Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
I'd like to open us up with a word of prayer.
Anyone?
Any takers?
Who?
Mr. Smith, will you open us up with a word of prayer?
I will, last man in.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you've given us, this beautiful day that you've given, this first day of the week to come together as people of God, and we thank you that we can gather around your word.
Pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes to see things that would make us more like you. We pray that you'd be with our brother, Mike, as he is studied and prepared. Pray that you'd bless him as he brings forth your word.
Give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to receive.
We pray.
A couple of y 'all have asked me about my reference to Daniel being the author of 119 Psalm. So I would like to direct you to a person that was very influential to my understanding of that. His name is George Zimmick.
He did write a book on Psalm 119. It's exegetical, theological, homiletical reflections of Psalm 119. So if y 'all want to get it, he died last year in February. The book's still available on Amazon. It's only 448 pages.
So if y 'all would stay out of the trap of TikTok and get out of the black hole of YouTube, you could read it. So, all right, open your Bibles to Daniel chapter 2, and this is probably the most lengthy chapter in the book.
So we're going to read the whole chapter, and then we'll spend a couple of weeks in it. It says, now in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. His spirit was troubled.
His sleep left him, and the king gave orders to call all the magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dream. So they came, and they stood before the king, and the king said to them, I had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream.
And then the Chaldeans spoke to him in Aramaic. O king, live forever. Tell the dream to your servants, and we will declare you the interpretation. And the king replied to the Chaldeans that the command from me is firm.
If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb, and your houses will be turned into dung heap. But if you declare the dream and its interpretation, you will receive from me gifts and reward and great honor.
Therefore, declare to me the dream and its interpretation. They answered a second time and said, let the king tell the dream to his servants, and we will declare its interpretation. The king replied, I know for certain that you are bargaining for time, and as much as you have seen the command from me is firm, and that if you do not make the dream known to me, there is only one decree for you, for you have agreed together to speak lying, corrupt words before me until the situation is changed.
Therefore, tell me the dream that I may know that you can declare to me its interpretation. The Chaldeans answered to the king and said, there is no man on earth who can declare such a matter for the king, and as much as no great king or ruler has ever asked anything like this of any magician conjurer of the Chaldeans.
Moreover, the thing which the king demands is difficult, and there is no one else who could declare it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh. Because of this, the king became indignant.
He became very furious. He gave orders to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. So the decree went forth, and the wise men should be slain. They looked for Daniel and his friends to kill them, and Daniel replied in discretion and discernment to Ariok, the captain of the bodyguard of the king, and he had gone forth to slay all the wise men of Babylon, and he said to Ariok, the king's commander, for what reason is this decree from the king so urgent?
Then Ariok informed Daniel about the matter, so Daniel went and requested of the king that he would give him time in order that he might declare the interpretation to the king, and Daniel went to his house and informed his friends, Hananiah, Mishiah, and Azariah about the matter so that they might request compassion from the god of heaven concerning the mystery so that Daniel and his friends would not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision, and then Daniel blessed the god of heaven, and Daniel said, let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, and his wisdom and power belong to him.
It is he who changes the times and the epics. It is he who removes and establishes kings and kingdoms. He gives wisdom to the wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. It is he who reveals the profound and hidden things.
He knows what is in the darkness, and that light dwells with him. To you, oh God, my father, God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise to you, for you have given me wisdom and power, even now you have made known to me what we have requested of you, and that you have made known to us the king's matter.
Therefore Daniel went to Ariok, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon, and he went and he spoke to him as follows. Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon. Take me into the king's presence, and I will declare the interpretation to the king.
Then Ariok hurriedly brought Daniel to the king's presence and spoke to him. He said, I have found a man among all the exiles of Judah who can make the interpretation known to the king. King said to Daniel, whose name is Belteshazzar, are you able to make known to me this dream, which I have seen and its interpretation?
Daniel answered before the king and said, as for the mystery about which the king has inquired, neither wise men, conjurers, magicians, nor diviners are able to declare it to the king. However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known, the mysteries which he has made known to the king Nebuchadnezzar and what will take place in the latter days.
This was your dream and the visions in your mind while you were on your bed. And as for you, O king, while your bed and your thoughts were turned to what would take place in the future, and he reveals mysteries and has made known to you what will take place.
But as for me, this mystery has not been revealed to me for any wisdom residing in me more than any other living man, but for the purpose of making the interpretation known to the king that you may understand the thoughts of your mind.
You, O king, were looking and behold, there was a single great statue, that statue which was large and extraordinary in splendor was standing in front of you and its appearance was awesome. The head of the statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms were made of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
You continued looking until a stone was cut without hands and it struck the statue and its feet of iron and clay and it crushed him. And the iron and the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors and the wind carried it away so that there was no trace of them was found.
But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream. Now we will tell its interpretation before the king. You, O king, are the king of kings to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom and the power and the strength and the glory and whereas the sons of men dwell or the beast of the field or the birds of the sky and he has given them into your hands and has caused you to rule over them, you are the head of gold.
After you will arise another kingdom inferior to you than another kingdom of bronze which will rule over all the earth. Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron in so much as iron crushes and shatters all things so like it breaks into pieces and it will crush and break all these into pieces in that you saw the feet and the toes partly potter's clay and partly iron.
It will be a divided kingdom but it will have in it the toughness of iron in so much as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. As for the toes and the feet, partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay that they will combine with one another in the seat of, with the seat of men but they will not adhere to one another even as iron does not combine with pottery.
In those days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed and that kingdom will not be left for another people. It will crush and put away and to end to all of these kingdoms but itself will endure forever in so much as you saw the stone that was cut out of the mountain without hands that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, the gold and the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future.
So the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy. Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and he did homage to Daniel. He gave orders to present him offerings and fragrance of incense and the king offered, answered Daniel and he said, surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and is revealer of mysteries.
Since you have been able to reveal these mysteries, then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts and he made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and the chief prefect over all of the wise men of Babylon.
Then Daniel made a request of the king and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego over the administration of the province of Babylon while Daniel was in the king's court. Well, that was full of stuff and we're gonna take some time walking through this because what Nebuchadnezzar saw was basically world powers come and world powers go and as we walk through this, we're gonna talk about four major world superpowers.
That come about.
And they are crushed by this little itty bitty stone and what that little itty bitty stone stands for and who it is. So, before we get further into the text, there is a common discrepancy as I've brought up before about times.
Right here, you will say, it says, now the second year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. You go, well, wait a minute. Last week when we ended, they were three years in Babylon University, correct? So, like, what's the discrepancy?
Remember, sometimes if they go in in a half a year, that's considered the year, the full year they were in and however long they come out, that following year doesn't equal 36 months. Just means one part of that timeframe.
In this case, this would be in the second full year reign of Nebuchadnezzar and it says here that Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. Now, how often do we see people having dreams in scripture? Some? First dream.
Anybody wanna take a shot at it?
People falling chronologically, let's see.
Jacob.
I say Pharaoh's probably gonna be down here somewhere.
You talking about, like, anybody?
Anybody.
Like, Jacob.
First dream happened in Genesis 20. Abimelech. Anybody remember what happened to Abimelech?
He had Abraham's wife, right?
That's right. And God spoke.
That's important.
God spoke to a pagan through a dream.
Anybody remember what he told Abimelech?
He said, you better let that dude go,.
Let his wife go, and give him a bunch of money.
And tell him to get out of here.
Because you got another man's wife. And he said, well, hold on, I ain't touched her yet.
He goes, I know, and if you do, you're dead.
All right?
So, what would be the next one?
You said it.
Where'd he say it?
Jacob's Ladder.
Yep. What did it do?
They showed Jacob's Ladder, Mike.
What's wrong? That's what it did.
It showed him coming up and down.
Coming and going.
That wasn't the time he was wrestling God, did he?
No.
He saw Jacob's Ladder. He saw the angels coming and going up and down.
It was basically, it was saying, hey,.
There's a way that men can be, there's gonna be a way that can be made.
Between men and God. What happened after Jacob's Ladder?
What was the next one?
It's like Bible trivia, isn't it?
I know.
It was Jacob again.
Okay.
Jacob, we'll put it right here, he got one telling, go home.
Remember, he said, he took all the speckled,.
All the speckled and mottled and all the non-pure looking goats and sheep. Well, he, God said, don't worry about it.
You're gonna continue to, you're gonna do good.
You're gonna prosper.
I've seen what Laban's done to you, and now you can take your stuff and you need to go back home. That's why I say his sect division.
Basically tells him to go back home.
Then he has, then you have Laban's.
Dream.
Can you have, anybody remember what Laban got a dream for?
Leave Jacob alone, right?
Yeah. He, hey, Laban, he, remember,.
When Jacob leaves, he takes all his kids.
And his items.
He takes, well, not yet. He takes, first of all, he takes all of his kids,.
All of his grandkids,.
And he took his best worker of all, who was who?
Jacob Kessel.
14 years he worked for him.
All right? Laban, she takes his idol, he peels out, he's gonna chase Jacob down and grab him, basically.
Grab him back.
God gives him a dream, and what did God tell him?
He said, you don't say nothing bad or good.
You shut your mouth.
That's what God told him.
Well, not quite like shut your mouth.
He just said, hey, you don't say nothing to him. Bad or good.
Then, when's the next, after this, remember, who's next?
Didn't Jacob have a dream when he, what good mean he saw? Or was that just the Lord speaking to him?
That was part of just the Lord speaking to him.
Hey, we're talking about specific dreams, though.
I'm gonna make a distinction between dreams and visions, okay? Just because God spoke to somebody in a vision,.
That's not a dream.
And the Bible makes a distinction. There's two words, the Hebrew word for dream is kalam, and the Hebrew word for vision is kazam.
Yeah, kazam.
So there's a difference in how, and even in Daniel, we'll get to that in a minute, there's a difference between a dream and a vision. So, after Laban, what would be our next major person.
Had a dream?
Joseph.
Joseph, yeah. What was Joseph's?
The following.
The first one, the first one, go ahead.
Yeah, he was.
Yes, there's a lot of similarities between Joseph and Daniel.
Joseph had a dream of his grains.
Bowing down to his grain, basically. Now, we would say that we didn't see anywhere in Joseph's life that he,.
Don't say he was a sinner,.
I'm saying where he sinned.
We don't see that.
But what we're gonna see with Daniel is Daniel, not only would he see with Daniel in his life, we don't see wherever he sinned,.
Although he was a sinner.
I want you to understand what I'm saying, which is as a man of character,.
Not only did Daniel, he was only a man above reproach, he was good in discernment. I would say the only failure we see with Joseph, Joseph didn't have, around the same age, he didn't have nearly the discernment that Daniel had.
Why?
Because what did he tell his brothers? Yeah, because he had another dream.
What was the other dream? Remember what he had after that?
The stars.
The stars were bouncing.
Yeah, you had, so you had the one about the grain, then you had the moon.
Parents.
Yeah, moon, sun, stars.
And then he decides he's gonna tell them that, and that makes him on the outs. They sell him into slavery, right? When's the next dream come along?
The other two, the chef and the kitchen help.
Yeah, you have the cupbearer.
The cupbearer, yeah.
Cupbearer.
And the baker.
Who does God give the dream to, though? To the cupbearer and to the baker. What does Joseph have to do?
He interprets it.
Right.
What about after this?
This is all to show you that dreams.
Aren't that often in the Bible.
Just let me know.
It was the Egyptian pharaoh.
The pharaoh, huh?
It was the pharaoh.
Yeah, so this guy gets elevated, right? Remember, the cupbearer gets up, this guy gets his head whacked off. Two years later, Pharaoh has had a dream, and he's like, I need somebody to come tell me what it is.
He actually had two dreams.
Remember, he had one about, Pharaoh has a dream. This is the one you were thinking of, right, Mike?
Okay, well, do you remember what his dreams were? Do you remember, there were two?
Correct.
Cows, grain.
That didn't come to Joseph either, did it?
It came to someone else, and he interpreted it, right? So we see Joseph having a dream and interpreting it, and we see people having dreams.
And Joseph, then, interpreting it.
So we know that Joseph had a line of understanding dreams, and what would that have given to anybody? God, do you remember exactly what he tells him?
Hey, I don't even have,.
He says the same thing Daniel says when he stands, look, I don't have nothing special about me. I'm giving you only what God has revealed to me. He's like, I'm not special.
So, anybody remember what happens after,.
Who gets a dream after this?
This is an odd one.
If anybody gets this,.
I'm gonna have to buy them a steak dinner.
So loud.
Because this is one here that most people don't even have a clue, because it comes in a weird book, Judges.
Judges seven, you remember what happened in Judges seven? Come on, we were in that four years ago.
Was it Gideon?
Sir?
Gideon. He's already laid out the fleece, showed his unbelief a couple of times, okay? He gets insured that he's gonna get the battle, he goes into the Midian camp. Well, he walks up on some of his buddies.
And he's talking about a dream he had,.
And his buddy's saying,.
Yeah, man, I had a dream about this barley loaf come walking into a tent, and it leveled the tent and everything around it,.
And this guy says, oh yeah, that barley loaf was Gideon.
He's gonna kill everybody in the camp.
It's like two sentences.
That was the next dream, right?
And what about after that?
Or have I made my point that dreams are not, okay?
Pretty significant.
Hey, understand though, every one of these dreams,.
Even when we get to Nebuchadnezzar's, okay?
When we get to Nebuchadnezzar's three dreams, and actually the next ones were the three dreams.
Of the two of Nebuchadnezzar,.
Then you go on, and after you get out of that, you get into. There's only five in the New Testament.
Five, six maybe.
21 total in the Bible.
So dreams aren't that,.
Aren't really as common as we think that they are. Visions happened a lot. You have Zechariah and all that. Hey, every time these guys had a dream,.
You know what it was for?
It wound up showing that God was gonna prosper or either protect or both his servant. This one was gonna protect and prosper his servant Abraham. He was gonna protect and prosper Jacob through these here.
He was gonna protect and prosper Joseph through here and through this one. This here, he was gonna protect and prosper Gideon, even in Gideon's unbelief, God still, after laying out the fleece three times, hey, if y 'all think that he's laying out that fleece that was a sign of him just wanting to protest God.
God had already told Gideon, you're gonna win.
You're gonna win.
He said, I don't know, let me just check it out. Can I just lay this out? That's unbelief. That's unbelief. So it was to show that he was going to either prosper,.
Protect or both.
So now when you get to Daniel, Daniel gets the same thing. This is gonna not only protect, but it's going to prosper Daniel to second in the kingdom. So dreams aren't that often, are they?
Are they?
No, they're not. They're not that often at all. Visions happened a lot more common in the sense of through redemptive revelation. So it says that Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. His spirit troubled and his sleep left him.
Why would his sleep have left him? He didn't know what it was. In ancient times, dreams meant a lot, okay? They had conjurers, and these people didn't interpret these dreams so that they could try to figure it out.
Now, there's no doubt in my mind that the Magician and Dreamers Guild had a book of some kind of understanding dreams. And you know, trees meant this, and cattle meant this, but that was not always the case.
But because those conjurers and all had basically a rule of interpreting, they were always pretty consistent. Well, in this case, Nebuchadnezzar's like, hey, man, I had some dreams. And he's troubled.
Anybody, y 'all have dreams that are troubling? What usually makes us have dreams?
Pizza.
Okay, pizza. Or something you read or something you see. And I used to read Western, but some of y 'all know me if I've said this before. I used to read Western books, Louis L 'Amour, stuff like that.
And I would be reading through, I was reading through Exodus. And I had a dream that Moses was riding on a horse across the land with a shotgun. And I said, I'm done reading the Louis L 'Amour books. You know, you had Moses, just like, yeah, I'm not gonna be reading any more Louis L 'Amour and studying Exodus.
So we have dreams based on a lot of things that take place in our life. Should we interpret those dreams as revelation from God? No, that would be stupid. But that's not how these pagans saw it, okay?
Now, there was times that God did give these revelations to these men and that they understood it. Like in Abimelech's case, there was no doubt who gave him that. God said, you gonna touch my man's wife, I'm gonna strike you dead.
There was no doubt. In this case, he doesn't know. He just had a dream. He doesn't understand it. And he's wigging out. Verse two says, the king gave orders to call all the magicians, all the conjurers, the sorcerers.
And this would be, does anybody say snake charmers in there? The word conjurer actually means snake charmer. But I don't know if any translation said that. The magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers.
Now, those are all three separate groups, but they're all included in the wise men. You understand what I'm saying? They would all be included in the wise men. So when Daniel gets elevated to his position over all of the wise men, he would have been over all of these weirdos.
He'd have been all these weirdos. So, he gathers them, the Chaldeans, to tell the king his dream so that they could, came and they stood before the king, and the king said, I had a dream and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream.
And we know he's anxious to understand it because he had lost sleep over it. It says then in verse four, that the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever. Verse four, starting right here, through the end of seven, is all in Aramaic from here on out.
I don't know if any, does anybody have a caption in their Bible that says that? Does it, what translation you got?
The new king James.
Anybody else? Yours says it might. There's a little note. Yeah, it's in Aramaic from here.
Syriac.
Yeah, okay. So, and the reason being, my understanding is why does this go to Aramaic from here to the end of seven is this is a proclamation to the nations. Okay? This is a proclamation of God to the nations.
And he's, and back then, the common language was Aramaic. It was not Greek. It wasn't Hebrew. It was Aramaic. That was the, just like when you get to the New Testament, the trade language to speak all over was Koine Greek.
And we're gonna get into how that came about and all that. Probably won't do it today, but we'll get into that at some point. And then they give the typical, we're gonna schmooze the king to get him to like us better.
Oh, king, live forever. Tell the dreams of your servants and we will declare the interpretation. The king replied to the Chaldeans. The command from me is firm. If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, I will tear you from limb to limb and put your houses into dung heaps.
But if you declare the dream and its interpretation, you will receive gifts and rewards and honor and therefore declare it to me, the dream and its interpretation. Now, there are some that believe at this point that Nebuchadnezzar has forgot the dream, but he doesn't remember it.
And he needs, it made him lose sleep, but he can't remember it. So he's wanting them to not only tell him what was the dream that I was having that was making me lose sleep and its interpretation. That's not how I understand this.
Because when he goes on down, he tells them why I want you to tell me the dream. He says, I want you to tell me the dream because I know you're all a bag of lies anyway. He said, and I want you to tell me the dream and its interpretation, because then I know that you ain't lying to me.
So you understand there's reward and punishment to this guilt. What's the reward? Yeah, I mean, gifts from the king, great reward and great honor. That reward is absolutely irrelevant, isn't it? Nobody knows the dream, but the punishment is real relevant because it comes on everybody because nobody knows the dream.
He says, they answered him the second time, let the king tell the dream to his servants and we will declare the interpretation to you. Verse eight, the king replied, I know you're bargaining for time.
Interesting. They've asked him again. You don't get it, king. You know how this works. You tell us what you dreamt and then we make up something good for you. That's basically what they're saying. And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
No, you're gonna have to tell me what the dream is. He basically says, do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? I'm telling you, tell me the dream and its interpretation or I'm gonna make you drawn and quartered.
Understand that drawn and quartered, being chopped in pieces was a relatively good thing to do to dissidents in kingdoms like that. I mean, we think of people being drawn and quartered in the Middle Ages time.
That didn't start then. They drawn and quartered people alive just because they didn't do what the king told them to do. He says here, the king replied, I know you're for certain that now you're bargaining for time insomuch as you have seen that the command from me is firm.
What is he saying there? That's exactly right. Look, this man, he's the man. There is no laws of the Medes and the Persians that can change what he's saying. He's saying, look here, what I'm saying is it.
This is my final answer. There is no going back. You're gonna have to tell me what the dream was and its interpretation or every last one of you are gonna be slain. He says, and if you know in verse nine that if you do not make known to me the dream, make it known to me, there is only one decree for you for you have all agreed together to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the situation has changed.
Therefore, tell me the dream that I may know that you can declare its interpretation. That's why I believe right there that he knows the dream, but he wants these hucksters to tell him. Look, he knows they're false teachers, okay?
He knows all they do is blow smoke up his robe to make him feel good. In this case, he's like, I need the truth. I need to know what's going on. And he's in verse 10, it says, and then the Chaldeans answered the king and said, there is not a man on earth who can declare the matter for the king in so much as no great king or ruler ever has asked anything like this and any magician or conjurer Chaldean.
Hey, look, they're saying, look, what you're even asking is completely out of bounds of what we're supposed to as conjurers and magicians. You know how this works. We're going to tell you again, you tell us the dream, we're going to make something up good for you.
What he says there, there's no man on earth that can do this.
And even Daniel's going to say that. Daniel doubles down. He says, well, we'll get there. He says in verse 11, moreover, the thing which the king demands is difficult. There's no one else who could declare it except to this, to the king, except the gods whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh.
Now we'll say right here, here's where the hucksters actually say some truth. They understand that what they're asked, what he's asking, nobody on the planet could answer because there's nobody that can get into the mind of Nebuchadnezzar except the god.
In their case, they're saying the gods, which there is a recognition here that there is a higher power that's controlling all of this. And it says whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh. Is that true?
Yeah.
God does not dwell with mortal flesh. He is, from the standpoint of the pagans, gods were not transcendent. They were far away, disconnected from men, did not dwell with men and would not come dwell with men.
And even you look at pagan religions, that is why most of them, when you bring up Christianity, it's hard for them to understand that God came as the second person of the Trinity and became flesh and dwelt among his people.
They're deists.
Yeah, well, that too. And they wind up making them demigods and all kinds of other nonsense because God's not transcendent to them. God would never, hey, Islam? That's why they reject Jesus as even being the second person of the Trinity, the son of God.
There's no way that Allah would lower his standard and come down and be a man. That is the, look, I have debated them. I debated them standing in Speaker's Corner and outside Hyde Park, which is nothing but a Muslim community in London.
And that is, there is no way that God would do that. But we're saying God can do that if he so chooses. But their understanding of God is, hey, God does not dwell with men. Verse 12, because of this, the king became very indignant, very furious, and he gave orders to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.
Why did he become angry? Just like any other tyrant who holds all the cards, he doesn't get what he wants, he's gonna throw a temper tantrum. And that's what he does. This ain't the first time he throws a temper tantrum.
This is the first time he does in the book, though. He said that he would give orders to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. So the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain. Remember, the wise men's all this group of people, which would include who?
Daniel and his three buddies. And they looked for Daniel and his friends to kill them. Verse 14, then Daniel replied with discretion and discernment to Ariok, the captain of the guard. So here it is, we see Daniel with discretion and discernment.
What did it say in the last chapter about Daniel? That he was wise and he was discerning and that he had great discretion. I mean, God had gifted this young man, teenage young man, had given him discernment.
So when he speaks to Nebuchadnezzar's secret service, he doesn't speak to him like, hold on, dude, you can't do this. That's not how he responds. Look how he responds. It says that the bodyguard had gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon.
He said to Ariok, the king's commander, for what reason is this decree from the king so urgent? He's like, hold on, what's going on? This is the first we've heard. We weren't called into his court to come hear this.
Now we're coming here to come take me and my buddy's life. What's, why is this so urgent? What is, what's the big deal? Well, Ariok's gonna tell us. Then Ariok informed Daniel of the matter. Understand, this is the first time that Daniel has ever heard of this, right here.
It says that he, Ariok informed Daniel about the matter, so Daniel went and he requested of the king that he would give him time in order that he might declare the interpretation to the king. Then Daniel went home to his house.
He informed his friends, Hananiah, Mishiah, and Azariah about the matter so that they might request compassion from the God of heaven concerning this mystery so that Daniel and his friends would not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
So, Ariok tells him what's going on. He's obviously had this crazy dream. He's very angry. Nobody can do anything about it, can't tell him. He says, and he's gonna kill everybody. You have a death warrant along with everybody else.
You're gonna be chopped into pieces and wherever you're living, that's gonna be turned into a dung heap. And he says, hold on, just give me a chance. Give me a chance. And it says, what does it say? It says Daniel actually approaches the king, doesn't it?
Daniel approaches the king and says, hold on. Can you just give me some time? Can you just give me some time? And then I will tell you the matter. So Daniel requested of the king and he would give him time.
That's exactly what happened. But what does Daniel do? Does Daniel say, all right, maybe I should just buy some time. Maybe he'll forget in a couple of days and we'll go on about our merry way.
No, no, no, no.
What does Daniel do? He goes and he gets with his friends and he says, and he talks about the matter and it says right here, so that they might request compassion from the God of heaven concerning these mysteries.
What does it mean to request to God?
Pray.
So what do we know about Daniel?
He's a praying man.
And I know I made a little conjecture last week that as Daniel was eating his weeds on the Mike Smith diet, that he was, oh Lord, please make these beans and grass make me fatter. Okay? There's no doubt in my mind, that's what he was praying.
As he was putting God to the test, then look, he offered up God's services last week. Did he not? Did he not? You may remember what happened? He didn't say, hey, let me pray to God and find out what he wants me to do about eating your food that's gonna seduce me into this lascivious lifestyle.
He just says, you know what? I don't want it. Basically, I'm gonna trust God. He's gonna make me fatter. In this case, he doesn't get the opportunity to offer God's services at his own accord. He's like, look, we're gonna have to petition God because that's our only way out.
We're all gonna die. And if we don't petition God and ask him for compassion, we're gonna die. Why do you think, does anybody have any idea why they would pray for compassion? In 1 Kings chapter eight, I was flipping through.
This has been some years ago. I was flipping through 1 Kings chapter eight and I was looking, because there's a passage at Solomon dedicating the temple where he says, I was actually arguing with a dispensationalist about how they said that God still has to go back and give them all the promises that he promised to Abraham and Moses and all that.
And I was flipping through that passage to get to verse 56 to show them. But as I was scanning through it, I came across another passage. It's in chapter eight, verse 46. And it says, when they take off, when this is Solomon dedicating the temple, he says, and when my people disobey you and you punish them and you haul them off into another land or the land of Babylon and you make them eunuchs and you enslave them and they have the opportunity, have them pray for compassion from the king of Babylon.
That was Solomon's prayer. And if anybody wants to know the verse that all the promises were fulfilled at the time of Moses for argument with a dispensationalist, that's chapter eight, verse 56. Okay, just so anybody wants to know.
All of Abraham's promises were fulfilled in Moses. So Daniel's gonna pray to his friends or pray with his friends and seek and request compassion from God that this mystery be given to him. And we're gonna have to stop there.
We only got a couple of minutes. I wanna see if there's any questions, reflections, disagreements.
Anyone? No? Yeah.
It is interesting that he wouldn't give.
Well, if you remember earlier in the book, it says that he had favor with the court. He had favor with the court. He had favor with the court.
And he really spared everybody.
Yeah, and when I first got saved, I had a allergic reaction for false teachers. I mean, like when I say I was like on Luther's side, I still think we should burn them at the stake. I know that's sinful.
I'm being honest. I could not stand the Benny Hens, the Creflo Dollars, all of that. I saw them sheep as wolves in sheep's clothing and they were misleading so many people astray. And I mean, I got sternly rebuked by another pastor.
I was like, I think they should still be burned. I think they should be executed. And he was like, you wanna go back to the time of the Roman Empire where they got to choose when the Christians were wrong, when they were actually right?
And in this case, if I was Daniel, I'd probably let a few of them get whacked. I'm like, man, let's just get all lined up and then step out of the line. Hold on, I got it, you know? But Daniel doesn't do that.
Daniel doesn't do that. Daniel prays for compassion and he even prays for compassion on his enemies. You understand he's in a pagan land. Under what we know about what Daniel knew about the Old Testament, what should be done to pagan lands?
Destroyed.
What's that?
Scorched earth.
Yeah, they should be done away with. That was part of the reason when they came into the land under the conquest of Joshua, they were to wipe everybody out, that they would not stay and be a thorn or a stern or hornets to them that would lead them away into idolatry.
And what is Babylon actually trying to do to him and his three buddies? They're trying to lead them off and away from the true and living God. Remember, they renamed them, reeducated them, removed them from their homeland so that they would, what, react positively towards this Babylonian culture.
That's what they're wanting them to do. Well, now he has the opportunity to let a few of them get whacked before, and he doesn't. He wants compassion. He wants compassion not only just him and his buddies, but on all of them.
And I think that is very, very, yeah, it's hard to use Christ's life because Christ hasn't come, but this is how God would want them to act when it says, love your enemies, okay? Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
Those who wrongly mistreat you, pray that God would bless them, and that's what he's doing. Be careful how you say that.
Be careful.
But here's what, my thing is that warned the Jews that they were gonna end.
Yeah, he warned them for 490 years, he warned them.
Right, so he said it was going to happen anyway. So I would assume that Daniel knew, so everybody knew, so they had to submit to that.
Well, I would say Daniel and his three friends had an understanding of submit, and in Jeremiah 25, it talks about them going into the land and how they were gonna serve Nebuchadnezzar, but then he reiterates that in Jeremiah 27.
Jeremiah 27 actually, not only tells them how long it's gonna be, but how many kings are gonna go through that before it's time for them to come out. He tells them in chapter 27, he says, when you go into exile for these years, you're going to serve Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and his grandson.
So, they know the timeframe. And because we know that Daniel was a student of Jeremiah, what was he reading when he understands that it's over? He's reading that after Belshazzar has already been taken over, which who was Belshazzar?
Just, I know we're getting a little ahead of the book, but remember who Belshazzar was? It was his grandson. Yeah, Nabonidus' son. Nabonidus was Nebuchadnezzar's son. So, he's going, oh, wow, I'm reading the prophet Jeremiah.
He's reading about the 70 years in captivity. Now he's going, oh, wow, not only was it 70 years of captivity, but he gives me a timeframe in which they should have an indication that it's over. It's when that king's grandson is gone.
And poof, Daniel's like, oh, they can go back. They can go back. And what does Daniel do in that passage? He prays. He prays. Did you have something you wanted to say?
Oh, no, I was just saying.
You got about 45 seconds.
I was just saying, it's interesting. It's interesting that these titles, like you look, like these were more than just neutral. Had, a lot of them had, like,.
You know, familiar spirit interaction.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, they weren't just, you know, neutral dream tellers. They were actually conjured with the spirits.
Oh, sure, they'd cut open the entrails and pull out intestines and all this stuff and go, oh, yeah, king, this dream means this. You know, yeah, they were, I wouldn't even say it's not said that specifically here, but I would say necromancers.
They would seance type stuff. Any of that stuff was not taboo to any of them. That was actually pretty common. So for Daniel to come in and to not use all of the standards by which all of the conjurers, magicians, snake charmers, whatever you're gonna call them to do, was certainly out of character for that guild.
Because you ask the last question, you get to pray.