commandments, and immediately they are exiled, kicked out, banished from the garden.
SPEAKER_00: And they experience relational separation from God.
SPEAKER_00: The first sin in the Bible immediately produces relational separation from God.
SPEAKER_00: Later on in the biblical story, Israel is about to come into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, the promised land that Israel enters into, it recalls the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: Because Israel is told that if you obey me and you listen, you follow my commands, you will remain in the land and enjoy the land.
SPEAKER_00: But if you disobey, you'll be kicked out.
SPEAKER_00: The land of Israel itself functions as a metaphor for relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And Israel repeatedly and repeatedly disobeys God.
SPEAKER_00: God sends prophets to them, they don't listen.
SPEAKER_00: Sends more prophets, they still don't listen.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we don't like to listen, right?
SPEAKER_00: I don't like to listen.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of times I hear what I want to hear, and I like to tune out anybody who tells me something I don't want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to God, we all have a little bit of selective hearing, do we not?
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites became spiritually deaf in the worst way.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't listen to God.
SPEAKER_00: And what was the result?
SPEAKER_00: They were exiled.
SPEAKER_00: They were kicked out.
SPEAKER_00: Just like Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, Israel was kicked out of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: They experienced separation.
SPEAKER_00: It's a reminder once again that sin and disobedience brings relational separation from God.
SPEAKER_00: But then we come to the New Testament, and Jesus perfectly fulfills the law.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is called by the Apostle Paul the last Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus obeys where Adam disobeyed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus fulfills the law of God where everybody in history before him had broken it.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus goes to the cross and dies the death that we deserved and is raised to new life.
SPEAKER_00: And the Apostle Paul in the book of Galatians makes sense of the death of Jesus by recalling the Old Testament blessings and curses.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the curses upon Israel, if they didn't listen, was exile.
SPEAKER_00: Exile was a curse for disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: And the Apostle Paul says this in Galatians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
SPEAKER_00: The law of God represents God's holy standard, his moral perfection, his purity, which we could never measure up to.
SPEAKER_00: And because we fall so far short of that standard, it is not to us a blessing but a curse.
SPEAKER_00: Because it reminds us of our separation from God.
SPEAKER_00: Yet into our place stepped Jesus, the one who was faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Into our place stepped Jesus, the one who knew no sin.
SPEAKER_00: And he took upon himself the penalties of exile to bring us out of exile and back to God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one, through his work, who brings us out of relational exile and back into the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: It is through Jesus that our exile from God is taken care of.
SPEAKER_00: Through him, our separation from God is resolved.
SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Daniel, as a story about exile, reminds us of the relational separation that we experience from God and the fact that Christ has cured that.
SPEAKER_00: What this means is that we are now in the world, in a society that is not home to us, but we are in relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: So in one sense, we're in a state of exile, and in another sense, we've been brought out of exile.
SPEAKER_00: We live amongst people and in a society that doesn't fully understand what it is that we value, and yet at the same time, through Christ, we no longer have to live apart from God.
SPEAKER_00: We have access to his presence and in relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: But we do away today when we are fully with him, face to face.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, we have a long distance relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: It's good, it's real, but it's not full.
SPEAKER_00: What we experience now in Christ, we will experience much more fully in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: What we have now.
SPEAKER_00: Is the appetizer for the main course to come.
SPEAKER_00: So let's not get too comfortable here thinking that this is the best it ever gets.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not.
SPEAKER_00: The best is yet to come.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has brought us out of exile and into relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: We have much more to look forward to, but it's a start.
SPEAKER_00: And while we live in a society surrounded by people who don't fully understand who God is or the salvation we have in Christ, we have relationship with Christ Himself and with one another.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a society feeling a sense of exile from that society, but we also have relationship with God having been restored back to him.
SPEAKER_00: This is a big picture view of the significance for us of the book of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into a lot more specifics as we start going through it chapter by chapter, starting next week.
SPEAKER_00: We might not be worrying about going into Babylonian captivity like Daniel did.
SPEAKER_00: But we have been rescued from a much greater captivity, a much greater exile.
SPEAKER_00: Exile from God.
SPEAKER_00: In 2023, the Surgeon General of the United States declared that loneliness was a public health issue.
SPEAKER_00: Loneliness was a public health issue.
SPEAKER_00: That people in society are becoming more and more separated from one another, more and more disconnected, more and more isolated.
SPEAKER_00: Makes me think of a song lyric that I heard some time ago from a song called Perfectly Lonely.
SPEAKER_00: Perfectly lonely.
SPEAKER_00: And the songwriter sings in that song, I'm perfectly lonely because I don't belong to anyone and nobody belongs to me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't belong to anyone and nobody belongs to me.
SPEAKER_00: It expresses a feeling of alienation, of isolation, of looking around and there not being anybody there.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we go through difficulty in life, it can be alienating.
SPEAKER_00: It can feel like we're walking through something all by ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we encounter people who don't understand our faith, don't know Christ, it can feel a little bit alienating.
SPEAKER_00: Like they just don't get it.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps they even disrespect us, mistreat us because of it.
SPEAKER_00: That can feel alienating.
SPEAKER_00: There are many things in life that can produce a sense of loneliness or a sense of isolation.
SPEAKER_00: The singer expresses it, I don't belong to anyone, and no one belongs to me.
SPEAKER_00: When we come to Christ, we come out of exile and come to a place of belonging.
SPEAKER_00: We come out of wilderness wandering and come into a place where we are known, accepted, and beloved in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus resolves the exile that we experience from God and brings us not into a promised land physically, but brings us into Himself.
SPEAKER_00: We are in Christ, as the New Testament describes believers.
SPEAKER_00: We do not need to go to a physical promised land because we spiritually are in Christ, the promised one.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the ultimate cure for loneliness, because he brings us out of exile.
SPEAKER_00: And when we come to him, we belong to the one true God of the universe, and by extension, we belong to one another.
SPEAKER_00: The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest catalyst for community that history has ever known.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the ultimate cure for loneliness.
SPEAKER_00: As we begin our journey in the book of Daniel, I want to encourage you to reflect on this and to reflect on these questions.
SPEAKER_00: Do I feel a little bit of a sense of alienation from the world around me?
SPEAKER_00: If you do, that's probably a little bit healthy.
SPEAKER_00: We should be in the world, but not of it.
SPEAKER_00: There should be a little bit of difference between us and those who don't claim the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But also, in addition, ask yourself this question: do I have a sense of belonging?
SPEAKER_00: Do I have a sense of belonging to Christ and to his church?
SPEAKER_00: Do I have a sense of belonging to Christ and to the people of God?
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, we have come out of exile.
SPEAKER_00: And in Christ, we have a sense of belonging.
SPEAKER_00: Let us be faithful to Christ during this life, and let us look forward to the return of Christ when our exile will once and for all be brought to an end, and we will be fully with the one that we love.
SPEAKER_00: I invite the musicians to come forward.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have a time of reflection.
SPEAKER_00: As I said, we'll