Daniel Message 8

Wisdom for Crisis – Daniel 2:14-28

Continuing our study of Daniel, you recall that Daniel, unlike the familiar picture of the book, is not primarily a book on prophecy, it’s a book on wisdom. It’s a book to train believers on how to live in the kingdom of man. Therefore Daniel shows you how to use prophecy properly, to have a balanced use of prophecy, an effective use of prophecy. And we’re going to see that as we go on. Daniel 1 was Daniel’s entrance into Gentile politics, and chapters 2-6 are Daniel’s career in Gentile politics. Each one of these chapters basically gives a crisis in Daniel’s life or in the lives of his friends. All of these chapters deal with the application of Bible doctrine to Daniel’s experience, and therefore each chapter is significant for practical Christian living. We’re trying to get away from just looking at Daniel as a book of theory; it’s a book of practice. Daniel’s crises are just simply the same kind of crises that you and I face as a believer.

In Daniel 2 the crisis begins with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Nebuchadnezzar, in his second year, actually the third year after the battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream at the very pinnacle of his success. Here was a young man, probably around 25 or 30 years old, who had conquered the world. He had done in his day what Alexander would do in his day. He was at the pinnacle of his power and his political success; he was at the helm of the greatest culture that the Ancient East had ever seen; he had been schooled, raised in the astrology, the astronomy, the arithmetic and some of the early trigonometry of the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar, then, represents the ideal human viewpoint man. And just at the pinnacle of his success God sends a dream. And in the dream God utilizes God-consciousness.

The verse in connection with this is always Ecclesiastes 3:11, that’s the verse that tips you off as to how God uses God-consciousness to destroy human viewpoint. God uses this tactic when he deals with unbelievers to awaken them to the content of the gospel. People have come into this congregation and thousands of other congregations where the Word of God is taught and have had the same experience. God’s tactics basically do not change. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 we are told that God has put a “Trojan Horse” in the heart of every man, the Trojan Horse that is always there to destroy human viewpoint, the God-consciousness, Romans 1, etc. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says is a sense of eternity. Holem, the Hebrew word holem, which means extension; this word is a sense of eternity in the heart of every man, atheistic, agnostic or Christian, every man has this. This is the first divine institution, is responsibility, and no matter what a man may say to you by way of his beliefs, he can never deny, eradicate or destroy the first divine institution in his soul. So we have Ecclesiastes 3:11 as a “good verse” so to speak to summarize the mechanics of what’s happening here.

So God’s uses Nebuchadnezzar’s sense of eternity to destroy his confidence in human viewpoint. It’s like this: Nebuchadnezzar is like the man who has built a kingdom for himself. He has gone out and he has conquered. Some people do this intellectually, other people do it politically, some do it socially by various manipulational things; some people do it economically by business, but whatever it is, we build our own kingdoms. Nebuchadnezzar has built his own kingdom. And what always threatens the human viewpoint person is that outside of the limits of his kingdom there is pure chance. He has no control of what lies beyond, and in this dream, in this terrifying dream by night, the young man Nebuchadnezzar is suddenly made aware, very forcibly, that there are questionable forces out beyond the domain of his kingdom, in this case beyond the time domain of his kingdom, that will undertake and destroy his whole life’s work. That his whole life’s work is like a boat, and it’s moving on an ocean, the ocean is just sheer chance, and there’s lots of crisscross current, he doesn’t really know where he’s going. He’s built a magnificent boat, magnificent engines, magnificent deck work, but he’s not sure of the course.

And that’s the case with you if you are an unbeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ; it’s the case with Christians who are not oriented to the Word of God, and it was the case with Nebuchadnezzar. Needless to say, the reaction that we get from Nebuchadnezzar is the reaction that modern man has had in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and that is there has been a movement from the principle of human viewpoint rationalism, that everything is moot and organized and we’re going to conquer the world intellectually and we’re going to explain everything by our theories, and we’re going to develop almost comprehensive knowledge, that’s all been abandoned. Nebuchadnezzar saw that isn’t going to work, so rather than go to divine viewpoint he takes the opposite, human viewpoint irrationalism, and that’s where all is chaotic, and it doesn’t require a genius to see this effect in music, in art, and in literature of our day. It’s just the human viewpoint man swinging from his rationalism over to his irrationalism and then he’ll be back to his rationalism again. It’s gone on and on and will go on forever until Christ returns. But man will not choose submission to the authority of the Word of God, it always has to be this rationalism or irrationalism.

Now Daniel, in chapter 2, presents us with the fundamental apologetic for the Christian faith. Over and over in the Bible there are certain things that are presented, God’s way of dealing with men; there’s one that comes up over and over again, and this is the thing that you as a Christian can be proud of because no other religion has it, and that is a plan that spans history with hundreds of fulfilled prophecy, one continual ongoing plan. In Isaiah 41 God is using the same technique but He makes it more clear. He challenges the gods of human viewpoint. In Isaiah 41:21, and here’s the argument that God throws out; He challenges any takers to come up and try Him at this point, and as Christians we can throw the same claim up to our generation. There’s no system, there’s no beliefs on earth that can answer these questions. “Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob,” let me see them, what are your strong reasons, never mind picking away at Christianity, you claim to be such an authority, where are your strong reasons.

And God says, Isaiah 41:22, “Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen; let them show the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things to come.” In other words, prophesy, you think you’re so authoritative, prophesy, tell us what shall come to pass. Verse 23, “Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.” In other words, show your power, show your ability to prophecy and predict and to control absolutely history, then we will worship.

See, it’s always these claims that ought to be directed against the critic of the Christian faith, so quick to condemn, so quick to criticize, and yet what answers do they have. It’s like one of the French Christians said to one skeptic who had claimed to invent a new religion, and his answer was, “I’m waiting for you to rise on the third day,” and then he’d accept his religion, but Buddha hasn’t risen, Mary Baker Eddy hasn’t risen from the dead, nor has Confucius. There’s only one person who has risen from the dead on the third day and it’s the Lord Jesus Christ. So therefore there are public manifestations of the validity of our faith, and we ought to flaunt these in the face of the skeptical world. Be bold about it, just throw it out and let them interact with it.

Now in Daniel, after Nebuchadnezzar has his fit, he issues a decree. And we ended last time in the text at verse 13. We filled you in on the schools of prophetic interpretation to prepare you for what is coming in Daniel 2. In Daniel 2:14 we have Daniel coping with another emergency. So far in this book we remember Daniel coping with an earlier emergency and it gave us three principles of Biblical separation. Remember Daniel was faced with the problem that he was misnamed, they tried to suppress his testimony by giving him a human viewpoint name and they tried to exert various other pressures. And from that we obtained three principles that can be used in everyday experience to grapple with this problem of separation.

The first principle was taken from Daniel 1:8, and it was the fact that one must concentrate on a few issues, not shotgun the matter. You can’t sit here and juggle a thousand issues to make the point of where the Word of God stands. Daniel could have argued about his name, he could have gone on a hunger strike, he could have done a lot of other things, but he didn’t. There was only one issue that Daniel pursued and that was the issue of the diet. That was the issue. He could have protested the curriculum of Nebuchadnezzar’s high school, because remember Daniel is of high school age. He could have done these things but Daniel followed the principle of concentration; concentrate your efforts at one or two critical points, and you’re going to have to let the rest of it slide, pick that up later if you’re successful with the point you’re bringing forth to bear. But use the principle of concentration.

The second principle we obtain from Daniel 1:8 was that you have to be diplomatic and respect the authority, even of human viewpoint authority. And the reason for this is because of the structure of the divine institutions. God has erected these divine institutions in society and the fourth divine institution is the institution of law and justice. And whether the person is a believer or unbeliever, it doesn’t make any difference; you respect them because of their position in the divine institution. You respect the judge in the courtroom, you respect the policeman, you respect the lawmaker, not because of who and what they are but because of their position in the divine institution of government.

If you obtained a little book by L. John VanTil, Liberty of Conscience, The History of the Puritan Idea, will remember that in that book, which is the background for Cromwell, the background for that is that the Puritans scattered terror into the hearts of their generation because here was their position, and it was precisely the same point as Daniels. Their position was we obey the king only because we obey the Word of God first. If the Word of God doesn’t tell us to obey the king, then we don’t obey the king. Our primary allegiance is not to the king or to the state, or to any human authority. Our primary allegiance is to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if He directs us to obey others, we will obey others, but not because there resides in these authorities an innate authority; we reject that concept. And it struck terror into the heart because up to that day even the Christians went along with the idea that there was innate authority, that the king somehow just had authority, but it wasn’t authority because he was in the fourth divine institution, it was just authority because he was the king period. And along come the Puritans, who said yes, we obey authority but the reason we obey is totally different from the reason you’re obeying. You’re obeying because of the authority itself, but not us, we’re not boot-lickers, we obey because our God tells us to obey. And because we first obey Him, then we obey you, but don’t be deceived, the Puritans would argue, we’re not obeying civil authority because of civil authority; we’re obeying civil authority because of Jesus Christ.

Always remember that, the basics is the divine institutions, the divine institutions are creation ordinances. We obey authority only because God has created that authority. If you will train yourself to act this way on the job or wherever you are in society, you’ll protect yourself and give yourself some tremendous witnessing opportunities and here’s how. If you continue to enunciate the principle that you are an obedient and in subjection to authority because of the Word of God and the divine institutions, then when someone comes up to you and denies the Biblical faith, then following their logic you can argue that there is therefore no reason any longer to submit to authority. In other words, you will show them the vanity of human viewpoint very quickly by showing that once you’ve tubed the Scriptures, once you exhaust their authority, once you’ve passed away the authority of Jesus Christ over every institution, then you have just cast away the institutions themselves. Now there is no authority, no reason whatsoever why I should obey.

So the second principle of separation we learned from Daniel was that he discussed the process diplomatically, with respect, not because of who and what Nebuchadnezzar was but because of the divine institution.

The third thing was that we found in Daniel 1:12 is that when you are faced with a situation where there’s room to negotiate your stand before non-Christians, you don’t get a flat no, we’ll see what to do with that later in the book of Daniel, when you get a no, when you say I’m going to separate, I am going to operate this way because this is the way God’s Word says and you get a no, that will be dealt with in this epistle, but we haven’t got there yet. If you say I’m going to operate this way because this is the way the Word of God says and you get a yes, you solve the problem. But in Daniel 1 the third principle has to do with what happens if you say this is the way the Word of God is, I’m going to operate this way and you get a maybe. In other words, there’s room to negotiate. In that case the third principle is to sell your program on a pragmatic basis.

Some of you men may be in business, you may see dishonest practices going on in your business; you may as a Christian have great problems of conscience participating in this, for example on a college faculty and the department chairman is manipulating the budget, or saying in a certain field it will be taught inside of a human viewpoint framework and you can’t go along with this. Instead of saying I’m going to teach from divine viewpoint, one of the things you can say is well, let’s open up for more discussion, let’s present both sides of the issue, and therefore we can obtain better education. That would be a sample of pragmatically showing your program. You might use the same thing in business, you see a dishonest practice, you may not be able to sell your honesty on the basis of honesty, you may have to sell your honesty to whatever organization you’re in on a pragmatic basis. That’s all right; Daniel sold his on a pragmatic basis. What’s the justification for it? It’s not compromise; it’s just that the unbeliever could care less about God’s laws. So you say you recognize and say I’m not going to argue on your apostate basis, if you want to argue pragmatically I’ll argue pragmatically with you. So the pragmatic option is what is taught in the book of Daniel.

Now when we come to Daniel 2:14 we’re in another ballgame. Here we’re not dealing so much with the problem of separation, of which we’ve seen these three principles involved; now we’re dealing with simply an urgent, urgent type of [can’t understand word]. This is when the mud hits the fan and everything falls apart. This is the tendency when everybody goes to panic and you’ll have these situations come up in your life, and here’s the model how to handle it. This is when the ceiling caves in, everything goes, it might be health, it might be finances, it might be something else but everything is caving in. It might be a situation where everyone is panicking. That’s the situation Daniel faces because the whole establishment has just been threatened with extinction; every wise man, every counselor, everybody is going to be destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar is hacked at the human viewpoint educational system. We found that as he said in his decree to these people, in verse 5, I’ll turn every educational institution into a public toilet, that’s the way he put it at the end of verse 5. And that’s the way he argued. That’s how angry he was at the establishment, turn it into a public toilet and the people would be destroyed in the process.

Now verse 14, remember his age at this time; Daniel is only 17 or 18 years old. What you’re looking at is the magnificent behavior of a teenager who knows the Word of God; tremendous! Now in Daniel 1:14 it says “Then Daniel answered with counsel and wisdom to Arioch, the captain of the king’s guard,” now “then” begins the fact that Daniel is going to respond to the situation, coolly, calculatingly and doctrinally, a magnificent fellow. David is a tremendous hero, at least in my life I always looked upon David as a great example of the Word of God but as I study Daniel he is an even more potent one because he’s so young; at 17 he’s doing this, just think of it, at 17 he receives the vision that outlines history, that Karl Marx stole to form communism. So Daniel, at 17 is basically the one who has mastered history.

“Then Daniel answered with counsel and taste,” literally, the word “counsel” involves the idea that he actually is going with the divine viewpoint framework to Arioch, it’s the word for advice, he spotted something in this decree that’s come out and now Daniel is going to deal with the situation. The first step that he uses to deal with the situation that we all ought to do, if we’re in the situation where shock hasn’t overtaken us, is data gathering. It’s simple, Daniel is going to gather some data. He doesn’t know what the decree is yet, all he knows is that everybody is going to get killed, he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t know what Nebuchadnezzar’s reasons were for making this decree, so he’s going to get some data. What’s the justification for this? Because God has put a brain inside our head and He expects us to use it, so Daniel is going to gather some data. And he does it with a tactic; the tactic is that he’s going to use what doctrine he has to go to Arioch and get this data.

Now when he goes to Arioch it says he goes “with counsel,” in other words that means that he’s basically squared away himself, Daniel is. He’s got his doctrine down, he knows what he has to do, he knows what ought to be done, and the word that is translated in the King James as “wisdom” means taste, we would use the word for diplomacy, with diplomacy. And diplomacy is seen in how he asks the question. He doesn’t come up to Arioch and say what’s the matter, the big man flipped his lid? That’s not the way he goes about his problem, he points it out with a question, there’s something unusual about this degree, and he’s going to spot it in a moment, though it’s mistranslated in the King James. “Then Daniel answered with counsel and taste to Arioch, the king’s captain.” Arioch was captain of the king’s guard, and that’s a mystery because the word translated in the Aramaic for “guard” is the word from the Hebrew which means to slaughter, and people are vague on what this word is talking about, but it looks to me like what he is, he’s the captain of the king’s executioners, not just a guard, this is a man who is the head of all capital punishment, he’s the grand executioner of the state. Daniel comes to him, “the king’s guard, who was gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon,” the word “gone forth” refers to the decree. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar says it has gone forth from me, that’s the decree that has gone forth. So the man has gone forth under the authority of the decree.

Daniel 2:15, “He answered and said to Arioch, the king’s captain,” now notice the diplomacy here. “Why is the decree so hasty from the king?” Now the word “hasty” is not the way it looks in the original. The word in the original isn’t hasty, but harsh. In other words, it’s so wild, absolutely out of it, and in a way what Daniel is saying, it’s beneath of what we would expect of our king, isn’t it. In other words, he’s trying to wake up Arioch to something unusual here and Daniel wants to know what that unusual thing is; again, tremendous diplomacy, particularly for a 17 year old. Why is the decree so harsh, he asks, just a simple innocent question, but it’s a barbed question, it’s a question to get data, Daniel needs data before he can solve his problem. “Then Arioch made the thing known to Daniel.” So at this point Daniel receives the data, he understands it was a dream, he understands that Nebuchadnezzar is flipping his lid over the whole thing, that he’s going to destroy the educational system because human viewpoint can’t provide answers.

So understanding that, Daniel 2:16, “Then Daniel went in,” and this is the second principle that’s involved, he goes in “and desired of the king,” of all the things, a 17 year teenager walking into the presence of the most powerful man on earth with this absolute air of confidence. And that shows a second principle about how Daniel solved his problems; no matter how big the problem was, Daniel had the absolute confidence that there was a solution on a divine viewpoint basis and that’s where he used the “rest” part of his faith. He rested on the conviction there had to be a solution to this. He wasn’t going to flip like the rest of the astrologers and wise men and counselors, they were all taking aspirin and tranquilizers at this time, but Daniel isn’t. He walks right into the presence very coolly because he has this abiding conviction of 1 Corinthians 10:13 that no testing has taken him but such as is common to man, God will not permit him to be tested above that which he is able. So therefore Daniel walks in with this solid conviction. “Then Daniel went in, and desired of the king that he would give him time, and that he would show the king the interpretation.”

Daniel 2:17, “Then Daniel went to his house,” literally it’s the place where the boys stay because they were all staying together as they were going to Nebuchadnezzar’s school. He went to his dormitory, “and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions,” he mad the thing known to his three roommates. That’s the third principle of handling a major crisis, and that is that in major crisis, that’s the doing part of faith. In this case the doing part of faith, Daniel goes back and he deals with group prayer, he doesn’t try to solve this major crisis himself. The other guys were implicated in the thing, they’re going to die too, they’re part of the problem and so he gets together several believers, not just himself; there are no lone ranger Christians in Scripture, even though there are plenty of them around here. In Daniel’s day he believed in the idea of the interdependency of believers. That’s why we have the doctrine of spiritual gifts; each person is given a certain amount of gifts to interact. So Daniel relies on the help of his thee roommates, he talks the problem over.

In Daniel 2:18 they begin a tremendous importune prayer, prayer that goes on and on and on, we’ll see just how long it goes on in a moment. “That they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret, that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.” Now Daniel is very, very heavy on sovereignty of God. The book of Daniel would be the Calvinist delight because of its absoluteness on the sovereignty of God. God is the final authority over every event of history. But I want you to notice that along with the sovereignty of God in Daniel is an element that amateur Calvinists always miss and it is the fact that the God of history is dynamic, He interacts with prayer; He is not a fatalistic God because the implication of verse 18 is that if they don’t pray they’re going to die, if they do pray they won’t. In other words, their future destiny does depend upon their response to the situation. If Daniel believed like some amateur Calvinists he would have sat around and said whatever is going to happen is going to happen and done absolutely nothing. But he does do something and he has this big long concerted prayer in response.

And he also, and this is another feature that you have to watch very, very carefully, the God of the Bible can be reached and influenced in prayer. The expression “that they would desire” means that they would ask for, “That they would ask for mercies of the God of heaven,” this means that God has a plan for history. We know something of that plan, we know pieces of that plan, but we can never hope to know the total plan because the total plan is in the omniscient mind of God Himself. God reveals pieces of the plan that are rationally consistent, yes; but the pieces He has revealed are not comprehensive, they’re not total, there are always gaps and room for maneuver in the plan as far as we’re concerned. So Daniel makes his petition to God. He petitions that God will respond to him. He’s not thinking of God as one big computer and as he prays 20 lights will turn green. He wants God to personally respond to him. And whatever your belief about sovereignty is, if you’ve gotten to the point in your thinking where now you can’t pray because you keep getting hit with this idea of what’s the use of praying because God knows what I’m going to pray before I pray it so therefore I won’t pray it, if you get stuck in that you’re way off on your Biblical understanding of sovereignty. It’s incorrect and its unbiblical, somewhere along the way you’ve gotten off the track.

Daniel is an obvious case of a believer who believes in absolute sovereignty of God and yet as he believes this it doesn’t paralyze his prayer; his prayer is stimulated by it. So that’s the practical every day test; if you’re solid and you’ve got things going for you in the area of prayer, and you’ve got this together, then somehow you must have correctly perceived the sovereignty of God. If you find the sovereignty of God setting up tension in your prayer life, then there’s something wrong some place.

So in Daniel 2:19 we find that God does respond, God does answer the prayer of Daniel, “Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision.” Not a night dream, and that tells us how long they prayed. Visions come to waking people, Daniel stayed awake that night. Those boys got together in that dorm and they started a prayer meeting; we don’t know when it started, maybe some time in the afternoon, and they prayed and prayed and prayed on into the night, until, apparently through angelic means, God gave Daniel a vision. As they prayed their prayer meeting was interrupted with a vision of the answer, God gave the answer to them. It was at night, so the prayer meeting had gone on for a number of hours.

“Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.” This is another feature about coping with crises situations. So often, we are all prone to do this, get in a big jam, pray for emergency help, the emergency help comes and no thanksgiving. Jesus commented on it more than once in the Gospels. Now Daniel isn’t that kind of a believer, Daniel concludes the crisis with a praise Psalm; he gives public thanks for God’s answer to his prayer in the middle of crisis. In other words, biblically speaking, as we saw in the Psalm series, a crisis is not considered over until the crisis has not only been solved but until it ends in praise. At the time the crisis ends in praise we come full cycle through it. But if you haven’t come through it to the point of praising, you haven’t come through it. Here’s why. If we can’t look back on that crisis and give thanks for God we still have problems in our soul, we still have something wrong with our mental attitude, there is something about us that paralyzes thanksgiving and we just haven’t progressed out of it. You can tell how far you’ve come out of the crisis if you can then turn around and give thanks for it. If you can’t you haven’t come out of the crisis. So here Daniel comes out of the crisis and he blesses the God of heaven.

And here is one of the most remarkable short psalms in the Bible. All of the psalms aren’t in the book of Psalms. There are many psalms that aren’t in there. This would make an excellent song for someone musically inclined. Verses 20-23 is a short four verse psalm; it’s pattern and structure goes 3, 4, 3, 4, there are 3 lines in the first verse, 4 lines in the second, 3 lines in the third, 4 lines in the fourth. And here’s how he does it. Now whether this was made up that day or not or whether this was the substance of what he did and it was later put into a psalm we don’t know.

Daniel 2:20, “Daniel answered and said,” and there are certain principles of thanksgiving, which if observed, will enable you to give good testimony to God. Oftentimes testimony meetings deteriorate because it’s somebody telling a bigger story than somebody else. “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever; for wisdom and might are his,” now notice the emphasis as he starts, this is the central emphasis of all prayer, “Blessed be the name of God,” the name of God, what does name mean? Name means essence, and so the object of praise does not stop with a work on earth; a work, or an event, or a happening or whatever it is, praise looks at the work or event but finally comes to rest in the character of the God who answered in the middle of the event. When it says “Blessed be the essence of God,” this is where praise focuses, the character of God Himself. Any testimony, any public narration of what Christ has done for you, or what God did in answer to a prayer is not complete until it has moved all the way to the point where you can point to certain attributes of God Himself that were shown in that situation. Then the praise has been full. That’s Biblical praise; it’s not going around cross-eyed saying praise the Lord, praise the Lord or something like that. That is not praise; praise of the Lord is what you see focused here and you can’t praise the Lord without doctrine. Doctrine is the prerequisite for praise, not emotion; emotion can be involved but it’s always doctrine.

“Blessed be the essence for God forever and ever,” now that may look like a very small phrase, but “forever and ever” is the first time this occurs in such a position in Scripture. After this it is used again and again, in the Lord’s prayer and so on, in the Christian era we’re fond of putting this in our hymns. But let’s never forget the expression “forever and ever” began with Daniel. Now it was used earlier but this is where it was really focused in praise, and literally it reads: “Let God’s name be blessed from eternity to eternity.” Now connect that up with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. What was Nebuchadnezzar’s dream? Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was a sense of eternity to eternity, the ship that was on the ocean that had no shore, absolutely without orientation, and what Daniel comes along with in divine viewpoint, he encompasses the whole thing and he says let God’s character, let His essence be blessed from one shore of the sea to the other, from eternity to eternity, in other words, all encompassing, God is that big.

“Blessed be the name of God from eternity to eternity, for wisdom and might are His,” now he gives two attributes of God’s character that God showed in that crisis, and every testimony to God’s answered prayer ought to go back to some attribute of God shown in that particular crisis of your life. Daniel saw two things, he saw God’s wisdom and he saw God’s might, and so he talks about God’s, we would say His omniscience and His omnipotence, but it’s the same idea. He goes back to these attributes of God and says they’re His, and I saw them, these came true in my life, in the middle of my disaster, in the middle of my crisis, God showed His character.

Now in Daniel 2:21 he makes the statement that more than any other statement I’ve seen in this book, summarizes the Biblical philosophy of history, and it’s a statement that strikes and destroys all non-biblical philosophy; it’s a statement that just cuts against the grain of everything. What is it? “And He changes the times and the seasons,” and the significant word in the Aramaic is [sounds like: shaw nah] it’s like in the Hebrew, it means to actually reverse something, change something that was there and has now been changed. That’s the force of it, it’s not saying that God makes the times and the seasons, that’s taken for granted. What he’s saying is that God changes the times and the seasons.

Now we have to pause here for a few moments to grasp what he’s just said; he’s said a mouthful. What was the central element of Babylonian education? The human viewpoint education of the day corresponded to what that you read in the newspaper every day? The horoscope. What’s the essence of the horoscope? That the times and the seasons are fixed by astronomical regularity. In other words, there’s a fatalistic determinism that’s involved in astrology, that the universe just sort of runs in a very fatalistic way and the times and the seasons are all preprogrammed. And Daniel says no, times and seasons are not preprogrammed, God changes the times and God changes the seasons. Said in astrological terms, God will change the constellation, God alters their time and their periods; He introduces an element of catastrophism into the geophysical universe. God tampers with His own creation, He changes the times and the seasons. He’s not bound by his own natural laws, if He wants to change them he does. He can change His own ethical laws if he wishes.

So God changes the times and the seasons, and this is something again that we have to pause on until we understand it, that God does not have this kind of a situation, where he has gone in and He makes up this big IBM program for the universe and then He sets the universe in action and that the universe sits there and blinks lights for eternity. Turn to Jeremiah 18, we’ll go to that potter illustration that Paul uses in Romans 9; what about the potter, God makes good pots and bad pots out of the same clay.

In Jeremiah 18:2-10, this again shows the same concept, that the God of history interacts with history. God has a plan, true, but God at every point…at every point, is involved in cause/effect relationship with His own creation. In verse 2 God says to Jeremiah, get up, “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear My words. [3] Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheel. [4] And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter,” in other words as he’s making it and the wheel is spinning, and he’s got the glob of clay that’s he manipulating to a pot, somehow the thing is malformed, that’s the idea, it’s still wet clay, it’s not broken clay, it’s wet clay that he’s still forming on the wheel but it’s malformed, “so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. [5] Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, [6] O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? Saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in mine hand, O house of Israel. [7] At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it, [8] If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. [9] At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, [10] If it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I would benefit them.”

Don’t you see God interacting there? It’s not God passively sitting off and saying there’s My program, hands off for now, let My program just kind of autonomously carry on like a machine. That’s fatalism, that’s not Biblical sovereignty. God at this point is interacting. Said another way, an event future to us all is the return of Jesus Christ. We could all say prophetically it’s certain that Jesus Christ is going to come. In God’s mind there has never been a doubt when Jesus Christ is going to come, true. But as a matter of fact at the instant the wheels are set in motion for that final climax when Christ returns there will be an actual decision in the throne room of God; the Father will say to the Son, NOW, and it will happen. In other words, it won’t be the result of a blueprint tacked up some place, “is it time yet” concept. It’s not that at all. In other words, every moment, every moment of history is under the direct control of God. That’s the powerful picture of the sovereignty of history. That’s what differs from fatalism. Fatalism accepts the fact that what’s going to happen is going to happen irrespective of means. Biblical sovereignty is what’s going to happen is going to happen by ordained creation means, volition, responsibility, etc. And God being the Creator over the creation constantly molds us, just like the potter and the clay.

That’s the concept that Daniel has; he said the trouble, Nebuchadnezzar, is that all your astrologers in this court have all these big horoscopes laid out and they’re trying to give you advice on this when the God of heaven is over the planet and the stars and He can change them and that’s what he’s trying to signal to you in the dream. And that’s why the astrologers can’t handle this problem because it’s over scientific law, it’s above scientific law, God is bigger than that. So when he says in his psalm, “He changes the times and the seasons,” that includes physical miracles, it includes chronologies of history. God changes the length of the Church Age in response to the response of the people, it’s not that God violates His sovereignty, God responds. If a whole bunch of people would accept Christ and the body of Christ would be filled today Christ would come. If there aren’t going to be people who accept Christ then Christ’s Second Coming will be held off. There’s that interaction.

So Daniel 2:21-22, “He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings, and sets up kings,” and this again is the hand of God in history. Said another way, God’s hand is never taken from the steering wheel of history; there’s no automatic pilot in the universal airplane, the pilot’s hands are always at the control, that’s what the Bible is saying. “He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding, [22] He reveals the deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness,” now notice the sequence of statements in verses 21-23, so you don’t get them reversed. The average Christian thinks of this He thinks of God’s foreknowledge and then His work, but if you notice the way Daniel praises God in verse 21, He gives God’s work first, there’s God’s sovereign power operating; because God’s sovereign operating power is there, then He gives wisdom; He gives wisdom on the basis of His already in motion power.

“He reveals the deep and secret things,” and the word “secret,” if you turn back to Deuteronomy 29:29 here’s the concept. The idea is that God’s knowledge consists of what is known, what is not yet known, and the unknowable. The unknowable will never be known by man. In heaven we are not going to know the unknowable; you’re still going to be finite and mentally limited in heaven. That’s why 1 Corinthians 13 can’t refer to the rapture of Jesus Christ, “then we will know as we are known,” it can’t be, because the people are saying that is making it equal to omniscience, we’re never going to know everything. The unknowable will always remain unknowable, so that’s not the secret things.

The secret things according to Deuteronomy 29:29 are the things that are going to be later revealed. “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” In this case the known things are the law, the unknown or yet to be known thing was the future of Israel, and Moses says God has revealed so much to you now, now your obligation as a believer is to master the doctrinal content and application of that content to experience of what God has so far revealed; don’t you worry about what He hasn’t revealed yet. What He has revealed will keep you occupied. There’s a sufficient amount, you don’t have to add added prophecy. I never could understand why people have to have new revelation; I’m still catching up with the old revelation myself. I haven’t yet met anyone who has mastered what He already has given.

So the word “secret” of Deuteronomy 29:29 is a Semitic stem from which the Aramaic word “secret” comes in Daniel 2:22. It’s the same concept. Daniel says God reveals new information based upon what He is already doing. “He reveals the deep and the secret things; He knows what is in the darkness,” and the darkness is a synonym in the Bible, not here for evil, darkness is a synonym for what is yet to be known, the light has not yet been thrown on the plans of God, they’re murky, they’re vague at certain points. God knows what’s out there; your life is vague, you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. If you knew what’s going to happen tomorrow you might not want to wake up tomorrow morning. You have no idea what’s going to happen to you tomorrow, that’s the darkness, and God knows what is in that darkness, it says. So your confidence isn’t what’s going to happen, your confidence has to be in the one who knows what’s going to happen, God.

The last phrase, “and the light dwells with Him” is very interesting historically because that last part of verse 22 was interpreted in a very, very strange way by generations of Jewish people. The last part of verse 22, “the light dwells with Him” is interpreted as the Messiah. In other words, the person who fills up the darkness, that vagueness out in the future, will be Messiah, and it’s here where the concept of the Messianic light that shows up in the Gospel of John occurs. Turn to John 1:9, this is the New Testament counterpart to the light that dwells with God John says, “That was the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world,” the light that lights every man that comes into the world, every man, not just believer, unbeliever; so you see what it’s saying is that any truth that is known about history or anything in history is basically knowledge about the plans and person of the Son of God. It is Christocentric epistemology, Christocentric knowledge; all knowledge is Christ centered according to this. The light itself is in Jesus Christ. So John says every man, to the degree they know truth, to that degree they’ve encountered already the person of the Son of God. That’s why Jesus Christ said “I am the light that’s come into the world, if you had known the light you would have known Me.” Same think it’s the same principle.

Daniel goes on in his prayer of thanksgiving, “He reveals the deep and secret things: He knows what is in the darkness,” that is the unknown future, “and the light,” that which gives light in the future, “dwells with Him,” the Son lodges with the Father. Daniel 2:23, “I thank Thee, and praise Thee, O Thou God of my fathers,” now when he calls Him “God of my fathers” he has reference to the covenants that were given to the fathers. And the covenants were the Abrahamic Covenant; remember the three promises, the seed, land and worldwide blessing. In order for that third promise of the Abrahamic Covenant to come to pass, the worldwide blessing, the God of Scripture has to exercise control over the Gentile nations, and it’s that has at last been revealed to Daniel. So Daniel responds with tremendous view of the sovereignty of God in history, bringing to fruition that third point of the Abrahamic Covenant, and says thank you, “O God of my fathers,” and in the Aramaic it’s more potent than this; in the Aramaic it’s “Thou, God of my fathers, thanks to you.” The emphasis is that suddenly in the song, he’s been talking about God in the third person, in verses 20, 21, 22, it’s all God in the third person, the song is being sung at men, and then the last concluding point of the psalm is he turns upward and he talks to God Himself, “You, God of my fathers, I praise You and I thank you, who has given me wisdom and might, and have made known unto me now what we desired of thee, for Thou hast made known unto us the king’s matter,” and so on. Daniel is grace oriented.

We’ll look at the next four verses to see what happens after he has given this song of thanksgiving. Picture it, the crisis is over as far as Daniel is concerned. He’s gathered his data, he’s had the confidence that there’s a solution, he’s gathered other believers around, he’s done something about it, God has answered the prayer and he’s given thanks; he’s grace oriented.

Now what happens? He collides with the establishment, and this will always be the truth, wherever you go, whatever organization you belong to it will be basically run on human viewpoint principles and any organization run on human viewpoint principles will have a tremendous quantity of approbation lust. Approbation lust will exist from the lowest employee on up to the highest person. Everybody is trying to seek the approbation of the boss by doing certain things or by not doing certain things. It’s not living your life before the Lord, it’s always living your life before the next person up on the ladder, lick their boots so you can get up high enough to tear them off the ladder so you can get in their position. That’s the story in business, in sales, in all organizations; the same thing here and here it starts in verse 24.

Daniel 2:24, “Therefore, Daniel went in unto Arioch, whom the king had ordained to destroy the wise men of Babylon; he went and said thus unto him, Destroy not the wise men of Babylon. Bring me in before the king, and I will reveal unto the king the interpretation.” By the way, this shows how divine viewpoint bails out the human viewpoint system. The human viewpoint educational establishment has been saved again and again because of the Christians in it. It’s only the Christian teachers that are oriented to truth in the public classroom. If the public classrooms are doing anything it’s only because of the faithful remnant of Christian teachers; they’re the salt that’s preserving the whole thing from collapse, just as Daniel is the salt here. Otherwise, without it the whole rotten thing would fall to the ground

Daniel 2:25, “Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste,” and now watch Arioch’s tactics, Arioch is one of the human viewpoint types, he’s one of those approbation lust types, and so he walks into the king and he figures ah, this is the time to get Nebuchadnezzar’s attention, I haven’t had a promotion recently and inflation is hitting my salary so I need a raise and the way to get it is get Nebuchadnezzar’s attention. So he says, “I have found a man of the captives of Judah, that will make known unto the king the interpretation,” in other words, claiming credit for himself. Now he didn’t find Daniel, Daniel found him. He has no right to claim this but that just shows you the kind of atmosphere that this young boy of 17 had to operate in; everybody was worried about what someone else was going to say. Remember the man he talked to earlier, oh, I can’t take your food away, the boss will get mad, that kind of concept. So Daniel knows it and he goes right on, ignores it.

Daniel 2:26, “The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar,” in other words he’s introduced to the king by this name, the king doesn’t know Daniel by Daniel, he knows him only as Belteshazzar, and he says, “Are you able to make know unto me the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation.” In the Aramaic the emphasis is on the word “thou,” you little kid, you’re going to make known the dream. And there may be something else than just surprise; it may be that since Daniel’s graduation, apparently he was very close in chapter 2, that all of a sudden Nebuchadnezzar thinks, wait a minute, Belteshazzar, I’ve heard that name around here before, oh, he was the guy that graduated at the top of his class, and it may be an expression of amazement; there definitely is amazement here in the original language, we can’t tell why, we can only guess from the context. But apparently he’s also amazed that this same kid that graduated at the top of his class is also the kid now coming into his courtroom and saying I’ve got the answer to your problem, king.

Daniel 2:27, “Daniel answered in the presence of the king,” and notice in verse 27 how the Holy Spirit has very carefully written that sentence, it doesn’t says Daniel answered and go right into the dream; we won’t get to the dream today but we’ll get to the introduction of it, and it says “Daniel answered in the presence of the king,” just to make everyone clear that when Daniel walked into the kings court, and the king wasn’t alone, Daniel was there, Arioch was there, the counsels were there, everyone is staring at this 17 year old kid who has the audacity to walk in to the greatest man on earth and say I’ve got the answer to your problem. And Daniel, right there in the presence of the royal court, says I want one thing clear before I give you this dream and the interpretation; one thing, and that is it doesn’t come from me. And Daniel is going to make several points which show that Daniel is giving his testimony in subordination to the authorities of his time, but he’s still opening his mouth for Jesus Christ face to face with the most powerful men of his day.

And here’s what he says and here’s his point: “The secret which the king has demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show [reveal] unto the king;” so his first point is you were right, Nebuchadnezzar, you’re absolutely right, your rotten human viewpoint system can’t answer your problem. He’s bailing them out but only indirectly, like the Christian teacher would not say public education is the solution, a Christian teacher that would give their testimony would have to make this very clear, it’s truth that’s the issue, not the system. It’s not how the truth is done, the truth itself, and that truth has no meaning apart from the Word of God. A Christian teacher would have to make that clear, though she or she might teach in the system, and might even save the system from destruction by his acts, they still would have to do as Daniel, the system doesn’t give the answer, and Daniel is saying your system, Nebuchadnezzar, is rotten, I agree whole heartedly, not one of these men… and they must have all been present, there’s not one of them, look at them, look at all these men that taught me in your school for three years how to write Babylonian cuneiform, look at them, not one of these men can give you the answer. Now that’s not an arrogant kid lipping off, that’s just a point he’s got to make that the hap system doesn’t have the answer.

Now Daniel 2:28, “But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and has made known to the king, Nebuchadnezzar, what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these:” and Daniel is going to give him an account of the vision, but not before he carefully says this is a gift of the sovereign gracious God of history; only then will he give him the answer.