Unending Sovereignty - Daniel 5
Indestructible Kingdom • Sermon • Submitted
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· 52 viewsBig Idea: Trust God's unending sovereignty when everything changes but evil stays the same.
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How many of you like change? Over the past few months, we have endured a lot of change as a society...
Author Ross Douthat wrote an op-ed piece for the NY Times this week titled, “Waking Up in 2030” in which he suggests the societal change of the past 3 months has accelerated to the degree that what typically happens in a 10 year period will likely happen over the next year or two.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/opinion/sunday/us-coronavirus-2030.html
He writes, “This means that when the coronavirus era finally ends, there will be a Rip Van Winkle feeling — a sense of having been asleep and waking to normality, except that we will have time-traveled and the normality will resemble the year 2030 as it might have been without the virus, rather than just a simple turn to 2021 or 2022.”
He cites a number of areas of change that have been accelerated by the economic recession, the coronavirus itself, supreme court rulings and other legislation, and social reform changes:
“Colleges were expecting a grim landscape in the later 2020s, because 2010s birthrates were so low, but now a decline in foreign enrollment and an acceleration of online learning will threaten [some colleges] much sooner. “
“In religion, [note: Douthat is a generally conservative Catholic] the pandemic may strengthen certain forms of faith, but that won’t save institutional churches from... falling donations and shrunken attendance. Smaller churches may suffer most, for the same tight-margins, high-overhead reasons that restaurants are going under. But big religious bodies like Roman Catholicism and the Southern Baptists will probably decline as well, in a hurried-up version of the decay that awaited them with the next decade’s worth of generational turnover.”
“A political shift is certainly accelerating within elite institutions, where the younger generation is trying to establish… a new set of standards and boundaries for behavior and opinion, that otherwise would have advanced more slowly, with more [push-back], over the next 10 years.”
Overall, he says the pandemic moves us more quickly to [centralized power], weakened [small business] and growing [demand for people to think exactly the same way].
He didn’t mention this in his article, but we could also add the example of two major supreme court rulings in favor of abortion and the redefinition of traditional gender identities within the last 3 weeks.
We are experiencing MASSIVE change on a societal level… But then on a personal level, think about how much change you are constantly being subjected to these days:
Kids… what school is going to look like this fall is constantly unknown and changing...
A lot of our jobs have changed dramatically… and there is some uncertainty with how it will look...
The guidance on mask-wearing seems to change with the wind...
By 2021, we could have a largely different congress and government to answer to… apparently Kanye West is now running for president (announced on Twitter yesterday)...
And yet with all this change, the trajectory of sin generally seems to stay the same.
We battle the same temptations in different forms...
True Christ-centered beliefs are viewed as suspect as they have always been in most parts of the world…
God is made small and our idols are made big.
Everything changes… but the evil stays the same.
How do we respond when we see that happening? When everything changes… but the fallenness of the world around us stays the same.
Do we grow anxious? Fearful? Angry?
Do we fight to keep things like they always were? Do we fall into a nostalgic, “I miss the good ole days when...” kind of curmudgeon attitude where we are just complaining and feeling defeated all the time?
Do we give in to the changing tides of society and ride along with them?
Do we retreat in an effort to create our own little utopia with our family, away from all those evil people out there… failing to recognize that we are not the solution to our own problem?
What do we do when everything changes, but Evil stays the same?
Will we hold tight to our undivided allegiance to the indestructible kingdom of God when the world is rapidly changing around us, and but seems to be getting farther and farther from his ideal?
That’s what we want to look at today from Daniel 5. Here’s our Big Idea for today:
Big Idea: Trust God's unending sovereignty when everything changes but evil stays the same.
Big Idea: Trust God's unending sovereignty when everything changes but evil stays the same.
There are sermons that move the ball forward and challenge our thinking or teach us something new… and then there are sermons that just set our heart on what we’ve already seen in God’s word so that we can have courage to walk into a new week… today is that second type of sermon...
Some Sundays we just need to be reminded that God is still on the throne… he isn’t shaken… his plan isn’t altered… and we can trust him to keep working.
Trust God’s unending sovereignty when everything changes but evil stays the same.
Your Bibles are open to Daniel 5...
We are going to see today that chapter 5 is really a summary of the themes and a mirror of events that have already happened...
So this will sort of be a good heart check… are we applying God’s word in real time?
Is the week-to-week hearing of God’s word transforming our hearts?
Daniel 5 opens with a new King… look at v. 1 - King Belshazzar… and up to this point in the book, we’ve been talking about life under King Nebuchadnezzar...
Now if we look at the history that’s not recorded in the Bible, a lot has happened between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5: [show timeline]
Nebuchadnezzar died, and his son Evil-Merodach took the throne (sounds like a villain from the Avengers)...
Evil-Merodach was murdered two years later… and Nebuchadnezzar’s son-in-law Neriglassar took the throne...
He reigned for about 4 years and died naturally… and Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson Labashi-Marduk took the throne...
He was assassinated after a SHORT time on the throne… and the people who assassinated him put a guy named Nabonidus in his place...
Now it’s a little unclear, but Nabonidus COULD have married either Nebuchadnezzar’s wife or Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter… she’s the queen that is going to show up in our story today...
And she has a son named Belshazzar… Belshazzar may have been Nebuchadnezzar’s direct son (if the queen was first his wife… in that case Nabonidus adopted Belshazzar)...
OR Belshazzar could have been Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson TRHOUGH his daughter and Nabonidus…
Bottom Line: In SOME way, Belshazzar is in the direct family line of Nebuchadnezzar… and there’s been a LOT of political turnover in the past 20 years…
So Nabonidus was put on the throne of Babylon, but he wanted to go Arabia… and history would confirm that he made Belshazzar the Regent King over Babylon. Belshazzar is in this position for 12 years or so… and Daniel 5 takes place at the very END of his reign…
by the events of chapter 5, Nabonidus has been already captured by the Medes and Persians while in Arabia, thousands of miles away…
A new empire is being established… secured… the winds of change are coming again…
And now the Medes and Persians, under the rule of a general named Gubaru (who is possibly the same guy who is called “Darius the Mede” in this chapter… their soldiers are knocking on the door of Babylon this very night.
As the account of Daniel 5 unfolds, history would tell us that the Medes are sneaking through the canals of the Euphrates River that brought water into Babylon’s fortified walls… and they are in sneaking in to assassinate Belshazzar...
What we are reading about today is literally the LAST NIGHT of the Babylonian empire.
And we are going to see that GOD is in SOVEREIGN control of ALL of it.
A LOT of change… evil staying the same… but God’s sovereignty is unending.
As we look at verse 1, we see that Belshazzar is unaware of his fate… he is throwing a HUGE party to celebrate the gods of Babylon and to double-down on his assumption that he is indestructible.
Look at v. 1 [read 5:1-4, explaining as we go] [2 slides of Babylon when prompted]
We need to trust God is still sovereign when...
1) The celebration changes, but idolatry stays the same. (v. 1-4)
1) The celebration changes, but idolatry stays the same. (v. 1-4)
Explain: Here we have a raging party.
It’s drunken… it’s perverse… it’s wild.
And so Belshazzar says, “You know what would really spice up this party… let’s get those really nice dishes from the Jewish temple to eat and drink out of!”
It’s possible he did this because he was drunk… obviously this was an unusual practice because those vessels were in storage, and there had been a general respect of them in the past.
It’s possible Belshazzar was trying to recall how Babylon’s gods had proven superior in the past and they could do it again in the future against Persia...
Whatever the motive, the result is this (v. 4): “They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.” (Daniel 5:4, ESV)
God’s holy and precious vessels meant to remind God’s people of God’s provision in bringing them out of Egypt…
Mike Boos preached back in May about when the first vessels for the tabernacle were made by the Jewish craftsman’s own hands out of gold that was plundered from the Egyptians.
This is God’s HOLY Temple vessels…
I hope we all can feel how offensive this is.
Illustrate: Imagine someone took our cross from the front of our worship space… and took it to their house and burned it upside down in some satanic ritual...
Or maybe they took our communion elements and raised the cup to toast their favorite celebrity...
That would… it SHOULD… be painful for us to know about.
I believe these verses are written in such a way as to remind us of Nebuchadnezzar’s feasts in chapter 1… in chapter 1 v. 2, we have the moment when Nebuchadnezzar took the golden vessels from the House of God…
And not only did he take the holy vessels… he took God’s holy people out of God’s land.
Remember, he would feed the youth of the nobles of all the countries he conquered with his own wine and food… they were given a portion of his daily feast and celebration.
And its from that group that we are introduced to Daniel and his friends… who were teenagers from Judah at the time…
They had grown up under the reign of Josiah… they had seen the temple worship restored… they had seen these vessels used in their proper context…
More than that, they had seen the people of God reformed for a short season while they grew up in Jerusalem...
But the ruler in Jerusalem changed… and things went back to evil as usual… and so in chapter 1 of Daniel, they found themselves under the authority of a pagan dictator...
They were enrolled in Nebuchadnezzar’s brainwashing program… invited to his daily feasts... but they refused to eat his food.
They stood with unshakeable conviction and refused to eat and drink to the gods of Babylon.
And here again in chapter 5, the celebration changes, but the idolatry stays the same.
We are now a good 65 years since Daniel first came to Babylon… he’s an old man, likely in his 80s...
He has lived far more of his life under Babylon’s rulers than he ever did in Israel under Josiah or Josiah’s sons...
He has had to navigate many difficult circumstances as a public official in a secular government while remaining faithful to the Most High God...
And even now, it seems like he has been removed or retired from his position of influence that was given to him by Nebuchadnezzar as chief of the wise men.
He’s lived a long life in exile.
And I just wonder: how many of these parties has he seen or known about?
How many times has he had to abstain from celebrating the idols of Babylon while the name of his God was forgotten or trampled underfoot?
He has had to endure these idolatrous celebrations… for a variety of occasions… COUNTLESS times in his long life...
And that can begin to wear on you.
You can begin to wonder… is God still sovereign? Is he still in control? Will he bring us out of this exile?
Let me ask you personally:
Apply: What do you do when you are asked to celebrate what the world celebrates over and over again? Do you get angry? Do you run away and retreat so that you just don’t have to relate to the world? Do you celebrate with them?
Apply: What do you do when you are asked to celebrate what the world celebrates over and over again? Do you get angry? Do you run away and retreat so that you just don’t have to relate to the world? Do you celebrate with them?
Instead, let me urge you to trust the unending sovereignty of God to stand firm in unshakeable conviction.
There’s always something new that our society is celebrating:
Maybe it’s the ever-changing concept of gender or marriage...
Maybe it’s a victory in the Supreme Court that upholds abortion like happened this past week in Louisiana...
Maybe it’s a new music album or TV show that has come out that is hailed as amazing artistry, but really objectifies women or celebrates some other form of sin...
Our society loves to celebrate what God says is evil… and condemn what God says is good.
When we were studying Daniel 1, we talked about that unshakeable conviction of Daniel and his friends… and how God can uphold you as you stand with him...
How has living with conviction been going since then? Maybe you’ve felt this on a personal level:
Maybe you’ve been invited to a wedding you don’t support...
Or you are at the work party and expected to participate in the pleasure-seeking games of your coworkers…
Maybe the pressure to laugh at your friends jokes and agree with their perverse views is really strong.
Over time, that can become pretty exhausting.
And when the celebration changes, but the idolatry stays the same, we have to return to our trust in God’s unending sovereignty.
I am reminded of a Savior named Jesus who was able to attend the party of both a Pharisee and a tax collector, and who in both occasions had a purifying and redemptive effect on the people around him.
He never participated in or condoned the sins of the people with whom he ate and drank… he didn’t bow to their idols… instead, he transformed their feasts.
He changed what they celebrated...
Before you encounter Jesus, you think that eating and drinking to the gods of this world is the most joy that can be had...
But when Jesus comes to your party, he doesn’t take away your joy… he shows you a BETTER joy!
He shows you an eternal joy that the gods of gold and silver and bronze, iron, stone and wood could never provide.
Jesus offers a perfect celebration that will never end in his eternal kingdom… and all earthly celebrations are trying to reach that level of transcendence but fall short.
They are trying to find the satisfaction of our souls but can’t.
Jesus died so that we could be set free from the futile celebrations of false gods… and be brought into the forever celebration of the One True God..
Think about this: NOBODY worships the gods of Babylon anymore. But people still worship the God of Daniel… we just worshiped him today.
God has remained sovereign above the ever-changing idols of nations and empires and societies…
And we must trust that Sovereign God.
We must turn from celebrating idols… from worshipping created things… and instead celebrate the one True God who made us and who revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
If you’ve never done that, I would URGE you to do that today.
God is going to prove his sovereignty as the story goes along…
So in v. 1-4, the who’s who of Babylon is drinking out of the Holy vessels of his house… and he’s not going to tolerate it tonight.
Look at verse 5 [read v. 5-12, explaining along the way] [use picture of throne-room when prompted]
It feels like we’ve been here before, doesn’t it?
We need to trust the unending sovereignty of God when...
2) The prophetic opportunity changes, but the ignorance stays the same. (v. 5-12)
2) The prophetic opportunity changes, but the ignorance stays the same. (v. 5-12)
Explain: If you’ve been tracking with us through Daniel, this situation should sound VERY familiar...
In chapter 2 and chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream or vision of some sort… they are different, but they both point to his doom…
And so he was terrified… and he summoned the wise men of Babylon… the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and Chaldeans… and both times they couldn’t answer him…
And both times, they called upon Daniel, and Daniel is filled with the Holy Spirit to tell the dream or vision and its interpretation.
So now, God shows up in a new and terrifying way to a different king… Belshazzar… God has a message about Belshazzar’s impending fall… Belshazzar is TERRIFIED… and Belshazzar’s wise men are equally incompetent for the task.
So Daniel will AGAIN have to come in and do what they cannot.
The prophetic opportunity changes, but the ignorance stays the same.
Why can’t these rulers understand that their wise men… and their gods… are incapable of resolving their deepest fears and answering their hardest questions?
Why do they refuse to go to God for his unparalleled wisdom?
We could ask the same things of our society… and we could say the same things of our own hearts at times...
The prophetic opportunity changes, but the ignorance stays the same.
Now when I say prophetic opportunity, I don’t mean that we have experiences like this of a hand coming in and writing on a wall or something strange like that very often.
I don’t mean that we are given this insight into the future like Daniel is about to do.
I mean that very often, there are questions and fears and concerns in our society… and because the world has no access to God… because he is not at the center of their worldview… their finest “wise men” fall short of an answer that can satisfy our souls. And that is an opportunity to speak on behalf of God, based on what he has already clearly revealed.
When the world asks, “What will fix the problems that we face?”, we have a prophetic opportunity to speak God’s word...
When they are debating about answers to questions like...
What will bring unity amidst division?
How should we relate to history that contains evil that we don’t like?
What will provide hope in the face of sickness and death?
What type of government should we support and rally behind?
What should we do with the variety of beliefs in this world?
When the world is searching for and suggesting answers to those questions, we have a prophetic opportunity to speak God’s word.
Each one of these issues is an opportunity to go to God’s word to see how he explains the world that HE created and sent his son to redeem.
And the question is: will we take the opportunity?
Will we take the opportunity to (first) understand what God has to say (and then second) tell the world what God has to say, even when we don’t think we will be heard?
Even when it could threaten our lives because they don’t like our answer…
Even when what we have to say might be unpopular?
Apply: What do you do when the questions and fears of our world become an opportunity to speak for God to the unbelievers around you? Do you answer with the same ignorance of the world? Or with the unparalleled wisdom of God? [How can you speak from God’s word in the midst of the current questions that are facing our society?]
Apply: What do you do when the questions and fears of our world become an opportunity to speak for God to the unbelievers around you? Do you answer with the same ignorance of the world? Or with the unparalleled wisdom of God? [How can you speak from God’s word in the midst of the current questions that are facing our society?]
We talked about this especially in week 2 of this series… it’s time for a check-up… how has it been going?
Are you growing in your ability to allow God’s word to shape your responses to what has been going on in our world these days?
Are you letting him do the talking through you?
1 Cor 2:15 says that if we have been changed by Jesus and renewed by the Holy Spirit, then, “We have the mind of Christ…”
Let’s not settle for the ignorance of the world.
God will continue to be in control… whether the world recognizes it or not. Let’s speak of his power and authority.
Daniel is our guy to show us what that looks like… what a steady, bold, consistent prophetic voice looks like:
[Read v. 13-28, explaining along the way]
We need to trust the unending sovereignty of God when...
3) The ruler changes, but the pride stays the same. (v. 13-22)
3) The ruler changes, but the pride stays the same. (v. 13-22)
Explain: This part of the story is strongly connected to chapter 4… and the unrivaled glory of God that we saw there.
Daniel basically retells the story of chapter 4 and then says, “And YOU, Belshazzar, are JUST LIKE your ancestor!
And your fate will be even worse. Your days are numbered, your worth is not what you think it is… your kingdom is being divided and given to the Medes and Persians… as we speak.
Remember, they were, at that very time, sneaking into the city walls to assassinate him.
If you read in our reading plan this week, you would have read that Isaiah and Jeremiah BOTH prophesied of the same rise and fall of Babylon for the exact same reason: pride against God’s glory.
The pride of Nebuchadnezzar... is the exact same pride as Belshazzar… is the exact same pride of every ruler before them and after them who did not humble themselves before the Most High God.
Listen: every ruler… in every nation… is required to humble themselves before God as the one who rules the nations… and they will have to answer to God if they are not.
We need to remember that as believers who are given the privilege of voting for the rulers of our nation… humility before God is of utmost value… and extraordinarily rare.
Sadly, few rulers of the world can deal with the power they are given without it going to their head. Without them using their power to fulfill selfish desires. And they will be held accountable.
Ultimately, every ruler must humbly fall upon the grace of the one whom we all need… The Savior King over all the Earth who is gentle and lowly.
The King who Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar and every other ruler pales in comparison to...
The One who rules over the Kingdoms of men and is returning with an everlasting kingdom.
The one who opened the door into his kingdom through his death on a Roman cross and his resurrection from a garden tomb.
The king that this world needs… the king that we need… is JESUS!
That is my desperate prayer and plea during this series! That as a church, we would not have our hearts set on the kings and kingdoms of this world, but have our heart set on the indestructible kingdom of God!
That we would measure every king and government against HIM… and that we would long for HIM and HIS KINGDOM all the more!
That we would not view ourselves as Americans first and Christians in relationship to that, but that CHRIST would be our first and only identity… and we would operate as exiles in a strange land called America where God has placed us at this time.
Apply: Is your heart set on humble King Jesus as the ultimate ruler? Do you measure the kings and kingdoms of this world in relationship to him and his priority toward humility?
Apply: Is your heart set on humble King Jesus as the ultimate ruler? Do you measure the kings and kingdoms of this world in relationship to him and his priority toward humility?
I love Daniel’s lack of attachment to any kingdom except the kingdom of God… I love his willingness to boldly speak God’s truth to human power… I love his humility before God to speak only what God wants said.
And that commitment would prove necessary because he would need it in the next empire he served.
Look at verse 29 [read v. 29-31, explaining]
Trust the unending sovereignty of God when…
4) The situation changes, but the exile stays the same. (v. 24-31)
4) The situation changes, but the exile stays the same. (v. 24-31)
Explain: Again, we have this connection back to the earlier chapters… specifically chapter 2.
Nebuchadnezzar had a vision of a statue… an idol… and Daniel interpreted this dream for Nebuchadnezzar, probably when he was in his earliy 20s
He told Nebuchadnezzar that the statue represented the most powerful kingdoms of human history…
Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon was the head that was made of gold…
It would become the gold standard for every worldly, godless kingdom that ever would come later.
Babylon is known thoughout the Bible as the type of all future Satanic kingdoms.
But that head gave way to a second kingdom that would overthrow Babylon…
Daniel 2:39 - Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. (ESV)
History would show that the silver kingdom was the Medo-Persian kingdom, and the bronze kingdom was Greece under the charge of Alexander the Great.
And now… over 60 years later… the next phase of that vision that Daniel interpreted is coming true.
How awesome must that have been for Daniel in his 80s… to see the unending sovereignty of God at work...
To see God preserve and protect him all those years… and to know that God has an unalterable plan to save his people and usher in his kingdom.
But we will see even next week, that even while the plan is marching forward, the situation is changing… but the exile stays the same.
Likely within the next month, Darius (if he is the same guy as Gubaru the general) is going to have Daniel thrown into a lions den for praying to the Lord.
Even though the political situation changes, the realities of exile in a foreign land that is hostile to the ways of God do not.
And it’s in that place that we need to trust the sovereignty of God.
Until Jesus returns and sets up his kingdom, we are exiles in a foreign land.
We are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven wandering the wastelands of the kingdoms of earth.
Apply: When you face the ever-changing challenges and hardships and brokenness of life in a fallen world, will you continue to trust the unending sovereignty of God?
Apply: When you face the ever-changing challenges and hardships and brokenness of life in a fallen world, will you continue to trust the unending sovereignty of God?
No matter how your situation changes this week, he has proven, and will prove again, that he is on the throne… he is in control.
The same God that makes his mercy rise upon you like the morning sun… the same God who put the sun and moon and stars in their order… the same God who kept his people through the exiles of Persia and Babylon and Greece and Rome...
The same God who sent his son into exile on your behalf so that your sin could be pardoned and your relationship with him could be restored...
Is the same God who sits on the throne today.
Will you trust him?