No One But God
(Daniel 2:9-11)
Intro:
A. I love when a writer of the Bible just stops what he is writing and beings to praise God. But it is even more impressive to me when someone who is not connected to Jehovah see the work of Jehovah and has to praise Him, even if that person still does not be come a follower of Jehovah. Nebuchadnezzar is such a man. This great king of Babylon that God uses as a servant to do his bidding doesn’t even know God in any personal relationship. Yet, Nebuchadnezzar sees God through the lives of the men of Judah that have come to work in his court.
B. Today we are going to study Daniel 2. Listen as I read to you the first 16 verses. READ Dan. 2:1-11. As we see in vs 1-2 Daniel was not present. Nebuchadnezzar was many things, but gullible was not one of them. He knew that people could fake a very good answer. What the king asked was impossible if you didn’t have supernatural power.
C. The group the king assembled were made up people who claimed to have supernatural powers. The are more than just scholars, these are people who have claimed to have some type of power from some god.
D. Included in this group were the Chaldeans. Chaldean is used generically to describe the people of the Babylonian area who lived in the southern area of Babylon. Little is known about the tribe, but we learn from scripture that God called Abraham from the Ur of the Chaldeans. That was Abraham’s home. His father and grandfather worshipped the gods of that area. Archeologists tell us the Chaldeans studied astrology and mathematics, they were considered “wise people”, and their gods gave them wisdom. It is believed the wise men/Magi that came from the East to see little Jesus were Chaldeans.
I. Dreams
A. There are people who have dreams, and they deeply want to know if their dream is a premonition, a warning. They ask me or other people, “What do you think my dream means?” I don’t know!
B. READ Joel 2:28-29. Peter quotes this in Acts 2. Does God use dreams today? As we will see in Daniel 2, I believe we live in “the last days.” But from reading the Bible, God doesn’t give dreams to confuse people. You may have a dream, and it may have some connection to your spiritual walk, but if it is from God, the meaning of the dream will also be given. Even in this case, God wanted Neb to know what his dream meant.
C. When a person thinks their dream is from God, many time people go about trying to interpret their own dream based upon their own wisdom. That can be a very slippery slope. I come back to what the wise men of Babylon said to King Nebuchadnezzar in Dan. 2:11, “no one can show it to the king except God.”
II. No One But God
A. READ Dan. 2:12-16. Daniel and his friends are a part of this group of “wise men” of Babylon, but were not a part of the group that the King called that morning. When Daniel learns what is happening, he goes to the king and asks for time. Daniel says that he will give the interpretation, but can’t at that moment, so he asks the king to set a time for him to come back and give the dream and the interpretation.
B. I am reminded of the song, “Where Could I God but To The Lord.” Daniel was facing certain death. The king had made the edict and time was short. There are times when you really are at the end of your rope. There are times when life has dealt you and unfair deal. What do you do in those times? Daniel knew what to do (READ Dan. 2:17-18). Daniel went to his friends and together they went to God in prayer. Prayer was not Daniels back up plan, it was the plan. God revealed the dream, and the interpretation and Daniel praised God. The truth is, no one but God could do what the king asked.
C. READ Dan. 2:24-30. Daniel tells him exactly what the other wise men of Babylon said, “no man could do what was asked, but God could and did.” The point I want us to take home today is that it is not about your wisdom, your greatness, your understanding of scripture. What we share with people is no one but God can do for you what you want done. Our role is to give God all the glory. Our good works are done, so that they glorify God. If our good works center upon glorifying us, we are nothing more than then the first group of men that went to the king. I want to be Daniel and his friends. I want to a person of prayer who takes a message to those who need to hear it and give God all glory.
D. Sermons are often preached about the dream, because it was given for you and me to know what God is doing right now. The head of God was Babylon and king Nebuchadnezzar. But several other kingdoms would come and in the days of the last great kingdom, a kingdom that was represented with both iron and clay, was crushed with a stone that was cut but not by human hands. That stone is Jesus, and he established a spiritual kingdom that has filled the earth that we call “the church which belongs to Christ.” If you are saved, you are a part of the kingdom that Neb saw in a dream and Daniel told him about. That’s incredible.
Conclusion:
A. I want to end the way I began. I love doxologies and times when writer of the Bible break into praise, much like Daniel did after God revealed the dream and the interpretation. But listen to what king Neb has to say to Daniel (READ Dan. 2:46-47).
B. No one but God, take that phrase to heart. It’s not about you, me or anyone else. It’s no one but God. Even a king who did not know Jehovah came to at least see that the God Daniel worshiped was the greatest.
