Living Words

Bread, Wine, and Clean Feet

St. John 13

by William Klock

Our world needs more than ever the story of Holy Week.  The whole story of Jesus, just like the big story of Israel and her God, is a story about love.  But on Tuesday, as I was mixing concentrated floor wax remover into a bucket of water and trying to figure out the right ratio to get the old wax off the floor, I was also thinking about how Holy Week takes this grand biblical theme of love and super-concentrates it for us so that we can’t miss a single bit of it.  From Jesus humbling himself on Palm Sunday and weeping over unrepentant Jerusalem, to this last Passover meal he shared with his disciples and his washing of their feet, to his death on the cross on Friday, the love of God is profoundly manifest in Jesus.  And here, in the middle of Holy Week, after Jesus has shared this Passover meal with his friends and washed their feet, Jesus says to them, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”  But Jesus doesn’t leave it there.  He finishes saying, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34).  People will know we are Christians, not because we have fish stickers on our cars, not even so much because we go to church or because we read our Bibles or because we pray or because we do all sorts of good things.  Those are good things that help our witness along.  But more than anything else, it is our Jesus-like love for each other that witnesses to the world that we belong to him.  Why?  Because our love for him and our love for each other is what, above all else, shows that God has filled us with his Spirit, united us with his Son, and has begun his work of new creation in us—transforming us from the inside out.  Love.

It's a funny thing that while we do read part of John 13 for our Gospel today, we don’t read that part.  It’s that word “commandment”, referring to the new commandment that Jesus gave his disciples, the word mandatum in Latin, that’s where we get the name Maundy Thursday.  But here Jesus prepares us for the events of tomorrow and here he shows us what real gospel love looks like.  The world reduces love to good feelings and that love is following those feelings—doing what you want or even putting love for yourself first—sometimes even to the exclusion of others—especially people whom the world says aren’t worthy of your love.  But, Brothers and Sisters, Jesus shows us that love—real love—is just the opposite.  Real love is vulnerable and real love is sacrificial—you can’t have one without the other.  We see this as Jesus washes his friends’ feet, but then, too, in that scene at dinner as Jesus shares bread and wine with them.  Imagine the shock on his friends’ faces as Jesus said, as he does in verse 21, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”  One of you who has followed me these three years, one of you whose feet I have just so lovingly washed, one of you will betray me.  John doesn’t say as much, but I would think there would be a lot of objections from his friends reclining around that table.  John tells us that he was there, reclining next to Jesus and that Peter—maybe Peter was just morbidly curious, but I expect it was more that he was afraid it might be him and he wanted to know that it wouldn’t be—but Peter leaned over to John and said, “Ask Jesus who he’s talking about.”  John, I’m sure, was curious himself.  Why would any of them betray Jesus?  And so he asks, “Who is it, Lord?”

The room went deathly silent as Jesus took a bit of bread in his hand, looked around at them, and said, “It is he to whom I give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.”  And they all watched as Jesus dipped the bread and reached out to give it to Judas.  It seems pretty clear what Jesus meant, but maybe that’s our hindsight.  The disciples, John says, didn’t understand.  John, writing years later, says that it was at that moment that the satan entered Judas.  Jesus sent him off to do what he had to do and to do it quickly.  The disciples thought Jesus was sending him off to buy more bread or to give alms to the poor—since Judas was the treasurer for the group.  So Judas left.  The wheels were in motion.  It was only a matter of time before the soldiers of the high priest would come to arrest Jesus.  And knowing that, this is when Jesus announces, “Now is the son of man glorified and now God is glorfied in him.”  God is about to be glorified in the betrayal and death of his son.  God will be glorified in the cross of Jesus for so many reasons.  I would say, first and foremost, because in it God reveals his faithfulness to his promises.  But for Jesus, God was glorified in the cross first and foremost because the cross revealed his love—the same love that would then pour out of them, in the power of the Spirit, to each other and eventually to the whole world and, in that, would show that they belonged to Jesus.

And at the cross we see that godly love looks, again, very different from worldly love.  Godly love is vulnerable and sacrificial.  We see that prefigured in the upper room.  We know the story already.  Even the name, Judas, stands out.  If someone was going to be betray Jesus, obviously it would be the guy named Judas.  But, of course, that’s because Judas ruined the name.  But before Judas ruined it, his was a royal name.  We might miss it because of so many things going from Hebrew to Greek to English, But Judas is the Greek form of Judah—ancestor of Israel’s royal tribe.  It was the name of the great hero who led the Maccabean revolt two hundred years before.  It was the name of Jesus’ brother—the one we know (because of Hebrew to Greek to English and a little bit of wanting to distinguish him from Judas) as Jude.  Judas was a royal name—even a hero’s name.  So the rest of the twelve were shocked and surprised when Judas betrayed Jesus, but Jesus knew all along what was in his heart.  But that didn’t stop Jesus from washing Judas’ feet and sharing that Passover meal with him.  It didn’t stop Jesus from loving Judas and there we see what godly love is like.

So this last supper, as we call it, and Judas and his betrayal point towards the cross where we’ll see the love of God on full display.  And to explain to his disciples, consider what Jesus did.  The last supper wasn’t a theological symposium.  Jesus could have done that.  As much as we theologise and philosophise about the Lord’s Supper you might think that’s what happened that night—that Jesus sat down with his friends to talk theology and philosophy—not that those things are bad!  But, no, when he needed to prepare his friends for the cross, when he needed to explain what it was going to mean, Jesus offered not a word of theology of philosophy.  Instead, he gave them a meal and washed their feet—even the feet of the one who would betray him.

It was a meal.  You can know lots of people, but there’s something about sharing a meal that means you really know someone.  You’ve been in that person’s house.  They’ve given you food.  There’s something intimate in that, something you don’t get in most other settings.  And there’s something celebratory about a meal.  The Prophets had spoken of the Messiah’s kingdom in terms of plenty and bounty and in terms of a great feast and here, on the night before Jesus made that great act of sacrificial love through which God would begin his work of new creation, Jesus shared a foretaste of that great feast with his friends.

But it wasn’t just any meal; it was the Passover.  It was that meal in which the Jews, eating the lamb and the unleavened bread, participated in the events of the exodus from Egypt, of the parting of the Red Sea, of the defeat of Pharaoh, of their meeting God at Mt. Sinai where he gave them his law, established his covenant with them, and made them his people.  So this wasn’t just a meal, it was the Passover and in that Jesus made the Passover the lens through which his friends—and now through which we—see his death on the cross and resurrection to life.  In the events of Good Friday and Easter we see a new Passover and a new Exodus.  Jesus becomes the new Passover lamb, who dies in our place.  We pass through the Red Sea of sin and death and on the other side, in a new land, Jesus leads us to his Father, who pours out his Spirit on us and makes us the firstfruits, his advance guard of his new creation.

And finally, just in case any of us might think that we can be anonymous guests at the Lord’s Table, there’s the foot washing.  As we hear John tell us about Jesus washing his friends’ feet, we should have a sense of Jesus washing our own feet.  There’s something intimate in washing someone’s feet.  Try it for yourself in just a few minutes.  There’s something about it that leaves us more vulnerable while drawing us closer into relationship than even sharing a meal.  It’s awkward and uncomfortable and humbling and in light of that the cross becomes more than just a general symbol.  In the foot washing, Jesus carries his cross to each one of us.  In the foot washing Jesus says, “I did this for you.   If you let me, I will wash you clean of every sin and every hurt, of everything that separates you from God and of everything that has broken you.  I will heal your heart and I’ll fill you with my own Spirit.  Let me wash you and I will make you new.  Come to my table.  Eat my bread.  Drink my wine.  And let me wash you.  Brothers and Sisters, that’s what the cross is about.

And, again, there was Judas.  Eating the bread.  Drinking the wine.  Jesus washing his feet even though he knew that Judas would betray him.  That’s love.  That’s the cross.  And that’s why, as Judas left the upper room that night to fetch the soldiers, that’s why Jesus announced that he was about to be glorified and, in that, the Father too would be glorified.

Brothers and Sisters, think on that as we wash each other’s feet and as we come to the Lord’s Table.  Here we know love like we have never known it before and like we can know it nowhere else.  Here we know the love of God who gave his own life for the sake of those who had betrayed him.  And as we come to know and manifest this love ourselves, we give glory to the one who first loved us.  And that, my friends, is the vision of love that our world so desperately needs.

Let’s pray: Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.    Amen.

Hosanna to the Son of David

St. Matthew 21:1-43

by William Klock

That first Palm Sunday, Jesus made his last trip to Jerusalem for the Passover.  In the little town on the hill opposite the city he made arrangement for a donkey, then he rode down into the valley, back up to the city, and fulfilling the ancient prophecy of Zechariah about a humble king who would come to deliver his people.  You and I know where this story is headed.  Just in case we might have forgotten, the long Palm Sunday Gospel gives us an opportunity not just to remember but to put ourselves in the story of Jesus’ arrest, his trial, and his crucifixion.  But the people on that first Palm Sunday had no idea that the story was headed in that direction.  Jesus had put two and two together—or maybe we should say that he’d put Moses and Isaiah or the law and the prophets together—and he knew that somehow he was headed to his death, despite the acclaim of the crowd.  I have to think that there were a few others amongst his people, wise people steeped in Scripture and who had heard Jesus preach, who might have suspected what was coming.  But that Good Friday, that the Cross, were just a few days away, would have been a complete surprise to most.  They had heard Jesus preaching good news to the poor; they had seen him heal the sick, the blind, and the lame; they had seen him cast out demons and raise the dead.  These were “Messiah things”.  And even if Jesus didn’t always make a lot of sense, even if he was doing other things that didn’t fit the narrative they had in their heads, the Lord, the God of Israel, was clearly with him.  And now, here he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey just as Zechariah had prophesied.  He had to be the long-awaited King.

Jesus’ timing was perfect.  There couldn’t have been a better time for the King to arrive in Jerusalem.  This was Passover.  This was the annual festival where the Jews not only remembered how the Lord had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt, but it was also the time when they looked forward with hope to the day when the Lord would deliver them again.  The people travelling the road with Jesus were on their way to gather with friends and family to tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh, of the ten plagues, of the angel of death and the Passover lambs, the crossing of the Red Sea, and of the Lord meeting them at last in the wilderness.  They were rehearsing a story over a thousand years old, but it was their story.  This was how they became the Lord’s people and how he became their God.  It was a story of deliverance in the past and as they retold it each year they expressed their longing for and their faith in God’s deliverance in the future.  And now, in Jesus, they see the King finally arriving, and that meant that the covenant renewal and the Lord’s visitation and vindication of his people had to be just around the corner.

There were a lot of other stories of deliverance in Israel’s history, but as they waved their palm branches that first Palm Sunday, the people had to have in mind the story of Judas Maccabaeus.  Two hundred years earlier, he and his army had marched on Jerusalem.  They defeated their Greek overlords and retook the city.  And after retaking the city, Judas cleansed the temple, which Antiochus, the Greek king, had desecrated.  The people of Jerusalem had greeted Judas Maccabeus with palm branches too.  For about a century the Jews lived in freedom under the Maccabees and many in Jesus’ day were looking for a King to come like Judas, to once again drive out the oppressors—and this time the Lord would truly be with and stay with his people.  Finally, he would set the world to rights.

But Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem wasn’t the only one.  Pontius Pilate had his own procession into the city.  He lived in Caesarea, down on the Mediterranean coast, but to keep the peace during the Passover as the city was packed with people, Pilate, the Roman governor marched up to Jerusalem with his soldiers.  Pilate would have arrived from the opposite direction as Jesus.  He might have arrived the day before or later that same day, but it’s entirely possible that he and Jesus arrived at the same time, King Jesus representing the Lord, the God of Israel, and Pilate representing the great Caesar.  The people caught on.  They were expecting a showdown.  They saw Jesus on the donkey and they remembered Zechariah’s prophecy of the coming King.  And in thinking of the King they would certainly also have remembered other prophecies about the King.  They sang psalms on the road to Jerusalem and may have been singing some of the royal psalms about the King coming to conquer the nations, breaking them like a rod of iron and smashing them like pottery.  Jesus looked pretty humble and peaceful now, but many of the people expected him to throw off the humble itinerant preacher disguise to rise up like another Judas Maccabeus.  He would drive out the Romans, the corrupt Herodian sell-outs, and the corrupt priests who governed the temple.  And then he would rule like David and Solomon.

So we can imagine the excitement of the people when Jesus headed straight for the temple.  Our lesson from Matthew 21 in the Liturgy of the Palms stops just short of that bit of the story.  Jesus marched into the temple and promptly set about upsetting everything.  He drove out the very people who sold animals and made the sacrificial system possible.  Jesus’ problem wasn’t so much with the buying and selling.  Sacrifices required pure animals.  Carrying animals all the way from places like Galilee was impractical.  They could escape, get injured, or die on the journey.  The people selling animals were offering a needed service and there was nothing wrong with making a profit—they had to feed their families like everyone else.  The money changers were necessary too, because the temple had its own currency.  No, quoting Jeremiah 7:11, Jesus shouted out that they had turned the temple, God’s house, into a house of robbers.  When Jeremiah said these words, he was rebuking people who thought that they could find comfort in God’s house while continuing unrepentant in their sin.  By Jesus’ time the word for “robber” had taken on added meaning.  The Jews had borrowed the word from Greek and used to refer to violent revolutionaries, like the Zealots, who wanted to overthrow the Romans.  The temple was supposed to be the place where the people came to the Lord in prayer and submitted to his will and his agenda, but instead the people had made it the focal point of their hopes and dreams for violent revolution—of another Maccabean revolt and a violent Messiah like Judas.  And so Jesus did something that disrupted the temple and that stopped the sacrifices.  It was an acted-out prophecy declaring that the temple’s days were over and with it the old order.  God was about to do something new.  Jesus had been teaching this all along—and acting it out as well.  Whenever Jesus healed and forgave and declared people clean and bypassed the temple and the system of ritual and purity, he was sending the message that the temple’s days were coming to an end and with it the days of the priesthood and the sacrifices.  The Lord, in Jesus, was about to do something new, to offer a better sacrifice, to build a better temple, to make a better priesthood—all centred in him.  So Jesus does it again here in Matthew 21.  Jesus brought the sacrifices in the temple to a halt and then, Matthew says, the blind and the lame came to him and were healed.

What kind of King were the people looking for?  Again, they were looking for a warrior like Judas Maccabaeus, but Jesus arrived on a donkey and wept over the city because it did not know the way of peace.  They were looking for a king to come and restore the temple and to once again make it the centre of the world, but Jesus, instead, acted out a prophecy of its destruction and declared that he would tear it down.  They looked for another king like David who would vanquish Israel’s enemies, but Jesus instead taught of a king whom the people would reject and murder.

Jesus went back to the temple the next day to teach.  Matthew says that the chief priests and elders confronted him to ask by what authority he said and did these things and Jesus threw their question back at them.  They were afraid to answer.  If they admitted that the Lord truly was behind Jesus they’d have to answer for rejecting him.  If they denied it they would lose the respect and obedience of the common people who loved Jesus and, even if they didn’t understand him very well, they could see the obvious: God was at work through him.  So the priests and elders simply refused to answer.  They were more concerned with their position of authority than with the truth.

Jesus responded with a parable.  This is what he said:

“Once upon a time there was a householder who planted a vineyard, built a wall for it, dug out a winepress in it, and built a tower.  Then he rented it out to tenant farmers and went away on a journey.  When harvest time arrived, he sent his slaves to the farmers to collect his produce.  The farmers seized his slaves; they beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again he sent other slaves, more than before, and they treated them in the same way.  Finally he sent his son to them.  “They’ll respect my son,” he said.  But the farmers saw the son.  “This fellow’s the heir!’ they said among themselves.  ‘Come on, let’s kill him, and then we can take over the property!’  So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  Now then: when the vineyard-owner returns, what will he do to those farmers?”  “He’ll kill them brutally, the wretches!” they said.  “And he’ll lease the vineyard to other farmers who’ll give him the produce at the right time.”

 

“Did you never read what the Bible says?” said Jesus to them:

“‘The stone the builders threw away

Is now atop the corner;

It’s from the Lord, all this, they say

And we looked on in wonder.’”

 

“So then let me tell you this: God’s kingdom is going to be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the goods.  Anyone who falls on this stone will be smashed to pieces, and anyone it falls on will be crushed.” (Matthew 21:33-44 KNT)

This time the priests and elders understood.  We know they understood because Matthew goes on to say that they were angry because they knew the parable was about them.  They would have arrested him then and there if it hadn’t been for the crowds.  You see, they knew a similar story that Isaiah had told long before.  In Isaiah 5 the story is about a man who lovingly planted a vineyard, but no matter how well he cared for it, it produced only worthless wild grapes.  In the end the man was forced to tear down the wall protecting the vineyard and to let the wild retake it.  Isaiah himself had said that the man was the Lord and the vineyard was Israel.  But, now, in Jesus’ version of the story he makes it plain that the problem isn’t just the vines producing bad fruit.  It’s the tenant farmers refusing to acknowledge the vineyard’s real owner: the Lord.

Jesus stresses that they’ve had warning after warning.  The Lord sent his prophets, but they rejected and murdered them.  Now he’s sent his own Son whom they’re about to reject and murder too.  This is one of the most explicit statements Jesus makes about both his relation to the Lord and about his mission, his vocation to bear himself the hatred and violence of the very people to whom he was sent.  And here Jesus reminds us of the problem.  Again, the people were looking for a David or a Judas Maccabaeus.  They were looking for a king who could overpower Caesar.  But the King who came will, instead, allow the violence of his own people and of Caesar to crush him.  Somehow, Jesus is saying, God’s plan will be worked out by everything going terribly wrong in order to make everything perfectly right.  The King will let evil—will let sin and death—do their absolute worst to him.  He will be rejected and scorned.  But the stone that the builders rejected will somehow end up becoming the cornerstone of a new and better temple.  This is where Holy Week is headed.  It’s not until Easter, when we find the empty tomb and meet the risen Jesus, that it all makes sense.

In the meantime, we need to ask which King we are following.  The world is a mess.  Violence is everywhere.  Strife is everywhere.  Poverty is everywhere.  And the very moment it seems one situation is improving, things fall apart somewhere else.  The things the world looks to for hope never seem to pan out—often they just make things worse.  Brothers and Sisters, we need to ask: In what or in whom do we place our hope for peace and a better world?  Caesar has failed over and over and over.  Many of us place our hope in mammon, but mammon’s track record is no better.  We need to declare with Solomon, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son!  May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice!” (Psalm 72:1-2).

But then we need to ask a more personal question.  The Palm Sunday crowd was fickle, hailing Jesus as King on Sunday and crying out for his crucifixion on Friday, but they weren’t wrong in their hope for the Lord’s deliverance of his people.  They longed to see God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.  They hoped for the justice and peace of God to set his Creation to rights.  Where they were wrong was in missing, in failing to see the means by which Jesus would usher in God’s kingdom, not by violence, but by giving himself.  Brothers and Sisters, Jesus calls us to follow him on the road through Holy Week—this road of rejection, and of suffering, and even death.  He demands our all.  That’s what it means to repent—to turn aside from everything that is not him, to turn aside from every source of security that is not him, and to turn aside from every plan that is not his and to give our lives to the task of proclaiming this King, who gave his life for the sake of his enemies.  It means that we give our whole selves in faith and in hope to make his kingdom known on earth as it is in heaven in practical and tangible ways, that through us, no matter the cost, the world may see his justice and his peace, his mercy and his grace.

Let us pray: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for mankind you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility:  Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

About the King’s Business

Daniel 8:1-27

by William Klock

The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the Apocrypha detail the persecution of the Jews in the mid-160s BC, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  2 Maccabees 6, for example, tells how “the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their ancestors and no longer to live by the laws of God; also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus” (6:1-2).  The gentiles used the temple of God for their orgies and drunken banquets.  Antiochus desecrated the alter with the sacrifice of a pig.  On holidays the king’s men would round up Jews and force them to participate in his parades and sacrifices.  Those who refused to participate or who were caught living by torah were killed.  Two women, for example, were caught having circumcised their baby boys.  Their babies were tied around their necks as the women were paraded through the streets to the wall of the city and then thrown down it to their deaths.  Faithful Jews who were caught secretly observing the sabbath in a nearby network of caves were burned alive.  2 Maccabees 7 tells the story of seven brothers and their mother, who were threatened with torture to eat pork.  Despite being beaten, they refused.

The king fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and caldrons heated. These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on. When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, “The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’” (2 Maccabees 7:3-6)

The king went on to do the same to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh brothers who all refused.  We read that:

The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Although she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors. Filled with a noble spirit, she reinforced her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage, and said to them, “I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.” (2 Maccabees s7:20-23)

She stood firm—and so did her sons—because they hoped in the Lord.  They knew that he is the Lord of history.  They knew his goodness.  They knew his faithfulness.  They knew their story and how it was interwoven with the story of the faithfulness of the God of Israel, and so even as they were brutally murdered by a mad king, they trusted in him.  Daniel was written for these people.  The stories in the first half of the book show Daniel and his friends standing firm for the Lord during the Babylonian exile, but the dreams and visions in the second are situated right in the middle of those days of violent persecution four centuries later.  That’s what we see now as we come to Chapter 8 and to Daniel’s second vision.  Let’s start with verse 1 and read through to the end.

In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.

 

As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.

 

Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?” And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.”

 

When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man’s voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.”

 

And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand. The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.”

 

And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.

 

Another vision during the reign of the blasphemous king Belshazzar.  In his ways, he foreshadows the evils of Antiochus Epiphanes.  But as the first vision revealed, the days of Babylon were soon to be over, so this vision whisks Daniel hundreds of kilometres to the east, to Susa, which would become the capital of the Persian empire.  And there he sees another animal, this time a ram.  This is another clue as to when the book was written.  The ram as a sign of the zodiac was associated with Persia—not in Daniel’s day, but in the time of the Greeks.

The symbolism of Daniel 7 was difficult and there’s a fair bit of disagreement about what it all means, but not so much with Daniel 8.  This vision is simpler and the explanation pretty straightforward.  Most everyone agrees on the major points.  So it begins with a ram representing the combined empire of the Medes and the Persians—those are the two horns, one bigger than the other.  Horns, in ancient imagery, represent strength.  The Medes were strong, but the Persians eventually become stronger and gobbled them up and so Daniel sees the ram, lowering its head, and charging from the east into the north and into the south and into the west—which is exactly what the Persian empire did, until it controlled the known world, even as far as Greece.  Daniel writes that the ram did as it pleased and became strong.  It’s the way of human empires.

But as the ram reaches the peak of its power, Daniel sees a goat appear in the west.  It helps to know that in the biblical mind, the goat was stronger and more powerful than the ram.  This goat had a single horn and it made its way across the land so fast it might have been flying for all it seemed to touch the earth.  It put its head down and charged the mighty ram and shattered both its powerful horns.  In case the symbolism wasn’t already obvious, the angel explains that the goat is Greece.  The jutting horn is Alexander the Great.

Alexander was the son of Philip II, King of Macedon.  He was tutored by Aristotle and assumed the throne when his father died in 336 BC.  He was only twenty years old.  By the age of thirty he had conquered the known world, from Greece in the west to India in the East, from Central Asia in the north to Egypt in the south.  And then, in 323 BC, still a young man, Alexander died of a fever in Babylon.  For twenty years his generals fought over his empire, eventually carving it up into four kingdoms, which Daniel sees as four horns.  The two relevant ones for the Jews were that of Seleucus who controlled Syria and the east, and Ptolemy, who controlled Egypt and Palestine.

But this is all the background to the most important part of the vision.  Out of those Greek successor kingdoms arises another horn.  He isn’t named, but as the details of the first horn obviously point to Alexander, the details of this new horn point very obviously to Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  In the great sweep of history, Antiochus was hardly the greatest of the Greek kings, but when he defeated the Egyptian Ptolemies and took control of Judah he became very important to the Jews.  The Ptolemies had treated the Jews well and allowed them to govern themselves as a sort of religous state as long as the high priest coughed up the annual taxes.  Antiochus, however, wanted to make good Greeks of the Jews and to get his hands on the temple treasury.  Under his rule the priesthood was bought and sold and eventually observance of torah was outlawed and torah scrolls burned.  God’s worship in the temple was ended and it was turned into a temple to Olympian Zeus.  And Antiochus murdered faithful Jews by the tens of thousands.

In Daniel’s vision, Antiochus takes the form of this great horn that rises up against heaven itself.  These verses, especially 12-13, are difficult.  Just when I was glad to leave the Aramaic of chapters 2-7 behind, here come these verses that I can only describe as a Hebrew word salad.  The Hebrew of Daniel is something else that points to it having been written in the Second Century, because it’s not written in the great literary Hebrew of Daniel’s day, but in a sort of clunky Hebrew that looks a lot like it was written by someone who probably spoke Aramaic as a first language.  But that’s okay.  The gist of Daniel’s vision is that Antiochus, in going up against the temple and the priesthood, was really shaking his fist at the God of Israel.  This little earthly king who called himself “Epiphanies”—the manifestation of God—was pitting himself against the living God, the Lord of history, the one the Babylonian kings had had the good sense to acknowledge as God Most High.  That never ends well.

And yet, for a time, the mad king seems to have won.  Israel’s identity was centred on the temple.  That was the place where heaven and earth, where God and man met.  They were the holy people who lived with God in their midst.  And not only did Antiochus do his best to make sure they broke their end of the covenant with God by preventing them from keeping his law, but he suspended the very sacrifices that acknowledged God’s presence in the temple.  He wanted the Jews to live like good Greeks and when they insisted on living like Jews, he banished their God from his temple and set up an altar to Zeus.  Judah was now his land.  Their God was gone, so they had no reason to obey his law.  Of course, the Jews knew better.  Like that mother and her seven sons in 2 Maccabees, they knew the faithfulness of the God of the Israel and they knew that no puny human king could blaspheme against him forever.  But, for a time, he would seem to have won the day.  According to Daniel’s vision, for 2300 evenings and mornings the temple would be desolate.  That’s a reference to the morning and evening sacrifices that were—or were supposed to be—made every day.  The sacrifices that Antiochus suspended.  Depending on how you parse this detail out, it’s either about three years and three months or it’s about six years and six months.  Most people tend to go with the three years, which corresponds closely to the time when Antiochus had suspended the worship of the Lord in the temple.  But the six-and-a-half years works too, if you count back to when the high priest was deposed.  Either way, we know what the vision represents.  And either way and for whatever reason, it’s not an exact number, which means it may also be symbolic—we just can’t be sure exactly how.  However we parse out the number, the important point is that the Lord has numbered these evil days.

And that’s the point I want to close on.  Too often we get fixated on numbers and on fixing dates and end up missing the point.  We do it with books like Daniel.  We do it with books like Revelation.  We do it with the prophets and with the apocalyptic discourses of Jesus.  It’s nothing new.  Christians have been setting dates for over a thousand years and whenever we do, we seem to end up distracted from the gospel mission we’ve been given.  Often it ends with the creation of schismatic sects and cults.  William Miller, for example, worked out from these 2300 evening and mornings that Jesus would return in 1843.  His argument convinced a lot of people (and it helped that he threw in plenty of “God has told mes”).  Of course, it didn’t happen so he adjusted his formula, admitted a small error, and corrected the date to 1844.  That didn’t happen either.  But his followers had given up everything and then many of them walked away and became jaded.  They called it the “Great Disappointment”.  But, still, to this day Miller has his ardent followers.  They’re the Seventh Day Adventists and believe that it really did happen in 1843, and that it wasn’t about Jesus returning to the earth, but that Jesus on that date entered the heavenly temple to begin is work of judging souls in anticipation of his return.

And many of us remember Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth that became a sensation in the 1970s.  Lindsey made a point of not setting an exact date, but he wasn’t shy about saying things like the 1980’s would probably be the earth’s last decade.  It motivated some people to become missionaries, but it motivated lots of other people to abandon their jobs, their families, and to run up massive credit card debt because they were convinced that in a year or two none of it would matter.  In more recent years we’ve had similar predictions made about “blood moons” and the like.  Christian bookstores were filled books about the imminent return of Jesus and end of the world.  People were, once again, all worked up about the end of the world and, once again, nothing happened.

Again, we too often forget the point of passages like this one in Daniel 8.  Even if we could estimate or even set a date by it, the point is that God is in control and, because of that, we have every reason to stand firm in the midst of trials and persecution, knowing that God will vindicate us in the same way that he has vindicated his people in the past and, especially for us as Christians, in the same way that he vindicated his son when he raised him from death.  Daniel 8—and so many other passages—remind us first and foremost that God is sovereign.  No matter how it seems, history is not random.  No matter how much they may shake their fists at the heavens, no king is outside the sovereign will of God.  No matter how much we may abuse our God-given liberty, every one of us will be held to account.  Sin and evil will not go on forever.  God is judge, one day he will deal with sin and death once and for all, and eventually all of creation will be to rights—including us.  And we know that this will happen, we believe, we have hope, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  At the cross God did the hard part needed to set the world to rights.  At the cross Jesus won the decisive battle and one day the war will be over when we, the church, his people, have accomplished the work he has given.  He has equipped us with his own Spirit and sends us out to proclaim the life giving and renewing good news of his death and resurrection.  And for two thousand years, that good news has driven away the false gods of the pagans and brought kings and their people to their knees before Jesus and to give glory to the God of Israel.  Brothers and Sisters, date-setting, goofy predictions, and eschatological paranoia do nothing to witness the sovereignty of the Lord of history.  They do just the opposite and they undermine our witness.  They make Christians look foolish and the scriptures untrustworthy.  Our mission is to proclaim the gospel, because in Jesus and in his death and resurrection, that is where the world meets the living God and knows his faithfulness.

And that brings me to the final point.  Look again at verse 27 and Daniel’s response.  The vision left him troubled.  He even lay sick in his bed for “some days”.  He was in some sense dismayed because he didn’t fully understand it.  But what did he do?  He says that he arose and went about the king’s business.  Brothers and Sisters, the prophecies and apocalypses that the Spirit has given us in the scripture were never meant to send us out in a panic or a frenzy, they weren’t given to have us abandon our earthly responsibilities because the world is coming to an end.  They were given to us to remind us that God is sovereign, that he will judge the wicked, and that he will vindicate his people for their faithfulness.  So be faithful.  The Lord had placed Daniel in a position of authority in the court of the king of Babylon.  That pagan court was soon to fall.  That pagan king was soon to die.  But the Lord had put Daniel in that position for a reason and so he went faithfully back to his work.  The same goes for each of us.  The Lord has put us where we are for a reason.  Be a faithful husband and father or a faithful wife and mother knowing that the Lord is sovereign.  Be faithful in your vocation, whatever it may be, however mundane it may seem.  Be faithful to your earthly obligations: to your family, to your business, to your school, to your church, to your club, to your friends, to your debts, to your country knowing that the Lord has placed you where you are.  That is, after all, the King’s business.  This witness to our trust in the sovereignty of God is the foundation that undergirds our greater witness to Jesus and the gospel.  It is what prepares us to stand firm should the day come when we find ourselves forced to choose between obedience to an earthly king and obedience to our heavenly King.  May we stand firm like the saints of old and declare with the mother of those seven martyred sons, “The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us.”

Let’s pray: Almighty God, look with mercy on your people; that by your great goodness we may be always governed and preserved both in body and soul, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

With the Clouds of Heaven

Daniel 7:1-28

by William Klock

The seventh chapter of Daniel begins this way:

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter.

 

It’s finally Daniel’s turn to dream.  The storyteller rolls back the clock about a decade to the first year of Belshazzar, which would have been about 550 BC.  The implied audience, remember, is the faithful Jews living in Judah in the early 160s BC, during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.  The purpose of the book of Daniel was to encourage them and to exhort them to stand firm for the Lord, to stand firm for his law, even as this pagan king was making it illegal for them to live according to the law and to worship the Lord, even as many of their fellow Jews were caving in to the pressure and apostatizing.  The book of Daniel points them back to their ancestors who lived during the Babylonian exile and had their own struggles to remain faithful to the Lord.  The story is told through their eyes to encourage the current generation.

We also need to understand that the book of Daniel now shifts its genre from tales about Daniel and his friends in the Babylonian court to apocalyptic visions.  There are four visions.  This first one in Chapter 7, a second in Chapter 8, a third in Chapter 9, and a fourth spanning Chapters 10-12.  In Greek, an apokalypsis is a revelation, an unveiling, of something.  It’s related to prophecy, but it usually has—at least in the Bible—it usually has to do with current events and is God’s way of pulling the curtain back to show that current events aren’t just random or haphazard, but that he’s at work behind them.  Biblical apocalyptic encourages the faithful to stand firm and to trust in the Lord knowing that even as evil seems like it’s out of control, it’s not.  God is sovereign and he—and his faithful people—will win the day.  It reminds us that God is king and that he will vindicate his people for their faith.

And, as we saw with Revelation, one of the defining characteristics of apocalyptic literature is that it communicates through symbols.  And that can make it difficult for us.  The symbolism would have been obvious to the original hearers, but because it’s very context dependent—things like culture and history, worldview and mythology and things like that—it can be very hard for us to understand.  One of the hard things for us, one of the things that gets lost in translation is the visceral reaction this symbolism would have created in the original audience.  For us it’s just something to decode: this means that.  For them, the imagery would stir up emotions.  This wasn’t about events thousands of years ago.  This was about what they were experiencing.  It was about their world, their not-too-distant past, and their not-too-distant future.  It was about the present affliction, the present persecution, the present pressures that confronted them.  Think of the feelings you might have as you watch the evening news: fear, dread, sadness, elation.  Those sorts of feelings were connected with this imagery.  The timing of this vision, at the beginning of Belshazzar’s co-regency, means that Daniel’s vision would coincide with big news.  For millennia the Assyrian empire had dominated the Near East.  The Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus and Belshazzar was the last incarnation of Assyria.  To the north was the Median Empire and to the east the Persian.  Cyrus the Great, the Persian emperor was on the move, gobbling up parts of Media and Babylon.  In 550 BC the Medes fell to the Persians.  Now Babylon was in Cyrus’ sights.  Here were Daniel and his people, bystanders in the middle of turbulent times.  We can imagine Daniel hearing the most recent news of the fall of the Medes, going to bed, tossing and turning, finally falling into restless sleep, and dreaming.  Let’s continue with verse 2:

Daniel declared, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, ‘Arise, devour much flesh.’ After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.  (Daniel 7:2-8)

In his vision, Daniel stands by the great sea.  In the Old Testament the “great sea” always means the Mediterranean.  It was the centre of the ancient world.  Imagine Daniel standing in a place jutting out into the sea, a place the Rock of Andromeda at Joppa.  The waters rage and the winds blow.  It’s not an ordinary wind.  The winds rage from north and south, east and west all at the same time and the sea churns violently around him.  For all the ancient Near Eastern peoples, the sea represented chaos.  Genesis opens with the sea—formless and void—representing the chaos of the uncreated world into which the Lord speaks, separating the waters, raising dry land, bringing the order needed for humans to live and to flourish.  Now, in his dream, Daniel sees the sea raging.  Chaos threatens the order of God’s good creation.  As we look at our own current events, it’s not very hard to image what Daniel felt.  Turn on the news or look on the Web and so often it seems like chaos and evil are tearing the world apart.  In so many places humans languish when they should be flourishing, all because of war and corruption, because of poverty and greed and sickness.  Sometimes it seems like chaos has won the day.

And who’s at the heart of the chaos?  Daniel sees four ferocious beasts emerge from the sea.  The beasts are symbolic and it’s hard to be certain exactly how all the symbolism here works.  A lot of it seems to come from the Old Testament prophets, but it could also be coming from the mythology and the symbols of the various peoples and empires that are symbolized.  Some of it is eerily similar to the symbolism of the Babylonian books Daniel would have studied in learning about divination and the symbolism of dreams.  What we do know—because Daniel is told in verse 17—is that these beasts represent four empires.   We know from what has preceded and what follows in Daniel that the sequence of empires begins with Assyria, of which Babylon was the last incarnation.  So a regal lion with the wings of an eagle emerges from the sea representing the greatness of Babylon.  Its wings are plucked off and it is set on two feet, which reminds us of Nebuchadnezzar in Chapter 4, ranging in the wilderness like a wild animal, but eventually restored to humanity and kingship by the Lord.

From this point there’s disagreement on how to interpret the symbolism and that’s because of our distance from the original context.  We just can’t be sure what the symbolism means and it then becomes very easy to look through history and cherry pick things that match the symbolism and squeeze it into our modern interpretations.  I’ll just note that the rabbis and Christians for most of our history interpreted these four empires as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.  That was mostly because in the days of the rabbis and early Christians, Rome was the great global power and because Rome so often stood opposed to both the Jews and Christians.  Rome fell, but Byzantium—the eastern Roman empire—remained until the 15th Century.  And there were successors to Rome in the West.  In 800 Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans and it wasn’t until 1806 that the Holy Roman Empire finally came to an end.  But as the years went by, connecting Daniel’s fourth beast to Rome became more difficult, and since the early 19th Century folks have had to work especially hard to hold on to that interpretation, whether identifying the beast with the papacy or with the European Union—and those schemes have consistently ended up falling apart.

History gives us a better basis for interpreting Daniel’s beasts.  We know now that at the time Daniel was written there was a common scheme across the Ancient Near East for describing the succession of empires.  The four great empires were Assyria, the Medes, the Persians, and the Greek Macedonians.  In fact, as the Romans replaced the Greeks in the centuries that followed, they were added to the scheme as a fifth empire.

So following this common pattern, the bear represents the Medes.  As in Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, it was clearly inferior to the Babylonians.  The three ribs in its mouth may be a reference to Jeremiah 51:27-29, which describes the three nations that joined with the Medes in their attack on Babylon.  And the four-winged, four-headed leopard then represents the Persians.  The swiftness with which the Persians conquered the four corners of the earth contrasts with the ponderous bear imagery of the Medes.  But Daniel’s vision really isn’t very interested in the second and third kingdoms.  The focus of his dream is on the fourth.  This is the kingdom that raged and threatened the people of God at the time the book was written.

And the fourth kingdom is different.  As we’ll see in a bit, the first three beasts, despite appearances, were all under control.  But this fourth beast, it does what it wants to do—or at least, that’s how it thinks of itself.  The imagery of the great beast, exceedingly strong, and stamping into oblivion what was left after breaking things apart with its iron teeth or tusks, suggests an elephant—a good image of Alexander’s unstoppable army that conquered the territory of the other three empires.  The ten horns are fitting symbols of the ten kingdoms that arose from Alexander’s empire after his death.[1]  But out of those horns there came up one king in particular, who was a menace to the people of God.  The little horn is, again, a fitting image of Antiochus Epiphanes.  He tried to abolish the law and the worship of the God of Israel.  He was the one who claimed divinity for himself.  He was the cause of all their woes.

But then, in the midst of the chaos, as the sea churns and these ferocious beasts rage across the earth, a new image appears—a bit like Dad coming home to find his unruly children tearing apart the house.  Look at verses 9 and 10:

“As I looked,

thrones were placed,

         and the Ancient of Days took his seat;

his clothing was white as snow,

         and the hair of his head like pure wool;

his throne was fiery flames;

         its wheels were burning fire.

A stream of fire issued

         and came out from before him;

a thousand thousands served him,

         and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;

the court sat in judgment,

         and the books were opened.

 

The beasts are brought to heel as the God of Israel takes his seat as judge.  The one who tamed chaos in the first place established earthly kings to preserve his order and to promote human flourishing.  These kings have done the opposite and now what at first seemed like wild and ferocious beasts stand pitifully before the judgement seat of the Most High God, his fiery throne, and before the heavenly hosts.  Then verses 11 and 12:

“I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

 

Even as he stands before the Most High, that blasphemous little horn continues to speak.  The other beasts, for all their raging, served the Living God—as we’ve seen in the first six chapters.  They all, in some way and in the end, acknowledged him.  The Lord of history raised them up to serve his purposes.  But this horn on the fourth beast rages against the sovereign God and is judged: killed, destroyed, and burned to oblivion.  The vision gave hope to the faithful living under his reign of terror.

But that’s not all there is to it.  Daniel has a second vision and this one’s not just about the bringing down of wicked rulers; this one is about the raising up of a righteous one.  As St. Paul writes in Romans, creation waits with eager longing for the sons of God to be revealed.  It’s not enough to judge the wicked.  Creation longs for its rightful stewards.  Look at verses 13 and 14:

“I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

         there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

         and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion

         and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

         should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

         which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

         that shall not be destroyed.

 

History will not continue as a reign of terror and blasphemy, nor will it merely end in judgement.  In place of the raging kings represented by ferocious beasts, Daniel now sees one “like a son of man”.  In the beginning the Lord created human beings to rule his creation with goodness and wisdom as his stewards and that’s what this new figure like a son of man represents.  After the Lord has judged the wicked empires of the world, this son of man arrives riding on the clouds—that’s a dramatic image of the Lord’s war chariot.  He is presented before the Ancient of Day, before the Most High God, and to him is given glory and an everlasting dominion—ultimately a kingdom that will not be destroyed.

But what does this all mean?  The dream continues as one of the heavenly host explains the symbolism to Daniel in verses 15-27:

“As for me, Daniel, my spirit within me was anxious, and the visions of my head alarmed me. I approached one of those who stood there and asked him the truth concerning all this. So he told me and made known to me the interpretation of the things. ‘These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.’

 

“Then I desired to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet, and about the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn that came up and before which three of them fell, the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke great things, and that seemed greater than its companions. As I looked, this horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom.

 

“Thus he said: ‘As for the fourth beast,

there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth,

         which shall be different from all the kingdoms,

and it shall devour the whole earth,

         and trample it down, and break it to pieces.

As for the ten horns,

out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise,

         and another shall arise after them;

he shall be different from the former ones,

         and shall put down three kings.

He shall speak words against the Most High,

         and shall wear out the saints of the Most High,

         and shall think to change the times and the law;

and they shall be given into his hand

         for a time, times, and half a time.

But the court shall sit in judgment,

         and his dominion shall be taken away,

         to be consumed and destroyed to the end.

And the kingdom and the dominion

         and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven

                  shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High;

his kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom,

         and all dominions shall serve and obey him.’

This is the hope of the saints.  The blasphemous little monster will put himself in the place of God.  He will torment the faithful.  He will have power and authority and, to all appearances, it will seem like his reign will last forever—or longer than those other kingdoms, at any rate.  A time, times—and that would go in sequence: four times and eight times and sixteen times and so on.  But no.  It’s a time and times and suddenly a half.  That might be a reference to the roughly three-and-a-half years Antiochus Epiphanes terrorized Judah, but it’s more likely the idea that his power is cut short at its height.  The Lord will give him enough rope to hang himself.  And his kingdom will be given to the saints, to the holy ones of the Most High—and his dominion, his kingdom will go on forever and ever.

It’s an image of the world set to rights.  Chaos is finally, once and for all given order in by the Lord, and human beings are restored to their rightful place, to serve before the Lord as his stewards—as priests and kings.  This is why the Jews saw the son of man here as a symbolic representative of Israel.  They were the people elect and set apart by the Lord, a people made holy to be a light to the nations—a people who, in living with the Lord in their midst—gave the world a glimpse of what creation was supposed to be like and who pointed forward to the day when it really would be set to rights and men and women would finally serve the Lord as the stewards and rulers of his creation.

The chapter ends in verse 28:

“Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color changed, but I kept the matter in my heart.”

This is the end of the first vision, but there’s more to come.  This vision sets the scene and gives us the setting and timeframe for the visions that will follow.  But then—and I guess I’m jumping ahead to the end of Daniel—we realise as Christians that even as Daniel’s visions end, it’s not really the end of the matter.  The Lord did indeed bring down the evil Antiochus IV.  The Lord did indeed vindicate his people.  A new king would take the throne in Judah.  But as is so often the case with Old Testament prophecy, even though we see it obviously fulfilled in the events of those days, it’s fulfilled in a way that leaves things open to a final and greater fulfilment.  Judah was only free for a century and then Pompey came, conquered Jerusalem for Rome, and deposed the Hasmonean dynasty.  And the people would wait again for the Lord to deliver them.

It was in those dark days that Jesus was born and began his ministry and it shouldn’t surprise us in the least that he took for himself this title from Daniel, son of man.  He was the embodiment of the humanity we forsook in the garden and the embodiment of the Israel that Israel could never manage to be.  In him, God became the first man to be what we were created to be.  And as our representative, he broke the bonds of sin by letting evil do its worst.  The chaos and the vicious beasts of fallen, sinful, rebellious humanity rose up around him and did their worst, they killed him, and they buried him in the earth, and for three days evil thought it had triumphed.  But on the third day, God vindicated his son, raising him from death.  And as Jesus rose from his grave, so Jesus also rose to take his throne.  The son of man has been given dominion and glory and his kingdom and as the good news of his death and resurrection goes out, the peoples, nations, and languages are being brought to him in faith, to serve him and to give him glory.  And in that, we see the people of God, the new Israel, the church empowered by word and Spirit, coming on the clouds—riding the Lord’s war chariot, equipped with the gospel—the good news of Jesus, crucified, risen, and enthroned in glory.  And there, Brothers and Sisters, we ought to find hope and inspiration to stand firm in faith even as the seas rage today, as new beasts emerge from the dark waters, even as they speak vain and blasphemous things.  Jesus has won the decisive battle.  He now sends out: Onward!  Christian soldiers.  And on we go, taking up our crosses into the world, knowing that the one who humbled himself on the cross and who conquered by his blood not only stands with us, but has filled us with his own Spirit and now goes on before us.

Let’s pray again our Collect: Almighty God, consider the heartfelt desires of your servants, we pray, and stretch out the right hand of your majesty to defend us against all our enemies, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

 

[1] Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucia, Macedon, Pergamum, Pontus, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Armenia, Parthia, and Bactria.

He is the Living God

Daniel 6:1-28

by William Klock

Last Sunday we read those closing words of the fifth chapter of Daniel that tell us Belshazzar, the very night of his feast, was killed and that Darius the Mede received the kingdom.  Daniel 6 picks right up from there.  Let’s look at Daniel 6:1-9.

It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”

 

Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, “O King Darius, live forever! All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.” Therefore King Darius signed the document and injunction.  (Daniel 6:1-9)

Darius the Mede.  You might remember that last week I said he’s a bit of a mysterious character.  I think the author of Daniel does something very deliberate here that would, to the original hearers, have signalled a change in the sort of story being told.  Unless you’ve studied Ancient Near Eastern history, this won’t seem important.  If you have studied Ancient Near Eastern history, when you hear “Darius the Mede” it’s going to catch your attention.  It’s not right.  Darius wasn’t a Mede; he was a Persian.  And he didn’t rule before Cyrus; he ruled almost twenty years after these events, after the exile was over, and after Daniel had died.  Jews would have noticed the same thing.  Darius figures heavily in the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the prophetic books of Haggai and Zechariah.  So I think that a Jew hearing this—especially as the story continues—would see it as a signal that the genre, that the type of storytelling has changed.  And there’s good reason for the storyteller to make this change.  Chapters 6 and 7 are transitions in the book of Daniel from those earlier stories that were a type of wisdom literature, to Daniel’s apocalyptic vision.  We’re moving from the historical to the prophetic and apocalyptic and the book does that with one last story about Daniel in exile, but this time it’s—well—the best thing I can think to call it is a “prophetic parable”.  It’s a story that serves a different purpose than the other stories.  As we move from the historical to the apocalyptic, this story of Daniel in the lions’ den makes us pause as it reminds us of the big picture, the big story about the God of Israel and his people, it reminds us that he’s got a plan and is directing history towards an end goal, and it reminds his people of their place in that big story.

So it begins with Darius.  On the one hand, in the previous verse he’s called “the Mede”, but here he’s the Darius who organised his empire into satrapies.  That’s exactly what Darius the Great—who followed twenty years later and was a Persian—that’s what he did.  I don’t think this isn’t a mistake or a historical error.  This character is a sort of a composite of pagan kings who represents, who stands for something in the story.  Again, we’re moving from history to parable here.  Think of the parables Jesus told.  This character represents the faithful in Israel.  That character represents the unfaithful.  And that character represents the gentiles.  Here the king and his satraps represent the rulers of the gentiles.  And Daniel represents Israel.  Like Daniel, Israel had the Lord’s favour.  She was his favourite amongst the nations and the nations became jealous.  And that’s exactly what happens to Daniel in this story.  When they see how he’s been elevated and has been given authority over them, the satraps chafe.  He was one of the exiles.  He wasn’t one of them.  He didn’t deserve his special status or his high rank or his favour with the king.  So they get together and conspire against him.

There are echoes of Psalm 2 here.  In fact, I think if you wanted to turn Psalm 2—which is one of those big picture psalms that ends up pointing us to Jesus—if you wanted to turn Psalm 2 into a parable, I think it would end up looking a lot like Daniel 6.  The psalm begins:

Why do the nations rage

         and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

         and the rulers take counsel together,

         against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

“Let us burst their bonds apart

         and cast away their cords from us.” (Psalm 2:1-3)

Notice where they attack Daniel?  It was “the law of his God”.  He was blameless in everything so they go after his faith.  And in that they’re not just attacking Daniel.  Through Daniel, this is an attack on God himself.  It echoes what it meant in the Old Testament to stand against Israel and, looking forward to Jesus and then to the church, to attack Jesus was to attack God himself.  Think of Jesus’ confrontation with Paul on the road to Damascus: “Why are you persecuting me?” he asked Paul.  To attack the church was to attack Jesus himself.  To attack the Lord’s anointed is to attack the Lord himself.

So these men go to the king—all of them.  The satraps, who were viceroys over the provinces; Daniel’s two fellow triumvirs; and all the other counsellors and officials.  It’s quite the gang.  Everybody hates Daniel.  But they know that Daniel has favour with the king, so in order to take Daniel down, they’re going to have to deceive and manipulate the king.  So they hatch this scheme to recommend a law.  This injunction will ban everyone in the empire from petitioning any god for thirty days.  For that time period, everyone will be required to petition the king and only the king.  And the penalty—you know the story—the penalty for anyone who breaks this injunction will be the lions’ den.

Again, the details signal that this isn’t the same kind of story we’ve had before in Daniel.  It’s a parable.  As the nations rage against the Lord and his anointed in Psalm 2, all the king’s governors and counsellors rage against Daniel and, through him, his God.  The decree is not something that a Persian king would have signed—or a Babylonian or any other Ancient Near Eastern king, for that matter.  The Jews who read this would have known that.  The Persians were known for their religious and cultural tolerance—and especially their friendliness to the Jews.  Not only were they tolerant, but the Persian kings were Zoroastrians and would never put themselves in the position of the gods.  But even all that aside, to ban prayer to the gods was religious and political suicide.  Nabonidus got into trouble for downgrading Marduk and elevating Sin.  You can imagine the sort of trouble a king would get into if he made it illegal to pray to anyone but himself.  And, of course, why for only thirty days?  If you’re going put yourself in the place of the gods, why not do it permanently?

The absurdity of the law is meant to highlight the unhinged rage these men had against Daniel and his God and reflects the real-life experience of Israel, beginning with Pharaoh and running all the way through their story down to Antiochus Epiphanes.  Men who so hate the Lord and his anointed that they’ll cut their own noses off to spite their faces.  Even the punishment seems to be deliberately over the top.  As far as we know, no one in Babylon or Persia kept lions around in a den.  Kings might catch and release lions for hunting, but they didn’t keep them as pets or to execute prisoners.  But this threat hanging over Daniel represents the very real threat hanging over the faithful in Israel.

And looking to pagan kings for help was hopeless.  As much as he favoured Daniel, Darius, this great emperor, is a pathetic dupe, conned and fooled by his advisors and hobbled by his own laws.  In contrast to the perfect law of the God of Israel, the great law of the Medes and Persians—like so many other human laws—is arbitrary, short-sighted, and self-defeating.  What was Daniel to do?  Look at verse 10:

When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.

 

What was Daniel going to do?  We’ve seen in the earlier stories that sometimes the wise thing for God’s people to do is to keep their heads down and pursue a quiet faithfulness.  Being faithful doesn’t always mean sticking your head off so that it can be cut off.  But Daniel knew these guys were watching him.  He could have closed his shutters.  He could have gone somewhere out of sight to pray.  But to do that in this case would be to betray the Lord.  So he continues to pray as he always had: morning, noon, and evening.  And as he prays he does so in the direction of the temple in Jerusalem.  That was a tradition begun by Solomon at the dedication of the temple and Daniel continued it and in that he declared his hope.  For all his status and privilege in this foreign land and with a foreign king, he made it clear that his ultimate hope lay in the promises of the God of Israel to deliver his people from their exile and to return them to the promised land.  Daniel knew that God is faithful and because of that he trusted him—not only that, but he made that trust public.

And, of course, the inevitable happens.  Verse 11:

Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, “O king! Did you not sign an injunction, that anyone who makes petition to any god or man within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions?” The king answered and said, “The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.” Then they answered and said before the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.” (Daniel 6:11-13)

So they go back to their spying on Daniel to confirm what they were already sure he would do.  And then they take their evidence to the king.  Their smarminess if palpable.  “O King!  Did you not sign an injunction that anyone who petitions anyone but you shall be cast into the den of lions?”  Like the king wouldn’t remember if he’d signed such a petition.  Again, we get a sense of just how pathetic earthly kings are and how foolish it is to put our hope in them.  “Oh yes,” he says, “Of course I remember.  It’s now the unchangeable law of the Medes and the Persians.”  We’re left wondering how busy the king has been, because surely, if everyone had taken this law seriously, Darius would have been swamped with petitions—but we don’t get the impression at all that anything like that has happened.  If these guys had been bringing their petitions to the king, they hardly needed to ask him if he remembered signing the injunction.  So either these guys have been ignoring it and praying to their gods anyway or—and this is the implication—they’re a bunch of impious louts who don’t pray at all.  They stand in stark contrast to Daniel, who prayed three times a day and, no doubt, used that time to lift up the king and his empire to the Lord.  These other guys show that they don’t care about the king; they only care about themselves and their own power and status.  Verses 14 to 18:

Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed and set his mind to deliver Daniel. And he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, “Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.”

 

Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.

 

The king now regrets his decision, but there’s nothing he can do.  The greatest king, the most powerful man in the world stands useless and powerless to save Daniel or to intervene on his behalf.  Even as he exhorts Daniel to pray to his God for deliverance, the king is commanding Daniel to be thrown into this pit of lions and sealing the opening with his own signet.  But now, what the satraps and counsellors intended as a punishment and execution, the king unwittingly turns into a contest, a trial.  Will Daniel’s God deliver him?  The den is sealed.  No one can intervene.  The Most High God has, in his sovereignty, used the wickedness of evil men and the foolishness of the king to orchestrate a situation that will reveal his glory.  In that, the lion’s den points prophetically to the tomb in which Jesus lay.  What will the king find when the stone is rolled away?  Has evil won the day or has the living God?

And, not unlike Jesus’ friends, the king goes home and, too anxious to eat or sleep, he paced and prayed.  And in the next verse we can almost see the king’s robes flying behind him and hear his sandals slapping as he runs—in a very unkingly fashion—to the lions’ den at sunrise.

Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” Then Daniel said to the king, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.” Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.  (Daniel 6:19-23)

Unable to move the heavy stone himself, the king calls out to Daniel: “O servant of the living God, are you still there?  Has the God whom you so faithfully serve delivered you from the lions?”  That the king speaks of the living God is a powerful witness.  Living God doesn’t just mean that God isn’t dead.  It means that God is active and powerful, that he is awesome and mighty, that he brings judgement and blessing.  Again, the satraps and counsellors expected an execution, but Darius has turned this into a contest.  Will the God of Daniel act?  Will he vindicate himself by delivering his servant?  And, of course, God has done just that.  The king hears Daniel’s voice echoing up through the stone.  “O king, live forever!  Yes, my God has delivered me!”  In an echo of the fiery furnace episode, God sent his angel to shut the lions’ mouths and Daniel is alive and well.  There’s not so much as a scratch on him.  The king’s men roll the stone away and Daniel emerges unharmed, because he trusted in God.  The God of Israel has won the contest.

The satraps and triumvirs, and counsellors of the king have lost.  So the king turns the tables. Verse 24:

And the king commanded, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. And before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.

 

Presumably this means that all 120 satraps with their families are thrown to the lions.  Again, the scene isn’t realistic and trying to figure out how this could possibly be done is to miss the point of the parable.  This scene calls back to the Lord’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”  And to passages like Isaiah 41:11: “Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish.”  And, again, I think this what Psalm 2 looks like as a parable.

He who sits in the heavens laughs;

         the Lord holds them in derision.

Then he will speak to them in his wrath,

         and terrify them in his fury, saying,

“As for me, I have set my King

         on Zion, my holy hill.”

I will tell of the decree:

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;

         today I have begotten you.

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

         and the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron

         and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Now therefore, O kings, be wise;

         be warned, O rulers of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear,

         and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son,

         lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,

         for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:4-12)

The psalm is a declaration of the Lord’s intent to be glorified.  He has made a people for himself and even given them a king and through them he will be glorified.  He will be glorified in the nations and kings who see him at work in his people and give him glory and he will be glorified as he vindicates his people and judges their oppressors.  And that’s just what we see as the satraps are thrown to the lions and as Darius’ glorifies the Lord in the closing verses of the story:

Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: “Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel,

for he is the living God,

         enduring forever;

his kingdom shall never be destroyed,

         and his dominion shall be to the end.

He delivers and rescues;

         he works signs and wonders

         in heaven and on earth,

he who has saved Daniel

         from the power of the lions.”

 

So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. (Daniel 6:25-28)

The historical Darius was what we might call an evangelical Zoroastrian.  History—not to mention lots and lots of his own inscriptions—show that he was single-mindedly devoted to Ahura Mazda.  But this is a parable and the king here is a composite.  He represents the gentile kings of the earth.  While the satraps represent the gentiles who will persist in their unbelief and eventually be judged, the king here represents those kings—like the ones we see in Revelation—who see the God of Israel as he vindicates his son and as he vindicates his church, and who end up believing and coming to the New Jerusalem to glorify this living God.  Darius’ decree is echoed by the songs we hear in the heavenly throne room in John’s vision as they acknowledge the saving power and everlasting dominion of the God of Israel.  In that I think we see the prophetic side of this parable that transitions us into Daniel’s apocalyptic vision.

In that, it points us powerfully to Jesus in the same way that Psalm 2 does.  The psalm is about Israel and about King David, but it points forward to Jesus who would embody Israel and Israel’s king to accomplish the saving work of God and the establishment of his everlasting dominion.  Daniel’s dilemma points to Jesus.  When Daniel went home to pray, he knew he would fall afoul of the king’s new law.  He knew he would end up in the lions’ den.  He didn’t know if he would live or die.  He had the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, but would the Lord send his angel again to deliver his faithful servant?  Miracles don’t happen every day—that’s why they’re miracles.  What were the chances that it would happen twice?  But Daniel knew that he didn’t have a choice.  He could dishonour God by hiding his prayer or he could give glory to God by showing his unwavering faithfulness to him.  Daniel chose to remain faithful and to glorify God and in that he points to Jesus.  Daniel knew with certainty that the living God vindicates his anointed.  And Jesus knew that too.  We don’t always know what form that vindication may take or when it may happen.  Daniel escaped without a scratch.  Jesus was scourged, beaten, and killed.  But in the end the Lord vindicated both and revealed his glory to the watching world.

And in that there’s the reminder—and I think maybe the main purpose of this prophetic parable:  Brothers and Sisters, the Lord does not merely glorify himself.  He has, to use the imagery of Psalm 2, anointed a people for himself and that people—first a small ethnic group in the Old Testament, but now a worldwide family of people united to Jesus and filled with God’s own Spirit—the living God has anointed a people for himself, a people full of his own life, that we might reveal and proclaim his glory to the world and that he might reveal his own glory as he vindicates us before the watching world.  There’s a reason why God’s people are called to a life of humility, sacrifice, and even martyrdom.  There’s a reason Jesus calls us to take up our crosses if we are to follow him.  Because the Lord reveals his glory in our deliverance.  He slays the dragon and rescues his bride and becomes the hero as the world watches.  To quote the Roman scholar and priest, David Burrell, who died a few months ago, “We are never enjoined in the Scriptures to accomplish anything. The recurring theme of the psalmist, who summarizes as only poets can the sweep of God's covenanting with his people, is that we are to recount—often and loudly—God's accomplishments, his great deeds on our behalf.”  Brothers and Sisters, if we have really and truly believed the good news about Jesus and all the long history of the Lord’s faithfulness to his people, if we really believe that good news, it ought to work out in our lives as we recount—often and loudly—what he has done.  Because we want to proclaim his greatness, his goodness, and his faithfulness for the sake of his glory and because we desire for the whole world know him as we have—so that one day the knowledge of his glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  Hebrews famously speaks of the great cloud of witness around us, witness who ought to inspire us to faithfulness.  But, Brothers and Sisters, remember that you and I are, ourselves, are part of that cloud.  As those witnesses exhort us, we exhort each other and those who will come after us.  So let us be faithful in running the race that is set before us, knowing the mighty deeds of our God, knowing his faithfulness, and above all looking to Jesus who has perfect our faith by enduring the cross, despising the shame, and because of that, is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, as we confessed in today’s collect, we have no power to help ourselves.  You are the living God who, through the death and resurrection of your son, has gracious restored us to life.  Keep the cross ever before us that we might always remember our helplessness and your great grace and might and often and loudly proclaim your glory.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin

Daniel 5:1-31

by William Klock

Let’s begin this morning by hearing Daniel 5:1-12.

 

King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand.

 

Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

 

Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. The king called loudly to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers. The king declared to the wise men of Babylon, “Whoever reads this writing, and shows me its interpretation, shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around his neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.” Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. Then King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed, and his color changed, and his lords were perplexed.

 

The queen, because of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banqueting hall, and the queen declared, “O king, live forever! Let not your thoughts alarm you or your color change. There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were found in him, and King Nebuchadnezzar, your father—your father the king—made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation.”

 

It was the evening of October 12, 539 BC.  The palace in Babylon was glowing with lights and full of people—all the lords and ladies of Babylon.  There was a huge, golden harvest moon hanging low in the night sky the way harvest moons do.  Belshazzar revelled with is people.

Belshazzar was the son of King Nabonidus.  After Nebuchadnezzar, there was a series of kings who usurped the throne through murder and palace coups.  In 556 BC—seventeen years before Belshazzar’s party—a palace coup had removed Labashi-Marduk, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and replaced him with Nabonidus.  Nabonidus was an outsider to the royal family.  He was from the city of Haran, not Babylon.  The chief god of the Babylonian pantheon was Marduk, but the chief god of Haran was Sin, the moon god.  Nabonidus upset many in Babylon by downgrading Marduk in favour of Sin.  Nabonidus left Babylon for most of the last ten years of his reign and this may have been why.  There are various accounts of Nabonidus’ absence.  We know he spent that time in Arabia.  The Persian empire was quickly gobbling up Babylonian territory and he may have gone to Arabia to firm up his relationship with that part of the empire.  It may have been some kind of madness.  It’s very possible that the account of Nebuchadnezzar’s departure into the wilderness that were read about in Chapter 4 may actually have happened to Nabonidus.  Whatever the case, he left his son, Belshazzar to rule the empire in his absence and, as Chapter 5 opens, Nabonidus had only recently returned, taking command of the Babylonian army as they went to war with the Persians.  In fact, in the days just prior to Belshazzar’s feast, Nabonidus had been defeated by the forces of Cyrus, the Persian emperor.  Belshazzar now stood alone in Babylon.

And that’s what lies behind Belshazzar’s feast.  It wasn’t just any old feast.  It wasn’t just a drunken orgy.  It was an important religious festival.  The Babylonians called it Akitu.  It was an annual festival associated with the new year.  If October seems late in the year for that kind of thing, this is because Nabonidus had declared Sin, the moon god, to be chief deity of the people.  The Akitu associated with Marduk took place at the spring equinox, but in Haran, the Akitu associated with Sin took place at the fall harvest moon.  It lasted for eleven days and this was the start of it.  And the reason Belshazzar would bother with this just as his empire was falling to the Persians, was because the Akitu festival was the annual re-enthronement of the king in the presence of his gods.  At the end of the festivities the king would take his throne to rule for another year, his priests would announce the will of the gods for the next year, and the empire would have assurance that their gods stood behind their king.

That’s why this was important.  The Persians were at the gates.  Belshazzar may have believed that his father was dead.  He needed the support of his people, but most of all he needed the support of his gods.  So there, with the harvest moon hanging in the sky, he began this ritual to assure his victory.  I don’t think he did this in desperation.  Babylon was a strong city with good defences.  Belshazzar was ready for a siege.  But this ceremony would guarantee that the gods were on his side.

But he goes a step too far.  He calls for the temple vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had brought from Jerusalem.  These were the vessels used to pour out libations, to pour out drink offerings to the Lord.  The Babylonians had similar vessels they used when worshipping their gods.  After the drink offerings were poured out, it was customary for the Babylonian king to drink what was left to show his connection with the gods, sort of saying that he was their favourite.  If anyone needed the help of the gods right then, it was Belshazzar.  But, again, he takes things a step too far when treats the vessels from the Lord’s temple this way.  He’s not intentionally profaning these sacred vessels by partying with them.  What he’s doing is enlisting the help of the God of Israel.  To his way of thinking, when his people conquered Judah, they didn’t just conquer the people; they also conquered their god.  So the God of Israel—so far as the Babylonians saw things—the God of Israel is now a vassal to their gods and to their king and by drinking from these vessels, again, Belshazzar is enlisting the God of Israel to fight for him.

But the Lord—the one, true God—doesn’t work that way, does he?  No, the Lord is not like the gods of the pagans.  Immediately, the text says, a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall.  Archaeologists have dug up this very throne room.  Its walls were plastered, just as the story says.  But these weren’t just plain, white, plaster walls.  This was the palace of the greatest king in the world.  The walls were covered with frescoes.  And we would expect there to be at least one fresco depicting the king standing before his gods.  There’s an interesting word in verse 5.  The ESV writes that this hand appeared in front of the “lampstand”.  But this isn’t the word for lampstand.  That would be menorah.  The problem is that this word is a hapax legomenon—a word that only appears once—so there are no other instances to help us understand what it means.  We do know, though, that it’s based on a root meaning to shine or to luminesce, and what it’s probably referring to is the fresco on the wall.  The Babylonians gods represented the sun, moon, planets, and stars—the luminaries in the night sky.  So this is probably a painting on the wall of the king surrounded by his gods.  Everything going on here is about the king having the support of his gods: the Akitu festival itself, the king drinking from the temple vessels, and the painting of the king surrounded by his gods.

So a human hand appears.  Maybe it was a hand already depicted in the fresco or maybe it appeared in the air—it’s hard to say—but it begins to write.  This is exactly what the king wanted.  All of this was meant to show that his gods were behind him.  If the festival had continued, his priests would have issued declarations of the gods’ support at the end.  And now—maybe at first this seems better than anything Belshazzar could have hoped for—this divine hand appears and begins to write.  But—first—it defaces that sacred image of the king with his gods—and over the top of it—the hand writes these mysterious words.  The king went pale and the Aramaic says literally that the cords of his loins went slack and his knees knocked.  In other words, he wet himself and stood there quaking in his soggy boots.

The hand disappeared, but the writing remained, so the king summoned all his wise men to tell him what the words meant.  Aramaic, like Hebrew, is written without any vowels.  Nouns are formed from verbal stems and so the same set of consonants could, when vocalised one way, mean one thing as a verb and with different vocalisation mean something different as a noun.  The king, first, wasn’t sure how to read it, but second, even if he knew what the words were—well—what did they mean in this context?  But the kings wisemen had no more idea than he did.  That’s been the theme all the way through Daniel.  The wise men may be fine in their own pagan domain, but when the Lord acts or when the Lord speaks, the pagans are confused and all their learning and wisdom is exposed as useless.  It’s worth noting that the original Babylon fell when the Lord confused the languages of the men who built a tower to heaven and now, again, the fall of the last of the Babylonian empires is announced in a language none could understand.

And that’s when the queen finally makes her way into the banquet hall.  This is probably the queen mother, the widow of Nebuchadnezzar.  Her name was Nitocris.  By all accounts she was a force to be reckoned with.  The Greek historian Herodotus tells us of her great wisdom.  And the storyteller here gives us a sense of that.  In her wisdom she avoided Belshazzar’s feast.  Maybe she knew that defeat was inevitable.  And now she arrives, calm in the midst of chaos, and tells the king to calm down.  There is a man full of wisdom who had solved riddles just like this back in the days of Nebuchadnezzar.  His name is Daniel.  Call for him and he’ll know what it all means.  But you might not like what he has to say.  Nitocris was old enough to remember that when the Most High God spoke to Babylonians kings, things did not go well for them.

And so the king summons Daniel, now in his eighties.  Look at verse 13:

Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king answered and said to Daniel, “You are that Daniel, one of the exiles of Judah, whom the king my father brought from Judah. I have heard of you that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you. Now the wise men, the enchanters, have been brought in before me to read this writing and make known to me its interpretation, but they could not show the interpretation of the matter. But I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems. Now if you can read the writing and make known to me its interpretation, you shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around your neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Daniel 5:13-16)

 

Belshazzar speaks fairly contemptuously of Daniel, but he makes the same offer he made to the other wise men: Tell me what it means and I’ll give you the robe of a king and make you the third ruler of the kingdom.  But Daniel isn’t interested in rewards.  The God of Israel has spoken and Daniel, who serves this God, will tell the king what it means, but he has no interest in a reward.  He knows that this is the end of Belshazzar’s kingdom.  Now, picking up at verse 17, notice how Daniel explains what’s really important before he even gets to the words written on the wall.

Then Daniel answered and said before the king, “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another. Nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and make known to him the interpretation. O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty. And because of the greatness that he gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whom he would, he killed, and whom he would, he kept alive; whom he would, he raised up, and whom he would, he humbled. But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was brought down from his kingly throne, and his glory was taken from him. He was driven from among the children of mankind, and his mind was made like that of a beast, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. He was fed grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will. And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored. (Daniel 5:17-23)

Daniel reminds Belshazzar what he should have known already.  It is the Most High God who raises up kings and brings them down.  The Most High had raised up Nebuchadnezzar.  The Most High had even given Jerusalem and the temple vessels into his hand.  But when the king became proud, when he claimed the credit for himself, when we saw in the last chapter that he ruled without justice and mercy, the Lord took him down.  The man who thought he was the great Gilgamesh was humbled by the Lord and made like Enkidu, the beast man running wild in the wilderness.  But the Lord had spared his kingdom and restored the king so that he could acknowledged the Most High as the true king of kings.

But there is no such humility in the heart of Belshazzar.  The Lord knows the hearts of men.  He knew that Nebuchadnezzar could be corrected and he knows that Belshazzar cannot.  The fact that he brought in to Lord’s sacred vessels in an attempt to enlist the Lord to his cause highlights a hubris, a pride beyond that of Nebuchadnezzar.  He thinks he can snap his fingers and that the God of Israel will come running to serve him.  And so Daniel explains the words:

“Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:24-28)

Daniel reads the words as three coins: mina, mina, shekel, and a half—something like a dollar, a dollar, a dime, and a nickel or a pound, a pound, a penny, and a half-penny.  But remember that in the old days, coins were associated with weights.  So Daniel looks to the verbal roots behind these coins to explain the meaning.  The king has been “numbered”, “weighed”, and “divided”.  What it means is that the king was appointed—given his throne—by the Most High, he has been weighed by the Most High and found wanting, and now he is to be punished by the Most High.  And Daniel plays with that last word peres, which sounds like “Persia”, to foretell the fall of the kingdom to the Persians.  It may be that the Lord is exposing the failures of the kings of Babylon.  Nebuchadnezzar the great was the mina and Nabonidus the shekel—worth only a sixtieth of a mina—and wretched Belshazzar, for all his pride, is worth only half of that.  Whatever the case, these kings were only great because the Lord had made them so, they have served his purposes—not he theirs—and now their entire empire is to be judged and handed over to another.

At least at the end, Belshazzar was good to his word, for what little it was worth.  Verse 29 says:

Then Belshazzar gave the command, and Daniel was clothed with purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, and a proclamation was made about him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

 

I can imagine Daniel standing there shaking his head as Belshazzar gave him these honours.  Maybe Belshazzar still thought his other gods would bail him out, but Daniel knew it was all pointless.  The Lord had spoken and the storyteller drives this home in the last verses:

That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.  (Daniel 5:30-31)

That very night.  This character called Darius the Mede is something of a mystery, but I’ll save that until next week.  Here’s what happened.  The Euphrates River flowed through the middle of Babylon and while the Babylonians were feasting, the forces of Cyrus, the Persian emperor, diverted the river upstream.  Babylon’s great walls were so wide you could turn around a chariot driven by four horses on them.  But the might of Babylon’s walls didn’t matter when the Persian army simply marched under them in the dry riverbed.  The army of Cyrus took the city without a fight.  We don’t know who killed Belshazzar.  His death is only recorded in Daniel.  Cyrus was a gracious king and spared the life of Nabonidus, so it seems odd that he would have Belshazzar killed.  Belshazzar might have been killed by his own people.  We just don’t know.  But that night he died.  The evening began with Belshazzar enlisting the God of Israel to fight for him and in the end he’s exposed as a fool.  The God of Israel fights for no one and, in fact, we find that Cyrus fights for him.

Now, what does this mean for us?  I think, first, that we once again have an exhortation to remain faithful in difficult times.  Again, these stories about Daniel during the exile were collected to exhort the people of Judah to remain faithful as they lived through the terror of Antiochus Epiphanes’ rule and as they watched many of their fellow Jews take the easy way and give in to paganism.  Maybe more than anything, the story of Belshazzar is a warning to kings and rulers to remember that the Most High is the real king and that they serve at his pleasure.  But that truth should be an encouragement to us.  Even when our earthly rulers are full of pride and even when they fail to act justly, we know that God is still sovereign, that he holds earthly rulers to account, and that no matter how bad things get, he always holds us in his hand.  Especially in light of Jesus and his cross and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we’ve experienced the dawning of God’s new creation and we know that that is where the world is heading.  It may not always look that way.  We may face opposition, persecution, and even martyrdom for our faith, but we have hope because we know that the Lord will finish what he has begun.  He’s already done the part that was hard and costly—that cost the death of his own son—so we can be sure that he will surely do the easy part that remains.

But what kept coming to mind as I wrestled with this chapter over the past week was the question of how we relate to God.  Rob brought my attention to a prosperity gospel preacher who was in town this week.  I listened to some of what she was preaching and was thinking just how much this false prosperity gospel is like Belshazzar using the holy vessels of the temple to enlist God to his own cause.  The prosperity folks enlist the holy gospel and the Holy Spirit for their cause.  We may not be so crass in pursuing health and wealth and ecstatic experiences, but we, too, are often guilty of treating the Most High like he exists to serve us.  Nations do it, just as Belshazzar did, declaring that God is on our side.  We do it in politics, claiming that we are in the right and that God is on our side.  We do it in the church.  We devise our plans—often good ones, often to promote the gospel and the kingdom.  And we just assume that our plan is God’s plan.  We do it personally.  We’re convinced we know what’s best and insist that God make it happen for us.  We know that God wants the best for us, but then we twist that into the belief that God wants what we think is best for us.  And that, Brothers and Sisters, is dangerous.  That was Adam and Eve’s mistake.  We are finite beings with finite knowledge.  God created us with the ability to recognise what is true, and beautiful, and good—to some extent—but he also created us ultimately to rely on him for that knowledge.  He has shown us repeatedly that he is good and faithful so that we can trust him.  He humbled himself to become incarnate—one of us—and to die for our sake—so that we can know just how profoundly good and faithful he is.  He gives us every reason to trust him.  Sometimes he walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death and sometimes he leads us beside to still waters and into green pastures.  Either way, he is with us.

Think of Jesus praying in Gethsemane the night before he was handed over to suffering and death.  He prayed to his Father for strength.  He prayed that if there was any other way, his Father might take that cup from him.  But in the end he entrusted himself to the goodness of his Father.  Not my will, but thine.  And because of that, new creation was born, because of that we know the forgiveness of our sins, because of that God’s own Spirit has been poured into us, giving us a foretaste of that dawning new age.  Because Jesus humbled himself and trusted in the goodness of his Father.

Jesus didn’t spend his ministry scrambling for prosperity, dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes or setting up multi-level marketing scams.  Jesus was repeatedly presented with other seemingly good plans, with other avenues to the world’s throne—with ways that didn’t involve his crucifixion.  But he knew the scriptures and he knew that real way to the throne, the one that would bring salvation and renewal, was the path of humility and suffering and humiliation and death.  It didn’t look good.  But it was the Father’s plan and, because Jesus knew that, he knew that it was the good one.  So he followed in confident faith.  Brothers and Sisters, as we keep our eyes on Jesus and his cross, may we too remember the unfailing goodness and faithfulness of the Father.  May we, too, always walk humbly before him, trusting him, and submitting to him in faith.  It’s an amazing thing to ponder.  God does not exist to serve us.  He created us to serve him.  But, still, even when we rejected that vocation, even when we turned our backs on him, he gave his life to forgive and to restore us.  He became a servant, giving his life, so that we might be restored to, so that we might understand the goodness of our own servant vocation.  St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”  We might also say, “Walk in humility, as the Messiah humbled himself for us and gave himself up for us”.  This is what we were created to do.  When we say “not my will, but thing” we become a fragrant offering to God—revealing the glory for which we were created as we humbly offer ourselves to glorify him.

Let’s pray: Lord Jesus Christ, for our sake you fasted forty days and forty nights: give us grace so to discipline ourselves that our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may always obey your will in righteousness and true holiness, to the honour and glory of your name; for you live and reign with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

His Dominion Endures

Daniel 4:1-37

by William Klock

In his day, Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest king who had ever lived and he ruled the greatest empire that had ever been.  But he lived in the shadow of another.  More than two thousand years before him, a king named Gilgamesh had ruled over Sumer, the first of the great Near Eastern kingdoms.  Through the centuries Gilgamesh had become a larger-than-life legend—the greatest king of all time, who ruled over the greatest kingdom.  In the ancient world, the gods brought order to chaos, but it was the duty of the king to maintain that order for his people.  Gilgamesh brought civilization to the world, but in his greatness he forgot his duty and abused his people.  They cried out to the gods for help and the gods created Enkidu, a wild man, more animal than human.  He had horns and was covered with hair and rampaged through the countryside, causing chaos, and challenging Nebuchadnezzar.  He was a reminder to the king: His duty was to maintain order for the sake of his people, but to claim to be the author of that order was to blasphemously claim for himself what rightly belonged to the gods.  Of course, even this ended up going to Gilgamesh’s headed.  He outwitted the gods and tamed the wild Enkidu, and as he drew him closer and closer to his great city, Enkidu was civilized and became a man—and eventually Gilgamesh’s best friend and sidekick.  The Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem carved in clay tablets roughly a thousand years before Nebuchadnezzar was even born, recounts the adventures of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

I mention all this, because this great legendary king and his beast-man sidekick lie behind the events of the Fourth Chapter of Daniel.  For over two-thousand years kings had come and gone in Mesopotamia, but they all saw themselves as successors of that great, legendary, demi-god king, Gilgamesh and his kingdom.  I think the way that the author of Daniel chose to incorporate into his book the story we read in Chapter 4 kind of highlights this.  In the story the king is Nebuchadnezzar, the same king from the last three stories, but when we look at the historical record, the events described here happened to another king, Nabonidus, the last of the Babylonian emperors.  He describes himself as a “nobody”.  Nebuchadnezzar’s nephew had ascended to the throne, but he was an evil man.  He was overthrown in a coup and Nabonidus was made king in his place.  But from the perspective of the author of Daniel, that doesn’t matter.  One Babylonian king was as good (or as bad) as another—all the way back to Gilgamesh.  Like Antiochus Epiphanes in his own day, these pagan kings rose to greatness, but were notorious for taking all the credit themselves.  It's a reminder that men were not created to rule men.  God is king.  But because we refuse to acknowledge his sovereignty, he raises up earthy kings and when they forget who it is they really serve, well, we can take heart.  The Lord will hold earthly kings to account.

So Daniel 4 is written as an encyclical from the king—his first-person account of his encounter with the God of Israel.  It begins this way:

King Nebuchadnezzar to all peoples, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you! It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me.

How great are his signs,

         how mighty his wonders!

His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,

         and his dominion endures from generation to generation. (Daniel 4:1-3)

This follows on the heels of the king’s praise for the God of Israel who had delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace.  But it’s not a continuation of that episode.  Something has happened since and the king wants to report it to everyone in his empire.  Whereas the last chapter began with the king summoning this crowd of people, nations, and tongues to acknowledge his greatness, here he declares to them the glory of the Most High God.  But what brought this on?  Continuing with verse 4:

I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me. So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods—and I told him the dream, saying, “O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw and their interpretation. (Daniel 4:4-9)

It's another dream.  The king summons his wise men to tell him the meaning of the dream, but for some reason he summons everyone but Daniel.  Maybe it’s that the king is really Nabonidus, not Nebuchadnezzar and this is his first experience of this sort.  He says that the wise men were unable to explain the dream.  In just a bit we’ll hear him tell the dream to Daniel and the meaning of the dream is pretty obvious.  It seems like the real problem is that the wise men are afraid to tell the king what his dream means.  So finally, the king summons Daniel.  Even after everything that’s happened, the king still doesn’t quite get it.  He’s a Babylonian.  He's acknowledged the might of the God of Israel, but that doesn’t mean he’s become a Jewish monotheist; he’s just squeezed the Lord into his pantheon.  But, still, his acknowledgement is something and he beings to explain his dream to Daniel.

The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it.

 

“I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven. He proclaimed aloud and said thus: ‘Chop down the tree and lop off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it and the birds from its branches. But leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, amid the tender grass of the field. Let him be wet with the dew of heaven. Let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. Let his mind be changed from a man’s, and let a beast’s mind be given to him; and let seven periods of time pass over him. The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’ This dream I, King Nebuchadnezzar, saw. And you, O Belteshazzar, tell me the interpretation, because all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known to me the interpretation, but you are able, for the spirit of the holy gods is in you.” (Daniel 4:10-18)

This kind of imagery of a tree representing the life-giving rule of the king is found in Ezekiel and Jeremiah, but more immediately, it’s also a motif found in Babylonian iconography.  The tree’s roots sink all the way down to the waters under the earth and its branches up to the firmament above, holding everything together.  The gods establish order, but someone on earth is needed to hold it all together.  And so in the Babylonian imagery, an image of the king sometimes replaces the tree.  The king is the personification of order.  The king sort of becomes the perfect or the ideal human being and the image of God.  And we see this in the way Babylonians thought about their own civilization and the peoples around them.  They were civilized.  They lived in an ordered society—and that order was represented by the king.  Other people, however, were less than human—the further they were from the civilization governed by the king.  They would write about their less civilised neighbours as wild animals.  Again, think of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.  Enkidu was the wild man, uncivilised, leaving chaos in his wake.  But Gilgamesh outwitted the gods by luring Enkidu closer and closer to his city and to himself, and the closer Enkidu got, the more civilised and human he became.

So the king is the great tree, bringing order—peace, prosperity, justice, civilisation—to his people.  But then the unexpected happens.  A watcher—a heavenly being—descends and orders that the tree by cut down, its branches lopped off, and it’s leaves and fruit stripped.  The remaining stump is to bound with iron and bronze—preserved for a time, while the king is cast out.  He will be wet with dew and live with the beasts of the grassland.  For seven periods of time he will have the mind of a beast.  And why?  So that all the living will know that the real king is the Most High.  He gives the kingdoms of men to whom he wills and sets over them the lowliest of men.  (That last bit sounds a lot like Nabonidus, who described himself as “nobody”.)

Like I said, the dream seems pretty self-explanatory and I suspect the problem with the wise men wasn’t so much that they couldn’t explain, but that they were afraid to explain it.  Daniel, who trusts in the Lord and who knows that it was the Lord who gave the dream to the king, Daniel confirms what I expect the king already knew, but was afraid to admit.  Continuing from verse 19:

Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was dismayed for a while, and his thoughts alarmed him. The king answered and said, “Belteshazzar, let not the dream or the interpretation alarm you.” Belteshazzar answered and said, “My lord, may the dream be for those who hate you and its interpretation for your enemies! The tree you saw, which grew and became strong, so that its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in which was food for all, under which beasts of the field found shade, and in whose branches the birds of the heavens lived—it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. Your greatness has grown and reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth. And because the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, ‘Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven periods of time pass over him,’ this is the interpretation, O king: It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, till you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. And as it was commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that Heaven rules. Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”  (Daniel 4:19-27)

For the most part, Daniel simply repeats the obvious and confirms what the king already feared.  He is the great tree, bringing order to the world as a king rightly should.  As far as the dream goes, it seems that the king’s fault is that he has refused to acknowledge that he rules on behalf of the Most High God.  He’s been happy to acknowledge the God of Israel and to bring him into his pantheon, but that’s not enough.  He needs to acknowledge that the God of Israel is the Most High who rules over all—including the gods of Babylon and, most importantly, over himself.  But Daniel does add his own bit of wisdom.  He could see how the king ruled his kingdom and he knew the king’s faults.  And so he adds, “Break off your sins.  Make your rule about justice and mercy.  If you do that, you might stave off the judgement the Lord has decreed.

There is a modern book, 126 pages long, full of the inscriptions left by Nebuchadnezzar’s on his buildings.  It’s a testament to his greatness and all he accomplished.  The Babylon he built was the greatest city the world had ever known.  His hanging gardens were one of the Seven Wonders of the World.  In one of those building inscriptions (No. 12), he describes himself as a just king, meek and humble.  And that’s what the imagery of the tree suggests.  But it's worth noting that Daniel leaves that part out when he retells the dream.  Nebuchadnezzar’s great empire was kind of like the Hindu god Vishnu.  Vishnu was supposed to be the god who preserves human life, but his giant image was traditionally carried in processions on a massive wheeled throne that crushed anyone who got in its way.  This great juggernaut that sees itself as preserver and provider for its people easy becomes the crusher and destroyer.  We see that still today in earthly governments with the best of intentions, but that routinely and uncaringly grind people up in the gears of bureaucracy.  Even pagan kings are called by God to embody his divine kingship and to preserve life and order and—this is where Nebuchadnezzar was falling short—to show justice and mercy.

I’m reminded of the disputes between King James and the Presbyterians of Scotland.  James believed in the divine right of kings, thought himself to be above the law, and got himself into trouble by trying to impose episcopacy on the Church of Scotland.  One Scottish minister, Andrew Melville, is famous for rebuking the king, saying, “Sir, ye are God’s silly vassal.  There are two kings and to kingdoms in Scotland: there is King James, the head of the commonwealth; and there is Christ Jesus, the king of the church, whose subject James VI is and of whose kingdom he is not a king, not lord, not head, but a member.”

Nebuchadnezzar needed a very similar rebuke.  Daniel spoke it—humble yourself and commit yourself to justice and mercy—but it appears the king did not heed it.  Continuing at verse 28:

All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.  (Daniel 4:28-33)

A year later the king was walking on the roof of his palace to admire his city.  It was the greatest in the world.  Nothing had changed.  It was all his doing.  It was all his because he was so great.  He did not heed the advice of Daniel.  And as he declared his greatness, the Lord spoke.  The tree was to be cut down, the kingdom taken away from the king.  For seven periods of time—it’s not clear what the Aramaic word means, but it doesn’t usually mean year—but for a specific period of time the king is to live as a wild man in the grasslands.  Remember the epic of Gilgamesh and his wild man sidekick Enkidu?  The structure of the Lord’s speech here is interesting in that it parallels the civilising of Enkidu in the epic, but in reverse.  Enkidu was more animal than man, but the closer he drew to the king and his city, the more human he became.  In precisely the opposite way, the king is now driven from his city and progressively became a wild man, like Enkidu.  The king thought of himself as Gilgamesh, the great king who single-handedly brought order and prosperity to the world, but because he refuses to acknowledge God, the true Lord of all, he is driven off to live like an animal.  For seven period of time—however long that is—he is reminded that he is not God, he is at best the sidekick.  And it’s interesting that because he refused to repent, he’s now given no choice.  The time is fixed.  At the end, the Lord announces, you will be restored, because you will have learned that it is the Most High who rules the kingdoms of men.

It’s an interesting aside to notice how the Lord’s discipline works.  Israel’s problems weren’t the same as Nebuchadnezzar’s, but the worked similar with her.  From the outset, he spoke through the prophets and said that her exile would last seventy years and that when it was over he would be glorified through his people.  It wasn’t a matter of disciplining the king until he learned his lesson.  He'd missed the chance for that.  Now the Lord decrees a set time and he also decrees that when that time is over the king will have learned.  Brothers and Sisters, we need to heed the Lord’s warnings when he gives them  Now verse 34:

At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,

for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

         and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;

all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,

         and he does according to his will among the host of heaven

         and among the inhabitants of the earth;

and none can stay his hand

         or say to him, “What have you done?”

 

At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.  (Daniel 4:34-37)

The Lord was good to his word.  When the time had passed, the king was restored and for all his trouble has finally gained wisdom.  In this fallen world, there is a place for human kings, but only when the kingship of the Most High is first acknowledged as the root and source of all human authority.  Nebuchadnezzar can even acknowledge his own greatness, but now that statement is sandwiched between his confessions that it is the Lord who has supreme dominion.  The king’s sin was pride and his government was rebuked for overseeing injustice and for lacking mercy, but Nebuchadnezzar now acknowledges that all the Lord’s works are right and just and that he makes the prideful to be humble.  The great king is back on his great wheeled throne, but no more will it rumble through the streets, crushing those who get in his way.

Now, what does this all mean for us?  When Daniel was written, this was meant to be an encouragement to the people of Judah in their exile.  As the other stories about Daniel and his friends reminded them, it might seem like these foreign, pagan kings were in control, but despite appearances, the Lord was still on his throne.  His promises would be fulfilled.  And he will hold earthly rulers to account.  We can take comfort in the same way.  No earthly king or prime minster or president rules apart from the Lord’s sovereign authority.  No matter how things seem, our God is in control and will hold human beings to account.

But, too, the application of the story shifts a bit in our own context.  We live in a democracy and that means that at least a little bit of the authority that Nebuchadnezzar held rests with each of us.  As individuals we hold very little power, but what we do have embodies a God-given obligation to the pursuit of a government that is humble, that acknowledges the authority of God, and that acts with justice and mercy.  That, Brothers and Sisters, is an integral part of our witness to the kingdom of God.  As Nebuchadnezzar saw the great tree of human kingship that brought order and prosperity to the world, you and I have seen the even greater tree on which the Lord Jesus died, the tree by which he has brought the justice and mercy of the Father into a broken world, the tree by which Jesus has become this world’s true Lord, the tree by which the Most High God has once again become king—through his son, who has died, who has risen, who as ascended to his throne, and who will come again.  The kings of old could only see power and strength in the tree of government, but in the cross we meet the one who rules with justice and mercy.  The kings and people of old walked in great darkness, but in Jesus we have seen a great light.  As Isaiah wrote:

For to us a child is born,

         to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

         and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

         Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace

         there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

         to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

         from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

Brothers and Sisters, the Lord of hosts has done this.  Now may we live as witnesses to his King and to his kingdom.

Let’s pray: O Lord, teach us to see and to trust in your kingship regardless of our circumstances.  Teach us to hear your voice, to heed your warnings, and to learn from your discipline.  Give your grace that we might be faithful stewards of your kingdom, always acknowledging your sovereignty with humility, seeking to manifest the justice and mercy of the cross.  Through Jesus the Messiah we pray, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

They Do Not Serve Your Gods

Daniel 3:1-30

by William Klock

King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

 

That’s how the third chapter of Daniel begins.  Nebuchadnezzar the Great made an enormous image of gold and set it up on the plain of Dura in Babylon.  Now, I expect most, if not all, of us know this story about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace.  On one hand, it’s a deadly serious and terrifying story in which these three young Judahites take a stand for the God of Israel and are nearly martyred for their faith.  The king holds all the cards.  He has all the might and all the power.  He stands before his subjects in all his glory.  He has conquered the world, after all.  There is no one more powerful than the great Nebuchadnezzar!  Or so he thinks.  And so as the story-teller unfolds the tale, he mocks the grandeur and the greatness of the king of Babylon.  Everything about his image of gold, the international crowd of dignitaries he gathers, the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony, even his orders regarding the fiery furnace—they’re all exaggerated and absurdly over-the-top.  Because from the Lord’s perspective that’s how it all sounds and the story-teller wants us to have a taste of that.

So, he tells us, Nebuchadnezzar made a great image of gold.  Sixty cubits by nine cubits.  That’s about ten storeys tall, but only nine feet wide.  Think about that.  Ten storeys tall and nine feet wide.  It’s an impossible image.  But that’s what I’m talking about.  It’s not to deny the historicity of the event.  Some people use this as grounds to do that.  I think Nebuchadnezzar probably did make a great image of gold—the real-life one just was surely grand in scale and appearance.  But the story-teller’s point—and it runs throughout—is to portray everything to do with the king’s greatness as excessive to the point of absurdity.  Not so much because Nebuchadnezzar was wrong to make an image commemorating his accomplishments, but because in doing so refused to acknowledge the one who had given him all his greatness.  It’s hard not to notice the parallels with that other great tower built on the plain in Babylon.  And that’s the point.  Nebuchadnezzar has just had a dream showing his greatness—the golden top of the great statue—but the dream also made it clear to him that all this greatness was given to him by the God of Israel.  And what does he do in response?  Like the men who had built the tower of Babel all those centuries before, Nebuchadnezzar erects a mighty golden monument as a testament to all that he has done.  Forget God.  This is all about Nebuchadnezzar.

And that takes us to the question: What exactly is the image?  It doesn’t seem like an image of a god.  Like other ancient near easterners, Babylonians erected idols inside temples, not out in the open.  Making a house for an idol was part of how idols “worked”.  And it’s probably not an image of the king, because Assyrians and Babylonians made images of their kings, but those images were put inside temples and placed before the gods to ask for well-being and prosperity.  I think the best answer is that this image is a stela—a big upright column.  Babylonians erected them to commemorate great events, victories in battle, and even great kings.  A stela might be erected to honour a king and people would bring offerings to the stela.  It was a way for the king to sort of obliquely receive the honour due the gods, without the blasphemy of actually claiming to be equal to them.  These sorts of ceremonies took place in the provinces as a way for the people—especially conquered peoples—to show their loyalty to the king and to Babylon.  I think that fits pretty perfectly with our story here and explains why the story-tellers mocks Nebuchadnezzar for what he's done.  Nebuchadnezzar knows he can’t claim divinity for himself, but he thinks he’s found a way to claim God’s glory for himself.

Picking up at verse 2, notice all the people who come to the dedication of the image.  And notice how the lists of all the dignitaries and all the instruments are repeated over and over through the story.  Everything is excessively absurd.  Continuing:

Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And the herald proclaimed aloud, “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.” Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. (Daniel 3:2-7)

Again, notice the repetition stressing that Nebuchadnezzar set this up, stressing the great crowd of important and international people, the list of instruments repeated over and over stressing the pomp and circumstance.  Even the description of the punishment for those who refuse to honour the image is over the top.  They won’t just be thrown into a furnace.  That would be enough.  But over and over it’s described redundantly as the “burning” and “fiery” furnace.  And, to all appearance everything goes well.  But we might ask—with all those dignitaries, Daniel and his three friends are probably forced to be there.  What are they going to do?  Are they going to bow down to honour this image.  Are they going to go along with Nebuchadnezzar as he robs their God of his glory?  Picking up at verse 8:

Therefore at that time certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, “O king, live forever! You, O king, have made a decree, that every man who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, pay no attention to you; they do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:8-12)

It's payback time.  Remember that at the end of Chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar had elevated Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over all the other wise men and put them over the affairs of the province of Babylon.  They and Daniel had saved the lives of the wise men, but that apparently doesn’t count for anything.  These foreign upstarts have usurped their positions and now they’re mad.  Apparently Nebuchadnezzar could see the great crowd from his vantage point, but he couldn’t see what individual people were doing.  But these men were down there with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They saw them refusing to bow down.  So they take full advantage of this opportunity to get rid of them.  They report them to the king, knowing that their rivals will end up in the burning, fiery furnace.  Nebuchadnezzar responds as we would expect:

Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” (Daniel 3:13-15)

Never mind that it was their God who revealed his dream to Daniel when none of his other wise men could.  Never mind that in response to what their God had done, he'd elevated these men over all his other wise men.  Everyone must honour the king and his greatness!  It’s so important to him that he’s going to run through the entire ceremony all over again.  He makes sure they know the consequences.  Refuse to bow down and it’s the burning, fiery furnace for them.  “Who is the god who will deliver you out of my hand?” he asks.  And right there Nebuchadnezzar the Great reaches peak stupid.  He throws down the gauntlet and challenge the God of Israel.  He challenge the God of whom the Psalmist writes:

Why do the nations rage

         and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

         and the rulers take counsel together,

         against the Lord and against his Anointed…

He who sits in the heavens laughs;

         the Lord holds them in derision. (Psalm 1-2, 4)

As Nebuchadnezzar makes his challenge I can just see the Lord in heaven raising an eyebrow and chuckling to himself.

In contrast, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do know the God of Psalm 2.  They know the God who once delivered their ancestors from the hand of Pharoah.  They know the words of Moses, who had said to Israel, “The Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day” (Deuteronomy 4:20).  They trusted that the same God who had delivered Israel from the iron furnace of Egypt was with them there on the plain of Babylon as this mad and power-crazed king threatened them with his own furnace.  Verse 16:

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-18)

There’s some debate on how their statement to the king should be translated.  Some translate it as if the men were absolutely certain the Lord would deliver them.  Others, like the ESV translators qualify their statement.  My Aramaic isn’t good enough for me to have a dogmatic opinion, so I’m happy to go with the ESV.  However it’s to be translated, the emphasis is on their faith.  They trust the Lord.  He will deliver them—or maybe he won’t—but either way they know that the God of Israel is wise, that he is good, and that he is faithful and, most importantly, that he holds them in his hand.

I think it’s important to note this, because this is where we see that the Lord had a reason in raising up this pagan king and allowing him to take the people of Judah into exile.  The Lord’s people had been fickle and unfaithful for centuries.  They had worshiped pagan gods at altars they’d set up in the Lord’s temple.  They had ignored the law the Lord had given them.  The rulers of the nation trusted in horses and chariots rather than in the Lord.  They oppressed the poor and took advantage of widows and orphans.  And because of all that, the nations looked at Israel and mocker her God.  But here in exile, these men represent the Lord’s people as they experience the Lord’s discipline and turn back to him.  This is what the people of Israel were supposed to be all along.  They refused to live it in their own land and in times of prosperity, so the Lord had taken it all away and here they’re finally that light in the darkness in the midst of a pagan land and as they stand before a pagan king.  Here they commit to being light in the darkness even though they may die for it.  The retelling of this story in those days of apostasy and terror under Antiochus Epiphanes was meant to exhort the people of Judah to something similar.  Why was this happening to them?  Where was the Lord in those evil days?  What should they do?  And the story-teller holds up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and reminds the people of his own day that this how the Lord works.  The Lord is present with his people in both blessing and cursing and, one way or another, the nations will glorify him because of Israel.  So hear the Lord’s rebuke, heed his discipline and repent, and be strong in faith and stand firm for the Lord, the God of Israel—even if the face of death.  Brothers and Sisters, that’s precisely the lesson we need to take from this, too.

Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace. (Daniel 3:19-23)

Such insolence!  How dare they refuse to honor the king?  Off to the furnace they go.  We can really only speculate about the specifics of the furnace.  It was probably close by because it had been used to fire bricks for the image or to smelt the gold used to plate it.  We can’t say much about its design, other than that it was probably a big hole in the ground lined with bricks and covered with some kind of roof or dome.  We can imagine the men who manned the furnace lighting the fires and pumping like they’d never pumped before at the bellows to get it as hot as they could.  Again, the story-teller uses crazy, over-the-top language to describe the anger of this crazy and over-the-top king.  Depending on what the furnace was used for, the normal temperature would have been around nine hundred to eleven hundred degrees Celsius.  With their technology, they might have been able to get the furnace up to fifteen hundred degrees—a far cry from seven times hotter than usual.  But the story-teller is emphasizing the king’s rage at these men who choose to honour the god of Israel before him.

The king’s guards throw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace and it’s so hot that those guards themselves are burned and die in the process.  Surely Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are dead, too.  But then:

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 24-25)

Nebuchadnezzar thought the heat was playing tricks on him.  Imagine him getting as close as he possible can to see into the furnace without getting burned himself.  He can feel the heat on his face.  His beard starts to singe.  And, sure enough, the three men were still alive—and not alive, but slowly dying in agony.  They’re up and walking around inside the furnace like nothing’s wrong.  And to top it off, there’s a fourth person with them and there’s something divine about him that causes the king to describe him as “like a son of the gods”.  Throughout history people have speculated on what that meant.  Some see the pre-Incarnate Jesus here, somehow pre-incarnately incarnated.  I’m not quite sure how that works.  It’s possible, but those sorts of speculations go beyond the scope of the story.  “Son of the gods” was a common expression for divinity in the Ancient Near East and I think that’s what’s important here. Whether it was an angel or Jesus or God in some other manifestation, the point is that God was with these men—and not only with them, but preserving them from harm—and Nebuchadnezzar somehow recognised that’s exactly who it was with the men.

Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace; he declared, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire. And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God. Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.” Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. (Daniel 3:26-30)

Nebuchadnezzar knew a host of gods, but he’d never seen anything like this before.  Seeing these men, not only alive, but completely untouched by the fire had to have turned everything upside-down for him.  And not only him, but all those satraps, prefects, governors, and royal counsellors who were gathered there to watch the execution.  It was all backwards.  The men who had been loyal to the king, who had obeyed his command to throw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they had died a pointless death for the sake of their loyalty to the king, but these young men who had stood up to the king even as he threatened them with death, these young men loyal to their God—they live.  It’s a powerful reminder that the lord is in control, but even more this whole scene was a manifestation of his glory.  This is what happens when the Lord’s people do what they’re supposed to do, when they live as they’re supposed to live, when they stand firm in faith: they cause great kings like Nebuchadnezzar to acknowledge that the Lord is the Most High God.  Notice the dramatic reversal.  Nebuchadnezzar threw them into the furnace because they refused to honour him and now he’s honouring them and he’s glorifying their God, for exactly the same reasons.

Brothers and Sisters, this ought to encourage us to stand firm in our faith as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did.  It’s a reminder that the Lord is in control, even as everything around us changes, even as the church seems to be in decline—going into exile, even as we and the gospel fall out of favour.  Even as we are despised for loving Jesus and proclaiming the good new that he has died and risen.  I don’t think we’re in danger of being put to death, but we may lose our privileges and rights as the world mocks our faith—as it, like Nebuchadnezzar claims God’s glory for themselves and tries to stamp out anything that might remind them of the truth.  Christians increasingly face situations in work or school or government in which the powers that be insist we bow to their demands that are often at odds with the gospel or even with the very idea of truth.  Postmodernism is increasingly cynically absurd.

One the one hand, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego remind us that sometimes the wise thing to do is to simply be obedient to the Lord and keep your head down.  They didn’t go looking for trouble.  They didn’t announce their stand to anyone or to the king in advance.  They simply and quietly refused to ascribe to this earthly king was rightly belonged to the Lord.  Sometimes godly wisdom dictates a louder protest, but I think this ought to be our default approach to difficult situations.  We don’t go searching for martyrdom, but sometimes persecution and martyrdom will find us and if and when that happens, Brothers and Sisters, never forget that God is sovereign, he is always in control, and he is always with us.

And never forget that we trust the Lord because he has given us hope.  It's hard to say what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego expected after death.  They lived before the Jews had developed a full doctrine of the resurrection.  But at the least they trusted that somehow the Lord would be with them in death.  They knew the Lord was good, they knew he was great, they knew he was faithful, and they knew his promises to care for and to be with his people.  They could say with Job:

For I know that my redeemer lives,

         and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

         yet in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see for myself,

         and my eyes shall behold, and not another. (Job 19:25-27)

And that was all they needed to be faithful.  Now consider all that we have.  The cross stands before as a reminder of the resurrection of Jesus.  He died for us, he rose for us, and he has promised that one day he will raise us from death to the life of God’s new creation, to a life lived in the presence of God—and he’s even given us an earnest on that life in the gift of God’s own Spirit.  Brothers and Sisters, this God who delivered Israel from the iron furnace of Egypt, this God who delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the burning, fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, this God has since manifested himself in Jesus.  He has entered the furnace himself, he has taken its punishment and died, and he has done so for our sake—that we might live and that me might one day live forever with him.  As St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, this Jesus is the very image of the invisible God.  In him we know in our own flesh this great God of deliverance.  Because of him, we have every reason to stand firm in faith and to glorify him.  And in him we have hope that one day, because of the faithful witness of his people, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that this Jesus is Lord.

Let’s pray: O Lord God, you know that we cannot put our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully defend us by your power, we pray,  against every adversity; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.