HEAVENLY THRONE ROOM
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Introduction
Introduction
-{Daniel 7}
-Over the years there have been a plethora of books and videos that have come out that claim to be people who have had near death experiences and have been given glimpses of heaven or hell. These have become popular because people want to get some sort of knowledge about the seemingly unknowable great beyond. People want to find some comfort (or warning) through these. I would highly caution us on relying on these accounts to shape what we believe and where we find our solace. These experiences may or may not be true. But the accounts given are very subjective and I also believe that it is possible for the enemy to give false visions.
-There is only one place to find truth about heaven, hell, and the after-life, and that is Scripture, and I would not put much stock in any other account. The only problem is that the visions of heaven or hell are very miniscule and don’t seem to give a lot of detail. And there might be a reason for that—our human limitations on this earth can’t handle much more than what is given. God has revealed all He has revealed for a reason, and He has not given us any more, and what we do is live by faith that what He says is true even if He doesn’t give us all the details that we want. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you can take comfort in the fact that the glories of heaven are so wonderful that they are beyond human words. If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, you are warned that the terrors of hell are even more horrible than what humans can begin to even imagine.
-But every once in a while in Scripture God gave a vision to a prophet of the happenings in heaven, and Daniel 7 is one such vision. The vision actually begins on the earth where Daniel is standing by the turbulent, great sea and there are these four creatures/beasts/monsters that arise from the water one right after another. These beasts represent kingdoms of man that were present and would come in the future. The first beast that looked like a lion with eagle’s wings represents Babylon. The second beast that looked like a bear eating ribs represented the Medo-Persian empire. The third beast looked like a leopard with four wings and four heads represented the Greco-Macedonian empire. And the fourth beast didn’t look like anything man had ever seen and was massive and terrifying and it represented the Roman Empire. On the head of the fourth beast were 10 horns and a little horn came and plucked out three of them by the roots. The beasts represented the powers that be in the Ancient Near East that affected what happened to Israel. Israel would be under the dominion of all four beasts at some point.
-This was quite a weird dream or nightmare, but then the scene in the vision changes and Daniel is given a glimpse of what is going on in heaven during this time. God is not passively looking on as these governments come and go. God is not ignoring Israel or the happenings on earth. In fact, God in His heavenly throne room was executing the plan that He already had in place from eternity. But what this vision specifically addresses is that while all these kingdoms on earth come and go, God in heaven was preparing His kingdom for mankind. So here is a glimpse of some of the goings on in heaven and how it affected Israel and affects us and affects the future.
9 “As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire.
10 A stream of fire issued and came out from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.
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.
13 “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.
14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
-Let’s consider the details of this part of the vision (as we remember it was a continuation of the first part of the chapter).
-The vision moves from the sea on earth to a courtroom in heaven. In the Ancient Near East it was the king or royalty that would make important decisions and judgments and the king would sit on His throne and hand down the verdict. Now, the description of the throne itself sounds weird to us because it says that the throne has wheels, but the kings in the Ancient Near East had chariots that were also thrones by which they would travel and make their judgments.
-But the court being held and the king sitting in judgment is no ordinary throne room or monarch. This is a glimpse of God the Father sitting in the midst of His heavenly court surrounded by His heavenly counsel. As God has shared the work on earth with man, so God shares the work in heaven with His heavenly counsel, but God alone is sovereign and God alone reigns and God alone passes judgment.
-The description of what is going on in this vision is so telling of who God is and what God does. God is described as the Ancient of Days. It is so difficult for mankind to grasp the nature of God, especially the fact that God is eternal—He has no beginning or ending—He has always existed and will always exist. The only way that Daniel could describe this being who has existed before time itself is to call Him the Ancient of Days. As God is described in:
26 Behold, God is great, and we know him not; the number of his years is unsearchable.
-How do you describe the One whose years are unsearchable—He is the Ancient of Days. The way that God depicts Himself in this vision of Daniel is the same way that Jesus Christ Himself is described in:
14 The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire,
-There is no denying the deity of Christ as the description for Him was borrowed from this vision of Daniel. The Ancient of Days had clothing that was white as snow, depicting His purity and holiness and glory and grandeur. His hair was like pure wool that depicts old age, but not just the fact of many days, but the wisdom of many days—God has the wisdom of an Ancient of Days, the eternal wisdom of the One True God. The chariot-throne upon which He sat was a fiery flame. Fire was often associated with the presence of God (just think of the burning bush of Moses’ time). But fire is also a symbol of judgment and wrath. The Perfect Judge is sitting in court to hand down a perfect verdict upon the affairs of men, specifically the governments of mankind as depicted by the beasts.
-This eternal King who judges all the earth is served by an untold number of heavenly beings. The number 10000 is the largest number that the Hebrews had a word for, and so what is depicted is untold number of being who ministered to do His bidding, especially here in the sense of judgment. These beings are the ones that will carry out His sentences upon the wicked nations after the verdict has been determined. We this depicted throughout Scripture:
13 For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”
36 And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
15 And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, the Lord saw, and he relented from the calamity. And he said to the angel who was working destruction, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.
14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones,
15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
-God has an untold number of heavenly servants ready for the word from God to execute the judgment that the Eternal Judge decides upon mankind. In front of the judge the books were opened from which He would determine His judgment. The Bible speaks of two books when it comes to heavenly judgment. The first is the Book of Life—whether you are a citizen of heaven by faith in Jesus Christ. If your name is in the book then you are saved and you get to spend eternity with God. The other book is what I call the book of deeds. For final judgment it is the book of everyone’s words and attitudes and actions on earth from which your punishment or reward will be determined. In Daniel this is a book of the deeds of these nations, and these nations are found wanting and will eventually be destroyed.
-The focus of judgment in this particular visions is upon the fourth beast who had the ten horns on its head with a little horn that had a big mouth. This beast is the Roman Empire. It is possible that the Roman Empire is judged because the Caesars spoke boastfully about being deity. The little horn might be Nero it might be Domitian and because of them eventually the empire would fall. If it speaks of later times, it could mean the Antichrist who, like the Roman Caesars, claims great things for himself.
-V. 12 says that the other beasts had their power taken away but they themselves continued in some way for a time. This could be referring to how the previous empires were absorbed by the new empires, but then after the Roman empire fell they were all dissolved in a way. But the point is that these human governments are short-lived, and because of the injustice and wickedness by which they ruled, they came under the judgment of the Ancient of Days. But, whereas human governments are temporary, there would be a Ruler who would be given a kingdom by the Father that would last forever.
-In the same heavenly courtroom scene Daniel sees one enter the room who is described as being one like a son of man—that means that this person is human. But at the same time this person is not merely human, because He is described as coming with the clouds of heaven. That might not mean much to us in our day and age, but in the Ancient Near East it held a lot of significance. In many of the religions of the day the gods in general were described as riding the clouds. The Canaanite god Baal was often described as riding the clouds. But to offset that false notion, God made sure that people understood there was no God like Him and would use that epitaph for Himself, for example:
26 “There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in his majesty.
-So, here is depicted one like a man who is riding the clouds, a picture of deity. Here is one that is both man and God. There is only one such Man to ever have existed, and that is Jesus Christ. This is a picture of the coronation of Jesus Christ as being the king of God’s kingdom for all of eternity. And so, knowing who He was, Jesus would use these descriptions to describe Himself. Jesus often called Himself the Son of Man, and did so with a double entendre. Jesus was surely human, but He was also the Son of Man as described in Daniel. You also find Jesus describing Himself as riding on the clouds, which is His claim to deity. 21st century Americans would not pick up on this necessarily, but when you read Jesus saying He is coming on the clouds it is not literally that He is riding on clouds, but it is a reference to His work as God the Son. And when He used that description, the Jews knew exactly what He was saying. Take for example this long passage:
57 Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered.
58 And Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the courtyard of the high priest, and going inside he sat with the guards to see the end.
59 Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death,
60 but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward
61 and said, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’ ”
62 And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”
63 But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
64 Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
65 Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy.
66 What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.”
67 Then they spit in his face and struck him. And some slapped him,
68 saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?”
-Why would the High Priest charge Jesus with blasphemy? Because he knew exactly what Jesus was saying. By saying that He was the Son of Man who would come on the clouds He was claiming to be the One who is described in Daniel 7:13-14. You better believe that this passage is speaking about Jesus. He is King of kings and Lord of lords and He has been given a kingdom that transcends all current national identities. He has been given dominion and glory and a kingdom wherein all people and nations and languages will serve Him. His is a kingdom that is everlasting and will not pass away or be destroyed, unlike the nations of men like those represented by the beasts.
-The kingdom of Christ came during the time of the fourth beast, the Roman empire. It has been set up and is ever expanding. Like the vision in chapter 2 where the stone not cut out by hands destroys the statue of kingdoms and grows throughout the earth, so now Christ’s kingdom is expanding and will continue to do so until He returns.
-What this means for us is that no matter how good or wicked we might think a human government is, it is only temporary and will disappear someday (yes, even the US). We do not need to live our lives for the current world and nations, but we need to take on an eternal Kingdom view of life. Our perspective and worldview should not solely focus on the here and now, but on the things of eternity. Why? First, because Jesus desires us to live with that perspective and He deserves for us to live with that perspective. Secondly, because we are going to spend a lot more time living under the Kingdom of Christ than we will under any Kingdom of man. So that is where we invest ourselves.
-Christian, are you living more for the kingdom of today or the Kingdom of eternity—where are your loyalties and investments? But another question to ask is if you are in the Kingdom of Christ? Have you repented of your sin and trusted in Jesus Christ alone to pay the penalty of your sin?...