Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Last week, we looked at Daniel, chapter one, and we saw what happened as Daniel and his and his friends were captured, taken to Babylon. Israel had abandoned God. They'd done worse than that.
[00:00:17] They had cheated on God. They were unfaithful. They chased after other gods and they did vile things.
[00:00:25] God humbled them.
[00:00:27] Daniel goes into captivity. And we see in chapter one, we see a plan that the Babylonians had to make good use of their captives.
[00:00:40] They wanted the smartest, the best, young, brightest young men in Israel to start to lose their identity and pick up more of what it meant to be Babylonian. They were brought into the king's chamber. They were fed the king's food. They were.
[00:00:56] They had access to literally the greatest.
[00:01:01] Anything that you could possibly, anything that a human at that point could think to want would be available to Daniel. He was living in the king's court, the most powerful king in the world.
[00:01:13] Babylon was the seat of power.
[00:01:17] And we read in chapter one that Daniel decided that he would not desecrate his soul, that he would.
[00:01:26] That he would not allow himself to be.
[00:01:32] To be changed, to lose his identity, to lose who he was.
[00:01:38] This week, we're going to be looking at kind of the results of that. What does it look like for a person who's living in exile, for the people of God who are living in a world, a culture that is not oriented towards God? What does it look like to live in the middle of a chaos that must come out of a world that's not oriented towards God?
[00:02:03] If the values and the desires, if what is considered good in our culture doesn't match what God considers good, how do we live in the middle of that? What does it look like to be a citizen in this world as we are citizens of the kingdom of God? And we see it play out all throughout the rest of Daniel. Daniel's interesting. The first seven chapters, specifically, it's like these vignettes you see, like, it's like these seven different stories that happen throughout Daniel's lifetime. The first chapter, Daniel was 16 years old by the end. He's like in his 80s. So you get these snapshots all throughout his life of how it played out.
[00:02:44] To be a person who maintained the image of God.
[00:02:50] He actually lived out what the prophets said Israel should be.
[00:02:56] The whole goal that God had in allowing the Israelites to be captured, to go into exile, the transformation that God was looking for his people, we actually see this lived out in Daniel's life. We see the faithfulness that he had in the midst of the humility that they experienced.
[00:03:17] So I want to pick up with Daniel chapter two, and see this first little vignette, this first experience that we have where Daniel had to live out what it looks like to be a person of God living in the middle of exile, living in the middle of a culture that isn't fit to the kingdom of God.
[00:03:34] It says, one night during the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had such disturbing dreams that he couldn't sleep.
[00:03:42] He called in his musician, his magicians and chanters, sorcerers and astrologers, and he demanded that they all tell him what he had dreamed.
[00:03:51] As they stood before the king, he said, I have had a dream that deeply disturbs me, and I must know what it means.
[00:03:59] Now, I don't know if you picked up on this.
[00:04:02] I know what's coming. And I still miss this because it. It makes sense to me that he's calling wise people in there to help interpret his dream.
[00:04:12] That's not what he's doing. He's calling him in there to tell him what his dream was.
[00:04:19] He says that they tell him what he had dreamed.
[00:04:24] In my head, I just say, tell me what my dream meant. Cause it's absurd. Hey, I had this dream that's deeply disturbing me and it's messing me up.
[00:04:35] So I'm gonna call. I need you to come in here and explain this to me.
[00:04:39] Explain what I just experienced. That makes sense.
[00:04:43] What doesn't make sense is to call somebody in here and say, hey, I'm not gonna tell you what dream I had.
[00:04:50] It's freaking me out.
[00:04:52] But I need you to tell me what that dream was, and then I need you to explain it to me.
[00:04:57] That's what he's doing here. Okay? So first of all, if you haven't picked up on this yet from Chapter one, Nebuchadnezzar is mercurial. He has strong emotions. He's, like, all over the place. I gather from the story that's going to unfold, he is.
[00:05:15] He is not. He has reason to doubt that his wise men are shooting straight with him. He doesn't trust them. So he's like, if I just tell you this dream, you're going to tell me. You're going to tell me whatever you think I want it to mean so I won't get angry because you don't like it when I'm angry. People die when I get angry. So I'm going to tell you what I dreamed, and then you're going to say something. Fluff it up. Make me feel Good about it.
[00:05:42] This dream actually was so scary to me that I don't need somebody to tell me what I want to hear. I need you to tell me what's actually going on here. Because this one freaked me out. Okay? So he's like. He's saying this. How can I trust these guys?
[00:05:58] How can I trust anything these guys have to say? I'll tell you. I know what I'll do. I won't even tell them what the dream meant. And if they're as smart as they say they are, not only can they interpret it for me, they can pluck it out of the ether and tell me what the dream was.
[00:06:13] This is hard.
[00:06:17] Now, what's really interesting at this point, just from a narrative standpoint, before we figure out how the wise men dealt with crazy Nebuchadnezzar, it says, then the astrologer, the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic. Now, this is really interesting if you're like. When we read it, we can't see this, but the first chapter is written in Hebrew.
[00:06:42] And chapter 8 through 15 are written in Hebrew, but chapter 2 through 7 are written in Aramaic. It's like the whole tone shifts. You ever, like, watching a movie and it's like, you know, it's like in some other language and then it switches over to English and they don't have subtitles anymore. It's kind of like that. There's this, like, chunk where it goes from being written specifically for people that speak Hebrew to the language that was ubiquitous throughout three different empires. Aramaic was the language of the kingly class in the Assyrian Empire, in the Babylonian Empire and the Persian Empire. Like, the three empires that are all a part of this story that span hundreds of years dominated the region. They all use this language to, like, communicate among themselves.
[00:07:39] It's like in America, it's like, got friends who.
[00:07:44] They come in, we hang out, we talk. They're speaking English.
[00:07:47] But then when they turn around and talk to their family member, they turn around, they talk in their home language. They come from a different country. And when they're talking to their son, their daughter, wife, they're like, just start speaking in their native language.
[00:08:00] It's not that they're, like, excluding me. Just, they're not talking to me. They're talking like they talk to each other at home, right?
[00:08:07] I should be eavesdropping anyway. I recognize, like, oh, that conversation's not for me. They're speaking.
[00:08:14] They're speaking Hebrew right now. If I happen to speak that language, they're not upset about It. It's great. I could. You know, they're not like, hiding it from me. They're just speaking their native tongue.
[00:08:26] But for the writer of. The writer of Daniel to specifically say, for this phase, I'm not speaking my native tongue, I'm going to speak your tongue.
[00:08:38] This next passage, these next seven chapters aren't just for me.
[00:08:45] They're for you, too.
[00:08:48] What's about to play out over these next. Over these six chapters from chapter two to chapter seven have more to do with what's going to happen to you than what's happening to us.
[00:09:00] Now, that in itself isn't even that big a deal, depending on what the content, you know, like, maybe the story just has more to do with Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon and all that kind of stuff. Right?
[00:09:12] But the way that these next several chapters play out are pretty intense.
[00:09:21] The form of these chapters, it's called a chiasm. And all that means the symbol for chi. It's just the idea is like there's concentric circles.
[00:09:31] The way that we usually tell stories is kind of like linear and will have like an arc to the story and all that kind of stuff. They would often share ideas like bullseyes. They would have a first idea that matches the second idea, the last idea, the second matches the next to last. And the two middle ideas match. And the idea there is that you're getting two.
[00:09:54] This.
[00:09:55] You're moving in towards a bullseye. You're coming in and out of the most important point in the middle.
[00:10:02] So the first thing will kind of correspond to the last thing as you get towards the center. And I wanted to look at the structure before we get into the rest of chapter two. I want to look at the structure of chapter two through seven so you can see where this whole thing is going.
[00:10:19] In Daniel chapter two, Daniel is going to interpret this dream that the king had about a statue.
[00:10:27] Okay.
[00:10:28] And then in chapter. If you. If you go to the end in chapter seven, you. Daniel interprets a vision of beasts.
[00:10:36] He's interpreting these visions. We're not gonna. It'll be a few weeks before we actually get into these visions.
[00:10:42] The vision and dream are very similar, and they speak to something that's really powerful.
[00:10:48] In Daniel chapter three. And in Daniel chapter six, you have Shadrach being shached and Abednego being thrown into the fiery furnace. And then in chapter six, you have Daniel thrown into the lion's den. You have an attempt by the kings to assert their authority and power over these Israelites when they're not.
[00:11:09] When they do something that the king doesn't like, it appears to be defiant in some way. They attempt to assert their dominance, and it doesn't work out.
[00:11:17] In chapter four and five, King Nebuchadnezzar is humbled and King Belshazzar is humbled. That sounds.
[00:11:25] That's a really soft way of putting it. When you read those chapters, humbled means, like, you actually lose your mind and start thinking that you're like an animal. You go from being. The people think of you like a God, you're so powerful, to, like, you're, like, eating grass and you can't, like, talk like a human. I mean, when we talk about humility, you're going from being, like, the thing that everybody thinks is the coolest thing in the world to, like. People are, like, embarrassed to look at you. That's the kind of humility that we're talking about. Right.
[00:11:56] So this is the chapter that we're looking at now in chapter seven, bookend. What's moving towards this central point is that God humbles kings and kingdoms.
[00:12:09] No one escapes his power.
[00:12:11] Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he's Lord.
[00:12:15] This is something that Israel itself has had a real hard time dealing with.
[00:12:20] Daniel is in this place. And it seems so weird. Like, he's literally.
[00:12:24] He's considered a wise man. He's considered brilliant among people who are brilliant. He's been given all these accolades and awards.
[00:12:32] This is deeply humiliating for Daniel. He is being told to give up his identity, who he is in God.
[00:12:42] The struggle, the focus that he has to have, the intensity that he has to maintain in his life in order to come through this experience as the man that he intends to be is very difficult. What seems to other people like trappings of a great life are just a trap for him. Right? So this is a humbling experience for him. This is a humbling experience for Israel.
[00:13:10] They didn't understand that God alone is all powerful.
[00:13:16] They failed at that. And they're experiencing this humility.
[00:13:20] But then the whole thing flips over from Hebrew to Aramaic.
[00:13:25] So that these other kingdoms will know that's not just us. That that's true for this story. That is true for us. That we will be humbled if we don't follow God. This is true for the whole world. And Nebuchadnezzar, most powerful man in the whole world. Something you need to know. You're not that big.
[00:13:46] What came for us is coming for you, too.
[00:13:49] This is who God is.
[00:13:51] I almost picture it like.
[00:13:54] Like everyone Else.
[00:13:58] Sometimes people think about, like, how you deal with powerful people or whatever. I think part of it is just perspective.
[00:14:05] Nebuchadnezzar literally had the power. He could. He could order an army to build a mountain, like he. He could.
[00:14:13] You think about the power that you have to, like, literally, like, dig up enough earth to build a mountain. Like, this is a person who could literally sit at the top of a mountain that he created.
[00:14:27] Daniel is looking at that man, and he is comparing him to the humility that, like, how humble am I compared to the power of Nebuchadnezzar? He's comparing that to what he's just gone through with God.
[00:14:38] Nebuchadnezzar isn't one who. Nebuchadnezzar is one who has the power to sit at the top of a mountain that he's created.
[00:14:46] God is one who created the mountain, the earth, the solar system, the universe, all of creation literally was spoken to existence in a moment by God.
[00:15:01] From Daniel's perspective, Nebuchadnezzar isn't much.
[00:15:07] Daniel isn't speaking to someone that he considers to be very powerful, that he's very afraid of. He's also not speaking to someone that he considers to be less than himself. He has been humbled. He recognizes his own sin and the sin of his people, that he also has been one that has rejected God and has experienced that humility.
[00:15:31] He's not looking at Nebuchadnezzar and saying, like, I'm going to get you. I can't wait till you're laid low. He's also not thinking like, oh, I'm afraid of you. What am I going to do?
[00:15:40] Nebuchadnezzar is just another guy to him.
[00:15:44] This is important.
[00:15:47] This whole attitude, this whole, like, tone of these next several chapters telling the Babylonian and Persian empires to come.
[00:16:00] You're not any worse than Israel. Look at our history and look what we've done. Look where we ended up. You're certainly not better. What's coming for you is just like what came for us.
[00:16:10] That's what we're telling you in your own language so that you will understand.
[00:16:15] That's so bold. Like, that's so, like, I just.
[00:16:22] I just imagine being the one who pins this and, like, this really needs to be written in Aramaic for our.
[00:16:29] For our captors here in Babylon so that they have the opportunity to repent and to turn to God as well.
[00:16:37] That's just not a way that I think normally. That's just like, normally not the way I think either. I'm going to be like, you guys have it coming. Or like, I can't say this to them. They'll kill me. You know, I mean, like, one way or the other. This is not normal anyway. It's important to recognize this whole. Next. These next several chapters are just.
[00:17:01] I don't know which direction it will be for you. But no matter which, no matter how you're oriented, these next several chapters are very bold. Okay, all right, let's go back then. The astrologers answered the king in Aramaic. Long live the king. Smart first. Great first response to somebody when you're about to tell. Basically ignore the question that he asked you tell us the dream and we'll tell you what it means. I'm going to pretend that you didn't just tell me to tell me the dream.
[00:17:32] We're going to go back to what's normal that people do.
[00:17:37] You tell me the dream. I am. My job is to interpret the dream for you.
[00:17:43] But King's like, I'm serious about this. If you don't tell me what my dream was and what it means, you will be torn limb from limb and your houses will be turned into rubble.
[00:17:53] But if you tell me what I dreamed and what the dream means, I will give you many gifts and honors. Just tell me the dream and what it means. Nebuchadnezzar is freaked out. Like, he's really. Whatever this dream's about. We'll get to this in a few weeks, actually. But whatever this dream is about has got him totally freaked out, and he needs. He's like, I will either make your life the best dream possible or I will end you and your entire line. That's it. Those are your choices here. They go back and forth. They try another time. We're like, yeah, yeah, why don't you just tell us a dream and then we'll. We'll work this out. And he comes hard at them once, one more time. And then finally, the astrologers replied to the king. They're like, look, no one on Earth can tell the king his dream. And no king, however great and powerful, has ever asked such a thing of any magician, enchanter, or astrologer. The king's demand isn't possible.
[00:18:47] No one except the gods can tell you your dream. And they do not live here among the people.
[00:18:55] Your job is to tell us your dream. Our job is to tell you something based on that dream that makes you feel good. That's the way kings. That's the way we've always done this.
[00:19:03] That's the like that's the system.
[00:19:07] That's all we can do.
[00:19:10] The king was furious when he heard this, and he ordered that all the wise men in Babylon be executed. Let me pause here.
[00:19:18] All the wise men in Babylon were not standing before King Nebuchadnezzar in this moment. All the wise men in Babylon are thousands and thousands. It's literally an entire. It's several classes of people. Actually, it's all of the astrologers.
[00:19:32] It's like there were several classes of people that collectively were considered the wise men. He's like, all of you are worthless to me. This entire system that I've built to effectively run my empire, I'm canceling it. You're dying, all of you. I'm starting over with an entirely new. You're all worthless to me.
[00:19:50] Yeah, clearly.
[00:19:54] I keep. I keep. You know, there's a lot of imagination that goes into this. Nebuchadnezzar was either so freaked out that he was willing to wreck and restart his entire empire, or he was crazy. My bet's on both. You know, I think there's a lot of both going on.
[00:20:11] Either way, he was ready to tear the whole thing down.
[00:20:15] Because of the king's decree, men were sent to find and kill Daniel and his friends. Why?
[00:20:21] Because Daniel and his friends were a part of this entire massive class of people. Now, not by their choice, they were captured, made wise men. They were good at it. But because they were one of the wise men, they get killed.
[00:20:33] They get killed, too. All right, so Daniel's supposed to get killed. Now, when Arioch, the commander of the kingsguard, whose job is to keep all the wise men safe, all the people that are. That are, like, a part of the king's palace and all that kind of stuff. Like, his job is to, like, look out for these people.
[00:20:58] Now he's got to go kill them. And Daniel handles the situation with wisdom and discretion.
[00:21:04] He asked Arioch why has the king issued such a harsh decree. Now, first of all, just saying this, Ariak must have had a pretty good relationship with Daniel to begin with. Like, criticizing the king's decree. Pretty bold.
[00:21:18] So Arioch told him what had happened, and Daniel went at once to the king. So Ariak's like, hey, Daniel, I'm here to kill you. What?
[00:21:26] What's going on? Ariak tells him what's going on. And then Daniel's like, hold on, before you kill me, wait a second. I'm going to go talk to the king about it. He's like, great, because I don't want to do this.
[00:21:36] So Daniel, when it wants to see the king, requested a little more time to tell the king what the dream meant. The king's like, whatever, I just need the dream answered. Then Daniel went home and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Israel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego would be names you probably recognize what had happened. And he urged them to ask the God of Heaven to show them his mercy by telling them the secret so that they would not be executed along with the other wise men of Babylon.
[00:22:07] Now, this is a really interesting response to me, like, something impossible has been requested.
[00:22:20] I could think of a lot of different responses that let's go to God and pray for wisdom about how to assassinate King Nebuchadnezzar. That's like. To me, that's more possible than, like, you know, like, conjuring the dream up out of this dude's head. All like, you know, I mean, in my head, I'm thinking, like, okay, I'm going to pray for. I'm going to start with things that I think are more possible and head towards things that are least possible.
[00:22:51] Knowing what dream showed up in King Nebuchadnezzar's head wouldn't have been my first.
[00:22:57] My first thing to pray for, honestly. Maybe for you, but for me, I'm like, maybe. Maybe Arioch could help us, like, revolt against the king. Maybe he's crazy enough, everybody recognizes it along with us. All these other wise men don't want to get killed. Maybe they'll all help and we can revolt or something. I don't know.
[00:23:16] I'm thinking strategy, you know, Daniel's like, hey, hey, guys, can you pray to God along with me that he will do something impossible and that we won't be killed?
[00:23:36] Kind of simple.
[00:23:38] Like maybe a childlike kind of response to a dilemma.
[00:23:43] You know, Sometimes I wonder.
[00:23:51] I wonder what my prayer life would be like if I could be less.
[00:23:57] Be more like that.
[00:23:58] You know, as I get older and my brain slows down, I become more senile. I'm hopeful that the simplicity of that will help my prayers get better and better.
[00:24:14] Maybe even before that, maybe I can figure out how to be less in control when I pray and just pray for simple things, even if they're impossible.
[00:24:28] Well, Daniel and his friends prayed. Daniel had a vision, and he understood the prayer.
[00:24:38] I mean, he understood the dream. He saw the dream.
[00:24:42] God allowed Daniel to see the dream that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed.
[00:24:47] And then he has this beautiful response. There's this.
[00:24:52] It's a prayer it's like a poem that he.
[00:24:56] Before he does anything else, before he like, it's eureka. And he like runs out and goes and helps everybody. The first thing he does is he articulates this response to God. As a result of the vision that God gave him, he says, praise the name of God forever and ever, for he has all wisdom and power.
[00:25:18] The king turned to his wise men to answer these questions.
[00:25:24] Daniel turned to God.
[00:25:27] God gave Daniel the answer. And Daniel recognized that all wisdom is God's.
[00:25:36] He controls the course of world events. He removes kings and sets up other kings.
[00:25:41] He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the scholars. He reveals deep and mysterious things and knows what lies hidden in darkness. Though he is surrounded by light, he is. I love that he is surrounded by light, but he can totally see what's going on over there in the darkness.
[00:26:00] As a result of thinking about God, this deep look into who God was and the experience that he had with God, he then begins to thank God. He says, I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors, for you've given me wisdom and strength. You've told me what we asked of you and revealed to us what the king demanded.
[00:26:19] It's like there's so much poetry in the like, as he's thinking about God, he's like thinking about this God of light, peers into darkness. And then when he comes to the practical matters, just seems very simple. Thank you for giving me wisdom. Thank you for giving me answers. You know, the end of, the end of that prayer feels very like, like the first part is like very articulate and very like high minded. Like as he's looking towards God and then when he's looking to his life and the experience that he has with God, it's just very simple. Thank you. You know, Then Daniel went to see Arioch, whom the king had ordered to execute the wise men of Babylon. Remember him? Daniel said to him, don't kill the wise men. Take me to the king and I will tell and I will tell him the meaning of his dream. Arioch quickly took Daniel to the king. First of all, this guy's like, what in the world do I have to. This is, this is going to wreck my entire life, right?
[00:27:23] So Daniel, just one of the wise men, first of all, he's like, hey, don't kill me yet. Let me go talk to the king. He comes out of the king chamber, says, you're not gonna kill me yet. I get to go pray first. Then he's like, hey, don't kill me yet. I need to Go talk to the king again.
[00:27:37] Arioch's like, I have found one of the captives from Judah who will tell the king the meanings of his dreams. This dude's, like, desperate to not have to kill these guys. Plus, he just told the king without hearing what Daniel had to say. He just told the king, I found a guy that'll answer your dreams for you.
[00:27:55] I don't know what their relationship was, but this guy trusted Daniel a lot.
[00:28:00] The king said to Daniel, is this true?
[00:28:03] Can you tell me what.
[00:28:07] Can you tell. Can you tell me what my dream was and what it meant? I want you to notice here the power dynamic that's going on.
[00:28:17] This man, who is literally a God among people, consider him a God. You know, he has the power of life and death.
[00:28:27] He's desperate.
[00:28:29] Everyone has failed him. And this guy says, I have your answer. And he's looking like, is this true?
[00:28:36] Like, can you help me?
[00:28:39] This is not a position that Nebuchadnezzar has probably been in.
[00:28:43] He probably can't remember a point in his life where he needed something from somebody. Like, he needed something from Daniel right now to have that power dynamic flipped in which the thing that the ruler of the whole world needs you and says, can you help me? Daniel's response is, no, I can't. This is what he says.
[00:29:09] There are no wise men, enchanters, magicians, or fortune tellers who can reveal the king's secrets, but there is a God in heaven.
[00:29:21] So look what Daniel has done with this power. When this power shift occurs, and the most powerful person in the world needs him, he has all the power in the moment. He says, I'm not powerful either.
[00:29:34] I, like you, am helpless.
[00:29:39] But there is a God who can help us.
[00:29:44] He's just invited the king to have faith in God with him.
[00:29:51] He has used his power not to, like, assert, not to, like, put him down, and not to, like, dominate him and not to be the one. Ha ha. Now you're going to get your comeuppance. Like, you captured our people. Now I own you.
[00:30:04] Yeah. I also am helpless here in this moment. You.
[00:30:09] You have never thought of yourself as helpless in this moment where you're helpless and you're dependent on me, I'm helpless, too. We're helpless.
[00:30:18] But there is a God who helps think about the wisdom, humility, tenderness, love that goes into that, the love for a person Daniel has no reason to love to invite him into sharing his faith in God.
[00:30:41] But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets. And he has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the future. Daniel's not even a part of this.
[00:30:49] I can't do this. But there is a God who has shown this to you.
[00:30:53] It's like he's not even in the story he's telling.
[00:30:57] Now I'll tell you your dream and the visions you saw as you lay on your bed.
[00:31:01] He says while your majesty was sleeping, you dreamed about coming events. He who reveals secrets has shown you what is going to happen.
[00:31:10] And it is not because I am wiser than anyone else that I know the secret of your dreams, but because God wants you to understand what was in your heart.
[00:31:25] This entire story, Daniel knows, is contingent on what God wants.
[00:31:33] Daniel is thinking about what God wants.
[00:31:43] Your entire family has been stripped of its homeland.
[00:31:47] You have been manipulated by the most powerful person in the universe.
[00:31:53] You've been threatened to be killed for nothing you've even done. Just you happen to be in a class of people along with people that try to get one over on him. So he threatened to kill you.
[00:32:04] You find yourself in a position where you have something he needs, and all you're thinking about is what God wants. When he said that, he wasn't prepared to desecrate himself, he wasn't prepared to give himself over.
[00:32:25] I think this really gets to the heart of it in the face to be pushed and pulled by your world, to be like, constantly manipulated, to constantly be taken advantage of, be in a position where you could reassert yourself, all that kind of stuff, to experience all that back and forth. And at the end of it, all that you're communicating is, let me tell you what God wants.
[00:32:55] That, that's. That's what his interest is.
[00:33:00] That is a person who recognizes that he was made in the image of God.
[00:33:07] Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon has been trying to desecrate that, been trying to. To demean his image.
[00:33:15] This is a man who has maintained who he is.
[00:33:20] I am a representation of God. My whole goal here is to be able to express the wants of God, and he wants to communicate what's in God's heart.
[00:33:36] I'm going to leave this next chunk out. There's a big chunk where he actually goes to the dream, explains the dream. It's crazy.
[00:33:42] Literally. I think we'll get to it when he explains this dream. If I was Nebuchadnezzar, I might think, no, I don't like that dream. You're dead. But he was so desperate to hear a real answer to the dream, and Daniel was actually able to tell him what the dream was that King Nebuchadnezzar was like, fine, whatever. I trust you. Right then. So Daniel has worked so hard to make clear that he is like him. Our faith is in God, and he is the one that rescues us from our needs. You're in this desperate spot. I've been. My. My people are in this desperate spot. All of us are desperately in need of God. He is pointed back towards God after God. After Daniel reveals the vision that God gave him.
[00:34:28] Nebuchadnezzar threw himself before Daniel and worshiped Daniel.
[00:34:33] And he commanded his people to offer sacrifices and burnt sweet instance to Daniel.
[00:34:40] Daniel is for him an idol, an icon of God. He points to. He says, truly, your God is the greatest of gods, the Lord over kings, a revealer of mysteries. For you have been able to reveal the secret. Your God is great. You pointed to your God, but you're the one in front of me. You're the one I'm going to worship.
[00:35:02] Daniel's not responsible for the king's response there. He's done everything he could to make clear, like him, he is in need of God. You are with me worshiping the one. This beautiful prayer that I have where I worshiped God, that was the response that Nebuchadnezzar could have had towards this experience as well. He didn't. Instead, he said, you. You're the one I worship. You're the one I'm gonna shower with gifts. You're the one that I'm gonna take care of because your God did this thing and he revealed it to you. You're like, I'm gonna put you on this pedestal.
[00:35:38] Gosh. The danger here, you know, if you get to the point that because you've been living your life in the midst of the chaos, you've been living your life for God. If you get to the point that you become an anchor for people that are constantly thrown about by the chaos, but you're living an anchored life in God, the potential for you to be their idol is so strong.
[00:36:03] I remember one time while back, somebody told me that they.
[00:36:09] The reason they didn't believe in God was because of something that a pastor had done.
[00:36:15] And I thought, that's crazy.
[00:36:18] You know, Like, I remember. Like, I was. I don't. I don't know if we had started Horizon at this point. It was really early on at Horizon, and I remember telling somebody else. I was like, can you believe? Like, if I did something awful, would you.
[00:36:38] Would you stop believing in God? And they were like, that would definitely make it Hard for me to believe in God.
[00:36:45] And I thought about it, like, maybe that would be true for me too. How hard is it to let you be a human being who is sometimes anchored and sometimes needed an anchor and not God himself? For me not to worship you guys, for you guys not to worship me, for us to really be able to distinguish.
[00:37:10] Daniel was not God. He was very clear about that.
[00:37:19] We are people that love each other.
[00:37:21] We look out for the best of each other. We don't worship each other. We don't have faith in each other. We don't use each other. We love each other. Right.
[00:37:31] God is the one that we have faith in. And when we see that faith played out in a person's life, we can look at that and say, praise God for what he's done.
[00:37:40] That the reflex, when we're looking to each other is a reflex towards God. And when God does something in our life, our reflex is to worship God.
[00:37:48] That we don't begin to think that we're something because of something that God's done in our life.
[00:37:54] Yeah.
[00:37:56] Then the king appointed Daniel to a high position and gave him many valuable gifts. He made Daniel ruler of the whole province of Babylon, as well as chief over the wise men, which makes sense.
[00:38:09] At Daniel's request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be in charge of the affairs of the province of Babylon, while Daniel remained at the king's court. So at this point, these people have massive responsibilities. Daniel is pretty much in charge of everything in the court. The people.
[00:38:24] Shadrach, Meshach, and Bendigo are responsible for taking care of the governmental functions out there in the province. So they massive responsibilities for them, along with titles and wealth and all kinds of stuff. But for Daniel, often these things would be given in order to trap them. Like, if I become.
[00:38:50] If I get all this stuff, it becomes the thing that I place my faith in. Right?
[00:38:56] Like, I need. My life is good because I'm wealthy. Therefore I need to maintain my wealth. I need to place my faith in my. I need to make choices that keep me safe. The thing that I have faith in.
[00:39:13] They are put in a position that could easily cause them to change where they have faith in and what they manage. Daniel sees all this. He doesn't see it as a problem. He doesn't reject it. He's like, okay, now I have more resources that I'm responsible for.
[00:39:30] He then takes responsibility for the. For the position that he has, for relationships that he has, for the wealth that he has. He. He is responsible for it. He doesn't place his faith in it. As you see this story progress throughout his life as he gets older, he maintains this dogged faith in God even as his position grows and grows.
[00:39:52] To be a person, to be a person that is harmed and hurt because you're following God, takes a lot of faith. It takes a lot of courage to maintain your faith, as when your life is.
[00:40:08] When you're being crucified for your faith. It also takes a lot of courage when, as a result of your faith, you're being rewarded.
[00:40:16] The world is giving you. They're like saying, oh, you're great here. Let's stack more praise.
[00:40:22] Let's make your life easier. It takes a lot of courage not to place your faith in that stuff.
[00:40:29] And that's how Daniel responds here.
[00:40:31] He maintained humility throughout this entire story.
[00:40:37] As we look next week and we.
[00:40:41] We see where that humility comes to play really well for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedo, and also for Daniel as the mercurial king decides that he doesn't like their choices. And we see how that same.
[00:40:52] How that same faith plays out when their circumstances change as well.
[00:40:58] All right, let's pray.
[00:41:00] Father God, as we look to these stories of Daniel and his friends in their life as they are living in a world that's not theirs, Lord, they're in this world, but they're not of it.
[00:41:12] They know that they belong to you even as they are good citizens in a realm that doesn't belong to you.
[00:41:19] God, I pray that the same wisdom and humility that they.
[00:41:25] That they execute, that they. That they live out of very well, informs our life, too, when we see things going off the rails.
[00:41:35] God, I pray that we're able to come back to these young men and see their faith, Lord, and that it encourages us and we can live in this long line of faithful, humble servants of you.
[00:41:49] God, you are light. You are surrounded by light.
[00:41:53] God, you peer into the darkness.
[00:41:55] God, I pray that you give us your wisdom to see in that darkness, too.
[00:42:00] We love you. Amen.
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