According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Cataloging the things we're not to do to discover what's ahead. Here's Pastor Damian Kyle.

Damian Kyle: So of course as Christians we don't take any part in any of those means of seances or horoscopes or palm reading or any of this kind of stuff for knowing the future and knowing anything about our lives. I mean what a folly it would be for any Christian to be engaged in that kind of stuff when we have the Bible and the Holy Spirit as a source for our wisdom and for what we need to know and anything that is troubling us in life.

Guest (Male): As Christians we face the same troubles as the rest of the world. And when we do, we can be tempted to employ the same remedies. Things that are expressly prohibited by the scriptures. So, how do we face that temptation and not compromise?

Join us, won't you? For "According to the Scriptures" and find out through our study of Daniel Chapter 2. We'll learn from Daniel's inspired example of turning to the Lord and maintaining his witness in an extremely difficult environment. But before we get there, Pastor Damian Kyle begins with some review and background.

Damian Kyle: Studying Chapter 1 of the book of Daniel, we really are provided with an invaluable look at Daniel, his character, his relationship with God, and a chapter that is really autobiographical. We get to know a little bit about the man even though he was very much a young man and we'll see glimpses of his life throughout the 12 chapters, but that is firmly put into place.

And then in chapters 2 through 12 to the end of the book, we really now in earnest begin to study him as he operates in his calling of God upon his life as a servant of the Lord and as one who reveals mysteries on behalf of God in that context of Babylon and as kind of a right-hand man to Nebuchadnezzar.

Remembering that Daniel did receive, as we saw in verse 17 of Chapter 1, that God gave him extraordinary gifting along with his other three Jewish brethren, but he was given kind of a special supernatural understanding of all visions and dreams. And so it begins in what is going to be the 70 plus years of his life in that capacity for God in Babylon and really into the Medo-Persian empire as well.

Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. And you see that word dreams is plural. He is having dreams only plural in the sense that he is having the same dream over and over again. It is a single dream that he seems to be having night after night and he can't shake it. And the dream is having such a tremendous impact upon him.

He has a sense that there is significance to it beyond our nonsensical dreams that we all have of bears chasing us through the woods or whatever your nightmare might be. But he had these dreams and his response to the dreams, this dream repeated over and over again, was his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him.

So this dream is leaving him unable to sleep related to his curiosity to know what in the world it means. And I don't know if you've ever had a dream that you've lost sleep over. Usually we wake up and they're again they're silly things and we go on about our business. But here he has a sense that this is something that's significant.

And so being the king he then gave the command to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. And so it isn't unlikely that he calls them in the middle of the night. Could have been two or three in the morning, midnight after he's dreamed the dream now however many times.

And now he calls for all of these men that constituted the wise men of Babylon. And after all this is what he kept them on salary for, kept them fed, kept them clothed, kept them on staff for this very purpose that they would be able to solve these kind of things for him. And so they were kind of the source of wisdom for Nebuchadnezzar.

The magicians were each one of them has their own kind of category in all of this. Magicians were kind of students of all of these vast volumes that were written in those days—they exist today as well—of the kind of spells and the kind of supernatural phenomenon that would occur. And then you would look at that phenomenon, you would go to these volumes and then look up that phenomenon and then find out what is the significance of it, what is it communicating. And the magicians were kind of in that category of understanding that.

The astrologers were those who look to the stars to try and tell the future. It speaks of the sorcerers here. These were people who were actually casting spells and incantations upon people. And then the Chaldeans were the people that came from a certain region of the Babylonian empire who were renowned for their wisdom.

So he calls all of them, all hands on deck. He finally wants to know once and for all what is it that this dream, the significance of this dream. Well, listen, if that's the source of your wisdom—magicians, sorcerers, the Chaldeans and the astrologers—then it reveals to us about Babylon what we ought to know about Babylon and it was a highly, highly demonic place.

And so of course as Christians we don't take any part in any of those means of seances or horoscopes or palm reading or any of this kind of stuff for knowing the future and knowing anything about our lives. I mean what a folly it would be for any Christian to be engaged in that kind of stuff when we have the Bible and the Holy Spirit as a source for our wisdom and for what we need to know and anything that is troubling us in life.

So he calls all of them together and then he communicates to them in verse 3 and he says "I have had a dream and my spirit is anxious to know the dream." Their response to him is as you might expect. The Chaldeans they spoke to the king in Aramaic on behalf of all of the wise men for sure, "Oh King, live forever." This is how you talk to kings in those days or probably in any day, certainly a king as temperamental as Nebuchadnezzar was.

So "live forever and tell your servants the dream and we will give the interpretation." All right, got a dream that's troubling you, tell us the dream and we will be happy to give you that interpretation. So again they're going to fall back on all of these volumes. Nebuchadnezzar would have a dream, let's just say this silly thing that I brought up of a bear chasing him through the woods.

And so they would look in the books and a bear would represent one thing and the woods would represent something else and then they would cobble together some kind of an explanation for the dream. And how could anybody know whether it was nonsense that they were feeding to the king? Something that they had just kind of made up. And so "you tell us the dream, we know where to go from there, but we do need that dream and then we'll give you that interpretation."

The king answered and he said to the Chaldeans, again who were representing the whole of the wise men, he said "my decision is firm. If you do not make known the dream to me number one and then number two and its interpretation, you will be cut in pieces and your houses shall be made an ash heap."

Now I don't know if you've had a year-end review at the job that you hold, but this is again tough to work for a guy like this. But he tells them, he pushes back on them and he says "no, I'm not going to give you the dream and you give me the interpretation. I want you to give me the interpretation and the dream" and we'll see in a moment so that he can know that they're not making something up on this.

And then he threatens to cut them up, hack them up in pieces and make their house a dunghill, their yard and everything they own a garbage dump. Now this isn't an idle threat for Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians and the Assyrians in the ancient world were known for just simply hacking their enemies to pieces in just bloodlust.

Sorry if you're Assyrian or Babylonian. We have no guilty blood among the Scots in human history so we rise above all of that. No, the fact of the matter is is it's everywhere and in every lineage so we're not picking on you at all. But nations and peoples who have been at the head of power in human history, world ruling empires at one time or another, the worst tended to come out of them in those periods and it was no different for the Babylonians and then the Assyrians.

You might remember that when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah for the third and final time, the King of Judah during that conquest was a man by the name of Zedekiah. And you remember when Nebuchadnezzar caught Zedekiah as he was trying to flee from the city and his family, Zedekiah was brought before Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar commanded that his sons be slain before his very eyes and then commanded that his eyes would be gouged out right on the spot. So the final image in his mind that had ever been produced by his eyes would be the death of his children before him for his own sin. But this was the kind of ruthlessness that Nebuchadnezzar had. And so they knew this is not an idle threat.

And he said, "however if you can tell the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts, rewards, and great honor." So he's even-handed. You fail to do it, I'll do this and if you do do it, then give me the dream and the interpretation, I will reward you richly. So he's got both—puts the stick out first and then the carrot after that.

He's playing—sometimes you'll watch maybe a TV show and you've got the good cop bad cop, but it's usually two people playing good cop bad cop. He's playing good cop bad cop all by himself here. This is what happens, they come and play hardball and then showing a little bit of grace. And he said, "therefore," he reiterates his demand there at the end of verse 6, "therefore tell me the dream and its interpretation."

They push back again and they answered again and said "let the king tell his servants the dream and we will give its interpretation." So they're trying to bring him to be reasonable on all of this and he doesn't have to be reasonable, doesn't feel compelled to be at all.

And so the king answered and he said, "I know for certain that you're just stalling for time because you see that my decision is firm. You know that I want both the dream and the interpretation. Now you're trying to buy time to change my mind. I'm not going to change my mind. If you do not make known the dream to me, there is only one decree for you, for you have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the time has changed. Therefore tell me the dream and I shall know that you can give me its interpretation."

Well, he's not a stupid man. So he looks at them and number one he doesn't trust them. He accuses them of buying time to lie to him. And he declares to them that the only way he can be confident that they are giving him the proper interpretation of the dream is if they also tell him what the dream was without knowing it.

And of course that's very smart on his part. Why would he trust them for the interpretation if they couldn't supply the dream to him to begin with? And so he draws the line here. He tells them that this is exactly what he wants.

And the Chaldeans they answered the king and they said, "There is not a man on earth who can tell the king's matter. Therefore, you're asking something that nobody can ask of a mere man. And for that reason no king or lord or ruler has ever asked such a thing of any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean.

Nebuchadnezzar, the fault is not on our part in a failure to produce both the dream and the interpretation. It is on your part, your expectation is completely unreasonable in what you're asking for here." And so they protested again. "It is a difficult thing that the king requests and there is no one who can tell it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh."

That's something that only the gods can reveal, not mere men and we have no control over the gods, is what they're communicating. And Nebuchadnezzar's reaction to this was not very favorable for them. "For this reason," in light of the excuses being given, the complaints, "the king was angry and very furious."

We'll see in Chapter 3 that Nebuchadnezzar has a temper problem, has an anger problem, but who's going to tell him about it? So it just keeps exploding forward. He was angry, very furious, and he gave the command to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. And so the decree went out and they began killing the wise men and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them as well.

So Daniel and his companions are not present at this meeting, but Nebuchadnezzar's decree to literally wipe out the source of his wisdom and start all over again with a new group included not only those who were present with him that had come before him, but all of the wise men of which Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, they were all a part of that group.

They were probably involved in other business related to the ruling in their areas of responsibility related to Babylon and hadn't been called in. I think it isn't unlikely that remember that when they were brought before the king in Chapter 1 and they excelled all of their contemporaries, all of the other slaves that had been brought from Judah and other parts of the world and then trained for the three years in the education of Babylon, that they excelled all of the people in that category.

But it doesn't mean that they then graduated into the settled and established ranks of these wise men and were immediately recognized as something significant. They will be by the end of this chapter, but that hadn't happened yet. And so they weren't called in by those that had more time and title, greater seniority in this category, so they weren't present. But they were put on the list in order for them to be slain. And so the decree went out, the slaying began. So apparently Nebuchadnezzar is very serious about finding out what this dream means. I mean it's really bothering him.

So then with counsel and wisdom, Daniel becomes aware of the fact that this decree has been given and with the kind of poise and tact that is going to represent him here in his youth, but will represent him all of his life, he comes to Arioch who is the captain of the king's guard who had been assigned the responsibility of killing all of the king's wise men.

With counsel and wisdom, Daniel answered him and asked him, "Why is the decree of the king so urgent?" Daniel doesn't question though it certainly didn't sit well with him, but he didn't question the fact that the king was capable of slaughtering his wise men because of their failure to meet this expectation in his life.

The question that Daniel asks of him is "What's the hurry? Why does this have to happen so quickly?" and probably in Daniel's mind is "Why did the decree go out to kill all of the wise men when all of the wise men including Daniel and his friends had not been pulled in for an opportunity to provide the knowledge of the dream and then the interpretation?"

And then Arioch made the decision known to Daniel and so he supplied all of the events that happened there in the king's quarters and everything that came down. And so Daniel he asks for evidently permission to be brought before the king in order to ask for more time that he might be able to seek God for the dream and the interpretation.

Again we see the winsomeness of Daniel's godly character that has really bought him kind of gracious margins among a pretty ruthless group of people as leaders. Arioch when he's approached by Daniel, his orders were to kill Daniel and the others, but he doesn't. And here Daniel even gains an audience with King Nebuchadnezzar after the decree had been given out.

So Daniel even at a young age is held in high esteem among the Babylonian officials. And so verse 16 Daniel went in, he asked the king simply to give him some time. He doesn't try like the others did to undo his thinking, he doesn't try to get him to lessen his demand to know both the dream and the interpretation, that's not what he asked for, he just asked for a little bit more time that he might tell the king the interpretation.

Obviously he is given that time and then Daniel made a beeline evidently to his house and he made all of these events known to Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, his companions. Now it's interesting that the three are mentioned here in their Hebrew names, not by their Babylonian names of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.

Because Daniel's going to pull them into their capacity which is not going to be the capacity of representing the Kingdom of Babylon, but in the capacity of seeking the face of God, the only one, the God of the Bible who could supply Nebuchadnezzar's demand.

And he informs them and he doesn't merely inform them. You notice that first word of verse 18, "that", that's a reason word. He tells them, brings them up to speed on everything in order that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven concerning the secret, these two things so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

So he tells them this and he says "I'm telling you what's going on here for the purpose of prayer." So that we can now seek God not on the basis of our own righteousness or we're better than all of the other wise men or better than all of the pagan worshippers in Babylon despite the fact that they were better than all of them by virtue of their relationship with God and how they conducted themselves.

But no one approaches the throne of God on the basis of anything other than God's mercy and his grace, especially when we're seeking him for something where our very lives hang in the balance. We're going to say "God would you please get me out of this terrible situation because I'm reading through the Bible in a year." And no, it is a call "Lord just on the basis of your grace and your mercy would you please reveal these things to us?"

So we'll see the first thing—Daniel's first instinct and reaction spiritually is to go to prayer. And we'll see this continually through the book. I don't think anybody knows anything about Daniel except to realize that he was a man of prayer and so they then go to prayer.

When it declares there at the end of verse 18 "so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon," I don't think that they went to God and they were pleading "God would you please tell us the dream, would you please tell us the interpretation or we're going to die!"

That would be me but it wasn't Daniel and the other three. I think the concern that they had because in the very next chapter Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are going to be thrown into a burning furnace and they will not bow down to the idol, they just simply will not do it. So I don't think at the forefront of any of their thinking is that somehow their life will be spared in this incident.

I think their concern is that they would not be slain and destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon and slain in such a way—their concern I think was for the glory of God here. Again they didn't mind dying at all, but they didn't want to then die with all of these other wise men and then their God be viewed as powerless or useless in the face of this demand as all of the false gods and idols of Babylon. Their concern was for the glory of God in all of this and so they go to prayer.

Guest (Male): Pastor Damian Kyle describing the motivation for prayer and that is the glory of God. We'll look at God's answer to their prayer next time on "According to the Scriptures".

Our phone number where you can order this series on CD is 209-545-5530. Again, we can be reached at 209-545-5530. By the way you can also find our studies in Daniel on our website at accordingtothescriptures.com as well as oneplace.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Well there's much more to come in Daniel. Don't miss a moment of the journey. Here on "According to the Scriptures" with Damian Kyle. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Modesto.