In Hebrew Scriptures, the book of Daniel is considered part of the Writings, not the Prophets… It is also one of the most unique - and significant - books in the entire Bible. The first half is in fact very similar to books like Ruth and Ezra and Nehemiah - glimpses of historical events which have greater life lessons. But scattered throughout, and in the entire second half, we have amazing prophecies, visions, predictions of things which would happen in the future. Many of these have been fulfilled - some are still awaiting their fulfillment.
But I think the biggest takeaway from the book of Daniel is an expansive view of the most high God which completely levels the playing field.
Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have declared that, “In this life, we are all kings or pawns, emperors or fools.” And this is our starting point in Daniel. Big bad Nebuchadnezzar - aka Nebby K - has finally shown up to capture Judah. It is the hand of punishment which God has been talking about, warning His people about for decades.
Daniel 1:1-2
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God; and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his god.
Think about how the people of Judah were feeling. Abandoned. Disillusioned. Questioning God - like Habakkuk did for a bit. Why, God? Why have You let this happen? Feeling 2nd class - or worse. Losers. At one point, they were on top of the world - but oh how the mighty have fallen.
Supremacy. Supremacy. The state or condition of being superior. Loftier. To all others. In authority. Power. Status. Elevated. Exalted. We look at the world around us and the people around us and we compare ourselves, sometimes favorably, sometimes unfavorably. We almost can’t help ourselves. One-upsmanship and one-downsmanship - it’s part of the human condition.
And as much as anything, what we see here from Nebby K is about supremacy. Power. A power play. He is exalting himself - as well as his god. The God of the Hebrews being subjugated to Nebby K's god, the god of Babylon (which we know is just another pagan idol). Even and especially in the pagan world, spirits are at the back of everything - spirit worship, appeasing the spirits. But for sure, Nebby K is striving after total supremacy - and he rightly assumes there is a spiritual component to that.
And we find that the world is full of those who develop the illusion of loftiness. Perceived superiority [or lack thereof] in relation to various things around them. We wax arrogant. Or we languish and shrink back in intimidation.
But what we really get in Daniel is a leveled playing field. We see the world as it really is - because we get a clearer picture of Who God really is. We puny humans get so caught up thinking there are all kinds of degrees of elevation - rank, status, of class, of giftedness. But we are waaay too close to the situation - things look so much bigger from up close. It’s all about perspective. In 3D mapping this is called vertical exaggeration.
[3D imaging - vertical exaggeration] - [profile of tour de france mountain stage]
In our vertical exaggeration we create mountains out of molehills. Delusions of grandeur. We look at the world and we look at those around us and we crank up our own personal game of thrones. One upping and one downing ourselves relative to those around us. And what we see in the book of Daniel is the leveling of the playing field, the entire field flattened like a pancake. Flatter than that even. Cuz pancakes can actually be quite fluffy. They can puff up. Zoom in close enough and even a pancake doesn’t seem so flat…
[kansas flatter than a pancake] - [top 10 flattest states - Florida. Illinois, North Dakota, Louisiana, Minnesota, Delaware, Kansas, Texas, Nevada and Indiana]
So we need to be thinking flatter than a pancake. A crepe. Or a tortilla. Flat. A world which is so flat as to make any and all seeming mountains and valleys of no account. We need to zoom out, and see things as they really are…
[profile of earth][on a line where the circumference of the earth is laid out and condensed down to 10 inches, everest is a dot .002 inches high…] ALSO *******[water on earth]
We think these hills and valleys are so steep, so huge in comparison to one another, to us. But in this we are far too myopic. We are too close to the situation. And so what we need to develop is this hyperopia, this ability to see objects at a distance. We need to zoom out - and get perspective. Daniel is about perspective, perspective on kings and pawns - and on the lofty God Who is elevated and exalted high above it all. The supremacy of our sovereign omnipotent God. And as we come to recognize this, it completely levels the playing field.
So here comes Nebuchadnezzar. Big bad Nebby K. He took down Assyria. And here he comes to take down Judah. And what is the first thing we’re told? The Lord GAVE Judah into his hand [1.2]
John 19.11 Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above…” Isaiah 14:27 “For the LORD of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?”
Next we see these four Jewish boys. Probably in their late teens. They were big fish back home. But now they are far from home. Captives. Slaves. Pawns. And they’ve been selected to become servants of the most powerful and ruthless king in the world. Yet there is this humble confidence and determination about them. And what do we see? [1.9] - God gives Daniel favor in the sight of the commander. [1.17] - And God gives the boys knowledge. God repeatedly is at work, doing His thing, working out His good plan in the world and in the lives of His people. Their perspective, their zoomed-out view of the supremacy of God makes all the difference. And we see that Daniel sees (and shows us) the supremacy of God.
The supremacy of God. The one true God. The great and awesome God. The Ancient of Days, Ruler over the realm of mankind. Everlasting. Almighty. Righteous. The God Who speaks, and has spoken. He is holy, pure, and worthy of all honor and respect and devotion. Full of compassion, and ready to forgive. He alone is supreme, and all earthly status and power and regimes are in His hands. Fleeting at best. They are determined and bestowed on humans by the Ancient of Days, the sovereign God of the universe.
Even the names reinforce this truth for us: Daniel - “God my Judge”; Hananiah - “God has favored”; Mishael - “who is what God is” [who can compare to God]; Azariah - “who God helps”. Most likely they were born right around the time of the revival under Josiah, and they managed to grow up in what was more of a devout atmosphere.
What we see in this first half of Daniel is God giving and reinforcing perspective to both kings and pawns. (And to us!) From myopia to hyperopia. Zooming out. Daniel and his friends could have been intimidated by this powerful king. They could have felt like they were simply pawns. But their view of the supremacy of God changed everything.
Daniel 11.32b “…the people who know their God will display strength and take action.”
In chapter 2, the king has a dream, but can’t remember it, and when none of his magi can recount or explain it to him, he wants to kill all the wise men of Babylon - including our four friends. But we see that God has a hyperopic lesson, a series of zoom-out moments for Nebby K - and Daniel, with his eyes fixed on the God of heaven, is not at all intimidated by the situation. [2.14-18]
Sometimes we might be tempted to feel like we are a pawn. Just a small cog in some huge impersonal machine. It’s interesting that Daniel gets elevated and relegated over and over - but the one constant, that which keeps everything in perspective for him, is this view of the supremacy of God.
Psalm 95:4 He holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains.
Job 12:10 For the life of every living thing is in his hand, and the breath of every human being.
Acts 17:26 ...and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,
Acts 17:28 ...for in Him we live and move and have our being.
So what is Daniel’s response? Prayer. Daniel sees (and shows us) the efficacy of prayer. Repeatedly, his first response is to turn to the God of heaven, to request compassion from Him. Dependence. All things are from Him and through Him. Apart from Him there is nothing we can do. Prayer is what cultivates our connection to the God of heaven. Of course it is inaugurated by faith/trust in the work of Christ on the cross, His blood poured out for us, but prayer is how we express and reinforce our ongoing trust in Him.
[LION’S DEN] Then look over in chapter 10. Verses 10-13. Do you know how long Daniel had been praying (and fasting)? Three weeks. Apparently it took three weeks of praying in order for the angel to break through the spiritual opposition. Sometimes we need victory in some area of struggle. Or love for a neighbor - or an enemy. Sometimes we need healing. Or reconciliation. Sometimes all we need is to be able to understand a situation.
Prayer is not supplemental - it is fundamental. Our little prayer meetings on Sunday morning and Wednesday evening - those are not supplemental. They are not add-ons, fill-ins, as if we didn’t have enough to do. We’re not just trying to fill up our calendar. Prayer is the most important work of the ministry. If God is going to do something, it is usually in response to the prayers of His people. You want God to show up, and do His thing? Better start praying. One person has said, never have so many left so much to so few. You look at the early church, leading up to Pentecost - what were they doing in that upper room?
Acts 1.14 These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer…
If we as a church want to see God do something, we better start praying…
So, back to ch 2, and Nebby K’s zoom-out lesson. Look at what God shows Nebuchadnezzar:
Daniel 2.47 The king answered Daniel and said, “Surely your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, since you have been able to reveal this mystery.”
God reinforces this lesson in chapter 3, the incident with the fiery furnace.
Daniel 3:28-29 Nebuchadnezzar responded and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him, violating the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God. Therefore I make a decree that any people, nation or tongue that speaks anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap, inasmuch as there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.”
But we also see something else. In [1.8], it says that Daniel made up his mind. A decided resolution. He made up his mind. Here’s the thing we need to realize. Everyone was doing it. Everyone was doing it, eating the king’s food, offered to idols. Here again in chapter three, where the command is to bow down to this idol. Everyone was doing it. Even some of their own people, I imagine. No problem. It won’t hurt you. Everybody’s doing it. But Daniel sees and shows us the primacy of doing what is right. It is always right to do the right thing. Daniel and the boys repeatedly decide that their relationship with God, the supreme God of heaven, was more important than their standing in the world. And don’t you love their faith? They knew with the eyes of faith that keeping God in first place would pay off in the end. So they do what is right in God’s eyes, what He wants - it doesn’t matter what everybody else is doing, what everyone else is thinking, and it doesn’t even matter who is looking.
Daniel chose not to defile himself. Defiling wasn’t about the food. It wasn’t about his body. It was about his soul. What we do and what we put in our body is more about what’s in our heart, the condition of our heart. The boys choose to NOT bow down to the idol. Daniel chooses to keep on praying to God in chapter 6, even though the new law says if he does so he will be thrown into the lion’s den. They do what is right. It is always right to do what is right. And this includes respecting and obeying the king, the person in authority. Daniel respects and obeys the king, right up until doing so would require him to do something which God doesn’t want. These guys trust in God and leaves the results up to Him. Our God can deliver us from the furnace, they say, but even if He doesn’t, we’re still not gonna bow. And God uses this to help Nebby K, the most powerful king in the world, learn about Him.
Look at the very next verse. Look who appears to be writing in 4.1…!
Unfortunately the worldly power Nebby K has been given still has a corrupting influence on his perspective: “…[until you recognize that] The Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes…” [4.25]
So, guess what it will take for Nebby K to get there? He has to be stripped of everything. Literally. Sometimes God has to strip away the fluff, the junk, all the layers of myopic misinformation, all this veneer of self-perceived loftiness so that we can see ourselves - and Him - in true and proper proportion.
It’s exactly how C.S. Lewis portrays it for Eustace Clarence Scrubb in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Eustace falls asleep on the dragon’s treasure with myopic greedy thoughts in his heart, and he wakes up all bloated. He is a fat lizardy dragon. And ultimately he must turn to Aslan, the Christ-figure, to tear away all the excess layers of self. Self-importance, selfishness - me-first, me-better. Sometimes the zoom-out can be painful. All that shrinking of self. Humbling. But we’re not talking about going sub-atomic. Shrinking so small in our minds so as to become invisible. Insignificant. So, smaller IS better yes - but the relative size doesn't matter. It’s not about us - it’s all about the Source of our power…
Daniel 11.32b “…the people who know their God will display strength and take action.”
In chapter 5, Belshazzar also needed to learn the supremacy of God - somehow the lessons which the Lord gave to Nebby K didn’t get passed down to and embraced by his grandson. And truth be told, power and privilege CAN make it harder to get the proper perspective on the true supremacy of God and our need to defer to and depend on Him. Here we have the famous "handwriting on the wall" incident. Something is coming. In this case, the Medes and the Persians were coming, coming to depose Belshazzar and conquer Babylon. But so Daniel sees and shows us the future.
Prophecies concerning kingdoms and rulers and Israel and Messiah and the end times. Some of which have yet to be finally fulfilled but many of which have been completely fulfilled, to the letter. Things which no mere mortal could have divined. Like chapter 8, for example - one of the most amazing non-Messianic prophecies in the whole Bible. In the 3rd year of Belshazzar, God gives Daniel a vision, telling Daniel that out of nowhere a king of Greece will arise who will conquer the Medes and the Persians, and then at the height of his power he would be replaced by four lesser rulers. Greece at that time was just a bunch of disjointed city states, and the Medes and Persians were still being ruled by Babylon. But we know now that Alexander the Great became the first king of Greece and went on to swiftly conquer not only the Persians but most of the then-known world in only 10 years. But he died at age 33 and four of his generals divided up control of his empire. God told Daniel precisely what would happen more than 200 years before it did! Skeptics will say, lucky guess, or, the author is not Daniel and that he is postdating what he is calling a vision. In other words, the author is lying.
As a young wise-in-my-own-eyes-yet-ignorant skeptic, I had never read the Bible hardly at all, had never considered its claims. And when I came face-to-face with these audacious claims, the engineer in me was looking for proof. I found myself strongly persuaded by the fact of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible. Once you establish the reliability and authenticity of the Scripture - which for me was a huge question at the outset but which I was also able to determine - then you cannot escape the truth that the Ultimate Author of this Book exists outside of and above time. Not only does He see the future (along with the present and the past), but He holds every moment and every epoch in His hands. He guides the paths of His people and in Him we live and breathe and have our being. This God Who sees all and knows all and gives us glimpses of what is to come has supremacy over all - all things, all times, all kings and pawns. We can either humbly hitch our wagon to His, or we can shake our fist at Him in a futile attempt to captain our ship and run from the truth.
Probably some of us here this morning have questions - or even doubts. I can totally relate. I would love to talk with you sometime. And I would highly recommend a book by a guy named Josh McDowell. As a young man he actually set out to disprove Christianity. And in the process what he discovered convinced him that it is in fact true. This is the book he wrote of the evidence he compiled in support of the claim of Christianity (Evidence That Demands A Verdict).
One more point: Daniel sees (and shows us) “The Son of Man”. We glimpse Him protecting His servants in the fiery furnace [3.24ff]. We see Him in a vision (ch 7) receiving from the Ancient of Days dominion, glory and a kingdom which will never pass away and never be destroyed. We see Him in another vision (ch 9) as Messiah, making atonement for iniquity and bringing in everlasting righteousness. Hundreds of years before He shows up, God tells His people to expect a Messiah. A coming King, One Who would flip the playing field by coming first not as a lofty ruler but as a humble servant - as a sacrifice for our sins. Making a way for us to be right with God... Messiah. Do you know Him?
[Outline of Daniel]
- Kings [ch 1-6]
- Intro - Nebuchadnezzar captures Jerusalem [1.1-2]
- Neb’s servants: Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego [1.3-21]
- Neb’s dream [2.1-49]
- Neb’s image [3.1-30]
- Neb’s lesson [4.1-37]
- Belshazzar’s feast [5.1-30]
- Darius, Daniel, and the lion’s den [6.1-28]
- Visions [ch 7-12]
- Four beasts [7.1-28]
- A Ram and a Goat [8.1-27]
- Seventy weeks [9.1-27]
- Daniel’s prayer [1-19]
- Gabriel’s answer [20-27]
- The Great Vision [10.1-12.13]
- Vision revealed [10.1-21]
- Vision explained [11.1-12.4]
- Vision clarified [12.5-13]
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