Sermon Tone Analysis

Being a father

Many of you may know that Stephen Goring, the new pastor at the local Christian Reformed Church, has recently had his first child with his wife Nicola.

As I was talking with him about it recently, I was reminded of my experience of this initial period of fatherhood.

Now I will admit straight up that particularly in this initial period it is the mother who has it the toughest.

Not only are they the only ones able to do the breast feeding, but there is a lot of other things happening for them, particularly with all the hormones running through their bodies.

But that being said, it is also an amazing time for the father.

I used the word amazing, but the truth is, I’m not sure what the best word should be to use, because it is incomparable to anything else that you go through.

It’s actually this mix of love of a type you’ve never really experienced before, thrown in with a severe case of helplessness and a bit of nerves for good measure.

You know at that point that you want to care for that child for the rest of their life, but while that feeling is really strong, you don’t really know what it even means.

And that starts the journey known as fatherhood.

One that I’ve quickly realised that the moment you think you’ve got it figured out, it all changes.

The truth is however, that this journey of fatherhood closely resembles the journey of life that each of us face, no matter where you are in life.

How often to you think you are getting a bit in front, only to fall back again.

It can often feel like you take one step forward, but two steps back.

Link to Daniel

This morning on Father’s day, I’m going to finish our journey through the book of Daniel.

In it, we will briefly look at chapter 11 - I say briefly, but it is by no means a brief chapter.

I will explore a few of the aspects of this chapter shortly, but essentially it looks at what is going to happen in the few centuries following the time of Daniel.

In fact, we will see how it goes into quite a lot of detail of the constant to and fro-ing of various kingdoms, with God’s people essentially being tossed around in the process.

You see, this turbulent journey that each of us are on is nothing new.

While the specific circumstances will differ for each of us, and for some it will be harder than others, but for all of us there is a long journey.

The Big Question

And so the question I want to explore today is how do we continue when there is so much uncertainty.

I want to keep this much broader than just fathers, but if I bring back to fathers just for the moment, we could ask the question - how do we keep being the best fathers we can be when we know that our children are going to grow up and make their own decisions anyway?

Exploring the passage

Well, by choosing to look at three chapters, we have a lot to cover, so we better dive in and have a look at it.

First, for those who haven’t been with us for the series, Daniel is set in the period of time when Israel had been sent into exile in Babylon.

Daniel, as a young man had in fact been part of the initial wave of Jews being forced to Babylon.

Throughout the book we’ve seen how Daniel and some of his friends managed to live in a foreign land.

The final three chapters effectively represent the final episode of activity we see during this time.

In fact we’re told that we’re in the third year of Cyrus King of Persia, which from other parts of the Bible, and indeed other historical sources, we know means that a group of Jews have actually gone back to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra.

We know that many Jews stayed back, and obviously it would seem Daniel was one of them.

We’re not told why he stayed back - maybe from the deduction that he must be in his 90’s by now, he decided to stay back because of age, although that is pure speculation.

Now to paint the picture just a little further for us now, in the immediate couple of chapters that precede this one, Daniel receives some fairly spectacular visions.

Visions which we use the term apocalyptic, due to the nature of them and their subject matter.

As we’ve looked at them in the last few weeks, we’ve seen how they relate to things of the future, and as I’ve said a number of time, we would do well to not be too precise about their exact meaning.

That’s because they set up a general pattern in which we can expect into the future.

That pattern being one of a time of increasing trouble but with God having the final victory.

This final episode in many ways continues the same sort of pattern, however in some respects it actually does become more precise - and I’m going to show shortly how chapter 11 reads almost like a history.

Initial vision

But first looking at chapter 10 which sets the scene we see that Daniel receives a vision.

Now as far as I can work out, the vision that is described in verse 1 is not actually explained to us other than the fact that it concerns a great war and that Daniel was able to understand it.

It would seem that this vision from verse 1 is different although related to the subsequent vision that we get later on.

Whatever the precise nature of it, however, we know that it results in Daniel mourning for three weeks, in which time he severely restricted his diet.

Well, verse 4 seems to take us to the end of that three week period, and Daniel is now sanding on the banks of the Tigris river.

Now you might recall that this river was one of four rivers named way back in .

And so there is a lot of significance with it.

Anyway, Daniel is standing there, and he looks up to see an amazing vision.

There is a man clothed in linen and above the waters of the river.

(Now for those who like to follow closely to the passage to see if what I am saying is true, you may wonder, where am I getting this idea that he is above the waters of the river - I’m actually taking that from the description given in chapter 12 which seems to complete this episode.

Now this man is described with some pretty amazing features.

The interesting thing here is that this description is really close to the vision of a man that Ezekiel has right back in , and it is also really close to the description that the apostle John sees in the island of Patmos which we get in the first chapter of Revelation.

In this last reference, it is made clear that the person that is in view is none other than Jesus Christ himself - and while some people may offer other suggestions, I think it is fairly clear that what Daniel is viewing now is the second person of the Holy Trinity.

Now you might think that such a vision would be very empowering, however like others in the Bible who have vision of the almighty, we see Daniel overwhelmed by the experience.

Indeed from verse 7 he has an angel helping him, and it is just beautiful to read how this angel just places these gentle touches on him and gently encourages Daniel which helps him to keep going.

I’ll briefly come back to this later, but this little picture of the angel gently encouraging Daniel is very similar to what we need to get through the struggles of life.

Spiritual battle

Before we then get into the main part of the new vision, which comes in chapter 11, verses 12 to 14 of chapter 10 gives us a little insight to the spiritual battles that rage that generally speaking, we are unaware of.

You see this angel references these last 3 weeks in which Daniel has been troubled by his initial vision and his subsequent diet and self-imposed restrictions.

We then learn that during this three week period, this heavenly being, who some speculate might be Gabriel based on his appearance in chapter 9 (although there is no real evidence for this), has been detained by someone referred to as the prince of the Persian kingdom.

Now we don’t actually really know who this prince is.

Some have tried to link it to actual physical princes associated with Persia, although I think it is clear that what is in mind is actually a spiritual being.

This little glimpse shows us just how serious this spiritual battle is.

We quite rightly assume that God is in control, and I’m certainly going to be arguing that very point shortly, but this doesn’t mean that there are not real struggles that come with it.

The enemy is real and there are real consequences to them.

In this case, the chief angel Michael, has to come and rescue this unnamed angel, and it is only at that point that he can come to minister to Daniel.

We have to be careful and not see every delay as some spiritual battle going on, however it is interesting to think that sometimes there is far more going on then we realise.

Chapter 11

But then we come to chapter 11, which it would seem is the message given by this unnamed angel.

A chapter like no other

It should be noted that this chapter is really like no other chapter in the whole bible.

While it is lumped together with the section known as apocalyptic, it i actually a bit different in that it isn’t relying on metaphors.

In fact many people point out how much it reads like history.

So much so, and given the accuracy of it, many people don’t think it is prophecy at all, but rather something written in the 2nd century BC after it all happened and just disguised as prophecy.

I’m not going to get into all the details of this debate (we’d be here all day if I did), but it is worth noting that even some evangelic scholars who have a high regard for prophecy and the Bible have concluded that it is actually a 2nd Century document.

While I recognise some good points on both sides of this debate, at the end of the day, based on my high regard for the inerrancy of scripture, I’m going to assume that it is what it seems to be, that is, a prophecy given in the 6th Century BC prior to it occuring.

(I’m happy to discuss the ins and outs of the argument afterwards if you are interested).

The battles

Now if you have your bibles in front of you, you probably realise that chapter 11 is quite long, and you might be worried that if I decide to go through this bit by bit then we’re going to be here a long time.

Well don’t worry, I’m not going to do that.

If you’re keen to get all the little bits of detail, then come and see me afterwards and I can give you a print out of a commentary that does this for you.

What I will do is show the main thrust of what is happening.

At the start of the chapter you’ll see Persia and Greece named.

After this, references become a little more vague, but by referencing other history documents we can quite clearly know who is being referred to.

Essentially, we skip over Persia very quickly other than noting that there will be four kings after the first (which is Cyrus).

We then also get a brief reference to Alexander the Great in verse 3, with the focus on the chapter mostly on what happens once his kingdom gets divided among the four generals.

As you can see on the map on the screen, while there are four areas, two make up the bulk of the area, and certainly the bulk of the area in which the Jews were concerned.

Those two are what this passage refers to the kingdom of the North and the kingdom of the South.

The north is the Seleucids and the south is the Ptolemies.

Now these two kingdoms really battle it out for power, and this chapter goes into quite a lot of detail - the detail in which I’m mostly going to skip over.

But it is this detail which if you care to study it, you can see just how close it fits with what we know from history.

Antiochus

The whole thing does however culminate with someone who is described as a contemptible person in verse 21.

Now if you were here when we looked at chapter 8, you might remember my discussion on a man called Antiochus IV Epiphanies, who was a Seleucid ruler (that is, the northern kingdom), and he severely persecuted the Jews.

Well, it seems quite clear that this is the person in picture starting in verse 21.

Verses 21 to 35 then give us quite a bit more information about what he gets up to.

However, once we get to verse 36, everything starts to get a little tricky as we sychronise what we know from history with the prophecy.

A lot of what is said, particularly after verse 40 does not seem to match what we know of Antiochus.

For instance, verse 42 says he will extend his power over many countries, however this is not known from history.

Now some people who have a low regard for the Bible and understand this being a 2nd Century BC document, suggest that the previous verses were history written in the guise of prophecy, and this is then just the authors attempt at actual prophecy, but he just gets it wrong.