Sleepless in Babylon

As we begin this morning, please turn in your copies of God’s Word to Daniel chapter 2. We will be reading verses 1-19a shortly, so please have these verses marked and ready for that time.

As we have made our way through the book of Daniel, we began by traveling back in history in an effort to understand why it was the southern kingdom of Judah was taken into captivity. We concluded that it was their continued disobedience to God’s directives that brought about their being whisked away to Babylon. How it was never God’s desire that they be led away, in fact God sent prophet after prophet to encourage the nation to change its course and thus avoid God’s judgement. They turned their back on those prophets, thus God sent Nebuchadnezzar and the army from Babylon to be God’s instrument of judgement. Make no mistake, King Nebuchadnezzar was not in control, the sovereign God of heaven was in complete control.

From there we continued our look at the history of the Nation of Israel as we considered the many young individuals God has used throughout history. Looking at these young men and women, some who were teens at the time as we travel through the pages of Scripture, we saw how time after time the brilliance of God’s love and light is displayed on the backdrop of the dark landscape of a world steeped in sin.

Then, 2 weeks ago we looked at the faithfulness of Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael even in the midst of challenging times, and how God blessed their faithfulness. Truthfully, their faithfulness continues to be displayed in this mornings passage.

By the way, just a quick aside before we read this mornings passage, you will note that the last verse in chapter 1 declares that Daniel remained in Babylon until the first year of King Cyrus, which would have been 539 BC. Which meant he was a part of the leadership of Babylon for 66 years, through the leadership of 3 Babylonian kings and 2 Medo/Persian kings.

With that, will you please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word? Daniel 2:1-19

Daniel 2:1–19 ESV

In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. 2 Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. 3 And the king said to them, “I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” 4 Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.” 5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.” 7 They answered a second time and said, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation.” 8 The king answered and said, “I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see that the word from me is firm— 9 if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.” 10 The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” 12 Because of this the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. 13 So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed; and they sought Daniel and his companions, to kill them. 14 Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. 15 He declared to Arioch, the king’s captain, “Why is the decree of the king so urgent?” Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel. 16 And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king. 17 Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, 18 and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. 19 Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night…

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Word. Please be seated.

Before we look closer at this morning’s passage, let’s go before the Lord in Prayer.

Heavenly Father,

We hold in our hands Your divinely inspired Word. We ask tat You would speak to us in a powerful way this morning. That I, Your servant, would be Your mouthpiece, and as such, I would be completely yielded to You.

This I pray in Jesus Name, Amen

I Dreamed A Dream.. Daniel 2:1

Sometime around April of 2009 my life was changed forever. It wasn’t the birth of a child, or a new home or job. I didn’t get a new car and my first nice bike was still a year or 2 in the future. But one particular day I heard a scream from my wife. I feared the worst, something happened to her or one of the kids! I quickly ran to find out what happened and when I got into the room where Pam was, my heart sunk. Pam was staring at her phone, tears streaming down her face.

“What’s wrong?” I questioned.

Pam couldn’t even speak, she stifled a sniffle, wiped a few tears away, as I sat down next to her, ready to provide the best possible comfort any husband could give to a heartbroken wife. Still uncertain of what had happened!

She drew my attention to her phone and pushed “play”. There before my eyes was a stage in Britain, and out walked a frumpy looking 47 year old gal ready for an audition on Britains Got Talent. The judges and the crowd were quietly making fun of her and her cheeky grin and her desire to sing like Elaine Paige….that is until she began to sing.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by When hope was high And life worth living I dreamed that love would never die I dreamed that God would be forgiving

That was a day our world was introduced to Susan Boyle, and for me, well we can’t go back. In fact I just want to prepare you all, I don’t want you to be caught off guard later today, like I was in April 2009. Moments after we sing the last line of “May The Lord”, Pam is probably going to quietly sneak out the side door of the church leading to the parsonage, quickly scoot across the sidewalk, run down to our basement, turn the TV on, crank up the volume, go to YouTube and she will not stop until she listens for what will likely be the 10,000 time to Susan Boyle singing I Dreamed A Dream!

All kidding aside, researches indicate that the average person dreams between 3-7 dreams each night. The vast majority of which are forgotten before we wake up. Most dreams are rather short, varying from 5-30 minutes. To a very large degree, our dreams are meaningless. Honestly, it has probably always been that way. However, there are times that God speaks to individuals through dreams.

I could be wrong, but I believe that for most who have committed their life to the Lord, our dreams rarely have spiritual significance to them, if for no other reason that we have the Word of God in it’s entirely, and what we read in these pages, include the vast majority of God’s will for our lives. That is not to say that He doesn’t speak to us through dreams, but it is rare.

However, the same may not be true for those who have not trusted in the Lord. Both now and throughout biblical history.

Missions Frontiers magazine published an article a number of years ago where they had interviewed 600 muslims who had converted to Christianity, of the 600, 25% talked about dreams in which Jesus appeared to them as a major catalyst to their conversion. The dreams reported by former muslims usually include several details that were in common;  

“1) Jesus appears to them. 2) Jesus tells them to find and speak to a person at a certain place at a certain time. 3) When the Muslim follows Jesus’ instructions, he or she finds the person at exactly the right time and place, and the person explains who Jesus truly is and presents the gospel. 4) The Muslim believes that Jesus is the Savior and places his or her faith in Him, renouncing Islam.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Muslims-dreams-visions-Jesus.html)

By the way, it should not surprise us that God would use dreams as a form of evangelism. In Scripture, we actually see it take place in back to back chapters in the Book of Acts. In Acts chapter 9, a young Pharisee named Saul was on the road to Damascus, with the express purpose of jailing and killing Christians, when Jesus appeared to him in a vision, that ended up with him converting to the very movement he was seeking to destroy. We know the Pharisee named Saul as the Apostle Paul. Then, in chapter 10, God appears to a Roman Centurion name Cornelius, who

“had a vision of an angel of God telling him to call for a man named Peter in Joppa. Cornelius summoned Peter, who had been alerted (via a vision) that men were coming to see him. Peter traveled with the messengers back to Cornelius and preached the gospel to him. Cornelius was saved and baptized that day.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Muslims-dreams-visions-Jesus.html)

In biblical times, God spoke frequently through dreams and visions, partly because they did not have personal copies of God’s Word. And these dreams and visions took place for both those who followed God as well as those who didn’t even believe in Him.

By the time of the dream we read about in this mornings passage, God had already spoken to 3 pagan rulers through dreams. The first account is in Genesis 20 where God spoke to King Abimelech in a dream, letting him know that the woman he had taken into his harem was actually Abraham’s wife, not sister (which is what Abraham claimed she was for fear he would be killed because she was so beautiful) and if King Abimelech proceeded any further he would be struck dead! The second was in Genesis 41 where God spoke to the Pharoah through a couple dreams that Joseph interpreted for him, which resulted in thousands and thousands of lives being saved from a pending 7 year famine. And the 3rd took place just a year or 2 before King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream when God spoke to Pharoah Neco in a dream, that dream is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 35 and 2 Kings 23.

Yes dreams were much more commonplace in Biblical history. But I’m not certain anyone had eve had a dream like the one by King Nebuchadnezzar.

We’re actually not going to look at the dream this morning, we’re going to look at the verses leading up to the dream as they tell a story of their own. To begin with we see;

The Nightmare of the King. Vs. 1-3

The first thing we see in verse 1 is that all this took place in the 2nd year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, yet it seem pretty clear from the following verses that Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Misheal had already completed their training and were fully a part of the wise men of Babylon.

Perhaps you may be thinking,

“Wait, if this was the second year, wouldn’t they be in the middle of their training?”

Which is a valid question. In some ways we answered this question 3 weeks ago when we addressed the different dating systems used by the Babylonians compared to the dating systems used by the Israelite's and Egyptians. Remember, the Babylonians didn’t count the first year of a reign until after the full year had been completed.

Daniel and his friends were taken captive between June - August of 605 BC.

Nebuchadnezzar began his rule and their training began in Sept. 605 BC.

Historians believe that the dream Daniel is writing about in chapter 2 would have taken place somewhere between April of 603 BC and March of 602 BC.

Apparently by the time of the dream Daniel and his friends had completed their training. However, it is likely that they had just completed their training, thus, in verse 2 when the king summons the wise men of Babylon; Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Misheal were not included in those who were summoned. But since they were still included in the list of the Babylonian wise men, they were to be included in the kings edict in verse 12. Therefore, based on what we read in verse 1, Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Misheal, would be between 17-20 years of age at the time. Honestly, what a young age for yet another major spiritual battle for these young men of God. Yet once again we see these young men were, in many ways, undaunted, because they completely trusted our sovereign God.

The next thing we see in verse 1 is that the king had not one, but multiple dreams, but we get the impression from the following verses that there was one particular dream that troubled him greatly. So much so that the king summoned the wise men of Babylon to find out the meaning of the dream.

Which brings us to;

The Nightmare of the Wise Men of Babylon. Vs. 4-12

Daniel Akin, who wrote one of the commentaries I have studied in preparing for this series on the Book of Daniel titled chapter 2 verses 1-16;

God Creates Impossible Situations to Reveal His Greatness. (Daniel Akin)

Which fits what we read quite well. The Chaldeans were correct in verses 10-11

Daniel 2:10–11 ESV

The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.”

(Underline the word “difficult” and correctly write “impossible)

In fact we see Daniel agreeing with part of what the Chaldeans said in verse 27, which we will look at next week. However, as we travel through the book of Daniel, which I believe we will clearly see in the fiery furnace of chapter 3, as well as throughout the rest of God’s Word, we find out that our God, El Elyon, the Most High God, is different from the false gods of the world.

We are less than 2 months removed from Christmas. During the Christmas season one of the most often repeated Names for God, which sets our God apart from the false gods of the Chaldeans as they state in verse 11, is what? He is called (Immanuel-God with us). The God Whom we worship loves us so much that He sent His Son Jesus, from the splendors of heaven, the One Who became the God/Man. Jesus was and is God with us. And if that wasn’t enough, we read in the Great Commission in Matthew 28 that Jesus made clear to the Disciples that; Matthew 28:20

Matthew 28:20 ESV

…. I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

But it doesn’t end there, Jesus also states in John 15:26

John 15:26 ESV

…when the Helper comes, Whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, Who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me.

And as if this were a part of an Infomercial,

“But wait, there’s more!”

One of the clearest teachings concerning God in Scripture is that He is Omnipresent. What does omnipresent men?

It means;

God is everywhere present. In other words, while the false gods of the world do not dwell with flesh, our God does, in all 3 parts of the Trinity!

What Nebuchadnezzar was demanding of the wise men of Babylon, from a human standpoint was unreasonable and impossible. Which had created a nightmare scenario for them.

Now there are at least a couple of different thoughts on what is taking place with King Nebuchadnezzar in these verses. One thought was

2 Possible scenarios on Nebuchadnezzars impossible request;

Nebuchadnezzar didn’t remember the dream.

Nebuchadnezzar didn’t trust the wise men.

Either could be true, but I lean towards the second, particularly based on what we read in verse 9;

Daniel 2:9 ESV

“..if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.”

Amir Tsarfati writes;

Dreams, They’d done before. They’d listen to the king tell his story. Then they’d give a little song, a little dance, a few random words of wisdom, and the king could go back to sleep with a cheery interpretation of his nightmare. (Discovering Daniel; Pg. 40)

In other words, these men had pulled the wool over the kings eyes many times in the past. He’d tell a dream to them, they’d all get together and brainstorm a feel good interpretation for the dream that would make the king happy, and them look good before the king. He’d be overjoyed at their made up interpretation, reward them lavishly and they’d all go on with life.

By the time of this dream King Nebuchadnezzar was on to their charade, thus he demands the impossible. His anger at them was so severe that he decreed they were to be torn limb from limb and their homes were to “laid in ruins”. Honestly, in the phrase “laid in ruins”, the ESV translation has softened the kings decree substantially. The literal language literally means “refuse-heap, dunghill, outhouse”. But the severity of his anger went beyond just making their homes refuge heaps, dunghills and outhouses. His decree included anyone who was a part of the wise council of Babylon, which meant the executioner would soon be at the door of Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah & Misheal.

The Mid-night Knock at the Door. Vs. 13-15

Unlike King Nebuchadnezzar and the wise men of Babylon, Daniel and his 3 friends were sleeping like babies when they are woken from their sleep by a loud pounding at the door. The reason why I am under the impression that this visit took place in the middle of the night is what we read in verse 15.

Daniel 2:15 ESV

He (Daniel) declared to Arioch, the king’s captain, “Why is the decree of the king so urgent?” Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel.

Which brings us to;

Daniels Unreasonable Request. Vs. 16

We read in verse 16;

Daniel 2:16 ESV

…And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king.

You may look at this verse and think, why is this request unreasonable? To answer your question, go back and look at verse 8, what did the king declare was the intent of the wise men that were there before him? (They were trying to buy time). Again, let’s not forget, King Nebuchadnezzar was anything but a reasonable man, don’t forget, around this time he had all the sons of a King Zedekiah of Judah killed before their fathers eyes and immediately had his eyes put out so that the last thing he saw with his eyes was the death of his sons! And in chapter 3 we see his anger burn so hot that he ordered those who didn’t obey his command to be thrown into a fiery furnace heated so hot that the soldiers that threw them in died from the heat.

For an unreasonable man, Daniel’s request was unreasonable. The we see;

God Moves the Heart of an Unreasonable King. Vs. 17 & 19

So, here Daniel is, making, what the king would have considered to be an unreasonable request. He certainly wan’t willing to grant the other wise men any additional time. Why would Daniel expect the king would grant him any additional time?

Yet what do we read in verse 17?

Daniel 2:17 ESV

Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions…

In other words the king granted his unreasonable request!

As far as I am concerned, the only explanation for the response of King Nebuchadnezzar was the Hand of God moved the king. Can you think of another explanation?

Add to this what we’ve already read in chapter 1 verse 9.

Daniel 1:9 ESV

And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs..

God had already moved the hearts of Babylonian leaders, why would the king be any different?

Now keep in mind, it appears Daniel approaches the king with his unreasonable request sometime in the middle of the night. Now my thought would be, even if the king was to grant him some time, it would be minimal at best.

Alrighty Belteshazzar, you’ve got 2 hours to come up with the dream and it’s interpretation, that’s 2 hours more than I gave the other wise men!

Yet what do we read in verse 19?

Daniel 2:19 ESV

…Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night…

Perhaps this took place the same night of the kings dream, or perhaps it took place the next night, Scripture doesn’t really tell us, but what we do know is that the king gives Daniel some extra time and what do we see Daniel do?

Daniel calls a prayer meeting. Vs. 18

He calls his 3 companions and they spent some time in prayer. Based on what we see of Daniel throughout the rest of this book, prayer for Daniel was not the last resort, something he did after trying everything else first, prayer was his first course of action. We would do well to learn from Daniel. Prayer for us should be our automatic response. This is something I am continuing to learn, and not nearly as quickly as I should!

Again, based on what we see from Daniel throughout the rest of this marvelous book, his going to prayer is not surprising, but what we see next is a head scratcher! Let me tell you why. King Nebuchadnezzar had such an alarming dream that we read in verse 1 that “his sleep left him”. Meaning he was no longer able to sleep. He threatens the life of all of the wise men of Babylon, which included Daniel and his 3 friends. He gives Daniel extra time he had not provided the other wise men and what do we see Daniel do after the prayer meeting? Look again at verse 19, how does God reveal this great mystery to Daniel?

Daniel 2:19 ESV

…Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night…

In other words, after praying, with his life and the lives of all of the other wise men of Babylon, including Hananiah, Azariah & Misheal all on the line.

Daniel takes a nap! Vs. 19

Daniel climbs into bed, pulls the covers over himself and goes to sleep! The king was unable to sleep, Daniel slept like a baby!

Why is it that King Nebuchadnezzars “sleep left him, yet Daniel fell asleep with no problem?

You could say that the kings trust was in false gods whose dwelling place is not with mankind.

Not so for Daniel, he was able to sleep based on what we read in verse 22, which we will look at more closely next week.

Daniel 2:22 ESV

..He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.

O that we would do the same. Let’s close our time this morning in prayer.

Include in prayer that our God is Sovereign, He is God with us, through Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Himself and we can trust completely inHis Sovereign Hand.