Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. I bless you to live all your days under the right hand of God's favor. When times are hard, may God create a way in the wilderness for you. And when times are dry, May He provide rivers in the desert for you. Isaiah 43, 19 When times are uncertain, May God cover you with favor as with a shield.
Psalm 512. When it's time for work, May the favor of the Lord our God be upon you and establish the work of your hands. That's Psalm 90, verse 17. and all of life. May you grow in wisdom, stature, and favour.
with God and people everywhere. That's from Luke 2. Verse 52. That's today's blessing. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
The greatest news imaginable. Is that the kingdom of which you are ultimately a citizen will never fail to falter, or subside or diminish. but only increase And you, along with Christ. Reign in that kingdom. Forevermore.
That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. Yeah. I'm Daniel Britt. Excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series called Daniel, as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina.
If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860.
More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. The setting of Daniel chapter two is. This Daniel who has been exiled.
to Babylon about 600 years before Christ. And so he is a foreigner. In Babylon, having lost his homeland of Jerusalem, having lost the the temple that he loves, the customs, his family, his friends, all that he holds dear. All that he's separate from now. And Daniel's there.
He does have three close friends there nearby, which is a blessing. But while he's there, Nebuchadnezzar sees that Daniel and his friends are very gifted, very articulate, very wise, very skilled, handsome young men. And so they kind of take him in on a scholarship program to induct them, initiate, and teach them everything that Babylon knows. And so it's an odd thing. They are in the court of the foreign God who is teaching, of the foreign king who worships a foreign God, as the wise men of that foreign land are teaching him.
Uh and yet they are lost. And worship false gods, and yet they're trying to impart their wisdom to Daniel. And yet Daniel needs to learn their language and learn their customs. All of this, it's a very unusual situation. And while he's there, Daniel.
Is set up by God to receive. Favor, unbelievable favor. Promotions as he is serving in the Babylonian court. And it's just absolutely remarkable what's happening.
So here's the picture: a favored foreigner.
Now what this pictures in advance Is the ultimate favored foreigner, which was Jesus.
Now Jesus, he came and it's his world, and yet people rejected him and rejected him from religious sides or political sides, feeling threatened by him. And yet, so much favor and anointing on Jesus, the Son of God, that everywhere he went, great crowds pressed in upon him. And so you're kind of wondering, you know, is he favored or is he just, and then he is crucified, but he lives and is resurrected unto lordship forever over an invisible kingdom. That's the gospel that is being sort of foretold through the whole story of Daniel.
Now, in this particular story, what has happened is Nebuchadnezzar has had a really troubling dream.
So troubling, in fact. That Nebuchadnezzar insists that some wise man tell him about his dream. The wise men of Babylon say, Okay, tell us what your dream is. We'll interpret it for you. He says, No.
He says, I want somebody to tell me what I dreamed and tell me the interpretation. They say, nobody can do that. No kings ever asked anybody to do that. No one but God could do that. There's the whole point.
sets up for Daniel Because only God and Nebuchadnezzar know what this dream is. And Daniel, who hears from God, has confidence and faith that he'll be able to hear from God and that. In giving the king what the dream is and the interpretation, the king will repent of his edict that had said that if no one interpreted his dream, he was going to kill all the wise men.
So Daniel's life is at stake. All the wise men of Babylon are at stake.
So God uses Daniel and this story to not only save Daniel, but to save other people. It's a message of a saving work that comes because he's so connected with heaven.
Okay. That's what this story is.
Now, we're going to pick this up after Daniel has received the revelation of what the dream is and the interpretation, and he comes to Nebuchadnezzar at verse 31 of Daniel chapter 2. Daniel 2, verse 31. And here's where we pick up the story: Daniel speaking to Nebuchadnezzar. You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening.
The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold all together were broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floor, and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. Yeah.
This was the dream.
Now, we will tell the king its interpretation: You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, the birds of the heaven, making you rule over them all. You are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze which shall rule over all the earth. 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.
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. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. 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. 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. 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. That's a great story.
But we're talking about feeling like foreigners in the world. And sometimes, even in our own beloved country, in America, sometimes you're like, I can't believe how much things have changed. And you can feel like, what is going on around me?
Well, this idea of being like a foreigner in your own world, it's okay to feel that way because we run on something different than the world. We are different. I love the story of a nun. Bless her heart. She ran out of gas and she was feisty.
She could take care of herself. She was a nurse, and she had. She had well, she was fine. She the gas station wasn't too far away. And so she just went and in her in her trunk, she was a nurse, she looked around anything she could get to get to get some gas with, and so she goes and gets the bedpan.
And uh Goes and gets a little gas down at the gas station. She comes back and she's pouring the contents of the bedpan into her car. And some passerby goes, man, that's faith. Oh. You ready for some good news today?
You are a citizen of the kingdom of God. You might also be a citizen in America or another country. You might have your citizenship there, but your ultimate citizenship. is as a Christian of the kingdom of God. There are two kingdoms.
There is the kingdom of darkness and there's the kingdom of light. And the kingdom of light, the kingdom of God, has one king, the preeminent Lord Jesus Christ, the God of all that exists, reigns supremely over this kingdom. And all of the kingdoms of this world and all the ideologies of this age that stand up against the kingdom of God in the end shall all crumble and be turned to dust. The fact of the matter, this story that we're delving into today just highlights for us the assurance of the preeminence of the kingdom of God. And you, beloved, are a citizen in that kingdom.
Now, in this world, you may face troubles because you're still in the world. But every day Every day, you can remind yourself of your ultimate home and your ultimate citizenship. Which means that there is an unusual kind of paradox in which you live. It's called You're already in the kingdom. You already taste the essence of the kingdom and all its righteousness, peace, and joy.
You see the evidence of the kingdom of God, the power of God that is at work. We've already we're seeing the power of God in our midst today, and we'll see even more. And yet, you also live in a world and drive the same cars that other people drive, and you have to use the same gasoline that other people use, and yet, inwardly, your heart and your life. Is fueled by a completely different source. Of energy, divine energy.
So you're absolutely different from anything related to the systems of the world. And yet you live in this this world. And this goes far to explain some of the tensions of our lives. And yet it is, for us Christians, the greatest news imaginable. Is that the kingdom of which you are ultimately a citizen?
will never fail, falter. Or subside or diminish. But only increase And you, along with Christ, reign in that kingdom. Forevermore. Let's talk about this vision, the meaning of this dream.
Um What? Uh what is agreed upon by almost every interpreter uh is certainly this: that the this this great image, this big That's you. that Nebuchadnezzar sees in his dream. That it is awesome and, in a sense, dreadful in its appearance, even in Nebuchadnezzar. and very troubling to him The head of gold and then and then throughout the the chest it's it's of silver and then bronze around the waist and then as it moves down it's it's iron and then iron mixed with clay.
That as Daniel is describing the empires that will emerge after Babylon. That Uh there is almost universal agreement that what Daniel has done here. Is so here from God. That with amazing symbolic but yet accurate Imagery is portraying the actual kingdoms that will emerge, not only Babylon, but afterwards.
Now, as you get down to what we're talking about with that fourth kingdom or the ten kings, there's much dispute about what that means. And there are, of course, different interpretations of eschatology, which we will not go into today, but the ultimate answer to when Jesus comes back in relationship to the nature of the church and the people of God and all that is subject to many different interpretations. It seems very clear that, of course, initially when he says this first, the head of gold, this is you, Nebuchadnezzar, and this refers to Babylon, and this is an empire that is in preeminence from about 605 BC up until 539. And then Cyrus of Persia emerges as the great leader of the Medes and the Persians, what is often called the Meadow-Persian Empire, because it really is the Empire of the Medes and the Persians. And Cyrus is the one who, in 539, as his empire emerges, he is the one that actually allows the people of God, the Jewish people, to go back to their homeland in Jerusalem.
period of exile ends in 539. They're restored. That's the restoration. And this happens under Cyrus, which interestingly, the scripture says that God had anointed Cyrus, even though he was pagan, to be his instrument of restoration to the people.
So, one of the sidelines of this: the sovereignty of God is at work, where He is working. This is what's mind-blowing about this. He's working through. the empires of the world. To even through that, to accomplish his greater sovereign kingdom purposes.
That's an extraordinary thought.
So Babylon and then Medo-Persia with Cyrus and leaders that followed, that Meadow-Persian Empire runs from 539 to 332 BC. And then a man named Alexander the Great comes onto the horizon of history. And Greece becomes preeminent up until most would say around 146 BC, and this then becomes the Roman era. And Rome really, depending on how you measure it, you could say it's from 146 BC to about 395 AD. And it was into the Roman Empire.
That of course Jesus was born. And that the gospel is presented, and Jesus says the kingdom of God is emerged in your midst, in the midst of that.
Now, what you see, again, with there being some dispute about some would say, well, is that really Rome, the fourth one? But I think that this is the prominent view, and I think it's the right view. These four absolutely massive and major empires are all symbolically imaged in this big statue that was in the dream. And that's what Daniel says: you're going to be, you've got your empire, and then there's going to be another empire, and another empire, and another empire. And what you observe about these is that it is one big dazzling statue.
And yet, if you were to look in Daniel chapter 7. Which would be worthy of you reading after this just to see the parallelism to this. These kingdoms, these same kingdoms, seem to be mirrored in the vision that Daniel has in Daniel 7. But now, instead of seeing it as a statue, he sees these four different empires in sort of images of beasts.
Something like a lion with eagle's wings that represents Babylon, something like a bear that is representing Persia, Meadow-Persian empire, something like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back that is representing Greece. And the fourth beast, again, this mention of iron, has iron teeth. And so it's like this. The image of this statue seems awesome and dazzling. in a sense from the world's perspective.
But what Daniel sees in his vision. is he sees it really from From a kingdom of God perspective, from God's perspective, really the empires are more like ravenous, wild, uncontrolled beasts.
So in other words, Externally, they look like this big statue. Internally, they are out-of-control beasts.
Now beloved, this is an accurate picture. Of the conflict of the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. That Even those things that at times dazzle the world and may seem awesome and dreadful. And their awesomeness, if you were to see. Behind it, the The inspiration of darkness.
You would see great wickedness that oftentimes the world doesn't see.
So, this is what Daniel has observed.
Now, what he says and he sees in this dream, and you can notice, is there's a deterioration and a decline, the substances, the metals, become less valuable as they descend in this statue.
So, gold becomes silver, silver becomes bronze, bronze becomes iron. And Daniel describes the next kingdom as being inferior, but what we know from history is it's not that the Medo-Persian Empire was smaller than the Babylonian Empire. It wasn't less great in that sense. But the picture is it moves towards the empire of Rome, it is a picture of the continuing decline of the moral fiber of these empires. Even as they decline in their sense of value, which may be a picture of the moral depravity of the empires, they are increasing in their strength.
The hardness of the metals increase.
Now, this is not by accident in this vision, that the valuable gold, which is relatively soft, then becomes the less valuable iron, which is so hard that it crushes and is a symbol in the scripture of that which is very hard, very strong, and it crushes. And so, ultimately, what you get is a picture of iron and then iron mixed with clay to picture Rome, which is so crushing.
So powerful, so pervasive, and seemingly so preeminent in the world, and with all of their advances and all of their roads and all that happens in the Roman Empire, yet there's an increasing moral decline in Rome, which becomes famous and is attributed to the collapse of Rome, really. And so these two things are going on at the same time, and all this is pictured in this statue. And one of the things that you notice is that the statue itself. While depicting these four different empires, the statue is one statue. It's an image of like one man.
Which is an important part of the revelation that is essentially saying this: all of the kingdoms of this world are all connected essentially to the same headship. And they may look different, and they may have different worldly leaders, and they may have different emphases, and they may have different territorial borders. But the kingdoms of this world, if they are all still connected, it's really just really in the end, it's just two kingdoms: a kingdom of darkness and a kingdom of light. And then what happens in this is this little rock. That is seen in the dream that was not cut with human hands.
Alan Wright. And today's teaching, the good news of the kingdom of God. Ever feel like the pressure is always on? What must I do to be accepted? There is only one solution: the grace of God that lifts our shame.
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Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Is it difficult to strike balance of living as a citizen of two worlds, and will most of us always struggle with that? Yes, is the short answer to that, Daniel. The first thing to say is that let's at least acknowledge that we are. A citizen of two different worlds.
And there are many different perspectives about this. Um That go beyond the scope of today's teaching, but The idea of the kingdom of God is so pervasive to everything in the gospel. That what is proclaimed from Jesus' lip and what he told the disciples to proclaim is the arrival of the kingdom.
So the focus on being in the unshakable kingdom. He is the ultimate hope of our world. And that's what today's message is about. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
