Sermon Tone Analysis

We took a few weeks off from our series through the book of Daniel to focus on Holy Week—Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Resurrection Morning.

The last two Sundays have focused on the very familiar, and this is a good thing.

It’s good and it’s so important to reflect upon and rehearse the familiar stories of Jesus’ crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection.

I love the familiar; I love the familiar, life-altering, world-changing, amazing news that the perfect, spotless Son of God came to save sinners like me.

We’ve spent the last few weeks swimming in the familiar.

This week as we get back to Daniel, we wade into the exceedingly unfamiliar, the exceptionally odd.

Daniel chapter 8 is just plain strange; and it’s difficult to understand.

As we work through this chapter, we might think: “What in the world does this have for us as God’s people today?

Why did the Lord see fit to fill an entire chapter of Daniel with this?

What’s the point?

Why didn’t Barrett stop preaching through Daniel when he got to the end of Chapter 6?”

This chapter, as we dive into it, as odd as it is will give us two important reminders.

There are some good reasons why Daniel 8 has been preserved for us.

>Here in Daniel 8, Daniel foretells the rise of a relatively obscure king from a split-off of the Greek empire who will wreak havoc on Israel.

Doesn’t that sound directly applicable to your life in 21st-Century America?

“Thanks, Daniel!”

Why an entire chapter covering this?

Because it’s important for God’s people to know and prepare for what they will have to face, not only near the end, but also along the way.

If you have your Bible (and I hope you do) please turn with me to Daniel Chapter 8, and follow along as we dive into this weird and incredible chapter of God’s Holy Word:

God steadies His people (vv.

1-8, 15-22)

This vision takes place two years after the vision Daniel had in chapter 7; this vision takes place in the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, that is about 550 years before Jesus.

If you remember back 3 and 4 weeks ago, as we looked at Daniel 7, we saw four really strange animals coming up out of the sea: a lion with the wings of an eagle, a bear with some ribs in its mouth, a leopard with birds’ wings and four heads, and a fourth beast with large iron teeth.

The temptation for most in reading Daniel 7 is to try to identify who the beasts represent.

And some people work really hard to do this.

Study Bible notes (which, by the way, aren’t inspired or all-knowing) often say this animal is this kingdom or that animal represents the kingdom of _____________.

What we decided as we studied Daniel 7 was this: we don’t know.

The text doesn’t tell us what the animals represent other than four kings that will rise from the earth.

Daniel 7 is deep, allusive, imaginative, abstract.

Daniel 8, on the other hand, is clear and concrete.

Daniel 8 is explicit in its explanation.

“The interpreting angel” (in verses 15-22) makes the meaning of this vision clear.

Here in Daniel 8, the text tells us who the ram represents and who the goat represents.

We don’t have to guess.

We don’t have to have someone help us figure it out.

We don’t have to hope the notes in our study Bibles overstep and tell us something the text doesn’t.

The Bible here interprets the Bible.

As we look back through history, all of this makes perfect sense.

The two-horned ram represents the kings of Media and Persia, one of the horns longer than the other, signifying that one is stronger than the other, just as the Persians were stronger and more dominant than the Medes.

The Media-Persian kingdom is unstoppable…that is, until it’s stopped by a shaggy goat who crosses the whole earth without touching the ground.

The Medes and Persians are conquered by the Greeks.

The large horn between the eyes of the goat, represents the king of Ancient Greece, the Basileus of Macedon, or, if you prefer, Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great conquered virtually the whole of the known world by age 33 (this makes me really stop and evaluate my life; I’m 33 and I haven’t conquered anything…)

Alexander the Great conquered the known world by the time he was 33...and then he died.

And his kingdom was divided among his four generals—Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy.

Just as God hath said:

All of this tells us something.

Daniel saw this in a vision—and this vision was given him by God in order that it might steady him.

This tell us that no matter how great and menacing an empire may appear to be, it is simply an actor in a play written by someone else.

It plays out the role assigned to it by God on the revolving stage of world history, and then, when it has finished its lines, it slinks off into the wings.

The rise and fall of these real, historical nations, foretold centuries ahead of time by the Lord through His prophets reminds us clearly Who is directing the course of history.

The message of this vision is good news to generations of saints who suffer at the hands of earthly kingdoms—be it the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, or present-day persecutors.

“These empires that to human eyes looked so powerful, that seemed to have no weakness, no Achilles’ heel, no chinks in their armor, were actually merely sheep and goats whose destiny lay in the hands of the Divine Shepherd—the Lord Himself.” - Iain Duguid

Do you grasp the steadying impact of all this?

Daniel has this vision, it tells accurately the who and the what that are to come, and it reveals that they will all eventually come to nothing; they are not in control, they are not all-powerful, they are not everlasting.

If the Lord’s holy people watched all this come to pass, experienced the brutality of these pagan kings and the havoc they wreaked without any knowledge that their end was coming, it would be unsettling and un-steadying to say the least.

The Lord steadies His people even in what is an extended period of history.

Verse 4, for instance, spans nearly two hundred years.

There’s a lot of time packed into the verses describing the ram and the goat.

Daniel doesn’t know how much time, but it’s clearly a long and turbulent ride.

This is where the people of God live; this history is their address.

We might as well hunker-down, strap-in, and prepare for a wild ride.

God doesn’t promise smooth sailing, but His Word is sure and His presence is steadying.

We don’t have to know every detail of the future; we need to live as if He holds the future.

We need to live as if He holds us safely and securely in the palm of His mighty right hand.

The Lord steadies His people to walk through the course of history.

You know what it is to be steadied, either by someone or something.

You start to fall, but you catch yourself by grabbing a railing; you trip and stumble, but before you hit the ground somebody reaches out and takes hold of you.

Some of you walk with a cane, not necessarily because you require it for each step, but because it steadies you.

We know the song lyrics, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.”

Our friends and loved ones steady us through various trials and circumstances.

We are all in need of steadying from time to time, aren’t we?

Christians are those who readily admit their need for God at every turn; Christians are those who admit how incredibly weak they are.

Christians are those who say: God steadies us each and every moment of each and every day.

He steadies us, upholds us, carries us along.

The message of Daniel’s vision is this: this scary world which is out of your control is never beyond His control.

The One who raises up world conquerors and then consigns them to the pages of ancient history books is the same One who controls your personal story as well.

If you belong to Christ, the whole world revolves in the Hand of the One who cares for you far more deeply than you can begin to imagine.

Nothing, nothing, nothing in the present or the future or at any point in between can ever separate you from His love (Romans 8:38-39).

Let that steady you.

God arms His people (vv.

9-19, 23-26)

No, this doesn’t mean God is going to outfit you with a handgun or a switchblade, no, no.

But if you belong to Him through faith in Jesus Christ, He is going to arm you with the truth, with some knowledge of the future, with a partial understanding of what’s to come.

Now, it’s not a total or complete knowledge of the future or a full-understanding of what’s to come; but He does give us what we need to face the crises of history.

And there are a lot of crises in this life.

We face crisis after crisis.

And this is to be expected.

Jesus promised as much.

In Daniel’s vision, after the one-horned goat’s kingdom had split into four parts, another little horn emerged from one of these kingdoms and expanded its realm toward the south, the east, and toward the Beautiful Land (that is, Israel).

If you thought the ram and the goat sounded powerful or scary, wait until you get a load of the little horn—he’s one bad mamma-jamma.

This one rose from small, obscure beginnings.

But that soon changes.

This one becomes great and powerful and exceedingly evil.

This one opposes God, eradicates the worship of God, and crushes the people of God.

Based on what we know from the text that the ram is Media-Persia and the goat is Greece, this one who came from one of the four horns is considered by every scholar and historian to be Antiochus IV, aka: “Antiochus Epiphanes”.

>Antiochus, whose nickname “Epiphanes” means “God made manifest” (in other words, Antiochus thought himself to be and was thought to be a god), was the king of the Seleucid empire, one of the four kingdoms that followed Alexander the Great’s former territory.

Antiochus seized the throne out of turn.

He was a tyrant who tried to unify his kingdom by forcing all of his subjects to adopt Greek cultural and religious practices.

He banned circumcision, brought an end to sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem, deliberately defiled the temple by making pork rinds on the altar, and placing an object sacred to Zeus in the Holy of Holies.

He burned copies of the Scriptures and slaughtered those who remained true to their faith in God.

In Antiochus Epiphanes’ short reign, he executed thousands upon thousands of Jews.