Sunday, September 14

We are moving through this book of Daniel. Our series is entitled "Unshaken Because He Reigns." And so a lot of times we'll read through our text before we dive into it this morning. There are a lot of verses in Daniel chapter 2, so what we'll be doing is as we move through this chapter, we'll sort of read through it as we go. So if you want to follow along in your Bible or on the handouts, I think most of the Scriptures should be in there. But also on the screen as well. We're going to go ahead and pray and then dive right into it. Father in heaven, thank you for grace. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for hope. We ask this morning that as we look at the impossible, to know that with you we can be unshaken even when it seems like we are outnumbered or overwhelmed or underskilled. And so as we see these different reactions this morning,

may you bring us to the place that gives life. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. So it seems to me that whatever geographic area you are in, you always sort of have kind of a special season that nobody else has. So, for example, when it got nice and cool and felt like fall, at the end of August and beginning of September, right, we went from like 100 degrees to waking up and it's like 42 degrees outside. I walked outside and said, "Oh, this is beautiful." In Virginia, we call that either false fall or the autumn of deceit, right, because it just comes back and the next thing you know, it's 100 degrees again. In Vermont, growing up, we had an extra season, generally sort of the winter, end of winter, beginning of spring that we called mud season. And one of the things that I enjoyed and my friends enjoyed, we would do this at recess when the snow began to melt, it began to warm up, and it's very interesting because if you've been wearing heavy coats all winter,

and then all of a sudden it's like 42 degrees, everybody's running around in short sleeves and having a blast, and there would be water melting and pooling, and so what we would do is because the snow was still there and still soft, we would sort of make little channels and divert the water here and there, and it was a blast. Unfortunately, we're doing this like in sneakers, and we go back to class, and our feet are wet, and then we don't pay attention, but it was a great time. We probably don't consider the water cycle, maybe outside of elementary school, but it's a pretty remarkable thing, right? Consider those snowflakes, right? They begin as water, evaporate, travel into the clouds, and come down as snow. They melt, they begin to puddle and pool, and then all of a sudden that water begins to flow, directed by someone unseen, which was us in like third grade.

And just as those for the snow and for that melted water, just as those unseen forces shape the course of the water, what we see in Daniel 2 is that God directs the hearts of his people and the hearts of kings. We begin in a moment with a story that just looks like chaos, but underneath it all we see God's hand is firmly at work, and there are several sides to this story. There's sort of a big side of God's people, a divided kingdom, a northern and southern kingdom. And the southern kingdom has been attacked. Jerusalem has been destroyed. People are brought into captivity. That's the big picture. And then Daniel zooms in on this smaller picture of Daniel and these three other Hebrew young men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and we see their story. And in part, Daniel is a prophet of

good news. And it brings hope in how to stand for what's right and how to trust in God in the midst of the chaos. But it's not just for the other captives and those other people. It's for us as well. Daniel and his friends had to feel like life was out of control, taken from their homes, brought here, being directed without choice. But through it all, they trust in the hand of God that directs them. And we'll see, this morning, as we go through this, that God is firmly and clearly directing them. And he's not just directing them. He's directing the most powerful man in the world at the time. The book of Proverbs tells us that the king's heart is water in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it wherever he will. This book is not just a book of good stories and wild visions. It's a book of good news about how God

is in control, and that he's in the work, in the midst of our struggles, even when it seems impossible. So this morning, what we're going to do as we dive through this chapter pretty quickly is we're going to see how we can remain unshaken when facing what seems impossible. And I want to begin with this because most of the first half of the chapter is devoted to sort of three big reactions to an impossible problem. And we begin with an anxious king. Daniel chapter 2 verse 1 says this, "In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, his spirit was troubled, and sleep left him." Now he is a fairly young ruler at this point, and so in Babylonian kingly tradition, what happens is you ascend to the throne, and that is called your ascension year, and then at the new year begins the first year of your reign, at the next new year begins the second year of your reign.

Nebuchadnezzar here has had his ascension year. He's had year one. He's had year two. He has been king now for about three years. That's still fairly new. And in totalitarian regimes, which is definitely one of them, especially ones that span great distances, when you have a new king, what tends to happen is unrest begins to happen. Authority needs to be asserted, and oftentimes, specifically in regimes like this, authority needs to be asserted with an iron fist. And so in his early years, and we know this from historical accounts, he's sending out all of these expeditionary forces to lands that are controlled by Babylon to remind them that there was a king still on the throne, that he was in charge, and to collect the taxes that were due. We know that in 604 BC, there was resistance, and he asked to send an army to destroy people. In 603, we have the Babylonian records that their heavy siege equipment and that their troops were in the field far longer than usual. And so what you have is a fairly new king who, despite all of his power, is just a man. A man who is worried and is still experiencing sleepless nights.

Still having difficult dreams. And maybe we've been in that same situation where something is weighing deeply on our hearts and our minds and we go to sleep and it's like our dreams just are troubled and difficult. Maybe we don't even remember them, but we wake up and we just feel more anxious than we went to sleep. But Nebuchadnezzar, this is what happens. He will call his people together to interpret his dream and he'll say this. Listen to his emotions in this. I have had a dream and I am anxious to understand it. Now, if you pair that with what he has just said in the narration of Daniel, his spirit is troubled. He's unable to sleep. He wants to know the answer to what this dream means. And there's a little bit of irony here in this text because the man who rules the entire world is unable to rule his own heart. And there are times when we will face the unknown, uncertain, impossible.

And we'll be like Nebuchadnezzar. We'll be up all night. Or maybe it's in grief. And our souls are crying out. So the king is having that kind of trouble. Now, however, being a king, he has some great human resources. Maybe a little bit different than today because none of these human resources are there by choice. They are the best of the best of all of the knowledge professions, as we'll see in a minute. The wisdom of the countries that Babylon has conquered, all of the education, all of these resources. He has gathered these people as advisors around him. And so the king is losing sleep. He's troubled. And he responds by using his resources, these wise men, these sorcerers, these magicians. And he says, "I need an answer." And when they fail to provide one, he resorts to threats to kill them

and to use force. And the reality is, how can you be this kind of king and not threaten to kill people on a regular basis? And so he tells them in the opening, in these sort of dramatic moments, they don't just have to provide a dream interpretation, but they have to provide the dream itself. And if they don't, this is what he says, "The word from me is firm. If you do not make it known to me, the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins." Have you seen The Wizard of Oz? And The Wicked Witch goes, "And your little dog, too." Right? This is Nebuchadnezzar. He's like, I'm going to tear you apart, and your houses, and your family, and this is not an idle threat. And so they make some excuses, these wise men, and in verse 9 he says, "If you do not make this dream known to me, there is but one sentence for me. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt

words before me till the times change. Therefore, tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation." When his first response fails, when he asks them, "Come tell me this dream," and the interpretation, he moves to control and to force, and he begins to lash out in anger. And isn't this the reality for us? When we find that we can't control what is in front of us, no matter how hard we try, we tend to react the same way as Nebuchadnezzar, right? Fear erupts into anger, which makes we try to hold on to things more tightly and to control. And while this is Nebuchadnezzar on a much bigger scale, it's also a picture of how we often react when something in front of us disturbs us and seems impossible. Now we move to the second response. We've seen the fear, the response of anger and fear and control try to hold on tightly and make things happen. Now we come to a bunch of scheming

wise men. Here's the list. The magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans, they were summoned to tell the king his dreams, and so they came in and stood before the king. So these are what are called the wisdom disciplines. Any area of study from being able to read, to magic, to casting spells, to astrology, any discipline involving knowledge is pictured here. And the request the king has was for a dream interpretation. Now this would have been their specialty. They would have had the king relate the dream, and they would sit down and they would go, "All right, let's write down all the symbolism." So you saw an aardvark and an anteater falling off a tower, and they would list all of the symbols they saw in the dream. And then they would go back, and they would go into their libraries, and they would begin to research these symbols, and they would come up with an interpretation based on these symbols. Now the problem with that was, it may sound very research-oriented and very

intellectual, but these guys are political animals, and we'll see this in the very next chapter. And so they don't necessarily come with an unbiased interpretation. They will come with an idea that says, "Well, here's what the king would like to hear. He's nervous. He's upset. Let's tell him something that calms him down." And they would seek to provide the king what he wanted to hear, rather than what was true. And one of the interesting things we learn about Nebuchadnezzar outside of Scripture, from history, is that he is a very devout worshiper, albeit of pagan gods. In fact, there is an inscription of his prayer on the day he ascended to the throne in the British Museum. And it talks about how he worships this God, and he is very fervent in his belief, although it is misplaced. And so Nebuchadnezzar, they've misread the situation. He doesn't just want some platitudes or something. He wants the truth. And the way that he

decides to get the truth, whether he remembers this dream or doesn't, is he says, "You can't just give me an interpretation. You have to tell me the dream first." So the king withholds his dream either out of caution or because he can't remember, and these guys have nothing to work with. They just need the dream. Here's what they say the second time that he commands them. They answered him a second time, "Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation." And the king answered, "I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time because you see the word from me is firm. If you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence to you." And then he goes on to say this, "You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the times change. Therefore, tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me the interpretation." Right? Their cleverness collapses.

Right? They try to delay. That's what the king accuses them of. They're hoping that if they can, you know, go back and study long enough, the king will move on to a different subject. His anger will pass over. Right? They have come to this agreement that we're just going to delay until something changes and the king sees right through it. And here's the reality. Human wisdom in every category, it doesn't always work. In fact, there will come a time where any kind of human wisdom will fail. And when it does, when we can't figure it out, maybe like these guys, we stall, we scheme, we hope for a change in the situation. And what you see here is their wisdom is ultimately exposed as powerless. And much like the magicians sometimes, we try to strategize or manipulate our way out of the impossible. The king is trying to exert control and it ends in anger. These guys are trying to turn and

twist circumstances to their own advantage. And it just ends in hopelessness. Now, before we go any farther and look at the third response, what's remarkable about these guys is they do come up with the right answer. They just don't know it. Listen to their answer. The Chaldeans answer the king and says, "There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician, enchanter, or Chaldean." Now, first of all, this is gutsy, right? You come to the king. King says, "Tell me the dream and its interpretation." They say, "We can't." He says, "I'm going to tear your arms and legs off and kill your families." And they go, "Yep, still can't do it." And they try to delay, and they try to stall. And they finally, they will say, "There's nobody on earth that can do it, and you're super unreasonable for asking us." Right? That's gutsy to the guy who's just threatened to cut your arms and legs off, right? But listen to what they said. At the beginning, "There is not a man on earth who can meet

meets the king's demand." Right? It's true. The thing that the kings ask at the end is difficult. No one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. The only person who can tell you this is a deity, and they're far, far away from you. Isn't this interesting? There's this picture. They say it's hopeless. Nobody on earth can tell you, and gods don't care enough about you. There's a third response we see. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These four Hebrew young men, they're at a severe disadvantage. Right? They're outnumbered by the magicians of Babylon. In fact, that's one of the common things commentators say about this text is the reason you get these continual lists of the Magi and the sorcerers and the Chaldeans. It's right. They're pointing out that there is a vast amount of wise men, and then there's four people who serve God. The text is intentionally

pointing out that these guys are the underdogs. They're too young. Likely they are under 20 years old at this point. They're inexperienced, just graduated from Babylon wizard school, and they are far from home, and in the pagan belief of the day, that would equate to them being far from God. Now, they know the truth about their God, but if you were simply looking at this situation from the outside, these guys have no chance. They're weak, they're vulnerable, and what's interesting is they don't seek power or control. They don't seek schemes or try to find a way out of the situation. Look at how they respond. We'll pick it up in verse 12. Because the king was angry and very furious, he commanded all the wise men in Babylon be destroyed. So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them. And it seems like, as we'll see in the next verses, the palace guard shows up and knocks on the door and goes, "Hey, we've got to clear

some time in your schedule so we can bring you in and kill you." That's how it seems from this text. Look at how Daniel replied, "With wisdom and discretion," not with anger or hostility, but with discretion to Ariok, the captain of the king's guard who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. He declared to Ariok, the king's captain, "Why is the decree of the king so urgent?" Then Ariok made the matter known to Daniel. They're obviously not in the inner circle because they haven't heard about any of this. And Daniel goes in, requested the king to appoint him a time that he might show the interpretation to the king, right? Put yourselves in their shoes for a minute. Your four Hebrew young men just graduated. You're young. You're not part of the main inner circle. You get a knock at the door. The king's guard says, "I'm here to kill you." And they don't try to control. They don't get angry. They don't seek to delay. They act with wisdom. And listen to the confidence that's in Daniel, right? He hasn't even prayed yet.

And he goes, "Let's make an appointment so that I can come in and tell the king the interpretation." No panic. No rushing. Just wisdom and dependence as they run to God. And one of the great lessons I think we can learn as we move through this chapter is that power and wisdom and scheming will fail, but God will not. And it leads us to this question. What are you doing when it seems like things are impossible? Where are you running? I'll be honest. We've seen a lot of people running this week to anger and to hatred. We've seen people running into discouragement and brokenness. Look at where these guys run. They're about to be killed, and they run to God. One more question. Why would God put them in this situation? One of the reasons God sometimes places us in impossible situations is to show that in our weakness, His power and

His wisdom sustain us, right? Gideon, with his 300 men going up against the thousands of Assyrians. Paul in Corinthians, as he says, "I didn't come to you with great flowy speech, but in weakness." But it's not just a testimony of what God does, it's an assurance for the heart of our soul. Because sometimes we sing, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness," and we might sing it, but oftentimes you and I need a reminder and the correction that the hope is in Jesus, not in ourselves. And so through these moments, and there's a lot of other answers too, but in these moments, two things. God is teaching others, but he is teaching and encouraging us as well. Power, wisdom, and cunning fail. God does not. Three groups, three responses: control, delay, and dependence. And here is the way that Daniel and his friends seek God. And that's where we turn.

Next. I want us to think about hope in God. In the 42nd Psalm, the psalmist is speaking to his downcast soul. His encouragement to himself were hope in God. And I want us to speak to our downcast souls in the same exact way that we would hope in God. Daniel went to his house and made the manner known to Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and his companions. And told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery. So Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Then the mystery was revealed. Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Not responding with panic or anger, control or scheming, but they hope in God. And I want you to see, first of all, this is a shared hope. Daniel goes home and makes the matter known. He takes it to God together.

Together with those who are near to him, not by himself. Right? Hope encourages us. Especially in those moments when our hope starts to slow down and get tired, but by being in community with one another, we can encourage and we can carry one another when we struggle. It's a humble hope. Listen to the worship. As Daniel answers, he says, "Blessed be the name of God, forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and he sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him." To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise for you have given me the wisdom and the might.

You have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's manner." Daniel, when he goes before the king in just a moment, the king will go, "Do you know what's going on with my dream?" And once again, Daniel being very gutsy, he goes, "No. No wise men, magicians, astrologers, enchanters, can show the king the mystery he has asked." He goes, "Nobody has it, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mystery, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions that lay in your head as you lay in bed are these." And in verse 30, "But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, that you may know the thoughts of your mind." You see, Daniel has a chance to set himself up and instead directs

his attention to God. So you see, it's a community of hope. It's a humble hope. And look at this, in verse 45, it's a certain hope. Just the very last words, the dream is certain and the interpretation is sure. The answer to despair is to hope in God. Faith drives us upward, where all of these other things will either drive us inward or outward, but faith takes us in the only direction that can save us. God answers. The God who hears the prayer is the God who reveals mystery. And he doesn't just give Daniel insight for this one moment, but he gives a vision of eternal power, a kingdom that no human hand can build and that no earthly empire can overthrow. And we see this, that God's kingdom is forever. Daniel will say to the king, "You saw, O king, behold the great image,

the image of might and exceeding brightness stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest of arm and silver, its middle and thighs were of bronze, its legs of iron, feet partly of iron, bronze, and clay. And as you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on the feet of iron and clay, broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were all together, were broken in pieces and became like chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away that not a trace of them could be found, but the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. And I think we begin to understand maybe why the king was upset. A big statue crushed by a rock that grows into a mountain without knowing any details of interpretation, this seems ominous. Right? Especially if this statue was sort of Babylonian in nature and then gets crushed by a giant rock. And then Daniel shares the interpretation.

Beginning in verse 36 of this dream pictures different kingdoms beginning with Babylon, and each sort of getting successively less grand. Right? From gold, to silver, to bronze, to iron, and then the iron sort of morphs into iron and clay. And there's been a lot of debate about these interpretations. Are there four kingdoms? Gold, silver, bronze, iron. That sort of morphs into iron and clay. Are there five kingdoms? Most commentators agree, because this is to Nebuchadnezzar about him and what comes after. The head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar, the Medo-Persia is silver, Greece is the bronze, Rome is the iron and clay. I think probably the four kingdoms is the right picture, because as Daniel interprets this, he says one, two, three, four, it doesn't say anything about a fifth. But there are questions and debates about how this stretches out and how this happens. The main point of what Daniel is saying about the kings and kingdoms of the earth is this:

In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all of these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. Just as you saw a stone that was cut from the mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, a great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain and the interpretation is sure. The statue in this dream shows us that kingdoms rise and fall. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, all have their moments of greatness, and all have their moments of decline. They might look rich and strong, but sometimes they're very brittle. And like every empire built on human power, it doesn't last.

And then Daniel sees something new, right? A stone cut without human hands, small at first. It strikes the statue and grows into a mountain filling the whole earth. And that stone is the kingdom of God. And unlike any earthly kingdom, it will never be destroyed, never handed to another, and will stand forever. And the question people ask, is this point to Christ's first coming or his second coming? I think the answer is yes. Like standing in the mountains and we look out and we see only the peaks. Daniel's vision, I think, shows itself at once. In his first coming, Jesus is the stone, rejected by men, but chosen by God, who begins a kingdom. It's like a mustard seed that grows and spreads. In his second coming, he is the conquering king, whose reign will be openly

and finally established over all things. And the whole point is this. There's good news. Jesus reigns now and he reigns forever. So the question at the heart of this is where should we place our hope? Are we going to place it in the heart of political figures, shifting nations, or our fragile human power? You see, our hope as Christians and as the church is in the king whose kingdom begins small and in weakness and grows in power and will fill the glory of the earth. Every kingdom crumbles but Christ's kingdom. Begun at the cross, fully revealed at his second coming, it will never fail. What we face in this life often seems impossible. We don't just have, as Daniel did, a dream interpretation to hold on to. We have a king who reigns forever and who is with us

now. So just for a moment, I want us to think about living unshaken and facing the impossible. You see, when life seems impossible, we do not need to despair. God has fully revealed to us wisdom and power and grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. He meets our impossibility with His sufficiency, and He rules over every kingdom with unshakable power. In the impossible, we trust God, the wisdom and power revealed in Christ. So three things. When anxiety keeps you up at night, maybe like Nebuchadnezzar, uncertainty about the future, instead of fear driving you to hold more tightly to control or to anger, let it drive you to prayer. Maybe a practical idea is this: a little note card next to your bed. And when you wake up at night in the midst of that anxiousness, turn your worry into a prayer list. Or maybe when you're tempted, like the wise men, to

scheme and try to delay. Be honest with yourself about your limits. I can't fix this, but God can. And just like Daniel didn't pray alone, don't pray alone either. Seek that community with people who pray with you and for you. You see, dependence on God grows when we're together. And maybe when you feel weak and outnumbered, much like Daniel and his friends, remember that God can show his power in the impossible places. And so I would encourage you to look at your life and evaluate your place, that place where you feel weak, and to consciously turn that over to God and say, "Your wisdom and your power and your strength are enough." So don't lash out like Nebuchadnezzar. Don't scheme and stall like the wise men. Instead, like Daniel and his friends, take your fears and your heartbreak to God in

prayer. Lean on your brothers and sisters in Christ when you're weary. And remember that in Christ the wisdom and power of God have already come near. And he has faced the greatest impossibility, sin and death, and he has overcome it. And so we can say with confidence, "I will trust in the God of wisdom and of power revealed in Christ." You see, there's kingdoms in the world that rise and fall, but there is a God in heaven who reigns forever. His wisdom cannot be matched. His power cannot be challenged, and his kingdom cannot be shaken. And so we're going to pray. Father, may we behold you and your strength and your power. Help us to see that our impossibility is dwarfed in the light of your goodness and grace.