Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 7 - Visions from God

All righty. Hope everybody had a great week. We are in the book of Daniel this morning. if you guys want to open up to Daniel chapter 2.

This is a very exciting. Lesson, it seems like every week's an exciting lesson, huh? It's the Bible. You can't beat it.

But let's go ahead and pray. we do have a friend of mine, Sean Ransom. He's right here from the Philippines. He's one of our missionaries.

So it's good to have Sean if you guys wanna chat with him later. He'll be sharing a little bit. just like reading, and then, if you wanna hang out and talk with him later, he'll be hanging around. We are gonna go to, if anybody wants to go to lunch, we're gonna go to Los Gilbertos.

On University Avenue, over by the old building. So we'll head over there for a burrito. And then he's gonna be at our care group today. If anyone wants to visit our care group.

So, but let, let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your kindness to us and just, just revealing yourself to us, for giving us knowledge, wisdom. Lord, without your light, we would be in darkness. Without you giving of yourself to us, through the prophets, through your word, we would have no direction, but we thank You, Lord, that you have chosen.

to direct us and just to direct all of human history. But we ask that your kingdom would come and that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We ask that you would, Do that in our lives today as we study your word together in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. Has anybody ever had a dream? That troubled you? I'm not talking about a nightmare, just necessarily.

But just you have some dream and you wake up and you're like, Man. Anybody ever had a dream like that? Yeah, I have. Seems like I've been having more dreams lately that are.

Just kinda, I had a couple of dreams in the Philippines actually up in Baggio. That were freaky. Where I was wondering if Lord wasn't trying to tell me something. But And, Katie and I.

We went to a marriage conference last fall. And the Lord really blessed us and was opened up our eyes to some things and new layers of sin and Confession, and we just came out of the conference just feeling really pumped up, both about the Lord, but also about just our relationship. And then, We get home. And I have this dream where we're sitting in some restaurant and I remember the tables like really thick.

almost like a King Arthur table. It was a, it was a restaurant, but we're sitting at this big table, it was very thick. And I'm talking to Katie and I think there's some few other people there, and we're talking about things of the Lord and we're just really excited. And for whatever reason, at this place, it was just very, very busy and they came over and they decided to seat a couple of other people at our big table because there was no more room for them.

So, I guess, for whatever reason, that's just what they do at this restaurant. And so I didn't really pay attention to who they seated, but I could just keep talking to Katie. About the things of the Lord, and all of a sudden I hear out of my periphery, I hear this. And so I just ignore it and I keep talking about the things of the Lord.

And then I hear this. And I look over and there's like this weird demonic-looking dude with long fingernails and like weird-looking eyes, like just kinda like wagging his His head at me. And I just remember I got filled with anger and I just slapped my hand on the table and I said, I will not stop talking about the Lord. And then all of a sudden, like I woke up and I was just like, And I just wanted to get close to Katie.

I'm like, help me. And Anyway, she woke up. I explained it to her and She was just like, yeah, the Her, her one comment was, is, she said, the devil's losing his grip, devil's losing his grip. He's not happy.

So I don't know what to make of that. I don't know. I'm not trying to tell you I had some Nebuchadnezzar dream or something like that. we're, we're gonna talk a little bit about the theology of a Dreams today as we look at this passage.

But it is interesting sometimes, just to ask, where do dreams come from? Before we read the text here, I wanna just make a, a couple, kinda, just kinda, this will be summary suggestions about dreams and then we'll Kinda hit the text and maybe come back to it is, we know for sure that dreams are in the Bible, right? You see, we're gonna see a dream, a dream in this passage, we see it in chapter 7, we see it in 8. we see Joel's prophesying at some point in the future, there's gonna be people that are gonna dream and have visions.

We see dreams happening in the book of, well, with, Joseph, we see a dream in the back, in the book of Acts. There's various things. Peter sees some vision of a sheet coming down. So there's clear evidence of the Lord, at times using either dreams or visions to communicate information.

But then we also see examples of false dreams. In fact, over in Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 8, and there's a couple of places in Jeremiah, where Jeremiah, the Lord through Jeremiah is warning people that, that you are dreaming your own dreams and you're wanting to manufacture dreams. and visions for yourself. So there's several different places.

One's chapter 23, verses 25 and following. Then in chapter 23, verse 16, it speaks of false visions. So the, the Bible records a lot of dreams and visions. Some of them are considered from the Lord and others are false and actually manufactured by the human heart in order to support what they wanted.

In that case, they didn't want the idea that God is sending Nebuchadnezzar to come down and judge. They wanted to, to believe that everything was gonna be OK. But then, the other thing that we could say is that if dreams are in the Bible, then we have a secure guide for how to understand those particular dreams, right? We're gonna look at Nebuchadnezzar's dream this morning.

And because it's in the Bible, we can have security in knowing that it did come from the Lord and that it has a certain interpretation that Daniel's gonna give us. And there are certain dreams in the Bible where it's very clear, here's the dream or the vision, and here's the interpretation, or here's a false dream. And so, dreams are in the Bible and any dream that's in the Bible that's interpreted for us, we can be secure of that interpretation. But a third thing that we could say is that dreams outside of the Bible are not so secure.

we do know that the Bible says that, he, that God does, has communicated through dreams and visions. but we have to be very careful, about how we understand dreams outside of the Bible, because we know that God speaks through prophets, has spoken through prophets, and he's inscripturated many prophecies, and he's given us His sure word that we now have. but unless you have the gift of prophecy. then there's no, there's no reason like that my dream should be written in Revelation 23 or 24, right?

in fact, we have ample indication in the book of Revelation, we need to be careful not to add or take away from anything that's written in this book, that just so happens to be the last book of, of our New Testament canon. And so, So we'll come back to that issue and try to figure out what do we do. So what then do we do with our own personal dreams? What I want to focus on in this text is the fact that God chose to give a very significant dream to a pagan.

that there's no indication here that Nebuchadnezzar is a believer. We're not gonna see him really humbling himself until chapter 4, right? And, but God does choose to give him dreams or a dream. So in this section, we're gonna see Nebuchadnezzar's dreams or dream.

We're gonna see his threat, 23, we're gonna see Daniel's prayer. And then we're going to see, Daniel, give the dream back to Nebuchadnezzar, then he's gonna give us interpretation, and then lastly, we're gonna see Daniel's promotion in God's exaltation. So, let's work through the text together, starting with Nebuchadnezzar's dream or slash dreams. We're gonna start right in verse one.

I'm reading from a New King James. And, we'll make some comments as we move through the text. Now, in the 2nd year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. So notice here it says dreams.

I want you guys to pay attention to the, the singular and the, the plural here. Let me get us on the right slide real quick if I can. I might be out of a battery or something. So, in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, Bible teachers tell us this is probably around 603 to 602 BC.

In Babylonian reckoning, you wouldn't count the ascension year as the first year of the reign. The first year is considered zero, and then his first year of the reign, and then there would be the second year of the reign. So this would, by our understanding, would be the third year since since Nebuchadnezzar's been, ruling and functioning. So we're on the back end of the training period of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abendigo.

You guys remember chapter one. And So this would be his, his second reign, and so he has dreams and he was just really troubled and his sleep leaves him. Then verse 2, then the king gave the command to call the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, Chaldeans, to tell the king his dreams. I've got plural again.

So they came and stood before the king. So you've got all these different, we've seen this in the past, all these different offices for necromancy and, on romancy, that's a new word. I heard this, I learned this, this week, onomancy. I, I'm almost 50 years old.

I've never heard that word in my life until this week. Just means giving the interpretation of dreams to understand the future, aeromancy. And so you've got these Chaldeans, these Chaldeans, that would normally be a term of just a particular group of people in Babylon, but it seems like it came to become a specialized term for parti perhaps those that were like the representatives of this whole group. Sometimes they be, they're called the wise men, but if you guys remember what we've talked about with Daniel and Shadrack, Meshack, and Abendigo, basically, they're working with a bunch of People are dealing with sorcery and spells, dream books.

We have evidence of, Babylonian dream books. We had all these annals where they would look for various interpretations, this symbol means that, and, so whenever Shadrack, Meshach, and Amendio went to work, it wasn't the best work environment, we've said in the past. these are very, Pagan, perhaps even demon possessed people. So they came and stood before the king, verse 3, and the king said to them, I have had a dream.

Now, does your text have that in singular or plural? Singular. So I have had a dream and my spirit is anxious, and the New King James says, to know the dream. Some translations say to understand the dream.

And this is actually one of the questions that's raised by the text is, is Nebuchadnezzar asking for them to reveal the dream back to him as if he's forgotten it? or is he, just saying, help me understand this dream. we'll, we'll try to develop that as the text moves on. Verse 4, then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic.

So notice they're the representatives. They seem to be the group that represents this whole group of quote unquote wise men. And from this point on, the text goes to Aramaic. It's been, the book of Daniel's been in Hebrew up to this point.

Now it goes to Aramaic all the way through chapter 7, which is interesting. Bible teachers suggest that perhaps this section was meant to really be understood and read by the Babylonians and by the pagans, not just for, the Hebrews and, by the time this book would have been fully put together, the Jews were probably all reading and speaking Aramaic anyway, being put into, yes, that verse. Hebrew 12, and 3 and part of verse 4 all in Hebrew and all the way from Daniel 1:1 all the way to that section of 24, it's in Hebrew and then it starts, then it moves into Aramaic.

It's one of the unique features of this book.

What's interesting is if you were just looking at the alphabet, so to speak, you wouldn't really know unless you knew Aramaic in Hebrew because they're using the same script. But all of a sudden, you'd be reading your Hebrew Bible, so to speak. All of a sudden you'd be like, I don't understand these words. These are now new words to me.

so, so starting verse 4, so the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever, tell your servants the dream, and we will give the interpretation. And they would typically give the interpretation. in Babylonian culture, it was not unusual for the, for the king to have dreams and to think of his dreams as, signs from the gods to give him direction. And again, there were all these books that the quote unquote wise men would refer to in order to try to give the interpretation of the dream to the king, to try to give him some direction.

Then verse 5, the king answered and said to the Chaldeans, my decision is firm. If you do not make known the dream to me and its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces and your houses shall be made an ash heap. We've seen pagan kings are very much into these threats. These aren't just threats.

These are realities. The idea of cut in pieces is literally made into limbs, which could mean that they would be sliced up, but there's no Use of sword language here. And so what some people suggest is actually they'd be tied by the wrists and by the ankles to various trees or these big logs that would be tied together, then they would cut the ropes, let the logs all fall apart, they'd be leaning, and then they would just be made into limbs. It was an ancient form of fun Babylonian torture.

Obviously, the person would die. And, and so that's what's gonna happen to these. wise men, if they don't reveal the dream and give its interpretation. verse 6, however, if you tell the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts, rewards, honor, or great honor.

Therefore, tell me the dream and its interpretation. Verse 7, they answered again and said, let the king tell his servants the dream. And we will give its interpretation. The king answered and said, I know for certain that you would gain time because you see that my decision is firm.

If you do not make known the dream to me, there is only one decree for you, for you have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the time has changed. Therefore, tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can give me its interpretation. The Chaldeans answered the king and said, There is not a man on the earth who can tell the king's matter. Therefore, no king, lord, or ruler has ever asked such things of any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean.

It is a difficult thing that the king requests, and there is no one who can tell it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh. For this reason, the king was angry and very furious and gave the command to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. So the decree went out and they began killing the wise men, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them. So Daniel, Shadrack, Meshach, and Domenico, we saw in the previous chapter, they're part of this whole group.

They're considered part of the wise men, they're eunuchs, and they're supposed to be there giving wisdom and so on and so forth, and there's some component of them that's giving sorceries and interpreting dreams, and there's necromancers and all this stuff. And so it's not unusual that Nebuchadnezzar would be asking for the interpretation of a dream. What's unusual in this instance, and it, and it seems like the whole group, the Chaldeans representing the group, is that he's, he's asking for the actual dream itself.

theoretically, these guys would have been brought in on a fairly regular basis, listen to Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, go to the dream books, say this is the interpretation of your dream, Nebuchadnezzar.

So it begs the question. What exactly, why is Nebuchadnezzar asking Something so unreasonable, and, and, in, in a case that would not be out of the norm in the court. Do you guys understand what? This isn't a completely out of the norm situation for the king to come in and say I had a dream, here's what it was, give me the interpretation.

But what's happening here is completely out of the norm. So, there's a couple of things that could be going on. first of all, notice that in the, in the front part of the narrative, we saw that he, he spoke of dreams, dreams, dreams, right? And then he says, I've had a dream singular, which some Bible teachers would say that could be a sign that he had one dream, but it reoccurred.

It was the same dream. That's why it's called dreams at some places and dream in another place. In Babylonian culture, from some of their annals, we know that to forget a dream was a bad omen. And so it could be that he had, and then, and then the gods would actually bring the dream again, so to speak, at least in their annals, if a king forgot a dream.

And so it, it could very well be that Nebuchadnezzar had this dream, it troubled him, he forgot it. how, have you ever had that where you just have a dream and you're really bothered by it, but for the life of you, you cannot remember what it was. Or maybe you can only remember like certain components of it. So it could be that Nebuchadnezzar was having this reoccurring dream.

He can't remember it, but if he admits to all of his court that I can't remember the dream, everybody's gonna be like. That's a bad omen. The gods are against you. That's why you can't remember it.

And so it could be that he doesn't want to let them know that he's forgotten it and he's not doing the normal thing of telling them and just making, making it sound like, no, you need to tell me the dream. So that's one possibility. The other possibility is that he's afraid of of subversion. there is evidence, even in the scriptures of people using false dreams or false prophecy to get the king to do something that actually puts him in peril, and maybe he's worried that there's some plot.

Against him in his 2nd year. And so he really knows what the dream is and he's just not letting them know, and he wants to, he wants to put the pressure on them to maybe even eliminate some of his enemies. The problem is, it'd be really put him in a bad situation to kill off all of his wise men. there's really not.

There's not much of an indication here that Nebuchadnezzar doesn't believe in the whole concept of his wise men and then giving interpretations and stuff like that and getting guidance from the gods. So for him just to willy-nilly go start killing everybody off would be unusual. But it, it could be that perhaps the way the, the narrative develops, perhaps God didn't allow Nebuchadnezzar. To remember the full import of the dream because God was trying to drive everything towards Daniel.

So it could be that Nebuchadnezzar got the dream, he's troubled by it, but God did not give him all of the details or did not allow him to remember the details because God's behind the scenes driving this thing into Daniel's lap. And that's my inclination. there's, you guys could read the commentaries, there's different ways to approach it, but my inclination is because of the dream and the dreams and some of the background culture that we know of the Babylonians and the way the narrative develops eventually coming to Daniel's knowledge is that God had given this pagan king a dream, but did not give him the ability to remember it, but he was troubled by it.

And, and, and so God's just sovereignly moving this whole thing along to, to put it into the lap of Daniel.

You guys can take a look at it and see what you guys think, but that's, that's my inclination. So let's get to, now Daniel's, what we would call maybe Daniel's prayer. verse 14 and following. Then with counsel and wisdom, Daniel answered Arioch, the captain of the king's guard.

Who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. So it seems like in verse 13, and there's different ways to, different translations do different things with this, but it seems like the killing had already begun and Daniel and his compatriots were next on the list. So the muscle, Arioch, who no doubt would have had other people with him, comes in to take care of Daniel and his friends. Daniel, with counsel, probably counsel with his friends, and with the wisdom the Lord had given him, is able to stop the hand of Arioch.

And get him into a conversation. And so, he answered and, and so he says, why is the decree so urgent? Then Arioch made the decision known to Daniel, verse 16. So Daniel went in and asked the king to give him time that he might tell the king the interpretation.

You might wanna circle or make a, just kinda keep verse 16 in your mind, we're gonna come back to it. It The question in verse 16 is, did he actually go into Nebuchadnezzar, to, to ask for a stay, or did he just see an advisor of Nebuchadnezzar to make a future appointment to meet with him? that's a question we're gonna come back to. Is this Daniel meeting face to face with Nebuchadnezzar or is he making an appointment to meet face to face with Nebuchadnezzar?

But look what he does in verse 17. Daniel went to his house and he made the decision known to Hananiah, Meshel, and Azariah, his companions. Who's that? Yeah, so this is the Hebrew names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo, right?

So he makes it known to them, then verse 18, that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven concerning this secret or mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. So he calls a group prayer meeting. Really good idea when your life's on the line, gather together your friends and have a group prayer meeting. And so, Daniel, he doesn't just go it alone.

He does have some, some believers. again, this very pagan setting., I know a lot of you guys work in various situations that are difficult and challenging, and, But may the Lord bless you with one believer or maybe two believers that you can go to and pray with and seek the Lord in your, in your place of employment. I know for me, when I was a public school teacher, just to have those, those two friends that I had on campus to be able to meet with at lunch, which I didn't have at first.

At first, I felt, when I first started teaching, I felt like Daniel and Babylonia.

And just there was nobody. And then eventually, the Lord brought a few teachers, we're able to talk and pray together. And just a great encouragement. But these guys, so they start praying.

Now, we see the result in verse 19 and following, then the secret was what? revealed. What words do you guys have in your translations in verse 19? Mystery was revealed revealed.

Somebody have anything other than revealed. Say it again. OK, there you go. There you go.

Spanish. All right. All right, so yeah, so the secret is revealed. So the implication here, obviously it's revealed by God to Daniel in a night vision.

So Daniel blessed the God of heaven. So they seek the Lord, they're saying, Lord, please help us. We need, we wanna find the what this dream is, what the interpretation is, God in his favor reveals it to Daniel. And.

And we see back in In chapter one, remember Daniel. Was given a. Yeah, in verse 17, 1 chapter, chapter 1 verse 17, God gave them knowledge and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. So the Lord had actually given him the ability, would bless him with, giving him understanding and visions and dreams.

So then, so then Daniel just breaks out into praise, which I think is awesome. I got a feeling though that he's probably offering this praise as he's walking, cause remember, there's probably guys being killed unless you understand it as a stay has been put on the killing of the wise man. Some people think that, but I got a feeling that the killing might still be going on. Arioch just moved on to the next group.

And so Daniel gets the revelation. And then he says, b Blessed be the name of the Lord forever, for wisdom and might are his wisdom and might is what we're gonna see in this prayer. And he changes the times and the seasons, he removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those of understanding, he reveals deep and secret things.

He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. I thank you and praise you, oh God of my fathers. 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 demand. Would there be any way, do you think, for Daniel to come to knowledge of Nebuchadnezzar's dream without special revelation?

No, it just wouldn't be. He could go search through all the annals of the Babylonians, unless God had just said, here you go. They, they were just at, totally at the mercy of the Lord. And really, if, as, as we think about a biblical theology of knowledge or what we call epistemology, we are all completely dependent upon God to reveal His will to us.

How many of you have met Jesus Christ in the flesh? You've met him and shook his hand. None of us. So how do we know Jesus?

We know Jesus because God has revealed Him to us through His word, both written and preached. And if God didn't choose to reveal Himself to us, We would just be in darkness. We, there would be no real hope and direction for our lives. What does that say?

No one can come to me unless the Father sent me drows them, exactly. So, here, Daniel and his friends, they're totally dependent on the Lord, so are we, but in verse 24 now, we see, Daniel goes and he begins to, to share this information. Then, therefore, Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon, and he went and said thus to them, do not destroy the wise men of Babylon, take me before the king, and I will tell the king the interpretation.

Then Arioch quickly brought Daniel before the king and said thus to him, I have found a man of the captives of Judah who will make known to the king the interpretation.

So he takes full credit for finding the man who is going to bring the interpretation. the king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Beltashazzar, that's Daniel's Babylonian name, are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen and its interpretation? This raises the question, did Ario, we already know that Daniel either went in before the king or made an appointment with the king. So why is Arioch suddenly showing up and saying, hey, I've found somebody who can help us out?

It could be that Arioch didn't really know that Daniel had made this appointment and gone before the king previously. It could be that Daniel just spoke to a secretary. My inclination is, is verse 16 is Daniel didn't really appear before Nebuchadnezzar, but he made an appointment. That word time can be in verse 16.

Ask the king to give him time, that could be give him an appointment. Some of you might actually, I think the ESBs, they may have the ESV, what does that say, Kitty, or? OK, to appoint him a time. So that, they're taking that take on the Aramaic text.

So, I think, I think that might be more of the idea is Daniel had actually made an appointment. Arioch probably didn't know anything about it, but now they're just gonna bring Daniel before the king. He's like, hey, I found somebody. And Nebuchadnezzar knows that this appointment is coming.

And so his question is, have you been able to do what you were hoping to do or has your God been able to do that for you? So then, then 27, Daniel answered in the presence of the king and said, the secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. That phrase latter days is a, is a, a phrase, there's, it gets interpreted different ways in the English, but it's always understood to be pointing to the Messianic end of times.

He's not just gonna be, he's, he hasn't just revealed to you what's gonna happen in the near future, but we're talking about the far future, the The end of human history as we know it. You dream your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed were these. As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed about what would come to pass after this, and he who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than any living.

But for our sakes, who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart. When I'm reading this part of the text, I'm kinda like, I don't know about you, but I'm kinda like, OK, Daniel, get to the dream. There's people, people dying, but he, he, it's court protocol to go through all these different things. Then verse 31, you, O king, we're watching and behold, a great image.

This great image whose splendor was excellent stood before you and its form was awesome. This image image's head was of fine gold. Its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces.

Then the iron, the clay, and the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff, from the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. So at this point, he has told the dream to Nebuchadnezzar. We don't have the interpretation yet, but he's revealed it.

And you can just imagine. Nebuchadnezzar listening to Daniel recite this dream and just starting to sit up in his chair. I don't know if you guys, any of you guys fans of Hamlet? Anybody likes Shakespeare's Hamlet?

do you guys know the scene where they, they work out this play and, Hamlet has, it's been revealed to him through some ghost that his stepfather killed his dad and then married his mother. Love these Shakespearean plays, right? And so, Hamlet works out this play to basically put on display before the king what happened. And I love the Laurence Olivier version.

Anybody ever seen the old black and white Laurence Olivier? Oh man, it's just crazy. And so they're doing this play and the way the camera moves, at first, you just see the king just drinking, just hanging out with his soulmate, his queen that he stole from a Hamlet's father. And then as the play moves on, all of a sudden he's just like.

What is going on here? Then he starts to grip the throne. And then as he sees what's happened and it shows the actor killing the other king, he just stands up and starts to stumble around the room. And you can just imagine Nebuchadnezzar, just this whole dream that nobody knew that he couldn't probably couldn't even remember the full details of is now being reported before him by Daniel.

That would be pretty amazing and pretty impressive. what if, what if I walked up to one of you guys today? And just said, I know what you dreamed last night. And I began to just tell it to you, just, just point by point.

You'd probably freak out. I'd freak out, right? But, so here, just the scene is, is just a, it's very, very dramatic. But then we get into the interpretation.

So not only has Daniel been told what the dream was. But now we've got this interpretation that goes well beyond the pagan times of Nebuchadnezzar. verse 36. So let's, let's look at the interpretation together.

This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. You, O king. You are a king of kings, for the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory.

Now, just, just a side note, Daniel is not holding any scrolls here to look at the Babylonian dream interpreter chart, right? He's been given this to this by the Lord. So, the other guys will probably be checking their chart and coming in and, but he's just given this straight from Yahweh. Verse 38, and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, he has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all.

You are this head of gold. But after you shall arise another kingdom, inferior or lower than yours, this, then another, a third kingdom of bronze. And, shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything and like iron that crushes that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others.

Whereas you saw the feet of toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided. Yet the strength of the iron shall be in it just as you saw the iron mixed with the ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. We're gonna come back to that in, in a little bit later, verse 42.

As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another just as iron does not mix with clay. Verse 44. And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron and bronze, the clay, the silver. And the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. And the dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure. So, we've got this image, we've got different parts of the image described as four different kingdoms, the end of which is the, this kingdom that comes from God, this rock that is carved out of the mountain and thrown at the feet of the image and topples over these other kingdoms.

Been lots of different ways to approach this. The most traditional way, to interpret the various kingdoms that follow. Clearly, Nebuchadnezzar is stated right in the, the vision, the head of gold. but right after the Babylonians, the next kingdom would be the Medes and Persians, and that's actually when you compare that over to chapter 7, that's what chapter, or chapter 7 or is it chapter 8 actually says, Medes and Persians.

After that, the traditional interpretation is Greece. particularly with Alexander the Great as the head. And then after that would be, what's the big kingdom that comes after Greece, Rome. And so, that's the traditional interpretation.

The 10 toes, it's all over the map on how you understand the 10 toes. if those that are more of a, what we would call a dispensational, leaning, see, what we have in this image is the reign of the Gentile kingdoms, and then the lead up to the reign of the Messiah, over the kingdom of the holy people, as it's spoken of in chapter 8. And so you've got Nebuchadnezzar, you've got the Medes and the Persians, you've got Greece, and you've got the Romans. But the 10, the dispensation would say the time of the 10 toes has not really come to fruition yet.

There's a gap period, where the Lord has set aside Israel and brought in the church and is causing jealousy. The, the Gentiles are causing jealousy on the part of the Jews who will then be brought back into the kingdom period during the millennium where Christ will reign for 1000 years and then on in, into eternity. There does seem to be, whether you are more of a dispensational variety or more of a covenantal variety, whether you understand that at this point is not my burden.

we could talk about that on another occasion.

but both would agree that there is some near fulfillment. We do have this character, Antioch's Epiphanies that came into the temple. in the 2nd century BC and desecrated the temple and slaughtered a pig right there, and stopped all sacrifice of the Jews. And so when Jesus and the apostles show up on the scene in the New Testament, we are not having, there's no sacrificial system.

they are under the hand of the Romans. And so the Jews were looking for the Messiah to come and set up his kingdom. Because the indication here in 44 and following, and then when you compare it to chapter 7 and chapter 8, is it seems like the Messiah is not gonna just come and then live side by side with these pagan kingdoms, right? And just slowly grow while the pagan kingdoms live side by side.

There's this rock that is made without hands, and what does that big stone or rock do to the pagan kingdoms? It completely demolishes them. So there's this unprecedented, just entrance of the Messianic kingdom that happens suddenly. At the hits at the feet, the pagan kingdoms fall over, the Gentile kingdoms fall, and Christ's kingdom is established not slowly over time, but it's according to these visions, it seems like immediately.

And if you buy into that, and you can, we, we don't have time to look at chapter 78, but if you, if you lean towards the idea that Christ's kingdom rises suddenly and destroys the Gentile kingdoms, suddenly, guess what, you're well on your way to being a Dispensation list, just like the rest of us that read the Bible very carefully. Right?, so that's, if you were, if you think that the, that Christ's kingdom is gonna develop slowly over time and be parallel alongside of the pagan kingdoms, then you would be more on the side of a covenantal, perspective on some of these passages.

but see, I'm, I'm holding my Schofield, New Schofield reference Bible here, which gives me a good interpretation, in my view. Of these, of these particular texts.

But let's get back to verse 46 that wrap, wrap up the At least, the chapter two. In verse 46, then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, prostrate, prostrate, sorry, prostrate before Daniel, I always mix that word up, and commanded that they should present an offering and incense to him. Now this could mean a couple of different things. it could be that they're giving him the appropriate materials for Daniel to turn around then and make an offering to his God.

That's my leaning. The other leaning is that they're viewing Daniel as a God and actually offering something to him. the problem with that view is pretty much universally, you normally have prophets and angels, whenever people try to worship them, they normally, there's something in there about their rejection of that worship. It could be that Daniel rejected it and we, it's just not recorded on, in the text for us.

But my inclination is, is that he, he bowed down, gave him honor, and then gave him the materials to go offer to his God. Verse 47, the king answered Daniel and said, Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret. Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts, and he made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon. Probably that means ruler over the wise men.

In the province of Babylon and chief administrator over all the wise men of Babylon, and also Daniel petitioned the king and set Shadrack, Meshach, and Abendigo over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel sat in the gate of the king. So very Just a dramatic situation here. just think about it.

these are the slaves of, a minor kingdom. the Jewish kingdom is not a big kingdom that the Babylonians went and attacked and in fact, when Nebuchachadnezzar first comes through Judah, is he actually going to Judah to attack Judah? No, they're just on the way to Egypt. he's not even really, it's not even really, hey, let's go attack Judah.

No, they happened to go through Judah, they, they sacked Jerusalem on their way to Egypt. Egypt was the real target. And, and so Judah and the Hebrews, they're all just dogs. They're the dregs of the other captives, and yet these dregs are the ones that are standing before Nebuchadnezzar, giving him the interpretation of the dreams that his other wise men could not figure out.

And so what a, what a turn of events. Now, Let's talk about the, the impact. Of this dream. Does Nebuchadnezzar hear the truth from Daniel?

And the interpretation of this dream, and suddenly fall on his face before God and begin to worship the Lord. Now, what happens in the very next chapter? He sets up an image of himself. So while God is, He gives true revelation, people can still take good Bible teaching, and good revelation, good dreams, and then flip it on its head and turn it into evil.

And so, Nebuchadnezzar hears this, this incredible vision about what's coming in the future and he's the head of Gold. doesn't really think a whole lot about the fact that his kingdom is coming to an end at some point. and all of a sudden now he's demanding that everybody worship this image. And so, Shadrack, Meshack, and Abendigo, who were in the frying pan, are now literally gonna be thrown into the fire in the next chapter.

Which goes to show you that you can teach the truth and people can just totally disregard it and misinterpret it, or they can come up with bad applications. the Puritans back in the day, whenever they would preach sermons, they would always have, they would have like the sermon, they would talk about the text, and exposit the text. And preach it, and then they would have the section of the sermons called the uses of the message or the uses of the text. And what they meant by that is they would say, they would say, here's how you should use this teaching properly, and here are bad uses of the text.

They would warn people about taking good teaching and using it wrongly. Like for instance, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. you can teach someone about the sovereignty of God, and what can they do? They can all of a sudden say, Well, I remember one time was, this is years and years ago, there was this, this gal, that was justifying getting back together with her unbelieving boyfriend because God and his sovereignty brought him back into her store with the cologne that she liked.

Think about that. Why did you get back together with your unbelieving boyfriend? Well, why did God bring him into my store wearing the cologne that I like? Is that the right use of the sovereignty of God?

Now, is it true that in the sense of first causes that God is the first cause of all things? Yes. Is it true that God in some sense had control of where this boyfriend was going? Yes.

But is the Bible mean for that to be an excuse for sin? No. And so there's right and wrong uses. Nebuchadnezzar here is good teaching that should have humbled him before God Almighty.

And in the very next chapter, he's building up an image to himself. And we have to be careful that we don't do the same thing. Yeah, with the Bible. I've known people that have studied, for instance, the issue of divorce and remarriage, and they have what seems to be a really good understanding of those texts, until they wanna get a divorce, and suddenly now they wanna reinterpret all those texts.

years ago, I had a good friend who believed, he believed what certain things about the Bible when it came to remarriage. he had told me that he never wanted to be remarried, he just wanted to serve the Lord in his singleness because of his understanding what he felt like the Bible taught. And all of a sudden he met a gal, and all of a sudden he reinterpreted the text and, and married this gal without very little counsel, should have never married this particular gal. And before you knew it, he was totally out of the ministry, trying to take care of this marriage situation that he had gotten into himself, got himself into with no counsel.

And, and so we have to, we have to be very careful. I've seen, teenagers who seem to have an understanding of not dating unbelievers. They seem to understand what the text means, right? Until they meet a cute guy who's an unbeliever, who says, yeah, I'll come to church with you.

And all of a sudden, boom, they've reinterpreted the text to align with their viewpoint. And so we have to be very careful to allow God's word. To impact our hearts and, and to make a commitment, Lord, help me by your grace to do and apply the scriptures the way it's intended, not just the way I want it to go. Remember that Jeremiah passage, people were dreaming dreams up to go along with what they wanted in life.

They were actually dreaming things then claiming it was coming from the Lord when it wasn't, yeah. Yeah. Spirit to help you to understand how you once you apply that totally. Interpreting his own way with divorce, I'm sure Totally.

Yeah, my sheep hear my voice, right? And there are times, I think even as believers, we can, our hearts, we can get darkened and we can deceive ourselves. We have to be careful about that. but yeah, you're right.

We gotta go and pray and ask the Lord to help us be open to counsel. I've told my kids on a number of different occasions, if, if your desire is to really do what the Lord's will, do the Lord's will, and if you stay open to counsel, stay open to your pastors, your parents, and your godly friends, then, I just believe God's gonna guide you in your life. But when you close yourself off to godly counsel, watch out. then, now your heart's, you're primed to kinda start reinterpreting the Bible according to the dictates of your own heart, as Nebuchadnezzar did here.

a couple of other things and we'll, we'll pray, So one of the things I think we can learn from this text is, is, God was on the throne in the exile. here, God, God's people got carried away off into Babylon. And it was nasty, it's just bad, bad stuff. And there could have been, obviously a real temptation.

I'm sure many people did feel just this hopelessness, God has left us. But even before they went to Babylon to the prophecies of Jeremiah, God was telling them, Submit. In fact, there, I forget exactly what chapter it's in, but in Jeremiah, he, he was telling the people, if you go outside of the city of Jerusalem and turn yourself over to Nebuchadnezzar, I will rescue you. But if you stay in the city, you're gonna be destroyed.

So turn, defect. Jeremiah was telling everybody to defect to Babylon, then go up to Babylon, Guess what? Get married, have children. we, and, and buy houses or serve in your houses, and I'm gonna bring you back in 70 years.

And so even before they left, God was giving them hope. And then here they are up in exile, and God is continuing to dump hope on them through revealing of dreams and to demonstrate that all of these soothsayers and gods in the, in Babylon are false, and the true God is still on the throne. That should give us, I think, great hope as, as we realize that, We should not be trusting, we're, we're living still in the reign of the Gentiles, right? Christ is, Christ in one sense, His kingdoms being spread through us, but Christ hasn't physically come to reign on the earth yet.

And so we're still in this time of the reign of the Gentiles, and so there's a sense in which we really are strangers, in a foreign land. We're like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo, and yet we can trust the Lord. We're not trusting in President Trump. We're not trusting in President Obama.

these are men that God is raising up and putting down, but we are looking to that stone that's gonna be carved out. It's gonna be thrown at the foot of the Gentile kingdoms, and they will top over suddenly. And then Christ will reign. And so that's our ultimate hope.

and so because of that, we realize that Christ's kingdom is unstoppable. I don't know about you, but when I just have that image of Christ coming, and just toppling over the world's kingdoms, that just makes me wanna leap up. It's like, here comes Christ, and it's just boom, it's on. And no one will be able to withhold him or stop his hand.

He will destroy all kingdoms. And and, and he will reign. And then finally, true knowledge comes from revelation. Let's just cycle back to dreams here and then we'll close.

true knowledge comes from the revelation that God gives to us. We know that there is general revelation that we can look out at nature and certain, certain things about God. But to get any certain knowledge about God, God's got to reveal it to us. We wouldn't know that Jesus Christ died on the cross as a propitiation for our sins, to save us from the wrath to come.

we wouldn't know any of that unless God had revealed it, to his disciples, his apostles, and then if it wasn't written in the Bible for us today. Anything that we have in the Bible, we can just bank on. We can have security. If we've understood the Bible properly, interpret it properly, we can say, I know this.

I'm certain about these things. any, I don't posture myself a prophet. if you wanna talk about prophecy and our view here at Cornerstone. we believe that apostles, just like the Paul was, or, the last apostles died out, the last prophets died out, in the early age to set up the scriptures.

When the two witnesses come back during the period of the tribulation, then yeah, OK, we'll probably have some opening up a new prophecy with the two witnesses perhaps. But beyond that, there is no less authority in our Bibles than if Jesus Christ was standing right here next to me. Jesus Christ opened up his mouth and uttered right before us, and then I read from the Bible, there would be no difference in authority between the two. That's how authoritative God's word is.

And when it comes to our own particular dreams or visions or ideas, we need to make sure that that all gets subjected to Christ's word. I, I, I, personally, I think that there might be times where God allows certain circumstances in my life, whether it's a dream or some circumstance where the Lord might be trying to direct me in a way because we do know that he's sovereign and He's the first cause of all things. but for me to try to put that on the level of revelation, I believe it is a completely inappropriate and dangerous.

I would never take my dream about the shushing, demonic looking dude and think, oh, that was, that special revelation on par with scripture.

It, it could be. Well, the thing, the thing is, is I've been in environments, my church, my first church environment when I became born again was a very, very healthy church, for, for the most part, but we did believe in, there was times where people would stand up and speak their revelations from the Lord and they would encourage people to seek visions and stuff. And I can remember just have my quiet time in my bedroom as a young person and I thought I saw these flags coming out of a cannon.

I went back and told my pastor, I saw flags coming out of a cannon.

I think that means there's gonna be wars. What is, what is that? when you're in that environment, you just start to You start to think the way everybody else is thinking around you. And, and so what was sad in our church is because you would hear people telling stories that felt like they were touched by Jesus or as you start to seek those things, you start to seek these special experiences that other people said they were having.

And then if you didn't get those experiences, it was kinda like, wow, what's wrong with me? I'll, I'll have God in my Bible and the Holy Spirit and my salvation. Oh, what's wrong with me? then you start to despise the passages of the Bible that says we are complete in Him.

We have everything that we need, through the Holy Spirit, through his church and stuff. So, I would just encourage you to be very careful about placing too much value. now, Joel says that there will be dreams in the future, and I, we, in the pages in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts, we see dreams all over the place. Until the scriptures were established and the time of the prophets had laid that foundation for his word, and now we depend on His word and the Holy Spirit to help us understand it and illuminate it.

That makes, if you have questions about that, you can talk to me afterwards. That's our, our position on prophecy. It, prophecy is a real simple way to define prophecy. Prophecy is thus says the Lord speech.

That's prophecy. If you believe you're a prophet, Then I think both New Testament and Old Testament means you are speaking with the authority of thus says the Lord. Secondly, thus says the Lord's speech has the same authority and quality of the Bible. Not all that says the Lord's speech has been inscripturated, but all that says the Lord's speech has this could, could have been inscripturated has that same authority.

So if you meet someone who says they're a prophet, guess what, you should take their writings, write it down and stick it in the back of their, of your Bible. That's what prophecy is, it has that authority. and if they're saying, no, no, my prophecies aren't of that weight. Then it's not prophecy.

Prophecy is thus says the Lord's speech. And so for me, I'm just not, based on my understanding of the scriptures, I'm not comfortable saying that I have ever prophesized or I've ever heard prophecy in my age. This is the prophecy I read every day. I hear and read prophecy every single day from the Bible.

but unless somebody can come and do the deeds of a prophet and demonstrate that they are indeed speaking from God, i.e. predicting things that come true. And giving us new revelation. a lot of the things that I would hear when I was a kid in my church, were just repetitions of Isaiah.

Somebody would stand up and say, thus says the Lord, I will not let the fire touch thee, and I will not let the waters drown thee. And, and they were just reciting Isaiah as if it was a prophecy of the Lord. It's like, well, if it really is prophecy, predict something because prophets needed to do miracles in order to demonstrate they were given new fresh revelation. And then give us something new that accords with what the Bible says.

If you're not doing that, you're not a prophet, and be very careful of anybody that claims they are a prophet. because as you guys know, Jesus said, in the last days, there will be many false prophets, and we see examples of them all over the place. People that are claiming to have a word from the Lord, and, And it does not accord. with the whole pattern of prophecy.

I, I'm, you guys, I, I can, get you guys done it's next, next week if you guys let me go one more minute. but the, the difference in prophecy between Old and New Testament, the only difference is the punishment. In the Old Testament, a prophet, if they were a false prophet, what would be the punishment? stony because Israel is a theocracy, right?

And they have a constitution that had certain punishments that included capital punishment. In the New Testament, if you have a false prophet or somebody who's teaching falsely, the church is not a theocracy anymore. They get excommunication, right? Or you're warned not to listen to them.

So, the only real difference between Old Testament, New Testament prophecy is the punishment. Whether if, if it's false or not. other than that, read through the book of Acts, you're gonna see the same type of language being used of the New Testament prophets as the Old Testament prophets. And, and there's no modifiers in the New Testament that says, hey, by the way, we're talking about New Testament prophecy.

That's of a totally different category than Old Testament prophecy. If that was true, then Paul and the authors of scripture would have been very, very, very clear on that. So any, any thoughts on that before we pray? So I've gone off on my little sideline dreams, prophecy hobby horse.

Yes. Today that Right Yes, Right That's a really good question. So the question is, what about, like, even John MacArthur will refer to the preaching of the word as a gift of prophecy in some sense. In my, in my viewpoint, I think it's, it is a muddy, it muddies the waters a little bit, and I'll tell you why.

Because in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says, we, we know in, in 1 Timothy 2, a woman shall not what, teach or have authority over man, correct? So, in the, in the church, are women allowed to teach or have authority over men? No. In 1 Corinthians 11, a woman may prophesy if what?

She has her head covered. So women are allowed to prophesy, but they're not allowed to teach. That means they're different. Correct?

So they must be different. So prophecy is a conduit. God uses certain people as a conduit of information. Thus says the Lord, more of a pipe, water flowing, flowing through a pipe.

That's why a woman was allowed to prophesy but not teach. Teaching is someone who's looking at the Word of God, and then they're given exhortations. They're not just a conduit of information, they're actually exhorting with that information. And so, I love John MacArthur, I would just say, In one sense, if, if, if you're reading God's word, there's a sense in which that's prophecy because you're reading prophecy.

But once you start teaching from the word, now you're no longer prophesying, you're teaching or preaching. And, and I, I think it's important to keep those two distinguished, otherwise we do get confused about what prophecy really is, I think. So, if that answers that question. There are, there are lots of people today who believe that they, that they are prophets or that they prophesy.

Some of the confusion I think is what I would describe as sometimes I think there are people that are doing the right thing, but they're using the wrong word to describe it. Like, if somebody comes up and exhorts me, and they're challenging me in the word and, and they give me something that really is something I needed to hear and I do think it was from the Lord, and they might call it prophecy. And I just wouldn't. I, I, I, I think, I, I think it's possible that a person might be immature in their understanding and description of that spiritual gift.

They just gave me, they, they have the gift of exhortation. They understand the word of God, and they were led the Holy Spirit to exhort me, but I wouldn't call it prophecy because if it was prophecy, it should have a predictive value and it should have the same weight and authority that we could stick in our Bibles theoretically. And again, is all prophecy and scriptured? No.

Does all prophecy have the same weight of scripture? Yes, It does have the same weight of scripture. That makes sense. Anyway, so you guys got a free lesson on prophecy today.

All right, no charge. All right, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word that is, thus says the Lord's speech. We thank you.

Amazing how amazing it is that you would reveal these incredible plans to a pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, and just to set all this stuff up for Daniel to give these interpretations, for us to get a glimpse of the Messianic kingdom. That is not growing side by side with pagan kingdoms, but come suddenly strikes at the feet. Lord, we look forward, we ask, Lord, that your kingdom would come, and that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray that you would just extend your reign in our hearts as we await for your reign on the earth.

And we thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen.