So as the kids head down, we're going to read scripture together from the Old Testament, Daniel chapter 2.
! So Chris, our minister in training, is going to come and read scripture for us, and let's read God's word together.
Thanks, Corey.
So we're going to read Daniel in chapter 2.
We're going to read through the chapter, various verses, and I'll try to let you know where we are as we go.
This is God's word.
In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams.
His spirit was troubled, and his sleep left them.
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 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 the dream, and we will show its interpretation.
And the king answered and said,
I know with certainty that you're 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've 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's not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand.
For no king, no great or powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.
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.
Because of this, the king was angry and very furious,
and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.
Then we're going to verse number 17.
Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions,
and 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 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 forever and ever, to whom belong 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 it is to dwell in dark.
He knows what is in the darkness.
And the light dwells with him.
To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise,
for you've given me wisdom and might,
and have now made known to me what we ask of you,
for you have made known to us the king's matter.
And to verse 31.
You saw, O king, and behold a great image.
This image mighty and of exceeding brightness stood before you,
and its appearance was frightening.
The head of his image was of fine gold,
its chest and arms of silver,
its middle and thigh of bronze,
its legs of iron,
its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
As you looked, a stone was cut by no human hand
and 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 floors.
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 filled the whole earth.
And finally, verse 44.
And in those days,
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 with 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 known to the king
what shall be after this.
The dream is certain
and its interpretation is sure.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face
and paid homage to Daniel
and commanded that an offering,
an incense be offered up to him.
The king answered and said to Daniel,
Truly, your God is God of gods,
the Lord of kings,
and a revealer of mysteries,
for you have been able to reveal this mystery.
Amen.
This is God's holy word.
Thanks, Chris.
Let's pray.
Lord, we ask now that as we look at this text together
that you would help us to hear and understand
and that our hearts would be open.
So we ask for the presence of your Holy Spirit,
and we pray that in Jesus' name.
Amen.
We're working our way through the book of Daniel
on Sunday mornings,
and in the year 605 B.C.,
King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
went to Jerusalem,
and he sacked Jerusalem,
but he didn't destroy it with violence.
Instead, he wanted to destroy God's people in Jerusalem
by assimilating them,
assimilation,
annihilation by assimilation.
He wanted to Babylonize the world
and create a great empire
where his name would be renowned in all the world.
And so what he did was he took the professional class
from Jerusalem to Babylon.
So these are the people with the most skills,
the smartest people in the city of Jerusalem,
to help build Babylon into this even better empire
and city than it was.
And he wanted to really turn the whole world into Babylon.
God's people here in this book are in exile,
exile.
And exile simply means any time where the people of the Lord,
the people who follow God,
are not in the place they're supposed to be.
They're not in the garden city of God ultimately.
They're not in the city of God.
And throughout the Bible,
Babylon and exile become metaphors,
symbols of the reality that the Bible says
every single Christian,
every single person who follows the Lord
is also living a life of exile,
a life of pilgrimage,
a waiting for the city of God.
So St. Augustine said
that every single Christian
is a citizen of the city of God
living in the cities of men.
And at the heart of the city of man,
which is at the heart of Babylon,
is the problem of idolatry.
Babylon is not only a living reality
of putting an idol at the center of life,
but it's a symbol in the rest of the Bible for that.
And it tells us that
what's at the heart of Babylon
is also in every human heart
that we all struggle with the same things.
No matter what you come and believe today,
no matter your spiritual background or not,
we all struggle with what the Bible calls idolatry.
And idolatry is anytime we take something in this life
that's creaturely, that God made,
and we divinize that thing.
We turn anything in this world
into a little God for us.
So idolatry is when something absorbs your heart
more than God does.
Something takes over your imagination
far more than God does.
It's when you seek something
and you give it all your attention
and you center your life around it
and you make it far more important to you
than the God who made you.
And so while the Bible says
believers are living in exile
because we're in a city of idols,
a city that we do indeed love,
but a city full of idols
and our hearts are struggling with idolatry,
there's a sense in which
it doesn't really matter the background
you came from today,
you come from today.
We all struggle with exile
because exile is just being away
from where God made us to be.
And that's in his presence,
making him the center of our lives.
And so Babylon's in all of us.
It's a space that we're all living in.
It's just any time that we turn anything in this world
into a little God
and we worship it
and we center our lives around it.
We take good things that God gave us
and we turn them into bad things.
That's idolatry.
And that's at the center of Babylonian life.
Now, the book of Daniel is wisdom literature.
And I mentioned this in week one,
but in the original Hebrew Bible,
the Old Testament,
the order of the books
is slightly different than the order
we have in our English Bibles.
And originally the book of Daniel
was part of the wisdom text
like Psalms and Proverbs and Esther
and books like that.
And so this is a book about wisdom.
And it's really asking the question today,
how do you live as a believer
with faith and hope and wisdom
in an age of exile in Babylon?
How do you live as a human being
in a situation where we have Babylonian hearts
prone towards idols?
That's the wisdom question
around the book of Daniel.
And week one, week two,
I can say it in one sentence.
I won't repeat the sermons.
Don't worry.
Week one and week two,
what do we say?
The first two principles we learn
is that the book of Daniel
in chapter one says,
the call of the believer
is to be in the world,
never separate,
to love Babylon,
to give your life to her,
to seek the peace of the city,
to pray for Babylon,
Jeremiah 29,
to never back away
from being a part of the culture
that God's put us in,
and yet not of Babylon.
Be in the world,
but not of it.
Seek the peace of the city,
love her,
and don't ever give your heart to idols.
So starve your idols to death,
fast from them.
That's the first two principles today.
We get the third principle.
It's very simple.
I fear that if I say it right now,
then you'll think
I don't need to listen
to the rest of this,
but I'm going to say it,
and hopefully you still will.
And it's so simple,
but remember,
Daniel's a wisdom book,
and it comes after the book of Proverbs
in the original order.
And the principle today
that we learn from Daniel 2
is get wisdom.
To live well in Babylon,
in exile,
you need wisdom.
And that's really the big idea here.
So let's look at that.
We're going to see that through,
briefly through the lens of
the man of Babylon,
the dream,
and the stone.
So first,
the man of Babylon.
Daniel 1,
maybe you know today
that the Bible,
the Old Testament,
is written in Hebrew,
the New Testament,
in Greek.
But there's a moment
in the Old Testament,
and here we are,
where Daniel 1
is written in Hebrew,
but Daniel 2 to 7
is written in Aramaic.
There's a third language.
And Daniel chapters 8 to 12
is in Hebrew.
So it goes Hebrew,
Aramaic, Hebrew.
So that means we've entered
into this own stand-alone section,
Daniel 2 to 7.
And if you were,
we'll see this over the next few weeks,
but Daniel 2 to 7,
Daniel 2 and Daniel 7
are all about dreams
from foolish kings.
If you take one step in,
Daniel 3 and Daniel 6
are all about the courage
of believers in the face of death.
The fiery furnace
and the lion's den.
And then if you step
to the very middle,
Daniel 4 and 5
are both stories
of the pride of kings
that topple their empires.
So we're entered
into this little section
that's really carefully constructed
and crafted together,
this Aramaic section.
And so it's making a point.
We're honing down in
on the problem in the middle,
Daniel 3 and 4,
4 and 5,
and that's pride
at the human heart,
at the center of idolatry.
And pride,
the point of this text
is pride,
our pride,
our idolatry makes us foolish.
It makes us fools.
And so this really is
the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream
is a story,
a dream that's focused
all about
how much Nebuchadnezzar's idolatry
made him into a fool.
And it's just playing out
Proverbs 1,
Proverbs 2,
Proverbs 3.
Get wisdom,
and to get wisdom,
the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom.
But if you don't fear the Lord
and you fear something else
in your life
far more than the Lord,
you're going to struggle
with foolishness.
That's the real idea here.
And let's see it.
In verse 1 and 2,
Nebuchadnezzar,
it says he had a dream
and that dream
made him very troubled.
He couldn't sleep.
He saw in this dream
some type of terrifying image.
And he does something wild
in verse 5 and 6.
He brings in all the magicians,
all the sorcerers,
all the Chaldeans,
the priests,
and he says to them,
I want you not just
to interpret my dream,
I want you to tell me
what the dream was.
And if you can't tell me
what the dream was
and then interpret it,
I'm going to tear you
from limb to limb.
I'm going to cut your heads off.
And he makes that pronouncement
throughout all the realm.
Every wise man that fails,
all of you together
will be collectively executed.
Now,
this is classic Napoleon complex.
Remember Napoleon?
He was a great emperor,
a conqueror of all of Europe,
but he could never get enough.
He wanted power.
Some people have said
that it was because
of his diminutive stature
that caused that.
And I can say today,
I've never struggled with that
or been accused of it.
Okay?
Just to make that clear.
I,
another Napoleon
that I like to think about
is Lord Farquaad
from Shrek.
You know,
he was so tortured
and so power hungry
that he tortured
the gingerbread man.
And,
look,
these are silly examples,
but you know
the story of Caligula,
perhaps,
the story of
the literary figure Macbeth
and Shakespeare's Macbeth,
that Scottish king
who was promised
the hope of a crown.
And in that,
he started off wise,
but it made him crazy
because he was so power hungry.
And he became
a murderer,
paranoid.
He couldn't live life.
And here,
what we have
is the fact that
Nebuchadnezzar
has centered his life
on an idol.
And that idol
is,
of course,
his own pride,
his own self-glory,
but we could say
it also is power.
Nebuchadnezzar
is the most accomplished
man in world history,
and some say.
And he has centered
his life around power.
And power
promises
to make you great.
And
when it becomes
the very thing
that you want
above anything else
in life,
it becomes a god to you
and it begins
to be a slave master
and rule you.
And you will do
terrible things.
To keep hold
of the god
that's at the center
of your life.
And that's what's
happening here.
Nebuchadnezzar
is the most powerful
man in all the world,
and yet
one little dream
makes him go crazy.
He says,
I will tear
every wise man
in this kingdom
from limb to limb
because of a little
dream that he had.
And we realize here
that
when you
center your life
around an idol,
whether,
you know,
we could think here
especially of
achievement idols.
Success,
wealth,
power,
the security
that comes by way
of being very
financially successful.
And in a city
like ours,
many,
many people
move here
to pursue
security idols,
achievement idols.
And we can think
about those
and say that
when you make
those the actual
goal of your life,
what happens
is not the security
you seek through them,
but a life of
fragility and fear.
And that's exactly
what's going on here.
Let me just give you
a couple ways
this works.
Idols promise
you something
and they can
never deliver.
And they create
real fragility.
So power
promises security,
but the more
you have,
the more you realize
how you have
to get more
and more
to actually keep
the original power.
And that's what's
going on in
Nebuchadnezzar's life.
He's so anxious.
He's so fearful.
He can't sleep.
He's got such a fear
of losing
what he's built
because he knows
something.
And that's what?
That when you center
your life around
stuff,
it's incredibly
fragile.
It can easily
be lost.
And so here
he's so afraid
that he's going
to lose his precious,
his ring,
the ring of power
that he's put
on his hand.
He's so afraid
of that.
So an idol
promises you
great things,
but it leaves
you in deep
fragility and
insecurity.
Secondly,
anxiety is
typically a
product of that.
So one of the
ways you can
know what
you're struggling
with maybe
that you've
put at the
center of your
life is to
ask,
what makes
me shake
in my boots?
What am I
most afraid
of?
What keeps
me up at
night?
And oftentimes
anxiety,
that type
of fear
is a smoke
signal.
It's a symptom
and it's like
looking up above
a forest line
and seeing smoke
on the horizon
and you've
got to trace
that smoke
down to the
bottom of
your heart
and ask,
why am I
so afraid
of this,
of losing
this?
What is it
that has
captured me
so much
that I've
centered my
life around
that if I
lost this
precious,
this ring,
I would be
lost.
That's what's
going on in
his life.
Third,
idolatry,
especially
achievement
idolatry,
reverses the
master-slave
relationship.
And so what
happens here
is instead of
wielding the
kingdom as a
great tool for
the common
good,
boy,
the most
powerful man
in human
history has
this opportunity
to wield
these resources
for such good,
for the common
good of the
people.
Instead,
what ends
up happening
is if,
very precise
here,
if power
is your
goal,
if achievement
is your
goal,
if success
is your
actual goal,
then what
happens is
that you'll
end up
becoming a
slave of
that goal.
It has
now mastered
you.
In other
words,
power,
success,
achievement,
and money
are not bad
things,
they're good
things.
But if
you make
them the
very object
of your
hope in
your life,
power itself,
not the
fact of
power that
could wield
resources for
so much
good,
then you'll
become its
slave.
It's become
your God,
it's become
your master.
Lastly,
you see here
in this
passage how
much this
idol of
power,
hunger for
him,
isolates
Nebuchadnezzar
from love.
Idols do
that,
they isolate
us from
real relationships
and love.
When power
becomes your
God,
you can never
be sure if
people really
love you or
they just want
something from
you.
And here,
all across
this passage,
you know,
what do the
Chaldeans do,
the Magi do?
They come to
Nebuchadnezzar
and they say,
oh king,
live forever.
They say,
we love you so
much.
And he turns
around and says,
I'm going to
cut you from
limb to limb.
And they say,
well, oh king,
live forever,
just give us a
little more time,
we're going to
do our best.
Nobody will
ever speak the
truth and love
to him.
They flatter
him,
they enable
him,
right?
Because idols
do that.
They take
loving relationship
away from us
because we're
so fragile,
we're afraid
to actually
have relationships
of honesty
and truth.
And the
takeaway here
is that anytime
we've made
an achievement
God,
the very center
of our lives,
it turns us
into slaves.
And at the
very end
of this section,
this first section
that we read,
the Chaldeans
themselves,
the magicians,
they say
exactly the
point in
verse 11 and
12.
They say,
King,
what you have
asked,
only a God
could do.
In other words,
it's turning the
tide,
it's starting to
make you think,
where is it that
you can get a
foundation that
will actually give
you security?
And they say,
only a God
could do the
thing that you're
asking for.
They're halfway
there,
so secondly,
let's see the
dream.
Now,
nobody in all
the kingdom
can do this.
Nobody can
tell Nebuchadnezzar
the dream.
Nobody can
interpret the
dream.
And what
happens is that
Daniel and his
friends hear about
this.
And in verse
12 and 13,
Daniel goes
to Ariok,
the king's
advisor,
and he says,
Ariok,
set up a
meeting between
me and
Nebuchadnezzar.
And so
Daniel rushes
straight in.
And the reason
for that is
because Daniel
knows that he's
also going to
die.
He and all the
people that have
come, the 10,000
that have come,
Nebuchadnezzar's
going to kill
everybody about
this.
And so he knows
that everybody's
life is at risk
here.
Now, what the
passage the writer
is doing here is
setting up this
great contrast in
this moment between
Daniel and
Nebuchadnezzar.
So we've seen
Nebuchadnezzar,
the man of
Babylon, the man
who has power at
the very center of
his life, that he's
revolving his
life around
entirely.
But then it
turns to Daniel.
And here's the
test.
Nebuchadnezzar has
a scary dream.
Nebuchadnezzar has
a scary dream, and
it makes him so
fragile.
Daniel, the
prophet Daniel,
God's servant,
what does he do?
His life is
actually on the
line, and in
verse 14, it
turns and we're
told, in verse
14, he acted
with prudence and
discretion.
All right, so you
see that contrast?
Nebuchadnezzar has a
scary dream, and it
absolutely breaks him,
the most powerful man
on earth.
Daniel is a slave,
and his life is under
threat.
He's been told he's
going to be executed,
and the next verse in
verse 14 says, but he
was able to operate with
prudence and discretion.
And there's a great
contrast between wisdom
and foolishness.
The word prudence that's
used in this passage is
like the word wisdom, but
it's a little more
specific, and maybe
prudence is not a word
that we use very often
in modern speech, but
prudence means the
ability to know what
to do when there are no
rules telling you what
to do.
So prudence is this
ability to enter into a
very complex life and
live with justice and
righteousness in the
midst of Babylon, in the
midst of exile, when
there's nobody telling
you how to operate in
every single situation.
So this is a very
complex situation.
Daniel is a slave of
the king.
The king has said, I'm
going to kill everybody
because nobody can
interpret my dream.
Prudence says, what do
I do in the midst of
such a difficult, complex
situation?
Now, if you were to go
read throughout the last
couple thousand years, and
even beyond that, in
philosophy, I'm going to
talk about it in the
classics, the classic
literature, in theology,
everybody gathers around
this idea that says, what
is wisdom?
And typically, four things
have been said, and I
won't go through them, I'll
just list them for you.
Typically, almost everybody
is gathered around the
idea that wisdom is
prudence, the ability to
know how to operate well in
a complex world, justice, the
ability to, with precision,
and seek what's good in
complex situations, seek
justice, to do it with
courage.
So, to be able to enter
into a space and speak the
truth, even at great risk
of your own life.
And lastly, the fourth is
temperance.
And temperance is a word we
don't use very often either,
and all it means is that
over time, the more you use
prudence with justice and
courage, this is who you
become, and that's what
temperance means.
It becomes second nature to
you.
And if you were to go
through this passage, verse
16, Daniel sets an
appointment.
Daniel says to Ariok, make
an appointment with
Nebuchadnezzar for me to
interpret the dream before
he ever even knows the
interpretation of the
dream.
And he's willing to say,
look, I don't know what to
do right now exactly, but I'm
willing to risk my life to
go in and hoping that God
will give this to me.
That's prudence.
It's the courage because of
justice to take a risk in a
really hard situation.
And then in verse 27 to 28,
he tells Nebuchadnezzar,
Nebuchadnezzar, your kingdom
is going to fall.
Boy, can you imagine?
Imagine stepping into the
court of Lord Farquad, and
you have to tell him, your
little kingdom is going to
fall because of your pride.
The man who kills gingerbread
men, he, in other words, you
see what Daniel's doing?
He is willing to step into the
fray and to say, the point is
your kingdom is dust.
To a man who's so fragile that
he's already said, I will kill
everyone if they cannot tell me
what this means.
Daniel was so wise that he had
prudence and he sought justice
and he had great courage and it
was just natural.
It flowed out of him.
Real wisdom.
The point of the passage is get
wisdom.
And how do you get wisdom?
And this is where we really hone in
on the big idea.
And that's that Daniel is not just
morally good.
Daniel is not just wise in the
story.
There's far more than that.
The question of the passage is,
what is the foundation of your
life that can make you wise?
And even deeper than that, what is
the foundation of your life that
can give you the security in your
life to operate with prudence,
courage, justice, and temperance?
What is the foundation of your
life that can actually ground this
type of truth and love, this
courage, this ability, this
wisdom?
And it's back in chapter 1.
It comes up again in chapter 2.
And it's that when Daniel refused
to give his heart to idolatry and
said, I will fear the Lord no matter
what, it says God then blessed him
with all wisdom.
And back to Proverbs 1.
If you want to be a wise person in
a complex world, the Bible says
get wisdom.
And the way you do that is saying
the fear, recognizing the glory of
the Lord is the beginning of all
wisdom.
And so the question of this passage
is, what is the foundation of your
life that can give you a security
where you're okay so that you can
actually be a person who's growing
in wisdom over time?
Now, this is just simply illustrated
in the dream itself.
And we only need to spend two minutes
on it to get this across.
And that's the dream in verse 31 to
35.
The dream is that there is a great
statue, a great image.
And it's a terrifying image.
But it's got a head of gold.
It's got a chest of silver.
It's got a core of bronze.
It's got legs of iron.
And it's got feet of iron with clay
on the bottom.
Now, Daniel goes and he tells the
dream because God gave him that
dream as a gift.
He gave him the interpretation.
And then from there, he then turns
and tells Nebuchadnezzar the
interpretation.
Now, people come to this and they
make the dream into a moment of
prophecy, a really important
prophecy about world history.
And it definitely is that.
This is a moment where the real God
is telling somebody a thousand
year span of history.
What's going to happen?
And that's important to note.
But the point of the dream is not
about the prophecy.
It's not about the kingdoms that are
to come.
Traditionally, we've said that the
head of gold is, of course, Babylon.
Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that
directly.
Then the silver is the kingdom of
Persia that's to follow this.
And then the bronze is Greece.
And then the iron is the kingdom of
Rome that is to come.
But at the very bottom of the
statue is clay.
And from verse 38, you see the
point, because in verse 38, he
turns to Nebuchadnezzar himself.
He doesn't say, let me talk to you
about everything here.
Let me talk to you about the
kingdoms that are to come.
He turns to the man of Babylon,
Nebuchadnezzar, and said, you are
the head of gold.
And your feet are clay.
And your kingdom is going to get
pulverized into dust.
And the way that that happens is
there's a supernatural event where
in the dream, someone invisible
cuts from a mountain, a great
stone that strikes this image and
casts all the kingdoms down.
And the point is that he's looking
at the face of Nebuchadnezzar and
saying, let me give you a thousand
year span of history that is to
come and understand that you are not
the climax of history.
And you've made your life centered
around power and achievement and
success and wealth, and it's all
going to crumble.
You have clay feet.
And Greece is going to have clay
feet, Alexander the Great will, and
Rome, and everyone else.
And the big idea is that any time you
center your life on your own personal
kingdom, if your life is made through
your own kingdom building, centering
your life around your success and your
glory and your power and your wealth,
you've got clay feet.
And ultimately it's going to pass away
and it's going to crumble.
And it's not a foundation.
You see, what foundation did Nebuchadnezzar
and all of his achievements have?
Clay.
Sand, as the New Testament says.
And the question of the passage is, what is it
that you're building your foundation upon in
your life?
What is, another way to say it is, what is
your why?
You know, what's, people debate about this
kind of stuff all the time, but what is,
what is the difference between a Christian
banker, a Christian who is a banker, a
Christian who is an accountant, a
Christian who goes to work every day in
the city, and someone, and somebody who's
not, who centered their lives around
power, wealth, achievement, and status.
And the main difference is why?
Why are you going to work every day?
Why are you raising your family?
Why are you seeking education?
Why are you going to uni?
Why?
In other words, what is the thing at the
center of your life that is a secure
foundation for meaning and purpose that
can provide a security that will never
leave you, a foundation that will never
go away, a meaning and a purpose that if
your stuff gets taken from you, that still
remains, that ultimately is still there.
Do you have that?
That's the question of the passage.
And so lastly, how do you get it?
We'll finish with this, the stone.
So at the heart of this dream, we're told
that there is all of a sudden in the midst
of the dream, a supernatural hand that
cuts a stone out of a mountain in order
to strike this great image.
And let me just mention a couple quick
characteristics about that stone.
Just think about this for a moment with me.
Verse 34 and 35 says, this is a rock cut,
not with human hands, but by supernatural
hands.
Then secondly, it says, this is an instrument
that will destroy the pride of all the great
kings.
And then third, it says, it's a stone.
It's a rock.
Okay, think about it.
It's not gold.
If you look at every piece of the image of
Nebuchadnezzar's dream, gold, silver, bronze,
iron, all far more precious than stone, than rock.
In other words, this stone is humble.
It's small.
It's of humble origin.
And then in verse 35, it says, but this
humble stone will one day become a great
kingdom that will start small, but will fill
the whole world.
Friends, the New Testament directly identifies
this stone as Jesus Christ.
The stone that the builders rejected has
become the cornerstone of a mighty kingdom,
a mighty foundation.
And the New Testament, just think about it.
The stone, it has to be crafted out of
supernatural hands.
Jesus Christ, born of flesh, truly human, but
born of the Spirit, conceived by the Holy Spirit.
He is the Son of God Himself.
He is supernatural.
The stone, He's not gold.
Boy, did Jesus come into this world?
Not gold, not silver, not bronze.
He was born and placed into a little animal
feeding trough laying in the spit of the
animals.
He's just a little stone.
He's humble in His origin.
The stone that the builders rejected became
the cornerstone.
The stone that all the kingdoms of this world
hate because He comes to vanquish their pride
has become the cornerstone of a kingdom that
will last forever.
This is talking about Jesus Christ, the stone in
the stream.
And the irony of the Christian gospel today is
this.
If you think, not Nebuchadnezzar versus Daniel,
but Nebuchadnezzar versus the stone, Jesus
Christ.
Nebuchadnezzar came to center his entire life around
power and abundance and temporal wealth and
security.
Jesus Christ, the only one who controls the
kingdoms, the absolute God Himself, came in such
great irony that He didn't come seeking power.
He came in exactly the opposite way of
Nebuchadnezzar.
He came to be the stone that shatters all pride
of the emperors.
And yet, at the same time, He came giving away all
power to release us and rescue us from our power
hunger.
Jesus Christ is the stone that the builders rejected
when He went to the cross so that He could free you and
rescue you from centering your life around power
hunger, around self-glory, around divinizing self and
everything else in this life more than God.
He came to offer that rescue.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone.
And so the question today, friends, as we finish is,
is Jesus Christ the foundation of your life?
Do you have feet that have been secured temporarily by
something else like achievement and wealth and power and
glory and relationship and romance?
And the proportion to which your life is centered really does
revolve around any of the stuff in this world like that that
can be lost will be the proportion to which you will live in fear
and fragility.
So anxiety is directly proportional to the degree to which we
have made our feet something in this life, our foundation,
something in this life that we can lose.
But if Jesus Christ the stone is your foundation, something that
can never be lost, an identity, a purpose, a rescue, a forgiveness
from idolatry forever that can never be taken away, you have a
foundation that will never leave you, that will give you true and
lasting security.
I'll give the last word to just this comparison.
Think about it.
Nebuchadnezzar's empire was built through military conquest, political
force, great evil, seeking absolute power.
It was maintained through fear and threat and executions.
He demanded worship.
We'll see that next week through intimidation.
His kingdom lasted 70 years, 70 years.
And today you can go visit the site of his kingdom in Iraq.
It's a tourist center.
It's an archaeological dig site.
It's long gone.
The dust has washed it away.
Jesus Christ's kingdom was built on sacrificial love, on giving power
away, on seeing a much bigger perspective.
And that's a kingdom that starts off so small but grows so big over the
centuries.
It's maintained through servants like Daniel and others and the call upon
all of us today that are willing to even die, to lose all power and death like he
did.
It has lasted thousands of years.
It's never going away.
It will endure forever.
It spans every continent, every culture, every kingdom, every language.
The mountain is here.
The kingdom has come.
It's in the now and not yet phase of history.
Build your life on that rock.
It's a far better identity, a far better purpose.
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank you that you rescue us from our idols.
And so we pray today, God, that we would be able to identify the little gods in our
lives that we continue to revolve our lives around.
And that, Lord, you would give us wisdom to fear you more than the fragility, the fear
that comes out of the fragility of chasing little rings in this life that will never satisfy
us.
So we thank you that that's such a clear message.
And Daniel, Lord, teach it to us more and more and more today.
And especially as we sing, Lord, show us these truths.
Meet with us in a particular way in this moment.
And we pray that in Jesus' name.
Amen.