Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] This is second week looking ahead towards this sermon series we're about to do in Daniel. But I want to take a couple of weeks and just set up the background to get a sense of how intense it was for Daniel, for the other people that were sharing this time with him, and for the readers of Daniel, what it was like for them to read this, and how it felt for them to see their story play out in the book of Daniel.
[00:00:32] I want to start, start where I started last week with this passage from Jeremiah. I've always wanted to treat.
[00:00:38] Treat you as my children and give you the best, the best land, the most beautiful inheritance on earth. I wanted you to call me Father. This is. This gets to the heart of God's desire, his longing for his relationship with Israel.
[00:00:55] And as you're reading the Old Testament, as you're reading through the books, there's this kind of. This high point that the Israelites kind of get to.
[00:01:02] They have some highs and lows.
[00:01:05] Joshua is this massive high. All through judges, they ran off and did whatever was good in their own eyes and they made poor choices over and over again.
[00:01:14] David is kind of a high point, but really where they kind of reach their. Like their moment where they felt like they had just really arrived was with the building of the temple.
[00:01:27] When King Solomon, David's son, the second king of Israel, builds the temple to the Lord. They are.
[00:01:36] It's as if they have finally found. They have finally totally settled into their place. They are, at this point, God's people, in God's place under God's king, worshiping in God's sanctuary.
[00:01:50] This is a moment where, for them, they look back on all the struggles of their ancestors and everything that they'd been through, all the poor choices that they made and all of the restoration that they'd been a part of, all of the trust and faith that they had in God to bring them to this point. And they say, finally, we are the people that God wanted. We are his children.
[00:02:17] He is our Father. He has given us this land and we belong.
[00:02:21] We know who we are.
[00:02:23] We finally belong.
[00:02:27] That's what makes kind of the rest of the story so intensely sad.
[00:02:33] The exile would be the exact opposite of all of this high point of it is the undoing of their entire identity.
[00:02:43] They who are, who are we? We are God's chosen people. This is our promised land. We are who we are because of this. And the exile is stripping away their identity in total.
[00:03:00] It is unmaking them. It's hard to.
[00:03:06] If I think about what it would take to, like, unmake you so thoroughly? Like, we don't usually have, like, a whole lot of identity wrapped up in, like, you know, maybe, like, if you're not American, how much of your identity would be stripped away from that if your spouse left you? How much of your identity if your.
[00:03:30] If your children didn't want to have anything to do with you? Like, I'm trying to.
[00:03:34] I don't know for you, but what would it.
[00:03:37] What would those anchor points in your identity, what would have to be taken away before you start to question, who am I? I don't even know who I am anymore.
[00:03:50] This is what it was for them. And it wasn't just.
[00:03:53] It wasn't just the place, and it wasn't just their security.
[00:03:58] It was their very relationship with God himself.
[00:04:04] Are we even people that God loves?
[00:04:09] This is what the exile was for them.
[00:04:12] It was a total unmaking. You kind of have that high point described in First Kings, chapter 1:10, but just five chapters later, already in the book, God is describing what is going to be happening to them in the future as a result of their choices. First kings, chapter 14, starting with verse 15, the Lord will attack Israel, making it like a reed that sways in the water.
[00:04:43] This must have been like the Lord who has led us out of captivity, the Lord who has brought us into the promised land, the Lord who stood before us, the Lord who protected us, the Lord who has our father.
[00:04:57] That Lord will attack Israel, making it like a weed swing in the water. He will remove Israel from this good land he gave to their ancestors and scatter them beyond the Euphrates River. This is like, like, literally outside of the known world for them because they angered the Lord by making Asherah poles.
[00:05:21] Now, that sounds pretty intense for just that. Like, you made Asherah poles. Like, what is making Asherah poles? That's a big deal. Clearly, if God is prepared to totally unmake you, then making Asherah poles. Asherah pulls are much more intense than they sound at first blush.
[00:05:43] So Asherah was a fertility.
[00:05:46] Fertility cult.
[00:05:48] They practice what has been termed as sympathetic magic. So the way it worked was Asherah was the female consort of baal, and the idea was that the two of them bring about good crops together, like, they bring about prosperity as they cooperate together. The goddess of fertility, the God of storms and weather.
[00:06:12] The idea is that between the both of them, they are making this land prosper.
[00:06:17] Sympathetic magic was the idea that we will worship these gods in a way that, like, we are acting out in our bodies what we want the gods to produce. And so they would engage in sexual acts in order to.
[00:06:35] They're imagining these gods are engaged in these sexual acts. And that's what's creating the prosperity that's happening, the fertility that's happening in the world, in the earth. And so they are practicing that, and it becomes pervasive, cultic in nature.
[00:06:52] This isn't just something that happened just with Asher. There were several gods and goddesses around like this. By the time you get to the New Testament, this has kind of become standardized. It becomes locked into the Roman pantheon of gods. You've got essentially Zeus or Jupiter taking the place of BAAL as the God of thunder, the God of storms.
[00:07:15] You've got Aphrodite of the goddess of love, or you've got what's her name?
[00:07:23] Artemis. Artemis, Diana, who's the goddess of fertility. And they're kind of functioning that same role. Even in Jesus Day in Corinth, it was said that there were a thousand prostitutes at the temple of Aphrodite.
[00:07:42] The temple of Artemis in Ephesus was considered one of the great wonders of the world. It was massive. And the cultic practices wrapped up around sexuality there were off the chain. This is what the church is dealing with in the first century, just like the Jews are dealing with here about 6, 700 years before that.
[00:08:02] And it's too much for them.
[00:08:08] They're overwhelmed by it.
[00:08:11] They desire it. They begin to figure out ways to say, like, no, no, it's good for us. We're in this land where these gods make sense. This is what it makes. This is what it takes to participate in this. And I'll be honest with you, I don't know. You can't go back and, like, talk to them and find out what their motivations are. But if I had to guess, I would say that any.
[00:08:29] Any religion that involves.
[00:08:32] In order to worship this God, you must have illicit sex with whatever women you want.
[00:08:39] I imagine that that had an appeal for several people just on its own.
[00:08:47] And they might have said, no, no, I'm doing this because that's what it takes to get the gods to give me a fertile land.
[00:08:55] Right.
[00:08:57] But I'm sure that the sex itself was appealing.
[00:09:01] What's not as appealing are the kids that come from it.
[00:09:07] Jeremiah 7. The Lord says, I have rejected them because the people of Judah have done what I consider evil.
[00:09:14] They've set up their disgusting idols in the temple that I have claimed for my own and have defiled it.
[00:09:22] They've also built places of worship in a Place called Tapath in the valley of Ben. I'm really bad at this. Hinnom. Yep.
[00:09:31] So that they can sacrifice their sons and daughters by fire.
[00:09:35] This is something that I've never commanded them to do.
[00:09:39] This is. This valley. Was a valley just outside of Jerusalem.
[00:09:44] It's the.
[00:09:46] What is it called? The.
[00:09:49] The.
[00:09:50] Like. The other word for like, hell. It's Gehenna. Yeah. This is the valley of Gehenna.
[00:09:57] By the time you get to the New Testament, it is a place that is considered so evil as a result of what the Jews did at the past that they would use this place to describe hell.
[00:10:11] It is hellish in the way we think of it.
[00:10:14] Our remembrance of the kind of stuff that happened here.
[00:10:17] Jeremiah 19.
[00:10:19] The Lord told Jeremiah, go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take with you some of the leaders of the people and some of the leaders of the priests.
[00:10:28] Go out to this valley, go out to Gehenna, that is near the entrance to the potter's gate, and announce there what I will tell you.
[00:10:36] Listen to the Lord's message. You kings of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem, first of all, I want you to know that being a prophet and standing up before kings and leaders and saying, this is how you're going to be destroyed. These guys are the boldness I'm very impressed by, Jeremiah.
[00:10:58] This is what the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of Israel, said, look, here I am about to bring a disaster to this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it ring.
[00:11:10] I will do so because these people have rejected me and have defiled this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children. They have built places here for the worship of the God BAAL so that they could sacrifice their children as burnt offerings to him in the fire. Such sacrifices are something I never commanded them to make. Make you guys. We were just singing.
[00:11:41] He has good plans. He has good plans for me, you know?
[00:11:46] And I was singing that song, thinking of this verse, you know, what does it look like for a God who has good plans for us to interact with people who are willing to do vile things?
[00:12:04] A God who desires deeply for you to call him dad, for him to be able to treat you like his own child, for him to be able to give you the inheritance of everything that you could have, to have a beautiful, wonderful life.
[00:12:18] That's the relationship. He wants good things for you, but this is who you Are.
[00:12:25] This is what you've become.
[00:12:29] What does that God do?
[00:12:31] What do I do with this?
[00:12:37] Jeremiah was told, break the jar in front of those who have come here with you and tell them, the Lord of heaven's army say, I will do just as Jeremiah has done. I will smash this nation and this city as though it were a potter's vessel that is broken beyond repair.
[00:12:58] I.
[00:13:01] A lot of times we.
[00:13:03] If you're reading the Old Testament, especially, you're reading things that God has to say. And you're like, man, God is harsh.
[00:13:14] I am constantly reading it in terms of, like, what.
[00:13:20] What does it take for God to decide that this level of harshness is necessary for you to have good things?
[00:13:34] Like, how far must I have fallen for good things to require this?
[00:13:46] This is what the people that are going through the exile are asking themselves.
[00:13:52] Were we wrong that God did not love us?
[00:13:56] God did not want to call us children. He does not want good things for us.
[00:14:01] Or is this what it takes for us to have good things?
[00:14:05] And that's the break.
[00:14:07] Some, they have different answers to that question. People respond differently to that.
[00:14:14] But God goes on to make promises about what's going to happen. And he starts with his use of the greatest powers in the world to bring about good things. This is from Jeremiah 25. And this is.
[00:14:29] I don't think Nebuchadnezzar could have ever read this. He says, Jeremiah says, I have sent my servant Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, whom I will bring against this land and its residents and. And against all the surrounding nations. How will he break a. Break this nation into, like, a pot in multiple shards? He will use the greatest power on earth as his servant.
[00:14:54] Nebuchadnezzar was nobody's servant. Nebuchadnezzar was pretty sure he was God. Okay? He knew, okay? Babylon was as close as there was to heaven as far as humans were concerned. Jerusalem was a big, cool city. It was a backwater, nothing compared to Babylon. And Nebuchadnezzar was the man that he twitched his finger and everyone could. He literally. We'll read this in Daniel. He literally didn't like an answer. And he decided that an entire class of people should just be killed. Like, his power was absolute and complete, right?
[00:15:28] So this is the man he is that he sees himself as.
[00:15:34] Jeremiah says that God sees him as his puppet, the person that everyone in the world feared was the tool of God.
[00:15:47] Do you understand this?
[00:15:49] So this is really important as we're reading through Daniel and we start seeing the way that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Bennego respond to the various powers that they're interacting with throughout their lives, we have to start with what power is and kind of where power actually lies. And we start seeing it here in Jeremiah 25. Let me paint a picture for this for you. First, I'm going to show you a picture of the kingdoms that existed from about the time just after.
[00:16:18] Just after I just said King David's son, Solomon. Thanks. Just after King Solomon, Israel gets broken into. Into two nations. The top two. The, the top nation were the 10 tribes of Israel, that is, they still called Israel. And the capital there was Samaria. Gosh, I'm sorry, the capital was in Samaria, which, you know, plays up a little bit in the New Testament. And we'll talk about that. The lower, the two tribes, that was Judah. The capital there is Jerusalem. The, this patch of land, this nation is the one that God was having a hard time managing.
[00:17:03] This one people. Now, these two tribes are constantly turning away from God, blowing up to God, standing up to God, telling God, I hear what you have to say, I'm not going to do what you have to say. He is unable to manage them. This next map shows you the land that they were exiled into that these great powers had control of. Now I want you in the. See that little piece in the corner over there?
[00:17:31] Jerusalem and Samaria. That's that tiny little piece that God wasn't able to. They were unruly and he. They kept. They kept disobeying God. God says, the one that has control of all of this, I'm going to tell him, I'm going to control all of that, to make happen what I want to have happen.
[00:17:56] The whole world is the one that I'm going to use as a tool to correct this little piece of land. And these little nothing people from backwoods Palestine that can't figure things out.
[00:18:10] This is the dichotomy of the power inversion that the people that Daniel had to process for him to make the choices that he had to make. He looks at this. He looks at. He looks at his own people in the small little backwoods that are constantly rebelling against God. And he says in order to correct that, God is going to take all of the power in the world, use that as his instrument to correct those little nobodies.
[00:18:42] It's absurd.
[00:18:44] That instrument used for that purpose.
[00:18:49] Jeremiah 29 says, oh, and by the way, just to explain what goes on here first, this first one is the Assyrian kingdom.
[00:18:58] There's these Series of kingdoms that take place all throughout the exile. First is this massive Assyrian kingdom. Nineveh is their home port. They come down and they end up taking over Israel. The top ten kingdoms they send, they take them off into exile. What they would do is they would want to take especially all the important people. Anybody that had any sort of like money, power, authority, they would take them away and put them in other parts of their empire and they took other people and put them into Israel. And so there in Samaria you had people, some people, the poorer people, less educated people were still Jewish, but you'd had the people that were kind of more important than their hometowns come to Samaria and they kind of intermix a little bit. And so the people that come out of Samaria are like Jewish, you know, like kinda, you know what I mean? They still see them, they think, yeah, we're still, you know, but they're blending a whole lot of stuff there and they're kind of making up their own God along the way.
[00:20:07] The Jews of Jesus day didn't have a lot of faith in the God that the Samaritans worshiped. As a result of their history here.
[00:20:17] After this takes place, Babylon, the Babylonian kingdom takes over the Assyrian kingdom and they end up wiping out Judea. A lot of political intrigue and everything causes that.
[00:20:31] They pull out all the important people and they send them to Babylon. They do something a little bit different.
[00:20:35] They don't have quite the same strategy for controlling.
[00:20:40] So the Assyrians control things. I'm going to move these people here, move these people here. And by making people displaced, they're all going to be dependent on the central power, the central authority in Nineveh. They're not going to be able to have their footing wherever they are.
[00:20:53] By the way, the Jews end up all the way over, way out. They end up over in media. We even find there's like three known Jewish communities all the way over in. They end up over in India. The spread of Judaism that happens as a result of this is incredible and I think pretty important by the time of Christ because like Thomas ends up heading over way out towards India, converting, converting people to Christians. He started just like Paul did, heading west to the Roman Empire.
[00:21:29] He heads east over to the, over towards India. And he starts in these Jewish communities making converts. And Christ is evangelized that way as a result of the stuff that happened way back during the time of the exile. So the way that God used all these parts, moving into the future is, is pretty remarkable. But, but people who were Jewish end up scattered all over the place, all throughout.
[00:21:56] All throughout this empire during, in the book of Daniel. That's during the Babylonian exile that Judah was under.
[00:22:04] And all of the rich and famous and smart people end up in Babylon. And the Babylonian king's position was instead of scattering you, I'm going to have you close to my I'm going to have you in my palace and I'm going to woo you into being a part of my kingdom. I'm going to give you lots of good stuff. I'm going to make your life very comfortable, and you're going to want to serve me. That's kind of what's going on under Daniel.
[00:22:33] So those are the two exiles that take place. Both of them smart strategies. These are the biggest kingdoms in the world at their time.
[00:22:41] Unfortunately for both of them, the Persians end up taking over. And at that time, the Persians allow the Jews to head back to revitalize the Jews from Babylon to head back over to Israel.
[00:23:00] And this is what he says in Jeremiah is going to happen. He's looking forward to a time when this exile will be over. He Sundays, only when 70 years of Babylonian rule are over will I again take up consideration for you.
[00:23:16] Then I will fulfill my gracious promise to you and restore you to your homeland.
[00:23:22] For I know what I have planned for you, says the Lord. I have plans to prosper you and not to harm you.
[00:23:28] I have plans to give you a future filled with hope.
[00:23:32] When you call out to me and come to me in prayer, I will hear your prayers. When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul, I will make myself available to you, says the Lord. All of this sounds so much like what God wanted from the very start, the relationship that he wanted in the first place.
[00:23:55] Then I will reverse your plight and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have exiled you, says the Lord. I will bring you back to this place from which I exiled you.
[00:24:07] You will be the people that I wanted you to be from the start.
[00:24:14] Now, how is he going to do this? This is another one of those. He says, I will raise up Cyrus, that's the king of Persia, in my righteousness, and I will make his ways straight. The only person in all these stories more powerful than Nebuchadnezzar is Cyrus. Also a puppet of God. Like, for a To really understand what's happening in this story as you are seeing as we go through Daniel and you See, Daniel, Shadrach, and Reshach, Shadrach, Meshach, and Bennego do tremendously brave things.
[00:24:51] You can't appreciate what they're doing unless you see the world the way they're seeing it.
[00:24:57] Everyone else is seeing the most powerful man in the world.
[00:25:02] They're seeing a puppet that God's using.
[00:25:09] They don't believe that these kings are the ones in power.
[00:25:13] They believe God is the one in power.
[00:25:17] They believe the only reason this is happening is because God wants good things for them.
[00:25:24] And they have made such an abomination of choices in their life that this is what it took for them to have good things.
[00:25:38] Daniel believed all that.
[00:25:40] Once you start seeing the world the way Daniel sees it, then you can start to see why it made sense for him to do the things that he made. He's not so much like, when you first read it, you're like, this guy's, like, super. This guy's, like, bold. He's like, this is the bravest dude in the whole world. No, he just doesn't. He just doesn't see things the way you see it.
[00:26:00] He doesn't think Nebuchadnezzar is who everybody else think Nebuchadnezzar is.
[00:26:04] He doesn't think this is happening for the same reason everybody thinks it's happening.
[00:26:09] He knows what God wants to happen as a result, and he wants to be a part of it.
[00:26:14] Because of the way he viewed his world, his actions made total sense.
[00:26:21] Ezekiel 36.
[00:26:23] I will magnify my great name that has been profaned among the nations which you have profaned.
[00:26:34] I want you to think about this.
[00:26:37] I am a child of God, right?
[00:26:42] I'm gonna call. Let's say I call myself a Christian. I am a Christian, necessarily. That means I am saying that I am a follower of Christ, right?
[00:26:55] When I say that I'm a Christian, I'm saying I'm a follower of Christ.
[00:26:59] You should then infer that following Christ looks something like what I do.
[00:27:05] What I do makes sense for a follower of Christ. I am a follower of Christ.
[00:27:11] And so if I'm doing things that look nothing like Christ, I have just lied to you about Jesus.
[00:27:20] You understand?
[00:27:22] If I have done things that God finds appalling, that I have just told the world that what God finds appalling is actually what God finds good.
[00:27:38] This is what God is dealing with.
[00:27:42] You have profaned my name. You have taken my name in vain.
[00:27:48] But the nations will know that I am the Lord when I magnify myself. Among you in their sight. You remember that covenant with Abraham, it wasn't based on their choices. It was based on God's choices. This right, this relationship with the people of Israel wasn't going to depend on them getting that covenant right. It was going to depend on God getting this covenant right.
[00:28:13] And he says, I will magnify my name in their sight despite you.
[00:28:22] I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from their. From all these countries. Then I will bring you to their land. I will sprinkle you with pure water, and you will be clean from all your impurities. I will purify you from all your idols. I will give you a new heart, and I will put in you a new spirit. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh.
[00:28:45] I will put my spirit within you. I will take the initiative, and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.
[00:28:56] These idols that they were dealing with, they have different names for them. They have a lot of different names and a lot of details, But I think they all come down to the same idols.
[00:29:06] Money, sex, power.
[00:29:09] The same idols that have plagued humanity forever.
[00:29:12] The same idols that we deal with in our culture. Now, he wants good things for us, but we have to decide if we're going to be his children, if we are prepared to submit to him, to allow him to replace our heart of stone with a tender heart, with a heart that loves the world the way he loves the world, with a heart that agrees with him about right and wrong, up and down, and the way that we're going to live.
[00:29:52] I have always wanted to treat you as my children and to give you the best land, the most beautiful inheritance on earth.
[00:29:59] And I want you to call me Father.
[00:30:04] I want to give you good things.
[00:30:08] I have no.
[00:30:12] I'm not a prophet. And I have no idea what it's going to take for him to give you those good things.
[00:30:20] I think that I can that those good things come from submitting to him and following him.
[00:30:31] My preference for you and for me is that God does not have to do extraordinarily hard things in our life for us to have good things.
[00:30:43] My hope is that we can learn from these experiences, from the stories that people of God previously have shared about themselves and say, like, yeah, I don't need to go through all that.
[00:30:59] I trust you. I know what you want for me. I'm prepared to follow you. I do not want to follow those other idols. I do not put my faith in money, sex, and power. God I know that you are the one that gives me good things. I trust you and you alone.
[00:31:13] Let's pray, Father. God, whatever.
[00:31:24] Whatever exiles we have experienced, Lord, I pray that we see the redemption in them because we see the value.
[00:31:31] We see that as hard things have occurred, it's been for your goodwill, Lord, the love that you have for us and the desire you have for us to be your children.
[00:31:46] God, I pray that you soften our hearts, make us tender, make us prepared to follow you. Not to take your name in vain, Lord, but that when we call ourselves Christians, people get to know who you really are.
[00:31:59] We love you. Amen.
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