Participants: Ty Gibson & James Rafferty
Series Code: DBOTB
Program Code: DBOTB00003A
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00:22 Hello friends and welcome to
00:23 Books of the Book. 00:25 We are studying the 00:26 book of Daniel and we are in 00:27 Daniel Chapter 2. 00:29 My name is James Rafferty and I am Ty Gibson, James's co-host 00:33 for this series of programs on the book of Daniel. 00:36 We just love the book of Daniel 00:38 James, because it is not only a 00:40 prophetic book that points 00:42 forward to events that pertain 00:44 to the end of human history 00:46 which ushers in the second 00:48 coming of Jesus and that glorious period into the future 00:51 that we all long for. 00:53 We love the book of Daniel because it is a book that 00:57 presents vital principles for character development, vital 01:01 principles to guide our lives spiritually and to have a 01:06 relationship with God. 01:07 It is a book that chronicles a story of Daniel's relationship 01:12 with God and it is a book that Chronicles the relationship 01:17 of King Nebuchadnezzar with God, a relationship that 01:20 King Nebuchadnezzar, at first, never even knew he was having. 01:24 God was pursuing him and finally got this king's attention and 01:27 Nebuchadnezzar became a worshiper of the true 01:32 God of heaven. 01:33 It is a book that shows the heart of God. 01:35 It shows us how to have this relationship with God. 01:37 We see that especially now as we move into Daniel Chapter 2. 01:42 We've begun to see a picture of God right here in Daniel 1. 01:46 As we move to Daniel chapter 2 this picture begins to unfold. 01:51 We looked at in the first chapter the idea that God was 01:55 going into captivity with His people, He was afflicted by 01:59 their afflictions and He was humbling Himself before this 02:03 heathen monarch allowing Himself to be small in the 02:09 sight of this ruler. 02:10 Now in Daniel chapter 2 with Nebuchadnezzar, in the 2nd year 02:16 of his reign, it says in verse 1 of Daniel 2. 02:19 Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and in this dream he was troubled. 02:23 So much so that he wakes up, perhaps in a cold sweat, 02:27 he wakes up in the middle of this dream but he can't remember 02:31 what he dreamed. 02:32 Now here is a picture of it. 02:33 We are going to find out if this dream is of God. 02:36 We are going to find out that Nebuchadnezzar was given this 02:39 dream by Divine Revelation. 02:41 We are also going to find out the reason why he could not 02:43 remember it, is also from God. 02:45 God gives Nebuchadnezzar a dream then he cannot remember. 02:48 What is the purpose? 02:49 The purpose is God is seeking to awaken Nebuchadnezzar to his 02:53 need of something more than just these gods of 02:57 stone and wood. 02:59 There are two things going on here. 03:00 There is as we said in the previous program, 03:02 in Daniel chapter 1. 03:03 The whole book of Daniel runs along two tracks, if you will. 03:07 There is this storyline of Daniel's experience as a captive 03:10 of Babylon, and a story of Nebuchadnezzar's conversion. 03:13 Then there are the prophecies that unfold. 03:15 Well Daniel 2 reveals that there are 2 things taking place 03:20 here, we tend to see that Daniel 03:22 2 each just revealing world history in advance. 03:25 And it is, but not only is world history, 03:29 in advance, coming to our attention in the prophecy 03:33 of Daniel 2, God is also, in the process of getting 03:38 Nebuchadnezzar's attention. 03:40 Speaking to him, so He is working for the conversion 03:44 of king Nebuchadnezzar and simultaneously He is giving a 03:48 prophecy to the world and all who will read down to our very 03:52 day, could read this prophecy and learn these vital truths. 03:56 I think is incredible that God is pursuing this king 04:00 in this manner. 04:01 Now most people in the world I won't say most people 04:04 because I don't know most people 04:05 I'm not a judge and I don't know most people. 04:06 But a lot of people in this 04:08 world have no need of God. 04:10 Nebuchadnezzar has no 04:12 need of God. 04:13 So he thinks! 04:14 He is a ruler with absolute 04:16 power and he has all the wealth that money can buy. 04:19 He has no need of God, he has a dream, 04:21 he can't remember the dream, but it really troubles him. 04:24 Have you ever had a bad dream you can't, you wake up and are 04:26 just troubled and perhaps you can't even remember it, 04:29 yet you feel it's significant? 04:30 He has a dream and can't remember that dream. 04:32 He know is it significant, he knows it is. 04:34 It troubles him and he calls for all his wiseman and they all 04:38 come in and he basically tells them I had a dream in want you 04:41 to tell me what it is. 04:43 They cannot do it. 04:44 Well they have no idea what his dream was of course. 04:47 So here is a man who is used to getting his way. 04:50 A man who has everything at his fingertips that he needs and 04:53 now he has a need for something that is really troubling him. 04:57 And no one can deliver his need. 05:00 No one in his kingdom that can take care on his need. 05:04 Or so he thinks, so he calls all the wiseman before him, 05:08 assuming that in their great 05:10 Babylonian education and wisdom 05:13 and the fact that they are in 05:14 touch with Babylonian gods, 05:16 he assumes that in answer is forthcoming, but they repeatedly 05:20 tell him king, tell us the dream 05:23 we'll tell you the interpretation. 05:25 The king says no, you tell me the dream so I know that the 05:30 interpretation that you give me is actually true. 05:32 Nobody can help him in the Babylonian realm of knowledge. 05:37 The Babylonian realm of religion and spirituality, but then 05:41 there is that captive Daniel, he is there behind the scenes 05:44 and he is not brought in at first, he is not one of the 05:48 wisemen that are brought before the king at this point. 05:52 He is pursuing his education, his three-year university 05:56 education that Nebuchadnezzar has plugged him into. 06:00 Absolutely, Nebuchadnezzar was giving him 3 years, according 06:03 to Daniel 1:5, that he would be nourished, provided for, 06:06 educated and then he would come in at the end of that time 06:09 and he would be tested, but going back to your point Ty, 06:12 and it is a powerful one. 06:13 Nebuchadnezzar is now feeling his need. 06:16 Nebuchadnezzar is recognizing just a little bit, that all the 06:21 power in the world, and all the money in the world, 06:24 and all the education of the world, cannot satisfy 06:27 our deepest needs. 06:28 This is the message in Daniel Chapter 2. 06:31 It doesn't matter how powerful you are, it doesn't matter 06:33 how educated you are, it doesn't matter how rich you are 06:36 none of that can satisfy your deepest need. 06:39 God is revealing this to Nebuchadnezzar, He is showing 06:44 Nebuchadnezzar through a dream. 06:45 Through a dream! 06:47 Nebuchadnezzar he is not getting it yet of course, he's upset, 06:51 he's mad. Okay, here's a king who he is 06:55 throwing a temper tantrum. 06:56 Here is someone who is use to getting his way and he is upset 06:59 and what does he do? 07:00 He sends out a decree to all the wisemen in Babylon, 07:02 your dead! 07:03 You are going to be killed by morning. 07:06 So this news comes, of course, to Daniel and he is 3 friends. 07:09 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego because those who are 07:14 commissioned to take the lives of all the wisemen show up 07:18 at their place of living. 07:21 They say to them, we have got to execute all the wiseman of 07:27 Babylon and you are among them. 07:29 Daniel knows that his God is a revealer of secrets that His God 07:35 can in fact give not only the dream, but the interpretation 07:42 of the dream. 07:43 This is incredible! Daniel presupposes that God is 07:49 able to solve this problem. 07:51 He believes that the Lord can and will intervene so he calls 07:55 upon God in prayer with his friends, that God in mercy, 08:00 will intervene. 08:02 You know what is really interesting, don't you think 08:05 that Daniel probably thought that God has a purpose 08:07 in sending me to Babylon. 08:09 God has a purpose in everything that is happening here. 08:12 It looks bad, but God has a purpose. 08:14 When this decree comes forth rather than being afraid, 08:18 because he is in this 3 years of training, not really part of 08:20 the wiseman yet, he is in this 3 years of training. 08:23 So he says when this decree comes forth, 08:24 he says could this be it? 08:26 Could this be it? He is not really so much 08:29 afraid of the decree because in his heart he knows God has 08:33 a purpose and so rather than say oh no and getting scared, 08:38 he says, what's troubling the king? 08:40 What's the king's problem? 08:42 Maybe this is an opportunity for God to help Nebuchadnezzar. 08:48 With that kind of an attitude he moves into mode 2. 08:52 Of course they give him the time 08:53 the opportunity, the king does, he moves into mode 2. 08:55 Let's have a prayer meeting. 08:56 Because Daniel doesn't know what is going on. 08:58 I love the way that Daniel 2:18 describes the approach of Daniel 09:05 and his 3 friends to the Lord. 09:08 It says that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven. 09:13 Daniel and his friends have a view of the character of God 09:18 that it's just beautiful. 09:19 They do not see God the way the pagan nations see God 09:25 as a vindictive tyrant and a micro managing control freak 09:30 kind of ruler. 09:32 Daniel thinks of God and says God is the kind of God who with 09:36 tender mercies we can call upon. 09:39 We can get on our knees before this God, tell Him of our needs, 09:43 and He will hear our prayers and be eager to answer our prayers. 09:48 Let's clarify something here, Ty for viewing audience to make it 09:52 very, very clear, Daniel and his 3 friends are no better 09:55 than anybody else, they are no better 09:57 then the wisemen. 09:58 They are humans, but the point 10:00 is that they are humans who see 10:03 God in a different way than the 10:06 others do. 10:07 They reach out to God, 10:09 desiring mercy from God, 10:12 in fact anyone can do that. 10:14 What we found here, what we find here is that initially 10:21 verse 18, he is seeking mercies from God that Daniel and his 10:25 fellows should not perish with the rest of the 10:28 wiseman of Babylon. 10:29 Even in Daniel, and even in believers, there are these 10:35 selfish aspects of our nature that are present in our 10:41 approach to God. 10:42 They're perishing but we need to pray that we do not perish 10:46 with them, but you know what happens when God's mercy is 10:50 revealed? When God sheds His light and truth? 10:53 When God gives us more of an understanding of who He is 10:55 and what He is doing? How He is orchestrating things? 10:57 Do you know what happens? 10:58 Verse 24, "therefore when Daniel went in unto Arioch," 11:02 this is after he gets the understanding of the dream, 11:05 he praises God and thanks God it says when he goes into Arioch 11:09 "whom the king had ordained to destroy the wisemen of Babylon: 11:12 he went and said thus unto him; Destroy not," who? 11:18 the wisemen of Babylon. 11:20 The wisemen of Babylon! Do you see how the love of God 11:23 in the mercy of God actually eradicates every visage of 11:27 selfishness from our heart. 11:28 So even as we are seeking God and following God and believers 11:32 in God, those aspects of selfishness that are there, even 11:37 those are diminished by God's mercy. 11:39 Yet we have to remember these were Daniel's captors. 11:42 Daniel is a slave in a foreign 11:44 land, Daniel finds himself 11:46 in a very unpleasant situation. 11:50 He could fear it easily adopt an attitude of antagonism 11:54 against the wisemen of Babylon. 11:57 He has no spiritual agreement with obviously, and he could 12:01 adopt an attitude of prejudiced 12:02 and arrogance, he could ask the Lord, hey God I want to 12:06 understand this, just preserve me and my 3 friends and go 12:09 ahead and destroy the rest of them. 12:11 Yeah, self preservation. All those religions are bad 12:13 my religion is good. Yeah exactly! 12:14 All those denominations are bad, my denomination is good. 12:16 Who cares about them? 12:19 What's beautiful here James, that in verse 24, Daniel shifts 12:24 his attention to preserving, preserving the 12:27 wiseman of Babylon. 12:28 Why? Because of the grace of God because of the mercy of God. 12:32 This is the key. 12:34 This is not a natural phenomenon 12:36 we cannot be as Daniel was 12:38 naturally, Daniel it seems 12:40 the hint in verse 18, 12:41 is Daniel it seems is not 12:43 necessarily that way. 12:44 But one more of the mercy, and more of the grace, and more of 12:48 the blessing of God come upon us then more of the self is lost. 12:52 It's diminished more and more and it is powerful because 12:56 you see as Daniel continues on you see he is giving an answer 13:00 to the king, and an answer to Arioch, and you see as he is 13:04 brought in before the king, in fact just in the context of 13:07 these verses, first of all Daniel seeks an answer in his 13:10 prayer meeting and they all pray and it is revealed 13:12 to Daniel, verse 19, and then what does Daniel do? 13:15 Verse 20, 21, 22, 23, all of these verses are directing us 13:21 to what Daniel does in response of this, 13:23 and what does he do? 13:24 He prays, praises God, he blesses God, he sings God's 13:28 praises, it is not an issue even to himself anymore. 13:32 He's lost in this atmosphere of praise and worship to God. 13:37 It's just amazing that as the story unfolds, that as Daniel 13:42 comes before the king, 13:44 you would think with his life 13:46 threatened that he is number one 13:49 objective would be to just come 13:51 straight into the king's presence and immediately give 13:54 the dream and interpretation and it almost looks like he's on 13:57 shaky ground here because the first thing that he says, 14:00 he comes before the king and the King says, are you the one? 14:05 Are you one of these individuals that can reveal the secret of 14:09 Kings dream and Daniel doesn't immediately tell the dream and 14:13 interpretation, he immediately directs the 14:15 attention to the Lord. 14:17 What he does, what he does, hold that thought right there 14:20 what he does is an incredible revelation of a human being 14:23 who is infected, saturated with the grace of God. 14:28 Don't go away we will be right back to talk about this. |
Revised 2014-12-17