Daniel 19: Daniel's Second Vision, Pt. 1
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Dan 8:1-4, 15-20
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, and welcome to family worship with the church body of Eastern Hills. Whether you are here in the room, or online, thanks for being part of our celebration of Jesus today.
If you are visiting with us for the first time today, thanks for choosing to worship with Eastern Hills! We would like to be able to thank you for your visit and to pray for you, so if you wouldn’t mind, please take a moment during the sermon to fill out a visitor card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. If you’re online, you can let us know about your visit by filling out the communication form at the bottom of our “I’m new“ page. If you’re here in the room today, you can get that card back to us in one of two ways: you can put it in the boxes by the doors at the close of service, or I would love the opportunity to meet you personally, so after service, you can bring that card to me directly, and I have a gift to give you to thank you for your visit today.
Last Wednesday, I got to hang out at Prime Time with our student ministry, and it was such a joy! We have an incredible group of students, and along with that, a great group of adults who serve in our student ministry to be a blessing to our youth. Thank you to those who volunteer to be engaged in the lives of students through our student ministry. I know that Trevor appreciates you all as well.
Opening
Opening
We took a couple of weeks off of our ongoing verse-by-verse series through the book of Daniel, celebrating all that God did at Vacation Bible School (VBS) the first full of June, and then Father’s Day last weekend. From here, Lord willing, we will go straight through the last five chapters of the book, finishing on Labor Day weekend.
We took that two week break right after finishing Daniel’s first apocalyptic vision in chapter 7. For chapter 8—his second apocalyptic vision— we will be approaching it a little bit differently. Rather than going through it truly verse-by-verse as we did there, here in chapter 8, we will look at parts of the vision, then to the interpretation that Daniel is given in the latter part of the chapter that matches the part we’ve considered.
So let’s dive in! Please stand in honor of the Word of God, and turn in your Bibles or your Bible apps to Daniel chapter 8, as we read verses 1-4, and then 15-20 of that chapter:
In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after the one that had appeared to me earlier. I saw the vision, and as I watched, I was in the fortress city of Susa, in the province of Elam. I saw in the vision that I was beside the Ulai Canal. I looked up, and there was a ram standing beside the canal. He had two horns. The two horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer one came up last. I saw the ram charging to the west, the north, and the south. No animal could stand against him, and there was no rescue from his power. He did whatever he wanted and became great.
While I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there stood before me someone who appeared to be a man. I heard a human voice calling from the middle of the Ulai: “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.”
So he approached where I was standing; when he came near, I was terrified and fell facedown. “Son of man,” he said to me, “understand that the vision refers to the time of the end.” While he was speaking to me, I fell into a deep sleep, with my face to the ground. Then he touched me, made me stand up, and said, “I am here to tell you what will happen at the conclusion of the time of wrath, because it refers to the appointed time of the end. The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia.
PRAYER (Ruidoso and surrounding area)
Let me open with a statement that is going to sound a little harsh, and it’s a general statement, but I believe that it’s true:
We tend to be self-centered when we read the Bible.
I know that I do. Think about it:
We read the account of creation in Genesis, and we don’t see ourselves usually as Adam or Eve, and certainly not the serpent, but as almost in the place of God, looking down on our forebears and shaking our heads in disappointment for their foolish submission to the serpent’s temptation.
We read the account of Moses and the giving of the Law, and Israel’s rebellion with the golden calf, and we don’t normally see ourselves as Aaron or the idolaters, but as Moses throwing down the tablets, grinding up the calf, and making the people drink it in our frustration.
We read the account of David and Goliath, and we usually see ourselves as David, stepping bravely onto the battlefield against a literal giant armed with only a sling, five smooth stones, and the Spirit of the Living God. We don’t see ourselves as King Saul, or the cowering Israelites, or even worse, the rebellious Philistines.
See? We usually view ourselves as the heroes in the narrative parts of the Bible. Same thing in Daniel: we aren’t Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar or Darius or the Chaldeans and wise men, but Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But who really is the hero of the book of Daniel? God is.
When we get to the latter part of Daniel, and really any other biblical apocalyptic literature and specifically prophecy, we tend to look at them in a self-centered way as well. We want to understand, we want to know what it means, we want to get it, map it out, understand all the nuances, and more importantly even, we want to know what it means FOR US. How will this prophecy affect my life, existence, and future?
Now, that’s not wrong, and in fact, doing so is good and useful. God gives us prophecy so that we might understand what He’s doing, reveal to us His glory when we see how far ahead He predicted things that later came to happen. But it’s so easy to get lost in interpretation of these things that we miss the most important aspect of biblical apocalyptic writing: it isn’t first and foremost about us. It’s first and foremost about God.
And what I want us to grab a hold of today as we study the first part of Daniel’s second vision is about God’s greatness: that He sees the future, knows the future, and ultimately controls the future.
1: God sees the future.
1: God sees the future.
This vision is not the first time, nor the second time, nor even the third time that God has revealed the future either directly to Daniel or through a vision given to someone else that Daniel had to interpret for them. In fact, if we take the book in chronological order, it is the fourth time. He gave the statue vision to Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 2, the tree vision in chapter 4, and Daniel’s first prophetic vision in chapter 7. This second vision comes between chapter 7 and the writing on the wall of chapter 5:
1 In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after the one that had appeared to me earlier. 2 I saw the vision, and as I watched, I was in the fortress city of Susa, in the province of Elam. I saw in the vision that I was beside the Ulai Canal. 3 I looked up, and there was a ram standing beside the canal. He had two horns. The two horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer one came up last. 4 I saw the ram charging to the west, the north, and the south. No animal could stand against him, and there was no rescue from his power. He did whatever he wanted and became great.
One thing that we miss—because we’ve had to translate the entire Bible into English so that we can understand it—is an important linguistic fact that we mentioned back in chapter 2. Beginning in Daniel 2:4, the book of Daniel was written in Aramaic, which was kind of the “common” language of the time. I went into more detail about this in our fourth message of this series. The belief is that Daniel used Aramaic so that the testimony of chapters 2-7 would be read and understood by the most people possible.
But here, beginning with verse 1 of chapter 8, the writing goes back to being in Hebrew—the language of a fairly small group of captives and refugees. Daniel’s purpose is no longer that everyone understand, but that the people of God do. From this point forward, the message of Daniel is meant to reveal to God’s chosen people what God was going to do. By allowing Daniel to see what He sees, God is giving the nation of Israel a glimpse into her future.
Now, remember that Belshazzar ascended to the throne of Babylon as co-regent with his father Nabonidus in around 553 BC. The writing on the wall in chapter 5 took place on essentially the last day of Belshazzar’s reign (and the existence of Babylon as an empire) on October 12, 539 BC. So the vision of chapter 8 took place in either 551 or 550 BC, about 11 years earlier, in the third year of Belshazzar’s reign.
Because of our limited understanding of ancient Near East geography, we kind of zip past verse 2, because it’s talking about places we don’t understand. But understanding verse 2 helps us understand the whole vision. We know where Daniel lived: in the capital city of Babylon, some 500 miles east of Jerusalem, in the nation of Iraq today. So when he had this vision, he said that he was “in the fortress city of Susa, in the province of Elam…beside the Ulai Canal.” He wasn’t there physically, but he was transported there in the Spirit as a part of the vision. But where was Susa? It was over 200 miles east of Babylon, in what is modern day Iran. I have a map so you can see how these things relate:
MAP
But the distance isn’t what’s important. It’s the fact that Susa was the capital of the Persian province of Elam. Later, Susa would become one of the Medo-Persian royal cities, where Cyrus and subsequent kings would spend some of their time. In fact, Darius I (not the same Darius as chapter 6) declared Susa to be the administrative capital of the empire in 521 BC and built his primary palace there. Susa is where Mordecai lived with his adopted daughter who would become the queen of Xerxes I, Esther (Esther 2:5). Susa is also where Nehemiah served King Artaxerxes (the son of Xerxes I) as cupbearer according to Nehemiah 1:1.
The setting of the vision helps us to understand what the vision is talking about, because verse 3 tells us that this ram was standing by the Ulai canal. And this ram had two horns, one of which came up last, but was longer than the other.
Recall that animals generally stand for nations, and horns typically signify power or strength in apocalyptic writings, and so this ram is a nation made of two powerful parts, although the second part was more powerful than the first, and this animal is standing by the Ulai canal. The ram charges to the west, the north, and south, and no other animal could stand against him. No one could be rescued from his power, and he became great. This will all be explained to Daniel, and to us, in a moment.
But what we want to take from this first part of the vision this morning is that God sees the future—He looks out over the landscape of time and sees every aspect of what is going to happen—and he’s allowing Daniel to see it as well. God did the same thing with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and so on and so on. Granted, Daniel is seeing the future in a way that he doesn’t fully understand, but that will be rectified.
Think for a second about the fact that God can see the future: He can never be surprised. He can never be worried. He can never be uncertain about what is going to happen, because He’s seen it already. There’s one passage about God’s foresight that makes me chuckle:
12 The wicked person schemes against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him. 13 The Lord laughs at him because he sees that his day is coming.
And just to be clear, it’s not just the future that God sees. He of course sees everything: past, present, and future. So we can FOLLOW Him, because He has seen it all: what has been, what is, and what will be. And Jesus said that He allows those who follow Him to see, because He is the light of the world:
12 Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”
Now, we see a lot of things. God sees every event of every moment of all of history. Think about how many things you’ve seen in your limited sight that you just don’t remember anymore. Not only does God see the future, but God remembers, God knows the future.
2: God knows the future.
2: God knows the future.
So not only does God’s ability to know things mean that He remembers, but to see something is merely to perceive it, but not necessarily to understand it. I can look to the east and see the Sandia mountains, however, I don’t know them. I’ve spent very little time actually in the Sandias, certainly less than a lot of you who are more outdoorsy than I am. Some of you might say that you “know” the Sandias, but even that knowledge is limited. When God knows something, He knows it completely and totally. In our focal passage this morning, He knew the meaning of Daniel’s vision so thoroughly that He could impart that knowledge to someone else, who He then commanded to impart it to Daniel:
15 While I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there stood before me someone who appeared to be a man. 16 I heard a human voice calling from the middle of the Ulai: “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.”
You have to give Daniel credit. He was trying to understand the vision, but He simply had no ability to do so without interpretation from the Lord. We have the benefit of historical hindsight to help us. He didn’t have a chance on his own, because this vision was of the future. And so this one who appeared to be a man, literally a “mighty one,” arrives on the scene there on the banks of the Ulai canal. And a voice apparently from somewhere over the canal gives this mighty one a name and commands him to act. His name is revealed to be Gabriel.
The book of Daniel is the only Old Testament book in which angels are named. There are two of them named in Daniel: Gabriel and Michael. We’ll meet Michael in chapter 10. But Gabriel is likely familiar to almost all of us. In Luke 1, we see that this is the same angel who spoke to Zechariah the priest to announce the coming of his son, John the Baptist, and the same angel who spoke to Mary to tell her that she would bear the Messiah. Announcing important things seems to be part of his job—a job he will do again in chapter 9.
And the first piece of knowledge that Gabriel would give to Daniel was the meaning of the ram (we’ll cover 17-19 momentarily). The ram’s identity was given in verse 20:
20 The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia.
Because of the study that we’ve done so far in Daniel, we know that the Medo-Persian empire is who ultimately defeated Babylon, so this comes as no surprise that they are mentioned here. However, it is entirely possible that when this prophecy was given, the Medes and the Persians hadn’t come together under Cyrus the Great yet. Notice that the ram represents the “kings of Media and Persia.” Kings plural of nations plural. However, the ram represents one nation, and it has two horns of strength, with the second one being stronger than the first. We’ve already seen an image of an animal (or a beast) that would represent the Medo-Persians, and it too had one aspect that was larger than the other, back in Daniel 7:5.
Remember that this vision is being given to Daniel in either 551 or 550 BC. Well, 550 BC is the same year that Cyrus II (the Great) consolidated the empires of Media and Persia under a single banner. Interestingly enough, in 550 Media was fairly large, and was in its own right a force to be reckoned with. Persia was actually a vassal state to Media, and was comparatively tiny, occupying less than 50,000 square miles of territory (for scale, that’s about the size of the State of Mississippi…Persia would have fit into New Mexico twice with room to spare). But when Cyrus II of Persia defeated the Mede army at Ecbatana, the close relatives decided to simply combine, and he became king of both, but he game priority to Persia.
At the time of Cyrus unified Medo-Persia, Media already controlled most of the territory east of Iran to India, or at least to the mountains of modern Pakistan. This explains why the ram charged to the west, north, and south (verse 4). They were the only directions they could really go, and the only known neighbors to be any threat to them.
I know that I’m kind of geeking out on history here, but stay with me. Here’s why it’s important, and what it tells us about God: If the Medo-Persian empire as it would become hadn’t unified under Cyrus the Great yet with this vision was given, think about how specific this vision was about things that could not possibly be known by anyone other than God! He spiritual transports Daniel to Susa, which wasn’t the capital yet, to see a ram representing a nation that hadn’t formed yet, that did exactly what the Medo-Persian empire would do in the years to come, and then be told exactly who that empire was… It’s amazing!
And just like God allowed Daniel to see what He sees, He allowed Daniel to know what He knows.
It is totally clear that God doesn’t just see the future—He knows it all intimately. Totally. Completely. And since that is the case, we can know that He knows everything about us as well. We cannot fool Him. We cannot thwart Him. We cannot hide from Him, like He would say of the disobedient Hebrew people in Isaiah:
15 Woe to those who go to great lengths to hide their plans from the Lord. They do their works in the dark, and say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?” 16 You have turned things around, as if the potter were the same as the clay. How can what is made say about its maker, “He didn’t make me”? How can what is formed say about the one who formed it, “He doesn’t understand what he’s doing”?
God knows exactly what He’s doing. He gave this word to Isaiah right before He followed up by an incredible promise—a promise that He could make because He knows the future:
22 Therefore, the Lord who redeemed Abraham says this about the house of Jacob: Jacob will no longer be ashamed, and his face will no longer be pale. 23 For when he sees his children, the work of my hands within his nation, they will honor my name, they will honor the Holy One of Jacob and stand in awe of the God of Israel.
You see, because the Lord knows the future, He can make these kinds of promises because He knows that they will come to pass. This is exactly what Jesus did with His disciples as He headed toward His triumphal entry into Jerusalem: He made an incredible promise of what was about to happen, how it would turn out, and what would occur as a result:
18 “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death. 19 They will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked, flogged, and crucified, and on the third day he will be raised.”
Jesus knows the future, because He is God. He told His disciples what was coming, and they still didn’t really get it. But that didn’t stop Him from saying it, and more than that, knowing didn’t stop Him from following the path He had to take. This is because He knew that the only way to save us from sin, death, and hell was to take that path to the cross. Since He knows everything, He knew that we could never save ourselves, because in our sin we had turned our backs on the holiness of God, rejecting relationship with Him in our selfishness. And so we were separated from God, and we could never be made right again on our own. So Jesus took our place through His death on the cross, so that we could be justified before God if we believe in what He has done for us.
But He also said that He would be raised on the third day! He could only make this promise if He knew the future, because dead men cannot raise themselves to life at will. And that’s exactly what happened—Jesus died, was buried, and rose again, having defeated not just sin on our behalf, but death as well, and He promised that if we believe in Him for our salvation, then we will have eternal life with Him as well.
40 For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Since this is the case—that God knows the future—this calls us to a place of TRUST. If you’ve never believed the Gospel—never trusted in what Jesus has done for your salvation, never surrendered your life to Him in faith—then this morning, I believe that the Holy Spirit calls to you through His Word to trust in Jesus and be saved, turning from your sins and surrendering to Jesus as both your Savior and Lord. And that can happen right now, right where you are in your pew or online, through faith in Jesus.
We can have confidence in our salvation because God knows the future. Jesus said exactly what was going to happen, and it did. That’s because He not only sees the future so we can confidently follow Him, He not only knows the future so we can faithfully trust Him, but He is actually sovereign—He controls the future as well.
3: God controls the future.
3: God controls the future.
The last couple of verses for us to look at in our focal passage this morning cause some pretty decent disagreement between well-meaning, well-studied, well-informed scholars. This is because there is a phrase used in verses 17 and 19 that we tend to only view in one light: the “time of the end.” Check it out:
17 So he approached where I was standing; when he came near, I was terrified and fell facedown. “Son of man,” he said to me, “understand that the vision refers to the time of the end.” 18 While he was speaking to me, I fell into a deep sleep, with my face to the ground. Then he touched me, made me stand up, 19 and said, “I am here to tell you what will happen at the conclusion of the time of wrath, because it refers to the appointed time of the end.
Gabriel approached Daniel, and Daniel was terrified. Gabriel took a different tack in his appearances with Zechariah and Mary in the New Testament, saying very early on in the conversation, “Do not be afraid.” He must be an intimidating sight to behold. Understandably then, Daniel fell facedown before him in sheer panic, basically even passing out in verse 18.
Gabriel calls Daniel “son of man,” so I want to cover this very quickly. We saw this same set of English words in chapter 7, and there I said that they referred to Jesus:
13 I continued watching in the night visions, and suddenly one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him.
So why is Daniel being called the same thing as Jesus? Well, Ezekiel was called “son of man” over and over. There are a couple of differences between the Daniel 7 reference and the meaning of this in both Daniel 8 and Ezekiel. In Daniel 7, Jesus is called “one LIKE a son of man,” and He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom. Yes, Jesus is fully human, but He’s also fully divine. He is the exact expression of who God is, according to Hebrews 1:3. So He is a “son of man,” but He is also more than that. He’s the Son of God. Neither Daniel nor Ezekiel were given dominion, glory, and a kingdom. And where the Daniel 7 reference seems to connect Jesus to being the bridge between broken humanity and holy God, in Daniel 8 and Ezekiel the term “son of man” seems to focus on their weakness and mortality.
Gabriel twice explains to Daniel that the vision refers to the “time of the end,” and says that something will happen at the conclusion of the “time of wrath.” (19) Over the next couple of weeks, we will look more deeply at the rest of the vision, because this morning, we’ve really only scratched the surface of all that it is said in it. But for right now, I want us to focus on one additional word here: “appointed.” “…it refers to the appointed time of the end.” (19)
Who does this “appointing?” God does. He is in charge, sovereign, in control of all of history, and we can absolutely count on the fact that God is taking history to His desired ends, and nothing and no one can stop it:
39 See now that I alone am he; there is no God but me. I bring death and I give life; I wound and I heal. No one can rescue anyone from my power.
10 I declare the end from the beginning, and from long ago what is not yet done, saying: my plan will take place, and I will do all my will.
The “time of the end” that Gabriel mentions twice could mean the end of some “appointed” time that God has set, the end of a particular epoch in history, a certain time of wrath that comes to a close. This approach makes pretty good sense, given that this message and the chapters that follow it are all aimed at the Hebrew people, to explain to them what was coming in their future. Essentially, this would say that the time of the end of their punishment is coming, but first they would have to go through the time of wrath, because the time of the end follows after its conclusion.
This is likely how Daniel took it. Israel would be delivered, but not until after some seriously difficult things happened first, which we will see through the rest of the book, and in particular, the next two weeks.
However, many believe that this reference to the time of the end also points to the end of history as we know it, when God wraps up the heavens and the earth, and creates them anew, unblemished by the sins of mankind, which we see clearly in the New Testament:
13 But based on his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Jesus Himself promised that he would return with power and glory, and that His coming would prompt not celebration, but mourning from the people of the earth:
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not shed its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the peoples of the earth will mourn; and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
And this could be the case—that this vision speaks to both a near and a distant fulfillment. But either way, it reveals that God is in control of the future. He is in complete command of history and its ultimate direction. Since that is the case, we can be filled with HOPE, because we know that no matter how bad the world may seem to get, no matter how unjust or insane or unbelievably immoral it may become, God will make everything right, everything rational and just, everything good in the end.
Closing
Closing
Do we have that kind of hope? The hope that only flows from an understanding that God is in control? Are we at a place of trust, because we believe that God knows everything? And are we willing to follow because God sees all, and by His light, we can see as well? This is what I pray we take away from this first study of Daniel’s second vision.
And maybe this morning, Christian, you’re struggling a little with hope or trust or your willingness to follow Jesus. I pray that through the Word this morning, the Spirit has encouraged you to take that next step toward Him. Perhaps that’s to repent of some sin that you have hoped in more that Christ. Maybe it’s to turn away from some idol that you trust in more than our Lord. Or it could be that you’ve failed to be obedient in following Jesus, and now He’s calling you back to the straight and narrow way. You can pray and make that commitment there in your pew or online if that’s where you are. You can come and pray at the steps if you’d like, or even come and ask for prayer with one of us—Joe and Rich and Trevor will be here with me to pray with you if you’d like while the band plays a song of response.
Perhaps you’ve been resistant to entering the waters of baptism, where you declare your faith in Christ to the church and the world as we saw Fiona do at the beginning of the service, and now you’re ready to take that step. Come and let us know that as well so we can talk about it with you.
Or maybe this morning, you’ve heard and understood the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and you have believed that Jesus has died to cover your sin, that you need Him to save you, and that you’re surrendering your life in faith to Him. Would you come and tell us that? This church family would love to celebrate that with you! If you’re online, and that’s you, please let me know by email to bill@ehbc.org.
And if you’re already a believer and you think that Eastern Hills is a church family that you can be a part of as you walk in Christ, a family that can help you grow in your faith, a family that you can serve alongside. If that’s the case, and you’d like to talk about formal membership, please let us know that as well.
And finally, this time of response can be used to give your tithes and offerings as the Lord leads. You can do so through the app or the website, or using the boxes by the doors as we go out.
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (2 Sam 1-2, Pro 22:1-16)
Pastor’s Study tonight at 5:30 in Miller Hall
Prayer Meeting this Wednesday at 5:45 in Miller Hall
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
64 “You have said it,” Jesus told him. “But I tell you, in the future you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”