Dr. Jack Beck and the Book of Daniel: Sermon Only

good morning westminster church what a privilege it is to be with you in worship and thank you for this opportunity to lead you into a study of the book of daniel my phone rang unexpectedly that morning i thought i knew exactly how the next days of the month were going to look that first weekend in march i was at the airport leaving for tel aviv israel i was on my way to jerusalem university college where for the next days i would be leading a field study in which we'd explore the idea of making the bible's geography meaningful well the phone call changed all of that israel had very rapidly began to shut down its borders and that meant this trip was not going to happen so i returned home and began to unpack i wondered what the next months would look like and i was candidly pretty hopeful i was looking forward to some vacation time some time flying around visiting visiting family members but as the days and the weeks and the months went by um hope was hard to keep alive the future just seems so increasingly insecure if you're feeling some of that today let me suggest to you it's a great day to open the bible and to allow god to speak to your heart and it's a particularly good day for you to take the opportunity to listen in on what the lord is saying in the book of daniel i think its core message is found in this sentence the future is more certain than it seems we'll use that as our theme for our study and in chapter 12 verse 1 we're going to listen to the lord speaking to daniel and to us about that theme there will be a time of distress about that there will be a time of distress such as not happen from the beginning of the nations until then but at that time your people everyone whose name is found written in the book will be delivered the future is more certain than it seems here's the three things where i'd like to briefly land today this is in spite of the crisis yeah despite the fact that there is a crisis the future is certain and that is because god is in control and it's because god has a plan it's hard to see the book of daniel breaking out let's let's dig in together starting with the first the future is more certain than it seems despite the fact that there's a crisis going on now if we entered daniel 605 bc we're entering a world in crisis a world in great turmoil and i see that going on at three different levels the political the personal and the theological so let's let's spend a minute with each of those so we appreciate just how bad it was so we can lay this message of the future being certain against that now first of all the turmoil was political in 605 bc a babylonian king by the name of nebuchadnezzar had empire on his mind now babylon is located in the green box on the map but nebuchadnezzar had marched his army out of the homeland and was moving westward toward the mediterranean sea one of his chief targets was israel or the promised land circled in blue you'll see from the map that it resides between two natural travel obstacles the mediterranean on the west and the arabian desert on the east this natural land bridge carried all sorts of international commerce between asia africa and europe it became a choke point to collect tariffs and taxes and it was the place that nebuchadnezzar had as a foundation for establishing his empire the money he would collect there would give him the resources needed to create the army that would dominate the world political turmoil in the mix and that led to personal turmoil for people who were living in the promised land because when nebuchadnezzar showed up in 605 bc and defeated the country he began to deport some of its leading citizens and the life they would have in the future was not the life they had known they were forced to leave their homeland and travel 500 miles east to babylon they were given new names they were taught a new language they meant new literature they were taught new theology and what had been normal was being slowly erased in this re-education process in babylon daniel and the people we meet in the book are folks who are in personal turmoil and thirdly there's theological turmoil going on as we enter daniel i don't think there's a place in the old testament where the plan of salvation seems more ready to go off the rails than it is at the time that the book of daniel is written during the babylonian babylonian exile to appreciate that we need to go back 1500 years to the time of abraham and sarah now the lord came to this couple who was childless at the time and said i am going to use you and your family to restore the blessing that was lost in the garden of eden during the time of the fall and to sin and so god came to them with three promises that you'll see represented in this triangle god said look i'm going to take your family and turn it into a great nation it's a pretty amazing promise given the fact that abraham and sarah at the time were were childless he then went on to say look your family turned nation is going to have a land of its own the promised land what we come to know as the land of israel and then from that nation on that land i'm going to restore the blessing that was lost in eden through one of your descendants someone we come to know as the messiah this is the core group of promises that we read and focus on throughout the old testament it is the hope of the old testament for salvation but this triangle is under great threat by the exile people were asking legitimate questions and we should be too about uh questions like these was the lord less powerful and the deities championed by babylon had israel failed so badly that the lord had given up on his chosen people and had the lord given up entirely and i redeeming the world from sin uh when we enter the book of daniel we are entering a time of crisis at many levels and yet it's against that background that the message of daniel shouts loudly and clearly the future is more certain than it seems now because god is in control now if you and i had been sitting in exile with daniel and his friends we would not have felt that at all as we looked around there would have been no time in our life when we felt things were more out of control deported from our homeland being forced to learn a new language being conditioned for new jobs on any given day i would not control what i did or for how long i would be doing it this is not a place where i feel in control and yet the bible's message in daniel is clear hey god has got this now it says it in many ways but i'm going to focus just briefly on three stories uh in chapters one three and six that bring this point out the first of which has to do with the health of hananiah mishael azariah and daniel four of the jewish exiles who were being re-educated in babylon now as as part of that reconditioning process these four gifted individuals were being taught the new language the new literature the new political system and in the mix of all of that they were required to eat what all of the other re-education students were eating and that was a diet that contained non-kosher foods foods that god had forbidden his people of the past from eating so daniel and the other three went to the royal official who was superintending this educational process and said look let us eat this kind of food the food is which is kosher with which the lord would allow and then at the end of a certain test period you check us out and see whether or not we are up to the level of health that the others are who are eating non-kosher food well at the end of the test period when these four were brought before king nebuchadnezzar here was his reply in daniel 1 20 in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom god was in control that's the message from the story in chapter one god is in control that's the message in chapter three where we see shadrach meshach and abednego rescued from the fiery furnace now this story in this story king nebuchadnezzar had built a 90-foot pagan image and said this is the only thing you are to worship well you know first commandment total violation right here so shadrach meshach and abednego refused and the penalty for non-compliance uh was being thrown into a superheated brick making furnace uh when shadrach meshach and abednego refused despite their giftedness as members of this new administration they were taken to the top of the furnace and thrown in it was so hot that the soldiers who pushed them in died from the heat and of course we'd expect shadrach meshach and abednego to very quickly succumb as well but as the side door the vent door was opened they saw people walking around inside and eventually the story goes here daniel 3 27 so shadrach meshach and abednego came out of the fire unthinkable right they saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies nor was a hair of their head singed their robes were not scorched and there was no smell of fire on them then nebuchadnezzar said praise be to the god of shadrach meshach and abednego who has sent his angel and rescued his servants god is in control we see it in one more story daniel chapter six now we need to fast forward because in 539 bc the uh budding empire of persia defeated the then established empire of babylon and despite this this shift in leadership daniel was so gifted that the persians quickly picked him up and made him one of the three administrators that was in charge of the entire persian empire he did so well that his compatriots were jealous of him and so they rigged this scheme what they say by which they were going to get rid of daniel for 30 days they convinced the king of persia no one should worship anyone anything except except you well the flattered king issued the decree the penalty for non-compliance being thrown into a den of hungry lions well daniel would not worship any human being and as a consequence we find him thrown into the lion's den how does that one turn out daniel says at the first dawn of day the king got up and hurried to the lion's den and when he came near the den he called the daniel in an anguished voice daniel servant of the living god has your god whom you serve continually been able to rescue you from the lines and daniel answered may the king live forever my god sent his angel and he shut the mouths of the lions they have not hurt me because i was found innocent in his sight nor have i ever done anything wrong before you your majesty again a story that teaches god is in control and because he is in control the future is much more certain than it seems and that brings us to the third component of the book of daniel the future is more certain than it seems because god has a plan now again i want you to join the thought world of those living in exile god's people of the past everything about your life seemed out of control it seemed random it seemed uncertain it seemed like nothing was getting anywhere in fact even backtracking at times and so part of the way the book of daniel speaks is designed to help us see that through this chaos god actually is evolving a plan now this takes us into some of the more exotic things that we find in the book of daniel in dreams and and visions again i want to take the 10 000 foot view with you look at two of these one from chapter two one from chapter seven two different dreams one head by nebuchadnezzar the babylonian king one head by daniel and what we're going to see is that through those dreams the book of daniel is teaching that in the midst of this apparent chaos god is actually evolving a plan let's go to the time of nebuchadnezzar now i know i just jumped a moment ago to the time of persia 5 39 let's go back let's go back to the time of of chapter 2 the time of king nebuchadnezzar and a dream that he had now i should let you know that in the ancient near eastern world dreams were taken very seriously was believed that this was one of the ways in which the gods communicated their thoughts to you they didn't have a a tool like the bible like you and i have and so a king would typically employ a group of people whose only job was to help him understand the dreams that he was having what were the gods saying well in this particular case the king had this incredibly disturbing dream but none of the people in his court could give him the interpretation this was in part because the king said this time i'm not going to tell you the dream i'm going to have you tell me what the dream was and then interpret it well these guys were throwing up their hands in despair and then daniel stepped forward and said look uh let me see what i can do with this and daniel immediately then explained to the king the unexplained dream that he had the king saw a statue with a head of gold with a chest of silver bronze and belly so excuse me uh a bronze or brass belly and thighs legs of iron and feet have a mixture of clay and iron pretty exotic looking statue and as the king was observing this statue in his dream a rock came flying out of the sky and smashed the whole thing to pieces and then that rock grew up to become a great mountain well that's a heck of a dream and daniel said let me explain for you what the lord is saying here and as we listen to daniel's explanation listen for the idea that god has a plan the statue made up of different kinds of metal was actually representing different kingdoms empires that would evolve in now imagine this you've got daniel sitting back at the sick in the at the close of the 7th century bc when babylon is controlling the world and through this dream he's helping the king and us understand what's going to happen in the centuries that follow that babylonian kingdom is going to be followed by another headed by the medes and particularly the persians that is going to succumb to a greek empire and that's going to succumb to a roman empire daniel is seeing the news before it happens in this dream and it's during the time of that fourth kingdom the time of rome that this is going to happen daniel 2 in the time of those kings the god of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed this is the time of rome the time of the coming of jesus in the time of those kings the come of rome the god of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed nor will be left to another people last in the list it will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end but it will itself endure forever this is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain but not by human hands a rock that broke the iron the bronze the clay the silver and the gold to pieces god has a plan and daniel helps the exiles see that there's a plan that's evolving towards the coming of the fulfillment when the kingdom of god would come fast forward in the book last portion chapter 7 to 12 oh man exotic weird extreme looking stuff here we come to daniel's dream about a hybrid beast now as daniel fell asleep and dreamed he had this very unusual dream that had four hybrid creatures in it a lion with wings of an eagle a bear with ribs in its teeth but lifted up on one side a leopard with four heads and wings and some sort of undefined fierce creature with horns growing out of its head once again daniel is confronted by something exotic and needs needing interpretation at the close in this dream in my vision at night daniel 7 i looked and there before me was one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven he approached the ancient of days and was led into his presence he was given authority glory and sovereign power all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him you know this is right this is jesus his dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed four nations and then the coming of the kingdom of god sound familiar when we look at daniel 2 and 7 we see the same rotation of empires babylon medo-persia greece and rome and at the conclusion of this during the time of that fourth kingdom an eternal kingdom established on the cross by the coming of jesus christ the chaos that israel was feeling in exile was actually going somewhere because god had a plan and that's the book of daniel i mean there's so much more there right but you get the message in its core the future is much more certain than it seems that's in spite of the crisis going on because god is in fact in control because god has a plan where does this land in my life well daniel 12 8 is a question that i have circulated in my mind in this time my lord what will be the outcome of all of this where is all of this going i think the book of daniel not only raises that question right but it answers that question and so how does it answer it for me as i work through this challenging time in the life of america and the world well let's start with daniel 12 1. there will be a time of distress oh great no kidding right but let's think about that a little bit god says the time of the coming of the kingdom the ultimate arrival of the kingdom will not come until we have gone through times plural of distress i feel that i feel that distress like you do i'm wondering when am i going to get back to work when are my publications going to start selling again if i become ill if i become ill will there be an icu bed available i have kids in medicine four of them and and i and i wonder is there going to be enough ppe to protect them as they on a daily basis now are seeing covet 19 positive payments uh patients it makes me wonder uh for folks who are unable to make house payments i saw a statistic the other day that said a third of americans in the last month were unable to make their house payments and what about those families uh for whom cash is running out and food now is a real question mark in their mind oh man this is a time of distress and a time of grave uncertainty and so what does the book of daniel have to say to me it says get your eyes off your feet because the closer i look at the things that are near me the challenges that i'm facing at the moment the more uncertain the future seems but when i lift my eyes to the horizon and i go to the second half of chapter 12 verse 1 i see this but at that time your people everyone whose name is found written in the book will be delivered remember the dream and the four exotic beasts we saw it was the march of four kingdoms babylon persia greece rome and during the time of that fourth kingdom there would be one like the son of man who would come and who would suffer and die for the sins of the entire world so that the punishment each of us merited fell on him that happened during the time of that fourth kingdom and what that means is incredibly profound because it really then doesn't matter if i die of coba 19 if i die in a car accident if i die in a lightning strike the reality is i know what happens next i enter into an eternal kingdom which is the last in that that long line of empires a kingdom where i will be with the lord in peace forever and forever the phone call that i got that first saturday in march it changed everything and yet in so many respects it stay changed nothing certainly it made the future look somewhat uncertain but daniel has an answer for this in the book of daniel we see that the future is more certain than it seems the book of daniel is the antidote for an uncertain future and i pray that it may function for you in exactly that way and now may the peace of god the kind of peace the world can't give but that passes all human understanding made that peace keep your hearts and your minds in christ jesus our lord amen

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Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020