The Conclusion of the Matter

Our Theme for 2021 is “Redeeming the Time.”

We have been going through the book of Daniel and talking about how God preserves His people and guides them through difficult times.

Daniel is a book comprised of stories, visions and stories of visions.

The structure of Daniel is a “chiasm” which means that the early chapters mirror the later chapters and the climax of the book is in the center.

The central message of Daniel is that God is God, and we are to align ourselves with Him.

We also talked about God’s faithfulness and how we learn to be faithful by mirroring God’s character.

Just as King Darius did when Daniel was in the lion’s den; he mirrored the faith of Daniel.

Oh, and Happy Father’s Day everyone!

Speaking of mirroring - we honor Father’s today because you are our examples of God’s father heart to us.

Maybe your father wasn’t the best example of God to you, but you have fathers in the faith who are there to encourage and affirm you.

Dads, you have a really important role of imparting identity and destiny to your children.

We are going to be looking at identity and destiny today as we look at Daniel chapters 7 and 8.

Chapter seven is the bookend to chapter three where Daniel interprets king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

In the dream he saw a statue with four parts, representing four kingdoms which became increasingly stronger but less precious and pure in their composition, until finally it was iron mixed with clay which is unstable.

Another kingdom, the Kingdom of God, was the rock which toppled all of those kingdoms and then grew into a mountain.

Remember that! Because things are about to get ugly.

And when things get ugly, we need to always come back to the conclusion of the matter.

Daniel 7:28 ESV

28 “Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color changed, but I kept the matter in my heart.”

As men, we like to get to the bottom line; we’re usually pretty much to the point.

Except when we are explaining how something works, then we get very detailed.

The point is, that much of what we are going to talk about today, Daniel did not understand and you probably won’t understand it all either.

But what he did understand, he remembered and he kept it in his heart.

In other words, it changed him and guided his thoughts and responses from that point on.

He learned some lessons.

We don’t have time to read all of these chapters and it would probably bore most of you and the rest of you would be thinking I’m moving way too fast.

So let’s identify some lessons that we can learn;

First, a history lesson.

Then a moral lesson.

Finally a faith lesson.

It’s easy to believe God when times are good, but how do we find faith in difficult times?

We accept that God knows far more than we can comprehend.

We learn to trust God and to follow the lessons that He gives us.

Time and Providence will show that God is working regardless of how things appear.

A History Lesson

Times and seasons come in waves.

Daniel 7:2–7 ESV

2 Daniel declared, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. 3 And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 4 The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. 5 And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, ‘Arise, devour much flesh.’ 6 After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. 7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.

Four beasts came out of the sea.

The sea is an image of chaos.

A vast expanse of time and nothingness.

But God created order out of chaos.

And then satan corrupted that order.

And so patterns emerge in time and in history

Sometimes orderly and yet somewhat random.

I spent some time on a sailing ship early in my ministry. One of the things that I learned is that waves have a certain rhythm. In this instance, when traversing the waves, every fourth wave would be bigger than the other three. One I learned this, I could brace myself for the big one.

I looked it up on the internet, and waves really do come in sets. when wave patterns travelling in different directions interact, it creates a pattern where a larger wave comes at regular intervals, though the number of those intervals may change from 2-15.

History has patterns too, and once you learn to recognize those patterns, you can better prepare for what is coming. Why? Because history repeats itself. What is happening at any given moment in history already has happened and will probably happen again, just like the waves.

History tells us that four empires came and went.

The Babylonian empire was symbolized by winged lions.

The Medo-Persian empire was aggressive like a bear and the three ribs were three prominent conquests - Babylon, Egypt and Asia Minor.

Then we have Greece represented by the four-winged leopard because its armies moved really fast, taking over the world in less than a decade.

And then we have Rome which is some kind of monster with horns and lots of teeth. Rome was known for its brutality in an effort to establish order.

All of this bizarre imagery is typical of apocalyptic literature.

The second half of Daniel and the Book of Revelation are probably the best examples of this in the Bible.

It’s like art, not everything is meant to be taken literally.

More important is the impression that it creates, how does it impact you emotionally and what does it make you think about?

We often think of apocalypse as being the end of the world.

But in fact, apocalypse has happened, is happening in the time of Daniel and will happen again.

Apocalypse means “the unveiling” of something new.

It’s not really the end, but the start of something new.

Or you could say that is the end of an age, but the beginning of another.

God is showing Daniel that He already knows the next 500 years!

Does knowing that God knows the future help you to face the present?

It should give you some perspective.

Little people make big threats.

Daniel 7:11–12 ESV

11 “I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. 12 As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

When King Nebuchadnezzar wouldn’t acknowledge God he became like a beast.

It has power, but not as much as you might think, because most of its power is just words and intimidation.

This person who is the power behind the beast is not really powerful at all.

It’s just a “Napoleon Complex” exaggeration meant to to distract you from noticing his lack of stature.

Or as in the Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

The beast is destined for destruction.

Remember that when you start to feel intimidated!

That brings us to our final history lesson:

Good always wins in the end.

I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but our stories are still being written.

If good has not yet prevailed, then it’s not really the end.

Why did God want Daniel to know about the next four empires?

Because the Jews who went into exile were tempted to think that their story was over. - they had failed and God had lost!

But in reality it was just a cycle of history like the flood or like going into Egypt and coming out again.

God would allow a dormant period in the cycle of time, but through it he would preserve a people for eternity.

So who are these people and what makes them different?

A Moral Lesson

God allows challenges to His authority

We are still talking about the little horn with the big mouth.

We have already said that he is not really so powerful after all, so we are not going to be intimidated.

That is the big picture perspective, but in the moment it really seems like a big deal.

For a moment, it is going to seem like this guy is really invincible.

He’s going to challenge God.

He’s going to wear out or wear down the saints.

He’s going to move the goalposts, change the rules, make them up as he goes.

Why would God ever allow this?

Because He’s God and He knows the end from the beginning.

God is not threatened by challenges to His authority.

Sure, He is grieved by rebellion and disobedience.

But God knows that evil can never win because it’s very nature is destruction.

Selfishness can never win because it only knows how to consume and when it has consumed everything else, it will consume itself.

The devil will always overplay his hand because he lacks any self-restraint.

It’s like the gambler who thinks he is just clever enough to beat the house and walk away.

Or the criminal who insists that this is the last time and then he’s going to quit.

He forgets that the rush of adrenaline that he gets from winning or from getting away with something also makes him feel invincible and stupid enough to to do it again.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for a person caught in an addiction or in deception is to let them learn for themselves.

They have to see for themselves where that path leads.

They have to hit bottom, before they will accept help.

Sometimes they have to do it repeatedly.

God allows evil to prosper for a time.

Historically speaking, scholars believe that this prophesy was fulfilled by a Greek ruler named Antiochus IV.

He is the one who persecuted the Jews beyond what anyone else had done up until that time.

He assassinated the High Priest and declared himself to be high priest.

His soldiers slaughtered 80,000 Jewish men, women and children at one time.

He desecrated the altar by sacrificing a pig and then erected a statue of Zeus in the holy place.

I’m sure that the Jews were wondering if God had completely forsaken them.

Anyone who had read Daniel might know that God had already foretold all of this.

You can imagine the comfort that Daniels writing would have been to those who had returned from exile only to be occupied by one army after another.

But it is also not the end of the story.

The appropriate question is not “why” but “how long?!”

Psalm 13:1–2 ESV

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

God is faithful!

God will deliver His people.

God has promised to send a Savior.

Before their can be salvation, we need to recognize our need for God.

Now God is not mean - He’s not torturing us until we beg for mercy.

He’s letting evil do what evil wants to do so that we genuinely see evil as evil!

We blame God for suffering but God is just letting us see where our path leads.

Romans 6:23 TPT

23 For sin’s meager wages is death, but God’s lavish gift is life eternal, found in your union with our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One.

The real question is - how long is this going to take?

How long will it take until you finally give up trying to control what you cant control?

How long is it going to take until you figure out that everyone else is not the problem?

How long until you admit that your life is out of control and that you need God’s help every moment of every day.

For the Jews it was about seven years from the time that the High Priest was executed.

Or about three and a half years from the time that the temple was desecrated until it was rededicated.

Judas Maccabees led a revolution in which the people took back their city and the temple and it was miraculous!

The light in the temple never went out during the eight days of rededication even though they only had enough oil for one day.

And that brings us to the final lesson - the decision to trust God.

A Faith Lesson

Daniel 8:18–19 ESV

18 And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. 19 He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end.

God is able to make you stand.

Daniel is frightened by everything that he is seeing.

Keep in mind that this was before the lion’s den and before the writing on the wall.

Babylon is fighting the Medes and the Persians and Daniel is getting the revelation that Medo-Persia is going to come together as one empire and win.

Daniel is probably wondering, “so when is the Kingdom of God going to happen?”

The answer apparently is “not for a long time.”

I don’t know abut you, but I would have a hard time being OK with that.

I want life to be like a sitcom where everything gets worked out before the end of a half-hour episode.

I think Daniel had a hard time with it too.

Ever had one of those days where you just wanted to sleep and not wake up?

Daniel gets “touched by an angel” and he snaps out of it.

I know that seems like a small detail, but it speaks hope to me.

Jude 24 NRSV

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing,

While the Toronto revival was happening here, I was in Denmark and a similar revival was breaking out. People were falling in the meetings and even though most of the Danes had never seen it before, it was becoming quite common. I went forward for prayer in one meeting and I started to fall over but I didn’t go down. I would just sway from one side to the other at an angle that seemed impossible to maintain.

I was used to strange things happening in meeting by that time, but I had never experienced this. So I asked God, “What is going on here?

God showed me how I was so afraid of failing Him. The revival had made me so aware of my own sinful nature and my human frailty. I just couldn’t repent enough, I was still a sinner. That’s when God gave me this experience, along with the scripture “I am able to keep you from falling!”

Evil, sin and suffering all have their limit.

Daniel 8:22–23 ESV

22 As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. 23 And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise.

Chapters 7 and 8 are two different visions that cover pretty much the same information except chapter 8 simple reiterates much of what was said about the middle two empires.

And it particularity zeros in on one evil character which fits the description of Antiochus Epiphanies whom we talked about earlier.

But the language of the text sounds like it could be talking about Roman times or even end times events yet to come.

Remember that history happens in cycles.

So a prophecy may have more than one meaning or fulfillment.

Isaiah prophesied about things that would happen in his day, but the same prophecies were recognized and applied to Jesus the Messiah.

As we will see next week, some of the things prophesied by Daniel were applied to the second century BC

and then again a century after Christ

and would be interpreted throughout church history and also describing events that were happening or those yet to come.

But I want you to pay attention to the pattern.

Once sin and rebellion reach a certain point, God lets it go so that it will be seen for what it really is.

Sin, evil suffering all has a limit - it will eventually destroy itself.

So if you see the pattern or if you are in the pattern - what do you do?

Trust God to do what you can not do.

Antiochus was a type of what is later called “antichrist.’

It is essential a demonic counterfeit of the Messiah Jesus Christ.

Whatever Jesus is or does, antichrist is the opposite.

2 Thessalonians 2:3–4 ESV

3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

Paul is saying that before Jesus comes back, there will be a counterfeit.

He will essentially do what Antiochus did centuries before, only this time Jesus Himself will appear to show who’s the counterfeit.

This is not just human behavior, this is a spiritual battle and it requires spiritual weapons.

The scripture says the he will take on God and God will defeat him.

The lesson we learn from this is that some battles are not ours to fight, except what we do out of obedience to God.

If you are trusting in your own strength, your own intelligence or your own spirituality to get by; you’re not going to pass this test.

But you don’t need to be afraid either - God’s got this!

He told us all these things would happen a long time ago.

Just trust God, even if it looks like we’re losing, we win in the end.

So the conclusion of the matter is this:

A history lesson - that history repeats itself and just because a prophecy had been fulfilled doesn’t meant it won’t happen again.

A moral Lesson - sometimes God allows evil and suffering for a time so that we see the result an learn from it.

A faith lesson - the best way to navigate all of this is to stay close to God and trust Him.

Questions for reflection

What is the bottom line for you? What lessons have you learned that you hold on to in times of difficulty? What lesson is God teaching you right now that should serve you well in the future?

How to you feel about God allowing evil and suffering? Are there patterns in your life, your work or your family that God may allowing so that people will come to realize the path that they are on? How might your prayers help in that process?

Does the thought of apocalypse scare you? Are you afraid of life as we know it coming to an end? Then ask God to also unveil to you what He is beginning. What glories will be revealed in the age to come?