A God Who Transcends Time and Seasons.
Time & Providence: Lessons from Daniel • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 48:45
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· 82 viewsIt’s easy to believe God when times are good, but how do we find faith in difficult times? Suffering causes us to focus in on ourselves, but Daniel looked up to get the big picture. God is above all and has a plan. Time and Providence will show that He is still on the throne.
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Our Theme for 2021 is “Redeeming the Time.”
These days have been chaotic and confusing.
It seems like the world around us has gone mad and if we are not careful we can get caught up in it.
I know that people have strong opinions about everything from politics to the pandemic, feelings about racial injustice and cancel culture.
let’s first recognize that our reactions are just that… reactions… because we feel threatened, judged, manipulated or intimidated.
It is good to admit what we feel and then take time to prayerfully decide how we will respond rather than react.
Let’s take a moment and try to get perspective.
Remember what we said last week?
He is faithful!
He wants us to be faithful.
God is Providence.
He created the world.
He sustains the world.
He is moving everything toward a conclusion.
Remember “The Hallelujah Chorus” Handel’s Messiah?
The kingdom of this world; is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ And He shall reign forever and ever...
George Frederick Handel is said to have wept when he wrote it.
King George II in 1743 rose to his feet when he heard it.
Women were told not to wear their hoop skirts to make room for more to attend the performance.
Is it just the music or is there truth in these words that brings everything else into perspective?
Today we are going to rejoin Daniel and his three friends near the end of their three-year preparation.
God is going to give Daniel a revelation that is going to cause this “hallelujah chorus” kind of reaction.
It’s easy to get caught up in the story and forget the backdrop.
We forget that Daniel and His friends were captives, forcibly taken from their homeland “re-educated”(brainwashed) for service in Babylon.
Last week we saw that their character was one of faithfulness to God had shown his covenant faithfulness even in the land of their captivity.
It’s easy to believe God when times are good, but how do we find faith in difficult times?
Suffering causes us to focus in on ourselves, but Daniel looked up to get the big picture.
God is above all and has a plan.
Time and Providence will show that He is still on the throne.
This story is about to get even more intense as it involves not only our main characters, but all of the wise men in the kingdom and the king himself.
An impossible test.
An impossible test.
1 In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. 2 Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. 3 And the king said to them, “I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” 4 Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.” 5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.”
It is a common theme in ancient literature that the hero is put to some kind of impossible test to which there is no apparent solution.
Upon solving the problem, he is then entrusted with people’s admiration and the right to rule.
It seems that in Daniel’s time people valued wisdom much more than strength.
Through the time of the Judges, those who ruled Israel were those who could keep communities safe, usually by beating the bad guys.
But then Solomon came along and showed that there was another way to make peace through diplomacy and commerce.
Babylon seemed to have mastered both of these strategies, but also had a mystical side.
Note that the king is surrounding himself with really smart people.
These are people who not only had a lot of knowledge, but were preoccupied with trying to understand the stars, magic and the supernatural.
The word translated as “Chaldeans” is so close to the word “astrologer” that it is probably and intentional play on words meaning that these people from Chaldea were known for their magic and mysticism.
These were people like you might read about in “Harry Potter” or “The Lord of the Rings.
You can’t make revelation happen.
You can’t make revelation happen.
10 The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.”
Now there is a loaded statement!
These people are have devoted their entire vocation to trying to manipulate the forces of the universe to their advantage, but they are admitting that they can’t actually do this at will.
There is a limit to their power.
We believe in prophecy. Someone like Dale Mast will gladly give prophetic word if you ask him too.
He can tell you what he hears God saying, but he can’t tell you about just anything you want to know.
Like if I asked Dale, “tell me the dream I had last night.” He would say, I can only tell you what God shows me.
Balaam is an Old testament example of the limits of such powers.
Balaam was hired to put a curse on Israel, but God intervened and put Balaam in his place to make sure he would only speak what God would have him to speak.
God lets us do a lot of things, but we don’t tell God what to do.
It would seem then that King Nebuchadnezzar has gone mad.
He is about to kill off all the smartest people in his kingdom for not solving a riddle that is admittedly impossible to solve.
You could say that maybe the king wanted to know that God was really behind the answer and that may be true.
Without getting too far ahead in the story, let’s consider another possibility: the king thinks that he is the one who is facing an impossible challenge.
The problem with being the king is that you’re a huge target.
So he has this dream about a toppling statue getting hit by a huge rock.
What is he likely going to think? Someone is out to get me!
He has a traitor in his operation. If he tells them the dream, he is going to embolden his enemy.
By threatening to kill everyone, he figures that someone will start to talk.
“You tell me what is about to happen and maybe I let you live.”
So Daniel and his friends are caught in the middle of this.
Not only are they hostages in a foreign land, but the hostages are starting to get killed in a standoff.
They have to do something to keep this situation from going from bad to worse.
But, you can’t make God do miracles...
However, you can position yourself for it.
However, you can position yourself for it.
How do you position yourself for a miracle, for revelation or for divine intervention?
17 Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, 18 and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. 19 Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
The first thing that Daniel does with his problem is share it.
The only thing worse than being desperate for an answer from God is being desperate all alone.
Why do we keep our dilemmas, worries and concerns to ourselves?
Maybe because we think that if we don’t have the answer, nobody else will want to hear it.
The bottom line is that we don’t need to have the answers because God does.
We can go to God together, but you need help just to carry it to the cross.
The next thing the do is to cry out to God together.
God want’s you to ask Him for help, but to do it the right way.
2 You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
If you are going before a king or some other important person, you will first inform yourself of what that person wants, likes or is trying to accomplish.
Your presentation is going to include how what you want helps them achieve what they want.
What do you think these four Judeans would say to God?
“God, we are your people, representing you in this land.”
“They think this is all about magic and manipulation, we want to show them your glory.”
“This is about you demonstrating not only your power but your character.”
“Have mercy on us - You created us, so sustain us and let it be toward your purpose.”
I think the reason that Daniel was able to tell the king his dream was because he knew something that the other magicians didn’t know.
They know tricks; illusions, spells, incantations, omens and perhaps a bit of science.
But Daniel knows God.
God wants you to know His thoughts.
God wants you to know His thoughts.
29 To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. 30 But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind.
“He who reveals mysteries...”
For Daniel, God was not a far-off cosmic force.
God is a relational being who desires to know and to be known.
That’s what relationship is after all; knowing a person’s thoughts and being known in return.
Did you catch what Daniel said to the king?
God wants you to know the meaning of your dream (His thoughts) so that you can know your own thoughts.
God wants you to know Him so that you can know what is in your own heart.
If I were that king, that would be scarier than someone trying to kill me.
Daniel gets personal with the king of Babylon, “God didn’t do this because I’m special; He want you to know that your special.”
God sees your fear, insecurity and my sinful human nature and he wants you to know your own heart.
Why? So that He can show you his!
God loves you and He wants to show you the trajectory of your life because it’s not too late to change.
The good news and the bad news.
The good news and the bad news.
31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 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. 35 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.
Being awesome doesn’t always end well.
Being awesome doesn’t always end well.
So Daniel tells the king his dream, but it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.
Keep in mind that Daniel is walking a fine line here. The king is on edge an will kill if threatened. No pressure!
Daniel’s vision was of a great image and that image was literally awesome!
Awesome in the sense that it made you feel small just looking at it.
And then he tells the what he needs to hear to settle him down. “You are that awesome!”
But awesome doesn’t always end well.
Daniel knows he can’t just give him the bad news.
Daniel has to give him first the good news and then bad news.
Well actually, the good news is also the bad news.
“You, Oh king are the greatest worldly ruler that will ever live!”
So what’s the bad news? In other words, it’s all downhill from here.
The thing that makes any leader truly great is not how awesome you are or how impressive, whether likable or intimidating you are; it’s all about legacy.
What happens after you are gone? Will you be forgotten.
Will the things you have built stand the test of time?
Will those who come after you appreciate your vision and want to add to it or will they scrap it and start over.
Will your life produce anything of lasting value?
Will you contribute anything to the world that may be memorable?
Will people be better off for having known you?
Will you children take after you in ways that you would want them to?
The good news it that your life is precious. You are gold!
The bad news is that if you are truly great but never make others greater, then your greatness will die with you.
The materials in the statue are increasingly less in value but greater in strength as you go down.
Was the Babylonian Empire truly the greatest empire that ever was?
It depends how you measure.
They were not the biggest or the most wealthy.
But as time goes on you can see the trend toward greater power, better weapons and more control.
Each empire would become increasingly ruthless and destructive.
Centuries later Jews and Christians would read this text while under the tyranny of Rome, claiming to be the greatest empire that ever was.
They would read these words and would recognize that for whatever was gained, something was also lost.
Rome thought they were awesome, literally striking fear in everyone.
But history remembers Rome as being awful.
Some say we are still living in the remnants of the Roman Empire but that our institutions are more clay than iron.
Know what you are made of.
Know what you are made of.
This statue which represented the successive world-wide empires was made of materials that would be increasingly strong, but also more brittle.
That’s the problem with materials, the things you do to make them stronger make them harder to penetrate, but more likely to break under their own weight.
40 And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. 41 And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.
The thing about clay is that it doesn’t mix with iron.
Clay can be used in casting iron to make a mold or a void.
The clay will go through the fire but then it disintegrates leaving only the iron.
A metal worker might finish a statue only to find that particles of clay mixed with the metal during the pour.
It will leave voids at the base of the object where integrity is most needed.
History tells us that the Roman empire fell because of invaders, but also from within because of corruption.
The mixture speaks to a lack of unity in ideals and purpose.
Clay speaks to me of our sinful human nature.
After all, clay is what we are made from.
But what are you made of?
We still use the term “clay feet” to refer to a fatal flaw in a prominent person.
People can seem larger than life, especially when they gain notoriety, but they are still human.
So what do we do about our human frailty?
Fall on the rock or be crushed.
Fall on the rock or be crushed.
44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, 45 just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
The statue is destroyed by a rock that comes flying in, smashes the statue and them grows into a mountain.
We get a clue as to what the rock means by the fact that it is not cut by human hands.
Jews were not allowed to cut stone to make idols or even their altars.
God cannot be represented by wood, stone or metal, only by humans themselves, created in the image of God.
Since the other parts of the dream represented empires, it makes sense that this would be a fifth empire, but not like the others.
The rock is the Kingdom of God which came crashing on to the scene with the birth, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Jesus called Peter “rock” and said that the church would be like a rock that smashes the gates of hell.
Jesus himself is called the rock:
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “ ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? 43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. 44 And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”
If you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, you become part of His kingdom.
Jesus is going to win in the end.
One way or another you are going to confess His as Lord.
The question is: will is be voluntary or involuntary?
The revealer of mysteries.
The revealer of mysteries.
46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him.
The greatest difficulty with progress is pride.
The greatest difficulty with progress is pride.
God wants to bless us and use us for His Kingdom purpose, but the biggest problem is not failure, but success.
What happens when we do great things for God and come out on top?
That is when we are most vulnerable to the greatest pitfall of all: pride.
You start to, as the saying goes, “believe your own press.”
How would you handle it if the greatest leader in the world bows down and starts to worship you like a god?
I think this test was greater than the impossible one.
What did Daniel say? What did he do? The text doesn’t say.
It does however record the kings response to whatever he said or did:
47 The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.”
Daniel obviously pointed the king to God.
That’s what you do when people try to put you on a pedestal.
In not talking about false humility; rather just tell them who God is to you.
Daniel’s interpretation would serve as a testimony and a warning.
Daniel’s interpretation would serve as a testimony and a warning.
48 Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.
So Daniel went from being a new recruit to being one of the top officials in Babylon?
Does that sound impossible?
Ezekiel would be a contemporary of Daniel, another of the exiles and a priest. He mentions Daniel three times in his book, twice along side Noah and Job as an example of righteousness.
It is likely that the wise men who visited Jesus as an infant would have studied Daniel’s prophecies and come to see the fulfillment of what was foretold centuries before.
But what about the warnings?
The Apostle John would borrow imagery from the writings of Daniel in his book of Revelation.
He would proclaim the final end of Babylon as an empire, ascribing the name however to Rome.
But John also predicted future events related to the end time.
That is why some people think that the rock that Daniel saw was actually the second coming of Christ.
But Jesus declared when he came that the Kingdom (the rule of God) was already begun.
It wouldn’t surprise me if end time events bore some resemblance to events that have happened before at the time of Daniel and in the days of John.
After all this great empire that has fallen may have a few kicks left in it.
Someone has suggested that the end time one-world government is the toes of the statue, because of the number ten which John also uses. If that’s the case, then Daniel has already described it as inherently unstable. - It’s not going to last long.
What we should glean from this is that God is beyond time and seasons.
He knows the end from the beginning.
Nothing is going to happen that God does not know and has already seen.
The kingdoms of this world are falling and the Kingdom of God is rising!
The mountain continues to grow.
The mountain continues to grow.
The rock that grew into a mountain continues to grow.
It’s not the Catholic church or the Orthodox or any denomination.
It may well include those, but it is far beyond our institutions or “empires”
Remember this is not a rock cut with human hands
The Kingdom of God is made up of people who have surrendered their lives to Jesus the King of Kings.
This mountain is going to continue to grow until it fills the whole earth.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
This is not a time to be fearing the end of the world. This is a time to be working toward Christ’s return.
This is not a time to be intimidated by worldly empires, one-world government, the Illuminati, the deep-state or any other world empire. They are defeated and simply waiting for the final blow.
And don’t be afraid of the antichrist or the mark of the beast or any evil that is prophesied to come.
You are in Christ. You will not fall for those things because, by nature, they are the opposite of what you are becoming.
15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
This is what we have to look forward to; the final “hallelujah chorus.”
That’s why it gives us chills, because it is our destiny.
Even if it doesn’t happen in our lifetime, it should be our legacy.
We serve a God who transcends time and seasons.
Questions for reflection:
Questions for reflection:
What is troubling your spirit these days? What keeps you awake at night? Do you think God knows? Do you talk to Him about it? Maybe its time to share it with a few friends and cry out to God for revelation?
What mysteries has God been revealing to you? God wants you to know Him more and he wants to show you whats in your own heart too. Does that sound like a good thing to you? All you have to do is ask.
Does the idea of being in the end times frighten you? Or does it excite and inspire you? Daniel would probably love to be living in this time, but he served God in His generation. How can Daniel’s example help us serve God in ours?