The History Of The World Part 1 Series

THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I

Series: Against the Grain

Limestone Baptist Church, Bedford, IN

Rev. Michael Wilhite

February 24, 2008 at 10:30am

Daniel 2:24-45

OPENING THOUGHTS

· PRAY HERE

· This morning we are coming to one of the most awe-inspiring prophecies in the Bible. Daniel chapter two has been the source of much controversy over the years from those on the liberal side of the isle. In fact, chapter two and chapters 7 thru 12 have been at the center of a hot debate in Christianity in recent decades.

· And this should not surprise us, beloved. The prophesies found in Daniel are so accurate that those who want to discount every miracle and every prophecy in the Bible will naturally attack these beloved chapters.

· Paul warns us in 2 Timothy that in the end times, even the church will turn aside to believe the lies of the enemy.

· 2 Timothy 3:1 says:

1 But understand this, that in the last days difficult times will come.

· And the Greek word for time there is actually kairos and not kronos. Kronos means chornological time, kairos means seasons, epochs, times not in a chronological sense, but time in a sense of a different season coming. Fall and Spring are different times or different kairos we might say. Paul is telling us that in the last days, difficult seasons will come upon the church.

· And similarly, Paul goes on to say in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 say:

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,

4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

· And beloved, that time is already here. It is this type of people that want to attack the book of Daniel because it is so historically accurate that they want to discredit it altogether because it doesn’t fit with what they want to hear and know.

· But I want you to rest assured that Daniel is entirely accurate. Daniel contains some great prophesies about the end times and the times before the end. You can be assured that Daniel is trustworthy, if by nothing else that than simple fact that our Lord Jesus said he was.

· Jesus told us in Matthew 24:15 that Daniel was a prophet and spoke about the abomination of desolation that was going to come on Jerusalem in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the Temple.

· Now, if Jesus refers to that passage out of the later chapters in Daniel as being spoken and written by Daniel, then we can rest assured that the liberals have it wrong! Daniel really did write the book and what is written in it really is true!

· And so we shouldn’t be afraid to come to these passages, beloved. Yes they do contain some things that are hard to understand. Yes the symbolism in them is a bit cryptic. But as we go through this great text today, we are seeking to demystify these things and put them in plain terms that we can understand. There is a lot of great truth that we can gain from this text this morning.

· Now last time, we saw that the king had a bad dream and wanted to destroy all the wise men of Babylon because they couldn’t interpret the dream for him.

· And we saw how Daniel reacted to this. He didn’t run and hide and stick his head in the ground like an ostrich, did he? No, he went and found his three friends Hananniah, Mishael and Azariah and called a prayer meeting. And we know that likely this was a Wednesday night, right?

· We saw the power involved when you live a life of integrity and make prayer your first priority when trials come your way. God answered Daniel’s request in a powerful way and we ended with verse 23 where we saw Daniel giving glory to God for His provision of the answer.

· This morning we are going to look at that interpretation that Daniel gave to King Nebuchadnezzar in depth.

DANIEL VERSE BY VERSE

· Now I want us to start out in verse 1 again briefly.

· 1 In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him.

· We mentioned that he had a bad dream, but I want you to look very closely at the wording of the Biblical text here. Words are very important and if we overlook them, we can miss really big details.

· Notice that the king had dreams, not dream in the singular. Dreams in the plural. Now, Daniel only gives the interpretation for one dream, so what does this mean? I believe it is telling us that God was tormenting the king with the SAME dream over and over.