Are We Losers? | Daniel 2

Good morning, church.

If you could remain standing, just as we honor and are so grateful for the reading of God's Word.

Today we're going to be in Daniel 2.

So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn there.

This is going to be a longer passage of scripture, so if you need to sit down, please feel the liberty to go ahead and do so.

We'll start in Daniel 2, chapter 1.

Or sorry, Daniel 2, verse 1.

Daniel 2:1

In the second year of ne uh the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.

His spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him.

Then the king commanded that the magicians and the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams.

So they came in and stood before the king, and the king said to them, I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.

Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever, tell your servants the dreams, and we will show you the interpretation.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The word from me is firm.

If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins.

But if you show me the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor.

Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.

They answered a second time and said, Let the king tell his servants of the dream, and we will show its interpretation.

The king answered and said, I know with great certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see that the word from me is firm.

If you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you.

You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change.

Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.

The Chaldeans answered the king and said, There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.

The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose flesh uh whose dwelling is not with flesh.

Because of this the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.

So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them.

Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Ariok, the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon.

He declared to Ariok, the king's captain, Why is this decree of the king so urgent?

Then Ariak made the matter known to Daniel, and Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time that he might meet to show the interpretation to the king.

Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Meshel, and Azariah, his companions, and told them to seek mercy from God, the God in heaven, concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night.

Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might.

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

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

And now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter.

Therefore Daniel went to Ariok, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon.

He went and said thus to him, Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon.

Bring me in before the king, and I will show the king the interpretation.

Then Ariak brought in Daniel before the king in haste, and said thus to him, I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation.

The king declared to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?

Daniel answered the king and said, No wise man, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show the king the mystery that the king asked.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to 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 what would be after this.

And he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be.

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 may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind.

This is the word of the Lord.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we come before you today with great gratitude.

Gratitude that we serve a God who speaks.

Gratitude that we serve a God who reveals himself to us through his word.

So, Lord, as we come before you today, we ask that the Holy Spirit would come.

Spirit of truth, as we have heard your word read, open our eyes to behold its wonders, open our minds to understand its truth, and open our hearts to receive it with faith and obedience through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Man, the internet is a dark, wild place, isn't it?

It leaves very little doubt that we actually are living in Babylon.

This past week, Beth Ann, our communications director, posted a snippet from last week's sermon.

It was the part, if you'll remember, if you were able to be here, I talked about how the Lord is so good and so mighty that he can take the worst moment of your life and he can use it as the first line of your testimony.

Bethane actually thought that would be really encouraging, and so she did it as a paid ad to try to broadcast our message as broadly as we can to hopefully get the good news out there.

And y'all, the comments and private messages that we have received over the last week have been vulgar, they have been violent, they have been aggressive.

I mean, it's been a lot.

It's been a lot.

It made me think can you imagine if the Apostle Paul would have had a Facebook account back in the day, the comments that cat would have gotten.

But there was one that stood out to me a little bit more than the others because of exactly what I'm talking about today from Daniel chapter 2.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

I blacked out all the parts that are inappropriate for church and a little bit uncomfortable, including his name, but I want you to notice what he calls us at the end of the comment.

Losers, right?

Losers.

And the question that I want us to ask this morning is is he right?

Is he right?

Are we losers?

Are we, as followers of Jesus of Nazareth who walked the earth thousands of years ago?

Are we crazy losers?

It actually reminds me of something the philosopher Nietzsche, who was behind and the father of so much of modernity and post-modernity, something that he said.

He said years ago, he said, What is good?

But all that happens, the feeling of power, heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

What is bad?

All that proceeds from weakness.

That is in in Nietzsche's mind, Christianity actually inverses those things which are highest priority, those things of which are greatest value, most in need of preservation.

And so he actually interpreted Christianity in light of what he understood the world to mean.

This is what he said.

He said, Christianity has preserved too much of what should perish.

It has taken the part of the weak, the low, and the botched.

That Nietzsche saw Christians and he saw them worshiping a crucified savior.

He saw them loving their enemies.

He saw them turning the other cheek.

He saw them denying themselves what they could have so that they could care for the weak and the oppressed.

And his response to that was not that it was noble, but that it was actually a preservation of that which we ought to let expire.

That in his mind, Christians were losers that were just glorifying losing.

So let's wrestle with that question.

It's a hard, maybe even an offensive question.

Are we losers?

It's not a new question.

This is actually a question that's as old as mankind is.

That human beings have always assumed that the winners, however, winning is decided, whether that's on the battlefield or that's at on uh Wall Street, winners, however that's decided, must have the strongest gods.

That they've always believed that the victorious must be right, the powerful must be secure, that the successful must have some kind of inside track with some kind of inside knowledge, with some kind of inside God that has allowed them to be successful above and beyond everyone else.

And if we're honest, that's what our neighbors believe.

That's the pervasive belief of the people that we live around us.

That's what Babylon believed.

And transparently, that's what we're tempted to believe too, isn't it?

That's what we're tempted to believe too.

So Daniel 2 is actually written to challenge that very assumption.

Because by every visible measurement, Babylon is winning and Judah is losing.

Think about the contrast here.

Nebuchadnezzar has the throne, but Daniel and all of the remnant of Israel and Judah are in exile.

Babylon has the army, but Judah has been conquered.

Babylon has the temple vessels, and Daniel has a death sentence that's hanging over him.

So everything that you see says that Babylon is strong and Daniel is weak.

Babylon is winning and Daniel is losing.

And so what Daniel chapter 2 is doing is it's pulling back the veil, it's opening it up so that we can see what is really real, what is actual reality.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

That it's showing us that the most powerful man on earth, yes, has great power, has great might, has great authority, but he can't sleep.

The mightiest gods that appear to be victorious, they can't speak.

But this little teenage boy, this little teenage boy who has the favor of God resting upon him, he's able to have access to the mysteries of the universe.

So what I want us to see this morning from Daniel chapter 2 is that men are only as secure as their gods, and gods are only as strong as their word.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Men are only as secure as their gods, and gods are only as strong as their word.

First, notice the contrast between the men of Babylon and the man of Judah, and you'll see that men are as secure as their gods.

The question that's facing Daniel and Judah is quite a simple one.

Should we become Babylonians or not?

The brilliance, I mentioned this last Sunday, the brilliance of Babylon is that they would conquer you, they would eliminate everything that appeared weak and unhelpful, and they would take away all of those who were considered to be the wisest, the best, the cream of the crop, and they would bring them into Babylon where they would retrain them and re-educate them and re-indoctrinate them to make them thoroughly Babylonian.

And if they did well, they would actually have quite a prosperous future within the empire.

This made it really desirable to become Babylonian.

This is what they wanted these cultures to do, and it made it really difficult for them to stage a mutiny against Babylon.

And this is exactly why Daniel himself is in Babylon.

He's not merely being relocated, he's in the process of being remade.

And so Daniel has to decide.

Daniel has to decide who's right and who's wrong, who's winning and who's losing.

Who is the actual God that is worthy of his allegiance?

Will he remain loyal to the Lord even though the Lord has allowed his people to be conquered and taken into exile?

Or will he become solidly Babylonian and enjoy the rewards of the empire?

This is the tension of for Daniel.

But it's not just Daniel's tension, is it?

That's really our tension too.

That this is the tension that we, our teenagers, face as we send them off to school.

This is the tension that our college students face when their faith is challenged by academic study.

This is the challenge that singles face as they think about dating and sex and marriage and loneliness.

This is the challenge that young families are faced with when they're trying to decide the priorities and the values that they're gonna build their family around.

This is the tension that seniors are facing when they try to figure out exactly how they're gonna leverage the final chapter of their life and what that's gonna ultimately look like.

It boils down to will we assimilate into Babylon or will we follow Jesus?

Will we be shaped by the mainstream of secularized culture, or will we lean into an ancient faith with its ancient values and its crucified Savior?

There are two great ironies that really come to the surface in Daniel chapter two that form the spine of this chapter.

I'm gonna do my best to take those two ironies that form the spine of Daniel chapter two to form the spine of this morning's sermon.

The first of these is that the secure man is the conquered man, and the insecure man is the ruling man.

The secure man is the conquered man, and the insecure man is the ruling man.

It's the exact opposite of the way that you would expect.

That's what we see here is that power doesn't promise sleep.

Nebuchadnezzar, at this point in his reign, is a young kid of about 20 years old.

And literally everything that the man has ever touched has turned to gold.

He has the world by its coattails.

And so he has everything that he wants, everything that he says comes about, everything that he wills happens.

But we see that there's a chink in the armor in verse one.

That we see that he's a man that can't find rest.

Look at what it says.

In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.

That's one.

His spirit was troubled.

There's two.

His sleep left him.

That's three.

All of us can identify with what it feels like when your sleep has left you.

In the Hebrew language, when you repeat something or a concept three different times, that's the English equivalent of adding five exclamation points.

You're saying this to the highest degree.

And so what we're seeing here is that he may have the mightiest military and he may have the world at his fingertips, but he has no command of his own soul.

This is a man that is paranoid.

This is a man that is insecure.

This is a man on the verge of being overwhelmed and overcome.

He can secure the borders of Babylon, but he cannot secure his own heart.

It reminds me of what Reinhold Niebuhr once wrote.

He said, Man is tempted by his insecurity to seek security beyond the capacities of a Phyanite creature.

That is, human beings are so unsettled by the insecurity of life that we actually start reaching for the kind of security that is only available within the sovereignty of God.

So think about Nebuchadnezzar.

This is a great descriptor of him.

He has power, but he craves certainty.

He has conquest, but he's seeking and pursuing control.

He has the throne, but he wants the future.

And so what he does is he keeps trying to reach for power and reach for power and reach for power.

But what he's actually reaching for is not more conquest, not more success, it's security.

He's constantly longing for it and he's chasing it in the one place that it can never be found within himself.

Within himself.

So you can see the security, insecurity that Nebuchadnezzar's insecurity actually creates for those around us.

And those people that are terribly insecure typically create insecurity that's around him.

He goes to the wise men of Babylon, having received this vision, and he goes to them and says, I want you guys to interpret my dream.

Now you have to understand, the wise men of Babylon are considered to be the wisest of all wise men.

They're supposed to have direct divine ability to be able to interpret the difficult and mysterious things of the world.

But he goes, he says, and the wise men are like, Oh, yeah, let's go.

You know, we'll tell you what's going on.

He said, But there's a catch this time.

This time, I'm not gonna tell you the dream so that you can interpret it if you have connections actually to the divine, have the divine tell you the dream and the interpretation.

And they're like, whoa, man, easy now, easy.

And what happens is he creates an insecurity vortex, right?

That Nebuchadnezzar is like, interpret the dream and know the dream.

The wise men are like, okay, like easy, like not a man on earth can do that.

Nobody, he's like, okay, if you don't do this, he raises the stakes, right?

If you don't do this, I'm taking you down.

All of you are dead.

Every single wise man in Babylon is gonna be proven foolish.

I'm gonna kill every one of you, right?

And they're like, all right, now, easy Neb, easy Neb, give us 10 more minutes, you know, like like it's like a kid like negotiating with a disciplinary parent, right?

Like, easy, easy, easy.

Like, give us more one more time, give us one more day.

They're all nervous.

And so what we see here is insecurity is begetting insecurity, paranoia is begetting paranoia.

The telling verses are really there in verses 10 and 11.

I skipped over them.

Yeah, verses 10 and 11.

It said the Chaldeans answered the king and said, There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.

The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods.

But what's the problem with the gods?

They do not dwell with the flesh, their dwelling is not with flesh.

So, do you see the source of their insecurity here?

Babylon's entire religious system is crumbling literally within one sentence.

That which has been the tether and the anchor of Babylon in all of their lives and all of their wisdom and all of the great conquests they think that they've had, it's coming up nil, it's coming up silent.

That they have a mighty military and a great king and a stockpile of God, but uh gold, but the one thing that they do not have is a God that cares enough to listen to them and respond to them and dwell among them.

So, Nebuchadnezzar couldn't find a good night's sleep.

The divines knew their lives depended on trying to draw water out of a dry well, and insecurity is begetting insecurity, paranoia is leading to paranoia.

Everyone here is anxious.

Think about the picture that we find in Daniel chapter 2.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Babylon sleeps, the servants are sleeping, the city is sleeping, impoverished are sleeping.

The king is laying in the palace, staring at the ceiling, and he can't find sleep or buy it for a million dollars.

The throne can't help him, the gold can't help him, the army can't help him, because eventually every human being arrives at a series of questions that no amount of power, no amount of success, no amount of money can answer on your behalf.

I want to pause for just a second.

What's winning?

What's winning?

What's winning?

Is it having the nicest throne or having the soundest sleep?

And what's losing?

What's losing?

Is it having to sleep at peace in the servant's house?

Or is it being restless and anxious in the finest palace?

See, security, it doesn't come from all the places that we're looking.

Security comes from sovereignty.

In Daniel, we find a man who is very different from the Babylonians.

He's in exile, he seems to live at the beck and call at the king, the king seems to be able to decide at any moment or any time whether or not he wants to be able to let Daniel live or not live.

God seems to have let him down and allowed him to be able to enter into exile.

But notice the difference in Daniel's response to the threats of King Nebuchadnezzar and the response of the wise men of Babylon.

The wise men of Babylon are like, easy, easy king, easy king.

Like, we just need one more day, just a little more time, 10 more minutes, another day, another week.

Easy king.

What does Daniel say?

Bro, set up the meeting.

Set up the meeting.

Give me an audience with the king.

Let's just make this thing happen.

Let's roll out there.

It's awesome.

Before Daniel prays a single prayer, he is already filled with conviction that his God is going to deliver him.

He says in verse 16, Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time that he might show the interpretation to the king.

That Daniel has faith that God will deliver him.

Why?

Not because of who he is, but because of who his God is.

And so he doesn't even know what that deliverance is gonna look like, but he is confident and resolved that his God will deliver him and his God will come through.

You see, the God of Daniel is the polar opposite of the gods of Babylon.

He does dwell with his people.

It's a con it's an interesting contrast when you think about it, isn't it?

That Nebuchadnezzar is the most powerful man in the world, and yet he's scared to death of what tomorrow may bring.

He's used to speaking and getting his way, and yet he speaks to his gods.

He always summons people and they come.

He summons his gods, and his gods completely ghost him.

But here's Daniel.

Daniel is a 16-year-old boy.

He's barely shaving at this point in his life, right?

And yet he's courageous enough to call an audience with a king who has already threatened to kill him.

And the difference between the courageous and the cowardly, the inspired and the insomniac, is that Daniel knows that when he prays, his God cares about him, hears him, and will answer him.

See, the security of the man is determined by the strength of his God.

You see this even clearer when Daniel goes and he prays, and God gives him the interpretation.

And so Daniel's response is not to immediately run to the king, his response is immediately to lift up his voice and his hands to the Lord and to bring praise to his name.

And he sings of his sovereignty in verses 21 and 23.

Listen to how Daniel sings to the Lord.

He says, He, talking about God, changes times and seasons.

Here we go.

Daniel recognizes this is nothing about what I know.

This is nothing about my capability.

This is nothing about how great I am.

This is about God's revealing and speaking these things to me.

He reveals deep and hidden things.

He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.

To you, O God of my Father, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might and have made now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter.

The point is, Daniel isn't secure because he knows what tomorrow holds.

Daniel is secure because he already knows who governs tomorrow.

The God who answers prayer is the same God that removes and places kings, which means, which means, by the way, Daniel recognizes that Nebuchadnezzar is not outside the reach of his God.

Nebuchadnezzar may be the baddest man on earth, but the baddest man on earth will fall on his face before the mightiest God.

And so, on the basis of the strength of his God, what does Daniel do?

He rests.

He rests.

Nebuchadnezzar was trying to secure himself by his own conquest, but Daniel says humbly, as for me, this ministry has been removed, revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have.

Not because of my self-sufficiency.

So here's Nebuchadnezzar, he's trying to be secure by his own sufficiency.

Here's Daniel actually finding security because he comes to the end of himself and he puts his confidence in God.

Daniel knows the God of gods, and Neb doesn't even know his own thoughts, it says.

Brothers and sisters, winning isn't ruling.

Winning is resting.

Winning is resting.

This morning, if Nietzsche were here, I would love, hopefully I would be bold enough to ask him and not lose my nerve, but I would love to ask him a question.

And it's the same question that I would love to ask all of you.

Who here in this story is the winner and who in this story is the loser?

Is it the conqueror who can't understand his own thoughts?

Or is it the human, humble man, boy in a foreign land that's able to speak boldly and courageously to a king?

And the difference between the two is found in the trustworthiness of their God.

So does your God bring you rest?

Or is your God incapable of hearing you and loving you and answering you?

See, our community is filled with people living for gods that only make them more paranoid.

That all of our algorithms and all of the commercials are constantly trying to present us with new gods and fresh gods that give us opportunity to have fresh pleasures and fresh treasures and more security and more contentment.

But what do we actually find?

What we actually find is the more of them that we have, the less secure we actually are.

The higher we go up, the more we become afraid of the fall.

Look around.

Look around Collieville, look around Germantown, look around your family, look around your colleagues, look around at your classmates, and what you will find is to become more Babylonian is not to become a bigger winner, it is to become less secure and more anxious.

To become more like the people you go to school with and work with and retire with.

No, to win.

To win is to have the certainty of the resurrection.

It's to discover the God who knows the thoughts of man and yet still dwells with us in the flesh.

This is who the human soul is craving.

This is the tether that we're longing for.

This is the one that can calibrate our hearts to be at rest in Him.

So winning.

Winning isn't a seat in the finest palace.

Winning is the ability to sleep in the lion's den.

Men, men are as secure as their gods.

Next, I want you to see that men are as secure as their gods, and gods are as strong as their word.

Gods are as strong as their words.

To get the full picture, you have to understand that Daniel and his friends aren't only wrestling with whether or not to become Babylonian.

They're also wrestling with a question that's underneath it.

Has Babylon's God beaten their God?

You have to understand, like in ancient times, conquest was interpreted theologically.

So one of the reasons that you would go to war was to put on display how mighty and great your God was.

And it was really seen, really, not as a battle primarily against flesh and blood, right?

Though that certainly was real.

But this battle of these cosmic principalities.

Remember, Paul picks this up in Ephesians chapter 6 and applies it to the church.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

And the picture is that whoever wins has the baddest, biggest, bestest God, right?

And whoever loses, well, they have a loser God that doesn't care about them, maybe isn't there at all.

And so if you think about Daniel's situation, he looks at Babylon, and Babylon, by every metric, appears to have the better gods.

They have more gold, they have the throne, they have the great king, they have the future, they have they had the future, it seemed.

And all of this was seen as a credit.

And so the temptation, the temptation is to believe that they're better.

And that's ours too, isn't it?

That's ours too.

Like it's tough when everyone else in the world seems to be doing exactly what they want and flourishing, and we're still struggling to follow after Jesus, doesn't it?

Like, it's tough when the guy who ignores Jesus is the same guy that gets the promotion in the race.

It's tough when the person who disregards God's design for sexuality seems to be happier in their relationship than you feel like you are in yours.

It's tough when compromise appears to pay better than faithfulness does.

And that's what tempts us to become Babylonians ourselves.

Because the gods look more appealing, they look more attractive.

They seem to have more gold that they can offer over to us.

And that brings us to the second great irony here in Daniel chapter 2 that really forms the spine of this text.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

The first irony is that the secure man is the conquered man, and the insecure man is the ruling man.

The second great irony is that the victorious-looking gods are silent, and the defeated looking God speaks up.

See, the point of the text is that silent gods can't win.

Silent gods can't win.

The first contrast between the God of Judah and the gods of Babylon, we see is in their response to the dream.

Remember what the Chaldeans say in verse 10 there is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demands, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.

The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it except the gods who do not dwell with the flesh.

That sentence effectively gives us Babylon's definition of winning.

That the winner is the God who can answer.

It's the one who can actually reveal the future.

The winner is the God that can tell you what tomorrow means.

The winner is the God who actually dwells with his people and protects his people and provides for his people.

And so, yeah, on the outside, like Babylon looks Instagram perfect.

But the reality is, is by every metric that they actually have for themselves in this moment, they're losing and their gods are losing.

The whole passage, and I loved how Micah highlighted this when he was reading it, the whole passage turns on verse 28.

The wise men of Babylon are pulling out their hair, they're saying, This can only be known by the gods, but the gods aren't here and they won't say anything.

Do you hear how Daniel frames this up for the king?

He says, But there is a God in heaven.

And what does he do?

He reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar.

He has made it known.

So what does that mean?

He has spoken.

And Nebuchadnezzar is gonna know this without a shadow of a doubt.

He set up this battle of the bands, right?

Like he made all of this come about, he established the stakes, and it's the God of Daniel that's gonna prove to be the real God.

That Babylon's gods are silent, but Daniel's God speaks.

Babylon's gods can't tell the king what he dreamed, but Daniel's God is actually in the process of telling Nebuchadnezzar where all of history is headed.

So again, we're supposed to ask, who's winning here?

Who's actually winning?

Is it the empire whose gods can't speak?

Or is it the exile whose God can reveal mysteries?

Men are as secure as their gods.

And gods are as strong as their words.

So what we see here is that the winners are beginning to emerge from the losers.

The secure is beginning to emerge from the insecure.

And what we recognize is that now God is showing him that, showing Daniel that his people cannot lose, showing Nebuchadnezzar that his people cannot lose.

They may be conquered, they might lose a battle, but ultimately, on the grand scheme, from the macro picture, from the perspective of eternity, they will be victorious.

That the real test of a God is not whether or not he can make you rich.

It's not whether or not he can make you powerful.

The real test of a God is if he can actually tell you where history is going.

That's the purpose of the dream.

Let's let's read that together.

It's quite long, but I think I think it's really important for you to hear what he says.

And we'll read the dream and Daniel's interpretation, beginning in Daniel 2, verse 31.

Daniel 2:31

It says, You saw, O king, behold, a great image.

This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening.

The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

As you looked, the stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces.

Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold all together were broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.

And the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them could be found.

But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and it filled the whole earth.

This was the dream.

Now we will tell the king its interpretation.

You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom the power and the might and the glory, and into whose hand he has given wherever they drill, the twil the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all, you are the head of gold.

Another kingdom, inferior to you, shall rise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth.

And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things.

And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these.

And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom.

But some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with soft clay.

And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle, as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together.

Just as iron does not mix with clay.

And 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 you saw that a 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 it known to the king what shall be after this.

This dream is certain, and its interpretation, sure.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered to him, and the king answered and said to Daniel, Truly your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.

See, the dream is of a fearsome creature, a fearsome statue that fills you with dread unless you understand it, and unless you're one of God's people.

It talks about a head of shining gold, and Daniel tells him that this is Babylon.

You are the most glorious of all the kingdoms, you are the most impressive of all the kingdoms, you are the most perfect on Instagram.

Everybody wants to be you, everybody wants to be around you, everybody wants to benefit from you.

And it seems like you're unconquerable.

It seems like nothing can tarnish your glory, but in a generation you will fall because Persia is coming.

And Persia will come, and Persia will again look unassailable and unconquerable, and it will seem impossible that their renown could ever be dampened.

And then Alexander the Great and the Greeks will come.

And Alexander the Great and the Greeks will come and Persia will fall.

And the great general, Alexander the Great, will seem again like he is establishing a kingdom and an empire that cannot be overthrown.

But then Rome will be there.

And Rome will be strong as iron and will endure for a thousand years.

And the whole world will think that Rome is the ruler of all things, but Rome will not last.

Every single one of them, every successive empire looks like a winner.

Every single one of them looks secure.

Every single one of them appears unconquerable.

Every single one of them seems unassailable.

They all fall.

Why?

Why will they rise and fall?

Why will the kingdoms of man come and go?

Why will mighty empires come and conquer and be conquered just the same?

Because they are built on feet of clay.

Because their foundation is not solid.

They weren't built to last.

They were never meant to endure.

They were built with a faulty foundation.

And so, as pretty pretty as it is, as fearsome as it seems, as daunting as it might be, as unconquerable as it seems, the winner that it presents itself to be, if it takes a single step, the whole thing crumbles to the ground.

Because it's made of feet of clay.

But Daniel's God and our God.

He is a very different God and he builds a very different kingdom.

He can reveal the future because he governs the future.

Earlier, you'll remember the way Daniel praised him when he said, My, he changes times and seasons, he removes kings and sets up kings.

That God knows what is coming because God is the one that is bringing about what's coming.

And so Daniel is looking at Babylon and he's wondering if God's kingdom is lost, and God answers him how?

By sending him a dream to the mightiest man in all of Babylon that actually Daniel is on the winning side.

The God of heaven will establish a kingdom, and that kingdom will not be destroyed.

His kingdom is not like the others.

It is a stone uncut by human hands that shatters the kingdoms of men and fills the whole earth.

Every other kingdom diminishes and his kingdom expands.

Every kingdom ends and his kingdom endures.

Every kingdom loses, but his kingdom triumphs.

Centuries later, centuries later, the text that I opened our service with this morning, Jesus goes back and he quotes Daniel chapter 2 and he applies it to himself.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Look at look at with me, Matthew 21.

Jesus said to them, Have you not read the scriptures?

In other words, have you not read what Daniel said?

Have you not read Daniel chapter 2?

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

The stone that the builders rejected has come before, has become the cornerstone.

This was the Lord's doing, the one who appoints kings and takes them down.

And it is marvelous in our eyes.

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces.

And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.

The stone that Nebuchadnezzar saw was Christ.

And the expanding kingdom that would come and take over all of the world.

That was the church.

This is a story about Christ.

And this is a story about us.

The future belongs to Christ.

And the future belongs to us because we are in Christ.

God's people cannot lose.

Because God's kingdom cannot be overthrown.

See, winners, winners are decided on Sunday.

You know, the Babylonians said the gods do not dwell in the flesh.

But Daniel knew better, didn't he?

In fact, centuries later, God would prove it when the word would become flesh and dwell among us.

The response of Nebuchadnezzar will ultimately be the response of every king and every president, every Congress, and every dignitary, every man and every woman, every boy and every girl, that at the name of Jesus Christ we will fall on our faces and we will declare him as Lord.

See, winners and losers shouldn't be counted on Friday night when the cross is still bloody.

Winners and losers should be counted on Sunday morning when the tomb is empty.

And because we have a God who not only knows the future but told us the future, then all of us can know that we are safe and secure with Him.

The throne of David, it may have been empty when Judah was exiled in Babylon, but God is speaking to Nebuchadnezzar so that Nebuchadnezzar will know, so that Daniel will know, so that all of his people will know that the throne of Jesus will be filled, and it will be filled by his very own son, and it will endure through all ages.

Today.

Today you may feel like a loser living in Babylon.

But the crumbling empires of history and the empty tomb of Jesus say that you can keep sleeping even if today you're in the lion's den.

Babylon called Daniel a loser.

Nietzsche called Christians losers.

Our Facebook comments pretty much say the same thing.

But Daniel chapter 2 says that the kingdom belongs to the losers in Christ.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

Men are as secure as their gods.

And gods are as strong as their word.

So for all of us who today are in Christ, we have been made more than conquerors.

Can I pray for us?

Heavenly Father, how mighty and powerful and glorious your word is.

I pray, oh God, that the Spirit would illuminate our minds and inflame our hearts, that we would feel the security that Daniel felt, that we would know the peace that he knew.

That our hope would not rest on all of the crumbling things around us.

But on the resurrected King Jesus.

Father, I pray for the anxious here this morning that you would minister to them.

I pray this morning for the one who's trying, like Nebuchadnezzar, to find their way through the world by their own brilliance and ingenuity and strength.

That today you would bring them the rest of being able to come and knowing that those things are found in Christ.

I pray, Lord, that you would guard us from the temptation that's presented to us by all the gold of Babylon.

And that instead, Lord, we would cast our lot with you.

Who was raised on Sunday.

We ask these things now in Jesus' name.

Amen.