Daniel 20: The Second Vision, Part 2

It’s always great to gather with our church family, and especially on the days that we take the Lord’s Supper together, which we will be doing near the end of service this morning. Eastern Hills is loving, friendly, supportive, and encouraging church body, and I pray that if you’re visiting with us today, you’ve already caught a glimpse of that fact. We invite you, if you are a guest with us today, to fill out a communication card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Then you can drop that in the offering boxes by the doors on your way out after service, or you can bring them down to me at the front following our benediction at the end, as I would love to meet you and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit with us today. If you’re online, and visiting with us today, feel free to head over to our website ehbc.org, and fill out the communication card on the “I’m New” page. Whether you’re here in the room or online, we just want to be able to send you a note thanking you for your visit today, and to see if we can pray for you or minister to you in some way.

I need to hand it to our AV ministry team, led by Richard Stump. They have had to make some serious adjustments and learn a lot of new things in the last few months, and it’s been a joy to work with Richard and some of the other guys as we’ve figured out what the new normals of our lights, sound, and streaming are. We’re still making tweaks and upgrades, but we’re making great progress. Thanks, AV ministry, for all you do!

Announcements

Throughout the month of July, we take up a special offering that goes toward both world hunger needs through the IMB’s Send Relief network, as well as disaster relief through the BCNM’s Disaster Relief team (serving right now in Ruidoso, for example). Our goal for this offering is $6,000. Please pray about what God might lead you to give for this special focus.

Opening

Last Sunday, we started our look at chapter 8 of the book of Daniel by considering the first part of Daniel’s second vision. We read the vision of the ram with two horns by the Ulai Canal in Susa, which was in Persia, and that the angel Gabriel informed Daniel that the ram represented the Medo-Persian empire, which possibly hadn’t been unified under Cyrus at the time the vision was given. And rather than just noticing the historical references and accuracy, we used that vision as a springboard for glorifying the Lord, because He sees the future, knows the future, and controls the future.

This morning, we will continue with the next aspects of this second vision: the goat that would come and face off against the ram. Remember that our approach to this vision is to read the visionary part, and then the interpretation as given by Gabriel to Daniel. So let’s open up our Bibles or Bible apps to Daniel 8, and we will read our focal passage: verses 5-8 and then verses 21-22. Let’s stand as we are able in honor of God’s Word:

Daniel 8:5–8 CSB

5 As I was observing, a male goat appeared, coming from the west across the surface of the entire earth without touching the ground. The goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. 6 He came toward the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and rushed at him with savage fury. 7 I saw him approaching the ram and, infuriated with him, he struck the ram, breaking his two horns, and the ram was not strong enough to stand against him. The goat threw him to the ground and trampled him, and there was no one to rescue the ram from his power. 8 Then the male goat acted even more arrogantly, but when he became powerful, the large horn was broken. Four conspicuous horns came up in its place, pointing toward the four winds of heaven.

Daniel 8:21–22 CSB

21 The shaggy goat represents the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes represents the first king. 22 The four horns that took the place of the broken horn represent four kingdoms. They will rise from that nation, but without its power.

PRAYER (Reagan, Ruidoso, Send Relief and BCNM Disaster Relief)

I’m kind of a plan guy. I don’t really like going into a situation completely blind, and when I do things, I like to plan out HOW I’m going to do them. Any other “planner” types here this morning? Confession time: sadly, I’m also somewhat of a procrastinator, so this is a frustrating combination of personality trait and personality flaw that has caused and continues to cause me a decent amount of stress. Fortunately, I also tend to be able to roll with things pretty quickly if plans don’t really go the way I meant for them to go (to be fair: I am not always good at this).

Sometimes my plans go great. Sometimes they don’t. I really like it when plans don’t go the way I intended, but then they go way better than I planned. I am not, however, a big fan of plans that don’t happen the way I’d like them to in a negative sense. I don’t like it when that tiny little piece of plastic that you need to hold the thing together breaks off. I don’t enjoy it when I cannot find the thing that was so important for the plan that I put it in a special place—so special, in fact, that I can no longer remember where it was. And (oddly enough for a procrastinator), I struggle with patience sometimes when waiting to see how a plan will unfold.

Proverbs 19:21 tells us:

Proverbs 19:21 CSB

21 Many plans are in a person’s heart, but the Lord’s decree will prevail.

Ultimately, I can trust God with how my plans will turn out. This isn’t to say that I shouldn’t plan. It’s just that my plans can’t see the big picture, so God might have a better path in mind. But I admit that this is hard to do when He doesn’t work in the way I expect or in the time I expect.

Remember that last week we saw something that we usually miss in our English translations of Scripture—The fact that in chapter 8, verse 1, the book of Daniel returns to the Hebrew language, after having been written in Aramaic for the last 6 chapters before it. This is normally footnoted in our Bibles, but we often don’t look at the footnotes especially with the rise of digital Bibles, and even if we did, we might not give any thought to what this particular fact means.

It demonstrates a shift in the focus of the message of the book. Chapters 8 through 12 were for the Jewish people in the midst of their captivity, which they found themselves in in Babylon due to their sin. In 550 BC when this vision was given, Daniel had lived and served in Babylon for about 55 years, and was likely around 70 years old. And it was then that God gave him this vision of what was coming in the future.

Daniel had received the vision of the triumph of the Son of Man, so he knew how everything would eventually turn out. So when he had this vision, maybe he hoped for something more specific, more time-based, more direct. But that’s not what he experienced. He found that God doesn’t always work the way that we expect. He doesn’t always work in the timing that we expect. But He is always at work.

1: God doesn’t always work in the way that we expect.

Given what we have seen in Daniel’s life throughout this study, Daniel saw God move in ways that defied expectations. The truth is that Daniel expected God to work in unexpected ways. However, when the Lord did work in those ways, generally the other people looking on were shocked and awe-stricken by what they saw: the chief eunuch back in chapter 1, all of the wise men of Babylon in chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar and his advisers in chapter 3, and finally the entire nation of Babylon through Nebuchadnezzar’s experience in chapter 4 (don’t forget that chapters 5 and 6 hadn’t happened yet when this vision was given).

And in our focal passage this morning, we see that Daniel had been given a vision that might not have been what he expected it to be.

Daniel 8:5–7 CSB

Let’s evaluate the vision very quickly. The ram had violently expanded its territory to the north, west, and south, but it was met by a male goat from the west that ran with such speed that it didn’t touch the ground. It had one horn that was “conspicuous,” meaning that it was easy to notice or “obvious,” and this goat was furious with the ram. So it attacked the ram, overpowered, broke his two horns, threw him to the ground, and trampled him.

Remember that in biblical apocalyptic literature that animals usually represent nations, which is true in this vision as well. Just as Gabriel informed Daniel of the identity of the ram, he also revealed the identity of the goat in verse 21:

Daniel 8:21 CSB

21 The shaggy goat represents the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes represents the first king.

You might recall that last week, I geeked out a little bit on the history, but for a very good point: God revealed that the unified Medes and Persians would defeat Babylon more than a decade before it happened—He allowed Daniel to know what He knew. And He wasn’t done yet. We were impressed by a clear revelation of something that would happen 11 years in the future. How about this? The Medo-Persians would defeat Babylon in 539 BC. The goat, representing Greece, would not come to dominate the Persians for over 200 years after the fall of Babylon!

Greece existed at the time of Medo-Persian dominance, but it was a fairly loose collection of city-states on the Grecian peninsula and islands in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. It was invaded multiple times by Persia, even losing Athens in 480 BC. It wasn’t a world power. But that was before its “first king,” the “conspicuous horn” between the eyes of the goat. “First” can mean first in number, or “foremost” of the kings of Greece—the one who put Greece on the world power map. And who was the greatest of Greek kings? Alexander the Great. He wasn’t born until 356 BC, and didn’t come to power until 336 BC, when he was only 20.

But remember how the goat came from the west across the earth without its feet touching the ground, an indicator of its speed? Under Alexander, the Greeks conquered Persia in just FIVE years, finishing them off at the battle of Guagamela in 331 BC. By the time Alexander was 30—just TEN years after he came to power—the Greeks had conquered the known world. Talk about fast!

So how does this history work with our first point: that God doesn’t always work in the way we expect? I will confess that I am making a bit of an educated guess here about whether or not this point fits the passage, but I have two reasons why I believe this is at least a responsible guess: First, there’s one indicator in Daniel chapter 8 that leads me to believe that this inference is not coming out of left field. After this vision is finished, verse 27 says:

Daniel 8:27 CSB

27 I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was greatly disturbed by the vision and could not understand it.

The vision overwhelmed Daniel and made him sick. There’s no way that he took this as a happy prediction. He heard that the vision refers to the time of the end, and would be concluded after the time of wrath (last week: verses 17-19). It wasn’t coming soon, and there would be a difficult road to travel on the way.

My second reason comes from our experience of human nature. Let me give you an example:

In November of every leap year, what happens in the United States? The general election, including the election of the president of the United States. And it seems to me that every election (at least the last five or six) has been touted as the election to save our country or Republic or democracy or freedom or liberty or whatever other term they come up with that election cycle. And for the last five or six elections, things have been fairly close. About half the country “wins,” and about half the country “loses.” And for those whose candidate or party does not win the White House, there is a constant looking forward to the next election, when democracy or freedom or liberty might be restored. And more than that, it is the expectation that the desired restoration will take place at that time.

I imagine that the Hebrew captives in Babylon weren’t any different. Perhaps they expected that once Babylon fell, then the Jews would be completely restored to Israel and free from any foreign pressure, especially when they heard of who it was that had defeated Babylon: Cyrus. They no doubt would have recalled Isaiah’s prophecy from about 150 years earlier:

Isaiah 44:24, 28 (CSB)

24 This is what the Lord, your Redeemer who formed you from the womb, says: I am the Lord, who made everything; who stretched out the heavens by myself; who alone spread out the earth; ... 28 who says to Cyrus, “My shepherd, he will fulfill all my pleasure” and says to Jerusalem, “She will be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Its foundation will be laid.”

Even though this is exactly what happened (Cyrus was named well before he could have even been born), it didn’t turn out the way that the Jews expected it to. Israel would not be out from under the thumb of some power or another, other than basically one brief respite which we will talk about next week, for the rest of ancient history.

They, probably Daniel included, expected God to move and work in a particular way. But God doesn’t always do that.

In fact, God says that sometimes He confounds the wisdom of those who think that they are wise:

Isaiah 29:14 CSB

14 Therefore, I will again confound these people with wonder after wonder. The wisdom of their wise will vanish, and the perception of their perceptive will be hidden.

1 Corinthians 3:19–20 CSB

19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, since it is written, He catches the wise in their craftiness; 20 and again, The Lord knows that the reasonings of the wise are futile.

God’s ways of thinking are not our ways of thinking. His ways of doing are not our ways of doing.

Isaiah 55:8–9 CSB

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. 9 “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

This isn’t to say that God is arbitrary or capricious—His character is unchanging. He is perfectly faithful. He designed the universe and it’s still running after all this time. But it is saying that He can do what He wants to do, and doesn’t have to do what we expect Him to do. Often, He does more than we could ask or think.

For example, Jesus’s ministry wasn’t what people expected. Many expected Messiah to come and overthrow the Romans and set up Israel as the greatest nation on earth. But instead, He came and kept talking about His death, not His victory. He never trained in battle, warfare, or diplomacy, and He didn’t train His disciples in those things, either. At the Last Supper, he literally took on the attire and job of the lowliest of servants, washing the feet of His disciples as an example for them to follow. He went to the cross willingly, dying to overcome an enemy worse than Rome—He died to overcome sin, death, and the grave. He wasn’t (and still isn’t) what the majority of Jewish people wanted in a Messiah, but He is exactly who everyone on the planet needs as Messiah. God didn’t work in the way that we expected—He did something better.

And not only does He not work in the way that we expect, He doesn’t always work in the timing that we expect, either:

2: God doesn’t always work in the timing that we expect.

Along with the expectation that the Hebrews likely had because they thought that the fall of Babylon would mean Israel’s return to prominence, they also probably expected that such a restoration would happen quickly.

After the carting off of the first of the Hebrew young men (including Daniel) in 605 BC, and through fall of Jerusalem including the destruction of the temple in 586 BC, the Jews were clinging to Jeremiah’s prophecy in 29:10:

Jeremiah 29:10 CSB

10 For this is what the Lord says: “When seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place.

We’ll look at this promise more in a couple of weeks when we get to Daniel chapter 9. But I would guess that Daniel and the others were clinging to this promise of 70 years, which was a good thing to cling to, but that they also had a particular expectation of what that promise’s fulfillment would look like. Their perspective wasn’t exactly wrong. In fact, it was partially correct... Cyrus did allow them to go back home in 539 or early 538, and the rebuilding of the temple was completed in 516 BC, exactly 70 years after its destruction.

But deeper than this, according to the vision that Daniel was recording, not only was the fall of Babylon not the time that Israel’s fortunes would be restored, but the defeat of the Medo-Persian empire wasn’t the time, either. Daniel could see that regardless, this was going to take some serious time—long enough for the defeat of Babylon, then the defeat of the Medo-Persians, and then the fall of the king of Greece. And not only that, but the king of Greece would also exalt himself and be broken, replaced by four other “horns” who were not nearly as powerful.

Daniel 8:8 CSB

8 Then the male goat acted even more arrogantly, but when he became powerful, the large horn was broken. Four conspicuous horns came up in its place, pointing toward the four winds of heaven.

Daniel 8:22 CSB

22 The four horns that took the place of the broken horn represent four kingdoms. They will rise from that nation, but without its power.

Even though we tend to romanticize Alexander the Great, the prophecy that he would act “even more arrogantly” was accurate. History records that as Alexander conquered various provinces, he required that they worship him as a god. But no man apart from Jesus is worthy of such worship, and even more quickly than he rose to power, Alexander the Great contracted a disease (possibly malaria) and died in 323 BC at the age of 32, oddly enough dying in the city of Babylon. The large horn of Greece was broken.

Following Alexander's death both of his sons, Alexander IV and Herakles, were murdered as the internal fighting for power and position commenced. It would not be resolved until about 305 BC, when the Greek Empire was divided into four smaller, weaker kingdoms: Asia and Syria were given to Seleucus, Egypt to Ptolemy, Thrace and Asia Minor to Lysimachus, and Macedonia and the Greek peninsula to Cassander. This was just in line with what Daniel had seen.

If he was expecting to be released after the fall of Babylon, Daniel was disappointed. Daniel almost certainly died in Babylon under Darius, given that he was into his eighties when Persia conquered Babylon. The timing was probably not what Daniel hoped for. It wouldn’t be outlandish to suppose that the Hebrews in Babylon would have expected a sudden and total deliverance like they experienced in coming out of Egypt in the Exodus. But this is not what happened. Their complete restoration to their homeland would take considerable time.

We often have the same struggles. Not only do we want God to work in a particular way, but we want Him to work at a particular time as well. What’s the old cliche? “Lord, grant me patience, and grant it RIGHT NOW.” We have our own ideas about when it’s the right time for God to speak (immediately), to bless (super fast, thanks), and to answer (as soon as we ask). So we tell God what we expect Him to do, and then we try to insist on when He should do so. It’s kind of ridiculous. But it’s often how we are. We need to develop the patience to wait on the Lord, as we just sang a little bit ago.

Psalm 130:5 CSB

5 I wait for the Lord; I wait and put my hope in his word.

Jesus’s ministry didn’t coincide with the timing that people thought it should have, either. For many, it still doesn’t. He is the promised Jewish Messiah, prophesied about hundreds of years before His arrival on the scene as one of us by the prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 53:2–4 CSB

2 He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him. 4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

But the Jews in the days of His earthly ministry, and even today, refused to see Jesus as the fulfillment of this prophecy, or of any of the prophecies surrounding the Messiah. Sadly, the Jews are still waiting for Messiah to come. They’ve missed Him because of their expectations. I’m not sure what you might be waiting for when it comes to your salvation. Sometimes, we think that somehow we will be able to live our lives as we want to, and then at the last minute, on our “death bed” so to speak, we can give our lives to Jesus and be saved. And that does happen, but we aren’t guaranteed that kind of experience. We don’t know when the end will come.

So the answer is to surrender to God through faith in Jesus now. Jesus died, taking the punishment for our sin so that we could be forgiven, then overcoming death by rising again so that we can have eternal life. There is going to come a day when we can no longer turn to Him in faith, either when Christ returns in judgment, or when we die and face Him, and we don’t get to determine the timing of that day. It will be too late. This is why the writer of Hebrews says:

Hebrews 3:15 CSB

15 As it is said: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.

Believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Surrender to Him as Savior and Lord while it is still called Today, because Tomorrow is not guaranteed.

So God doesn’t always work in the ways we expect, and He doesn’t always work in the timing that we expect, but we can have confidence in the fact that, finally, God is always at work.

3: God is always at work.

This last point will be much shorter than the previous two, because we’ve covered all of the Scripture that this part of the vision contains, and we’ve covered most of the history that it included. I’ve included this point because of the passage we read earlier from the prophet Jeremiah about the seventy years’ desolation of Israel—the time that the temple would be unusable following its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, which hadn’t even happened yet when Jeremiah 29 was written, which was a letter to Daniel and others who had been carried away to Babylon.

By it, we see that God is always at work, because God always has a plan for the deliverance of His people.

Jeremiah 29:11–13 CSB

11 For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

The plan that God has may not look exactly like we think it should look, and it may not happen exactly when we think it should happen, but God knows exactly what He’s doing, and we can trust Him. And as I said last week, God sees the big picture, and He is doing things that we can’t comprehend.

Throughout the Old Testament, the narrative is constantly moving toward the coming of the Messiah, and this passage is no different. It is through the coming of Jesus that the New Covenant of Jeremiah would be established, and God would use the Greek empire to help set the stage for His coming.

How? When the Greeks under Alexander took over the known world, they did something everywhere they conquered—they impressed upon it the Greek culture, a process called Hellenization. Everywhere Alexander went, they had to understand Greek customs, Greek politics, Greek laws, and especially Koine Greek, the language of the empire. The entire New Testament is written in Koine Greek, and even though the Romans had come to power by the time of the arrival of Christ, the Romans mostly just adapted existing things for their purposes, rather than reinventing the wheel. The whole Roman world in the first century AD still spoke, wrote, and understood… even thought in… Greek. God used Alexander’s conquest to prepare the world for Jesus and the spread of the Gospel.

He sees things that we can’t see. He knows things that we can’t know. He controls things that we can’t control. And He is always at work.

Even now, by His Spirit, He is constantly at work around us, and He calls us to join Him in that work, church.

John 5:17 CSB

17 Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.”

John 15:5 CSB

5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

We’re called to be a part of His movement of drawing the world to Himself as we spread the Gospel, telling the lost about what Jesus has done for us, pointing them to a saving relationship with Him. And that’s a work that we cannot do in our own strength—it’s something that God wants to do through us. Will we join Him in His saving work?

And another part of that work is bringing the body, the church, together in unity and fellowship. That’s part of what the Supper is about, as we take the

Closing

God may not always work in the ways that we expect or in the timing that we expect, but we can assuredly expect that God is always at work doing what needs to be done, and we are called to join Him in that work as His body, the church.

Invitation to trust Jesus

Invitation to baptism

Invitation to church membership

Invitation for prayer

Giving

PRAYER

Observance of the Lord’s Supper

I’d like to invite the children to come in and find their families, and our deacons to come down and prepare to serve the Lord’s Supper to our church family.

As they come, I’d like to reiterate both a welcome and a warning. The welcome is that we’re here together in this room (and online for those who could not be here this morning, but are participating), and it’s such a joy to be able to take the Supper together. Look around you for just a moment and welcome each other to the family table.

The warning is that if you do not belong to God through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, please do not take the Supper. Since this is a time of memorial of and identification with the Gospel, if you do not believe, you should not participate. This is to safeguard the sanctity of the ordinance and for your protection as well, according to Scripture. We love you, and we’re glad that you’re here. We pray that witnessing this ordinance will be a blessing to you and open your heart to ask questions or to want to find out more about following Christ.

Ask Dan and Bryan to come and distribute the bread to the deacons.

Mark 15 records that Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke, it, and gave it to His disciples.

We’re going to do something just a little different this morning as we prepare to take the bread and the cup. We’re going to have a time of directed prayer. Families or groups sitting near each other, feel free to share this prayer together.

Directed prayer for the bread.

Take a moment to praise the Father for His wisdom, knowledge, and authority.

Thank Jesus for giving His body so that we can live forever in Him.

Ask the Holy Spirit to convict you of any sins of the flesh that you might be holding onto before we take the Supper.

Confess those sins to God, asking for His forgiveness.

Lord, we ask you to bless this bread and help us to eat it in a worthy manner this morning. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Deacons distribute the bread.

Mark 15:22 says that Jesus told His disciples, “Take it; this is my body.”

Have Dan and Bryan come and distribute the cup to the deacons.

Mark also recorded that Jesus gave thanks and gave the cup to His disciples.

Directed prayer for the cup.

Praise the Father for His mercy—that He doesn’t give us the wrath that we truly deserve because He has poured it out on Jesus.

Thank Jesus for shedding His blood to blot out our sinfulness.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to connect with both Jesus and the church through this taking of the Supper.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you identify with both Jesus and the church through taking the Supper today.

Lord, we ask you to bless this cup and let us bring you glory as we take it together. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Deacons distribute the cup.

Mark 15:24 says that Jesus said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”

Thank you, deacons, for serving our church family this morning. We all appreciate your faithfulness. And thank you, Donna, for playing during the Supper.

As the deacons return to their seats, I have just a couple of closing words:

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (2 Sam 15-16, Pro 27)

No Pastor’s Study tonight.

Prayer Meeting this Wednesday night

Claude & Eliza West and family will be with us for a little over a week before they head back to the field, and they would appreciate your prayers for them while they are serving abroad. They have prayer cards that you can pick up from the Get Connected table in the foyer.

Don’t forget the picnic!

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Ephesians 3:20–21 CSB

20 Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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