The Boys Intro & The King Dreams
Notes
Transcript
Title
Introduction — Refugee Boys
Introduction — Refugee Boys
For most of us its hard to imagine what was going on in the minds of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, four young men that I’ll just call “The Boys” for short. Most of us haven’t been ripped from our home, separated from our family, and force-fed the culture of an occupying power. But let’s imagine for a moment: what would you bring with you if violence or persecution forced you to flee your country? What would you think about and wish for as you walked the 900 miles from Jerusalem to Iraq? How would your body feel as you trudged through arid countryside, stumbled over rocky roads, and tried to scramble for food and water when the soldiers allowed you to stop for a break.
These boys were on their way to Babylon because the people of Judea had abandoned the God of heaven to worship idols. God had labored with them for generations, but finally He brought the pain of exile to break up their hard hearts and draw them back to Him.
Maybe these boys remembered God’s words through His prophet Jeremiah:
…I have spoken to you persistently, but you have not listened to me. 15 I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, sending them persistently, saying, ‘Turn now every one of you from his evil way, and amend your deeds, and do not go after other gods to serve them, and then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to you and your fathers.’ But you did not incline your ear or listen to me.
…Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the disaster that I have pronounced against them, because I have spoken to them and they have not listened, I have called to them and they have not answered.”
These boys don’t seem to be rebellious against God, but still they had to experience the tribulation that God brought on His people as a consequence of their nation’s sins. These boys had either learned the lesson of submission to God’s will from their parents, or they made a choice along the way to Babylon to obey God and surrender to the rulership of Babylon like God commanded them to. And so, they arrived in Babylon, haggard and hungry and surrendered into the hands of God.
Preparing for the End
Preparing for the End
Title
Today we’re beginning a series of studies on the book of Daniel entitled, Daniel’s Story.
Daniel is one of the most exciting books in the Bible. It’s filled with stories of refugees, tyrant kings, miraculous escapes, and apocalyptic dreams. It is this last category that has many people confused, but I hope that by the end of our study you’ll feel confident to read the prophetic visions in Daniel.
One of the things we’ll find out today is that Daniel’s visions consistently point to the end of time when God brings an end to human kingdoms, bringing judgment on the rebellious and eternal life to the repentant.
It is this end-time context that I’d like to draw your attention to.
1st and 2nd Half
Daniel is divided into two main parts—the stories in the first 6 chapters, and the visions in the last 6 chapters. Nearly everyone knows the stories of the three hebrews that were cast into the fiery furnace and didn’t burn, and the story of Daniel and the lion’s den that occur in the first six chapters. These stories are given to us to teach us how to live in the time leading up to the end of the world that is foretold in the last six chapters. And I think that these stories will help us to trust in God no matter our circumstances and to have hope in spite of uncertainty in the world around us.
One of the main reasons God gives us prophecies in the Bible is so that we can believe in Him, trust in Him, and place our hope in Him.
29 And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe.
Being Faithful when things are uncomfortable
Being Faithful when things are uncomfortable
Ishtar Gate
We’re going to spend most of our time in Daniel 2 today, but before we do I want to capture a lesson from the first story in Daniel chapter 1.
Let’s go back to those boys, trudging through the Ishtar Gate into Babylon, hungry, and weary. It kind of reminds me of what Jesus must have experienced after spending 40 days in the wilderness with no food. It was when he was hungry and weary that Satan came to tempt him.
Daniel and his friends also faced an immediate challenge to their faithfulness to God. The king had generously provided them with food from his own kitchen—the best food in all the land. But there was a catch: the meat had been offered to idols, and the wine was alcoholic.
While The Boys weren’t vegetarian they knew that eating the king’s meat implied that they were acknowledging and benefiting from the blessings of false gods. They had determined in their hearts that they would not forsake their God, and this was their first test.
Maybe they remembered Proverbs 31:4 where it says
…it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink…
Although they weren’t kings, they were in a position of responsibility, representing their God in a foreign country and in training to be political leaders. Not wanting their judgment to be corrupted by alcohol, Daniel records that they made a decision:
But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
When we face political and social pressure to violate what we know to be right, it’s natural to feel conflict. Even though we know what is right, we often begin to justify compromise in order to fit in. But God promises that if we give Him our allegiance that He will keep us safe:
Leviticus 26:3, 6 (ESV)
“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then... I will give peace... and none shall make you afraid.
And that’s exactly what God did for The Boys in Babylon
Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel.
There is a clear link between Daniel’s faithfulness to God, and God’s faithfulness to Daniel.
You might say that Daniel and his friends put themselves in a place where God could bless them.
If you’re willfully disobedient, then God can’t bless you. But when you step into the path of God, He can give fill your needs and give you the desires of your heart.
The story in Daniel 1 goes on to describe an experiment where the official gave The Boys a ration of vegetables and water for ten days to see if they would wilt or become healthy and strong. It was a comparison study between The Boys and the others who were eating the food the king provided.
The results of the study were astounding. The Bible says that the experiment went very well. At the end of ten days they looked healthy and strong. It would be wise for us to consider this experiment for our lives today. God designed the human body to receive nutrition from fruit and nuts and seeds and vegetables and herbs. He never designed us to eat meat. It was only his alternate plan for when they ran out of food in the ark.
no safe amount of alcohol
And He never designed us to drink fermented juice. Science tells us that there is no amount of alcohol that is safe to drink—it poisons the body, inebriates the mind, kills cells, destroys the liver and causes all kinds of cancers.
ishtar gate
Now, let’s think about the specific situation of these boys. They’d been on the road for a month, eating whatever limited morsels were available to them. Their bodies were fatigued, and their figures were gaunt from lack of proper nutrition. So, ten days of eating good food perked them right up and gave them a strength that the other captives didn’t experience because they were eating rich, fatty foods with low nutritional content.
And yet, while eating nutritious food is good to do—and you should consider carefully how you feed your body—that’s not the point of this story. The point the passage is all about the faithfulness of God.
God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams.
Do you see the point? God gave them learning and skill. God gave them favor with the steward.
God had promised to do the hard stuff and Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azaria were living proof that when you put yourself in God’s path, He can use you for great things.
At the end of this story the king began to notice The Boys. They were smart and talented. They were strong and healthy. When they answered questions it was clear to Nebuchadnezzar that they had a depth of knowledge and wisdom that none of the other students could even come close to.
As we transition to Daniel 2 I want to underscore a core concept from Daniel 1:
big idea
God is present with you, faithful to His promises, and powerful to save you. When you put your life in His hands and choose to be faithful to Him, He will provide for you.
The King Dreams
The King Dreams
The next story requires that we go back to the beginning of Daniel 1 to help us understand the political context.
During the third year of King Jehoiakim’s reign in Judah,* King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
The Lord gave him victory over King Jehoiakim of Judah and permitted him to take some of the sacred objects from the Temple of God. So Nebuchadnezzar took them back to the land of Babylonia* and placed them in the treasure-house of his god.
This verse hides some huge political maneuvering that was going on—world-impacting wars had recently taken place. Nebuchadnezzar had just defeated Pharaoh Neco in Carchamish, north of Judah. Then, he sent his army down to Jerusalem, which had been a vassal state of Egypt, to assert his authority. He then demanded the yearly tribute that had been due to Egypt. Then he took the brightest young men from the leading families of the nation and brought them back to Babylon to train. Who knows what his plans were; maybe he intended for them to go back to Jerusalem as his emissaries and loyal government leaders. But in just a few years Israel’s repeated rebellion led to an 18 month siege and a total relocation of the people of Jerusalem to Babylon. The displacement of people is at the same level as the current war in Gaza that has displaced 90% of their population.
Put yourself in the mind of the young men who were captured in that first exile. They weren’t likely going to die, but their plight was precarious. They needed to please their new masters or they’d be put in prison or worse. Remember, The Boys had determined to stay faithful to God which included obeying his command through Jeremiah to submit to Babylon.
And at the end of the story from Daniel 1 we find that the Boys’ faithfulness to God was rewarded by God giving them favor with the king.
Now, let’s turn to Daniel 2:1
One night during the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had such disturbing dreams that he couldn’t sleep.
He called in his magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers, and he demanded that they tell him what he had dreamed. As they stood before the king, he said, “I have had a dream that deeply troubles me, and I must know what it means.”
Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, “Long live the king! Tell us the dream, and we will tell you what it means.”
But the king said to the astrologers, “I am serious about this. If you don’t tell me what my dream was and what it means, you will be torn limb from limb, and your houses will be turned into heaps of rubble!
This was a disturbing dream. Something about it was different than all the falafel induced dreams he’d had before. He hadn’t taken any opium before bed, so it couldn’t have come from a hallucination. No, this dream was a vision from somewhere else, it was supernatural. And that disturbed the king.
Satan didn’t know what the dream was, but he knew it had been given by God. He conspired to make the king hide the details so that the dream wouldn’t come out.
Daniel and his friends were still in training but they were considered part of this group of wise men. When the wise men couldn’t interpret the dream Nebuchadnezzar got angry and ordered all the wise men to be killed. Satan thought he had won a victory—Daniel would be dead, and the king wouldn’t have a clue what God was trying to tell him. But as the story continues, Satan’s plans are foiled by the God who works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. (Romans 8:28)
When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, came to kill them, Daniel handled the situation with wisdom and discretion. He asked Arioch, “Why has the king issued such a harsh decree?” So Arioch told him all that had happened.
Daniel went at once to see the king and requested more time to tell the king what the dream meant. Then Daniel went home and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah what had happened.
He urged them to ask the God of heaven to show them his mercy by telling them the secret, so they would not be executed along with the other wise men of Babylon. That night the secret was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven.
Daniel now has both the dream and the interpretation, and so he praises God as the one who has all wisdom and power, who sets up kings and takes them down, and who reveals mysteries.
Daniel had just faced the executioner, stood before the king to beg for time, prayed to God for help, and seen an amazing dream in a vision. Can you imagine the emotions that were running through Daniel’s mind? From surprise to fear to gratitude to determination to peace and now exuberant joy!
With a grateful heart and a confident demeanor, Daniel asked to see the king. Arioch quickly took him to the king and said, “I found someone who can tell you the dream!” Nebuchadnezzar turned to Daniel and asked, “Is this true?”
Daniel replied, “There are no wise men, enchanters, magicians, or fortune-tellers who can reveal the king’s secret.
But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the future. Now I will tell you your dream and the visions you saw as you lay on your bed.
Standing before the greatest king in the world with the very information that he was begging for, Daniel remained humble. It’s been said before that when you have bowed down before the God of the universe, you can stand confidently in front of earthly monarchs.
Daniel didn’t accept the praise, instead he directed the attention to God. This is the central focus of Daniel’s story—the theme he returns to again and again—God is the revealer of secrets.
Have you ever read the Bible and thought, “this is difficult to understand. What does it mean? Is this at all relevant to me?”
That’s what Nebuchadnezzar felt like. God had revealed himself and he was totally confused. Maybe you need to do what Daniel did and pray to God to tell you what He means. Jesus promised:
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
The Dream
The Dream
the dream
Let me summarize this amazing dream and then we’ll look at the interpretation from the Bible.
Nebuchadnezzar saw a statue of a man made out of four different metals.
The head was made of gold,
the chest of silver,
the waist of brass,
and the legs of iron.
And then it had feet that were made partly of iron and partly of clay.
As he examined the image, a large stone cut out of a mountain sped through the air, pulverized the image into dust and then grew to fill the whole earth.
Before we get to the interpretation, I just want you to put yourself in Nebuchadnezzar’s shoes. He’s a conquering general, a master strategist, and a creative builder. He has dreams for his future. This dream that God has given him will challenge every aspect of his dreams for the future.
Let’s jump ahead to Daniel 2:37. We’re studying the Bible today which requires us to do some reading. And since this is the critically important interpretation, lets read down to verse 45.
Your Majesty, you are the greatest of kings. The God of heaven has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and honor. He has made you the ruler over all the inhabited world and has put even the wild animals and birds under your control. You are the head of gold.
“But after your kingdom comes to an end, another kingdom, inferior to yours, will rise to take your place. After that kingdom has fallen, yet a third kingdom, represented by bronze, will rise to rule the world.
Following that kingdom, there will be a fourth one, as strong as iron. That kingdom will smash and crush all previous empires, just as iron smashes and crushes everything it strikes.
The feet and toes you saw were a combination of iron and baked clay, showing that this kingdom will be divided. Like iron mixed with clay, it will have some of the strength of iron. But while some parts of it will be as strong as iron, other parts will be as weak as clay.
This mixture of iron and clay also shows that these kingdoms will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances with each other through intermarriage. But they will not hold together, just as iron and clay do not mix.
“During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever.
That is the meaning of the rock cut from the mountain, though not by human hands, that crushed to pieces the statue of iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God was showing the king what will happen in the future. The dream is true, and its meaning is certain.”
Kingdom summary
A quick glance at history and you’ll know what each of these kingdoms are. Nebuchadnezzar had formed an alliance with the Medes and was married to a Persian princess. Through war and negotiation he had unified the world… for a time.
But after Nebuchadnezzar’s death the Medes broke off their loyalty to Babylon and joined with the Persians to systematically take over the world, becoming the largest empire the world had known up until that time.
After the Persians, Alexander the Great conquered an even bigger swath of the world — all the way from the Indian ocean in the east to Europe in the west.
But that only lasted a little while because Greece was crushed by the iron fist of the Roman Empire.
When, after 600 years, the Roman empire crumbled under the weight of its own hubris there was no conquering power to take its place. Instead a quarrelsome bunch of European tribes clawed out power in their territories.. As they became their own nations they tried to fight each other for power and form diplomatic alliances to establish peace. The kings married off their children to each other, but they never seemed to be able to make a unified empire work. Even to this day we find little unity in the place the roman empire used to be. They have formed loose affiliations like the European Union, but there is no real unity in that union. Some countries in Europe are powerful and wealthy, and some are struggling and poor—just like the prophecy predicted.
The exciting part of this prophecy is that “in the days of those kings” the God of heaven will set up his kingdom, that will never be overthrown or conquered. It will be an everlasting kingdom.
When Nebuchadnezzar heard this interpretation he was amazed. He said, “truly your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries…” Now, to be fair, he hadn’t fully processed the meaning of this vision of his future. If he had, he wouldn’t have been very happy. But in that moment all he could fully grasp is that Daniel’s God knew his dream and gave it to Daniel too. All he could really grasp is that the greatest God in all the universe had a dream for HIM! And that’s pretty cool.
Maybe that’s all that we need to know today too. But since God gave an interpretation of this dream, we should probably pay attention to it, at least a little bit.
Here are the two big things we need to grasp from this dream:
1) God is the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the revealer of secrets, and He has a dream for you.
2) His kingdom is coming soon.
Think about these truths in Daniel’s experience. When Satan tried to intervene and destroy Daniel, God protected him and promoted him to a place of influence in a pagan court. God was involved in Daniel’s life, and he had a dream for his future.
Even though Nebuchadnezzar was an awful dictator and a tyrannical king, God used Daniel to set him on a course that eventually lead to his conversion. God is over all kings and governments. He has power to intervene in nations and individual lives. God had a dream for Nebuchadnezzar and He revealed himself so that wicked king would eventually humble himself to worship the God of creation and be ready for His soon return.
Jesus said, “behold I am with you always, even to the end…” (Matt 28:20) God is king of kings and Lord of Lords AND He is with you and has a dream for you! That’s cool.
Not only is He over all, but he wants you to know Him, and so He has revealed himself to us so that we can be confident that He will ultimately win the battle and bring us into His glorious, wonderful, welcoming, loving kingdom.
These stories in Daniel are designed to give you confidence in God; to trust Him as we wait for His return. They are also designed to give us clarity on the process of end-time events. We can see that we are “in the days of those kings” right now and the very next thing to happen in God’s grand time-line is for His heavenly kingdom to come and take away all the kingdoms of men and to fill the earth with goodness.
What we’ve seen in Daniel two is going to come back again. This time he gave us very little information; just “in the days of these kings.” But soon we’re going to find this same timeline repeated with more and more detail. It’s a principle we’ll find repeated throughout the Bible, but especially here in Daniel. We call it, “repeat and enlarge.” And I think you’ll find this same principle is true of God’s dream for your life. Maybe you only know an outline at this moment, but give God some time and he’s going to fill in the details. Be like Daniel and his Boys and be faithful to what you know, and God will be faithful to you and take you step by step into the dream he has for your life.
Conclusion
Conclusion
There’s a song that articulates this idea in a beautiful way, and I’d like you to listen to it. It’s called, The King Dreams, by the Lesser Light Collective. Pay close attention to the message God has for your heart.
song
On the cross I can imagine the King of the Universe dreaming about you and me. By faith He saw us as His children. You might not be the king of a powerful empire, or a prophet that He sends visions to, but the King of the universe has a dream for your life.
How is God inviting you into that dream? How has He called you to be faithful? And most importantly, do you hold His promises of faithfulness close to your heart?
