Daniel 2:1-30 – A Nightmare in Babylon

So we're in week two of uh a new sermon series that'll take us through uh this fall, up to Christmas time, uh through the Old Testament book of Daniel.

And so let me just give us the very brief context of last week.

And so uh the book of Daniel comes during a time when the people of Israel, and so what you can think of as the Old Testament Christians, they were given into the hand of Babylon.

And in particular, uh chapter one tells the story of when the king of Israel was given into Nebuchadnezzar's hand.

The king of Israel was given into Nebuchadnezzar's hand.

And so I just want to help you understand the significance of that moment.

And so, as a New Testament Christian, uh we believe and understand Jesus as our king.

Imagine the claim where it said that God would give Jesus into someone else's hand.

Overwhelming.

It's a story of great tragedy.

Um the extraordinary thing in the book of Daniel is that um even though God had given his people over into exile for their for their discipline, he hadn't removed his hand from them.

That if you want to think of it this way, when he gave them over to them, he spread his hand and sent it with them.

And so it remained with his people to give grace to whoever would trust him.

And so that's really the invitation for us that as we read the story of Daniel, we'd be growing to trust God's care for us, even in places and situations that are difficult.

And so we're gonna read Daniel chapter 2.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

We're just gonna read the first half of the chapter.

It's a long chapter, and we're gonna just fair warning, we're gonna stop before the dream itself.

And so, no reading ahead for the rest of the sermon.

We're just gonna stick with the very beginning part, and then next week we'll get to the details of the dream.

And so, Daniel chapter two, beginning in verse one.

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

His spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him.

Then the king commanded the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to 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 dream, and we will show you the interpretation.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The word for 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 the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards in great honor.

Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.

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

The king answered and said, I know with certainty that you're trying to gain time, because you see that the word for 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 asked is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.

Because of this the king was very 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 Ariak, the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon.

He declared to Ariak the king's captain, Why is the 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 show the interpretation to the king.

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

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

And then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

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

He changes 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 light dwells with him.

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

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

He went and he 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 Ariok 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 Beltshazzar, 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 men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has 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 dreams 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.

Well, in rushing through our prayer earlier, I forgot our common prayer of supplication, and so it's fitting for this time, and so let's pray together as a prayer to ask God to show his truth to us.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time, with one accord, to make our common supplications to you.

And you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his name, you will grant their request.

Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions, as may be best for us, granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come, everlasting life.

Lord, you have said that anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.

And so would you show us a good word this morning that we may be raised in your wisdom?

We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, as we go through the story of Daniel, our job is to be good readers and really to be good listeners.

That this Old Testament story is meant to be just that.

It's a story that is meant to work on us in particular ways.

And I hope as we go through the book of Daniel, you'll grow to enjoy the stories of God.

That I think they are extraordinary in the way that they engage with real life and they invite us to come to know and trust God in new ways.

It's really a part of my testimony when I was in college.

I had grown up knowing a lot about the Bible, but in college in particular, the stories of the Old Testament came alive to me.

And through that, I began to understand God's grace in new ways.

It's really a big reason why I felt called to ministry, called to teach and to preach, to try to help that happen for others as well.

And in the book of Daniel and in Old Testament narrative, our overall goal is to what we could describe to follow the camera.

That it's being written and told in such a way that if we try to follow what's being shown to us, it will help us understand.

And so let me just give us two more tools, kind of in the bag of the director of the Old Testament, the director of our lives in God's bag as he tells us the story here.

One is character development.

That if we look closely, God will be showing us how people develop either in their brokenness that takes them away from God or in his grace that would draw them near.

And so the stories are told to develop characters.

And so, similar to how you would watch a movie or read a book, the same thing is going on here, that the story is being told in a certain way to draw us in and help us to see through the experience of these characters.

The second thing we should be paying attention to is contrast and conflict.

That any good story, it has conflict or contrast.

There's competing themes and things going on that make us wonder what's going to happen.

It makes us wonder what is the truth or what is the lie.

In a similar way, that's what's going on in the story of Daniel.

And in particular, in chapter 2, um, the story is being told in such a way that we're meant to see that given the right situation, our helplessness would be exposed.

That in chapter two, given the right situation here, the helplessness of the wise men of Babylon is so clear.

And the ineffective bluster of King Nebuchadnezzar.

That the story is written to expose the helplessness of the wise men and the ineffective bluster of Nebuchadnezzar.

You notice that there's nothing particularly wise about these wise men in this chapter.

And the repeated list of who they are almost makes it worse.

Nothing enchanting about these guys.

And for the king, he has all the power in the world, but he's behaving like an out-of-control monarch, compensating for this hidden weakness, the nightmares of his own mind.

It's driving him crazy.

Maybe you remember the famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Conscience makes cowards of us all.

Conscience makes cowards of us all.

It's this idea that life and especially our perception of it has the way of bringing us to the end of our rope.

That life has a way of bringing us to the point where we don't have enough, we're not enough, and so we're at wit's end.

That's how we describe it.

You know, life finds a way at times and in seasons to put us beyond our ability.

Seems at times to set us up for failure.

And the big questions in those moments, I think there's two big ones.

What do you do with that situation?

How do you respond in the situation where everything seems out of control?

And then, secondly, is that a flaw or a feature of life?

In other words, does it just happen?

Is it just something you have to deal with?

Or maybe, is God behind those situations for good?

Because in our story, that is the contrast.

That as the tension of the story settles, we come to Daniel, same situation, but Daniel and his friends, they continue to grow in trust of God even in Babylon.

It means that this trusting God's wisdom and might to still be in control, to still work for good, even in Babylon.

And so that's our aim as we continue in the book of Daniel, to continue to trust and to rest in the generosity of God.

And in particular in chapter 2, it's God's wisdom and might, his sovereign control, to rest in his generosity, that he will work things for good.

Remember that the New Testament picks up so many of the themes of Daniel to describe our life that God would see us living in a world that's not quite right, exile.

It's not the world we're meant to be in, fully.

It's also a world that in many ways is against God, like Babylon.

And so this morning, as we go through the story, we're just going to look at this contrast, this tension in two parts.

And so, first, the crushing weight of the unknown and the uncontrolled.

And then, secondly, the generous grace of God's wisdom and might.

And so, first, the crushing weight of the unknown and the uncontrolled.

You know, chapter two, it should start with this picture of security and stability for Nebuchadnezzar.

And so, similar, chapter one starts with him conquering Judah, and what we know from history is actually that that wasn't the only thing he conquered.

At the time, he also conquered Egypt and Assyria.

And so when it came to kind of the known world at the time, the ancient Near East, Nebuchadnezzar was the top of the world.

Next week we'll find that even Daniel he calls him the king of kings.

He is the top.

And so, chapter two, it begins with him reigning in the second year of his reign when everything has settled down.

But follow the camera angle.

What is the story?

It's kind of like in a movie or a show, you're kind of watching a scene, and you get the sense that something's a little bit off.

Something's not quite right, and it turns out you're seeing a dream or a nightmare.

That's what's going on here, that Nebuchadnezzar, he is reigning over the entire known world at the time, except his own mind.

Look down, verse one.

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

His spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him.

See, we're in the realm of nightmares.

Is this real or is it imaginary?

Well, for our characters in the story, it gets very real.

Because from this point on, the initial part of the story of chapter two, it devolves into a crush of uncontrolled crisis.

And so in verse 2, the king he calls in his dream experts, and we get this back and forth.

That the wise men of Babylon, they're happy to interpret the king's dream, but there's one hitch.

Just tell us the dream.

Just tell us the dream.

And what we're meant to know is that this kind of experience of trying to interpret dreams was a common one, and it was a common one for these wise men to be equipped to deal with.

And so actually they have found, um, through archaeology, they have found ancient dream books where they actually go through giving you direction of how to interpret your dreams and figure them out.

It's not too different from what we might experience in our world.

And so the king has had experience with this type of thing.

But with this with this situation, he senses something different.

He doesn't want the usual vague tricks.

He wants to be sure.

It seems like he knows that this dream is from the divine, that he wants proof that these wise men are connected to the divine as well.

And so he comes up with a simple test.

Tell me my dream, unknowable, and you can prove that you can reveal other unknowable things.

You know, a recent Pew Research study says that three in ten Americans participate at least once a year with astrology, tarot reading, palm reading, and fortune telling.

Three in ten generates an estimated$2.3 billion in annual revenue.

That there is a deep desire to know the unknowable, to conquer the uncertain.

And the king is after it.

He wants to be sure.

And as he does that, he spins out of control.

In verse 5, we're invited into the story, he threatens these wise men, and literally the way the Aramaic goes is that he says they will be torn into pieces, limb from limb.

They will become just parts.

And their houses, the word there is actually dunghill, all right?

Your houses will be torred, be um turned into a pile.

And we're meant to start wondering if the king has lost it.

Over-the-top threats aren't becoming of the most powerful man in the world.

But we're meant to be invited into this crushing weight of insecurity that he feels.

And as we know, kind of stuff like this, it runs downhill.

And so his crushing weight turns to crush everyone underneath him.

And in verse 10, we have the wise men of Babylon, they answer with this final helpless acknowledgement.

The Chaldeans, they answer the king and he said, There's not a man on earth who can meet the king's man.

For no great and powerful king has ever asked such a thing.

The thing that the king asks is difficult.

No one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.

So notice the helplessness of the wise men, even under the threat of death.

No one can do it.

It's never been asked.

The thing is difficult, understatement.

No one can show it except the gods.

The gods don't dwell with flesh.

And so by the time we get to the end of this initial scene in verse 12, because of this, the king was angry and very furious, out of control, and he commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.

What good would that do him?

The king of the world, out of control.

A crazy man with his finger on the button.

And I think with the wise men of Babylon, we're we're repeatedly told the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans, we're meant to see the helplessness of them.

Altogether, they have nothing.

And this is the last we hear from them in the story.

You see, it's the crushing weight of the unknown and the uncontrolled.

Despite all the power and knowledge that we can have, there comes a point, situations, and demands where the limits are hit, where we come up short.

And sometimes our nightmares, whether we're asleep or awake, they expose the reality of what we face, the fragility and the insecurity of humanity.

Remember the background of that famous quote from Hamlet.

The lead-up goes like this to sleep, perchance the dream.

Ah, there's the rub.

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, it must give us pause.

There's the respect that makes calamity of so long a life.

For who could bear the whips and squams of time, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we cannot know of.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

It's the darker side, the more ancient understanding of YOLO.

You only live once, but for Shakespeare, he's realizing that the uncertainty of death keeps us on edge in the moment.

The uncertainty of the future, it slips back to infect our present like dreams haunting our sleep.

And so, as something as simple as a recurring dream has threatened to crush the king of the world, he doesn't know what the dream means, but he senses that the future isn't secure.

And so every night he is tormented, waking up in a dead sweat.

That's why he tells these wise men, no, no, you can't stall for time.

You're just gonna wait until times have changed.

What is he afraid of?

My time changes.

He had the entire world at his command, but he could not command his own sleep.

You see the story, it's meant to bring out the uncertainty that would crush all of us.

We can't avoid it, the uncertainty of life and ultimately of death, that despite all our study and understanding, despite our advances in healthcare and in technology, even with worldwide networks of connections, there's still the unknown and the uncontrolled.

Maybe you've heard about Brian Johnson, longevity entrepreneur.

Apparently, he spends two million a year on his own health.

There's a healthcare plan for you.

Well, unfortunately, recently he was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune condition.

He describes it as his stomach eating itself.

Two million a year.

And he can't control his own gut.

You see, and this uncertainty, unknown, it's all around us, and so this is what we face in our financial markets.

That's what we face in our families when we raise children.

It's what we face in our career when so much is out of our control.

Can we be sure of what to do and how it will go?

And so maybe you can relate to the experience of being paralyzed in decision making.

With each choice, we have to feel like our options are dying.

If we make the wrong choice, we'll be left with a plan B type of life, regretting what could have been.

Reinhold Nieber, he's an American theologian from the last century.

He really worked and studied from the 1920s to the 1960s, quite the time of life to live through.

He began really sympathetic to socialism.

But he was increasingly confronted with the consistent brokenness of human nature.

So he ended up towards the end of his career speaking powerfully against communism and liberalism.

He said they were both deep misunderstandings of the limitation of humanity.

And this is what he describes about humanity.

He says the lust for power in man is prompted by a darkly conscious realization of his insecurity.

Man is tempted by the basic insecurity of human existence to make himself doubly secure.

And so he grasps after position.

And fame and wealth and power.

But the more he attains and the higher he climbs, the more basically insecure he feels his position is, for the more terrible his fall could be.

See, there's no rising above it.

There's no rising above it.

King Nebuchadnezzar, king of the world, taken down with basically unknowable dreams.

But notice the contrast in the transition.

This is where we get to in verse 12 everything in chaos.

But the story and the testimony of Daniel is that God has condescended.

He has come down to generously meet us in our need.

And so our second point is the generous grace of God's wisdom and might.

The generous grace of God's wisdom and might.

In contrast to the devolving and violent situation in Babylon, and really that is the typical response to the unknown and the out of control, you know, I think we're fortunate to live at a time and in a place where a lot of the darker parts of humanity are restrained, that so much is secured and in control.

And so we can, in a way, be at our best.

But if you look through human history, if you take away the security that goes around us, humanity devolves into violence and selfishness.

You see, our narrator, he draws our attention to the freedom and the grace experienced by the smallest of the characters in our story.

Remember at this point, Daniel and his friends, they're teenagers, they're probably 14 or 15 years old.

The smallest of those in Babylon.

Verse 13.

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

Swept up.

Swept up into uncontrollable forces all around them.

And here's where Daniel and his friends from chapter one, here they show up again, swept up into the same crisis, but a noticeably different response.

Look, verse 14.

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.

And so in chapter one, Daniel is described as having wisdom and understanding from God.

It's interesting that the wisdom and understanding that made Daniel a wise man is now going to have him in hot water.

And yet, notice that this wisdom is not just a title for him.

It seems to be what's going on with the other wise men.

It's just a title, it's a position they're in.

But for Daniel, it's wisdom as the skill in the art of living.

He knows how to live well in God's world.

And so verse 16, he makes the request, time with the king.

Apparently, he knows what he needs to do.

But notice he doesn't have an answer yet.

He doesn't have an answer yet.

He just knows that this is the action I need to take.

Make the appointment.

You see, it's this quiet confidence of Daniel.

It's the quiet confidence when we have, when we can struggle with God's sovereignty, when we can grow to trust that he's in control, when you've already seen God's favor at work in your life.

I think Daniel, in some ways, is uh pre-shadowing the confidence that Romans talks about all things working together for good.

That Daniel, he seems to know that here.

And so he makes the appointment with the king even before he has the answer.

And then in verse 17, he goes to his house to make the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, his companions.

Notice they're back to their Hebrew names.

These are those who are cared for by Yahweh.

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

You see, the king of the world in chaos, gathering together all the wise men of Babylon.

And here we have a simple prayer in a secret place among a small company of believers.

You see, they're putting into practice a starkly different worldview.

Remember the wise men of Babylon, the gods do not dwell with men.

The unknown is out of reach and out of control.

But for Daniel and his friends, there is a God of heaven who will hear even the prayer of some teenagers far away in Babylon.

And notice how generous it is and how contrasting that is with Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar has all the power to make all the demands, and so when he doesn't get his way, he responds with threats of death.

And God, he gives wisdom to his wise men in response to a humble prayer.

Verse 19.

So simple.

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

The mystery was revealed to Daniel.

And now we come to the central section of today's passage.

It's Daniel's prayer of thanks and blessing.

Another tool of Old Testament narrative is that when things are really ramping up, when something's really important, they break into song.

And so some of you might think that in the Lord of the Rings, the songs are nonsense and a waste of time.

Not the case.

Great literature breaks into song when something important is to be told.

And what is the theme of the song here?

The wisdom and the might of God.

Look down, verse 20.

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

Here's the description.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

He reveals the deep and hidden things.

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

And so Daniel, faced with the same crisis, is driven to praise the God who has it all.

Here's the God who has all the knowledge and the power that Nebuchadnezzar desperately desires, and the wise men hopelessly despair of attaining.

Blessed be him who has it all.

And then notice the generosity of God in verse 23.

You have given.

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

Extraordinary that the same description of God, who in his wisdom and might, he changes the seasons, he raises the kings and lowers them.

The chaos that Daniel is even living through, he says, This is from you.

You are the one who knows the deep things.

You're the one who in darkness can still see light.

And yet, he says, You are the one who has given me wisdom and might.

And so the last section for today, our passage this morning, it really ends with application.

So what this means for life.

And so two main ones.

And so notice Daniel then he goes before the king.

And so the director, if you follow the camera, uh we're meant to go back to the crisis situation.

And so the story, it devolves, crisis leading to destruction, and then we suddenly go into the secret room with Daniel and his friends.

Prayer.

What good is that gonna do?

And then here we are, we're back in the throne room.

Who can come through?

What is Daniel's application for the king?

Did you notice in verse 27?

No wise man, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show the king the mystery that the king has asked.

He's living with the same crushing reality from point one.

The question is, who will hold it?

Who will bear the weight?

And you notice, Daniel, he's clear, it's not him.

That his situational involvement, his self-identity within the crushing weight of insecurity and the unknown is that he will not bear it.

And so, even in verse 30, as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom I have.

And so he doesn't roll up there with his resume.

So application number one is humility before God.

You know, it's noteworthy that Daniel doesn't fall back on his own wisdom.

And I want us to realize how easy that could have been.

How easy it could have been to acknowledge God, but still practically function on his own.

After all, God has made him ten times more wise than these wise men.

He probably does have good ideas and good answers.

How often we're tempted to do that, to acknowledge God and yet practically function on our own, and as if we have to figure it out.

And so, as you come to know me, you might know this about me that I love to analyze decisions, love hate.

And so when I had big decisions to make, whether it's vacation planning or electronics to buy, I'd go deep into spreadsheet analysis, gather the research, waste way too much time making decisions.

You know, it's okay when you're kind of looking for the best Airbnb to stay in, but it's insufficient for the big issues of life.

That there are some issues where WebMD research is not enough.

You see, the wisdom of Daniel, it began with acknowledging the distance between himself and God.

That's what Proverbs says, Proverbs 1-1.

That's what it means, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The way to know how to live well in this world is to acknowledge at the beginning, God, you were up there, and I'm down here.

And so whatever I need to do, it needs to start acknowledging you.

Application number one, even for Nebuchadnezzar.

Application number two, seek God's wisdom.

He wants to give it.

You know, that was our New Testament reading in James chapter one.

He says, If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

It's an extraordinary verse.

Sometimes it's helpful with verses and parts in the Bible to kind of try to put in what you might guess would happen next.

If anything you last wisdom, let him study more.

If any of you last wisdom, let him be embarrassed.

That's what usually happens in life if you don't know the answers.

But in this case, if you any of you last wisdom, let him ask God.

He'll give generously, and then what do they say?

Without reproach.

Why?

Because you might feel reproached.

No, no, if you lack wisdom, ask God.

He gives generously and he doesn't look down on you because of it.

And so here we are, it's the same God in the Old Testament and the same generosity now to Daniel.

And even, here's the surprise, even to Nebuchadnezzar.

You know, take note that the story here is not a response to Nebuchadnezzar's own spiritual investigation.

And so this is not a story about dreams having supernatural meaning.

That's not really the point here.

No, this is a story about God who's giving wisdom to anyone who will humble himself to receive it.

Because notice what Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar, verse 28.

So he said, It's not me, no one can give you this answer.

But in verse 28, there is a God in heaven who reveals mystery and has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the later days.

Your dreams 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 has revealed mysteries has made it known to you what is to be.

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

Before we even hear the details of the dream or the content of the interpretation, the story is inviting us into the truth that there is a God in heaven who holds it all, but who also gives real wisdom in real life to real humans, even to Nebuchadnezzar.

The development of Nebuchadnezzar as a character is one of the great parts of the story of Daniel.

And I think these lessons they come through this morning even more strongly because we haven't yet looked at the exact answer.

It's almost as if at this point it doesn't matter.

You know, Daniel, he does get a specific answer to his crisis and his prayer.

He says, it's not for myself, it's for Nebuchadnezzar.

And so Daniel he praises God, not for the details of the answer, but for the generosity of the God who would give wisdom for this particular situation.

And so as we come to an end, let me just remind us of the goal of the story of Daniel.

It was there at the end of chapter 1, verse 19, that they would stand before the king.

And Daniel would do so all throughout his life of ministry as a prophet.

He would outlive Nebuchadnezzar, he would outlive Darius, he would outlive all the other kings of Babylon, and he would stand in the time where God would redeem Israel and take them back.

It's a contrast.

Could Daniel stand, or would conscience make cowards of us all?

Another tool of Old Testament narrative as we close.

It's development of themes.

You know, Daniel he stands in a long line of godly men and women who trusted themselves to the sovereignty of a good God.

And so one of the blessings of the Old Testament story is that it teaches us in deep theology in robust ways that deal with both the nuance and the complexity of life.

It invites us to trust the deep theology apart from our standing over them in judgment.

And so it's not a propositional statement that you can evaluate, it's a story that you live through.

And so the sovereignty of God is one of those things.

It's hard to discuss, it's hard to just dissect in the study or the classroom, but it is exceptionally comforting and undeniable in the experience of being cared for by God.

That in the times of your life when you need and you have realized that God has been there to care for me, your questions about his sovereignty become less.

Think about the history in the Old Testament.

Remember the story of Joseph.

Once again, a character who was exceptional in hard situations.

A character who was given the interpretation of dreams for a foreign king.

And one who testified to God's ability to sovereignly plan and control all things to bring them to a good end.

Think of how Daniel then gets picked up in the life of Jesus, the one who answers the question of can God dwell with flesh?

Jesus who entrusted himself to a good father who would sovereignly care for all things.

And even if he didn't get the answer to his prayer of taking the cup away, he gave himself into God's hand.

Think of the story of Paul.

He goes through the same thing where his story was an acknowledgement of his humility before God.

And he then invites us into the same type of life.

And so we're going to end with this passage from 1 Corinthians.

It's one that talks about the same type of wisdom that's here in Daniel.

And so Paul, he's writing in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

And he says, Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it's not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.

But we impart a secret and a hidden wisdom from God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory, but as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

And he ends with this.

He says, For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

As in, who can stand over God and question his sovereignty?

And yet, he says, But we have the mind of Christ.

You see, the wisdom of God revealed to us, especially in the Lord Jesus, is one that invites us to find ourselves underneath God's sovereign care and yet wisely understanding what it would look like to live with him.

Another pastor, he gives this analogy, illustration.

He says, Imagine that there was a waiting room when we get to heaven.

You arrive and you're just outside of the full experience.

Enough to see in and to realize that all of God's promises are true.

This isn't how it is, don't worry, there's not a waiting room.

But if there was a room and you had to stand there for a little bit waiting your turn, and you could look in and see what it's going to be like and realize all of that God said is true.

If there was room and reason for regret, I wonder if the biggest regret would be all the times we spent living in this life as if those great promises weren't true, as if they weren't applicable enough.

What a waste it would be.

What a waste, not only in our kind of outward experiences and actions, you know, definitely that, but even more in the inner life of freedom within our minds.

The ways that our conscience, our worries, our insecurities, the unknown weighed us down when in reality there was somebody better, more good, who had it all.

The message for this morning is there is a God who gives generously of his power and might.

And he invites us to find the freedom of living in and under him.

And so let's pray that God will help us to grow in that.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your sovereign control and the reality that you do not lower your character to be with us.

Instead, you would lower your mercy that we could find ourselves under you.

Lord, forgive us for the ways that we would want to make you equal.

Forgive us the ways we'd want to elevate ourselves above, thinking we could be in control better.

We thank you that as we come to know who you truly are, it does not make us less, but it makes us actually more free to live with you and to live in your world.

And so, would you give us the power and might of your wisdom to know how to live well in the world that you placed us in?

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.