PT-2 "Intro to Daniel"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/18/2023 9:03 AM

 

PT-2 INTRODUCTIONS TO THE BOOK OF DANIEL

 

Once again this is taken from John MacArthur’s sermon on Daniel.

 

And so Daniel is a book for today and for all tomorrows. Daniel sweeps through all of our lives to give us insight into God’s standards. It tells me how to live for God in this evil age and it tells me what it will be like when I live with God in that golden age. Daniel has his feet on the ground, you might say, and his head in the clouds. With Daniel it is dreams and then it is daily living. It’s all here. It shows how a man who sees the future can live to the glory of God in the present.

Now generally speaking – let me give you the setting of Daniel in the Old Testament. The Old Testament, at least in the Jewish mind, was divided into three parts. There were the books known as the law, the five books of Moses; Genesis – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, the law, the Torah. Then there was the prophets and the prophets summed up everything from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel – Daniel being omitted – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and then all the minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. All of that was the Minor Prophets.

There was a third element of the Hebrew text known as the Hagiographa, or the Holy Writings. The Holy Writings were everything that was left. And it was interesting that in the Jewish text Daniel was not included with the prophets but he was included with the Holy Writings because, specifically, Daniel is never called a prophet, at least in terms of the same word which is used for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the rest. But whether or not the Jewish people put Daniel in the list of the prophets or not, believe me, he is a prophet. And that’s why in your Bible you’ll find him listed with the prophets.

He has been traditionally classed as what is known as a Major Prophet, and that’s only a designation of the length of his book, not its importance. But Daniel finds himself associated with some pretty great men, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel are the four known as the Major Prophets, Jeremiah having written also the book of Lamentations. These four men stand out as great prophets of God.

Now we need to understand how Daniel fits in to those four so I want to share that with you for just a brief moment. Isaiah ministered more than a hundred years before the Babylonian exile. He ministered to the same people, basically, but he ministered in Judah. Judah was the Southern Kingdom. Remember that after Solomon the kingdom was divided into the north known as Israel and the south known as Judah. The north was ten tribes, the south was two, Benjamin and Judah.

Isaiah mainly ministered, of course, in Judah and Isaiah was ministering 100 years before the Babylonian exile. And so, he was ministering in a time of prosperity in Israel when the – or in Judah rather, when the people thought everything was going very well. They were confident that everything was fine and yet Isaiah could see the spiritual state of apostasy. And so Isaiah was proclaiming the fact that judgment was coming if something didn’t change dramatically.

Then there was Jeremiah. Jeremiah came sometime after Isaiah. Jeremiah wasn’t a hundred years before the end of everything, Jeremiah was during the last five kings of Judah’s history. He was the prophet right at the end. And he saw the things that Isaiah began to see coming to full fruition. Jeremiah saw the captivity as very imminent.

Then there was Ezekiel. What about Ezekiel? Ezekiel prophesied to a group of exiles in Babylon. So moving along a time line, it’s Isaiah a hundred years before the captivity, it’s Jeremiah imminent at the captivity, it’s Ezekiel during the captivity ministering to a group of exiles captive in Babylon. I guess maybe that’s why Ezekiel’s message tends to be hopeful and the closing part of his book presents the glories of the kingdom to come, giving hope to that sad and exiled people.

And then there’s Daniel. Daniel ministered during the exile also. But not from the vantage point of moving among his people, but from the vantage point of being a great ruler in Babylonian society. He was a Jew in the midst of the world powers of Babylon and Medo-Persia. As we’ll see when we study the book, there were four great world powers: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.

Daniel’s lifetime spanned the first two. He was there through the great period of the Babylonian Empire even to Cyrus who was the great monarch of the Medo-Persian Empire. His position was as a ruler in the pagan world. And from that vantage point he was God’s man in a pagan society.

So we see the distinction between the placing of these Major Prophets. Something else you might note is that there is a thrust to their books that’s unique. Each is different. Isaiah enunciates the principles of divine government. Jeremiah demands the practices, commensurate with divine government. Ezekiel portrays the person of the glorious Governor and His government to come. And Daniel speaks about the fact that that coming government is a permanent persevering and forever government. So they each have a special focus.

Now Daniel really zeroes in on the sweep of human history. He particularly speaks of a time called “the times of the Gentiles.” The Bible says that there was a time when Gentiles would dominate Israel. That time began at the captivity when Israel was taken out of the land and removed to Babylon, and we’ll see more about that in a minute. That time will end when Jesus comes back and gives the land back to His people. From the time of the captivity to the time Christ comes and restores Israel to its rightful place is known as the times of the nations, or the times of the Gentiles, for it is the time when the Gentiles dominate God’s land.

Now as I said, the book falls into two parts. You might say in 1 to 6 you have the historic night and in 7 to 12 you have the prophetic light. I believe there are four main purposes in the book and I’m just covering some basic thoughts. Don’t try to put them all together in your mind, just probably you ought to get this tape and mull it over about every three or four weeks so you’ll keep keeping yourself alerted to where we are in Daniel. There are four main purposes in the book. I want you to just get the general flow of it.