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Daniel 2:31-45 - "How To Keep What You Love In 2010"
Did you know that conservatives are the most blessed people? I'm not really talking about political conservatives. The word "conservative" refers to a way of thinking that tries to "conserve" or preserve what has been established. So I think conservatives, in this sense, are blessed people because they have something to lose-something they love and want to keep.
The news this week has been dominated by the tragic Earthquake in Haiti, as you know. I noticed that nobody is shedding tears for the number of buildings destroyed. We measure this tragedy by the loss of human lives. The photos that broke my heart showed the loss in terms of personal relationships: the bodies we see in the News belonged to someone's loved ones broken or buried in the rubble. A tragedy like this, while it is fresh in our memory, does remind us of the truth that though we spend most of our time concerned with material things like possessions, the losses that hurt the most are human losses. We want to hang on to the ones we love, don't we? Tragedy strikes, marriages fail, children rebel, sickness takes its toll, and we seem to have no power to keep what we love most. What will 2010 bring? Who knows how many Haitians had big hopes for 2010 and celebrated the New Year just 12 days before the massive quake struck? As we look to the future at the beginning of this new year, it's worth asking the question, "how can we keep what we love in 2010?" The answer of course is not simple. In part it depends on whether we will love some individuals enough to tell them the truth found in God's Word. In part it depends on whether we will decide to love what can be kept even beyond death.
Daniel 1-2 tells a story of two men: one who loses it all but gets to keep all that he loves in the end, the other who has it all and apparently loses everything in the end.
•1.In the first two chapters, Daniel recounts the story of his loss, but as we will see, his own losses are set as the background for the real story of God's faithfulness. In the next few weeks and months we are going to hear stories from Haiti of miracles and hope and human spirit. But in the videos and pictures from the first few days after the quake, we see shock and disbelief, people numbed by the horror around them with no hope for the future. Daniel, probably in his teens, was torn from his family and taken captive far away to Babylon [read 1:1-7]. The life that he had known, his friends and his family, were gone forever. He never returned home. And just 2-3 years after losing everything, in the events of chapter 2, his life is now in danger because of the anger of the king [read 2:1-13].
•2.As Daniel tells his story, he also describes King Nebuchadnezzar's great gains and rise to greatness. [read 1:1-2a] The king was probably about 28 years old when he conquered Jerusalem, and built on the military conquests begun by his father, Nabopolassar, who broke the back of the earlier Assyrian Empire. At the height of Nebuchadnezzar's power, Babylon had become the biggest city the world had known, famous for its wonders and beauty. The King himself was emperor of all peoples from Egypt to Assyria [read 4:29-30].
God used Daniel to teach the king that his greatness was a gift from the true God. The Scripture says that the things "given" to Nebuchadnezzar were, in v 37, his power, might & glory; in v 38 all men, animals and birds under his rule.
But the king's dream turned into a nightmare, literally. The Babylonians took dreams very seriously as glimpses of the future. So when he woke from this bad dream that was read for us, he knew in his heart that in some way the statue that in the end got crushed by the Rock represented his own destruction and the destruction of the kingdom he had worked to build.
The king must have been afraid because of the dream. Perhaps the total destruction at the end of his dream (v 34-35) made him fear his own total destruction. Part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict our heart through God's Word. A guilty conscience will find all sorts of passages of Scripture to be convicting and uncomfortable. I've observed that often people find it very hard if not impossible to understand the meaning of Scripture-especially of the Good News it contains-until they first humble themselves and confess their guilt as the Holy Spirit convicts them of it. The little bit he understood of the dream God gave him was enough to terrify him.
The greatness of the statue (vv 31-32) probably reminded him of his own glory and greatness. That's another thing about the human heart: we can use almost anything to puff ourselves up with our own sense of self-importance! But I think that after this dream, Nebuchadnezzar awoke with a sense of foreboding-afraid to face what the dream threatened; afraid to ignore it. This man's dream was truly a wakeup call. If God's ever used something big in your life to get your attention, I'm sure you know that at times like that pretend religion just doesn't cut it. Things get very real. Nebuchadnezzar had no church or pastor, but he did have magicians, astrologers, in his royal court. He knew most of them were frauds, but at a time like this he needed the real thing. So he decreed that if they weren't able to tell him the dream and its meaning, they would be killed (vv 1-13).
•3.So both Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar were "conservative"-they wanted to keep what they loved: Daniel, his life; Nebuchadnezzar, his empire. But Daniel acted in faith while Nebuchadnezzar acted out of fear.
I want you to notice the difference between how Faith and Fear act. Faith gives away all glory to God. The first thing Daniel did was to go and ask his friends to pray to God for mercy. And when God answered that prayer and revealed the dream and its meaning to Daniel, notice what Daniel said to God in verse 20-23 [read]: wisdom belongs to God and God gave wisdom to Daniel, so Daniel, in verse 23 gives back to God. "To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise..." Daniel is one of my heroes because he understood that he depended on God for absolutely everything. But he also gave back to God all he had to give: his deepest affection and praise.
Fear, on the other hand, becomes destructive and grasping. Notice in verse 5 how the king threatens his magicians when he is troubled by the dream. He threatens them with the very thing he was afraid of [read v 5] (he saw his kingdom demolished; he threatened to demolish).
Now here's the thing: the points in our lives when we are faced with a choice to live by faith or to live in fear are not usually big dramatic moments. You and I are faced with faith or fear moments every day. You might get in a fight with your spouse, worry about a deadline at work, receive a bill you don't know if you can pay, you fill in the blank-in every kind of regular situation, we have an opportunity to depend on God's mercy and give back to Him our affection and praise. On the other hand, you can ignore God and try to cling to what you fear to lose.
Daniel's approach seems better doesn't it? The only riches truly worth trying to keep are those that belong to the coming Kingdom of our Saviour and King, Jesus Christ. He is the greatest Gift God's people have been given; every gift God gives His people is given in and through Jesus Christ. So it should come as no surprise that the only gifts we get to keep forever are the gifts we receive in Jesus-gifts belonging to Him and His Kingdom. Listen, as I read vv 24-30, to how Daniel acknowledges God and challenges the king to do the same.
When I was 15, my dad gave me a book to read that explained this prophecy and its fulfillment in great detail. I was amazed. At the time, I was encouraged by learning just how true it is that God is in control of events, big and small, a person's dreams and world history. But now, at 38 years old, and a little more mature, I see something much more amazing here in Daniel 2. I see God's grace available to saint and sinner, to the upright young man and the wicked king. Think with me about the opportunity God put before King Nebuchadnezzar when He gave him this dream. It's the same choice you have today: to believe in God and through Jesus Christ, to gain all that is finally worth keeping, or to lose everything you have. If you were Nebuchadnezzar, what would you have done when Daniel explained the dream to you? Here's what God showed to Daniel and what Daniel told the king about the dream [read vv 31-45].
This prophecy in this king's dream announced that the time would come, very soon, when all that Nebuchadnezzar loved, all that he had built with his wars and with his wealth, all would be taken away from him. Babylon was left to the people of Persia, and their king ruled in the palace that Nebuchadnezzar had built, over the lands and people Nebuchadnezzar had acquired. In turn, Persia's wealth was left to the Greeks, and Greece's to the Romans. Even the land and wealth of the Romans was left in turn not to an empire but to the 10 nations of old Europe. What a mighty God we serve! Who else could have known that roughly 1000 years after this Nebuchadnezzar had this dream, the last of these empires, symbolized in the dream by the legs of iron, the Roman Empire, was overrun by barbarian tribes that divided up what today we call Europe into 10 kingdoms? These are represented in the dream by the 10 toes on the statue. Back then, in about 5-600 AD, those 10 kingdoms in Europe had names like the Lombards, the Franks, the Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Heruli, Sueves, Huns and Saxons. Today though, 1500 years later, the statue is still standing on its ten toes and these 10 countries of Europe are now called Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain and Portugal.
Only one part of this prophecy is still future for us-everything else has now happened: we are still waiting for the Rock to crush the empires and countries built by men, for the Lord Jesus to return and claim all the Earth as His kingdom-this is the Rock that grows into a mountain that fills the Earth. The Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will fill the whole Earth and He will be crowned the King of kings.
God's Word, this prophetic dream in Daniel 2, interrupted Nebuchadnezzar's "life-plan" like a bolt of lightning on a dark and quiet night. I'm not exactly sure whether Nebuchadnezzar in the end finally trusted God or not (chapter 3 suggests not; chapter 4 suggests maybe he did). But I knowDaniel did. The real question is, when a tragedy like an earthquake, loss or the fear of loss, or just a passage from God's Word gets your attention and interrupts your plans, how will you handle it?
If Daniel's God is able to reveal another man's dream to Daniel; if He is able to foretell 25 centuries and more of world history; if He is able to determine the dreams that Kings dream and the exact number of days they walk the earth, the boundaries of their kingdoms; to give or withhold wisdom from their advisors and to ensure by the force of His Divine will that everything in time will come under the rule of the Son He has raised up as King of kings and Lord of lords, then don't you think you can trust Him with your future? With your fears? With all that you love? With your faith?
[read v 44] If you and I will not give in to our fears but put our trust in Daniel's God, through believing in the Saviour He gave to all men to save us from the death our sin deserves, then he will give you and me a share in His Kingdom, in His "treasure", in the things He loves most of all. That Kingdom will last forever. What we build there will not be left to anyone else after us to enjoy. What we plant there will not be harvested by strangers who live there after us-we will harvest it ourselves. Those we love there will not be taken from us. And the King we serve there, in whom we will delight and find our most intense joy, we will serve Him, delight in Him, and enjoy Him forever.
