"Confident Faith Is Rewarded” Series

OPEN YOUR BIBLES TO Daniel 2 & Numbers 22

1. God has a lot of ways to get someone’s attention.

a. Have you noticed that? Maybe personally experienced it?

b. I mean to REALLY get his FULL & UNDIVIDED attention.

WALKING through an ARID DESERT: there it was, a little BUSH, all lit up with FIRE... And it began to TALK! God got Moses’ Attention.

THE PROPHETS of BAAL received a stunning message from God on Mt. Carmel as fire came down from heaven!

SAUL OF TARSUS is headed toward Damascus ready to destroy as many Christians as he can… but there was that BRIGHT LIGHT that introduced him to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself!

WHO CAN FORGET BALAAM as on his way to betraying God

• Let’s look at Numbers 22

• The King of Moab was afraid of Israel, in v2 notice.

• So the king calls for Balaam, a prophet of Israel to curse the Egyptians and fight on his behalf… But God told Him NO!

• The king of Moab won’t take it… he sends more men and more money and pleads for Balaam to come…

• This time God tells him to go, but as he goes, his heart is lifted up with greed… and thus we begin at v22.

I WONDER IF THE DONKEY SOUNDED LIKE:

• Well WILBUR… or WELL BALAAM…

• YES IT’S TRUE: God has ways of getting man’s attention…

NOTE: Sometimes it’s a hospital room that grabs our attention.

• An unforeseen sickness, a surprise visit, a few zeros on a bank statement, a wayward child, loneliness, fears, anxieties, stress!

• They are attention grabbers for sure!

AND OTHER times it’s the clear teaching of God’s Word, illuminated by His Holy Spirit. We cry out with the Psalmist:

Psalm 25.5 Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; On You I wait all the day.

• And God Answers us through His Spirit…

John 16.13 "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.

NOW THE BIBLE SAYS…

Hebrews 1:1-2 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;

THIS MORNING… in the chapter before us, we find God speaking to a HEATHEN KING, getting his attention through a radical dream.

• Which is really encouraging to us.

• God is wanting to speak to ANYONE who will listen.

2 Peter 3.9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

I OFTEN THINK OF THIS PASSAGE when I’m praying for leaders, and rulers, and authorities. Remember back in our study in Titus?

Titus 2.1-4 But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: 2 that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; 3 the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things-- 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,

• I wonder if, in answer to our prayers, God sends a dream to trouble them, to stir them, to cause them to cry out.

• Then God sends a ‘Daniel’ into their lives to clear it up and point them in the right direction!

I. (2:1-13) TROUBLING DREAMS.

1. (1-3) A bad night.

a. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the world had a bad night.

b. The dreams in his head troubled him.

NOW THE DREAMS are in the plural and he had them in the 2nd year… so this could be a series of dreams in one night.

• Or it could be that he had the same dream over & over & over again. And finally they got to him! He couldn’t take it anymore.

c. SO: Next to the word troubled, you can write, “disturbed, pushed down or beaten persistently”.

d. These dreams caused him some deep emotional disruptions.

e. He was unsettled. They stirred him up, and down, and all around inside. Notice in v3, it caused him great anxiety!

NOTE: These were no ordinary dreams. They were from God Himself. God was speaking to him and now he wants to know!

2. (4-5) Tell me the dream.

a. Nebuchadnezzar was a tyrant, out of control, mad man.