- Text: Daniel 2:1-49, KJV
- Series: With God in Babylon (2017), No. 2
- Date: Sunday evening, February 26, 2017
- Venue: Trinity Baptist Church — Seminole, Oklahoma
- Audio Download: https://archive.org/download/rejoicingintruthpodcast_202011/2017-s05-n02z-relying-on-gods-wisdom.mp3
Listen Online:
Transcript:
We’re going to be in Daniel chapter 2 tonight. Daniel chapter 2. I started looking with you at Daniel chapter 1 last week, the book of Daniel.
And the fact that this book really covers the story of Daniel and his friends while they were exiled in Babylon. While they were part of this group, actually there were several groups that were carried away, but they were part of the overall group of Jewish young men who when the king of the kingdom of Babylon came and took over Judah. They took the best and the brightest, and they kidnapped them.
I mean, in study of the Bible, we call it the exile, but it was really a kidnapping. They came and kidnapped the smartest, the brightest, the best-looking, the strongest young men, and took them back to Babylon, and they were going to get rid of their identities. They were going to spend three years totally breaking down everything that made them Jews, everything that made them Israelites, everything that made them followers of God, and they were going to rebuild them from the ground up into Babylonians.
And all throughout the Bible, Babylon is a symbol of the world in rebellion to God. And so, as I say that this is symbolic, don’t think for a minute that I think it didn’t really happen. I believe the book of Daniel is literal history, just as I believe anything else in the Bible that was written as literal history is literal history.
I believe the book of Genesis happened just the way God said it did. I believe Daniel really was kidnapped by the Babylonians, along with Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. But at the same time, it’s symbolic in the sense that we can learn from it, and that we are God’s people, and not just us here, but anybody who is born again by faith in Jesus Christ. We are God’s people, and we find ourselves plucked up and over here in our own personal Babylon.
We live in a world that would like nothing more than to take us as followers of Jesus Christ and tear down that faith and rebuild us into something, conform us into something that makes the world more comfortable. And that’s not my opinion. That’s not me talking.
That’s the passage that the Apostle Paul wrote that I shared with you last week in Romans chapter 12 that says, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. There’s a constant struggle, a constant battle going on in each of us about whether we’re going to be conformed to this world or we’re going to be transformed by the Father. So there’s a choice whether we continue to hold on to what we were taught, continue to hold on to the teachings of God, or whether we allow ourselves to be conformed to Babylon.
And when I started thinking along those lines, The book of Daniel took on a little more significance to me than just a historical account, but it took on the significance to me of the story of these men’s struggle to do the very thing that we are called as Christians to do day in and day out, which is to live in Babylon and yet not become Babylonian. To live in the world but not be of the world. And so we talked about that last week, just the importance of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah refusing.
Now they were humble about it, they were meek about it, they weren’t obnoxious, but they refused to eat the food that was offered to them by the king and said, could we have vegetables and water? Because to eat that food would have been to violate the things that God had told them. Tonight I want to look at another part of this story in Daniel chapter 2 that deals with them needing to know where they were supposed to go, what direction they were supposed to go, them really needing answers, knowing that there was some wisdom out there that they needed, knowing that there was some understanding that they lacked, and saying, where do we go to find that?
Now, we don’t have time tonight to read all through Daniel chapter 2. I was studying this week, and at one point I came into charla, and I said, I’ve got to do some more studying, because I don’t want to preach on 49 verses Sunday night and they don’t want me to either. So I please forgive me.
We’re not going to go through this verse by verse. I do encourage you to go back and read the story for yourself. You make sure that I’m telling you the truth.
I’ve told you this before and I will tell you again do not take my word for it. You go and check the scriptures and make sure I’m telling you the truth. I’m going to tell you parts of the story in Daniel chapter 2, and then we’re really going to focus in on about 14 verses in the middle that really hit home at the point that I believe it’s trying to make tonight.
But we start at the beginning of the chapter, and this is a little while into these Jewish young men’s time in Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar has had a dream that has caused him a great deal of trouble. And I think we all have those from time to time. I don’t normally remember my dreams unless I’ve eaten Mexican food for dinner.
Charla doesn’t really remember her dreams except when she’s pregnant and she wakes up and says, I can’t believe I dreamed that. But we’ve all had a dream before that has troubled us. And a lot of times my dreams that trouble me are the ones I remember.
But sometimes the ones that trouble me most are the ones I wake up and I can’t remember what it was. I just remember the feeling. Well, Nebuchadnezzar was having one of those moments where he had woken up, and he was so troubled by this dream, but as soon as he woke up, it vanished from his mind what it was.
And so he called all of his magicians and sorcerers and wise men, he called them all together, and he said, I’ve had a dream, I’ve dreamed a dream, and I had a dream, but not like the Martin Luther King dream. I’ve had a terrifying dream, I’ve had a troubling dream. He said, my spirit was troubled to know the dream in verse 3.
and he wanted them to tell him the dream. So all of his wise men and all of his astrologers and sorcerers and magicians said to him, well, tell us what the dream was and we’ll explain it to you. There are people today who will still do this.
They claim to interpret dreams. These guys were magicians that worked for Nebuchadnezzar and one of their jobs was to interpret the dreams for him Because the Babylonians believed that heaven spoke to you through dreams. Although we see that, that’s really not such a stretch for me, because we see that all throughout the Old Testament, that God was, even in the New Testament too, that God was speaking to people in and through dreams. Now, the inevitable question, does he do that today? I don’t know. I don’t see anywhere where it says he does or does not.
What I will tell you on that is if you believe God is speaking to you through a dream, test it against the scriptures. God will not tell you something is okay in a dream if he’s told you it was not okay in his word. This is the standard right here by which we test everything.
So he says, I want to know the interpretation of the dream. They said, tell us the dream and we’ll tell you the interpretation. And he said, the thing is gone from me.
I’ve forgotten. And he knew that these magicians, they were tricky. They were tricky.
They were like children or politicians. They would say whatever they had to to save their own skin. And so he said, wait a minute.
The dream is gone from me. And if you really are the magicians you claim to be, if you really are sorcerers, if heaven really speaks to you and through you, then you’ll tell me what the dream was and the interpretation of the dream. And he said, if you don’t, he says, I’m going to cut you in pieces and turn your houses into a dunghill, is the King James version of that.
What he’s saying is, you either tell me what the dream was and what it means, or I’m going to have you torn limb from limb, and I’m going to turn your houses into a garbage dump. I’m going to salt the ground so nothing will ever grow there again. He was going to utterly destroy them and everything that belonged to them.
All these riches that they had swindled, all these things that they had fortune-told and done all their little tricks to get, he was going to get rid of all of them. Their party was going to be over. He said, if you show the dream and the interpretation, I will give you gifts and I’ll give you rewards and great honor.
So tell me what the dream was and what the interpretation is. So again, they tell him, just tell us what the dream was. Like they’re not even listening.
Tell us what the dream was and we’ll be glad to give you the interpretation. And again, the king sort of lashes out at them because he knows by now. These guys are tricky.
They are slippery. They’re going to say, if I give them enough time, they’re just going to make something up. They’re going to figure out whatever it is they need to say, that exact combination of words, and they’re going to say it so that they’ll save their own skin.
He’s looking for whatever wisdom that heaven was trying to give him, and he knew that they were just going to make up what they needed to. And so he tells them in verse 8, I know of certainty that you would gain the time. He said, I know you people, you’re just trying to buy time here, so you can come up with some plan.
because I’ve already told you I forgot what the dream was. I’ve already told you. And you’re still asking me, what is the dream?
You’re just stalling. He says, but again, if you don’t tell me what the dream is, then he says, but there’s but one decree. He said, there is one thing that is going to happen.
There’s one thing I can promise you because you’ve been speaking lying and corrupt words for me. You’ve been telling me lies. he said the one thing I can tell you is that I will have you killed he says I’ve already told you what is going to happen to you so you better now tell me what the dream was and what the interpretation is and so they answered him and said there’s nobody on earth that can show what the king’s dream is there’s nobody on earth that knows this nobody knows the answer there’s no king there’s no ruler who has ever asked what you’re asking us to do they’re trying to reason with him trying to reason with Nebuchadnezzar and say, what you’re asking us is completely unreasonable.
It’s completely, it’s impossible. It is a rare thing the king requires. And I say perhaps the first honest thing they’ve ever said in their lives, there is no one that can tell the king what he wants to know unless the gods share it with them, unless it comes from the gods.
Well, they’re wrong on one count. There’s only one God. But they were right.
They were saying perhaps the first honest thing that these magicians and sorcerers had ever said to the king, and that’s what you’re asking is impossible. Nobody knows that but God. Well, as you can imagine, the king was not happy.
The king was angry and very furious. Now, if he’d been angry or if he’d been very furious, that’d be one thing. But he was both.
He was angry and very furious. I don’t know what the difference is in those words there. but I don’t think I’d want to stick around and see what that was.
He was angry and very furious and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. He was like, okay, I’m done with you people. And the decree went out that the wise men should be slain.
So he finally, he says, I’m done with you. I’m done with your lying stories and all that. And so he makes the decree that all the wise men of Babylon are to be killed.
Well, as they’re doing this, they go looking for all the wise men, and that includes Daniel and his fellows. That would include Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Now, they were not the only Jewish wise men who were there in Babylon at this time, but they seem to be at the, they appear to be the ones who were most likely to side with God over the Babylonians.
So they went looking for Daniel and his friends to be slain. We’re going to pick it up here in verse 14 and kind of look at it verse by verse. And Daniel answered with counsel and wisdom to Ariok, the captain of the king’s guard, which was gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon, he answered and said to Ariok, the king’s captain, why is the decree so hasty from the king?
Then Ariok made the thing known to Daniel. So they come and say, hey, by the way, Daniel, we’re going to take you off and kill you, along with all the other wise men. And he says, what’s happening here?
Why did the king make such a hasty decree? And they recounted what had happened, this lying and the stalling for time that the sorcerers had done. Then Daniel went in, verse 16, and desired of the king that he should give him time, and that he would show the king the interpretation.
So he goes and asks the king for more time, which the others had been trying to trick the king into giving, but he comes into the king honestly and says, I don’t know the answer you’re looking for, but if you’ll give me time, I will give you an interpretation. And Nebuchadnezzar grants this, where he wasn’t willing to give the others more time, maybe because of the dishonest way they went about trying to get it, versus the honest way Daniel came to him.
But the king, or it could be the fact that Daniel had a reputation with the king because of the way he’d served him in the past, that the king is willing to grant Daniel this request. Then verse 17, Daniel went to his house and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, that they would desire the mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret, that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. They went in and they said, we’re going to pray about it. And we’re going to ask God to be merciful to us and show us what he was trying to reveal to Nebuchadnezzar.
I mean, God was trying to reveal it to him. He wants him to know it anyway. If he’ll just tell it to us, then we won’t suffer the same fate as all these false prophets.
Then verse 19 says, Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are his.
And he changeth the times and the seasons, he removeth kings and setteth up kings. He giveth wisdom to the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things.
He knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him. I thank thee and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who has given me wisdom and might and has made known unto me now what we desired of thee. for thou hast now made known unto us the king’s matter.
So they went in and they said, we’re going to pray, we’re going to beg God for mercy, that he would show us the answer, and then God does. God speaks to him in the middle of the night, just as he had done to Nebuchadnezzar. And the first thing Daniel does is to get up and pray again and praise God for what he had just done, to give thanks to God and to bless God and to just acknowledge the power and the might and the sovereignty of God, that God was in control of everything.
God was in control of nations and kings and even the seasons, and God, the darkness and light, and God’s in charge of it all. And he thanked him. There’s a lesson in there for us that how many times do we ask God for something?
And we may be down on our knees on our faces crying out to God and begging him to do something, and then he does, and we think, yay, that worked, and we go on. We’ve got to go back and thank God, and not act like we’ve just solved our problems ourselves because we’re so brilliant, but acknowledge the power that has been at work in our lives. Therefore Daniel went in unto Ariok, we’re in verse 24, went into Ariok, whom the king had ordained to destroy the wise men of Babylon.
He went and said thus unto him, destroy not the wise men of Babylon. Bring me in before the king, and I will show unto the king the interpretation. Then Ariok brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus unto him, I have found a man of the captives of Judah that will make known unto the king the interpretation.
And the king answered and said unto Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen and the interpretation thereof? The king still is not messing around. I don’t have time for you tricksters who are going to ask me for the dream so I can give you the interpretation.
I need to know both. He says, can you do both of those for me? Daniel answered in the presence of the king and said, the secret which the king hath demanded, cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show the king?
He said, there’s no man wise enough in your kingdom. In all your collection of wise men, there’s nobody who knows the answer you’re looking for. He says in verse 28, But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.
Thy dream and the visions of thy head upon thy bed are these. He says, the king asks him, Daniel, can you help me know this? Can you tell me what I’m looking to know?
Can you tell me what this wisdom is from heaven in this dream? And Daniel says, I can’t, and all the wise men of your kingdom cannot, But there is a God in heaven who makes such things known. As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon my bed.
What should come to pass hereafter? And he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass. But as for me, the secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom, that I have more than any living, but for their sakes, that shall make known the interpretation of the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.
And again, he gives credit not to himself, And doesn’t even say that God has given me this so that he’ll make me wiser. He said it’s really to save everybody’s skin here. But he acknowledges that it’s not his wisdom, it’s not his goodness, but that it’s God revealing the truth so that Nebuchadnezzar could understand.
And he tells him, he begins to explain to him all the things that he saw, this terrible image. What Nebuchadnezzar saw, as we go through the rest of the chapter, what Nebuchadnezzar saw and what I’ve taught on here before just a few months ago, was he saw in his dream this statue made up of four or five, depending on how you look at it, four or five parts. And the head was made of gold and the torso was made of silver and the midsection was made of, and the upper part of the legs was made of bronze and then the legs were made of iron leading down to toes and feet that were made of mixed clay and iron.
And these parts of this statue represented four great kingdoms that would be upon the earth. And you had the golden head that represented Babylon, represented Nebuchadnezzar in all his glory, that would one day be overthrown by a slightly lesser kingdom, which would be the Medes and Persians, represented by the silver torso. And then you had them falling one day to the Greeks who were represented by this bronze stomach.
Alexander the Great just swept in all of a sudden and just conquered everything, including the Persian Empire. But eventually his empire was broken into pieces after his death, and then along you came the Romans with their iron will, who were represented by the iron legs and these feet of iron and clay, which some people have taken to represent the splitting of the Roman Empire into two parts and the eventual breakup leading to the Dark Ages. Some say it represents the new Roman Empire in the latter days with ten kingdoms that are going to be smashed by the Son of God when he returns.
And all I can say is sometimes prophecies have an immediate and a far future fulfillment. And I’m still studying those myself to figure out which or both it is, and I’d encourage you to study those for yourself. But what he’s telling Nebuchadnezzar is that the God of heaven, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God that Daniel serves, the God that Daniel represents, who has revealed these things, is telling Nebuchadnezzar that his kingdom, while it’s great, and while it’s glorious, it’s represented by this gold head, and it’s sort of the standard against which all empires would be judged after it, that it won’t last forever.
And it’s just a part of the picture. And eventually it’s going to be supplanted by somebody else who’s going to be supplanted by somebody else who’s going to be supplanted by somebody else, and none of them are going to be a match for the Son of God. So it’s a dream revealed to Nebuchadnezzar that basically he’s not the end, he’s not the summit of power in this world.
Verse 46 says, then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and worshiped Daniel and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odors unto him. So they’re giving him a wine offering and incense and he’s worshiping Daniel. And I think somewhere along the line, he’s missed what God was trying to tell him, that God is really the one he should be concerned about and should be worshiping.
And this is because as soon as he heard what the dream was with the statue in its parts, and he heard the interpretation representing these kingdoms, he remembered that dream was, have you ever had something that you’ve forgotten? That not only you’ve forgotten, but you forgot you ever knew it. And then somebody tells you, somebody starts telling part of a story, and you think, I forgot that ever happened.
Sometimes that happens to me, and I know it’s only going to get worse as time goes on. I forgot that story ever happened. Why are you telling it now?
As soon, and it all comes flooding back to you. Well, as soon as he starts telling him about the statue, Nebuchadnezzar knew. That’s it.
You got it. And he was amazed. The king answered unto Daniel and said, Of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods.
and a lord of kings and a revealer of secrets, saying thou couldst reveal this secret. He said, your God, he’s still got all of his little Babylonian pagan gods, but he says, your God is above all of them. Well, yeah, our God is so far above all of them that he is all of them.
He’s the only one there is. But Nebuchadnezzar, he’s not there yet. And he just says, all these gods I’ve got, he outweighs all of them because he can see everything and reveal all of these secrets.
Then the king made Daniel a great man and gave him many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, chief of the governors over the wise men of Babylon. Then Daniel requested of the king, and he sent Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon, but Daniel sat in the gate of the king. And so he was given this place of honor because he had tapped into this wisdom that only God could supply.
But here’s the problem. They knew that there was some kind of, Nebuchadnezzar as the king of Babylon, knew that there was some kind of transcendent truth that he needed to understand. He knew that the heavens were trying to get in touch with him in this dream.
He knew there was something that a higher power was trying to reveal to him. And he knew it was important, but he just couldn’t remember what it was, and so he went searching. And he went searching in such a way that made it crucial for Daniel, for Hananiah, for Mishael, for Azariah, really for all of the wise men, it became crucial for them to understand what this truth was, quite literally to save their own necks.
There was some kind of higher truth that they knew was out there that needed to be understood. And folks, we are in the same boat in our Babylon. Maybe not to the extent that we’re trying to save our necks, that we’ve got a tyrant who’s telling us, I’m going to kill you if you don’t tell me all the things I forgot.
But we’re still in the same boat in our Babylon in that our world out there knows that there’s some kind of wisdom that they don’t understand. They need to understand. Even when I say higher wisdom, a lot of the world wouldn’t even say from a higher power.
But people are always looking to the secret of how am I supposed to live? How can I have a good life? How can I handle these situations that come to me in life?
How can I handle difficulties? How can I handle pain? How can I do the right thing?
How can I be secure? How can I be wealthy? All these questions that the world wants to know, and they’re always looking for some key that’s going to bring them that knowledge.
And they’re looking for it in some place outside of themselves. If you don’t believe me that people are looking for those kinds of things, then you should have been in Brother Terry’s class tonight when we studied televangelists. and some of the garbage that people just eat up today because they’re hungry for somebody who’s got answers.
They’re hungry for some truth that they don’t have in and of themselves. There are cults and occult things, and people are just eating up the answers. People go to talk shows and buy magazines and say, how do I live a better life?
And I know this because I hear all the time about the latest thing that Dr. Oz said is going to be the thing that’s going to make everybody live to be 100. Okay?
This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. The world is looking for answers. What’s the truth that’s going to make us healthy and wealthy and wise?
The world knows there’s a truth out there, but it’s searching for truth everywhere and can’t find it because this truth doesn’t work and we’re just going to leapfrog off a bit to whatever’s the flavor of the month next time. We’re just going to jump from one truth. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll jump to the next one and we’ll jump to the next one and he sounds like he’s got answers over here.
Let’s follow him. Oh, that didn’t work out. He sounds like he’s got answers over here.
Let’s follow him. And folks, one thing that I see in this passage, we could focus in on the statue and all that, and I have preached messages on the statue and the meaning of the statue, the meaning of his dream. But tonight I’m more concerned about the search for the meaning of his dream.
They knew that there was some answer out there. Nebuchadnezzar knew that there was some answer out there that he as the king needed for his duties. To be the king he needed to be, he knew that the heavens were trying to tell him something.
And so he set these wise men on a journey to figure out what it was. And he went to his magicians, and he said, what can you tell me? And these were some of the brightest, I know I’ve put them down as being con artists and tricksters, but you kind of have to be smart to be a con artist and trickster, don’t you?
I watch the news, and they’ll talk about the latest scams with gift cards, and this old lady fell for it and gave $5,000, and so-and-so’s doing this with the phone, and the attorney general warnings to watch out, and I think, I am not smart enough to figure out how to scam people in this one. I mean, you’ve got to have a certain amount of intelligence to be a con artist like this. And I don’t have it.
And so he goes to these guys who, in spite of their, you know, they were not the most honest, but these were wise men. These were learned men. They knew lots of stuff.
They couldn’t come up with the answer. And these were guys who, it says, astrologers, they could go out and read the stars. It talks about sorcerers and magicians.
They could go back and consult with what they thought were their deities and their priests and their priestesses, and they could read palms and leaves and all sorts of junk and try to come up with some answer. They knew all the philosophies. They knew all the writings of all the wise men and all the things that might be able to provide some kind of answers.
They had access to all of the human knowledge that was in circulation at that time. And they could not come up with an answer. And so Daniel steps in, along with Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, all four of them good men, as we’ll see.
They were righteous, godly men, as we see throughout the book of Daniel. They said, we’ve got to figure out what the answer is here. but even they in their goodness, even they in their morality, and their understanding of the Scripture, they didn’t understand what he was looking for.
They didn’t know the answer. And all their human wisdom let them down. And so what Daniel did was say, we’re going to call out to the God of heaven.
We’re going to call out to the God of heaven. This is his truth he’s trying to convey anyway, so why not ask him to be merciful to us and show us the right way, to show us the right answer. So they called out to the God of heaven, and what did he do?
He answered them. He answered them. They came to him in humility, looking for mercy, looking for an answer, and he gave it to them.
This brings me around to my one and really only point for tonight. Aren’t you glad I’m getting around to a point tonight? My one and only point tonight is that human innovation, human innovation is no substitute for divine revelation.
Let me say that again. Human innovation is no substitute for divine revelation. When you know there’s a truth out there that’s going to set your life on the right course, when you know there’s a truth out there that you desperately need to know, when it comes to being King Nebuchadnezzar and ruling your kingdom well and ruling your kingdom in the fear of the Lord, whether it’s you looking for how am I going to get through the next day and how am I going to get through the next week and how am I going to live the life that God wants me to, what does God want me to know, what’s the truth I need to know?
We can look around at all the people we know and all the human ideas and all the human wisdom and all this idea and the latest fad and that, we can look around at it. And we can look at the smartest people we know, the smartest people in our world today. And folks, not only does not one of them compare to the wisdom of God’s revelation, but folks, all of them combined, don’t compare to the wisdom of God’s revelation.
My opinion is worthless. I will tell you that. I know a few things, but my opinion is worthless on how you’re supposed to live your life if it is not based on God’s revelation.
And for us today, we find God’s revelation in this book. In between these pages, these precious pages of black and white and red and white, this is where God has spoken to us. This is where we had access to the mind and the thoughts