Daniel: Kingdoms Rise, Kingdoms Fall
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Introduction
Introduction
Kingdom collapse.
Recap
Recap
The events of Daniel take place between 605-530ish BC
God had sent Israel into exile because of their failure to remain faithful to God. Yet the book of Daniel shows us that God remains faithful to his own, even when they are in “enemy territory”
Daniel was intricately involved in living in that ungodly society, yet he showed his allegiance to God in negotiating a way to stick to God’s laws. Because he couldn’t get access to ceremonially clean food, he traded the rich food & drink sacrificed to idols, for vegetables and water. God blessed Daniel and his mates in this effort.
Although Daniel is a hero in this book, it is worth being reminded that the real hero of these stories, and the prophecies, is the Lord God. God is the one who is protecting and helping his people. All these stories would be much less interesting if God hadn’t come though to bless them when they take their stand. We’ll keep reminding ourselves of this in the future.
We also were reminded that we too are God’s people in exile. The human race was exiled from the Garden of Eden and we are waiting for the day when our exile is over, and we come to our home in the city of God. The New Testament describes us as exiles and sojourners because we are citizens of Heaven, belonging to Jesus Christ, the people of God - but we are living in enemy territory - where Satan, Sin & Death still hold sway.
Human Power will Fail (v1-13)
Human Power will Fail (v1-13)
Here’s Nebuch… at the top of his game: He has a massive kingdom, he’s had some impressive military victories, he has the best and brightest minds of the empire on staff. It’s early days for his reign, he has plenty of years ahead of him. He looks like he has it made. He should have no trouble sleeping right?
Nup!
In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep.
He was up at night. Presumably after a few nights of this he was starting to become a nervous wreck! “I just want to sleep!”
So, he has the best and brightest on staff. They’re meant to be in touch with the divine! They should be able to help him out!
So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king, he said to them, “I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.”
These are meant to be the best - they talk a big game about their power and their gods. Now Nebu has come to put them to the test.
It’s the modern day equivalent of having all the experts - the scientists, the researchers, the analysts and whatnot, all at his fingertips, and he’s going to put the to work to discover the meaning of the dream. He’s been keeping them around, feeding and housing them, surely he can get some value out of them?
Anyway, the cohort of “wise” men answer:
Then the astrologers answered the king, “May the king live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”
Seems innocent enough! “Tell us the dream and we’ll give you the interpretation.”
But Nebu doesn’t want to be taken for a ride. If he tells them the dream, they could make up any any old interpretation that suits the story. Some sources indicate that he couldn’t remember the dream properly, so he actually needed them to tell him the content of the dream to help him get it straight in his own mind, let alone interpret the meaning for him.
He is probably convinced that it is a divine message from the gods, and so there has to be at least one amongst his herd of wizards who is in touch with the right gods or spirits to get the divine message. Right?
But strangely, when put to the test this way, they are rather reticent to help - not least because there is the threat of death if they get it wrong.
Eventually they respond with:
The astrologers answered the king, “There is no one on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among humans.”
So, to recap, here is the greatest man on earth, king over a vast empire with incredible power, cannot be helped by the wisest and most educated people you could find!
Which in turn also indicates that their gods were powerless to help to! They were meant to be in touch with the other side and have access to secrets - yet they were coming up trumps.
If they couldn’t solve the problem, no one on earth could! So Neb. responds, essentially:
“Whats the good of all these “wise men”? They must all be charlatans and ticksters - kill them all!”
What a pertinent reminder that human power has it’s limitations! We might like think ourselves more enlightened and intelligent than those old superstitious “primitives” but you know what, we’re still in the same position! Not only is it elitist to think you’d be any smarter if you were in that position, it’s also comon today - Pick any country and you will find flawed leaders in charge, surrounded by a cloud of people jockeying for access to power where they can provide their insight and interpretations of current events. But when things go south, as we’ve seen in recent events, nobody can fix it! Every “solution” only creates more problems.
We are only human. Even the best of us are still flawed people. Even if you get the best and brightest in a room to solve the hardest questions, they will never be able fix everything.
Humans are limited creatures, and on top of that we have the problem of being twisted by the effects of sin in our lives.
We are limited in what we can see,
in what we can understand,
in what we can accomplish.
We’re so limited that we can’t even chose what color hair grows out of our head!
We try and compensate for all our inability with medicine and technology and education and power and money. But there’s only so far that those things will take us.
Humanity cannot secure life for itself.
We need divine intervention to solve our greatest problems. We need someone outside our brokenness and limitations to come in with what we truly need.
We cannot even understand a word from God unless God helps us by sending His Spirit to illuminate the pages of the Bible and have the veil removed from our eyes.
God sent a man to Neb. to remove the veil and reveal the message!
God Provides the Mediator & Message (v14-28)
God Provides the Mediator & Message (v14-28)
News goes out to round up the whole cohort of wise men - counselors, magicians, priests, etc. send them to the chopping block.
When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact. He asked the king’s officer, “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him.
I’m sure it was a lot more dramatic in person, but the way the text writes it makes Daniel seem so non-cahlont. “Oh, may I ask why we’re going to be put to death? Oh, really… would you mind pressing pause on that for a minute and see if I can sort something out?”
A question that may come to mind is, why wasn’t Daniel involved before? Well, who knows. He may not have been involved in those high level discussions, as he was pretty new to the palace at that stage. Or maybe he just was trying to stay out of it initially thinking that it was out of his wheelhouse.
Now that the life of his friends, and in fact all the wise men of Babylon, Daniel acts as a mediator - twice actually- stepping in between both Neb. wrath & God’s people (in the mates), the also mediating between God & Neb.
So Dan secures the extension of time and turns to God for help! He enlists his friends to pray with him to provide the interpretation of the dream.
Our faithful God responds!
He hears their prayer!
He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven
Even though it was Neb. who was making threats to kill them, these guys turned to God to protect them. They asked for His mercy.
Even though they had been exiled from their home country by God, as a nation they were going through a severe trial, but they knew the Lord was their hope, so they turned to Him, and the Lord delivered - the mystery was revealed.
How does Daniel respond? The right response to God’s revelation! - Praise & Honour & worship to the Lord!
and said:
“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.
He changes times and seasons;
he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.
He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what lies in darkness,
and light dwells with him.
I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors:
You have given me wisdom and power,
you have made known to me what we asked of you,
you have made known to us the dream of the king.”
Daniel knows that despite Neb. seemingly great power - God can give or take away that position. God is the one with the power & knowledge, as evidenced by Neb. not being able to find peace or understanding of his dream.
Daniel also knows that despite all his own wisdom and position and education, all he has came from God. The revelation of the mystery come from God, not Daniels own abilities.
So God provided what was needed at every stage. Of course the whole affair is God’s plan, so that Daniel would be there to bring God’s message, but nevertheless, God likes to show up where human ability runs out so he can demonstrate his power.
It’s when we’re at the end of ourselves, when we’ve finally given up trying to wrangle reality and bend it to our will, there we are now ready to see how God might acts.
Just as God sent a mediator to bring a message to Neb. God has sent his people many mediating messengers throughout history - the Prophets namely. But none of them were able to secure any long lasting change, that is, until Jesus showed up some 600 years after Daniel. He was our mediator, who brought the Good News of God to us, that God’s kingdom was being established, and that no one needed to fear God’s wrath if only they would repent and put their trust in Jesus Christ!
Even now, Jesus is the one who stands between God and us, sitting at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.
We don’t need to fear the wrath of God because Jesus has dealt with it on our behalf by dying in our place to make atonement for our sins.
Like Daniel did, Jesus stepped in at the perfect moment to save lives, but not only the lives of a few select mates, but of anyone who would come to him! All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved!
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
God’s Kingdom will Dominate (v29-45)
God’s Kingdom will Dominate (v29-45)
So back to Daniel, he goes before the king and lays out the message. The dream content is:
“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
So there’s a statue with the four different materials.
Now, we get the interpretation:
Each of those different sections represents a different kingdom, starting with Neb. at the top. Gold - Silver - Bronze - Iron & clay.
But then a rock fly in and brings the whole thing down, a stone from God, the seed of his new kingdom.
This is a vision of their future, about things that will happen in the time to come.
So the question the is Statue of 4 kingdoms? Who are they?
Option 1: Maybe the 4 kings featured in Daniel? Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus. But it’s not a neat fit.
Option 2: The 4 Empires before Christ? Babylon, Medo-persian, Greek & Roman. Not a neat fit, especially with all the shenanigans that happen in-between Greek & Romans.
Option 3: Longer term, 4 era’s of humanity? Really difficult to nail down, especially seeing as we live in the middle of history ourselves.
Option 2 is certainly my pick, and the one that fits most naturally with the text, so it gets my vote!
But here’s the thing - it doesn’t matter who or what each section means exactly which because what is important is the meaning of the message. We’re not supposed to sit back and ponder if we’re living in the kingdom of bronze or iron, we’re meant to listen to the conclusion, which explains the rest!
Which kingdoms are meant here is not important from our place this far removed in history - what matter to us is the rock that destroys those succession of earthly kingdoms and establishes the kingdom of God!
The powerful and mighty Neb would give way to a succession of other kingdoms, but eventually it would all collapse and come to nothing. Literally blown away in the wind!
Neb. with all his power and might was still going to die and give way to another. It would all come to nothing in the end. Even now Neb. is just a historical figure with no real impact on anyone’s life.
Kingdoms Rise and Kingdom’s fall but the Lord will establish his kingdom, and everlasting Kingdom!
“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.
“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
God’s kingdom will destroy and overtake all other kingdoms. But is starts small, like a stone carved out of a mountain that grows into a mountain that takes over the whole earth!
It is like a mustard seed, while although it is a tine seed, can grow into a see that covers the whole garden.
From little things big things grow.
Jesus was an unassuming tradie in Palestine who turned out to be the son of God!
He started to teach and preach, to herald in the kingdom
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Then he died, rose from the dead, and the kingdom exploded across the world! It’s all over! Yet It’s not fully taken over yet, there’s still hold outs. But they will all come to an end soon enough, Jesus will triumph - every knee will bow and tongue confess.
Every succession of rulers and powers will come to an end. We have experience this with our own quick succession of prime ministers - Rudd, Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbul, Morrison. (Morrison better watch his back because predecessors haven’t done well going beyond 3 years! )
But empires will come and go - Han Dynasty, Mongols, Ottomans, Britain, Soviet Union, United States, League of Nations, EU, UN. It will all end.
Other successive powers will end too - Print Media, Radio, TV, Internet, Hollywood, Silicon valley.
At one time or another there are massive powers that seem to tower over society, but they will all fall - and COVID showed us how shockingly fragile everything is.
It’s a great reminder that we belong to the kingdom of God, our trust and devotion is to him above all others! We don’t pin our hope and identity on the survival of any these earthly powers - only Jesus.
How should we Respond? (v46-49)
How should we Respond? (v46-49)
Now with this fresh news and the interpretation finally unveiled, Neb. is very grateful:
Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”
The king’s response - Temporary allegiance with words and nice actions and next moment he’s setting up idols.
Daniel & Friends response - Faithfully serving in the midst of exile, while looking out for each other.
Neb. reminds me of myself. One moment I’m on fire for God, and then the next I’m doing the very things God told me not to do and feel like I’m a terrible Christian. I’m sure many of you know that same experience.
But let me press a little deeper and say that Nebo isn’t here just a stumbling believer who’s just battling with his soul, No! he is someone who has come face to face with the revelation & power of God, and then after an initial response of allegiance, turns back to his self obsession. Maybe you are someone who identifies with this, who has seen God at work on your life, or in the lives of others. Maybe you heard the Word of God and you were convinced that it was the truth! But then instead of giving your life to God in response, you’re trying to live a life between masters. A little God on the side, but I’ll do what I like the rest of the time.
A little religion to keep the fear and anguish at bay, but not enough to actually see your life transformed.
Why?
What is to be gained by serving yourself? Are you satisfied? Has it got you anywhere? What are you doing with your life?
If you are trying to live a life that suits you, that meets your idea of comfort or success, then you’re flushing your life down the toilet. You’re wasting it. You’re building on sand.
Like Neb. it will all just blow away in the wind.
Don’t waste your life!
Why are you waiting?
What are you waiting for?
A life lived in service of yourself is vanity. It is utterly useless.
You will be always dissatisfied, because you will never find lasting joy.
You will be full of regret and despair when you discover that worshiping yourself has not made you divine.
You will come to nothing.
But, the good news is that building on the Rock of Christ is building for eternity. Only there can our actions ripple through eternity. Building earthly kingdoms tumble and fall, but building in Christ lasts forever!
I think we ought to follow the example of Daniel, which was also the example of Christ, remain faithful to God in the midst of a crooked generation and care for those around you. There your efforts can have everlasting impact.
Be faithful to Jesus, and Jesus will be faithful to you:
“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.