God Reveals Mysteries

then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, his companions,

all from Judah,

and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

" Incredible. Daniel knows he's gone. He's made a bold request. He's petitioned to go stand before the king. And notice his first action is, we need to pray. We mentioned the courageous faith earlier of he's petitioned the king to stand before him when he's furious in Daniel's life in the line, but I mean, this is courageous faith. This I would say is the source of his faith. Prayer isn't just for lifting up the faint hearted. Prayer is the source of strength for the strong. Here, Daniel goes to the only one who could give him what he needs and he asked his friends, pray with me. I say, verse, 17 and 18 and 19. This is what we would call the turning point of the story. It's a little bit of a different plot line than we normally see. And it's pretty amazing that the language is so vanilla. It's just pure descriptive. He went, he asked for prayer, he fell asleep, he had the dream. Just bang, that's what happens. But we see incredible faith. We see an incredible God. We see God heard him, God knew what he needed to know, God revealed it to him. And this is what disrupts the story. The whole story is everybody's going to die going to his house and praying and seeking mercy. That's what changes the direction of the story. Now, I mentioned 17 through 19 is pretty just straightforward prose, right? Just very descriptive. He asked for prayer. He went to sleep, God revealed it. Notice verse 20 introduces a different kind of language. Whenever prose pauses and turns into poetry, you really want to take notice. We go from the most vanilla kind of description of what happened to an elaborate declaration in poem. It's a type of psalm. God said, Daniel said, we need the God of heaven to reveal the mystery. And the mystery is just what is unknown, what we do not have access to. He fell asleep, God revealed it, and he woke up and he blessed the God of heaven. And then we see the recording, which I know we just want to see what this dream is. We want to know what it means today. And we're going to get some charts out maybe. It'd be fantastic. But the change in language, the change in focus, it's about praising God who knows all and makes known what we need. Notice verse 20 parallels with verse 23.

Blessed be the name of God forever and ever to whom belong wisdom and might.

Drop down to verse 23.

To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might.

The God who has all wisdom and might has given wisdom and might. We see those are the two important, significant declarations. God has wisdom and might. God is wise and mighty. And because Daniel has asked, it has been given. Blessed be God. There's a praise. Praise you, O God, who possess all wisdom and might. And then at Thanksgiving, You've given what you have to those who have asked. There's an important pattern in his prayer here. We see that it's God whose name has been praised forever and ever. He's the God of heaven. Verses 21 or 22,

he changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings.

Okay, that's already alluding to the dream and what's going to happen. He is the one who rules all.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him.

Daniel does not have the ability to do what the king needs. And so he goes to the God of heaven and ask him. He seeks mercy and God answers. There's layers to the story we need to just kind of appreciate here. The immediate problem is King Nebuchadnezzar has had a dream that has bothered him and he's going to kill everybody if he doesn't get that dream in his interpretation given. That's fearful. That's the most immediate problem. The most important problem is there is one God who has absolute eternal rule. We are to fear him. He is worthy of praise. I draw it into where the text draws us that this is the God to be praised and thanked and sought in his mercy. To ask you just the most simple question, who is your God? You know who your God is based upon where you turn when there is trouble. What is it you think about when you think of God? What do you think God has? Is he wise? Is he powerful? What do you think he can do? What do you ask of God? I believe verses 1 to 12 are meant to be contrasted with 13 to 23. You've got the clear failure of paganism on display and you've got the clear one true God who hears and speaks and cares for his people on display. You've got the false religion. of Babylon on display, and you've got the true religion of the God of Heavens on display. Just think about verse 11 versus verse 18. The thing that the king has asked is too difficult. No one can know this. Only the gods. Well, verse 18, they seek the mercy from the God of Heaven. What a contrast of these charlatans, these whose lives are built upon practicing a false religion. There's nothing they can do, but Daniel and his friends, they have confidence in the God of heaven. They seek his mercy. Both recognize this beyond their ability, their pay grade. Daniel goes to the one God. He is near. He knows he will sleep. Well, let's look at another contrast. Nebuchadnezzar, after this dream, he cannot sleep. He has all earthly power. He reigns in every way in one of the greatest kingdoms ever known at this point, but he can't sleep at night because of this dream. And notice Daniel, who is next in the line, he's gonna be killed. He decided, I wanna go before the king, and he'll either be the first one to die, or he'll reverse everything. Notice it simply says, so Daniel slept there. There we see God, God revealed to him in a, in a, in a night vision as, as Daniel slept. What would a contrast between Daniel who knows God and Nebuchadnezzar who's bothered by this dream? I would say also one of the most significant contrast verse 11 and verse 17, the false religion. They, they, they don't pray. They don't pray. They do not have access to any God. Whereas Daniel and his friends, they pray to God. Believer, our God exists. Our God listens. Our God speaks. We kind of have to remember those things. There is a God and I'm not him. That was last week's lesson. But here, He listens and He speaks. He's active. He's communicating. He hears us. He speaks to us. We let so many things get in the way of the access we have to speak with God. Too busy. Too frustrated. Too confused. Maybe a sense of shame. We come to God and we We seek mercy. What a fantastic little description of what prayer is. We're seeking his mercy. 13 to 23, I believe, is helping us see the true religion. In this foreign land, among foreign gods, the true religion, it works. Because Yahweh is the one and only true God. He is the God of heaven, and he's the God of earth. Believer, I ask, does your religion work? And the simple question is, do you pray? Prayer is supposed to be like breathing for the Christian. Too much of American Christianity became private, as if prayer is supposed to be private. No, we come together to pray with one another. That's the only way we can actually rejoice with one another and grieve with one another and comfort one another. Do not be too busy or troubled to pray. To be very clear, verses 1 to 12 is about false religion. When we make gods in our image, our problems do not go away. Those gods are just as dumb as we are because we made them in our image. We need help from outside. We can seek mercy from him who is the creator and has committed himself to us. So an unusual turning point, 18 is they sought mercy. 19, God revealed that mercy while Daniel was sleeping, doing nothing. 20, 23 is a praise of the God who is wise and mighty. Let's not lose sight of this. The wisdom and might are on display. We're looking at the God who is wise and who is mighty. How kind of God to just make that so easy, who he is. To him belong all wisdom and might. And he gives those who seek mercy, wisdom and might. As we reflect upon this as new covenant believers. Later on today, discuss after the service, 1 Corinthians 1, where Christ is declared to be the wisdom and power of God. The wisdom and power of God has come down to us. The wisdom and power of God has been fully revealed to us, but it's revealed to us in a way that's surprising. In the cross. The cross at that time, we've seen a change of value in the cross because of Christ, but at the time, the cross is associated with shame and lawlessness. This is where Christ, this is where God's wisdom and power are most clearly revealed. When we look at the cross in our nature, in our fallenness, in our finite minds, we think, what a foolish symbol, what a symbol where the worst kind of people are punished and suffered in the greatest shame. This is where God shows us wisdom and how he gives life to the dead. how he gives forgiveness of sin, how he demonstrates his power in the midst of what looks like weakness. Many will look at the cross and think that this cannot be associated with God, this shame and lawlessness. Well, you're right, unless God has promised to save shameful sinners like us. That's why the cross is where we see the wisdom and the power of God on display. This is why we can go to Christ with great confidence, who reigns with perfect wisdom and power, and seek Him who is the wisdom and power of God, who gives us His wisdom and His power. The most important thing we need is Christ. Because we're fools, we need His wisdom. Because we're weak, we need His power. It's incredible how clear it is. Jesus says,

I came to seek and to save the lost.

If you're feeling that, the foolishness, the weakness, the guilt, Jesus came to save you. Jesus came to use all that he has to save you, to bring you back to himself. Or we read earlier, what Ben read, he comes and welcomes you to himself, who are weak and weary and heavy laden and gives you rest. He came down to meet us in our weakness. He came down to meet us in our foolishness, in our ignorance, in our shame, and invites us into his strength, wisdom, truth and glory. This is why we praise him. So the problem, the immediate problem, the king's dream, the immediate solution, there's a revelation given to Daniel, a great praise of God because he has all wisdom and might. And now we see our last major unit, our last section. God reveals mysteries and rules forever. Daniel goes into the court of the king. The king declares to Daniel, verse 26,

are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen in its interpretation?

Now again, remember that this is the demand because he's so burdened by this, he wants to make sure whoever tells him what this means, they have to first tell him what it is. And notice, are you able? There's a sense in which he's asking Daniel, are you the one who can finally tell me because all those other astrologers, magicians, sorcerers, they could not do it. Daniel's answer is very helpful for us. Verse 27,

Daniel answered, no wise men, enchanters, magicians, astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked.

Notice he doesn't say, but here I am to save the day.

But there is a God in heaven.

Now, the Babylonians, they worship the stars, the moon, the sun. This is very important. There is a God. His astrologers said, well, no one can know this because those gods, they don't dwell in flesh. Daniel says he has access to the God of heaven. These dudes can't tell you anything, nor can I. There's a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. Who makes known what is not known.

And He has made known to the King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these. To you, O King, as you lay in bed came thoughts of that would be after this. He who reveals mysteries may known to you what is to be.

Yeah. So we pause here. Let's go back to verse one. It's written as if just kind of passive. He had dreams. Well, we see here. God did that. God created all that anxiety for Nebuchadnezzar. God gave him the dream in order to get him here. God's been at work. God gave him the dream, but not the interpretation, and Nebuchadnezzar's been full of trouble. Daniel's telling him that the God of all heaven, he is the one who can make known to you because he's the one who gave it to you. Notice verse 30,

but as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation might be known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your own mind.

Daniel has godly confidence. There's a sense in which we see, I think, Daniel really functioning like an image-bearer is supposed to function. Fully dependent upon God, relying upon God, receiving from God what God has said, and then conveying it to whomever needs to hear it. He doesn't take the opportunity here to be arrogant. That is just a self-confidence that's independent. That's arrogance. This is godly confidence. And God calls image bearers, especially your image bearers renewed in Christ, to have a godly confidence. To know God and what he said. To know God and what he's revealed. To have confidence God has spoken and thus says the Lord when necessary. We see Daniel speaking to the king, not any kind of arrogance, but a clear confidence in God. God reveals mysteries. There's nothing, Daniel is not claiming, I do not have some decoder ring the astrologers lacked. I've not figured this out on my own. I asked the God of heaven and he gave it to me. It is him alone who makes this known. God is the revealer of mysteries. God being the revealer of mysteries, well now we see God is, he rules. This is why God has even given this whole mystery. Verse 31 to 35, that is telling him what the dream was. And we start to see, all right, this is why Nebuchadnezzar was so terrified, troubled. You saw a king and behold a great image, a statue. Now, the key here, this is a future telling kind of dream. We talked about the date last week. Why it's so important we understand when Daniel is in the sixth century because the whole point here is that God is able to share things and know things and make known things that are otherwise unknowable for us. Notice here the mystery This isn't like Ephesians three promise fulfillment mystery. This is simply not known mystery. The God who makes known. Christian, I think it's important for us to pause here because I fear we too often want to continue to pretend that we live under a veil or a curtain. Sometimes I think sin likes foggy theology. Or we pursue spirituality, not truth. We like to be seeking, not finding. There's a way we misunderstand. God is the most competent communicator. He makes clear what we need to know, and He's made clear who He is. He's made clear who we are. He's made clear what He's done for us, and what it means to believe in Him, and what it means to obey Him. We like to pretend still there's some kind of myth or labyrinth and God speaks. And it's not confusing when God speaks other than the confusion we want to make it. We make it confusing with our own inability to either obey or seek to truly understand. God wants to give us a firm foundation, a rock to stand upon. The truth that he's given us. Ignorance is a real problem. And those who have the word of God should not live in ignorance. Okay. The dream. It's a great image. It's a statue. We see different parts of this. There's, there's the gold and the head and the silver chest and the bronze core and the legs of iron. And then in the dream, he describes, I want to drop down to the very last sentence of verse 35,

but the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

So there's a stone that strikes this image. It falls down. It's destroyed like chaff. It just disappears into the wind. And that stone, it becomes a great mountain. That's the dream. Then verse 36, having told him the dream, having proven to him he has been given the revelation of God, verse 36, now I will tell you the interpretation. Let me break it down for you. Here's what he says. Essentially here, he addresses Daniel, or Daniel addresses him as the king of kings, which here he has been established as the great king. He is the golden head. We'll look at this later in chapter seven, but it does appear that the silver chest, we Persia, the kingdom that comes after the bronze core, Greece, legs of iron, mixed feet, Rome, maybe the stone is Jesus, the eternal king. That's a picture we see throughout scripture from Psalm 118 we read earlier that Jesus himself says he is. That stone destroys evil kingdoms and establishes a forever kingdom. The main point of this dream is to show these earthly kingdoms will come to an end and there is going to be a kingdom that has no end. These earthly kingdoms will be destroyed but God's kingdom is forever. We say that at the end of verse 35, but let's just focus in on verse 44 and 45.

In the days of those Kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end and it shall stand forever. Just as he saw the stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, a great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain in its interpretation, sure.

All right, in those days, let's put a pin in that. This kingdom's indestructible. The kingdom's forever. Think about this, there will be an end to the king and nobody will ever be brought out of that kingdom. The stone is going to establish a kingdom and it'll never end. Great God has made known to this, the dream is certain, the interpretation is true. Again, like I said, there's some layers to this story. For Nebuchadnezzar, he's being told he's not forever and this is relieving to him. Think about how strange that is. The dream has troubled him. Now he understands what the dream is, but this is the relief he needed. He wanted to know what the dream meant, and he has received that word, and now he knows what the dream means. That's one level. That's that immediate problem. A second way we can think about how this dream might apply is for Judah and for Daniel, whose kingdom was destroyed by Babylon, who were yanked out of their land and their kingdom and dragged into Babylon. There's a promise that there's a victory over these evil kings coming. This evil will not reign forever. The good God in his perfect kingdom will come and it will not have an end. There's a way in which they're hearing the exile you're in is temporary. God will bring you out of this. Number three, this is for us. This word belongs to us. The spirit carried Daniel along for us to long for this kingdom. To understand there's going to be kingdoms that are raging against the king. There are nations will be raging against the king and we must always remember he will bring to all these kings to absolute destruction. We can trust him the forever king. Now let's go back to in those days because that's what probably has some folks interested. When and where will this kingdom be? Well, let's go to some gospel proclamations. Mark 1 opens with Jesus proclaiming,

the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.

Matthew 4 says, Jesus began his ministry preaching,

repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

In Luke 1, the angel comes and tells Mary, you'll conceive a child. And the child is the son of the most holy.

And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there shall be no end.

Acts 1, before Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father, the disciples ask, is now the time to restore the kingdom? He says, that's not to be known to you. The promise is for you to receive the Spirit from on high. and to go out and make known this kingdom. How does this connect with the promise here in Daniel of the kingdom? The kingdom is a significant theme throughout scripture, and there's a promise of God that there is and will be a perfect, peaceful, forever kingdom. Jesus come as the king. We know who the king is. He has come to introduce the kingdom. He himself understood himself to be the king. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. He is the stone that comes to destroy wickedness. Promised. He is the king. Number two. Remember the disciples in the Gospels, they always have a problem understanding what Jesus is saying when he says you have to suffer. And it's because they had a problem understanding there's two comings of the King. There's the first coming where he comes in lowliness to die, to defeat sin, to defeat death, to defeat Satan on that cross with all his wisdom and power. And there's a second coming when he will come again and bring about all the fruition of all the kingdom promises where there really will be perfect peace forever. We have to understand there's two comings and we have to remember this is what we're still waiting on. Christ has come, he has died, he has risen again, he is ascended and he will come again to complete what he began. That first kingdom, that first coming was conquering sin and death, the second coming will be forever. Third, as citizens of this kingdom now, we are waiting for that final fulfillment. We wait by worshiping, relying upon the power of the spirit, and seeking to be obedient. Church, what you need to hear this morning is Christ has come, he's died, he's demonstrated his perfect wisdom and power. Our king is risen and he is ascended. He reigns from on high, but yet he still says, I am with you. He's not too far from us to hear our prayers. He's not too far from us to see us in our troubles. And we're waiting in the midst of possible persecution, tribulation, difficulty, trials, confusion for him to fulfill all the promises yet to be fulfilled. Our last few verses introduce something that can just happen throughout Daniel that's fascinating. We see King Nebuchadnezzar, he pays homage to Daniel. That's unusual. He commands all these things be given to Daniel and his friends. They're putting these positions of power. Verse 47, the king answered and sent a Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar, he gets it almost. We're going to see how he continues to get it closer and closer.

Truly. Your God is God of gods, and Lord of kings, and revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.

There's something about this worldview where you needed to be the right people in the right land with the right God. There was local deities. And if your people defeated other people in their land, it showed that your God is mightier than that God. King Nebuchadnezzar's gotta be rethinking everything. His gods and his land with his sorcerers, they couldn't help him at all. But Yahweh, the God of Judah that he conquered, he, the God of heaven, came into his land and revealed not only the dream, but the mystery. So that he would know he's not supreme, that is King Nebuchadnezzar, but Yahweh. Our God has no boundaries. He's the God of heaven, who is with his people wherever we are, in whatever we're going through. What a comfort that King Nebuchadnezzar, he's now seeing the gods, or should be seeing the gods he's been worshiping are false gods. He makes a confession, your God is the God of gods. And for Daniel, he did not doubt his God. He was not too far away because he's in the wrong land. He's not too far away because he's in heaven. No, he sought mercy and he received mercy. There's all kinds of troubles. I mentioned earlier, a lot of our families are grieving death, walking through health issues, marital issues, relational problems, trying to figure out how to raise our children, conflicts, work. Jesus Christ is our wisdom and power. He has all wisdom. This is why James 1, when he faced various trials, asked for wisdom and he gives generously. He's able to give generously because he has all wisdom. He's not stingy because he's full. And for those whom he died for, he seeks to give, have complete confidence that our God is wise and powerful. and just hear the invitation, come to me, pray to me, is what Christ says. And He gives what we need. Will you pray with me? Almighty God, we come before you. You who rule with absolute power, the king of heaven, the king of earth, the God who spoke this world into existence, the God whose son came to be with us, the word become flesh, who taught us, the God of truth, who's even given us your spirit of truth. Lord, we praise you for all the ways in which you've made known to us all we need. We ask forgiveness for all the ways we have not pursued knowing you or even bring our troubles to you in prayer. Or may we see more and more you are God who comes to us with all wisdom and power to help us in our foolishness and our weakness. Help us to trust you, our King. In Jesus name we pray, amen.