Today we complete our studies in Daniel as we look at God's final words to his faithful servant in chapter 12.
Its intention is to encourage God's persecuted people to persevere to the end for at the end of the age God will grant them the resurrection to eternal life.
Last week we began our study of the final three chapters of Daniel contain one last vison and its message is about a great conflict that God's people would find themselves immersed in in the future. Today we turn our attention to the details of Daniel's vison in chapter 11 which sets out in great detail the future history of God's people.
The final three chapters of Daniel contain one last vison and its message is about a great conflict that God's people would in the future find themselves immersed.
The message of chapter 10 is also designed to equip and prepare God's people in 2022 to stand firm in the challenging days of conflict we are facing.
Today we come to one of most challenging and confusing parts of Daniel. There is no end of speculation as to the significance of the 70 weeks and the other numbers in this passage. It is almost as if in addition to the 70 weeks there are 70 different interpretations! St Jerome one of the most brilliant scholars in the ancient church listed nine conflicting opinions on the meaning of this passage before declaring himself unable to decide what one (if any) was right.
Many of us remember learning that little chorus when we were a child - 'Daniel was a man of prayer, daily he prayed three times...'
It is a song based on Bible truth and in the first half of chapter 9 we get an insight into what Daniel was praying at a time of political upheaval in Babylon. We see that this prayer was also inspired by the particular part of scripture that Daniel was reading at the time. This prayer has a lot to teach us especially as we come to the Lord's Table today.
Last time in chapter 7 we saw the troubling dream that Daniel had. We also saw how the interpretation of this dream revealed that God had given Daniel a grand vision of the sweep of human history from the time of Babylon to the destruction of the end time Antichrist and the establishment of God's eternal kingdom.
Three years later Daniel has another troubling vision recorded in chapter 8. This vision is much narrower in scope. It zooms in on a specific period of time within that grand sweep of history. As we shall see the purpose of this vision was to forewarn Gods people about a period of severe persecution that lay in the future and to assure them that their sovereign God would limit the days of that persecution and ultimately defeat their persecutor.
While the stories of Daniel chapters 1-6 are generally familiar the second half of Daniel is relatively unknown and generally proves to be very confusing and perplexing to the average reader. The first six chapters are all written in a narrative style. Chapter 7 sees the beginning of a very different style of writing known as 'apocalyptic', which comes from the Greek word 'apocalypse' meaning 'revelation'.
We come today to the best known story in this book and one of the best known stories in the whole bible - Daniel in the Lion's Den. No doubt we all learned it as children. But it important to realise that this is not a nice story for children. It is the story of an innocent man, pushing 80 years of age, who is condemned to death in a most gruesome manner because he chooses loyalty to God over obedience to the state.
Once again we will see that this section of God's Word has a powerful relevance to the days in which we live. It encourages and challenges us to remain faithful to God and to trust that our God is able to deliver us from our exile in this fallen world.
The story suddenly jumps forward to 42 years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar. It is now 539 BC and a man called Belshazzar is ruling in Babylon. Daniel is now eighty years old and apparently out of favour and forgotten by the current regime.
However he is suddenly called back into service when Belshazzar's final party takes an unexpected and disturbing turn.
God reveals, God rescues and God rules.
Life is never going to be easy when you are living as an exile in the land of Babylon. There are always going to be temptations to compromise with the beliefs and practices of the sinful culture all around you. Today we come to one of the best known stories, not just in Daniel, but in the whole of the Old Testament - Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego & the Fiery Furnace.
Their determination to worship and serve the LORD their God overrode all other considerations and loyalties. As we look at what they were prepared to lay on the line for the sake of their faith and devotion to the LORD we need to ask ourselves how faithful are we in the face of the challenges of idolatry in our own day?
In our look at the first half of Daniel chapter 2 we saw firstly how God disturbed a King - Nebuchadnezzar was plagued by a bad dream and he desperately wanted to know what it meant. Secondly, we saw how God dismissed worldly wisdom - none of Nebuchadnezzar’s magicians and astrologers could divine what the dream was and so were powerless to try and interpret it. Thirdly, we saw God disclosed the secret of the dream and its meaning to Daniel as he and his fellow Judean exiles prayed.
Now in the second half of the chapter as Daniel goes to share this with the King we will finally get to hear of this dream and the message that God speaks through it. It is a message as timely and relevant for us as we live as exiles and strangers in the world today as it was for those living in exile in Babylon.
Daniel and his friends are living in exile in Babylon. Due to the sovereign God’s hand upon them they have been accepted into the King Nebuchadnezzar’s service. But they are about to be reminded how dangerous it can be as an adviser to the king of Babylon and how quicky and easily such employment can be terminated. How will God deliver them from this new threat?
For Daniel and his friends everything that was familiar and comforting changed overnight when they were taken from their home in Jerusalem into exile in Babylon.