Daniel Bible Study | Introduction

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Pastor John and Pastor Jeff teach through the book of Daniel. You can join live on Wednesdays at noon.

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All right, gentlemen, we are coming together to start our study in Daniel and as I've read it,
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I'm motivated by one powerful thought as I read through the book of Daniel.
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And of course, you have the first six chapters which discuss what's going on in Babylon and the last six chapters which discuss what's going to happen in the future.
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And I think the common thread that ties them together is the sovereignty of God. So I'm going to ask a question.
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What is the sovereignty of God? He's over all.
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He's over everything. He rules and reigns. He's in charge. He knows everything and He's in charge of everything.
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He's the king of the universe, period. How do you know that God is sovereign?
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He said so. That, by the way, is a great answer.
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Well, it does.
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In Romans 1, it says His divine power and eternal nature. Depends on how you're defining sovereignty.
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I think, yeah. The specifics of it, you couldn't know. Like the meticulous providence over everything, you might not be able to get there from general revelation.
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But general revelation sure does reveal Him as being God over all. Yeah. Other than the fact, and I honestly don't know where it says in the
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Bible that God is sovereign. I did not look that up. I probably could have. Do you know? Many of the passages that speak of His kingly rule,
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Psalm 110. Yes, they do. They speak around it. Psalm 2. What is the definition of sovereign liberty?
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That's what I was asking. That's the point. That's what I was asking. What is the definition? Well, that's the first question. I'm going to put this answer out as a working definition.
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There is nobody over Him and what He chooses and what His will describes is not going to be stopped.
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That's a working definition. And you also have no choice. Doesn't it say in there, who's the clay, the sable, the potter?
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I don't want to be an ugly thing. There you go. This is His sovereign will decrees and it comes to be.
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There is nothing. There is nobody that is over the top of Him. You want the definition? Go for it.
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One that exercises supreme permanent authority, especially over a nation or a government.
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There you go. Supreme authority over, and in God's case, it's supreme authority over all of creation.
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I believe that as we read in Daniel, the first six chapters are going to be anecdotal evidence of the sovereignty of God.
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There are going to be tests, there are going to be visions, there are going to be all kinds of things that the only way you can really justify what it is you're reading is
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God is sovereign, which then takes us to the last half of Daniel, in which case there are so many proclamations about what will be.
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The reason we believe that is the first six chapters proved He was sovereign and if He was sovereign in the first six chapters,
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His sovereignty will make true what it is He's going to proclaim in the second half of Daniel.
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We're done. We can go home. Good summary. Good summary. Do you want to give us a prayer?
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Yeah. How come nobody ever remembers
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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's real names? Because it's so easy to remember.
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Nobody calls Daniel, he doesn't call the book of Belteshazzar. Great point. That is one of the mystery questions of life.
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I did not write a definition of sovereignty of God on the paper. It was just going to be a discussion point, but let's get started.
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Our sovereign King, we do confess that you are Lord of all.
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Your reign is extensive even over all things that happen under the heavens and in heaven and everywhere,
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God. You are God and we confess that, Lord. And we thank you for the book of Daniel to give us more light to understand you and your ways and even things to come.
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So Father, we turn to the book of Daniel and we pray that you would use this study in a powerful way.
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We pray that your Holy Spirit would anoint Pastor John and myself as we teach through this book, that your will would be made known to us and that you would fortify us in your truth and make us strong.
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Make us willing to stand like Daniel or his three friends against those who oppose your rule.
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We pray that we would never cower or turn back, never fade,
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Lord, but that we would remain strong. And we pray that you would use the teaching of your word for sanctification in our lives.
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In Jesus name, Amen. Give me the first verse of Daniel 1, if you would.
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I would. Daniel chapter 1, verse 1.
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In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
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As we move into the book of Daniel, there is an abrupt change of location, of venue.
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It is now Babylon. It is no longer the promised land. There have been some changes of venue.
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We're in the book of Genesis. We start out with no land and we see creation come to be.
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And then we see the design of man seeking under the tutelage of Satan to even reach the heights of heaven.
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And so they build a tower of Babel and God kills that thought.
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And then everybody is spread apart. And now we have the population of the world because of what happened at Babel.
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We then can fast forward into Ur of the Chaldees. We see
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Abram is called by God and he sends to a land that I will show you. And they end up in what we now know as Israel, the promised land.
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He's 89 years old when he's told you're going to have a son.
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And Sarah is a spry spring chicken in her 80s. I will laugh terribly.
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The next many chapters are the establishment of the families. We have
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Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, his 12 sons. But then we see his 12 sons.
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One of them is the youngest and he's got a coat of many colors. His brothers are jealous. They send him down to Egypt.
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So then we have a change of venue to Egypt and then in Exodus we're in Egypt. And then we have a change of venue into the wilderness and then we have eventually a change of venue as we get into Joshua into the promised land.
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But now we're in exile. How did they get there? What's the journey that gets them into exile?
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In the very beginning, God creates Adam. He creates Eve. And what does he want from them?
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He wants their devotion. He wants fellowship with them.
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But somewhere in the midst of all of that, Luther up in the heavens says, I will make myself like the most high.
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He gets banished to earth and everything starts to get messed up. So now they're in the wilderness.
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They're now a nation. They went into Egypt as a family, a large family perhaps, but they come out as a nation.
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They've been in captivity for a long time and there's many, many, many of them. And so they're in the nation.
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And some of the thoughts that are paramount and they actually are so important to the book of Daniel are recorded.
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Rich, you're going to get Deuteronomy 10 .12. I'll let you get that ready for me. In Exodus chapter 20, we have the recording of what we know as the
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Ten Commandments and the first grouping of them are our relationship with God and the second is our relationship with each other.
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But it starts out with these words, I am the Lord. You will have no other gods before me.
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And what makes that so important is as the Jewish people are brought into Babylon, Babylon had a practice on how they would overcome other nations.
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And what they would seek to do is have the other nations assimilate into their culture so that they would be much easier to control and stuff.
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So the pressure to have the Jews assimilate into the culture and abandon their culture.
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We get that early on in the book of Daniel. He says, I am the Lord. You will have no other gods before me.
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And Deuteronomy 10 expands on that. Deuteronomy 10 .12. And now Israel, what does the
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Lord God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the
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Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul? If there is a phrase of what does the
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Lord require of you that implies that it's not something that you have no choice, but this is what you're going to do.
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You're not just a robot that automatically acts according to the computer code that's put inside of you.
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You are required to act in this way, which then implies that, well, maybe you will, maybe you won't.
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And so now we get into Deuteronomy 28. And in Deuteronomy 28 at the beginning of the chapter, if you obey these commands, these blessings.
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And then when you get down to verse 15, but if you don't obey, there will be these curses.
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And so there's already an expression from God. I desire to bless you, but I will curse you.
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If you choose not to do these things, I will curse you. There are many reasons why the nation of Israel goes into captivity.
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And it comes down to the fact that they had abandoned their worship and their relationship with God.
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And so God promised that there would be curses because of it. But one of them that's of interest is how long were they in captivity?
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70 years. Why? 400, I thought it was.
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Hang on a second. 400 years in Egypt. Oh, yeah. Babylon, it's 70 years.
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Good catch. Good catch on that. Why 70 years? You know the answer, somebody else. Why 70 years?
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The Sabbath year. And what does that mean? They weren't honoring the Sabbath year.
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I'm going to let you get Leviticus 25 and verses 1 to 4. So the people are in the land.
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They're going to be going into the land. And it's a land, by the way, it's described as a land flowing with milk and honey.
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When they're at Ganesh Barnea, they send in the spies. Unanimously said, it's a great land.
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It's flowing with milk and honey. It's plentiful. Hmm. 10 of the spies said, but there are giants. We can't go there.
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Two of them said, what giants? We got God. That's a paraphrase. He's bigger than all of them. He's better than all of them.
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He's bigger than all of them. They're going to go into the land and they're going to occupy the land. But God still has more insights of what he wants.
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Do you have that, Jim? Leviticus 25. 1 to 4. 1 through 4.
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The Lord then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, when you come into the land, which
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I shall give you, then the land shall have a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crops.
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But during the seventh year, the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard.
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This becomes a problem because the nation does not obey.
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They don't give the land its rest once every seven years.
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For 490 years, they did not give, if I do my math correctly, that's 70
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Sabbaths that were skipped. Are you a math teacher?
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Good job. Leviticus 26 is going to say, this is not your land.
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It was given to you and obey this. Give it its Sabbath rest.
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I wonder if the crops would be better if we actually did that. Yes. If we believe
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God's sovereignty. Well, yes. If we believe God's sovereignty. Now we in modern times have found ways to put nutrients back into the land.
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But how many times have what we put back in the land turned out not to be the right thing to put in the land anyway?
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And so now you go to Whole Foods and you have organic food that doesn't have the nutrients involved with it.
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We just mess with everything. We really do. Second Chronicles 36.
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I have it. Okay, great. If you've got that, I wanted to see what it was earlier. Yeah, please do. And then, that had escaped from the sewer, carried he away to Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the
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Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. For as long as she lay desolate, she kept
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Sabbath, to fulfill three score and 10 years. That's what's going to happen to them.
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Three score and 10 years, 70 years. Because they did not, and by the way, what's going on in Second Chronicles in that section right there are attacks on Judah.
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If we go a little bit before that, Assyria conquers the northern kingdoms and takes them away.
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The northern kingdoms, we had, okay, so we had. Which one's the north? Judah or the?
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No, Judah's in the south. Okay. In the north are 10 tribes. In the south is Judah, Benjamin, the half tribe of Manasseh.
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And in the north are 10 tribes, Rabon and Jeroboam. Jeroboam was north and Rabon was south.
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And they were evil, evil, and never good, the kings. And then they're gone. And in fact, today, they're called the
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Lost 10 Tribes. Because that group of people never returned to the land as a group of people.
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The southern group, they have good kings, bad kings, good kings, bad kings, but they blow it, they go into exile, but they get that 70 -year promise and they are going to come back.
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One of the reasons why Assyria attacking
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Jerusalem did not succeed, okay, the sovereignty of God, the main theme of this book.
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But one of the reasons why it does not work for them is the Shekinah glory.
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What was the Shekinah glory? Wasn't that the glory of the holy of holies?
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Yes, yes. It is God's presence in the holy of holies.
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As they first built the tabernacle in the wilderness, and the tabernacle is built, and that's going to be in Exodus 40 and 2
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Chronicles and stuff. As it's built, the tabernacle, and then the temple is built, and when it's built and it's consecrated,
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God comes down in glory, the Shekinah glory, and fills the holy of holies.
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It is so intense that nobody can go into the holy of holies unworthily and survive.
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That's why I had a rope tied around his neck. Yeah, you're teaching my lesson today. You're on fire.
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Once a year, the high priest has to go in, and if the high priest goes in unworthily, they're going to die, and now you've got a dead body in the holy of holies.
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And now, who's going in there? I'm not going in there. How are we going to get that thing out? So they came up with bells on the hem.
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Wasn't that required by God, the bells on the hem? Yes, it was. It was prescribed. The robe that they wore on the hem, there were bells.
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And on the outside, if they heard bells, they'd say, okay, he's doing okay. And then when the bells stopped, it was like, uh -oh.
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Uh -oh. And there was a rope tied around his waist, and they could pull him out.
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I thought it was tied around his ankle. I think it was his ankle. They would pull him out without having to go in.
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That was the intensity of the holy of holies. Nobody could go into the holy of holies unworthily and live.
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When I say nobody, I'm including the Assyrians. The Assyrians were not going to capture
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Jerusalem and destroy the temple. As long as the Shekinah glory was there, they would not be able to do it and live.
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Nobody can go there. Exodus 25 says, this is where I'm going to meet with you. The high priest will come in.
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This is where I will speak with you. And in Exodus 14, God promised to be with them and to protect
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Israel. And in this case, we're now talking Judah, where the temple is. And so, as long as the
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Shekinah glory remains in the temple, even though Assyria… By the way, at the time when
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Assyria is sieging, laying siege to Jerusalem, what was their battle record?
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Pretty good. Pretty good. Everybody they went to was defeated.
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In fact, they're going to taunt Jerusalem with that very, very, very fact.
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God is sovereign. It was not time for the temple to fall.
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And the temple is protected by God.
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And similarly, the city of Jerusalem then is protected by God.
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But what happened to change everything? The temple loses the
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Shekinah glory. Why? When? Like, is that a myth?
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It's in the Bible. Ezekiel. Really? Let's read that. Let's read it.
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Can you get Ezekiel chapter 10, verses 18 and 19.
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And then, Barb, I was going to call you
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Joyce. If you would get
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Ezekiel 11, verses 5. Okay. The nation of Israel goes bad.
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They go sinful. And Josiah is probably their last good king.
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And after Josiah, we have a series of kings that go bad, bad, and bad, and worse, and worse.
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And they start setting up idols, and they start doing all kinds of stuff, which is the law, the last straw.
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Until we get to how it's described in Ezekiel 10. Do you have that?
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Who did I give that to? It was Candy. Oh, I'm sorry, Candy. Yeah. Then the glory of the
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Lord went out from the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth before my eyes as they went out with the wheels beside them.
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And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of the house of the Lord and the glory of the
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God of Israel was over them. I can only imagine the feelings in the heart of the people.
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The Shekinah glory, which was, they knew what the Shekinah glory meant.
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How visible was it to have that Shekinah glory depart?
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I have to believe it was visible. I take that on, again, the sovereignty of God.
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But when they were in the wilderness, they would see the pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day.
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Things of God's presence was made known and visible to them. And in this case, the cherubim came down, and not that they could carry the glory of God, but they came down, escorting, and the glory of God leaves the temple.
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With the glory of God gone from the temple, who now can go into the holy of holies?
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Anybody can go in. That last line of defense that would stop an invading army from destroying the temple, going into the holy of holies, is now gone.
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All that's left are the people that divine protection has gone.
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So much, Ezekiel 11, I gave you that. Then the spirit of the Lord came upon me, and he told me to say, this is what the
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Lord says, that is what you are saying, O house of Israel, but I know what is going through your mind.
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You have killed many people in this city and filled the streets with the dead. Therefore, this is what the sovereign
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Lord says, the bodies you have thrown there are the meat of the city in the pot, but I will drive you out of it.
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You fear the sword. The sword is what you will bring against you, declares the sovereign
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Lord. I will drive you out of the city and hand you over to the foreigners and inflict punishment on you.
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You will fall on the sword, and I will execute judgment on you at the borders of Israel.
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Then you will know that I am the Lord. You go from Exodus 14, where God promised to be with you and to protect you, you go into Joshua 1, where it says, do not fear for I am with you,
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I will go before you, and now you get to this point in Ezekiel 11, and it's proclaimed by that prophet, that because of all of this which you have done, and now, by the way, the glory of God is gone, you have desecrated the temple, the glory of God is gone, the sovereignty of God.
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Babylon did not defeat Jerusalem. God enabled
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Babylon to defeat Jerusalem, and by his sovereign will, the kind of glory was gone, and so now basically the gates were open for them to have.
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Is that how somebody got a hold of the ark? That was a different story.
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Earlier in Samuel, they lost a battle, and the ark was taken, and Eli fell over and died, and then the ark came back on its own.
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They brought the ark with them into battle, and were defeated. There's another story of sin.
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Well, that's because they had it on a cart, and they weren't supposed to. Yeah, correct. Well, actually, that story is kind of fun, because they take it into the temple of Dagon, and if you take it into the temple of Dagon, and overnight
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Dagon, the statue of Dagon, falls and breaks his nose. Didn't he do it like three nights in a row?
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Yeah, he did, and then they said, you know, we better get rid of this ark, and but here's the thing.
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Israel sinned. Israel desecrated the temple. The Shekinah glory left, and God said,
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I know I promised to you before that I would be with you and protect you, but guess what?
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This whole picture now comes to be, I told you to give that land rest every seven years.
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It's been 490 years, and you didn't do it, and at this particular point in time, you have desecrated the temple, and the
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Shekinah glory is gone, and at this particular time in history, you're going to see defeat.
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Another prophet comes on the scene by the name of Habakkuk.
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That's a fascinating book. In the beginning of Habakkuk, Carol, I'm going to ask you to get
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Habakkuk 1, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and then you get into the Zechariah and stuff at the end of the book,
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Old Testament. Habakkuk 1, verses 5 and 6. Here's this prophet Habakkuk.
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It's about six books before the New Testament, maybe five, five or six books.
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Anyway, here's this prophet Habakkuk in the time of all of this evilness, and he cries out to the
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Lord in just agony of spirit. It's bad. Aren't you watching
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God? This is bad. Can you do something about this? And here's the thing.
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God does not chastise Habakkuk for complaining because Habakkuk is just pouring his heart out to God.
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What he does is he tells Habakkuk what's going to happen. Now, what's of interest is
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Habakkuk's first pre -prophecy is during the time of the
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Assyrians, which is before the Babylonian Kingdom. And he sees all this wickedness going on.
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Go ahead and read 5 and 6. The Lord replied, look at the mountains and be amazed.
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Watch and be astounded at what I will do. For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn't believe even if someone told you about it.
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I am raising up the Babylonians to be a new power on the world scene. They are a cruel and violent nation who will march across the world and conquer it.
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Sovereignty of God. Even kingdoms of the world, the Assyrians were, he's going to raise up the
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Babylonians. And by the way, you thought the Assyrians were bad? Babylonians are really nasty people.
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I'm sending them to punish you. That's chapter one of Habakkuk.
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It might say
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Chaldeans. Chaldeans, Babylonians, it's synonymous.
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It's the same group of people. All of this timing, 490 years, no
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Sabbath rest. The evil in the land, the time of the Assyrians, they cannot conquer them.
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God says, I'm going to raise up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and that's how I'm going to take care of the problem that you're seeing.
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And then he says, because of your sins, you're going to be, all of this comes together.
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And now what we have is a series, three series of groupings taken into exile by the
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Babylonians. One is in the reign of the King Jehoiakim, Judah removed from the
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Lord's sight because of their sins. And that's most likely in somewhere around 605
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BC, which happens to be 70 years before 535
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BC when the temple is being rebuilt. Hello. Actually, it's the decree, the decree from Cyrus to go back, the decree is given.
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And anyway, Daniel most likely goes in that exile. Then we have another siege by Babylon under the reign of Jehoiachin.
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And they lay siege and they take the treasures out of the temple. There's no
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Shekinah glory there anymore. Go for it, guys. There ain't no stopping you right now. And then under Zedekiah in 2
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Kings 25, 8 through 9, Jerusalem falls and the temple is burned and the walls are destroyed.
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586 BC, is it? And that's when the final, but there were three sieges.
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The first one is a group that goes, Daniel goes there. The second one, they take all the treasures.
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And the third one, the temple is burned and the final defeat. The deliverance into the hands of the
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Babylonians has taken place at a 70 -year clock is going to start to run.
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There are going to be times for the nation of Israel that they are going to be tested and tried.
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What significant book is written during that time of the exile?
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What significant book is written during that time? Daniel? Huh? Daniel?
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Well, Daniel, yeah. Didn't he go back to rebuild the temple?
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So we're going to have, Ezra's going to go back and he's going to be able to rebuild the temple.
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And then Nehemiah is going to hear about the condition of the walls and he's going to get permission to go back and to rebuild the walls.
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Anybody ever hear of Esther? Yeah, I think so. Hear of who?
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Esther. Esther, of course. Esther. That's during the captivity.
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She is actually able to gain favor of the king without exposing the fact that she was a
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Jewess until the very end. And who was it that wanted to have all the
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Jews destroyed? Haman. He just hated the
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Jews so bad. And this is, by the way, one of Satan's plots to stop the coming
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Messiah was through Haman. And the decree was that all
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Jews were to be killed. And Queen Esther, if I perish,
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I perish. And she talks and tells the king who she really is. And the decree is done away with.
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And who ends up on the gallows? Haman. Haman ends up in the gallows. That's an
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O, by the way. In parallel to what's going on with the nation of Judah, Israel, Judah now, and the sovereignty of God.
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It is so much on display from the 490 years, the decrees to Babylon, to you name it.
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It's all there. God is also working through the
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Gentile kings, the nations. These are all recorded in the book of Kings.
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There are, there's one king and another maybe king of Assyria, Sennacherib during the reign of Hezekiah.
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He destroys the fortified cities. What are the fortified cities? Cities that are fortified.
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This is not, but this is not Jerusalem. This could have been the cities of sanctuary.
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Could have been. But he succeeded in knocking all this other stuff down.
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He could not take Jerusalem. Class, why couldn't he take Jerusalem? Why couldn't he take
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Jerusalem? Shekinah glory was in the temple. God was still protecting them.
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Then we have a guy by the name of Rav Shachar. He is some sort of a king, but he is under Sennacherib and he comes up to Jerusalem and basically, he thumbs his nose at him and says, dude, you've seen what
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I've done everywhere else. You have seen how powerful I am and nobody can stand up to me.
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Give it up. But they don't. And then during the assault of Rav Shachar, Hezekiah pleads with God for protection and he protects them.
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Now we come to the time of Sennacherib. He comes back. Second Kings 19.
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Sandy, if you would get that. Second Kings 19. Let me know when you have it. I have it.
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You have it? 32 to 36. I told you
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I wouldn't finish this in one day. Therefore, that says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there and he will not come before him with his shield or throw a besieged ramp against it.
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By the way that he came, by no saying he will return and he shall not come to this city declares the
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Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant
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David's sake. Is that all the way to 36? Then it happened that night that the angel of the
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Lord went out and struck 185 ,000 in the camp of Assyrius.
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And when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead.
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That's one angel. That's right.
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I'd love to have one angel. I figured out 12 legions of angels. If one can lay 185 ,000, 12 legions can kill over 13 billion, which would mean the entire population of the world.
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Which says that at the end of time when we have the battle of Armageddon and we have all these nations coming in, they ain't got a chance.
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Now here's the thing. This is Sennacherib. This is the king of Assyria. This is during the siege of Assyria on Jerusalem.
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This is while the Shekinah glory remains in the temple. And how does
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God protect him? He sends one angel. One angel. 185 ,000.
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But now we need to move ahead because according to the prophecy given to Habakkuk, God is going to raise another nation.
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That's known as Babylon. Some of the versions are going to call it the Chaldeans. It's the same group of people.
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It could be
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Chicago. The king of interest for us right now with regard to Babylon is
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Nebuchadnezzar. Second Kings 24 .3. If you want to read that for us,
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Rick. Second Kings 24 .3. Yeah. And Candy, I'm going to have you get
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Second Kings 25 .8 -10. We already read that once, so you don't have to read it again.
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But give me 24 .3. You read that already too. 24 .3.
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Yeah. Okay, let me start from the beginning. In these days,
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Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and Jehoiachin became his servant for three years.
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Then he turned and rebelled against them. And the Lord sent against them bands of the Chaldeans and bands of the
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Syrians and bands of the Moabites and bands of the Ammonites and sent them against Judah to destroy it according to the word of the
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Lord. He spoke by his servants and his prophet. Okay, verse three.
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Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the Lord to remove them out of his sight for the sins of Manasseh according to all he had done.
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Manasseh was after Josiah and he basically desecrates the temple.
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He sets up idols. He does all of this stuff that leads to what we read about in Ezekiel 10 when the
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Shekinah glory goes out the threshold and up. So what we now have is
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God has raised the Babylonians. He has raised Nebuchadnezzar. We read it before.
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He takes it under siege. He takes them captive. He burns the city. He destroys the wall.
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So God has taken the two entities. He has taken Judah, Israel, from his initial commands.
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Love the Lord your God. I am the Lord. Have none beside thee. The warnings of blessings and cursings and the warnings about keeping the
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Sabbath protected, the land protection, the punishment that goes on and the
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Shekinah glory which protects them. It cannot be overcome by man but man's sin ends up with the
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Shekinah glory leaving them now exposed to the Babylonians and he's taken the
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Assyrians and done what they could and then the Babylonians he protected them to Habakkuk and he's converged these two into one and the exile takes place.
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As we get into the book and I'm just going to do this part because next week I guess we're going to do an outline overview of the whole book but there are four kings that are of significance that we will see as we go into the book of Daniel.
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Nebuchadnezzar in the first four chapters is going to be there. They'll be captured.
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There'll be a test given to them. The first test will be
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I got some good food for you and some good instruction for you and Daniel and his friends say no, we will stay true to our
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God. Then you're going to have a dream. God's omniscience is revealed because Nebuchadnezzar wouldn't even tell his seers what the dream was.
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They had to tell him what the dream was and then interpret it. I think I was smart actually. And then there'll be another test and they are supposed to bow down and worship.
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All this is going on during Nebuchadnezzar but they don't and then there's the fiery furnace with his three friends and one like the son of man.
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Very good. Not Shadrach. Well that's their Babylonian names, their Calvian names.
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Anyway and then one like the son of man but their clothes aren't even singed and then we have another dream and this time the exhortation from Daniel is basically
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God tells you repent. One of the amazing things about Nebuchadnezzar is at the end of it he proclaims that Daniel's God is the
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God of all gods and the Lord of all lords. Well after him comes
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Darius or Belshazzar, I'm sorry, Belshazzar, meany, meany, techy person.
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He has this big feast to himself and a hand. This is kind of like the
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Adams family. The hand comes out and writes on the wall. Meany, meany, techy person. Can you imagine?
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Like we sit here and talk about that but imagine being there and having this hand come out of nowhere and you're like has anybody else seen this?
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You know what I mean? Like it would be freaky AF. So as freaky as it's got to be and he's given the words of it by Daniel, he never repents.
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He dies and so now we get Darius the Mede because what ends up happening is
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Belshazzar is killed in the attack by the Medo -Persia empire.
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So we have Darius and he has a test. Everybody's supposed to bow down and worship his god and doesn't and so Daniel's thrown in the lion's den.
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To bow down and pray to him. Yeah I think that's the one. He doesn't. He gets thrown in the lion's den and in the morning
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King Darius wakes up and says oh Daniel, Daniel are you okay? And he says yes king
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I am. The lord has shut the lion's mouth. Darius professes god.
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Daniel's probably like don't wake up the lion. Yeah but you know that Darius professes god and he is not killed.
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Eventually we see Cyrus in there. He's in chapter 10 because the second half now we see the prophetic visions of what's what's going to happen.
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The sovereignty of god is what this is all about. In the beginning we have 70 years.
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We have 70 weeks of sabbath that we're not taking care of. We have horrible sin.
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The shekinah glory leaves. We have the siege. We now have exile for 70 years and at the end of it is a prophecy for 70 weeks and we know that those 70 weeks are each seven sevens of years and we're going to get from the time the decree to rebuild the temple there will be 62 weeks of years until messiah is cut off and then there will be a gap because Daniel does not see outside of the
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Jewish history. We are in the time of the gentiles right now but that's why we strongly believe that the time of the tribulation is a
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Jewish time again. We don't believe that the Jews are out of it.
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This is not a church age. The tribulation is a Jewish time which which is why my brother strongly believes in pre -trib.
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Okay anyway we will have a 70 week prophecy. Why can we believe in a 70 weeks prophecy?
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Because the sovereignty of god, we believe in the sovereignty of god because we see it proven over and over and over again in those first six chapters.
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So the second six chapters, if I believe the sovereignty of god here, I got to believe in the sovereignty of god here.
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What he says will happen will happen. That is a big level overview.
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Next week we are going to take the details. Do we need to do that or not? I think we can dive in next week.
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And you can start the first part. Are you still going to finish that next week? I'll finish this.
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Yeah why don't you finish and then because that way it'll just be all yours and then next week I'll take it. You've got it. So what
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I'll do is is I'll take the beginning section with the first seven verses of uh of Daniel.
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We'll dive in. And then you can next week take the prophecy. Yeah great job John. Thank you. Go for it.
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Let's pray. So father we have seen just a glimpse of your sovereignty and we see how you turn the hearts of a king like a water course.
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Lord you have you are the god over not just Israel but Assyria and Babylon and every nation.
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You you hold the world in your hands. You are sovereign overall and everything that happens is according to your decree because you are king.
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And so lord help us to see these things in scripture and as we dive into the book of Daniel beginning next week opening the text.
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Lord we pray that you would quicken our hearts to have greater faith, greater trust in your plan and that we would know your ways and live accordingly in Jesus name.
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Amen. Thank you John. Our brother put in quite a bit of work for this one.