Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Well good morning everyone!

If we haven’t met, my name is Dan and I serve as one of the pastors at Park | Forest Glen.

It’s really good to be here today with you.

If this is your first time here today, or you first time watching us, today is a good day to start because we beginning a new sermon series today.

At Park, we see all of the Bible as relevant for the way we live…and believe that God has something for us in every part of the Bible…even those parts that can be challenge or confusing to understand.

And because we believe that all of the Bible matters, we want to preach And teach through all of the Bible.

So our typical pattern is that our pastors get together and we’re praying about what we should study next as a church.…and

we landed on the Book of Daniel.

Series Introduction

Now, if you’ve been a Christian for a while, or are at all familiar with the Bible you know the book of Daniel has a bit of a reputation.

It’s got some stories that are very familiar even in the broader culture…stories like Daniel and the Lion‘s Den.

We use phrases tokay that reference stories in Daniel…like, ‘the writing’s on the wall’, to talk about the how the end of something is being made clear…that comes from the book of Daniel!

And it also records some visions and dreams that Daniel either has or interprets…that claim to reveal pieces of the future.

And, to be honest, some of these visions sound a little out there.

Through the series, when we get to those vision, we’re really going to slow down and look closely at them because I think it will help best understand what Daniel is talking about AND it will help us make sense of some other sections of the Bible that seem to talk about the same kinds of things.

Bit here’s how I want to use our time today.

We’re just getting started and I know not all of know much about this book of Daniel so we’re going to take some time to get on the same page today.

We’re going to do a brief introduction to the book, talking about who Daniel was..what the book is all about…and how it fits into the larger story of the Bible.

And then we’re going to look at the two major themes that show up all throughout this book—and they are both present within the first two verses of chapter one…the themes of a wavering people but an unwavering God.

And my hope is, that we walk away today, we’re thinking about the power and goodness of God that shows up our lives…our own stories…even in the failure and brokenness that we carry with us.

So let me read the passage, I’ll pray and then we’ll get started.

Introduction to the Book of Daniel

Alright, let’s get started.

We’re going to start off with just some basic questions that will help us get our barrings with this book.

Who Was Daniel?

Here’s the first one, “Who was Daniel?”

What we know about him is really what we can piece together from v. 3 (Daniel 1:3).

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had surrounded the city of Jerusalem…and as part of conquering the city, he took some of the upper class back to his own empire…where they would be raised, trained, and function as like emissaries or diplomats for the regions they were originally from.

Daniel was a boy, probably around the age of 14 who was from the Royal family in the Kingdom of Judah.

When did Daniel write the book?

When did Daniel write the book?

Look at v. 1 (Daniel 1:1)

Historians are able to piece together from a bunch of different sources that this event took place around 609 BC.

The Babylonians were a very advanced civilization that were known for keeping meticulous records and so we’re able to pinpoint when a lot of this stuff started to take place.

Again, Daniel would have been about 14 years old when Nebuchadnezzar had him removed back to Babylon.

But, as we’ll talk more about though this series, over the years, Daniel became a very person in the empire; rising through the ranks and given more and more responsibility—he actually outlives king Nebuchadnezzar and is still in Babylon when the Persian empire takes control.

There is about a 75 year timeframe that is covered in the book and Daniel would have written this towards the end of his life around the years 533 BC.

And this may seem like we’re getting into the weeds here a little too much, but when we believe the book of Daniel was written is actually really big deal.

Remember, there are several major visions or prophecies…things that have not yet happened, but Daniel is seeing and describing.

At Park, we join with the long history of God’s people in believing that prophecy is real…that God is able to miraculously provide a vision about the future and does so from time to time.

In fact, a good chunk of the Old Testament is made up of what we call ‘prophetic literature’…it’s describing things that had not yet happened when they were written…prophecies pointing forward to the person and work of Jesus…and some of them that have still not happened.

But here’s where things get interesting.

Some of the prophecies in Daniel are so specific and spot on that most modern scholarship on the Bible takes it as self evident that the book of Daniel could not have been written until hundreds of years laters.

Let me give you an example.

In Daniel 7-8, there is a prophecy about a kingdom that is going to come from Greece and destroy the Person empire…it even goes as afar as describing the kind of conquerer this person would be and how his empire would expand…and to a T, the unanimous belief is that Daniel was describing Alexander the Great—one of the most famous military leaders of ALL time—and who more importantly did exactly what Daniel prophesied would happen…about 200 years after Daniel was alive.

And Daniel describes this with such detail that many scholars look at it and say, ‘There’s no way it could have been written BEFORE Alexander the Great!”

Because in order for it to have been written beforehand you would need to them believe that the prophecy was real…and you’d need to believe that the God who Daniel describes as bringing these things about was real…but it’s far easier to assume that those things can’t be true and therefore Daniel must have been written after the time of Alexander the great.

And the reason this is important is because depending on when you believe this book was written…Daniel is either writing down things that are revealed to him by God…telling real stories of real rescue…and recording events that will actually take place and therefore PROFOUNDLY matter for way we live and engage in the world around us...

OR

The book of Daniel is essentially fiction.

Inspirational fiction, maybe…but at best it would essentially be a form of religious propaganda…at worst, it could be intentional deception.

At Park, we believe the book of Daniel was written by Daniel and around 530 BC before any of the events he describes took place.

We’re actually going to be releasing a video this week that goes into some more detail about why we take that position.

You’ll be able to find that on our YouTube channel.

How does the Book of Daniel fit in with the rest of the Bible?

Alright, here’s the last question we’re goin got look at today.

“How does the Book of Daniel fit in with the rest of the Bible?”

And actually, I think this is one of the questions thats probably the most important we can ask when we’re looking at any book of the Bible…it gives us the context and sets up what’s happening and why.

Look at v. 1 again (Daniel 1:1-2

Now, like I said earlier, that gives us a good time stamp of when all this is going on, but it doesn’t tell us anything about why this is going on.

To see that, we actually have to step back to for a moment and look at the larger story of the Old Testament.

And I’m going to fly over this really quickly—and we’ll just look at the first 5 books of the Old Testament…the Pentateuch.

Genesis

The book of Genesis shows tells the story of God’s creation—the creation of the world around us, but also the creation of his People—the people of Israel—a people he established to be his ambassadors to the nations around them.

They were supposed to live in away that told others who God was and what he was like.

Exodus

The book of Exodus describes how God’s people grew, suffered, but were rescued from Egypt and brought to a new land where God would provide for them and they would continue on mission of making God known to the world around them.

Leviticus and Numbers

In the books of Leviticus and numbers, we read the covenant that God made with Israel…where He shows them how they ought to live in the world around them…and spelled out the ways they were supposed to be distinct from the world around them…not because they were special or better, but because God is Holy - and their distinctness was to be a reflection of God’s holiness.

Here’s the point…God’s desire was to use his people as the primary way of revealing himself to the world.

Deuteronomy

That brings us to the book of Deuteronomy…maybe the most important book in the Old Testament.

It is essentially a written version of a sermon the Moses gave to God’s people before they entered the promise land.

He reminded them again what they were supposed to do…how they were to be a Light to the Nations…they were to put God’s goodness, compassion, kindness…His Holiness on display in the world around them and they were supposed to show their loyalty to God through their obedience to His commands; that they would live the way God had called and created them to live.

This brings us to Deuteronomy chapter 28.

And if the book of Deuteronomy is the most important book in the Old Testament…chapter 28 is probably the most important chapter in Deuteronomy in terms of understanding everything else that happens in the rest of the Old Testament including the book of Daniel.

Deuteronomy 28

In chapter 28, Moses explains to God’s people that as they enter into the promised land, they are standing on the cusp of great blessing or cursing.

That if they would remain loyal to God…to worship Him alone…to serve and honor Him…and not be lured off by the the false gods of the people in the land…if they would go on the live out the commandments that God had given them…practice obedience….they

would experience great JOY and BLESSING.

They would experience life the way God had intended it to be lived and enjoyed.

BUT

If they would turn from the commandments…if they were to waver back and forth between worshiping God on one day and the other gods the next day…if they were to pick and choose the commandments they wanted to follow…if they were to pledge their loyalty to someone or something else…this would bring about a curse.

The land of promise would become like a prison…they would be harassed, unprotected….carted of as slaves…it would lead to suffering…because of their rejection of the life God had prepared for them.

It would lead to an exile…where they would be expelled from the land God had provided for them.

Moses says it this way in v. 47 (Deut.

28:47-50)

Deuteronomy 28:47–50 (ESV)

Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything.

And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.

The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.

And, spoiler alert, the rest of the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy onward is the story of how God’s people essentially chose the curse.

How they slowly but surely lost their loyalty to God…and started to look elsewhere…they were steppin‘ out on that relationship.

Now, from time to time, God would speak to the people through prophets.

People like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Jeremiah and a few others were sent as messengers to God’s people to call them to turn from the their way of life and return back to God…to be loyal to HIM…to return to a lifestyle of obedience…and that if they did not…it would bring about the curses we read just read in Deuteronomy 28.

And while over and over again, the Old Testatment affirms that God is slow to anger and abounding in love…there comes a time when His Justice demands judgement—even over his people.

And two nations are brought forward to do exactly what is spelled out in Deuteronomy 28.

The Assyrians and Babylonians…nations that have been raised up and are on the world stage because God will use them to bring judgement on His people.

A Wavering People

And this brings us back to Daniel 1:1 (Dan.