Daniel's Vision (part 1)

Daniel and the Babylonian Captivity

We're starting this morning into the Old Testament equivalent of the book of Revelation, which is the book of Daniel. The book of Daniel outlines a period in Israel's history in which they were taken captive.

Throughout the history of Israel, they had been warned repeatedly of things that would happen to them if they did not obey what the Lord had told them to do. In fact, it was set out that if you obey the Lord, all of these good things will happen.

And if you don't obey the Lord, all of these bad things will happen. And one of the things that had been foretold for them was that they would be taken into captivity. And that's exactly what's happened.

Essentially, by this period in Israel's life, the northern kingdoms, the ten northern tribes have essentially disappeared as any kind of political body. And the two tribes of Judah have been taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar.

He's invaded and he's essentially taken everyone, most everyone anyway, out of the land of Israel and he has taken them to Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq. And among the things, and you know the story of Daniel, you heard this at your mother's knees, some of you, if you were raised in Christian homes, Daniel and his three companions, the best and the brightest of Israel's youth have been taken and have been educated in the Babylonian languages and in all of the, what we call the mysteries in those days, which was a modern term perhaps for science and those sorts of things, mathematics and all of this.

And Daniel is one of these. And that's where we find him right at the beginning of the book of Daniel. And chapter 2 starts out with telling us about some troubled thoughts that the king has had, King Nebuchadnezzar.

And it says,. And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep went from him. Now, this is a single dream that he's dreaming.

He's dreaming it repeatedly. This is not a one-time thing that's happened to Nebuchadnezzar. He dreams this dream, and he dreams it night after night after night. And he realizes that this dream is extremely significant because don't forget that in this day and time, first of all, these people put a great deal of stock in dreams anyway, and this entire bureaucracy had grown up around the interpretation of dreams, and we'll talk about them in just a minute.

But he realizes that this is something out of the ordinary. This is no ordinary dream. It keeps coming, and what the images might mean disturbs him. And he dreams this night after night after night to the point that he's starting to lose sleep over it.

He's becoming an insomniac about it. And so he does what you would expect the king to do, verse 2, then the king commanded to summon the magicians and the astrologers and the sorcerers and the Chaldeans to show the king his dream.

So they all came and stood before the king. So he brings all these guys in, and who are all these people? Take a brief look at that. Well, first of all, what's been interpreted in your King James Bible as magicians, those are scribes.

Those are the guys who write things down. And they wrote a course in hieroglyphics, and if you've ever seen hieroglyphics, you can realize that the persons that could write that and read it would be considered magicians in this day and age.

These are the folks that know all the secrets. They know all the state secrets, because they record everything that goes on in court, just like we do today. We record everything. We do it electronically, but they did it no less detailed in those days, except it was all written down by hand.

And so these are the folks, these are smart people. And then the astrologers, that's a catch-all term. It means anyone who is trained in the science of the day and trained in mathematics, trained in astrology, meaning the observation of the heavenly bodies, not predicting the signs of the zodiac, although those types of activities did get in there, pagan activities did get in there.

And interestingly, as a sideline, historians tell us that these guys also were the intelligence agency for King Nebuchadnezzar. They basically engaged in espionage as one of their specialties. Then the sorcerers, the sorcerers are the people handlers.

We would call them the PR department. These are the spin doctors that come in and, of course, their main thing in life is telling the king what the king wants to hear, you know, O king, live forever, yada, yada, yada, you know, all of that sort of thing.

So they're all there. These are also the folks that practice witchcraft. They practice necromancy, which is the consulting of the dead and all of that sort of thing. And then you have the religious folks, the priests, they come in.

They also practice witchcraft and idolatry. And finally, the soothsayers, who were the counterparts, the pagan counterparts of biblical prophets. These were the guys that came in and they were the predictors of what was going to happen in the future.

They read the omens. This was a very big business in those days. They exercised enormous amounts of authority and influence over everybody from the king on down. Archaeologists have found, uncovering things, they have found many, many, many tablets, which were called books of fate, where the reading of the omens were recorded.

So that, you know, you paid them a lot of money and they told you what was going to happen in the future. And the point about all these guys is that every last one of them, this whole bureaucracy was built up around the idea that they could predict the future.

They could tell you what's going to happen. They could, you dreamed a dream, you went to these folks and they told you what it meant. And as things normally went, and this happens today too, when you go and you tell one of these, and these people make a prognostication, it's very general.

So that whatever happens, they can say, see, that's what I said. Place where I used to work, we had a fellow who fancied himself as a financial expert and he was always making predictions about what the stock market was going to do and carrying on and holding forth on this.

And if you listened very carefully to what he was saying, it always boiled down to the market is going to go up or maybe go down or stay the same. So that regardless of what happened, he was able to say, yeah, see, I predicted that.

So that's what these folks did. These are, in effect, the State Department. Question Daniel. Yeah, the Chaldeans is a name for all of these folks. The Chaldean mysteries is a thing that covers all of this arcane witchcraft, paganism, the beliefs of what they did.

In fact, as a completely aside that has nothing to do with this morning's lesson, the good friend, when Dallas and I were first married, we had a good friend, delightful lady, one of the last of the grand southern ladies and she had a classical education and she could discourse on the Chaldean mysteries to great length as she used to do and tell us all about it.

But a great deal, if you look at what the things that we don't hold to today, the categories of sins and what have you that we hold to today, it all goes back to the Chaldean mysteries. It all started at the Tower of Babel, if you will.

It all really started at creation, in the garden, but essentially what came out of the Tower of Babel and all of that, you read about Nimrod and all of those sorts of things. And the cults that exist today, you can find their roots all the way back there.

And when they talk about the Chaldeans, that area around there is called Chaldea and it all comes out of that part of the world, the part which we now call Iraq. And so, back to the lesson, the king summons all the advisors, all the wise men, all the wise guys, they're all there.

And as I said, they all claim to be able to predict the future by various means. They read the entrails, they read the tea leaves, they cast the stones, they do whatever it is they do and they come up and make these pronunciations.

And all of this is forbidden by the Lord. It has been specifically forbidden to the Israelites. Passages where it says, you are not to do that. You know, I will send my prophets to you, but you're to test the prophets.

If a prophet says something and it doesn't come to pass, he's to be put to death. And even worse, it says if a prophet says something and it does come to pass, but he's trying to lead you astray from the true God, he is to be put to death.

And that passage, it's all there in Deuteronomy, that same passage gets into if your loved ones try to lead you away to the worship of a false God, they are to be put to death. God was very, very jealous about his worship and he was not going to share that with anybody.

Nebuchadnezzar's Impossible Demand

And so, the king calls everybody in, the king calls everybody in and he has a demand. The demand is in two parts. He says, now, I've dreamed a dream and so I got two things because Nebuchadnezzar is a very smart man.

And Nebuchadnezzar realizes that a great deal of what his advisors have been telling him is stuff they just made up. And so, he's going to sort of throw a test out to them and he says, number one, I want you to interpret my dream.

I've dreamed a dream. I want you to interpret my dream. And of course, all of the wise men say, well, you know, tell us the dream and we'll tell you what it means. He says, no, no, no, no, no. Here's the deal.

You claim to be able to see the future. Well, let's see if you can see the past. You tell me my dream first, number one. You tell me the dream and then you tell me what it means. And that way, I'll know that what you're telling me is something that you have really received from whoever and not just something that you're making up.

And he says, tell me my dream. Now, Nebuchadnezzar has not forgotten the dream. A lot of the times when you see people speaking on this passage, they say, well, Nebuchadnezzar forgot his dream. Nebuchadnezzar hasn't forgotten his dream.

He's been dreaming that dream every night for weeks. He knows every last detail of it. But what he's saying is, you tell me the dream so that I'll be able to put confidence in your explanation of what it means.

And of course, the wise men, they produce the standard answer. Standard answer number one comes out of the astrologers and soothsayers handbook, which is, you know, tell us the dream and we'll tell you what it means.

Because the answers that they came up with, particularly when they're dealing with royalty, particularly when they're dealing with the king, you know, they would sit around, they'd figure out what does the king want to hear?

And then they tell him that, whatever it was. And they had these vague general answers so that whatever happens, the soothsayers can say, yes, that's what we said. The most famous example of that is when he was getting ready to cross the Hellespont.

This is in Greek history. He went to the oracles and the oracles say, if the Hellespont is crossed, a great battle will be won. Well, what they didn't tell him was that it didn't mean him. They meant the other guys would win a great battle.

But, you know, you sort of hear what you want to hear type of thing. And so Nebuchadnezzar is having no part of this because no previous dream has ever troubled him like this one. He's had other dreams.

I mean, this was a standard modus operandi that they went through in those days. And he's had other dreams. And they came up with explanations. And like I said, Nebuchadnezzar is a smart man. And he's probably well aware that, you know, this is all just a bunch of spin.

But it's OK. It doesn't really bother me that much. This one does. He wants to know the real answer to this one. And so he's having no part of it. And he says, verse 5 here, the king answered and said to the Chaldeans, the thing is gone from me.

If you will not make known unto me the dream with the interpretation of it, you should be cut in pieces and your houses shall be made a refuse heap. Pretty serious. And when he says the thing is gone from me, he doesn't mean I've forgotten the dream.

That's the way of saying I have spoken. This is an official decree. You know, so let it be written. So let it be done. This is going down to be part of the law of the Medes and the Persians. It's not going to change.

I have made an official decree. You will tell me the dream or it's your neck. And so there they are. And of course, they panic naturally. They panic. All their necks are on the chopping block because they're well aware that they can't predict anything.

It's kind of like the situation when, if you remember when Saul went to consult with the witch of Endor and he said, he says, bring up Samuel for me. Well, now she's been faking the population for decades from this one location.

And so this time, you know, she goes through her mumbo jumbo. Only this time Samuel really appears and she panics. You know, what's going on here? Well, these guys are in a panic too, because they're well aware that the king is serious about this.

And so they fall back. They fall back. First of all, they restate their original answer. You know, well, tell us the dream and we'll tell you what it means. And the king, that's verse seven. And the king is saying, I know of a certainty that you would gain time because you see the decree or the thing is gone from me.

But if you will not make known to me, unto me, the dream, there is but one decree for you, for you have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me till the time is changed. Therefore, tell me the dream and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.

And so here's the thing. You know, they try to stall for time. The bureaucrat's number one reaction to anything, stall for time. And so they're going to try it there. See, there's nothing new in the government and they want to see if they can delay.

If we can delay long enough, he'll move on to something else. You know, the times will change and he'll get his attention on something else and we'll be off the hook. But that's not going to happen. The king is focused on this and he's well aware that they're stalling for time.

And so. Daniel records all of this. Because he is demonstrating under the power of the Holy Spirit, he is demonstrating the fallacy or the futility of relying on human reason. This is an issue that basically cannot be addressed by human means.

The king really has set before them an impossible situation, humanly speaking. Because he's dreamed a dream. He knows what it is. Nobody else does. And yet he demands that you tell me what I dreamed. And so, first of all, you have these wise men and they really are very smart.

These are not dummies. They are the forerunners of today's men of science, men of diplomacy, all of that. You know, these are the top guys in the kingdom. And they are very good observers of nature and people.

They know how people will react to certain things. They understand a great deal within the limitations of what they could understand in those days. They understand how nature works. You know, they know how things relate.

They're very good observers. And that goes a long way. And you see that even today. We see that even today. You'll hear people talk about, well, Dr. So-and-so, you know, can tell me exactly how I feel.

And then they jump to the conclusion that because Dr. So-and-so can tell you how you feel, he or she knows the answer to your problem. And that does not necessarily follow. If you're a good observer of human nature, yeah, you can pretty well zero in on the way somebody is feeling.

You know, I feel terrible, this, that, and the other thing. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have an answer. And we assume that so much. An entire industry is built up around that now. So they're good observers of people.

They're good observers of nature. And they're very impressed with their own brilliance. And apparently everybody else is impressed with their own brilliance as well. But now they've run up against a problem they cannot solve.

They've run up against a problem they cannot solve. They are not going to be able to address this without outside assistance. Except they don't believe in outside assistance. Not really. They cannot, they cannot do what the king has demanded and they know it.

And so the principle here that we can extract from this for our own lives is that the essential problems of life, the real problems of life cannot be solved apart from the Lord. That's Proverbs 3, 5. We are told not to rely upon our own understanding.

And when we're addressing genuine problems. Now certainly there are things, you know, what do we do? We come upon a problem in our lives. Perhaps it's a problem of health. And we know good and well that God has provided certain individuals that we call doctors.

And, you know, he has provided them with knowledge. And certainly we take advantage of that, don't we? In any other problems that we have, we go to experts in that particular field. And we deal with them.

And that's, but that's not what I'm really talking about here. I'm talking about things that matter eternally. The destiny of your immortal soul. That is not going to be addressed by human, by any sort of human reason.

And so that's the problem that they run into here. But mature believers look to God in times of trouble. Fundamentally, you look to God. Yes, we go to the appropriate experts that can deal with our problem in a narrow range.

But our fundamental resource is to look to the Lord. And we know that. But these guys, they're panicking, the wise men. So they come up with a threefold offense, with a threefold offense. And down here in verse 10, the Chaldeans answered before the king and said, there is not a man upon the earth that can reveal the king's matter.

Therefore, there is no king, lord, or ruler that has asked such things of any magician or astrologer or Chaldean. And it is a rare thing that the king requireth. And there is no other that can reveal it before the king, except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh.

So the first thing they do is they try the no man ploy. You know, this is humanly impossible. A man can't do that. No man can do this. The thing of it is, though, now you can tell they're panicking because they're not thinking too clearly here.

They've spent their whole careers claiming to be able to do exactly what the king says I want you to do. So now all of a sudden, they fall back and say, well, nobody can do that. And if the king's sitting there thinking, toying with them, saying, well, what about the last dream?

Oh, well, that was different. That was different. But no man can do this. And so then they also come up with the no precedent ploy. No king has ever asked this before. That's verse 9, which is also a totally irrelevant statement because he's the king and he can ask anything he wants.

He is not bound by precedent. You know, this king is a sovereign ruler and sovereign in the sense that, you know, what he says goes. And so basically, that's no defense. And then they also try to pass the buck ploy.

They say, you know, only the gods can answer this. Only the gods can answer this. And they're out today or whatever it is. Except that, again, they have spent their whole careers claiming to speak for the gods.

That's gods with a small g, by the way. You understand that. And so, you know, but again, it's three strikes and you're out. And in verses 12 and 13, the king loses his temper because essentially, you know, they have admitted before the king that everything they've told him in the past is a bunch of bunk, that they made it all up, that they can't really speak for the gods, that, you know, they can't really address these problems.

They can't really predict the future. And so the king says, OK, you've been lying to me this entire time, you know, and so here's the deal. Either you tell me my dream and its interpretation or I'm going to wipe out all of you.

And not just the ones that are in the room, but all of the, my entire cabinet, all of my advisors, I'm going to wipe them out and their families and I'm going to destroy their houses and make their houses a trash heap.

And you get an idea here, the king is kind of losing it as well because, you know, this doesn't make it a really bright idea because if I kill all of my advisors, who's going to advise me in the future?

That's not too smart, but that's what he's doing. And so the decree goes out, kill them all, get everybody. And that includes Daniel and his friends because Daniel and his three friends also fall into the category of wise men.

Now, even though, yes, they are captured Israelites, they have been trained in all of the mysteries of the Chaldeans and in the languages and the science and the mathematics and all the rest of it, they've been trained in all of this.

And so they fall into this category and they're under the death sentence as well. But notice Daniel has a completely different reaction. The decree goes out in the last part of verse 13, and they sought Daniel and his fellows to be slain.

Then Daniel answered with counsel and wisdom to Arioch, the captain of the king's guard, who was gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon. He answered and said to Arioch, the king's captain, why is the decree so hasty from the king?

Then Arioch made the thing known to Daniel. Then Daniel went in and desired of the king that he would give him time, that he would show the king the interpretation. And so this is a very interesting reaction.

Everybody else is in a panic, but not Daniel. The king's guard shows up and says, I'm sorry, we're going to have to put you to death. And you sort of read through the lines here a little bit that Arioch and Daniel may have been friends.

They were at least acquainted, and they're acquainted well enough that Daniel can ask the head of the king's guard, what's going on? I don't know what's happening. And the king's guard most significantly takes the time to explain it to him, what's going on.

It tells him about all of what's happened during the night and the king's decree and all of that sort of thing. And so unlike the rest of the wise men who start looking for an out, who start passing the buck, who start panicking, Daniel replies with counsel and wisdom, says the King James, or replied with prudence, if you look at the English Standard Version.

And so Daniel starts out from a different starting point. First of all, he starts with his dependence on God to provide for his safety. Psalm 4 .8 says, I will now lay me down and sleep for you provide safety.

I'm paraphrasing a little bit. That's not an exact quote. And back in Psalm 3, David also says, I laid down and I slept because you kept me in safety. Daniel knows where his safety comes from. And it's not from being able to spin things properly to the king.

His fundamental safety, his fundamental sense of well-being comes from his relationship to Almighty God. And there's another principle there. As long as God has a purpose for your life here on earth, the believer is invulnerable.

As long as God has a purpose for your life here on earth, you are invulnerable. And once your purpose is done, and accomplished, why would you want to stay here longer than you have to when you could be in heaven?

And so Daniel understands this. And Daniel is also well aware. Daniel is relying upon God's attributes. Daniel has been a Bible scholar all his life from the time he was a boy. And he knows the scriptures.

He knows the Hebrew scriptures. And he understands Jehovah God. And he understands what God is like. And he understands his attributes. And he understands, for example, that God is omniscient. And that God completely understands and has the entire matter with the king well in hand.

That God knows exactly what the dream was that Nebuchadnezzar has dreamed. He knows exactly what it means. He knows all about it. And he can provide an answer. He being God can provide an answer. And so he's cool in the crisis.

He's calm and collected. Just think what it would be if the local police force knocked on your door and said, I'm sorry, but we have to put you to death. There's been a decree. And, you know, please come with us.

You would tend to get upset probably, right? Well, that's essentially what's happened to Daniel. The head of the secret police has knocked on his door and said, Daniel, you know, it's really too bad. You know, you're a good guy, but got to put you to death.

That's what the king says. And so Daniel relax. He's cool and calm and collected. And he's thinking clearly. He's thinking clearly. The hysterical cannot think clearly. That's one of the definitions of what it means to be hysterical.

You're running completely on emotions. You've lost the ability to organize your thoughts and to work through whatever the crisis happens to be. And so he questions the need for haste. He questions the need for haste and he waits on God's time.

Now, consider us when we get into any kind of difficulty. Don't we want the answer right now? I mean, we want it today, preferably yesterday. We want the answer right now. We don't want to wait on God's time.

We don't want to wait on God's solution. We want an immediate resolution to our problems, whatever that is. We want it within the next 30 minutes with time out for commercials. Don't we? Now, Daniel is willing to wait on God's time.

But notice also, this is an active waiting. Daniel has got things going on while he's waiting for God's answer. He's not sitting on his hands. He didn't go back to his room and just sit down and say, well, I'm just going to wait.

I'm going to let go and let God. And I'm just going to wait to see what God is going to do. No, Daniel begins to take actions. So the first thing he does, he gives a wise answer to the head of the secret police.

He answers, the Bible says, the King James says, with counsel and with wisdom. And counsel is advice that is based on doctrine. Good counsel, good advice always is based on biblical principles. And he also answers with wisdom, which is doctrine applied to the given situation.

So the first thing he does, he asks for time. And we gather from what is recorded here, that already Daniel's kind of a special guy in the court, because if you understand how the old ancient courts worked, you didn't just bop in to see the king whenever it took your fancy.

Well, apparently, Daniel has got kind of a carte blanche to see the king whenever he wants to, because it says he goes to see the king. Normally, you didn't go to see the king unless you were summoned.

If you tried to enter the king's presence without being summoned, the guards would kill you. Anybody that comes in, if the king doesn't hold out the scepter and, you know, give you the royal blessing there, you're done for.

But Daniel has confidence that he can go see the king. So apparently, Daniel is already standing pretty well in the king's opinion. And so he goes to see the king and he asks for time. Now, the other wise men also tried to buy time.

But Daniel takes a totally different approach. Daniel is not trying to get to distract the king or to get him to delay until something else will attract his attention and he'll forget about this and go on.

Daniel simply goes in and says, King, please give me some time. Let me pray. Let me pray about this. Let me seek God's answer, because God knows all about this. There is an answer. And I have confidence that God will tell me what that is.

And then I will be able to come and tell you the interpretation of your dream. So he has a doctrinal answer. He depends upon God first. He gives a doctrinal answer and he applies doctrine to the situation.

And again, he can do all of this because Daniel has been studying. He has been a Bible scholar since the time he was a small child. And so he takes some action, gets himself a little time, all in God's providence, of course.

And then he goes back and he gathers his friends. First thing he does, go back, get Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who are three guys that also have the same frame of mind, the same frame of reference that he has.

These are also mature believers. They also know the Hebrew scriptures. They also rely first and foremost on God in a crisis. These were the four young men who have also already been through the food crisis.

If you remember chapter one, where they said, look, we can't eat the king's food, but here's what we'll do. You feed us just a plain diet, water, vegetables for a month, and then you come and check us out alongside all of the others and see who looks better.

And it turns out that, you know the story, that they were more handsome. They just looked better. They looked more healthy and all of those things. And so they've trusted God in a relatively small matter, but now they have assurance that they can trust God in this big matter.

Their heads weren't on the line with the food crisis. Now they are. But nonetheless, they're still trusting God because God was with us then, God will be with us now. That's their attitude. And so if you look for just a moment, let me turn back here to Psalm chapter 50.

In Psalm chapter 50 and starting in verse 15 says, and call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me. And so Daniel gets his friends together and they hold a prayer meeting.

Verse 17, then Daniel went to his house and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that they would desire mercies of the God in heaven concerning this secret, that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

And so he holds a prayer meeting and they get together and they begin to pray. And they begin to pray expecting an answer. And how many times when we pray, we do one of two things. Either we pray for something that we're pretty sure is going to happen anyway, or we pray for something that we don't really think is going to happen, but we're just sort of going through the motions.

It's kind of like if we come together to pray for rain, did we bring an umbrella? These four young men start praying and they expect an answer. And they expect it in a fairly short time because they haven't got a lot of time to deal with this.

We don't know what the king said. He may have said, okay, you have 24 hours, you have, you know, you have two days, but he's not going to give them months to agonize over this. They need an answer and they need it now.

God Reveals the Mystery and Daniel Blesses Him

And they pray expecting that. And sure enough, verse 19, the mystery is revealed. Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. And so here's his reaction.

He gets his answer. God shows him what Nebuchadnezzar has dreamed. God explains to him what this dream means. And then his reaction is to glorify God, to give thanks. Because Daniel understands that he is not important.

He's not the central player in all of this. The king isn't the central player in all of this. God is what is important. God is the central figure in all of this. God is bringing glory to himself. Daniel understands that it is God that has been troubling the king's dreams for God's purposes.

God is going to reveal something and he's working a work and he's, the king is involved in it. And so Daniel says, verse 20, Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for his wisdom and might are his.

He changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and set up kings. He giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to those who know understanding. He revealed that the deep and secret things, he knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him.

And so he gives glory where glory belongs. First of all, Daniel recognizes that it is God that is in charge. God is in charge and he gives wisdom to whom he will. And he gives power, might to whom he will.

And God is in charge of who is in charge, if you will. That the king is the king because God has put him there and God will remove the king in due time. And that principle has applied down to this very present day.

You might keep that in mind during the next election cycle, the next interminable election cycle. It's going on and on and on and on. But who's going to be the next president? The person that God has decreed to be the next president, whoever that is.