Does God ever reveal his plans through people who don't believe in him? We'll find the answer to that question today on Truth for Life as we continue our study in the book of Daniel. Alastair Begg considers the unsettling recurring nightmares of an ancient king and the only person who was able to interpret them. I invite you to turn with me to the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. If you have read ahead, then you'll know that it has forty-nine verses.
And so, in the interests of time, I'm not going to read the entire chapter. In fact, if I were to spend three minutes on each verse. in commenting We'd be here for quite a long time. Daniel chapter 2 and verse 1. In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.
His spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. 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. And the king said to them, I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream. Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever. Tell your servants the dream. and we will show the interpretation.
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. But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honour. Therefore, show me the dream and its interpretation. He answered a second time and said, Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation.
The king answered and said, I know with certainty that you're trying to gain time. because you see that the word from me is firm. If you do not make the dream known to me, There is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore, tell me the dream.
and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation. The Chaldeans answered the king and said, There's 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. 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. As a result of that, the king becomes exceedingly angry, issues a decree to send for all of these enchanters and magicians so that they might be killed.
As a result of that, Daniel and his friends are included in that edict. Daniel then prays to God. And is given the dream and its interpretation. And he then, in turn, goes to Ariok, who's responsible for the carrying out of the decree. And says, I don't think that you should just be too hasty in this.
And as a result of that, the encounter between the king and Daniel ensues. And we'll just read a brief portion from 26. The king declared to Daniel, whose name was Beltashazzar, Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation? Daniel answered the king and said, No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.
Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these. And then he proceeds to give to him the dream and the interpretation of the dream. And in verse forty six, the response of Nebuchadnezzar is to fall on his face and to pay homage to Daniel. and to command that an offering be offered up to Daniel. Uh Daniel in turn.
And makes sure that his friends are looked after in the promotional scheme of things, and the chapter ends in that way.
So we thank God for His Word. And we ask for his help as we study it together. Father, we thank you that as we are gathered here, infant voices are proclaiming your name and blessing you. And we pray for them as they Have the Bible open to them now that their tender hearts may be attuned to your truth, and that they might in early days. Come to know and love and follow Christ.
We ask that as we turn to the Bible now, the Spirit of God will be our teacher. And we pray humbly in Christ's name. Amen.
Well, I invite you, as I say, to turn to Daniel chapter two, and we inevitably need to be somewhat selective in working our way through this material if we're not to be here for a very long time. I've elected to do a chapter at a time rather than get bogged down on things, and I hope that you'll thank me for that. Nebuchadnezzar was powerful and he was successful. Of that, there is no doubt. He was the leader of the most.
uh magnificent and mighty nation on the face of the earth. He was the leader of the then known world. If people in his day had seen him moving around, they would have only been struck by the fact of his splendor and of his power and of his significance. Therefore, it would be uh quite a an undertaking for them to recognize that not only did he go through the routines of life the way everyone else had to, but he was also subjected to dreams, dreams that proved for him to be entirely unsettling. And the record that we have here in chapter 2 is of what seems to be a recurring nightmare.
We have to wait until about verse 31 for the dream to actually be recounted in the story. And since I can't be certain that all of you have done your homework, and you will have to wait until verse 31, let me begin by just giving a summary of the dream itself. A huge statue of a man was forming in the mind of Nebuchadnezzar. It had a head of gold, chest, and arms of silver. Its middle and its thighs were made of bronze, and its legs of iron, and its feet a combination of clay and iron.
And in the dream, this vast statue is smashed to smithereens by a stone. and it is quite literally blown away. The stone then begins to grow and grow, becomes a vast mountain which eventually fills the entire earth. And this is a means of destabilizing Nebuchadnezzar in the watches of the night. Verse 1 sets the scene.
He has had these dreams. We're told, his spirit was troubled and his sleep. left him. I think all of us recognize that there are notions which may appear problematic in the daylight and they actually become paralyzing. Uh in the darkness of the night.
There are certain things that you can handle when you're vertical that you apparently can't really handle when you're horizontal. And of course, we learned this from Phantom of the Opera, didn't we? Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation. Darkness wakes and stirs imagination. and this king's imagination had been stirred And so he does what kings do at that time.
He calls for his helpers in verse 2. The magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans are summoned to tell the king his dreams. He has a very straightforward request: tell me the dream and its interpretation. The response of the fellows is to say to him: if you tell us the dream, we will show you the interpretation. He said, no, that's not what I asked you to do.
The word from me is actually very firm. If you don't make known to me the dream and its interpretation, I will have you torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. What a nice person. I mean, I've woken up and said, I don't know what that was about, but I never ever thought of doing anything close to this.
However, he says that's the steak, the carrot is. If you show me the dream in this interpretation, then you will receive honor and reward, and so on. Verse 7, they answered him a second time, if you tell us the dream, we'll show you the interpretation. And then the king said, Oh, I see what your game is now. You're trying to stall for time because you don't know what to say.
And I want you to know that I have only one sentence for you now. I've put the carrot away. I'm coming at you with the stick. You're full of corruption and lies. If you don't show me this, then it's all over for you.
To which they reply, There's not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has ever asked people to do such a thing.
Well He just is completely bewildered by this. And one of the questions that you may want to discuss over coffee that doesn't matter a great deal is whether he actually knew the dream or didn't know the dream. There's nothing in the passage to suggest that he did or he didn't. Except, it would seem to me that if these characters were as Flaky as he imagined, then if they didn't Tell him what the dream was. their interpretation could be for just about anything.
So the only way that he could know that they were On the straight and narrow with him was if he actually came up with the dream itself and then the interpretation.
Now the significance of this is that you see the hatred and the atrocity of this man just because all of his kings, horses, and men cannot put him together again. He has no explanation for what is going on, and so these men find themselves on the eve of destruction, to quote Barry Maguire. I can go way back for many of you. Because of this, verse 12, the king was angry and very furious. And commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.
It's a quite amazing response, isn't it? The fact that you may know the story doesn't diminish its impact. It may make you think of another king who later on was destabilized on his little throne when he found that there had been someone who was born apparently the king of the Jews. And being unable to handle the thought of a threat to his power, he called for the slaughter of all of the innocents. Namely Herod.
Now this man is doing the same all these years before. This is not an unusual phenomenon. If you read history at all, if you read world history, if you think about contemporary history. If you think about a nation like North Korea this morning, And if even only a part of what comes out for us in the West is true, then you have to believe. That man, that young man, It's somehow or another driven by deep, deep darkness to do the things that he does.
Reinhold Naber, in his book The Nature and Destiny of Man, suggests this very thing. He suggests that modern political tyranny. Maybe traced To a darkly conscious realization of the insecurity of man's existence.
So that the great overreaching overplay of people who are placed in authority. May actually speak to the fact that in their heart of hearts they know that they're not really in control of anything at all. But that's actually true for all of us, whatever our little empire is. How else do we explain our angry outbursts? How do we explain our irrational responses to things that unfold for us when perhaps they do not fall out the way we would like them to or demand for them?
Nature who was a huge influence on Hitler philosophically. is the one who said, if there is a God, How can I bear not to be that God? In other words, I am the master of my destiny. I am the captain of my ship. I am in charge.
Now when a person actually believes that, It frames their entire view of the world. It shapes the way in which we will deal with one another. and deal with ourselves. Therefore, we ought not to be surprised. That this king Who believes himself to be so powerful, so significant, and yet his dreams in the night have completely unsettled him.
is so furious. that these enchanters who have proved to be completely useless should just be destroyed. There's more where they came from, presumably.
Now it's at that point in verse 13 when the decree goes out and the wise men are about to be killed that Daniel and his companions find themselves in the story. The reason being that at the end of chapter one, remember, they had been promoted, they had graduated magna cum laude in the realm of visions and so on. And chapter one ends with them included in this vast company of those who have direct access to the king. But their promotion at the end of chapter one now becomes the occasion for their potential destruction here, partway through chapter two. And we are not in any doubt about what's going on.
They sought out the wise men, and they sought out Daniel and his companions. To kill them. to kill them. Yeah. That'll change your day, won't it?
Now, the word is out on the street. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we're looking for you. The king is looking for you. Oh, perhaps they thought to themselves, maybe another promotion. Maybe a little more cash in the bank or whatever it might be.
No, no, no, no, no, no. No, he's planning on killing you. Ah, yes, he's issued a decree that all the bright boys should be killed. And unfortunately, you are the brightest of the best.
Now, the reaction of Daniel and the counteraction of Daniel should be instructive for us. I don't want to delay on it. But verse 14 seems almost matter of fact, doesn't it? Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arik, the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. Hang on a minute.
That's essentially what he says. There's no fatalism on the response of Daniel. There's no way in which he goes, Well, I suppose we were supposed to die, so die we will. Let's have a final cup of tea and get ready for the chopping vlog. No, he doesn't do that, there's no panic.
There's no indication that he immediately sets off to run for the borders and take his friends with him. Nor is there any subjective indication that he is now attempting to discover what God's will is. And then once he's discovered what God's will is, then he'll join him in that discovery. I'm growing old listening to people telling me that this is the way that you function in life, that this is the real proper way to function in life, that you find out what God is doing and then you join Him in what He's doing.
Sounds very pious, doesn't it?
Sounds very something.
Well, I'm a simple soul. I figured that he wrote this book telling me what he's doing, and that I don't need to sit cross-legged on the floor trying to figure out what it is. And Daniel decides not to do that. Daniel is very straightforward. He decides that what God's will for him is: that he would continue living.
That he would like to stay alive. And so that's exactly what he says. And in verse 17, he decides to call his friends together to pray. Not to discover what God's will is for him. But to receive mercy.
so that he might know the mystery so that they might not be destroyed. We don't want to die. Dear God, We would like not to die. Could we have mercy? To understand this mystery, So that we don't die.
That's very straightforward. And then verse 19, the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. of the night. I don't know if it was a Saturday night. When the fever had hit the king.
But uh Saturday night. But here here is friends. Or They feel the city breaking and everybody's shaking and they're staying alive. They're staying alive, right? That's that's their plan.
My mind is a complete mess, I confess.
Now you see, in verse 28, Daniel is going to tell the king that there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. And he knows that because in verse 19, he has revealed the mystery. to Daniel. What does that mean? Remember in chapter 1, it says that God had given verse 17 learning and skill in literature and wisdom, and Daniel.
Distinct from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, had understanding in all visions and dreams. As we continue through the book of Daniel, we'll see that this was a peculiar dimension that was granted to Daniel. Giving rise to these apocalyptic visions, whereby God is, if you like, pulling back a little bit of the curtain of the future, giving Daniel an insight into that. That is not given to others, in order that in this instance he might give it to the king. Showing Daniel that while earthly kingdoms will come and go, the kingdom of God will last forever.
A message which these Exiles were sorely in need of, a message which we this morning are sorely in need of too.
Now, verses 20 to 23 would be a wonderful sermon on their own because they give to us this hymn of praise. And Daniel blesses God, the name of God, forever and ever. to whom belong wisdom and might? He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings.
He gives wisdom to the wise, knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. To you, O God of my fathers, he says, I give thanks and praise. For you have given me wisdom and might.
and have now made known to me what we asked of you. For you have made known to us The king's matter. I want you to notice the distinction between what Daniel is saying here and what the enchanters had been saying in verse 11. The thing that the king asks is difficult, true, and no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. And clearly they say to the king, this is beyond the realm of our training, beyond the realm of our ability, and therefore we're going to have to go somehow into the realm of divinity.
And so, into these multivariates, and to them they might appeal. Only somewhere up there is the answer. Daniel is not saying, Yes, I agree. He's saying, No, those gods have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak. There is only one God who knows what he has done, who knows the end from the beginning.
Now loved ones, you need to understand that the same is true and abounds in contemporary America. Men's hearts and minds have become darkened. When people cease to believe in God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture, they do not believe in nothing, they believe in just about everything. They don't mind if we want to include our little God somewhere in the pantheon of contemporary gods. But if we're going to start to say that the name of God is forever and ever and He is the one who knows what is in the darkness and so on, then of course we're going to find ourselves in a different position altogether.
That's why we should prepare for it. But Daniel, you see, was not rude. He wasn't bombastic. His response to Ariach, who had the responsibility of the execution squad, was with prudence and discretion. Two very lovely individuals.
In other words, he was tactful. And as we've seen, he was prayerful. And as we realize, he was purposeful. In verse 24, he went into Ariach, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. And he went in and he said thus to him, Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon.
They're pretty straightforward. Nobody was in any doubt. And so it is that Ariok, in verse 25, brought in Daniel before the king in haste. Decides to put himself at the front of the parade. I have found among the exiles from Judah a man.
No, actually you haven't. Daniel is the one who has volunteered. And uh the king declared to Daniel Are you able? Daniel said no, no. No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers, are able, can show the king the mystery the king has asked.
But There is a God. In heaven who reveals mysteries. But as for me, the mystery has been revealed to me not because I'm brighter than any of the other people who are alive, but in order that the mystery might be known by the king and that you may know the thoughts of your minds.
Now get this. The sovereign control of God extends to the dream patterns of pagan kings. That's how much control God has in the universe. We're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life, and we'll hear more tomorrow. If you're enjoying our current study in the book of Daniel, you want to request the book we're offering titled Brave by Faith.
It's a book written by Alistair, and it comes with a study guide. This book explains what it means to live boldly as a believer in a society that rejects Christian beliefs. Alistair looks to Daniel's story to remind us that we're not left to our own devices. The God who enabled Daniel to live bravely in a hostile culture is the same God who empowers us today. This is a great book for believers of just about any age, including teens and young adults who might be entering the workforce or heading off to college this fall.
Give them a copy of Brave by Faith to help prepare them to live bravely and confidently in an environment that is not always accepting of biblical beliefs. Ask for your copy of the book and study guide today when you donate to Truth for Life using our mobile app or online at truthforlife. org/slash donate. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll learn how it's possible to be charmed by the gospel without being changed by the gospel.
The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
