In an age of power and empire, the captives of a tiny conquered nation seem irrelevant and weak. Their God also seems to be weak. When the most powerful man in Babylon suddenly discovers how limited he is, though, he starts to get a taste of where real power lies. Join Dave as he explores Daniel chapters 1-2.
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00:00:01
G'day. I'm Dave Whittingham.
00:00:03
Welcome to Stories Of a Faithful God.
00:00:06
As I look around the world today, there's a feeling I see everywhere, and that feeling is
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fear.
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There's personal fear about interest rates and
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job security.
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There's political fear.
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Fear of what will happen if the party you don't support gets power.
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People don't think, oh, there'll be some bad policies for a while.
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People on every side of politics are genuinely afraid of what will happen.
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There are fears about the world.
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Are we heading for World War Three?
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Has our country, whatever country you're in, given away too much to other countries?
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Some people are afraid of climate change, other people are afraid of people who are
00:00:46
afraid of climate change.
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The old certainties are gone.
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Certainties about security, certainties about peace and stability, even certainties about
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things like gender.
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And that uncertainty breeds fear.
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Today we're starting a new series in the Book of Daniel.
00:01:05
The events of Daniel are about a time when it would be easy for Daniel and his friends to be
00:01:11
afraid.
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Everything from their old world seems to be
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ripped away from them.
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They're thrust into the centre of power
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politics, where the stakes are high and failure is terrifying.
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And yet, throughout the book, fear is not what we see from Daniel and his friends.
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Certainly they're troubled by lots of things, but through it all, there's something that
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fights away their fear.
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A knowledge and understanding that calms their
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hearts and minds.
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And that's the knowledge that no matter what's
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happening on Earth, there's a God in heaven guiding and directing the affairs of the
00:01:50
world.
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A God who guarantees that the end result of
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everything is the success of his good plans.
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And so they can live in and navigate this
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world, confident that God is still in control.
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And so, with that in mind, I present to you
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our next episode of stories of a Faithful God.
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It's the time of great empires.
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One by one, small nations and people groups are swallowed up by the enormous strength of
00:02:46
the superpowers.
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Even Egypt struggles to maintain any vestige
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of its past glory with these much bigger powers around.
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One of these empires was Assyria.
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Assyria had seemed terrifying and unstoppable.
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And yet, almost overnight, an alliance of smaller powers had grounded into dust, never
00:03:09
to rise again.
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This came as a surprise to many people.
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But in the tiny nation of Judah, this event had been foretold by their God through his
00:03:19
prophets.
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Not just foretold, but decided on and enacted.
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Because even though Judah was a tiny state in this world order, their God rules the
00:03:31
universe.
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And the empires could do nothing apart from
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him.
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This God has also declared that Judah would be
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punished for her sins and fall to a new empire, the empire of Babylon.
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As Assyria fell, so Babylon rose.
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Situated roughly in modern day Iraq, it was an
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empire that had had past glories, but then faded into obscurity for almost a thousand
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years.
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Having wrested independence from Assyria under
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a king named Nabopolassar, Babylon entered its golden age under the rule of his son, King
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Nebuchadnezzar ii.
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At this stage, Judah was a vassal state of
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Egypt.
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The Egyptian king had replaced Judah's king
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with someone more willing to take orders, a king who he renamed Jehoiakim.
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Like so many before him, Jehoiakim rejected the word of the Lord and did evil.
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And God declared that the time had come.
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In the third year of his reign, in the year
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605 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar arrived at the walls of Jerusalem.
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If you look at what happened next with the eyes of a secular historian, the tiny power of
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Judah had no chance of standing against the might of Babylon.
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And Egypt wasn't powerful enough to stop the Babylonians either.
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Like many other small nations, Judah had to face the inevitable and submit to the power of
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Babylon.
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If you look through Nebuchadnezzar's eyes,
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he'd say that his gods were the most powerful in the world and the God of Judah had to
00:05:08
submit.
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But to truly understand the world, we need to
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look with the eyes of the God who controls the world.
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And so Daniel chapter one tells us exactly why Judah falls.
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It reads, in the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar
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of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it.
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The Lord handed King Jehoiakim of Judah over to him, along with some of the vessels from
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the house of God, the God who'd rescued his people from Egypt, who defied the Assyrian
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empire when they came to the gates of Jerusalem.
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He hasn't somehow lost his touch or grown feeble in his old age.
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He's in charge of these events.
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And he's the one who hands Jehoiakim over to
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Nebuchadnezzar.
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Nebuchadnezzar doesn't understand that, though
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in his mind it's his God who's won the victory.
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And so he carries off the vessels from Yahweh's temple to his Babylonian homeland in
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the land of Shinar.
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The first time we hear of Shinar in the Bible
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is way back in Genesis 10 and 11.
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People are migrating and they come across a
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great plain in Shinar.
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In their arrogance, they decide to build a
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tower that reaches to the heavens to make a name for themselves, establish themselves as
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the greatest.
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As they work on the tower, God comes down and
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confuses their language.
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They start babbling.
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And so their tower becomes known as the Tower of Babel or the Tower of Babel.
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The tower becomes the centre of the city of Babylon.
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And all these years later, the Babylonians still haven't learnt their lesson about who is
00:06:54
in charge of the world.
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Nebuchadnezzar takes the vessels from the
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house of the one true God in Jerusalem and puts them in the house and treasury of his God
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in the land of Shina.
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As well as bringing back treasure, he brings
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back something else.
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Nebuchadnezzar does what lots of empires have
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tried to do.
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He takes some of the young men from the royal
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family and families of the nobility.
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On the one hand, they act as hostages.
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You might think twice about rebelling if your sons are being held back at the heart of the
00:07:26
empire.
00:07:27
On the other hand, it's a way of incorporating
00:07:30
these people into the empire to say to them, hey, you've been growing up in this tiny
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backwater.
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We'll bring you into the centre of power and
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wealth and culture and learning.
00:07:41
Much better to be part of our sophisticated
00:07:44
empire than to be struggling along in Hicksville.
00:07:47
The Romans did it, so did the British.
00:07:50
To see evidence for that, you just need to
00:07:52
look at India.
00:07:53
India has one of the best cricketing teams in
00:07:55
the world.
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Cricket's almost a religion there.
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Why are they playing cricket? Because at one stage they were being wooed
00:08:02
with the benefits of the British Empire.
00:08:06
Anyway, for Babylon, they want to take the
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best of the best.
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Verse 4 says that they take young men without
00:08:13
any physical defect, good looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable,
00:08:20
perceptive and capable of serving in the king's palace.
00:08:23
These are the brightest and best looking and they're going to be put to the service of
00:08:28
Babylon.
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Verse 4 says that Ashpenaz, the chief eunuch,
00:08:32
is tasked with teaching them the Chaldean language and literature.
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It's like saying you don't want to be talking about your old campfire stories in that two
00:08:41
bit language of yours.
00:08:43
You're going to be studying Shakespeare.
00:08:46
It's more than that though.
00:08:48
We need to remember that for most of history,
00:08:50
religion is integrated thoroughly into every part of someone's worldview.
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So these young Israelites and other conquered people will learn the creation stories of the
00:09:01
Chaldeans.
00:09:02
The stories of their gods.
00:09:04
They'll be learning Chaldean astrology and magic, which is all about how to predict the
00:09:08
future.
00:09:09
Chaldean originally just referred to an ethnic
00:09:12
group.
00:09:13
You may remember that Abraham originally came
00:09:15
from Ur of the Chaldeans.
00:09:17
Later in Daniel, though, we'll see that
00:09:19
Chaldean has come to formally mean something like official fortune teller.
00:09:25
The Babylonians are pushing out the Judean worldview and trying to replace it with their
00:09:30
own.
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And there are lots of perks to this job.
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The king assigns them food and drink from his own table.
00:09:37
None of that peasant muck for them.
00:09:39
They'll be eating like kings, literally.
00:09:42
This education will go on for three years.
00:09:45
After three years, they'll become official
00:09:47
servants of the king.
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Among this group, there are four young men
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from Judah.
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Their names are Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and
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Azariah.
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These names are very Israelite names.
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They link to the Hebrew language and the Hebrew God Yahweh.
00:10:07
That's not appropriate for the Babylonian court.
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The Babylonians want to be reminded of their own gods, not the puny God of a conquered
00:10:14
people.
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So Ashpenaz gives them Babylonian names that
00:10:18
link with Babylonian gods.
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Verse 7 tells us he gave the name Belteshazzar
00:10:24
to Daniel, Shadrach to Hananiah, Meshach to Mishael, and Abednego to Azariah.
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This must be a huge whirlwind for these young men, ripped from their homeland and family.
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On the one hand, their court had given the kings food and drink, offered the benefits of
00:10:43
civilization, trained for the royal court of the most powerful empire on the planet.
00:10:49
But at what cost? The cost is that they have to give up not just
00:10:54
their culture, but their God.
00:10:57
They're being brought into the Babylonian
00:10:59
worldview.
00:11:00
And these four guys know that that's just
00:11:03
plain wrong.
00:11:04
There's only one true God, and they need to
00:11:07
live for him.
00:11:09
But what can they do?
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They can't control what people call them.
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They can accept the education even if they
00:11:15
don't believe all of it.
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They need to have some way, even a small way,
00:11:19
to say we have not lost our identity as the people of God.
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As Daniel thinks about it, he decides on a way forward.
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He wants to make a statement that says, you can't buy me off with your fancy food and
00:11:33
drink.
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And so verse 8 says, Daniel determined that he
00:11:38
would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine he drank.
00:11:42
So he asked permission from the chief eunuch not to defile himself.
00:11:48
Now, all sorts of things have been made of this.
00:11:51
There was even a very popular diet plan that was spruked as the more godly way to eat based
00:11:56
on Daniel's diet.
00:11:57
But that really has nothing to do with it.
00:12:00
It's not the specific foods that are the problem, it's the symbolism of the food.
00:12:05
It's where the food's coming from and what it's aiming to do.
00:12:09
And Daniel draws a line in the sand and says, you can't buy my loyalty.
00:12:15
God's watching and he's looking after Daniel.
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Verse 9 says God had granted Daniel kindness
00:12:22
and compassion from the chief eunuch.
00:12:25
Again, the Bible's giving us the background
00:12:27
information of what's going on here, things we can't figure out ourselves.
00:12:31
The chief eunuch doesn't like Daniel because of his sense of humour or quick learning at
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the heart of it.
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God's in control of this situation.
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Not one of the Babylonian gods, but Yahweh, God of Israel.
00:12:46
As much as the chief eunuch likes Daniel, he still freaks out.
00:12:49
At Daniel's request, it's his job to make sure these guys become fit and strong with the best
00:12:55
food on offer.
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If they become weak and weedy, he won't just
00:12:59
be fired, he'll lose his head.
00:13:02
And here's where we get a glimpse of the God
00:13:04
given wisdom that Daniel will become famous for.
00:13:08
He doesn't kick up a stink or go on a hunger strike, he just proposes a small test.
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He works with his captors, not against them.
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He suggests something that if it goes wrong,
00:13:20
it can be easily fixed.
00:13:22
No one will even notice.
00:13:23
Just a short 10 day meal test.
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He says to his guard, look, how about this?
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For the next 10 days you just give me and my mates vegetables and water just for 10 days.
00:13:36
At the end, check out how we look compared to the other guys.
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Then you decide what the best way forward is.
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It's such a gentle, respectful proposal.
00:13:49
And so the guard agrees.
00:13:51
Verse 15 says at the end of 10 days they
00:13:54
looked better and healthier than all the young men who were eating the king's food.
00:14:00
So the guard continued to remove their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them
00:14:04
vegetables.
00:14:06
They haven't discovered the perfect diet.
00:14:09
They have gently and respectfully drawn a line in the sand.
00:14:13
They've said we don't belong to this king.
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And God's honoured them for that.
00:14:19
He gives all four of them knowledge and wisdom and understanding.
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To Daniel, he gives the special power of being able to understand visions and dreams.
00:14:29
From verse 18 we read at the end of the time that the king had said to Present them.
00:14:34
The chief eunuch presented them to Nebuchadnezzar.
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The king interviewed them.
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And among all of them, no one was found equal
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to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.
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So they began to attend the king in every
00:14:49
matter of wisdom and understanding that the king consulted them about.
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He found them 10 times better than all the magicians and mediums in his entire kingdom.
00:15:00
Daniel particularly is going to have a long and distinguished career.
00:15:05
We're told that he stays at the royal court for many decades until the first year of the
00:15:10
reign of King Cyrus.
00:15:12
Cyrus isn't a Babylonian though.
00:15:15
He's the Persian king who God chose to destroy the Babylonian empire.
00:15:54
In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, he has a dream.
00:15:58
The dream troubles him so much that he can't sleep.
00:16:02
And so he does what any king would do in this day and age.
00:16:05
He summons the magicians, mediums, sorcerers and Chaldeans.
00:16:10
Remember, Chaldean has come to mean something like official fortune teller.
00:16:15
Being able to read signs, interpret dreams, speak to the dead, do magic.
00:16:20
It's all about telling the future.
00:16:22
It's all about ways to know the unknowable, to
00:16:26
reach beyond human vision and see with the power of the gods or God.
00:16:32
When the crowd arrives, Nebuchadnezzar starts off in a very traditional manner.
00:16:37
He tells them in chapter two, verse three, I have had a dream and am anxious to understand
00:16:43
it.
00:16:44
And they reply in a very traditional manner,
00:16:46
may the king live forever.
00:16:48
Tell your servants the dream and we will give
00:16:51
the interpretation.
00:16:53
Something unusual happens here in the text of
00:16:56
Daniel.
00:16:57
Up until now, the book has been written in
00:16:59
Hebrew.
00:17:00
Hebrew is the language of the Israelites.
00:17:02
It's very geographically defined to the people of God.
00:17:06
As the Chaldeans start speaking though, the written language becomes Aramaic.
00:17:11
At this time, most people would speak at least two languages.
00:17:15
Aramaic has become the common language throughout the Near East.
00:17:18
A trading language to some degree, a universal language, at least in that region.
00:17:24
The authors changing languages to show that the matters we're about to consider, the
00:17:29
matters that the God of the Hebrews will intervene in, has universal significance.
00:17:34
God isn't just the God of one small area of land around Jerusalem.
00:17:39
He's God everywhere.
00:17:42
Anyway, the Chaldeans ask Nebuchadnezzar what
00:17:45
the dream is so they can interpret it.
00:17:48
Then Nebuchadnezzar changes the script.
00:17:50
Suddenly we get an insight into the problems of being an all powerful ruler.
00:17:56
The problem is, as all powerful as you may seem, you actually have no power over people's
00:18:03
hearts and minds.
00:18:04
People can use you and manipulate you.
00:18:07
So when you ask for a dream to be interpreted potentially, someone can just say what they
00:18:13
want you to think, or they can say what they think you want to hear.
00:18:17
In the west today, people generally assume that dreams don't mean anything, that someone
00:18:22
claiming to interpret them is lying.
00:18:25
Back then, they believe 100% that dreams can
00:18:28
give insight to the future.
00:18:30
But they're not fools.
00:18:31
They know that someone can still lie and manipulate.
00:18:34
Nebuchadnezzar knows this, and he tries to find a way around it.
00:18:39
He tries to put a safeguard in place.
00:18:41
He says, no, no, no, we're not going to play
00:18:45
that game.
00:18:46
I don't want you to just tell me the
00:18:48
interpretation of the dream.
00:18:49
I want you to tell me the dream itself.
00:18:53
If they can, then they obviously have miraculous insight.
00:18:56
If they can't, then they're just frauds.
00:18:59
And he knows how to deal with frauds.
00:19:02
In verse five, he says, my word is final.
00:19:05
If you don't tell me the dream and its
00:19:08
interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb and your houses will be made a garbage
00:19:14
dump.
00:19:15
But if you make the dream and its
00:19:17
interpretation known to me, you will receive gifts, a reward and great honour from me.
00:19:23
So make the dream and its interpretation known to me.
00:19:28
Imagine the awkward looks among the group, the shuffling of feet, the gulping and loosening
00:19:33
of collars.
00:19:34
No one's ever asked them to do this before.
00:19:37
They try to get around it with what might be considered a strategic error.
00:19:42
They just kind of ignore what the king said and hope it'll go away.
00:19:46
In verse seven, they say again, may the king tell the dream to his servants, and we will
00:19:51
make known the interpretation.
00:19:54
Naturally, this makes the king really angry.
00:19:57
He says, you're stalling for time.
00:20:00
If you can't do this, you're all frauds.
00:20:02
You're all conspiring against me and you're all dead meat.
00:20:05
Now tell me the dream and its interpretation.
00:20:10
This time they address the matter head on.
00:20:12
They say, this is impossible, at least for humans.
00:20:16
Only the gods can know what someone dreams.
00:20:19
Here are their words from verse 10.
00:20:22
No one on earth can make known what the king requests.
00:20:25
Consequently, no king, however great and powerful, has ever asked anything like this of
00:20:32
any magician, medium or Chaldean.
00:20:36
What the king is asking is so difficult that
00:20:39
no one can make it known to him except the gods, whose dwelling is not with mortals.
00:20:47
What an amazing scene.
00:20:49
Here we are in the throne room of the most
00:20:52
powerful empire on Earth, with the most powerful king On Earth, with the most famous
00:20:57
advisors on earth.
00:20:59
And what do we see?
00:21:02
Powerlessness.
00:21:04
Weakness.
00:21:05
The king cannot get the one thing he wants.
00:21:09
The Chaldeans can't give him the one thing he
00:21:13
wants.
00:21:14
There's a realm of power that's completely
00:21:17
beyond his control.
00:21:20
The king flies into a rage.
00:21:22
He orders the destruction of all the wise men of Babylon.
00:21:26
Verse 13 says the decree was issued that the wise men were to be executed and they searched
00:21:32
for Daniel and his friends to execute them.
00:21:36
Again we see the God given wisdom of Daniel.
00:21:39
We're told in verse 14 that then Daniel responded with tact and discretion to Arioch,
00:21:45
the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to execute the wise men of Babylon.
00:21:50
He asks why the king's decree is so harsh.
00:21:54
It may be that Daniel and his friends are
00:21:56
still in their three years of training at this point.
00:21:59
They certainly don't seem to have been involved with the initial discussion with the
00:22:02
king.
00:22:04
Once he knows what's going on, Daniel asks the
00:22:07
king for some time to find out about the dream and interpretation.
00:22:12
That's a gutsy request.
00:22:14
It's bravery inspired by faith.
00:22:18
The other wise men knew with certainty that they could never work out the dream.
00:22:23
They didn't try and delay for time so they could discover the truth in a million years.
00:22:28
They knew they would never know the dream.
00:22:32
Daniel doesn't have more ability than them.
00:22:34
He just knows the right person to ask.
00:22:37
He goes back home and talks to his friends
00:22:39
Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah about what's going on.
00:22:43
And he asks them to pray.
00:22:46
Not to any of the Babylonian gods, but to the
00:22:49
God of the heavens, the one true God.
00:22:52
He asks them to pray for mercy, that God would
00:22:56
reveal the dream to stop them being slaughtered with the rest of Babylon's wise
00:23:01
men.
00:23:02
And God says yes.
00:23:06
At night, God reveals the dream and its meaning in a vision to Daniel.
00:23:11
Imagine the relief when he wakes up in the morning.
00:23:14
Imagine the joy around the breakfast table as he shares the good news with his friends.
00:23:19
Daniel's so excited he bursts into praise.
00:23:23
He wants God to be praised forever and ever.
00:23:26
Why? Because God knows and understands and guides
00:23:30
and directs all things.
00:23:32
There's nothing that isn't in his power, even
00:23:35
the rise and fall of kings.
00:23:37
He gives wisdom and power to whoever he
00:23:40
wishes.
00:23:41
Let me read what Daniel says in verse 20.
00:23:44
He declares, May the name of God be praised forever and ever.
00:23:49
For wisdom and power belong to him.
00:23:52
He changes the times and seasons.
00:23:55
He removes kings and establishes kings.
00:23:58
He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to
00:24:01
those who have understanding.
00:24:03
He reveals the deep and hidden things.
00:24:06
He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him.
00:24:10
I offer thanks and praise to you, God of my ancestors, because you have given me wisdom
00:24:16
and power.
00:24:17
And now you have let me know what we asked of
00:24:20
you, for you have let us know the king's mystery.
00:24:26
God saved them.
00:24:28
Not just any God.
00:24:30
The God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and
00:24:36
King David.
00:24:37
He's been able to save them because of his
00:24:39
wisdom and power.
00:24:41
What a stark contrast to the throne room of
00:24:44
Babylon, where we saw no power, no wisdom, no understanding.
00:24:52
May God be praised forever and ever.
00:25:27
After praising God, Daniel runs to Ariok, the
00:25:31
guard whose job it is to execute the wise men.
00:25:34
He's like, stop.
00:25:36
Don't do it.
00:25:37
Take me to the king so I can give him the
00:25:39
interpretation.
00:25:40
Ariok rushes Daniel into the king's presence,
00:25:43
and we see that Daniel hasn't yet reached the heights of political power.
00:25:47
He's a nobody.
00:25:49
Ariok tells the king in verse 25, I've found a
00:25:52
man among the Judean exiles who can let the king know the interpretation.
00:25:58
The king asks Daniel, who's also called Belteshazzar, are you able to tell me the
00:26:03
dream I had and its interpretation? Surprisingly, shockingly, Daniel says no. In
00:26:12
fact, he backs up what the Chaldeans had told the king in the first place.
00:26:16
He says in verse 27, no wise man, medium, magician, or diviner is able to make known to
00:26:23
the king the mystery he asked about.
00:26:26
Daniel wants Nebuchadnezzar to know that it's
00:26:28
not about him.
00:26:29
Daniel, he has no power, no special ability.
00:26:34
There's no human on earth, including Daniel, who can do what the king's asked.
00:26:41
But.
00:26:43
But Daniel continues, there is a God in heaven
00:26:47
who reveals mysteries, and he has let King Nebuchadnezzar know what will happen in the
00:26:53
last days.
00:26:55
It's not Daniel's power, it's God's power.
00:26:59
He's the revealer of mysteries, and he's decided to reveal the future to
00:27:04
Nebuchadnezzar.
00:27:06
Daniel says, your Majesty, while you were in
00:27:10
your bed, thoughts came to your mind about what will happen in the future.
00:27:14
The revealer of mysteries has let you know what will happen.
00:27:18
As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me not because I have more wisdom than anyone
00:27:23
living, but in order that the interpretation might be made known to the king and that you
00:27:29
may understand the thoughts of your mind.
00:27:33
So what has God shown Nebuchadnezzar and what
00:27:37
does it mean? God showed him a huge, towering and terrifying
00:27:43
statue.
00:27:44
It seems to be a statue of a man and it's made
00:27:47
of a few different materials.
00:27:49
The head is made of pure gold.
00:27:52
The chest and arms are made of silver.
00:27:55
The stomach and thighs are bronze.
00:27:58
The legs are iron.
00:28:01
The feet are made of a weird mixture of clay
00:28:04
and iron.
00:28:06
That's the first part of the dream, this
00:28:08
picture of a huge, strange, terrifying statue.
00:28:12
The second part of the dream shows the
00:28:15
destruction of the statue.
00:28:17
Daniel says a rock breaks off not, and he
00:28:21
seems to emphasise this not by human hands.
00:28:26
The rock strikes the feet of iron and clay and
00:28:29
shatters them and the statue falls and shatters into a billion pieces.
00:28:34
It becomes like chaff blowing in the wind.
00:28:37
There's nothing left of the statue whatsoever.
00:28:41
In the last part of the dream, this rock, the one that shattered the statue, it grows and
00:28:47
grows and grows.
00:28:48
It grows so big, it becomes a huge mountain
00:28:51
that fills the whole earth.
00:28:54
So we have the statue made from different
00:28:56
materials, the rock smashing the statue into oblivion and the rock becoming an earth
00:29:03
filling mountain.
00:29:04
That's the dream.
00:29:06
What on earth does it mean? Even before you get to the interpretation of
00:29:11
the dream, you need to ask, what's the most important part of the dream?
00:29:16
What's the most powerful part of the dream? And the answer surely has to be the rock.
00:29:22
Anyway, Daniel goes on to explain the dream, this vision of the future that God's given
00:29:28
Nebuchadnezzar.
00:29:29
In verse 36, he says, you, Majesty, you are
00:29:33
the king of kings.
00:29:34
The God of the heavens has given you
00:29:36
sovereignty, power, strength and glory.
00:29:39
Wherever people live or wild animals or birds
00:29:42
of the sky, he has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all.
00:29:48
You are the head of gold.
00:29:51
If you're Nebuchadnezzar, you might be
00:29:53
thinking, that's pretty cool, right? He might be thinking that he's really
00:29:57
powerful.
00:29:57
He rules over people, animals, birds.
00:30:00
He has sovereignty, power, strength and glory.
00:30:04
But that's not the most important part of what
00:30:06
Daniel's just said.
00:30:08
All these things, all this glory and power,
00:30:12
Nebuchadnezzar didn't earn it.
00:30:14
It's all been given to him by the God of the
00:30:17
heavens, the same God who gave him the dream.
00:30:21
But he isn't going to do that forever.
00:30:24
He's going to make other kingdoms arise.
00:30:26
As one empire rises, so another falls.
00:30:30
Daniel says in verse 36, after you, there will arise another kingdom inferior to yours, and
00:30:38
then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which will rule the Whole earth, A fourth kingdom
00:30:43
will be as strong as iron, for iron crushes and shatters everything.
00:30:48
And like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others.
00:30:55
Notice a couple of things.
00:30:57
Firstly, as powerful as these earthly kingdoms
00:31:00
are ruling over the earth, they're transient.
00:31:04
They have power and glory for a time.
00:31:07
But that time passes also.
00:31:11
The kingdoms become less precious.
00:31:13
Gold to silver to bronze, they become inferior.
00:31:18
In the last empire, there's nothing particularly precious or beautiful about it.
00:31:22
The thing it's known for is its brute force.
00:31:25
It crushes and shatters everything else.
00:31:28
But as it uses its brute force to conquer the world, its weakness grows more and more
00:31:34
apparent.
00:31:35
The people of this powerful kingdom won't
00:31:37
properly mix.
00:31:39
In verse 40, we read, A fourth kingdom will be
00:31:42
as strong as iron, for iron crushes and shatters everything.
00:31:46
And like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others.
00:31:51
You saw the feet and toes partly of a potter's fired clay and partly of iron.
00:31:56
It will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it.
00:32:01
You saw the iron mixed with clay and that the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly
00:32:07
fired clay.
00:32:08
Part of the kingdom will be strong and part
00:32:11
will be brittle.
00:32:12
You saw the iron mixed with clay.
00:32:15
The peoples will mix with one another, but will not hold together.
00:32:19
Just as iron does not mix with fired clay, so the kingdoms become uglier, more brutish.
00:32:27
And weakness is built in these kingdoms, these empires, they're earthly kingdoms.
00:32:35
They appear for a time and then they're gone.
00:32:38
As powerful as they seem, their power is
00:32:42
fleeting.
00:32:44
But Daniel says another kingdom is coming.
00:32:48
A kingdom that the God of the heavens will establish, that'll never be destroyed.
00:32:53
A kingdom that won't just fold into the next empire that arises.
00:32:56
A kingdom more powerful than all the others.
00:32:59
It'll destroy all the others.
00:33:01
Like the rocks smashing the statue.
00:33:04
Unlike those, it'll be an everlasting kingdom
00:33:07
that'll endure forever.
00:33:10
Daniel says to the king in verse 45, you saw a
00:33:14
stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it.
00:33:17
And it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver and gold.
00:33:21
The great God has told the king what will happen in the future.
00:33:25
The dream is certain and its interpretation reliable.
00:33:31
From our vantage point, we don't need to see this as the future.
00:33:35
We can already see that God's done exactly what he said.
00:33:39
People argue over which empire is which.
00:33:41
I don't think it's too complicated.
00:33:43
Babylon was followed by the Medes and Persians, followed by the Greeks, followed by
00:33:47
the Romans.
00:33:49
But all those are fleeting and transitory.
00:33:53
We don't visit these thriving empires now.
00:33:56
We visit their ruins.
00:33:58
We study their archaeological treasures.
00:34:00
We say, oh, what must it have been like to
00:34:03
live in Rome or Babylon or anywhere else? Because all these empires are dead, destroyed,
00:34:10
scattered to the wind.
00:34:13
But during their time, a different kingdom
00:34:16
arose.
00:34:17
It isn't shaped and fashioned by human hands
00:34:20
like a statue.
00:34:22
It looks rough, worthless, like a rock that
00:34:27
just happened to fall off a mountain.
00:34:29
But this kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, a
00:34:33
kingdom that can't be destroyed.
00:34:35
It's ruled by a king who's conquered the
00:34:37
greatest enemies.
00:34:39
He's conquered sin, the terrible selfishness
00:34:42
of the human heart that wants to replace God with our own authority.
00:34:46
He's conquered death itself.
00:34:48
He died, but was raised to life.
00:34:51
His heavenly Father gave him all authority in heaven and on earth.
00:34:55
He truly is king of kings and Lord of lords.
00:34:59
His name is Jesus.
00:35:01
And at his name, on the final day, every eye will see him.
00:35:06
Every knee will bow before him, either willingly and joyfully, or because they must.
00:35:12
And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
00:35:19
That's the heart of the dream.
00:35:21
All kingdoms will rise and fall, but Christ's
00:35:24
kingdom will last forever.
00:35:28
Russia will fall.
00:35:29
Australia will disappear.
00:35:31
The United States of America will become a
00:35:34
footnote in a history book.
00:35:36
Wherever you're listening now, whatever
00:35:38
country you're in, a day will come when it won't exist.
00:35:43
Don't put your hope there.
00:35:46
Put your hope in Christ's kingdom.
00:35:51
Back in Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar is really impressed.
00:35:55
He honours Daniel.
00:35:56
In fact, we're told that he worships Daniel,
00:35:59
bowing before him and offering incense.
00:36:01
As strange as that seems, it does seem that
00:36:04
the king is even more focused on the power behind Daniel.
00:36:08
He acknowledges Daniel's God as the revealer of mysteries.
00:36:12
He says to Daniel in verse 47, you, God is indeed God of gods, Lord of kings and a
00:36:18
revealer of mysteries.
00:36:20
Since you are able to reveal this mystery,
00:36:23
that doesn't mean he's suddenly become a worshipper of this God.
00:36:27
As the one true God.
00:36:28
He believes in heaps of gods, but he does
00:36:31
recognise that it's worth keeping around this guy who has access to this God, we're told in
00:36:37
verse 48.
00:36:38
Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him
00:36:41
many generous gifts.
00:36:42
He made him ruler over the entire province of
00:36:45
Babylon and chief governor over all the wise men of Babylon.
00:36:49
At Daniel's request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to manage the
00:36:55
province of Babylon.
00:36:56
But Daniel remained at the king's court.
00:37:00
Suddenly these young men are thrust into the centre of the empire, governing the very heart
00:37:07
of the empire itself.
00:37:09
That's going to create jealousy.
00:37:12
As for Nebuchadnezzar, he's excited to finally know the meaning of the dream, but that
00:37:18
doesn't actually mean he's learned its lesson.
00:37:21
In fact, he's about to reject the message of
00:37:23
the dream in the most public way possible.
00:37:28
But that's a story for next time.
00:37:43
I hope you've enjoyed this episode and that you're excited to get into the rest of the
00:37:47
Book of Daniel.
00:37:49
Can I ask a favour?
00:37:50
If you're finding the podcast helpful, who's one person you can tell about it?
00:37:55
Is there one person who you can say, hey, you should listen to stories of a faithful God?
00:38:00
Or your kids should listen to stories of a faithful God for kids.
00:38:05
That would be a great help and a blessing to them.
00:38:08
Don't forget to sign up to the club.
00:38:10
You can start with a seven day free trial.
00:38:12
You get access to both the bonus adult and kids episodes.
00:38:17
Keep trusting Jesus.
00:38:19
Bye for now.
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