Summary:

When Daniel says the “image” that the king dreamed about “stood” before him (v. 31), that indicates it was a man.  But not the walking, talking kind of man; the kind of image of gold or silver that the king worshipped (v. 32,33). The metals of this image get stronger from head to foot, which makes sense, for they represented nations that were about to rise and conquer one another in succession.  But the fact that these metals also get cheaper shows that God knows civilization is going downhill, spiritually speaking!

The “stone” (v. 34) is Christ (I Cor. 10:4).  “Without hands” means without human instrumentality (Col. 2:11 cf. Acts 7:48).  He was “cut out” of “the mountain” (Dan. 2:44) of God’s kingdom in heaven when the Lord was born of a virgin, without the human instrumentality of Joseph.  He was given a body like the body made “without hands” that we will have in heaven (II Cor. 5:1).  Your new body will be “eternal” because God made it, but recognizable because it will be the same body your mother made.

When verse 34 says the stone will smite the metals of this image, that’s a picture of Revelation 19:15.  It will smite the image’s feet because the metals represent nations that would rule the world in the future, and the last nation that will rule the world will be Antichrist’s.  His nation will be the culmination of all the wickedness of all those previous nations, so in smashing it the Lord will be smashing them.  That’s why verse 35 says they’ll be smitten “together.”

After that, the nations will be “like the chaff” (v. 35).  That tells you how small the “pieces” are they’ll be broken into (v. 34)—like “powder” (Mt. 21:42, 44)—and blown away by the second coming of Christ!  And after that there will be “no place” found for them (v. 35).  That’s referring to places in the government of earth (cf. Jo. 11:47, 48).  Fallen angels currently have places in the government of heaven (Eph. 6:12) and will continue to do so until they lose their “place” in Revelation 12:7, 8.  And there will be no place found for the nations of the world in the government of earth at the Lord’s coming either.  That’s because the kingdom that the Lord will set up won’t be a culmination of all the kingdoms that came before it.  Verse 35 says the Lord will make “of Himself” a kingdom, not of them.

Someday the Lord will be “the king of kings” (I Tim. 6:15), but here in Daniel 2 He made Nebuchadnezzar “a king of kings” when He gave him his kingdom (v. 38).  God again claimed credit for giving him his kingdom in Jeremiah 27:5-7.  When it says he had power over man and beast in all the world, that’s similar to the power God gave Adam (Gen. 1:28).  None of the fallen angels that he was told to “subdue” could have conquered him if he hadn’t sinned, and no nation could conquer Babylon either.

The next kingdom of silver wouldn’t rise until “after” Nebuchadnezzar died (Dan. 2:39 cf. Jer. 26:6, 7), which is exactly what  history tells us happened.  Then God said to his grandson that his kingdom would be “divided” to the Medes and Persians (Dan. 5:28-31)—one kingdom with two parts, represented by the one breast and two arms of the image.  It is said to be “inferior” to Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:39) because the world is getting worse, not better!

We find out who that third kingdom of brass is (2:39) when God gives Daniel a vision of the same world powers in Chapter 8.  After seeing Media-Pesia described as a ram with two horns, he saw a he-goat representing Greece conquer them (8:1-21), so the kingdom of brass here is Greece.  God showed these kingdoms to Nebuchadnezzar as a bright shiny man because that’s how men see the future.  But He showed the same future to Daniel as animals getting progressively smellier, because that’s how God sees man’s future!

The other metals represent nations, but the gold represented the king of a nation because God couldn’t say Babylon was the head of gold because Babylon had kings before Nebuchadnezzar (II Ki. 20:12), and Babylon didn’t become head of the world until he was king.  Even then it wasn’t automatic.  In the fourth year of Jehoikim, he burned his Bible (Jer. 36:9-23), and a year later God gave Nebuchadnezzar this vision appointing him head of the world in Jehoikim’s place (Jer. 25:1 cf. Dan. 2:1).

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Depiction of Daniel’s Prediction – Daniel 2:31-39

Summary:

In Daniel 2:1-14, King Nebuchadnezzar had a bad dream and asked his advisers to tell him: 1.what he dreamed, and 2.what it meant.  None of them could, so he ordered them all killed, including Daniel and his friends. After Daniel learns why he had to die (v. 15) he asked the king for time to tell and interpret the dream (v. 16).  He then went home and asked his three Hebrew friends to pray with him about this dire situation.

But how come he only calls God “the God of heaven” (v. 18), and not “the God of heaven, and the God of the earth” (Gen. 24:3)?  He left that last part off because God used to be known as the God of the earth through Israel.  When His people in Israel obeyed Him, they were the head of the earth (Deut. 28:1, 13, 15, 43, 44).  But once they got so disobedient God let Nebuchadnezzar conquer them, He made Nebuchadnezzar the “head” of the earth (Dan. 2:37, 38).  After that, God didn’t want to be known as the king of the earth, not with an unsaved pagan like that at the helm.

By the way, after Israel became a nation no one nation ruled the world like Egypt did before Israel became a nation.  That’s because as far as God was concerned Israel was the head of the nations for 900 years.  So he didn’t let any other nation rise over the others for 900 years, until Israel was released from Babylonian captivity.  Then God went back to being called “the God of heaven and earth” (Ezra 5:11).

A “night vision” (Dan. 2:19) is a dream (Job 33:14). God gave Daniel a dream to interpret the king’s dream—probably in the same night he was told he must die.  And if he was sleeping, that means he was dreaming.  Could you sleep if you were about to die?  You could if you did what he did.  He prayed and then leave it with the Lord (Phil. 4:6, 7).  Peace like that, in the dispensation of grace when God isn’t providing miraculous answer to prayer, “passeth all understanding” of unbelievers.

Daniel blessed God that He had the wisdom to know the king’s dream and the might to tell it to Daniel (Dan. 2:20).  And he blessed Him before he asked the king if he was right about what he dreamt! That’s like how we can thank God for the Rapture even though it hasn’t happened yet, forGod is wise enough to have planned our escape from the Tribulation in the Rapture and mighty enough to accomplish it.

Changing the times (Dan. 2:21) means setting up and removing kings like it says.  Antichrist will seek to remove kings and set himself up as king of the world (Dan. 7:25).  Daniel’s talking about this because God showed him that the king’s dream had to do with removing and setting up future kings.

When God set up Nebuchadnezzar as the head of the world, “the times of the Gentiles” began (Lu. 21:24), i.e., the times in which Gentile nations rule the world instead of Israel.  They will continue until the second coming of Christ (Lu. 21:24, 27) when God will put Israel back in charge of earth.

Would you stick up for the astrologers and soothsayers as Daniel did (Dan. 2:22-24)?  His Bible condemned their practices in Israel, but Daniel knew he wasn’t in Israel.  He didn’t expect unsaved men to know and do what God said.  Think about that the next time you hear a Christian condemn gay marriage and such.  We condemn sins like that in believers in church, but we shouldn’t condemn them in unbelievers outside of church.  Daniel hoped his lack of condemnation would open their hearts to the gospel, and we should pray the same about homosexuals and other sinners.

The king’s guard falsely claimed credit for finding Daniel (Dan. 2:25-27), but Daniel credited God for interpreting the dream.  Notice that he didn’t put God on the spot by mentioning Him before he learned the dream (2:16).  He knew God knew the dream, but he didn’t know if God would tell him the dream!  That’s how careful we should always be to make sure God always gets all the credit for things, and we get all the blame!

“The latter days” (Dan. 2:28) in this context has to do with the kingdom of heaven on earth (cf. Jer. 30:9).  The king went to bed wondering about the future (Dan. 2:29), so God told him about the future!

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The Run From the Outhouse – Daniel 2:14-30

Summary:

Later we learn the king only dreamed one dream, so the word “dreams” here (v. 1) must mean he had that one dream over and over.  Since it “troubled” him, it must have been a nightmare.  Don’t envy the rich; their riches won’t let them sleep for fear of losing their riches (Eccl. 5:12).  Besides, envy is unhealthy as well as unspiritual (Pr. 14:30).

The king called his advisers “then” (v. 2)—when “his sleep brake from him” in verse 1—in the middle of the night to show him his dream.  “Shew” means to interpret (cf. 5:15).  Pagans back then thought their gods communicated with them in dreams (cf. Mt. 27:19), so the king thought he’d just heard from his gods with troubling news that he needed interpreted pronto!  And he wasn’t the first pagan king to need a dream interpreted (Gen. 41:1-8).

In Chapter 1, we saw that Daniel and his 3 friends were in a 3-year program to become advisers, and Daniel 2:1 says that they were still in their second year, so the king only summoned his graduates to interpret this troubling dream.

The king told his advisers that he’d had a dream (v. 3) and they asked him what it was (v. 4).  “Chaldeans” (2:4) was another name for Babylonians (Ezek. 23:15).  “Syriack” (2:4) was what the Syrian language had evolved into in Babylon, the way English evolved in our country.  Daniel mentions this because at this point he starts writing in Syriack because it was the language that all the nations spoke after Assyria conquered them.  Daniel is about to describe the future of the nations, and he wants them to be able to read it, so they know Israel’s God is God.  It’s kind of like how God wanted the New Testament written in Greek because everyone spoke Greek after Alexander the Great conquered the world.

There’s also 15 Persian words and 3 Greek words in Daniel.  Bible critics say that this is because Daniel wrote his book after the Persians and Greeks conquered the nations and spread their language.  They say that because they don’t want to admit Daniel’s God predicted they’d conquer the world, because to admit that would mean admitting that the God of the Bible is God.  But Daniel spent his life standing in the king’s court (cf. 1:5) hearing ambassadors from Persia and Greece, so some of their words had crept into his vocabulary, the way Japan’s word tsunami crept into ours.

The king didn’t like being asked what his dream was (2:5), so just said the thing was gone from him, meaning: “I meant what I said” (cf. Ps. 89:34).  After threatening to kill them if they couldn’t interpret his dream, he offers to reward them if they can (2:6), so they ask him again what he dreamt (v. 7).

The king accused them of stalling (2:8), hoping he’d get so desperate for an interpretation that he’d tell them his dream.  He told them his “decree” of killing them would stand (v. 9) if they didn’t tell him his dream.  He knew that every time he’d asked them to interpret a dream in the past that they “had prepared” lying words to tell him—i.e., they just made something up “till the time be changed.”  That refers to a change in administration (cf. 2:21).  In other words, they’d just interpret the dream to be a prophecy of something that wouldn’t come true till after he was no longer king, so he couldn’t kill punish them when it didn’t come true!

That means this wise king figured something out.  After a year of listening to their phony interpretations, he figured out that if he makes them tell him what he dreamed, then he can be sure they were in touch with the gods and he could trust their interpretation.

They were partly right when they admitted that only the gods knew his dream (2:10, 11), for Daniel’s God did (Amos 4:13).  But only Daniel’s God did (IKi.8:39).  But when those advisors admitted they weren’t in touch with the gods that knew his dream, the king commanded them to die (2:12).  He’d been paying them to tell him what the gods said, and now they admit they didn’t know what the gods knew!

This death order included Daniel and his friends (2:13) even though they hadn’t been given a chance to interpret the dream—probably because the king figured if the men who had graduated his advisory school couldn’t interpret it, there was no use asking men who were still in school.

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: The King Had a Dream – Daniel 2:1-13

Summary:

The king’s meat (v. 8) probably included meats forbidden for Daniel to eat (Lev. 11).  And since they were meats the king himself ate (1:5), they probably came from animals sacrficed to his gods, for they only sacrificed the best to their gods, as did the Jews, and the king only ate the very best, of course.  And meat like that was also forbidden (Ex. 32:12-15).

Moses’ law didn’t forbid the drinking of wine (Dn. 1:8) but the king’s wine was also probably sacrificed to his god (Deut. 32:31-33, 36-38).  David refused to drink “their drink-offerings of blood” (Ps. 16:4), and the Bible’s connection be-tween wine and blood (Gen. 49:11) explains why Rome says the wine in the priest’s communion cup is Christ’s blood.

Catholicism calls their service “the sacrifice of the mass,” and in ancient times wine was sacrificed to a false god (Jer. 44:17), along with “cakes” (v. 19).  Jeremiah is telling us that the worship of false gods with bread and wine isn’t new with Catholicism, it goes back to the Old Testament.  But it was still around in Paul’s day, which is why he wrote that the bread and cup that “we” use in our Lord’s Supper observance isn’t the actual body and blood of Christ.  It represents “the communion” of His body and blood that we have with other members of His body (I Cor. 10:16-20).  But unsaved men back then were sacrificing to the “devils” behind their idols in their communion service, as Rome does.

But King Nebuchadnezzar commanded Daniel to eat that meat, and God told him to obey him (Jer. 27:12, 17).  So what was he to do?  Well, first he “requested” to be excused from the king’s table (Dn. 1:8), a request his prince was inclined to grant because he liked Daniel (1:9).  God hadn’t forced him to like him, of course.  Daniel had just been obeying him in all other matters so he’d have compassion on him, as God had told him to do (I Ki. 8:46-50).  It worked! (Dn. 1:10).

The reason the king nourished Daniel was so he could stand before him (1:5) looking healthy.  Kings felt if their subjects didn’t look healthy and happy it made it look like they weren’t doing a good job keeping their people happy (cf. Neh. 2:2).  So the prince told Daniel he’d like to help him but feared the king would punish him if Daniel looked underfed (Dn. 1:10).  And the word “faces” (plural) in verse 10 shows that Daniel’s friends were standing with him.

Daniel appealed to the middleman (Dn. 1:11), saying, as it were, “If you’re trying to nourish us (1:5), let us prove that keeping God’s diet can nourish us just as well” (1:12, 13).  If “ten days” (v. 12) sounds familiar, it is because Daniel is a type of Tribulation Jews who will likewise be imprisoned and tested (Rev. 2:10).  He was in Babylon, and Antichrist’s church will be called Babylon (Rev. 17:5).  They’ll be tempted to eat meat sacrificed to false gods just as he was (Rev. 2:14, 20).  The number 10 is the number of the Gentiles (cf. Zech. 8:23) and a Gentile was testing Daniel, and Gentiles will test Tribulation Jews as well (Rev. 2:9).

The middleman agreed to the test (Dn. 1:14), and God worked a miracle to make them healthier than others (v. 15), a type of how God will similarly nourish Jews who just eat manna and not idolatrous meats in the Tribulation.  So the middleman let Daniel keep God’s diet (Dn. 1:16).  We know Daniel’s ability to understand dreams (Dn. 1:17) was a miraculous one, for it enabled him to interpret the king’s dream in Chapter 2 without knowing what he dreamt!  That means the “learning and wisdom” God gave all four of them was miraculous, and a type of the miraculous wisdom the saints received at Pentecost (Acts 6:3), and a type of the wisdom God will give Tribulation saints (Luke 21:15).

The faithfulness of the Fab Four enabled them to stand before the king (Dn. 1:18,19) to hear his wisdom (cf. II Chron. 9:7), but the king soon found that they could advise him (Dn. 1:20).  This additional reference to the number ten emphasizes how Daniel will focus on the future of the Gentile nations, not the future of the nation Israel like other Jewish prophets.

Daniel lives to see the captivity end (Dn. 1:21) and his friends don’t, making him a type of Jews who will live through the Tribulation to enter the kingdom, and his three friends types of those who will have to die and rise to enter it.  He had 3 friends, a number associated with resurrection (I Cor. 15:3).

Video of this sermon is also available on YouTube: The Daniel Diet – Daniel 1:8-21

Summary:

The Book of Daniel centers on the events following the conquering of Israel by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and the carrying away of Israel’s people into captivity in Babylon.  Daniel was one of them.

When most people think of Daniel, they think of the lion’s den.  But that’s only one of the miracles in the book.  And all of the miracles in Daniel are important, for they prove that God didn’t desert Israel—as it looked like He did when He allowed them to be conquered.  And since these miracles are types of Israel’s future, they show He will never desert Israel—despite the claims of pastors who say He did after they killed His Son.

Of course, Bible critics don’t believe that any of the Bible’s miracles really happened. But they tend to focus their attacks on Daniel, for he also predicted which world powers would rise and fall in the following 500 years.  That proves He is God (Isaiah 41:22-25).  But critics refuse to believe Daniel predicted the future, so they date the writing of his book to be 168 B.C.—after those world powers rose and fell—making him a historian and not a prophet.  But that would make the Lord Jesus a liar, for He called him a prophet (Mark 13:14).  Besides, dating Daniel as 168 B.C. wouldn’t explain how Daniel predicted the coming of Israel’s Messiah to the very day He rode into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday.

The only reason Nebuchadnezzar was able to besiege Israel (Dan. 1:1) is because God let him conquer Israel (v. 2).  That’s something He had warned them He would do if they dis-obeyed Him (Deut. 28:15, 52).  It should also be pointed out that Daniel 1:2 says Nebuchadnezzar only took “part” of the temple’s vessels because Daniel was describing the first of three assaults Babylon made on Israel (II Chron. 36:5-18).

When God’s possessions are taken captive, His glory departs Israel (cf. Ps. 78:61).  Ezekiel saw His glory depart in 3 stages (Ezek. 10:4, 18; 11:22, 23; 21:25). The One fit to wear Israel’s crown was Christ, of course, so that makes Ezekiel 21:25 one of those prophecies that was fulfilled in Bible days but will be fulfilled again in the future.  God’s glory departed Israel in 3 stages again in Acts 13:46; 18:6 and 28:28.

Bible critics used to use Daniel 1:3 to challenge the Bible’s historicity, for no record of a man named Asphenaz serving in Babylon was ever found—until it was found on a Babylonian brick that can now be seen in the British Museum.  Of course, believers like us know Daniel is historically accurate, for history has no record of anything Nebuchadnezzar said or did from 582 B.C. to 575 B.C., something that is explained when God struck him with madness for seven years in Daniel 4.  God had also warned that “the king’s seed” (Dan. 1:3) would be taken captive by Babylon (Isa. 39:5-7).

The name “Daniel” (Dan. 1:6) means God is my judge, which reflects what God was doing with Israel at that time—judging her!  Daniel and his 3 friends were “children” (v. 3) and so were under the age of accountability that would have made them responsible for the sins Israel had committed that caused God to judge them.  But Israel was a “common-wealth” (Eph. 2:12) and so they had to suffer along with their nation when their grievous sin brought God’s wrath.

Daniel’s friends also had names that had to do with Israel’s God, so the king gave them new names (1:7).  Conquering kings often did this to their new servants to show their dominion over them (cf. Gen. 1:19, 28).  The king wanted his captives to know that he owned them, and that they should forget any hope of going back to their homeland.  The new names he gave them had to do with Nebuchadnezzar’s gods, so he was trying to get them to forget Israel’s God.

When you got saved, God gave you a new name (Eph. 3:14, 15) to show His dominion over you.  He owns you (I Cor. 6:19, 20), and wants you to forget the god you used to worship.  You used to worship the “God” you made up in your mind before you started reading the Bible, the God that usually looked and acted like you, so you could justify what you did!  He wants you to forget any hope of going back to the life you used to live.  If that’s what you want too, why not pray about it right now.  You’ll be eternally glad you did.

Video of this sermon is available on YouTube: Daniel in the Critic’s Den – Daniel 1:1-7