PT-14 "Intro to Daniel"

SPIRIITUAL DIARY FOR 11/30/2023 11:42 AM

 

PT-14 Intro to Daniel

 

            This will be the last introduction to Daniel from the two sermons by John MacArthur.  It is a rather long one.  Lord willing tomorrow I will begin to look at the Spiritual Diaries that I wrote on the book of Daniel.

 

            “You know, you may think that you can live the way you want to live and God will just kind of pass it by. And maybe you’ve seen what’s happened in history and how other people have gone. And you’ve looked at the cycle of decadence and maybe you’re doing some of the same –same things that others have done, but you don’t think it will come your way. You don’t think maybe that living the kind of life you live is going to bring the things it’s brought to others and maybe you’ll break the path of cycles in history.

            “And maybe you’ve heard the prophets and you’ve listened to the preachers of the gospel and you’ve decided that maybe that’s not for you. Maybe you’ve even seen revival, you’ve seen people’s lives changed and you’ve seen – seen people fall in love with Christ and their whole destiny, time and eternity is immediately transformed and you just kind of shove all that aside. Well, inevitably, inexorably and finally will judgment come. That’s the way it is.

            “A weekly newspaper in the Middle West once printed the letter of an atheist who in order to disprove the beliefs of his Christian neighbors had devoted a certain portion of his land to corn. And he decided to do every bit of work on that section on Sunday just to show you could violate the Lord’s day and you could still grow good corn. And now, he wrote in this article in the paper, “I find that in September I have more bushels of corn per acre on that part of my land worked exclusively on Sunday than my neighbors have on their land which they didn’t work on Sunday. Doesn’t that prove there’s no God?” The editor had an interesting answer. He said, “No, it doesn’t prove there’s no God, it simply proves that God doesn’t always settle His accounts in September.”

            “Will you look with me for a moment at Daniel chapter 1 again? And just a note, verse 2, “And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.” Because Nebuchadnezzar could never have done it if God hadn’t raised that nation up as the rod of His anger. And when Nebuchadnezzar went in the first captivity in 605, this one in which Daniel speaks, “he took with him part of the vessels of the house of God and he took them to the land of Shinar” – which is the ancient name of Babylonia – “to the house of his god,” – who was, I’m sure, the god known as Marduk.

            “It’s very hard when you study pagan idolatry to keep gods clear because they often interchange their names, their personalities, their sexes and everything and there’s so many different names. But Marduk seems to be the major god of this time of Babylonian history and the one to which Nebuchadnezzar would worship.

            “And so he takes the vessels of the house of God. That would be the lovely things that Solomon had put there for all of the articles of worship and the – and all of these beautiful treasures he took to the house of his god. Why? Because it was a tremendous thing when you conquered a nation to go in and loot the house of their God. And if you came back alive, your people were convinced that your god had overpowered their god. And so it was a great sign of security and confidence. And so a conqueror would want to bring back the artifacts of worship from another country to show the impotence of that god to defend his people and even to keep them from stealing from his own treasure house. And so they went into captivity.

            “But listen. As Lance Morrow said in his article in Time magazine, “There’s only one nation in history that ever rose from their own ashes and that’s this nation and they’ll be back.” And one of the reasons they’ll be back among others is because of a man named Daniel, God’s man for a very special time. And that brings me to the fourth point, and I’m going to touch it very briefly ‘cause we’ll see it in the book: the places, the period, the punishment and the person.

            “Notice you don’t even see his name in the first two verses, not at all. His name doesn’t appear until verse 6. “Among these were the children of Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.” And those three guys got their names changed to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Babylonian names. But you meet Daniel. God always has His man, doesn’t He? Daniel was born in 625 B.C. about. He was born, by the way, at the very year of the birth of a Neo-Babylonian Empire. He was a child of royalty, of kingly nobility. He was a man of tremendous capability and talent and character.

            “Apparently, the revival under Josiah really touched his life. And though the revival under Josiah didn’t do a lot for the country, it did a lot for him, a lot for him. He was committed to loving and obeying God and that dear man right on through the whole captivity, right on through the fullness of the seventy years – and by the way, he even went past the captivity a few years into the reign of the Mede king Darius. So he was way up there in years. Through that whole time he never defected, he never compromised, he never took a step out of the will of God. He stood for truth and honorable character in accord with the standards of his God. He becomes for us a tremendous example.

            “Eight years later, when the second little group went into captivity in 597, they had a pretty nice young fellow with them. His name was Ezekiel, and Ezekiel was a priest, a young priest. He also had superior gifts. And no doubt, people like Daniel and Ezekiel were chosen because they stood out in their society and the Babylonians were smart enough to go after them.

            “And the reason I bring Ezekiel up is this. You know it’s easy to look backwards and say, “Oh, So-and-so was so great, I remember the greats of the past. Where are the great men? They’re all dead, you know.” And we don’t like to assign anybody greatness in our day, right? We like all the great people to be dead, in the past. But when Ezekiel wrote the book of Ezekiel, three times he mentioned Daniel. And when he mentioned Daniel, he mentioned the fact that if there were three righteous men, Noah – no. Yes, Noah, Daniel and Job.

            “Now I want you to know something. When somebody puts a contemporary in that category, he must be something to write about. And so it was with Daniel. By the way, when

Ezekiel wrote, Daniel would have been about 50 years old. And Ezekiel says he’s one of the godliest men that ever lived and Ezekiel says in chapter 28, he’s one of the wisest men that ever graced the earth. Oh, he was some man. And the character of his life is literally overwhelming.

            “The Bible tells us he was a man of tremendous courage, tremendous courage. He was a man of fearless spiritual commitment. He was a man who could never be bought with money and never be corrupted with power. He was a man who prayed constantly. He was a man who was loved by God and everybody who knew him. He was a man of confidence. He was a man of hope. And, believe me, he was a man for a crisis if ever there was a man. God, help us to have some Daniels in our day.

            “In Daniel 6 verse 4, “Then the presidents and the princes in Babylon sought to find occasion against Daniel.” They wanted to find something against him. “But they could find no occasion nor fault, for as much as he was faithful neither was there any error or fault found in him. And they said, ‘We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.’” The only thing bad about this guy is he never violates the law of his God. What a man.

            “They had scrutinized his life for years and years and years and years and never found anything. Now that’s man the way God wants man to be, a man for a crisis. Born to rule, he became a servant of a pagan king. He was made a eunuch in the court of Babylon, a dry tree with no hope for posterity, yet he was God’s man in a pagan world. He set an example of virtue and godliness that maybe doesn’t have an equal.

            “So we see the places, the period, the punishment and the person, and, lastly, and very quickly, the purpose. Why did God take Israel to captivity? Why did God raise up Babylon? Just going to give you some quick ones, so listen. Number one, to manifest His sovereignty. If the book of Daniel teaches you anything, it will teach you who is running human history. I mean, you’re going to get that loud and clear. God raises up the Assyrians and puts them down. God raises up the Babylonians and puts them down. God raises up Nebuchadnezzar and puts him down. God raises up Cyrus and has him do what He wants. God literally controls human history.

            “God called Nebuchadnezzar “My servant.” What a statement. And that’s the same word, ebed, in the Hebrew that’s used of David in the Psalms. And in Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 52, it is used of the Messiah. He is as much the servant of God as anyone. Why? Because he does God’s bidding even though it be unwilling and he thinks himself independent. In Jeremiah 27, God says Nebuchadnezzar was placed in power by Me. And the one great lesson you’re going to see in Daniel is that God runs human history. And you’re going to see it not only then, but you’re going to see the plan for history until the very end of history as Daniel lays out the future.

            “There’s a second great lesson here and that is there are terrible results to rejecting God. You’re going to see that, too. Whether a nation or an individual, when God warns and warns and warns and offers gracious forgiveness and men reject, there is a terrible judgment. Rudyard Kipling even saw that when he wrote, “Far called our navies melt away on dune and headland sinks the fire, lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the nations, spare us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget.” How easy for men to forget that God has judged in the past and will judge again.

            “Thirdly, the captivity was not only to teach the sovereignty of God and the results of rejecting Him, but to purge His people. You know, there were five good things that came out of the captivity. I’m just excited to give you these and then I’m going to quit.

            “First, you know Israel was never again idolatrous? Do you know that since the time they came back from captivity Israel has never been idolatrous? It is absolutely unthinkable, heinous, horrifying to imagine a Jew in our society, even today, who worshiped an idol. They wouldn’t do it. Why in the day of Jesus when Pilate came into town with flags with pictures of Caesar on them, they threatened to take his life. Idolatry was once and for all rooted out of Israel in the captivity.

            “Secondly, the synagogues were born. When they didn’t have a temple, communities of believers grew up, the faithful, the saints. And they became the model for the church that meets in communities of believers today. Thirdly, it was in the captivity that the Old Testament Scripture was brought together and canonized by men like Ezra. So, you see, in the captivity idolatry was ended, community of believers was established, the canon of Scripture was formed. Fourthly, a remnant returned to reestablish the country and out of that remnant came the seed Messiah.

            “And finally, because they were dispersed everywhere, they carried the message of God to heathen lands. Daniel preached in Babylon. And one day, a child was born in Bethlehem. And some Magi came from the east, from Babylon. They came to find that baby. You know why? I believe because they knew that was the King of kings because it had been so said by a great man in their history by the name of Daniel.

            “What did the captivity do then? It purged the people by taking out of them idolatry, by giving birth to the synagogue, by forming the canon of Scripture, by creating a faithful, godly remnant to come back, through whom the seed of the Messiah would come and by carrying the knowledge of God to heathen lands. And so we see in this marvelous book so many great lessons, so many great truths. It’s my prayer that Daniel will speak to you, to me in a way that will change our lives.

 

11/30/2023 11:45 AM