The hazard has asked of them a lot of things that consider amongst the wise men of Babylon. The source of navigate, and as a concern, they're just part of the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, the astrologers. The wise men of Babylon. And now the advocate has had a dream, he's gone to the wise men, he says, you need to tell him what the dream means. And they've said, sure, King, tell us what was in the dream will interpret it for you. He says, no, I'm not going to play that game. Not only must you interpret it, you've got to tell him what's in the dream. And they say, nobody can do that. No kings ever asked anything like that of a wise man. And the king says, well, that's what I'm asking of you. And he said, if you don't do it, I'm going to put you all to death and put your families in the streets. So Daniel has been the one who stepped forward and says, give me time. And I will ask the God of Heavens, the one who reveals mysteries. He'll tell you what's in your dream and tell you what it means. That's what's happened. That's the scene. Read with me from Daniel chapter two beginning in verse 31. As Daniel explains the king's dream. You looked, O King, and there before you stood a large statue, an enormous dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold. It's chest and arms are silver. It's belly and thighs of bronze. It's legs of iron, feet, partly of iron and partly baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time. It became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. If the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream and now we will interpret it to the king. You, O King, are the king of kings. The God of Heaven is giving you dominion and power and might and glory. In your hands, he has placed mankind in the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Wherever they live, he has made you rule over them all. You are that head of gold. After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next to third kingdom, one of bronze will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, for iron breaks and smashes everything. And as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron. So this will be a divided kingdom. Yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay. So this kingdom will be partly strong, partly brittle. And just as you saw, the iron mixed with baked clay so that people will be a mixture and will not remain united. Any more than iron mixes with clay. The time of those kings, the God of Heaven, will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. Nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdom and bring them to an end. But it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands. A rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy. Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate for Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel, sure your God is the God of God and the Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries for you were able to reveal this mystery. Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men. Moreover, Daniel's request, the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Embednego, administrators over the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court. Let's pray together. Father, this is your word and your word of bice forever. The grass withers, flower falls, but the word of our God abides forever. We thank you for the truth of your word, even the truth of places like this in Scripture. Daniel's interpretation is prophecy where it's really hard for us, Father, to wrap our brains around the truths of passages like this, to understand what it meant to Daniel, what it meant to Nebuchadnezzar, what it meant in that day and time, what it means to us today. So I ask you now, again, that by your mercy and of your grace, and lighten our minds and empower our wills and activate our hearts, Lord, help us to then move out with our hands and our feet to serve you this day, with this word that we would not only know more about you, but that we'd be more like you, and I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, after a read of passage like that, I just want to say, any questions? Okay, let's go home.
I have a confession. I don't preach the predictive prophecies a lot. You know, the prophets serve basically two functions. One was to predict the future, and that's sort of the flashy dare I say sexy. Can I use that term in church? Sexy parts of the Scripture where they'll predict something that was going to happen some years later, hundreds of years later, thousands of years later. And we say, whoa, look at that. That's incredible. The other part, which is what they did more of, was they called the people of their time. They called God's people to repent of their sins and return to Him. And that's what they did the most of, but these predictive prophecies, these are the ones that the reason I don't like to preach in them much is that they're hard to understand, and they just, in general, a lot of arguments. However, I want you to know, I've read a number of the better commentaries on this passage and I'm going to tell you what the bulk of our reform commentators believe. And the more important, I'm going to tell you what I believe, which is also known as the truth. And so when we're done today, you will understand exactly what this is about. It's one of our distinctives in our form, faith. We preach all the Bible, not just the convenient parts, the parts that we like and the encouraging parts. I like those two, but we preach all of it in the difficult parts. It is difficult to interpret Bible prophecy. We're going to take our best child. This will be a different kind of a sermon than the ones I normally preach. Some of those, that means it'll be good. Well, we'll see. And verses 30, 60, 38, let me just tell you what Daniel sees in the visions. What we believe that he was seeing prophetically, verses 30, 60, 38. That first kingdom that Daniel sees that the head of gold, that's Babylon. That's Babylon. The head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar himself. Daniel tells him that this one's the easy one. Daniel tells him you're that head of gold, King. And his kingdom lasted another 61 years. And so Nebuchadnezzar was pleased to know that his kingdom would outlive him as fast down to a couple of his sons as descendants. But what would come after the kingdom of Babylon, after King Nebuchadnezzar, another kingdom would come and would crush that kingdom. That was the kingdom of Meadow Persia, the Meads and the Persians came and they overran the kingdom of Babylon. And they were ruled by first dearest and then Cyrus. And that kingdom lasted about 200 years. And then immediately following on that, that 13th kingdom, the rebellion, the thighs of bronze. What's Greece? That's Greece. And it was brought together by one Alexander the Great, an amazing, amazing military leader. They still study him today in the military strategy. Alexander the Great, who was able to consolidate all the territories that his father and other Greek military leaders had conquered. He brought them together into one Greek Macedonian empire. And Alexander did all this even though he lived only to the age of 33. Amazing, amazing man. That was in the years 356 to 323, it was when Alexander lived. So you get an idea as we're going forward in history. And then there's that fourth kingdom. The one with the legs of iron and the feet and the toes of clay. What we believe that that is being approximately the Roman Empire that was to come. It was the Empire of iron, their chariots and much of their armor made of iron. And that empire, it's hard to say exactly when it started. The city of Rome was founded at 753 BC by Romulus and Remus. It was founded then and of course it was just the founding of the city on the seven hills. But then it grew over the decades and the centuries after that to become the mightest empire of the world had seen up to that point. And it lasted for hundreds of years up until, again even to say the date of death of the Roman Empire is a little difficult. But in 410 AD, Alleric the Visigoth over ran Rome. That was the end of the splendor of Rome. The empire itself probably rolled over and died its last, read its last in 476 AD. So Daniel is prophetically using the vehicle of the king's dream, telling him and telling us what was to come for the next decades and centuries. These were the great kings and the great empires of the ancient Near East. And I dare say that many of us, maybe most of us, have never even heard of the names. Maybe of the kingdoms themselves and certainly of the empires are empires. The great kingdoms and the ones who led them of their time and most of us barely even know their names if we know them at all. The kingdoms of this world are dedicated to the glory of man and like man they are destined to expire into fate and to obscurity. It's been several years now that movie, Emperor's Club, came out and in that movie Kevin Klein plays an instructor of Western civilization at a very prestigious private school. In the first day of class about 30 high school boys all wearing identical red blazers, identical ties, they settle into a room adorned with maps and busts of Caesar and playtone socrates. And the instructor, Kevin Klein's character. He asked one student to read a plaque above the door. First day of school, first time he has to do things so the student is nervous and he walks over where he can see the plaque, the plaque itself looks like an object of antiquity. And he starts to read it rather uncertainly and this is what he reads. I am Shuttruk Nahuntai, king of Ashan and Susa, sovereign of the land of Elim. By the command of Nshushinak, I destroyed Sipar, took the stele of Nira Sin and brought it back to Elim where I erected it as an offering to my god Nshushinak. Shuttruk Nahuntai, 1158 BC, a teacher that asked the class. Has anyone in here familiar with this fellow? You're allowed to look at your textbooks if they won't help. Shuttruk Nahuntai, king, sovereign of Elim, destroyer of Sipar but behold, his accomplishments cannot be found in any history book. Why? Because great ambition and conquest without contribution are without significance. Great ambition and conquest without contribution are without significance. And then he looks at all the boys in his classroom and he asks the question, what will your contribution be? The kingdoms of this world are dedicated to the glory of man and like man, they're destined to fade into obscurity. The kingdom of God on the other hand is dedicated to the glory of God and like God himself, the kingdom of God is destined to last into eternity. Now you notice I left off that last kingdom. Daniel mentions it in verses 34 and 35 and he comes back to it in verses 44 and 45. Please remember Daniel didn't speak in chapters and verses, those are there for our convenience. This is one long interpretation on Daniel's part. But in our verses 34 or 35, 44 and 45, Daniel talks that fifth and that ultimate kingdom while you were looking, King Nebuchadnezzar, you saw and there was a rock cut out but not my human hands and this rock it struck the feet of that great statue that you saw with the feet of Iron and Clay. It struck the feet of that statue and crushed and toppled that whole statue and broke it to pieces until it was like chaff on a threshing floor that the summer wind blows away great imagery on Daniel's part. Blows away and doesn't even leave a trace but the rock that struck the statue. The one that was cut with that human hands, that rock became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. I don't know if that rings a bell with you about anything else you've ever read in the Bible. But when I read that, I think of a parable, it's a very short parable. Jesus told we have a Matthew chapter 13 but it's a very profound one. This is Jesus talking. He says Matthew 13 verses 31 and 32. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds yet when it grows it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and perch and it's branches. The kingdom of God Jesus said it starts out small it starts out tiny then it grows become the biggest plant. All the birds can come and rest in his branches. What was he talking about? You know the people around him had to be saying, was that me? We know now. Christianity, Christendom started as a tiny little sect of Judaism with one rather eccentric, wandering rabbi. Who do you have a home? And 12, let's just say an eclectic group of followers, Ragtag, not much account, following him around. At the end of three years he had 11. One of them turned trader and betrayed him from that humble beginning. In the first decades of what we call the era AD, Christianity took root and exploded throughout their own empire. Until today, today is now the largest and the biggest and the baddest. You'll let me say that. You're going to go home today and say that preacher used the word sexy and baddest in one certain. I don't know. That's right. The biggest and the baddest of kingdom of all. How can I say that about Christendom then feel like that does, especially in our culture? Shouldn't feel like Christianity is the big boy on the block. Let me remind you some things that I've told you before, but some of you weren't here at the time. Others of you were asleep, some of you were forgotten. Some of you just remind you of some realities that you need to keep in mind. What we hear in the news daily makes us think that what we Christians, we're this tiny little powerless minority and we're just getting beaten on all the time. Here's the reality of it. Christianity today right now is the largest faith the world has ever seen. Now I'm talking in broad terms, but around the globe estimates vary. I'm giving you pretty conservative middle of the road estimates on this, plus it comes from me saying it's true. That around the globe, 2.2 billion, that's with a B. 2.2 billion people profess to be Christians. Are they all Christians? God knows I don't. But 2.2 billion people check the box on piece of paper that says Christian. So I just faith the world has ever seen is growing more rapidly than it ever has around the globe. Estimus vary again, but approximately 1.1.2 billion with a B. People profess to be Muslims. That's the second largest faith on the planet. And it's not growing anywhere near as fast as Christianity is by what you hear. 2.2 billion people named the name of Christ. 2.1.2 billion people profess not to follow Muhammad, but to follow Koran. Behind that is Hinduism with 950 million. And then it follows down from there. Christianity is the largest faith the world has ever seen. It's growing faster than it ever has. You see, a boy didn't feel like it. Around the globe, it is. In fact, there are only two continents where Christianity is showing no measurable growth at all. One is Europe, the other is North America. But if you go around the globe, whether it's big or small, Christianity is growing in other places. Sometimes incrementally, sometimes by leaps and bounds. Christianity. And you also hear Al-Ned, well, it's organized religion as the source of all the troubles in the world today. It's the source of all repression and tyranny. If we didn't have organized religions, everything would be groovy. As John Lennon said, and he also said groovy in his sermon today, please forgive me. As John Lennon said, imagine there is no heaven and just be great. Let me just give you the reality of that. People who say that are either lying or they're ignorant, neither one of which is good. You think religious source of repression and tyranny try atheism? Here's reality. The 20th century alone, approximately 100 million people were exterminated by atheistic regimes. Perhaps you know the names of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and numerous other smaller tyrants and monsters. Those three alone were responsible for this, approximately 100 million people in the last century alone. Does organized religion do some horrible things? Yes, and today especially organized Islam. Quick, name the names of the last five Christian terrorists you can think of. Organized Christianity has done some horrible things. We must own up to it. We must own the Crusades and the Inquisitions. We did it. Or these people professing the name of Christ, I question that strongly. But if anybody wants to draw moral equivalence between, first of all, organized religion versus atheism, please. You're showing your ignorance. Or people who draw moral equivalence from Christianity and other religions. Don't embarrass yourself. Truth is that Christianity, wherever he's gone, wherever there is tyranny and oppression, the seeds of the gospel or some, may I give you a quick history lesson? It was Christians. It was Christianity to put an end to this organized slavery in the Western world. It was Christians, you know other names, or at least some of them, you know, John Newton, John Wesley, William Penn and William Wilberforce. Wilberforce more than anyone else who labored tirelessly for over 30 years to see an end to slavery in the British Empire. It was Christians here in this country who led the abolitionist movement to put an end to slavery. Did you know that slave owners in the colonial times of the United States, well, before the United States, the colonial times of America, yes, slave owners forbade anyone to teach their slaves to read, you know why? Because they knew if they could read, they'd read the Bible. And they knew if they could read the Bible, it was the end of slavery because they'd get to that very first chapter of Genesis and realize that all men are created in the image of God. No man should own another subject of slavery. It was Christians that wrote the words that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Did they live out? Those words very faithfully, some of them did, many of them did not. But that, Christianity is a soil in which those seas were planted. Christianity is science. We hear a lot about how science and Christianity are at war with one another. Modern sciences, we know what they grew out of the soil of Christianity. It was Christians who said, you know, if there's an orderly universe and a moral law giver, then we ought to be able to find the natural laws that that law giver gave. And then he set the universe up to work in an orderly fashion. We ought to be able to discover what those laws are. There's Christians who look through their rudimentary telescopes and their microscopes, and they begin to discover the laws in the universe, Newton and Kepler and so many others. There's Christians who gave, it is not an accident that what we call modern science, arose in northern and western Europe and in the new world, which were heavily influenced by the gospel of Christ. Christianity and education, you do know, I think, that all the Ivy League schools, every single one of them, the earliest institutions of higher learning in this country, every single one of them was planted, was chartered by Christians to be ministerial training schools. Every single one of Harvard, Niel and Princeton and all the rest, was founded originally to train ministers of gospel. That's what they were there for. It's Christianity that led to the civil rights movement in this country. It was Christians who led the fight for women's rights, who enacted the child labor laws, who led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, the Reverend Dr. King, who led the civil rights movement of the 50s and the 60s. This Christians, they lead the right to life movement for the pre-born, for the elderly, for the handicapped and the infirm. In every arena, Christians have led because we've taken seriously that all men are created equal. All men are made in the image of God. And we've taken seriously as our responsibility to advance the God's kingdom in the kingdoms of this world. Have we done it perfectly? Of course not. Are we sinners? Absolutely. We've done things that we ought to be embarrassed about. Things ought to make us cringe, but we acknowledge those things. We confess them as sins, we lay them at the foot of the cross and we say, we'll really help us by your grace. We'll do a better job next time. Some of you will know that old camp song, I've got a river of life flowing out of me, makes the lane to walk and the bind to sea, opens the prison door, sets the camp dish free. I've got a river of life flowing out of me. Doug, we need to get that one in the rotation. You'll have to learn to clap on rhythm when we do that, but we need to get that in the rotation. A river of life flowing out of us, it does make the lane to walk, the bind to sea. It opens the prison doors, sets the camp dish free, and one day, one day, that river of life will see to it that the chains to our cells are destroyed forever. The cells themselves are crushed and the jailer, that jailer, he's exterminated finally one day, and we'll all say along with Dr. King, free it last, free it last, they got a mighty, I'm free it last. Now, it's got providence that I'm talking about this today. You may be aware, I don't know, it hasn't gotten a whole lot of media time or airplay, but we have an election coming up week from Tuesday. Have you heard about that? I haven't talked much about it on TV or on the radio or on the internet. Should we as Christians just work on the Kingdom of God and focus on our spiritual responsibilities, our church involvement, and just let the rest of the world just let it go, and let other people take care of that. Is that the message here? Look who's talking in this passage, folks. Daniel, who is a man of God, one of God's choice servants, in service to a pagan king and a pagan kingdom, and he doesn't run to his corner and say, I'll just stay out of it. No, he gets to the pagan king and he steps up and he says, I'll interpret your dream because there's a God in heaven who does these things. And Daniel's up to his elbows, up to his earlobes involved in the political and civic life of the Kingdom of Babylon, the pagan kingdom of Babylon. For the application impaired, of course, Christians ought to be involved in the civil and political life of this country. And if you don't vote, I pray the plague falls upon you. I pray that you get boils and hives and your hair falls out. And then I hope worst things happen to you. I heard a caller last week through a radio talk show. The caller was a mom. She called in and a very impassioned voice. She said, I want to tell you something. My son's a Marine. He's 18 years old. He's going to be deployed to Afghanistan before long. But he drove home 10 hours so he could vote and early voting. And he drove back to his base where he will soon be deployed to Afghanistan. And he will put his life on the line. He'll write a blank check and give it to the United States of Americans. He can cash this up to and including my life. That's what he's doing. So we have the right to vote. And she said and she could barely talk. She said, I don't want to hear anybody getting excused why you can't vote. Look what my son's doing so you'll have that right. I can't tell you how to vote. I could but it's not my place. The folks if you don't at least get out. At least vote on next Tuesday. Shame on you. And I mean shame on you. Daniel doesn't shrink from his civic responsibility. He doesn't run for this pagan king. And it's going to get worse. I'll give you a hint. It's going to get worse for Daniel, Shadrach, Meeshaq, and I'm betting to go in right away. They didn't run. They stepped up. They said whatever you need us to do, Lord God Almighty will do it. Daniel and the others are models of God's choice servants who also play a key role in the civil and political life of a pagan nation and his pagan king. Well there's a lot more I could say about this. I'd love to say more stories from church history and even American history of God's people. But for time's sake, I'll just say this. I've talked about the elections coming up. In fact that you all ought to be voting and you should. But never ever lose sight of this. Politics, political power, civic life. They're not the end goal. They're not the end game. I know people just don't understand when the church and organizations like Promise Keeper rise up and they wonder what are they really after? What are they really after? Now I think it's politics. It's not politics. We have responsibility to be involved with that, to at least vote as citizens of a nation when we get to vote. That's not the end game. And when the church thinks it is, when we forget that the end game is really the kingdom of God and his rule and his reign, when we forget that, when we act just like other political action committees, then we become just like them. When we lose all credibility, when we lose all influence in this world. Remember folks, we have to say with Paul and Silas, there is another king, one Jesus, and it's him to whom we submit. To whom we bountiful. If you hear this morning, listen to me talk about this stuff. You never hear anything quite like this before. I'm taking biblical truth, and I'm applying it to our culture. That's the preacher's job. Let me just say again, it's such a privilege to be your pastor. It really is. But for you all, I'd be out there on USN, one with a big sign that said, we'll preach for food. Thank you for giving me a place to be, and to be your pastor. It's a privilege, it's a great privilege. One of the things I'm supposed to do is take biblical truth and apply it to our lives. Sometimes in ways that comfort, they afflicted, and sometimes ways that afflict the comfortable. I may be doing both this morning. But we must never forget that our primary allegiance is not to a political party or a candidate. Our repassionate, we might be about it. Our primary allegiance is to King Jesus, to his kingdom, which will never fail. We'll never falter, and we'll be here when all the death settles. If you've never heard this before, and you've never received King Jesus as your Lord in sovereign today's the day, folks. Today's the day. It's past week. I help conduct a memorial service for a dear friend of mine who died of cancer, much too young. And I'm so well aware of the sudden death in Gorman's family and Janet's family. As young as 18. Well, you're trying to scare us. No, I'm just trying to tell you the reality. Nobody's guaranteed tomorrow. Do business with King Jesus, and do it today. You'll find he's the greatest and the kindest sovereign you could ever, to whom you could buy any. We must never forget. The church is not to be the master of the state. The church is not to be the servant of the state. When we go to those two extremes, we lose all credibility. Now, the church is to be the conscience of the state. And we as Christians must hold the state accountable to act in moral ways. Now, Calvin said, so you know it's true, that the government is under a covenantal obligation to behave and covenently faithful managed before God. And when it does not, it can and must be removed. Calvin's another great model. Calvin was never even a citizen of the city of Geneva, where he passed her for so many years and so effectively. He was never even a citizen, exercised a great influence over the city of Geneva, over the government, over the political and the social life of Geneva, and through his involvement in Geneva, John Calvin has exercised a great influence, not just in the Protestant Reformation, but actually in this country itself. So much of what we hold to be true today was articulated best by John Calvin. We owe him a great debt of gratitude. Let me just remind you again. The kingdoms of this world are dedicated to the glory of man, their destined to fade away into obscurity. The kingdom of God is dedicated to the glory of God. And like God, it's destined to last into eternity. Daniel saw the day that the rule of God would sweep away all the other kingdoms. We need to see that day coming to work for that day until the day that God calls time out. It's seen with handle that the kingdoms of this world, the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ, and of his Christ. Doug would just crank up the handle. Hallelujah, of course. This morning, no problem. No rehearsal needed. As I was saying to the kids earlier today, we need to remember we serve another kind of king. When he came, he didn't have the crown jewels, but the crown of thorns. His throne was a cross, and his ascension ceremony took place outside Jerusalem in 133 AD. Paul had managed this, that our attitude should be very same, as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature, God did not regard a quality of God as something to be grasped, but he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a bond servant, humbled himself, even unto death, death on a cross. And therefore, God exalted him to the highest place, and gave him the name that was above all names. Every king, and every sovereign, and every dictator, and every emperor who ever lived, pale in insignificance to the name of Christ, that exalted above all names, that the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess on earth, and under the earth, every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of the glory of God, our Father. Let's pray together. Father, we're grateful for your servant, Daniel, that he was able to see with great clarity because you had given him that gift, and given him that insight, that ability. He was able to see with great clarity and explain to King Nebuchadnezzar also for us. The Kingdoms of this world is great in mind as they are. The Kingdoms of this world is lofty and exalted as they may be, or they may think they are. They are all destined to fade away. One king, one king, is destined to last forever. King Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen. I thank you again for the privilege of being your pastor and I ask you now to receive the Lord's benediction. Go now on the love of God the Father, the grace and the mercy of God the Son, the fellowship and companionship of God the Holy Spirit, and live the life, Amen.