Two Journeys

In the previous sermon, Andy looked at the ways not to use our speech according to Proverbs, now he turns to how the book encourages us to use our words in a positive way. 

For the last six days, I've had some kind of thing attacking my vocal cords. I have no idea what it is, but I've prayed and asked the Lord to get me through all of yesterday. In which, I would have opportunities to witness, and then all of today in which I would have some opportunities to teach. And I'm almost there, so bear with my croaking for the next short period of time, and I'm sorry that it's not pleasing to the ear. But hopefully it'll be edifying to the heart.

Tonight, we're gonna be looking some more at Proverbs, so you can open up to any chapter of Proverbs you choose, we're gonna be all over the book. Actually, in anticipation of next week, I wouldn't mind if some of you would find a favorite Proverb and maybe during our worship or sharing time, you can share. These are really wonderful things, aren't they? Just a single line or a couple of lines of truth, and it can really knock you back into line the way you need to be. So, maybe we can share a few verses with each other next week. So make a note to do that.

Tonight, we're gonna give the other half of last week's talk. Last week, we talked about negative uses of the mouth, some bad habits, and I'm sure this has been a phenomenal week for every one of you having weeded out all of those negative things. But it left you with nothing to say. And so now I don't want to leave you with nothing to say, I'd like you to be able to talk, and so we're gonna talk about positive things tonight, things that we can do that would be a blessing.

George Müller, does anyone know what George Müller's life verse was that he kept referring to over and over? Psalm 81:10, "Open wide your mouth and I will fill it." And he used that to trust God for the needs of thousands of orphans over many, many years of ministry. Again and again, he would come to God and claim that promise and say, "Lord, you have given me this as a promise." And just like we talked about this morning in terms of prayer, he used to wave God's handwriting in front of him and say, "Now, you wrote Psalm 81:10, and I'm coming to you again. I've got some orphans that need feeding." And so he would pray in that way.

Well, now I'm gonna use it in another sense, "Open wide your mouth and I'll fill it with words." Okay? I'm gonna ask that the Lord by His Holy Spirit would fill all of your mouth with words that would honor Him, and that's no small accomplishment, is it? That's a great thing. I want to consider together with you how we can use our mouths to bless and not to curse. A key verse for us would be in Ephesians 4:29. I know it's not Proverbs, but this sums up the negative and the positive last week and this week. And it says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." What a filter!

David talks about setting a guard over the door of his mouth. I think like an engineer so I think about setting a filter over my mouth so that only those things which meet this criteria of Ephesians 4:29 pass through. And that's a pretty extreme filter. This is what it says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk," so anything that is not pure, and holy, and Godly would be strained out. And we covered those things last time, you're talking about gossip and slander and words of cursing and bitterness, and arguments and complaints, and all of those things that we can do with our mouths. That's all been strained out. Okay, and then it says, "But only that which is helpful." The word only is the filter, isn't it? Only those things that meet the following criteria, that means nothing but the following things. So in other words, be silent in speaking to a brother or sister or another, or neighbor, unless the following criteria is met: Only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Boy, that's comprehensive, isn't it?

So I guess at least what we need is a little bit of lag time so we have time to think about what we're about to say and say, "Is this going to meet the Ephesians 4 criteria? Is this going to be helpful for building my brother or my sister or my fellow worker or neighbor up. And then it may benefit those who listen?" That's what we're gonna try to do.

Now, last week, we referred to Proverbs 18:21. You can look there if you want. If your fingers are nimble and you wanna move around, we're gonna be moving through Proverbs, or you can just listen. Proverbs 18:21, which we looked at last week, says, "The tongue has the power of life and death. And those who love it will eat its fruit." Okay, the tongue has power, doesn't it? How does the tongue have power of life? By preaching the gospel? That's true. The gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone. That's eternal life. How else does the tongue have power of life? Encouragement. Do you feel strengthened like a plant that didn't have enough water in the last two weeks when somebody pours a pitcher of water on you and you just feel strengthened? Especially, if it's really creative encouragement, somebody really thought about it, it's not obvious, but somebody has thought about you and has brought this message of encouragement. I think that comes through prayer, frankly. I think if you're praying for somebody, you can gain a message of encouragement, which really comes from God. And almost a form of of prophetic encouragement.

So the tongue has power of life. How does the tongue have power of death? Criticism. Don't you just wilt when somebody comes and brings a word like that, if it's unfounded? Now, we need to be careful because we know the role of rebuke in Proverbs, and that we all do need from time to time a rebuke, and if you're wise, you'll listen to it and it'll correct you. But I'm talking about just those criticisms that aren't from God, those things that really do tear you down and destroy. So the tongue has power of life and death.

Now, what I'd like to do is look at just some different ways that the Book of Proverbs speaks that we can... Some good habits or some good characteristics of the tongue. And then the second half, we're gonna talk about what are some of the outcomes of a good use of the tongue. So these are just some loose categorizations of the Proverbs, and you can do the same thing, you can go through the 31 chapters and organize it however you would like. It would be a useful thing to do. The first category I saw was the tongue characterized as a fountain of life, nourishing and refreshing many. There were many Proverbs like this. For example, 10:11, it says, "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. But violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked." Well, last week we talked, perhaps about the second half. How is the mouth of the righteous a fountain of life? Well, it's just like what we've been saying for the last minute or so, there's a sense of water that just flows out and is nourishing and refreshing it. It's soothing like on a hot day, you've been working out in the yard, it's just hot and you're parched and then the water just quenches that thirst. Well, that's what it's like when you're around the mouth of the righteous person. The words that come from them refresh and strengthen you. So do that. Do that for each other.

Proverbs 10:21 says, "The lips of the righteous nourish many, but fools die for lack of judgment." So here there's food, it seems. In the previous, there's a fountain of living water, and now there's eternal food coming from the lips of the righteous, so there's nourishment coming. And then Proverbs 18:4 says, "The words of a man's mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook." So again, a similar sense, a bubbling brook of soothing refreshment coming from the mouth of a righteous person. And 10:20 says, "The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart of the wicked is of little value." So there's value, there's purpose, and there's healing and nourishment that comes from the tongue or the mouth of a righteous person.

Second category is intimately related to the first, and that's the issue of healing or calming, the effects that the tongue can have in healing or calming. For example, 12:18 says, "Reckless words pierce like a sword." Have you ever been pierced by reckless words? Somebody says something and oh, it just cuts like a knife. It hurts. But the second half says, "But the tongue of the wise brings healing." This world is a harsh and caustic place, isn't it? And I feel that the more that the church behaves like the church and the world behaves like the world, the more this place becomes a place of refreshment and healing and strengthening that we need for what we just went through during the week. You see what I'm talking about? But if there's not much difference between the church and the world, there's not much need for that. You see what I'm saying?

But if we really are living like Christians, sharing the gospel, boldly witnessing, reaching out. Everyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted difficult, then you come in here and the tongue of the wise just brings healing, doesn't it? It just brings healing. The word of God has clearly explained, a brother or sister comes and encourages. Somebody says, "Can I pray for you?" The tongue of the wise just brings healing and you feel stronger. You should feel stronger at the end of a Sabbath day, ready for the week. The Puritans used to call the Sabbath day, the market day for the soul. They used to go shopping daily, not once a week the way we do 'cause they didn't have refrigeration so every day, they'd go and get what they needed, etcetera, and the Sabbath day was market day for the soul, you'd get what you needed for the week. And some of you need healing for what's gone on in the past week. And the tongue of the wise brings healing.

15:4 says, "The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit." The Tree of Life is a strong biblical theme, it was in the Garden of Eden, wasn't it? And the sword, the flashing sword, was sent to guard the way to the Tree of Life, and then it appears again in the Book of Revelation, and the Tree of Life is for the healing of the nations, it says, and it yields its crop monthly and there's always plenty for each nation. Well, here in the Book of Proverbs, the Tree of Life appears again, and it comes out of the mouth of the righteous person. Tree of Life. And it is the gospel, we are preaching the gospel, it is also just gospel truth. Remember that you're a child of God. Remember that your sins are forgiven> Remember that God has sent His son to die in your place, and it tends to put your problems in perspective, doesn't it? It brings healing and strengthening.

And then I like this, 12:25. This is just so practical. That's why I love the Book of Proverbs. 12:25, "An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up." Ain't that true? How many of us are tempted to be anxious about things you face in life? Maybe there's a loved one that's sick, maybe you're facing financial difficulties, maybe you're facing employment troubles, your job future's uncertain, and you're anxious and you come to church, you get alongside a brother or sister and they just speak. All it says here is a kind word, but I'd like to connect it to a whole body of doctrine and truth, just a Biblical word, something that is kind and loving, right to the point, but biblically true, not just, "Oh, you'll do this, or yield that," whatever. But hey, God loves you, and God is sovereign over this and God can care for you, etcetera. A kind word, and all of a sudden you feel strong, the anxiety has been chased away. Just like Jesus in the Sunday school lesson this morning in Luke 4, you remember? Was it? No, on Mark 4, in which he calmed the storm and then said, "You of little faith, why were you anxious?" And all of a sudden the anxiety is gone. And so, we should do for one another.

Is there ever a time that a Christian should be anxious? Is there any such thing as godly anxiety? Well, I guess we could debate about Paul's anxiety over the churches, concern for them, but not the way we mean by anxiety, it's tied to earthly things, isn't it? And a kind word gets us up out of that and moves us along to thinking about it the way we should. Let's do that for one another.

Also, the third category is that the tongue can spread wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge. We can speak words of wisdom to each other. 15:7 speaks of this, "The lips of the wise spread knowledge, not so the hearts of fools." Okay, so the lips of the wise are supposed to be going around spreading information and knowledge, and then 16:21 says, "The wise in heart are called discerning, and pleasant words promote instruction." So we're supposed to be speaking words of wisdom to each other. Well, how can we do that? We talked about that a little bit last week, you kinda have to store them up, don't you? You have to memorize and meditate on Scripture and know the word of God and be able to minister these kinds of wise words.

It says that Solomon knew 3000 Proverbs. Would it be amazing if Queen of the South said, "How happy are the men who just get to stand and listen to you all day long?" But we can do that for each other just by storing up biblical truth and encouraging one another. It may be just as simple as you choosing a number of proverbs that you think would be a blessing or some Scripture truth in the New Testament, something from one of Paul's epistles or a promise from the Book of Revelation, and just using it that week to bless somebody. It's true, and it could be your thing that you go out that week and use.

That brings us to the fourth, which is pleasant words. Already related to that to some degree, but look at 16:24, pleasant words. "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Pleasant words.

Now, I believe in preaching the whole counsel of God's word. But I enjoy preaching pleasant words too. I mean, who doesn't? I'd like to be able to stand and tell you that there is a place where there's gonna be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Where every tear will be wiped from your eyes, where you get to see Jesus face to face forever. You'll no longer be tempted for sin. I'd like to tell you of a place where there is no need for the sun or moon or stars for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp. I'd like to tell you those things, and they're pleasant to listen to, aren't they? It's even better that they're true. And so it is that we can speak and should speak pleasant words to each other. There's too much harshness, isn't there? Too much discordance in families and relationships at work. And I think we could be speaking soothing or honeycomb type words to one another. Why not? And I know that there's a place for rebuke, and we'll get to that later on. But there's also a place for speaking those pleasant and soothing, encouraging words.

The next category I found was the need for holding your tongue and restraining speech. Now, this may seem a little negative, but this is a wise thing to do. The fact of the matter is, we don't have as many things in those first number of categories to say as we may think. In other words, we may not have stored up enough to say all those things, and there may be a good time for us to just be quiet. And to control our mouth, holding your tongue, restraining your speech, guarding your mouth. Look at 10:19. I talked about this last time but it's worth saying again. We looked at the first half Look at the second half. 10:19 says in another translation, "When words are many, sin is inevitable. But he who holds his tongue is wise." There's a place for being quiet and not saying much. 11:12, "A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor." What does derides mean? Yeah, run them down. To run them down. Put them down. Talk them down. That's what the man who lacks judgment does. Why does he lack judgement? What kind of neighbor do you think it's gonna be? You have to live next to this person, that's foolish.

And what goes around comes around. How long is it gonna be before he's deriding you and you have a harsh relationship? So a man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue. I'm tempted to talk about barking dogs right now, I don't know why. [chuckle] Some of you probably love dogs so. We have dogs in our neighborhood, and whenever we go for a walk through the beautiful streets, we have a cacophony of barking that accompanies us. And I'd love to hear the wind and the trees, and it would be beautiful to listen to if it weren't also accompanied by this sound. But the fact of the matter is, I will never say a word to my neighbor about this. Never. There's no point. The point is that we do things, we've got a yard full of kids. And so, to some people, there's different kinds of cacophony.

So, at any rate, good relationships, there's a time for just holding your tongue and not saying anything. 17:27 says, "A man of knowledge uses words with restraint and a man of understanding is even tempered." We tend to say more than we should. There are times that we pull out the 10-pound sledge hammer, one of those little tool hammers would get the job done better. You know what I'm talking about? One of those little tapping type hammer, when we pull out the sledge hammer and get it done. But a wise person uses words with restraint, he pulls it back a little bit. Or maybe even a lot. You use a gentler word, a kinder word rather than the heavy duty word. A man of understanding is even tempered.

One of the later categories we're gonna go through is conflict resolution. A BIG theme in the Book of Proverbs, what to do when you're having conflicts with people. But this is very important, being even tempered, not easily ruffled or rattled. Because the first thing that starts to move when you're rattled or ruffled is your mouth, isn't it? You start to put it into words, but if you're even tempered, you're gonna use words with restraint. The very next verse, 17:28 is one of my favorites. "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent." Isn't that great? You want people to think that you're wise, just look like a sage and don't say anything. Just taking it in, not saying much. Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent and discerning if he holds his tongue. And then 21:23 says, "He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity."

Now, really camp on that word guard. I think about the Philippian jailer. Remember when there was the earthquake and the door flies open and he runs out and he's gonna unsheathe his sword to fall on it? Remember? If you're a Roman jailer and you lose your prisoners, you lose your life. Why? Because prisoners are dangerous, they're dangerous to society, they might go out and do the thing that they were arrested for, they might do it again. And so you're about as bad as the prisoner if you let them go. Well, that's the way it seems Proverbs thinks about your tongue. It's dangerous, it needs to be kept under lock and key. It needs to be guarded, you have to guard your mouth because it's a dangerous villain sometimes. So keep it under lock and key.

Alright, so holding your tongue. Also the need to keep secrets, keeping secrets. This is another way of keeping quiet. 10:13 covered the first half last week, "A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret." How many of you can testify whether from personal experience. Hopefully on the one side and not on the other, of being hurt because you shared a confidence with somebody, and the next thing you know, you're hearing echoes of it in the relational circles? It happens in churches all the time, and it's a kind of thing that you've gotta avoid. When somebody gives you things, and it's something I learned early in the pastoral ministry, you hear a lot of things and a lot of information comes your way. A lot of things that I guess in a way, it's good that you can know so you can pray for them but just the buck stops there. You can't say anything about them at all. And it's good, it's good to just end it right there, but you all are equally responsible for the things you hear too, to take in the information and that's it, it doesn't go any farther than you.

So to be a godly man or a godly woman, you keep secrets. You keep confidences in a dance with you. And imagine, let's speak positively now, if people just know that you're that kind of a man or woman. What kind of reputation you would have as a trustworthy individual? And how much more your ministry would enlarge, people would entrust more to you because you're faithful with little, now you'll be faithful with much, you see? So, there's times to keep quiet about it. And then I like this one, keeping knowledge to oneself. This is a very interesting proverb. Look at 12:23. It's very, very interesting. 12:23 says, "A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly." Now, I pondered this one. And I've noticed something in my life. There's some times that I will have an experience with the Lord or the Lord will share something with me and I'll feel such joy. And then I share it with somebody, and I feel like the air has been let out of the balloon.

I don't know if I can get my words around what I'm talking about, but there's just times to just keep things to yourself. They're just for you. God's done something or whatever. Mary did this, remember? Mary treasured up these things and pondered them in her heart, didn't talk much about them. Now, at one point she did talk about them to Luke, I think, and then they've got out for the rest of us to enjoy, but I think... What does it mean when it says that Mary treasured up these things and pondered them in her heart? I think she just kept it to herself and thought about it. And I think there's a time for that. Wisdom will tell you when it's a time to keep your knowledge to yourself and when it's time to spread it around.

And then this one. This one literally has been up on our mirror at home. It's a great proverb, 15:1, maybe one of the most useful and we will see it again when we get to conflict resolution. 15:1 says, "A gentle answer turns away wrath. But a harsh word stirs up anger." Is that not powerful? There's a time, somebody's coming and they're very, very upset, very distressed. And you speak with gentleness, you say, "You're right, let's pray together." This kind of thing, you're listening, there's a way to do it and a way not to do it, and then before you know it. It's been averted, the conflict is gone, you pray together and you've moved on. But if you respond in harshness, off you go, and you've got yourself a conflict. A gentle answer turns away wrath. Does a gentle answer always turn away wrath? No. And that's the way it is with Proverbs, these are general tendencies, this is general wisdom. But there are times that a gentle answer will not turn away wrath because some people are dumped on wrath. There are no gentle words Jesus could have spoken to turn away the wrath of the Pharisees against him. But I'm just saying that in generally good-hearted open relationships, a gentle answer will put to death many conflicts that don't need to happen. We'll talk about it more when we get to conflict resolution.

On top of all of that, however, there are times that a rebuke is needed. I wanna give balance because, again, the rebuke is very important in the Book of Proverbs. Look at 25:12, "Like an earring of gold or an ornament to fine gold is a wise man's rebuke to a listening ear." So there's a good time for speaking a word that can help a brother or sister. But your motive should be to help the brother or sister get away from a sinning pattern that's doing them damage. You see, that's the motive. And you do it, taking the log out of your eye and realize you know that you've got sin too. But you speak it with a certain wisdom and you do it to somebody who's going to listen. Not to like a wild pig or a dog that's gonna turn and trample you under their feet and tear you to pieces. Some people just cannot handle any kind of rebuke whatsoever. But a wise person can listen and there's a right time to do it.

Now you say, "You seemed to be giving contradicting advice." I'm telling you, the way of wisdom is not necessarily simple, but all of this is part of the way of wisdom. There are times for giving that corrective word, just as there are times for the pleasant word and the word of encouragement. Also 28:23, "He who rebukes a man will in the end gain more favor than he who has a flattering tongue." Ain't that true? You're a man or a woman of integrity. And you're saying the truth. And you're saying what needs to be said, and you're doing it out of compassion and love, not a bull in a china shop with your criticisms. But you're speaking what needs to be said and you're doing it with wisdom and in the end, you gain more respect than somebody who's just always saying the soothing, flattering, nice thing. There's a balance to it, because the world is not a nice place and we're not nice people. Let's be frank, alright? And there's a lot of sin, so there's times for encouragement, but then there's time for that rebuke.

And then finally the apt and timely response. "A man finds joy," 15:23, "in giving an apt reply, and how good is a timely word!" And 25:11 says, "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver." The point is to know what to say at JUST the right moment, and you ask the Lord to guide you in this, just say, "God, control my mouth so that I can say JUST the right words at the right time."

Now, perhaps of all these ministries, this one that I'm going to mention is the most significant, and that is saving lives and defending the poor. Look at 31:8 and 9, 31:8 and 9. This resonates with a deep theme in the Bible. Isaiah and the other prophets speak of this. It says, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and needy." That's one of the highest things you can do with your mouth, you use your mouth to defend the rights and the needs of others. My mind goes in lots of different directions, there's lots of poor people around. Perhaps, my first thought in America is the issue of abortion. The need to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Ain't that true? They can't say a word in their own defense, and so it's gotta be somebody outside the womb who can speak for them. Speak in their place, or speak a word.

But it's not just that one category, it's others that are just economically disadvantaged, they're just people that... We all, our minds immediately gravitate to those that through their own sin have gotten into issues. But there are others that, through no fault of their own, are in economic distress, and that is a big theme in the Book of Isaiah and in another place, the Book of James. That we, God's people, the righteous people, speak up for those who can't speak for themselves and defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow, it says in Isaiah. And that's a good thing to do with our voice.

Now, what is the outcome of all this? Well, good things. 12:14 says, "From the fruit of his lips, a man is filled with good things, as surely as the work of his hands rewards him." 13:2 says, "From the fruit of his lips, a man enjoys good things, but the unfaithful have a craving for violence." So good things come out of using your mouth this way. Enduring forever, 12:19, it says, "Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment." You're really speaking words of eternity when you use your mouth this way. You're speaking like Christ's word, and your words will live forever.

And then 22:11, another outcome. This is unpredicted. Friendship with kings, "He who loves a pure heart and whose speech is gracious will have the king for his friend." So if you talk this way, you may end up having a king for a friend. Now, we don't have any kings in our society, but we have important people that are around, and if you use your mouth wisely, speak words of wisdom, people are gonna be seeking out your counsel. They're gonna be looking at you as a wise-speaking person who knows when to speak and when not to speak. And you may have a king for a friend.

And then 25:15, look this one up, if you haven't looked at any of the others, this is good. 25:15, powerful persuasion. You wanna learn how to persuade, win friends and influence people? Book of Proverbs has the answer. 25:15, "Through patience, a ruler can be persuaded and a gentle tongue can break a bone." What in the WORLD does that mean? I'm not sure, frankly. All I know is that the context here is of persuasion and working against... Perhaps, working in a certain direction that somebody is opposing you. You're trying to get somewhere and somebody's resisting and opposing. Gentle persuasion with patience is very powerful, is what it's saying. Very powerful. You wanna know how to get your way? Make sure first of all that you're right and godly, and that it's the right way to go, that's wisdom. And then try gentle patient persuasion and just see where it gets you.

And then the final outcome, the one higher than all of them is 12:22, "The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful." The highest outcome is that God is delighted. Delighted with you. Pleased with your words. Wouldn't it be something to lay your head on your pillow at the end of one day and the Lord send an angel and say, "I want you to know that today, for the first time in your life. I was pleased with everything you said." Wouldn't that be something? And would it truly be the first time in your life? Probably so. But just for God to give you just one day in which every single thing that came from your mouth was pleasing to Him and He delighted in it. Isn't that remarkable? I wanna be that way, and I've got a long way to go, but it causes me to marvel and be amazed that Jesus lived every day that way, every single word that came from His mouth was pleasing to His Heavenly Father. Let's pray to be like Jesus. Let's pray that every word would be pleasing to Him. Won't you close with me in prayer?

Lord Jesus, we are in awe and we're still reading your words all these many years, 2000 years later. It said in the Book of Proverbs that lips that speak the truth endure forever. And how much more Lord, your lips and your words, for you said heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away. I thank You, O Lord, that you constantly spoke those words, the Father commanded you to speak. And therefore you were constantly the source of delight for your Heavenly Father. O God, work in us. We have the mind of Christ. O God, set a guard over the door of our mouths, that those things that are in our hearts would not be allowed to bubble to the surface and be blurted out. But only those things that are helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Goodnight.

Please if you would, take your Bibles and open to Daniel 9. Today we're going to be looking at Daniel 9, 1-19. Perhaps one of the most important things I've learned in my spiritual life is the first statement as I have come to understand it in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the spiritual beggars for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." And the thing about being a beggar is that you ask for things all the time. You ask for everything. And so what is the language of a beggar? It's a language of need, it's a language of request, it's a language of prayer. We need to speak to God and we need to ask for him, but what kind of words shall we use? What kind of prayer does this almighty and eternal God hear?

One person thinking about prayer said, "Many a beggar has sat at the gate of Christ, mute unable to speak and received everything they needed." And so it's not so much a matter of the perfect words, but the attitude of the heart of neediness, of knowing that you're a beggar and then speaking out of that emptiness and that need to God, but yet we need to be instructed in prayer, don't we? We need to be taught how to pray. John's disciples were taught by John the Baptist how to pray. Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. We need examples how to pray, and this holy man Daniel gives us an example of prayer here in Daniel 9, verse 1-19.

Now, as we look at this, as we look at this prayer, we come face-to-face, especially in context with a mystery. Prayer is at its core, mysterious. Now, if you don't think much about it, it's not. You just ask God for things and he gives them to you, right? You make God aware of some things that he may not have been aware of, and then he adjusts his plans accordingly, right? We're starting to get in the mystery now, aren't we?

What is prayer? We are speaking to an eternal God, that we're coming to understand in the Book of Daniel, who is sovereign over all things, who is King over every king and Lord over every lord. Nations rise up at his command, and then they sink back down into the dust. The minds of kings can be turned into that of an animal, just at his will. This is the God we're addressing and as we go on in Daniel past this into Chapter 10 and 11, we're going to see a God who has everything meticulously worked out, even to kings of the North and kings of the South, moving back and forth over the Promised Land, meticulous details, worked out.

Our God is a careful planner and very attentive to detail. Do you understand now why I talk about the mystery of prayer? What is prayer and what are we doing when we come to God in prayer? What happens to us and what happens to things? Have you seen the bumper sticker, "Prayer changes things"? Does prayer change things, or does God change things through prayer? How does it work? We're into mystery here, aren't we? And I don't know that we're going to resolve at all. But we need to pattern ourselves after Daniel. Daniel came right into the throne room of God, and I believe this prayer may be one of the greatest examples of humble, broken-hearted petition, a prayer that God will answer. Prayer for the glory of his name. My charge to you is I want you to learn how to pray by following the example of Daniel. Let's look at verses 1-19 and see how he prays.

"In the first year of Darius, son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel understood from the Scriptures according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting and in sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands. We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled. We have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers and to all the people of the land. Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame. The men of Judah, and the people of Jerusalem, and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you. O Lord, we and our kings, our princes and our fathers are covered with shame because we have sinned against You. The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him. We have not obeyed the Lord, our God, or kept the laws he gave us through his servants the prophets, All Israel has transgressed your law and turned away refusing to obey you. Therefore, the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us because we have sinned against you. You have fulfilled the word spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us great disaster. Under the whole heaven, nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem. Just as it is written in the law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet, we have not sought the favor of the Lord our God, by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth. The Lord did not hesitate to bring the disaster upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in everything He does, and yet, we have not obeyed him. Now, O Lord, our God, who brought your mighty people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day, we have sinned and we have done wrong. O Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our sins and the iniquities of our fathers have made Jerusalem and your people, an object of scorn to all those around us. Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant for your sake, O Lord. Look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, O God, and hear. Open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous but because of your great mercy. O Lord, listen. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, hear and act. For your sake, O my God, do not delay because your city and your people bear your name."

Now, this is a great prayer. And we can't plumb the depths of this prayer, but I hope instead to lift out some elements that may challenge you in your prayer life. Bottom line is I want you to pray like Daniel. I want you to pray like this. And so I'm going to bring out some elements to show you what I mean. But first, as always, we need to understand this in context. This prayer was uttered in a context. Something was going on in the world and in history. We Christians, we are tied into a flow of history, aren't we? Our feet are on the ground; we're not living up in the ethereal realms. We're living in a world. The world moves on with its events and those events have significance.

Frankly, brothers and sisters, if history doesn't mean anything, then your lives don't mean anything either, because history is made up of lives of people like you who went through this world and made decisions and did things. And so if history means nothing, your life means nothing, but history does mean something and so does your life. Every action, every word has significance. And we are people who are connected into a history and into a flow, and it's going on around us at all times. And so also was Daniel and so is this prayer. It's rooted in events. Something was going on. It was the first year of Darius, son of Xerxes, a Mede by descent.

Well, what was going on? Well, Babylon the great had fallen. The Babylonian Empire was no more. A new empire had come to take its place, the Medo-Persian Empire. Miraculously, Daniel, who had been third highest in the Babylonian kingdom, was made third highest in the Medo-Persian Empire as well. Only God can do that. And yet Daniel understood the significance of the times. He knew why he was in Babylon. He was a Jew, one of God's chosen people. And God had brought his chosen people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, into a Promised Land and had given them that land on condition. There were conditions to the land. They had to obey God's commandments, and God sent prophets and warned them that if they didn't obey that they would be expelled from the land. They didn't listen to the prophets and they were expelled and Daniel was among them. He was expelled from the Promised Land and went to Babylon, and there he lived out his life.

Well, now it's the first year of Darius. Now Darius was co-ruler, I believe, with Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Great was the conqueror that took over all that land, and I believe Darius was made in charge of Babylon and the former Babylonian Empire in that region. But Cyrus the Great, I believe, was the great king, the ruler over all. That's why whenever you have images in the book of Daniel, of the Medo-Persian Empire, you have two horns but one is longer than the other; the Persians really had the upper hand. Cyrus the Great was the true ruler. Darius was a Mede by descent, and I think he ruled under Cyrus the Great.

Daniel’s Devotional Life

But now, here in this chapter, in the midst of these historical events, we are going to get a glimpse into Daniel's devotional life. We're going to be ushered right into his prayer life. We're going to see how he prays. We're going to learn his heart. We're going to get a glimpse into Daniel's devotional life. Daniel was a man of prayer, wasn't he? We already learned that in chapter 6, the lions' den chapter, you remember? Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God just as he had done before. Daniel 6:10, three times a day.

He was a man of prayer, but he was also a man of intensive careful Bible study. What a beautiful combination. That's a devotion. Reading the Bible and prayer. That's a devotion. I hope you do it every day. Take in some Bible, read it, meditate on it, think about it, let it change your heart, and then return it back to God in prayer. That's a devotional. And Daniel had devotions, he had lots of them, three times a day. He was a man of careful Bible study. Look what he says, "I, Daniel, understood [literally] from the books or from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah, the prophet." Stop right there.

Now, if you want to read the words of the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet, what do you do? Well, you reach for one of your seven or eight Bibles, take it off the shelf, open it up, flip to page whatever it is, and begin to read. But it wasn't so easy for Daniel. When had Jeremiah, the prophet, written his words? In Daniel's lifetime. They may well have met each other; they may have been friends even. Two godly people, like Jeremiah and Daniel. Jeremiah, at that point, an old man, a prophet. Jeremiah, a very young man, maybe a teenager on his... I mean, Daniel, on his way to exile to Babylon. Maybe their paths crossed, we don't know; we can't speculate but we do know at some point, he got hold of a scroll, the words of Jeremiah the prophet. Realize they didn't have Xerox machines, they didn't have printers, they didn't have Microsoft Word, or any of these kinds of things that we have today.

What did they have? They had scrolls and they had pens and ink and Jeremiah wrote down his words on a scroll and somehow it was Daniel that got hold of it. Isn't that incredible? God got it to the right man, and my guess is he began copying that thing. Just like Baruch had done earlier, so that there would be more than one, so that you people could reach for one of your seven or eight Bibles, open it up and read it. Praise God for Daniel. But he was writing down, I believe, copying, but more than anything, he was reading and thinking and understanding. It's the way the Scripture is. You need to think about what you're reading, or it has no impact on you. And so he's thinking, and he's understanding, he says.

Jeremiah’s Words Vindicated: The Time Frame Revealed

And Jeremiah's words, it turns out, are being vindicated in history. The prophecy given by Jeremiah was being vindicated in history. Now who is Jeremiah? Well, Jeremiah was a very unpopular man. He was a prophet. And while Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army surrounded the walls of Jerusalem in fulfillment to the warning that God had given, centuries before through Moses, the Babylonians coming as a scourge and a discipline to the Jewish people inside the walls of that city holding out.

That city holding out against Nebuchadnezzar, was a man Jeremiah who said, "I would recommend that you open the gates and let him in because God has sent him. And if you yield to him at this point, God will preserve the city, but if you fight, the city will be destroyed and you will die." Was that a popular message? Absolutely not. And not only was it unpopular, it was viscerally hated by most of the people inside the city, and so also was Jeremiah. And so Jeremiah was arrested, he was thrown into the bottom of a well, muddy well; he was despised and rejected. He was hated, but he spoke the truth. He spoke the truth and he wrote the truth too, didn't he? He wrote down all of his prophecies, he wrote them down, the predictions that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city, that the people would be sent into exile. He wrote them all down. And the king of the city, before the city fell, Zedekiah got hold of that scroll and sat down in front of a fire pot to warm himself. You know the story. He's warming himself while the scroll is read, and he's got a knife in his hand. And as a line of Jeremiah's prophecy was read, he'd cut off a portion of it and burn it, keep the fire going.

Can you imagine? Isaiah 66:2. "This is the one I esteem: He who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my word." Not somebody who cuts it up and throws it into a fire pot. Well, he didn't tremble at God's Words, Zedekiah. And so the whole scroll get burned in that fashion, and so Jeremiah wrote it again, every word of it true. Now among those prophecies was a clear prediction as to how long the exile would last; it would be 70 years. Now, how in the world can God know that? Well, God knows all things. He knows the end from the beginning, he's the Alpha and the Omega, not just the Alpha. He knows all things and so he told Jeremiah to write down, this is what he says: Jeremiah 25:11 and following, "This whole country will become a desolate wasteland. And these surrounding nations will serve the King of Babylon seventy years. But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the King of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians for their guilt, declares the Lord and I will make it desolate forever." Clear prediction, 70 years.

Gets even clearer in chapter 29 of Jeremiah, 29:10. "This is what the Lord says…" and by the way, in these words, you'll hear a very famous verse that many people quote as their life verse. So, understand it now in context. Jeremiah 29:10 and following. "This is what the Lord says. 'When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. [Sound familiar?] Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord, and bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." Those are the plans that God has, plans to prosper the Jewish nation, and to bring them back from their place of exile.

But in the middle of that is a prediction that there would be somebody or some group of people that would pray and ask him to do it. "You will seek me and you'll find me and you will ask and I will answer." And who would that be? Daniel. And maybe some others. God raised up Daniel. And so he's reading Jeremiah's scroll and he begins to calculate. Let me see, it's 605 BC. It's been about 67 years from the beginning. 586 BC is when the temple was destroyed. For your information, 71 years later, the temple was rededicated. God has it perfect, the beginning and the end, 70 years, just perfect. But it's been 67 years now at this point, Cyrus the Great, he's measuring it out, said, it's getting near. "God I don't know your timing. I don't know exactly when it began, but it's time to pray, it's time to pray." And he got down on his knees and he started to pray.

Isaiah’s Stunning Contribution: A Specific Name

Now along with this comes a stunning contribution from Isaiah the prophet. 200 years before this, Isaiah had made a prediction as well concerning the restoration back to Jerusalem. Now, I have to believe that if Daniel had Jeremiah, he also had Isaiah. Doesn't say so, but I'm going to read it to you anyway. God, with perfect clarity, wrote down the name of the king of Persia who would send them back, and his name was Cyrus.

Are you amazed? 200 years ahead of time, he got the name right. Take one of your seven or eight Bibles this afternoon and pull it off the shelf and open up to Isaiah 44:28 and following and understand that the words you're reading were written 200 years before Cyrus was born. "Who says of Cyrus, 'he is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; He will say of Jerusalem, "let it be rebuilt, and of the temple, let its foundations be laid."' This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, who's right hand I take hold of to subdue the nations before him." Cyrus would come and conquer, and he would allow his people to go back and rebuild the land. Cyrus, hmm. Well, history follows prophecy. Cyrus the Great did come; he rampaged, he conquered, he's in charge now. And it's not going to be long before these things are going to be fulfilled, but first, there's a godly man who does what? He prays for it. Gets down on his knees and prayed.

Daniel is passionately motivated to pray; look what he says. "I Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years, so I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer, and petition, and fasting, and sackcloth and ashes." Verse 3. The first word is, "So" or "therefore." Because of what I was reading in Scripture, I prayed. Is that not beautiful?

Listen to what Calvin says about this, this is not motivation to laziness but to passionate prayer, this is what Calvin said, "The faithful do not so surrender in the promises of God as to grow lazy, and become idle and slothful through the certainty of their persuasion that God will perform His promises, but are rather stimulated to prayer. For the true proof of faith is the assurance when we pray that God will really perform what He has promised us."

Do you see that? It's not a motivation to laziness. Well, seventy years I guess, you're going to do it. I'm just going to kick back and relax, let you do it. Sit in that rocking chair, God, you're sovereign over all things. Absolutely not. He got on his knees and asked him to do the thing He had promised to do. That is godly prayer.

And that's what Daniel does. Now first, he prepares himself to do it. And this is so vital that we prepare ourselves to come into the presence of God. I try to do it just by pausing a little bit and remembering who it is I'm about to speak to. But Daniel goes far deeper than that with thorough preparation. First Daniel is prepared for this prayer daily and for years. He's prepared daily and for years. With his daily prayer life; three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed. Day after day, and through daily personal holiness. Prayer is deeply hindered by sin habits and worldliness. Listen to what John Bunyan said about this. John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, he said "Prayer will make men cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer." There's a battle going on in your life between prayer and sin. Who's winning right now? Who's winning? Prayer will entice you to stop praying. 1 Peter 4:7 says it this way, "The end of all things is near; therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray."

You kind of need to earn prayer almost; you need to be holy and pure, self-controlled, disciplined, because if you're not, you will not be able to pray, and all of us can testify to that. You can't pray when you're in sin. So he's prepared through holiness. William Gurnall said this. "When people do not pay attention to what God speaks to them in his word, God will pay as little attention to what they say to him in prayer."

You see that? If we listen to what God is speaking to us and live it out in obedience he will hear our prayers, but if not, he will not listen to that which we speak to him in prayer. And so Daniel was prepared through 90 years or so of walking with God and he's prepared also by the Word of God; he's daily immersed in the Scripture and therefore he's praying according to God's will. We know if we pray according to God's will, he hears us.

Prepared by the Word of God

Well, how do you know what God's will is? Well, he's told us in Scripture. He's immersed in it. He's just saturated in the Word of God. And the word alone has a record of God's promises and the promises are the basis of our prayers. Are they not? Things that God has said he's going to do, that's what we pray back to him. John Trap said, "Prayer is putting the promises of God into clothing." Isn't that great? Prayer is putting the promises of God into clothing. Clothing the promises of God. Thomas Manton said, "One way to get comfort is to plead the promises of God in prayer." I love this, "Show him his handwriting; God is tender of his Word."

So "Lord God, it says right here in Jeremiah, that seventy years you're going to restore, so here's your handwriting. You've written it, you signed it, please do it." Show him his handwriting, he delights in his word." We are not at liberty to make up our own requests.

I spent a summer in the summer of 1983, in New Hampshire; we were doing beach evangelism, witnessing, and just having ministry. It was a wonderful summer. But you could stand on the beach, of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire and you could look just south, right over the border into Massachusetts and there you could see this kind of smooth concrete dome and some interesting smoke stacks coming up. It was the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. It was the site of many protests when I was growing up. I always protest against nuclear power, but that provided power generation for that entire region of New England, a powerful plant.

How NOT to Pray

Now, what I try to want to get at here is a false understanding of prayer. Suppose your father were in charge of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, and you were 10 years old. And your father wanted to just involve you in his life and brought you right into the control room of the nuclear power plant. And all these lights and knobs and switches and buttons. It's amazing. And he said, "Listen, I'm going to leave and I'm going to go get us lunch, you stay in here for an hour and just do anything you want to do. Don't worry about anything. If you start hearing some sirens, they're going to be loud, but don't worry about it, just have a good time. And I'll be back in an hour with lunch, and then we'll take it from there." And that is some people's model of prayer, although they know it not, that God surrenders control of the universe to us and says "Look, whatever you want to do, just do it; if you ask enough, I'll let you do it." And then suddenly the universe goes careening out of control.

Not at all. Rather, it's kind of this way; it's kind of like we're out in a boat and we throw some grappling hooks on the shore and pull the shore to us. You see. The shore is getting ever closer to us. Is the shore moving? No. It seems like it is, getting ever closer and closer but the shore's where it always was. What's moving? We are moving toward the shore. Do we need to move?

Absolutely, absolutely. We start so far from God. We don't care about God, or his purposes and we don't care about other people. We don't love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we don't love our neighbors as ourselves. And what changes that? The blood of Jesus Christ and prayer and other things. Transformation, so that we start to care about what God is doing in this world and the shore gets ever closer to us all the time. Closer and closer, through prayer. God is not going to surrender the control of the nuclear power plant to us for even a moment. You know why, because he loves us too much to do it. He knows what he's doing. And so we're going to pray God's will.

Prepared by Extraordinary Humbling

And so, Daniel is prepared by saturation in the Word of God and by extraordinary humbling, and what is his means of humbling? Fasting, sackcloth and ashes. Is this to get God's attention? No. It's to get Daniel's attention. You understand that? God is attentive. Remember, a day is like a 1000 years; he's all over the things we do, he's attentive. But the humbling and the fasting is to make us serious about what we're praying for.

No amount of fasting or sackcloth wearing will ever get God's attention, in view of sin or life of sin. Augustus Toplady knew this. In his hymn, Rock of Ages, he said, "Not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands. Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow. All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and Thou alone." So it doesn't matter how hard you come to God, in fasting and prayer and sackcloth and all, we only come in the name of Jesus Christ and his blood. Isn't that true? It is true; we come in the name of the blood of Jesus Christ. Covered with his righteousness.

But the fasting and the prayer makes us serious. It's a way of showing seriousness about the prayer and also way of showing grief over sin. There's a mourning over sin, and Daniel is going to do it, isn't he? He's grieved over the sin of his own life and that of his people. And then he prepares by turning to God, verse 3, it says "I set my face to the Lord my God to seek him."

Daniel turned his face total concentration on the Lord. God was all he wanted; the will of God was all he wanted. In Daniel 6, he prayed towards Jerusalem and he's focused also on Jerusalem and on the people of God. Why? Because God cares about Jerusalem. God has a plan and a purpose for Jerusalem, so he zeroed in on what God wants. And then he prepares himself finally by words of awe, by words of awe, speaking glorious words to God. "O Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands." He's setting his mind to this awesome God. To whom are you speaking, to whom are you speaking? The God who set the ends of the heaven up and filled with more stars than you can count. The God who set the sun in the center of the solar system has kept it burning all this time with more energy than you can measure. The God who knit you together in your mother's womb. That's who you're talking to. So with words of awe he prepares himself.

And then in verses 5-14, he gives himself to confession of sin. Daniel is deeply probing himself and his people. He's looking for sin, and he wants to bring it up out and confess it to God. No light dealing here with sin. We're going to get deep here. When I was 12 years old, I was... I invited some friends over, and around the time that they were about to come, I started to suffer for some abdominal pain, some serious stomach-ache. I didn't want to tell my parents because if I told them they'd make my friends go home.

So I didn't say anything. And I spent a terrible night in agony, all night long, in terrible pain. The next morning, I could barely do anything. My parents went off to various things; my dad went to work, my mom to do some things and I was left after my friends left laying on the couch, literally dying from appendicitis. Literally. My mother came back earlier than she had expected, to save my life, though she knew it not. Brought me to the hospital, the doctor said "Well, it's probably appendicitis. It would probably be about an hour operation, maybe a little less." Problem was that it was acute appendicitis, and it burst on the operating table. So I was on the table for four hours or more.

Now, the point is, unless you get all the contagion out, the life is threatened; unless you get all the contagion out, the life is threatened. And so, Daniel was very thorough in his confession of sin. And so also, should we be. We're too light, too quick on this matter, aren't we? We move on too quickly. So Daniel deeply confesses.

Central Issue: Rebellion against God’s Word (vs. 5-6, 10-13)

And what is the issue? In Verses 5-6 and 10-13, the issue is rebellion against God's Word. Rebellion against the prophets. God had agreed to speak to the people, not directly with his own mouth, but through prophets. He would put his words into the mouth of human beings, and yet Israel did not listen to the prophets, did they?

What did Jesus say in Matthew 23:37, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who stone the prophets and kill those sent to you. How often I have longed to gather you together." And worse than not listening to the prophets or disobeying them, Israel broke the covenant, the very agreement that God had given generation after generation. And so, Daniel lifts up a contrast. We O God, we have broken the covenant; you O Lord, you have kept it. We have been wicked, you have been righteous. We have been faithless, you have been faithful."

In Verse 9, "The Lord our God is a merciful and forgiving God, even though we have rebelled against him," the contrast. And then finally, in verses 11-14, he speaks of the curses, the Mosaic curses which came true. "God, you said it would happen. You said you would bring curses on us, that you would expel us from the land and now, O God in perfect faithfulness you have done the thing you threatened."

In Deuteronomy 28, it says, this is the words of Moses a thousand years before it happened, "Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations from one end of the earth to the other. Then you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which you neither or your fathers have known. Among those nations, you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There, the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing and a despairing heart; you will live in constant suspense, filled with dread, both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning, you will say, 'If only it were evening' and in the evening, 'if only it were morning.'" God predicted all of this ahead of time, and in perfect faithfulness after much waiting for our God is a patient God, slow to anger, finally, the judgement came through Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, but it's been measured out seventy years.

God, you did what you promised. You did what you promised and brought judgment on us. And so Jerusalem is a scourge to the nations, but now in verses 15-19, he turns the whole thing around, it's amazing. He is saying, "Just as you were faithful to bring the judgment on us, so now O God be faithful to restore us." Do you see how it works? Our God is a perfectly faithful God, faithful to bring the judgment, faithful to bring the restoration. And so he's pleading with God based on his faithfulness.

Look what he says, verses 15 and following, he says, "Now O Lord, our God, who brought your people out of Egypt, with a mighty hand and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day. We have sinned and done wrong. O Lord in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem." You see? In keeping with your faithfulness, in the exact same character trait of faithfulness, now God, turn away your wrath and restore us back to Jerusalem. See how it works? He's pleading the character of God.

He makes a petition and understand the ground of his petition is God's zeal for the glory of his own name. Isn't it? "God, you do all things for the glory of your name. You chose out the people for the glory of your name, You brought them into Egypt for the glory of your name. You were patient with them for the glory of your name. You judged them for the glory of your name, and now, O God, for the glory of your name, restore them back to Jerusalem. Turn your wrath away." And so, Daniel's motivation is God's zeal for the glory of his name. For Your sake, O God, do it, not because we're righteous, not because we're Godly, but for your sake and for your name.

Now, why does Daniel pray like this? And why is God so intensely concerned with his own name? Understand this, that the proclamation of the name of God means salvation for people. Isn't that true? As we proclaim a glorious mighty God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ, who did miracles and who sent his Son Jesus who died on the cross and was raised from the dead on the third day, as we proclaim a God, the name of that God, what happens? People call on the name of that God. And what happens when they call on the name of the Lord? Well, they're saved. And so, Daniel restoring it over and over, praise for God's glory and for his reputation, not for Israel's righteousness.

Now what applications can we take from this as we look at Daniel 9. I guess, simply this. I want you to pray like Daniel. First of all, proper preparation and passion. Cold prayers freeze before they get to heaven. Do you understand that? They freeze before they make it. They never get there. Heat your heart up. Heat your heart up at the Word of God and with the Holy Spirit. Proper preparation and passion, the right emotion, the right knowledge of the Word of God, seriousness and humility in your spirit, saturation in the Word of God, fear of the Lord. These things prepare you for prayer.

Secondly, confession of sin. Don't come swaggering into God's presence based on your own righteousness. You have none. Come humbly as a spiritual beggar clothed with the righteousness that was given you as a gift, the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and then confess your sin. Search your heart and your mind. And may I suggest that you be like Daniel. Daniel confessed not only his own sinfulness but the sinfulness of his what? His people. Do we have things to confess on that score? Are we people of unclean lips, who live among a people of unclean lips? Can we not confess the sins of America as though they are very own? Are we so different from our neighbors in the things we read in the newspaper or see on television, we could never do those things? Can we not confess the sins of our own people the way that Daniel confessed the sins of the Jews?

And thirdly, prayer according to God's will, informed by God's Word. Don't think for a moment that God's going to let you into the control room of a nuclear power plant. Don't want him to do so. Don't trust yourself so much. Let God be God and let his will rule. Instead, say, "God, what is your will in this matter? What are you doing in the world and how can I pray in accordance with that?" And the only way to do that is saturation in the Word of God.

And finally, pray for the glory of God's name. May I suggest, do everything for the glory of God's name. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all that God's reputation may shine brightly around you and in the world. And why? So that people can be saved; for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Won't you close with me in prayer?

What does the Bible, and specifically Proverbs, have to say about the words we speak? In this sermon on Proverbs, Andy looks at godly speech as well as gossip, flattery, mocking, hasty speech, and more! 

We're gonna continue our look at Proverbs tonight, but I don't really know where to tell you to turn to look, we're gonna be all over the book. So, open to Proverbs 1, but we're not gonna be in Proverbs 1, you'll be having to flip or just listen. Tonight we're going to talk about what the Book of Proverbs has to say about our mouth or our lips, our words, our talking. And you know something, the more I research, I read through the whole Book of Proverbs this week, just looking specifically for Proverbs that had to do with speaking, and I ended up with about a third of the book. We're gonna be looking at it again next week, but tonight I wanna talk about just some beginning things about what the Book of Proverbs has to say about our words.

Now we're gonna start actually tonight briefly in the Book of James Chapter 3, Verse 2, just one verse, you don't need to turn there, but I'm just gonna quote it. It says, "We all stumble in many ways." Amen? "We all stumble in many ways." It's true. "If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep the whole body in check." If you are never at fault ever in the things you say, then you're perfect, that's what James 3:2 said. Now, why is it true? Why is it true that if you never say anything wrong, you're a perfect person? Why is that?

That's right, it means your heart's perfect. See, Charles, you are... You're remarkable. Immediately, Charles brings us to the heart of the matter, the connection between the mouth and the heart. Why is the fact that you, if you are never at fault in what you say, that you're a perfect man, why is that true? It's because of the connection between the mouth and the heart. And I think that's something that we need to get at and understand right here. The mouth is a reflection of the heart. And what is the heart like? Let's go to the next level. What is your heart like? Desperately wicked. Isn't that a little gloomy, Joyce? A little negative? [chuckle] It is though, it's true.

Jeremiah 9 says it's desperately wicked. And I think the more you go on in sanctification, the more you know yourself under the light of Scripture, the more you know it's true. And therefore, the mouth is constantly saying things that it shouldn't say. We're constantly getting ourselves into trouble with what we say. Now, the whole passage in James 3, you've read it before. Basically, in effect, it says, "No one can bridle the tongue." You just can't do it. No matter how hard you try, it's going to say something. It's gonna wriggle free at some point and say something you shouldn't have said. Therefore, the book of Proverbs, we can imagine, would have a lot of practical wisdom to give us on what we have to say.

Another key verse in this that you've heard me quote many times, and I'll quote it again, is in Matthew 12:34, and following. There, Jesus had just done an amazing miracle, and His opponents, His enemies were trying a new tact. They were trying a new approach. And they were saying, it is by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that he drives out demons. That's what they said. In other words, they were ascribing to the devil the things that the Holy Spirit was doing through Jesus. Isn't that incredible? And Jesus said it's a very, very serious moment, that's when He discusses the unforgivable sin, as you remember, which I think is ascribing to the devil the things that the Holy Spirit is doing in such a manifest way. The miracles should have been sufficient evidence of the deity of Christ. But they're ascribing to the devil by Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies is what it means, the things that the Holy Spirit was doing. And this is what Jesus said, "You brood of vipers! How can you, who are evil, say anything good?" Think about that. "How can you, who are evil, say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks."

And that's the very thing that Charles is bringing us right to the heart of the matter. You speak what's in your heart, isn't that true? And so as the Lord sanctifies you, He actually sovereignly, I think, brings you into circumstances where the things that are in your heart bubble up to the surface. And you just say them. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give an account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned. So, words, very, very important. Words are significant.

Think about words to God. How important are words to God? Think about that. Genesis 1:3, God said, "Let there be," what? "Light, and there was light." He created by the breath of His mouth. By the Word of His power, He created. He spoke you into existence. Simply by speaking the Word, "Let there be," so and so, and there was, that person. He wove you together in your mother's womb.  He created you by His words. God also used the Word to redeem the world. Not only did He create the world by the Word, but He used the Word to redeem the world.

Now, of course, He did that through Jesus Christ. John 1:1 says, what? "In the beginning was the," what? "Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So, He uses this metaphor, this concept of Word in reference to the second person of the Trinity. He is the Word gone forth from God the Father. He is a spoken word, a perfect representation of the will of the Father. That's Jesus Christ. He used the incarnate word, Jesus, but then He used the spoken word to save us. Didn't he? Romans 1:16, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." It's just the spoken word, and at some point you heard it and you believed it.

Hearing promotes faith. Faith comes from hearing the Word. God has chosen this means to the end of our salvation.

And so it says in 1 Corinthians 1:21, "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him. God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe." Just by the foolishness of this verbal communication, this preaching, and this message of the Word. And as I just mentioned, God will use our words to judge us. He's going to use your words, everything you've said, as a perfect assessment of your life.

Remember I said when I was preaching through Romans that you are going to be judged by your deeds? You will not be saved by your deeds. But you will be assessed by your deeds. You see the difference? None of us are saved by good works, but we can be assessed by our works. Jesus said, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be," what? "Good. Make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad." Jesus is a perfect judge of fruit. He can pick that fruit, look at it, and tell you what kind of tree it is. And He uses our words to do that, isn't that true? "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." And so He's going to use our words to judge us. By your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned.

And God's word itself is powerful and effective. I love this in Isaiah 55:10-11, "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word which goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish the purpose for which I sent it, and achieve the end for which I sent it forth." In other words, any time God sends out His Word, it accomplishes the thing He sent it out to do.

Words are very, very important, aren't they? Well, what are your words like?

Think about it. If you had a transcript of everything you've said in the last seven days, what would it look like? Go through it with a highlighter and say, "There's one I wish I hadn't said." And you could categorize them, those things, those words that were a blessing to somebody, those words that were a curse to somebody. Those words which were neither one or the other. Those things in which you were speaking the Word of God, and those things in which you were not. Just go through and think about it, a transcript of your words. It's not that uncommon a concept. Jesus already said you'll have to give an account, so there is a transcript somewhere. Well, think about it for yourself. What are your words like? Well, I think that's where the Book of Proverbs comes in to try to help us out. To give us some wisdom.

Now, what we're gonna do tonight is we're gonna look at the negative side, those things that Proverbs reveals as bad habits concerning the mouth and the words. We'll look at the positive side next time, but I think so much of sanctification is weeding out those things that are displeasing to God so that there's room for those things that are pleasing. Now, Charles has already brought out the close relationship between the mouth and the heart, and it is very clear in the Book of Proverbs as well. At 15:7, it says this, "The lips of the wise spread knowledge, not so the hearts of fools." So, there's a connection between the lips and the hearts. Remember, there's a parallelism all the time in these proverbs. And so there's a relationship between lips and heart. 15:28, it said... This reminds me of when I preached on Psalm 119, and I was moving all over that Psalm, as you remember, but that's what the Book of Proverbs is like. And you can just listen or you can try flipping there if you'd like, but we're gonna just move through. 15:28, it says, "The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil."

Again, in the first part, the part A, we've got the word "heart," and part B we've got the word "mouth," a strong connection. And 23:15 and 16, 23:15-16 says, "My son, if your heart is wise, then my heart will be glad. My inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak what is right." In other words, this father is speaking to his son, and he's saying, "I'm going to delight if you have a wise heart." And how will I know if you have a wise heart? By the words you speak. I'll just listen to how you talk, and I'll know if you have any wisdom to offer.

And so this connection between the heart and the mouth is true, both for the wise man and for the fool. It's true in both cases. 16:23 says "A wise man, a wise man's heart guides his mouth. His lips promote instruction." In other words, a wise man's heart guides the things he says. Now, we already know from Matthew 12 that the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. But here, there's a sense of self-control, isn't there? The wise man's heart, his wisdom, his discretion is bridling in the things he's saying and controlling it so that he speaks wisdom. On the other hand, the fool, 15:14, it says, "The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly." The mouth of a fool just enjoys foolishness, folly. Again, the strong connection between the heart and the mouth.

Now, one caveat about that, one warning is that deceptive people can fool us by how they talk. Isn't that true? There can be some that will talk a good talk but their reality is different. So, in general, it's true that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. But you see, God has a perfect record of your words. We only have a sampling of one another's words, don't we? We can actually do all right for a while. You know what I'm saying? We can be on our best behavior verbally for a little period of time, and therefore we can present ourselves as a certain way. But God's got a 168-hour per week record, so He got the whole thing and nothing's missing.

But it is possible to deceive other people by the way we talk. We've heard of people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk, that kind of thing. Proverbs covers that as well, Chapter 26 Verse 23 through 26, take a minute and look there because there's a number of verses there that it refers to this.

Proverbs 26:23-26, it says, "Like a coating of glaze over earthenware are fervent lips with an evil heart." Isn't that powerful? Like a coating of glaze, have you ever seen a piece of ceramic that's got that shiny glaze stuff over it, but at the heart it's just common clay? In effect, this proverb is saying that's what fervent lips over a deceptive or an evil heart are like. Somebody who can speak the fervent talk of a Christian, let's say, but at their heart, there's a disconnect there. There's no genuine zeal for the Lord, no genuine love for Him.

Reading on, Verse 24, "A malicious man disguises himself with his lips, but in his heart he harbors deceit. Though his speech is charming, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. His malice may be concealed by deception, but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly." In the end, it comes out, you can't keep it up for a long, long time. But for a short period of time, you can talk a good talk and so deceive your neighbor. So, it is possible then a shorter sampling of the words to carry off a good appearance. But in general, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks, and God has the perfect record, the whole thing, 100% of all your words, and so He's able to make a perfect assessment of your heart.

Now, inside ourselves, we're saying, "I don't wanna be that way. I don't wanna be like a glaze coating over an evil heart." And therefore, what has to happen to us? We have to have a heart transformation, don't we? We have to have a genuine renewal from within. And that's something only Jesus Christ can give us. Only God can transform the heart from within. And then out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Good things come up/out. And it says in 20:15, I love this, "Gold there is, and rubies in abundance. But lips that speak knowledge are a rare jewel." In other words, there's more gold and rubies out there than there are lips that speak genuine Godly knowledge. It's a rare thing. And then you say, "Well, I wanna be one of those people. How do I do it? How do I speak those kind of words?"

Or 25:11, it says, "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." I'll read that again, 25:11, "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." That sounds expensive, doesn't it? Apples of gold in a setting of silver? For your 25th wedding anniversary, what could be better to get her than apples of gold in a setting of silver, right? And that's what it's saying. It's that valuable, a word aptly spoken, just the right amount of wisdom, just the word to say at that key moment. And it's THAT rare. And you say, "Well, how could I be a man or a woman who does speak that apt word in a perfect setting?" Well, the words of wisdom transform the heart.

Look at 22:17, and following. We have to have a transformation, and what's interesting about the transformation is that it is accomplished by listening to words. Isn't that funny? Listen to words of wisdom. Listen to the Scripture. Listen to the teaching. You all have Sunday school teachers. There's good Bible preaching on the radio. I try to preach the Word faithfully. Listen to the good words of wisdom and put them into effect. It's a transforming effect, the Word of God. Look at 22:17, and following, "Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise. Apply your heart to what I teach. For it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips. So that your trust may be in the Lord, I teach you today, even you. Have I not written 30 sayings for you, sayings of counsel and knowledge, teaching you true and reliable words so that you can give sound answers to Him who sent you?" That's so powerful. It says, "Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise. Apply your heart to what I teach. Apply your heart to what I teach," so that you can have the words ready on your lips.

Where do you think I'm heading with all this? Scripture memorization, yeah, you know me well. You just have to saturate your mind in the Word so that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Am I speaking alien? Look what Jesus said. He said, "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him. Whereas the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him." How do you store up good things in yourself? May I recommend memorizing the sayings of the wise? You can't do better than Scripture. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. It's the Scripture.

Another reference on this, I'm not gonna read it now, is Proverbs 4:20 through 27, in which... Make a note of that in which the Father says, "Pay attention to my teachings, write them on your heart so that they come out of your mouth." That's kind of how it works. So, a transformation of the heart by the Word of God.

Now, let's get into a listing of some bad habits of speech. Talk about what Proverbs said. By the way, if you noticed, I've got Avery crack and peel labels here. I forgot to change the paper when I'm printing and I didn't have the time, so you all can have part of the talk tonight. If you wanna take it home, crack and peel, put it on your Bible, maybe your favorite proverb. Just come and ask, I'll leave it up here in the front, you can take it with you. All right. There are just different habits, and I don't think I've been exhaustive here, but there's just some different things that the Scripture, the Book of Proverbs gives us that are habits that we don't wanna get into in terms of our speech.

I'll just read through the list quickly, and then I'll go back and start reading the Proverbs. "There's foolish abundance," I categorized a number of these things, "foolish abundance, saying lots and lots of foolish things." There's lying and deception.. There's malice and destruction. These are really hurtful words, the words that just rip to shreds, those things. There's gossip and slander, which is covered in Proverbs. There's flattery, flattery, and hasty speech, speaking before your brain is connected. Have you ever done that? All right. And then there's boasting and quarreling. Another word for quarreling is arguing. All right. Mocking and poor timing. Saying things that shouldn't be said when you say them. Those kinds of things. And joking. Those are the things covered. "What's wrong with a good joke?" You might say. Well, ordinarily nothing, but there are some things that are inappropriate. Let's go through them and look at them.

First, let's talk about foolish abundance. There are three sub-categories here, chattering, talking too much, and blurting out folly. All right. First, what is chattering? Well, I don't really know, but this is what Proverbs 10:10 says, "He who winks maliciously causes grief, and a chattering fool comes to ruin." I guess it's just somebody who's just talking all the time. The mouth is going and going, and not much is coming out worth listening to. Chattering fool. Don't be that way, I guess, is what we're getting at here. This is about as practical as it gets. You want practical? This is practical. This isn't Romans Chapter 3 theology. This is practical, okay? So, if you like practical, don't be a chattering fool.

Or talking too much. I like this one, 10:19. Write this one down, if you're given to saying a lot of words, 10:19. "When words are many... " I'm gonna change the NIV translation a little bit here. "When words are many, sin is inevitable." NIV just says "Sin is not absent." I like inevitable better. You keep talking long enough you're gonna say something you wish you hadn't said. Have you ever noticed that? Just keep on going. You're at a party, things are going, somebody laughs at something you say, and next thing you know you say something you shouldn't have said. Have you ever seen that happen? "Where words are many, sin is inevitable. But he who holds the tongue is wise." Don't say anything, keep it quiet.

Or then there's blurting folly. I like this, blurting out things that shouldn't be said. 12:23, "A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly." It's like there's just no gatekeeper there, it just comes flowing out. Have you ever met somebody like that? Are YOU like that? I hope not. It just comes rolling out, something you wish you hadn't said. 15:2, "The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly." So, I'm relating blurting out and gushing, they're about the same thing. And then, "The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil." That's so good. 15:28, "The heart of the wise weighs out his answers first." You think about what you're gonna say before you say it. But the foolish person doesn't do that. They just say what comes to their mind. "I'm just telling you how I feel." Well, that's where the damage comes. All right? Self-control. Weigh out what you say before you say it. All right, that's that foolish abundance, saying lots and lots of stuff. And many of it shouldn't be said, much of it shouldn't be said.

Second category, lying, and deception. Lying and deception. First, lying. Oh, and by the way, let's take a minute. I wanna show you something. We're not gonna get to everything the way I wanna do it here, but look at 26:4 and 5, and this is gonna teach us something important about Proverbs. Could somebody... I'm losing my voice here. Could somebody read 26:4 and 5 for me? Big voice?

Someone in audience reading scripture

Okay, yeah. You stumbled a little bit over that and I understand why, because it seems like they contradict each other, doesn't it? "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or," what? "You'll be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes." Well, exegesis or interpretation in Proverbs is a little different than anywhere else in Scripture. You just have to handle them a little bit differently. Proverbs has some sayings that are absolute truths all the time, no matter what. Aren't they? Like "The Lord detest lying lips." We'll get to that in a minute. He always does no matter what. There's no way you can turn it around that sometimes he loves lying lips. Those are absolutes.

Then there are other things that are just general tendencies in life. For example, if you have a righteous leader, then the nation will be righteous, that kind of thing. They're just tendencies and generalities. They're not always true. And here is we get a juxtaposition of two verse that seemed to contradict each other. Basically what it's saying is that there are some circumstances in which you're gonna wanna deal with a fool blurting out folly at one way. And then other times you're gonna wanna deal with it a different way, and so you interpret it that way. All I'm saying is that exegesis or interpretation in Proverbs has to be handled a little bit more carefully than some other places. Actually, they ought to be handled carefully.

All right. Look at Chapter 6, speaking about lying. Chapter 6 Verse 16 through 19. "There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers." At least two or maybe three of those have to do with lying. The stirring up dissension may involve lying sometimes, you could be spreading stories about somebody and causing dissension that way. God HATES lying lips. Hates them. We try to get this across in our parenting, but it's true of all of us. And it says in one of the Psalms, "All men are liars." All of us lie at some point, we all shade the truth, don't we? We all suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God detests lying.

It says in 12:22, "The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful." And listen to this one. A commentary on the American political scene, "Arrogant lips are unsuited to a fool. How much worse, lying lips to a ruler?" Lying lips to a ruler. It's unseemly. It destroys a nation when you have untrustworthy people who use their public situations to speak lies to us. And we just get used to it, we're just hardened to it almost. It's almost like we don't even notice, but God detests it. And then 21:6, "A fortune made by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare." How many fortunes are made through deceit and lying? Think about it. Stock schemes and these different shady business deals and all that. And God says that the money made is like a vapor, it'll disappear, and then the actual scheme itself is a snare to your feet. So, don't do it. Don't make money that way.

And then deception we already covered in 23 through 26, the coating of glaze over earthenware. God does not want us to appear to be something other than we are, but He wants us to be genuinely righteous. He does not want us to be lying, he does not want us to be deceptive. And one of the beauties of the Word of God is how everything is covered. I love it as a parent. The fact that it says in Leviticus, I forget the exact verse reference, but it says, "Do not lie," or thou shalt not lie, "nor deal falsely with one another." It's all covered, isn't it? "Well, I didn't exactly lie, Dad." Well, that's true, but you willfully misled. And so, therefore, it's covered. We must not be deceptive, and we must not lie, and these things are displeasing to God.

The third category is malice and destruction. These are the most harmful words that we say in which we are speaking so as to destroy and hurt, and damage. Isn't it sad that we do that to one another? Isn't it sad that we look out over the tool bench of our possibilities and we pick out that sledgehammer and just hurt? And we do that, don't we? We use our words to cut and to destroy. It says in 11:9, "With his mouth, the godless destroys his neighbor. But through knowledge, the righteous escape." And then 12:6, "The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the speech of the upright rescues them." This is something that grieves me, is that I would ever say anything hurtful or harmful to a family member, but that's where you let your guard down. Have you ever noticed you say things that just shouldn't be said? Heat of the moment, etcetera. God doesn't want it. We should use our words to heal and to build up, to bring life. We'll talk about that more next time.

And also being a false witness. Back in that culture, if you are a false witness in a capital crime, it was like attempted murder. Do you understand that? If you were speaking and saying so and so did X, Y, and Z, and it was a capital crime, in effect, you're attempting to kill that person. And so God deals very seriously with the issue of being a false witness. "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free," 19:5. And then 19:9 says, "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will perish." A very serious thing. Let's not use our words to destroy or attack, but only to build up.

And then there's gossip and slander. What's the difference between gossip and slander? How would you define those two so that they end up different? What's the difference between gossip and slander? Yeah.

Someone in the audience replying

Either way, there are words that you put out that damage somebody's reputation, aren't they? Character assassination through the word, it's so damaging. And it's remarkable in the list in Romans Chapter 1, of all the terrible sins. We've got hateful doers of evil, murderers, adulterers, gossips and slanderers, right there in the list. Have you ever spoken words that you knew would drag down somebody's reputation in the eyes of the hearer and did it anyway? Or the ears of the hearer? The fact of the matter is we're all tempted in that direction. Maybe you're having a conflict with somebody and you can use your words in a way that drags that person down.

All right. 11:13 says, "A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps his secret." Sometimes somebody will commit to you some information that is private, and you go out and betray a confidence, say things that shouldn't be said. A trustworthy man keeps a secret. 16:28 says, "A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends." And 20:19, and this is just very practical, "A gossip betrays a confidence, so avoid a man who talks too much." All right? In other words, don't share with somebody who's always around talking a lot, because, guess what, your story is gonna be the next thing on the grapevine. Be careful about that. The words of a gossip are like choice morsels, they go down to a man's inmost parts.

And look at this, 26:20, "Without wood, a fire goes out. Without gossip, a quarrel dies down." How many churches can testify to the truth of that? Conflicts happening, difficulties, disagreements, and somebody keeps feeding fuel into the fire, keeps the fire going, keeps the log on there. That's sin. That is just flat-out sin. If you stop feeding, the fire disappears, the conflict goes away. There's wisdom from the word of God. And then there's slander. 10:18 says, "He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool."

The next one is flattery. Flattery. What is flattery? Or shall I ask the question, what's the difference between encouragement and flattery? Sincerity? Okay. When would you use encouragement? What's your motive in encouragement? To build that person up. What's your motive in flattery? To build yourself up, to gain something for yourself. That's the difference. It's gotta do with what is the goal of your words. Paul says, "We never use flattery, nor do we put on a mask to cover up greed," 1 Thessalonians. We never used it.

And so I'm always careful 'cause I want to encourage you, all of you, but I have to be careful that I'm not flattering. I have to always assess my motive. "Why am I saying this? Is there something that I'm trying to get out of this situation by saying it? 'Cause I wanna be like Barnabas, the son of encouragement, but I wanna be sure it's not flattery either." It says, "He who guards his lips guards his life," 13:3... I'm sorry, that's not the right one. 29:5, sorry. "Whoever flatters his neighbor is spreading a net for his feet." So, I wanna be careful about flattery. Basically, we're trying to entrap and gain some benefit.

And then there's hasty speech. "The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil." We looked at that one. 18:13, look at 18:13. "He who answers before listening." He who answers before listening, that is his folly and a shame. In other words, you interrupt. Have you ever done that? Right in the middle of the story, you'd stop and say, "I know what you're gonna say," and off you go. Well, you didn't know 'cause you didn't finish listening. Don't interrupt, but finish and listen. And 29:20, "Do you see a man who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for him." So, don't speak in haste.

And boasting. Two things, 27:1 and 27:2. 27:1, "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth." Don't boast about tomorrow, you don't even know if you'll be alive tomorrow. Right? 27:2, "Let another praise you and not your own mouth. Someone else, and not your own lips." That's a great verse, isn't it? Don't build yourself up in your own eyes. Don't talk good things about yourself, let somebody else do it. Let God decide when you need to be encouraged. Don't boast about yourself.

And then quarreling. Quarreling, arguing. Starting a quarrel. 17:14, "Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam, so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out." A dam is a wall, it's all built up, and then you start to pick at those stones and the mortar, and what starts to happen? Then the water starts to flood through. The next thing you know, you've got a huge problem. 13:10 says, "Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice." We're gonna talk more about conflict resolution, that's a major theme in Proverbs. We'll get to that later, but I just wanna touch on it in terms of quarreling.

And then there's mocking. 22:10, again, I think about churches sometimes with 22:10. "Drive out the mocker and out goes strife." Quarrels and insults are ended, all of a sudden there's peace. How did that happen? Well, the person who's causing all the strife and conflict isn't doing it anymore. Don't be a mocker. Don't seek to mock, but seek to build up. Use your words to build. Use your mouth and your tongue for what is right, not what is destructive and evil.

And then poor timing. This is some of my favorites. Poor timing, 27:14, speaking when you should be quiet. Somebody read 27:14.

Someone in the audience replying

Do you hear that? "If a man loudly blesses his neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse." But his timing was off. His motive was right, he wanted to be a blessing, he just got wrong timing. It's too early in the morning and his neighbor was not a morning person. Every spouse, one of them's a morning person, one of them is not, it's just the way it is. God has designed it that way, and so you just have to work it through, and know is this going to be taken as a blessing or not. You've gotta have timing, okay? 27:14 and 14:23, talking when you should be working. In 10 years of engineering work, I saw a lot of people who did a lot of talking when they should have been working. Right? Water coolers, discussions. I bet you tomorrow there may even be some discussions around the water cooler about various athletic endeavors, but I'm telling you it's just talking when you should be working. 14:23, somebody read this for me. Someone in the audience replying  "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."

That's great. "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." I was helping to build a water silo for a girls' school in Kenya, and I was pushing this heavy wheelbarrow of sand up a hill to make the concrete. And the teenage girls, the Kenyan girls, lined the way and joked and laughed at us while we were toiling up the hill. They did it for hours. And finally, I don't know how, I had just been reading the Book of Proverbs, and this particular proverb came to mind, 14:23, "All hard work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty." It dispersed the crowd. At any rate, we're working hard, we're trying to get something good out of it, but mere talk leads to poverty.

And then 18:2, talking when you should be listening to wise people. "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights only in airing his own opinions." They just talk ALL the time. And they do not have any interest in learning anything, they just wanna air their own opinions. And then one final one, 26:18 and 19. I love this one. This is about joking. 26:18 and 19, "Like a mad man shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, 'I was only joking.'" That's just a cover-up for doing wrong. There's a time for that. And you could extend that just out into joking in general. There's a lot of joking that's sin. It really is. I would say a good chunk of it. Look at it, majority of those things that you say to get a laugh hurt somebody. Hurt somebody, tears somebody down.

Anyway, these are some bad habits. I'm sure none of you have them, but I struggle with a few, and the Book of Proverbs has a lot to say on each one of these. Let's pray that God would weed these things out of our hearts and out of our mouths so that we can speak only of those things that are blessed.

Next week, we'll look at good habits to get into verbally. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to look at your practical wisdom in the Book of Proverbs. I pray that you would continue to instruct us and teach us the right way, that we would not do any of these things, but only those things that are helpful for building our neighbors up, that it may benefit those who listen. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen

Remarkable things from the book of Daniel, we've seen the sovereignty of God, we've seen his knowledge of the end from the beginning, the meticulous and careful way in which he's laid that out in the book of Daniel. And we come now to Daniel 8 and one of the most remarkable prophecies in the book in terms of how it lines up with popular secular knowledge of history. We come to an account of Alexander the Great. In the year 323 BC, the life of a 33-year-old man, the most successful, the most powerful, the most talented, the most visionary leader of the world had ever seen, and some people think has ever seen ended in a bout of drunkenness, in the city of Babylon. The very same place where Belshazzar's life, 200 years before, had ended in a fit of drunkenness. Alexander the Great, died because he drank too much.

Move ahead three centuries or more. 30 AD, city of Jerusalem, the life of a 33-year-old man ends on a cross and whereas Alexander's death ended his reign over his earthly kingdom, Jesus death on the cross began his reign and the advance of a kingdom, which will never end. Today as we look in Daniel 8, we look at a tale of two conquerors, and one anti-Christ. We look at the tale of Alexander the Great and his successor after 200 or so years, Antiochus, an anti-Christ figure and then we look at Jesus Christ, the greatest conqueror the world has ever seen, and we're going to compare their methods and their achievements, and we're going to see the eternal kingdom of God again. The thing that's remarkable about Daniel Chapter 8 is how specific it is about the coming of a man that most people know. And I'm going to give you today a tool right in your hands that you can take into your work places and with other people in this truth questioning age that we live in and say, there is a supernatural evidence of the truth of the Bible right here in Daniel 8. Have you ever heard of Alexander the Great, well, 200 years before he was born, his kingdom and his death and the division of his kingdom was all laid out in prophetic perspective by the Prophet Daniel.

Remarkable thing that I came across in my research for this sermon, about the year 330 Alexander the Great had not yet completed his conquest of the Persian empire. He was in the middle of it. He was seeking to conquer Gaza and he took a side tour up to the city of Jerusalem. The account of this is in Josephus, a first century historian, Jewish historian and he went to Jerusalem and there the high priest came out and met him in their robes, and he was so impressed with their appearance because he had had a vision. Alexander had had a vision, a dream (so the account goes) before he had ever left Macedonia, that he would come to a city in which people dressed in certain robes would come out and show him a prophecy. He had a dream, and that had encouraged him and exhorted him to begin his conquest of Asia. And now these men were coming out in these robes and it was the Jewish priest and the high priest in particular.

And he brought out a copy of the Book of Daniel and he showed Alexander in Chapter 8, what we're going to study today, what was written in there about him. Alexander believed these kind of oracles. He was always going to this or that or the other oracle for predictions or prophecies about him. But here is one that have been written 200 years before he had been born and according to that prophecy he would conquer the Persian empire. I think that the high priest stopped reading too soon because it also gave a clear warning of his death at the height of his power and perhaps the high priest should have taken a moment to warn him, to make himself right with the God of heaven before he died.

All of us today are facing our own mortality, and no matter how much we achieve in this world, no matter how great we are as Alexander was great in the world side, we need a savior, and we need to enter the kingdom, that we've been learning about in the Book of Daniel, namely the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

God’s Purposes: Vision & Interpretation

Now as we come to Daniel 8, you have to wonder why did God spell out something like this? Why is this important to God? I think, first of all, that we understand God knows the end from the beginning. He knows the future in detail and He delights to reveal some of it to us. Now, we don't know it all but we know enough to see that God holds the future in his hand. And secondly, why does he reveal it in this way? If you look and read through Daniel 8, you'll see the confusion in Daniel's mind. Daniel, one of the wisest man that ever lived. He could not understand it unless God sent Gabriel or some way to explain it and so it is also with the wisdom that comes from God. God knows all things. We know nothing unless God is pleased to reveal it to us.

And so we come to Daniel 8 and what I like to do is take it in parts so that we don't get overwhelmed by what's in here. Let's look at verses 1-8 and see the vision described and then we'll interpret it. Beginning at verse 1.

"In the third year of King Belshazzar's reign, I, Daniel, had a vision after the one that had already appeared to me and in my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa, in the province of Elam. In the vision, I was beside the Ulai canal. I looked up and there before me was a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal and the horns were long, one of the horns was longer than the other, but grew up later. I watched the ram as he charged toward the west, and the north, and the south. No animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. He came to towards the two horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him. The goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. The goat became very great, but at the height of his power, his large horn, was broken off and in its place, four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven."

Context: Time, Place, Circumstances (vs. 1-2)

The context, the time, place and circumstances of Daniel's vision are given in verse 1-2, it's the third year of Belshazzar's reign. Remember, Belshazzar is the one that had had the writing on the wall. The one I described to you earlier, the one who was the final ruler of the Babylonian Empire. The one who drank a toast to the gods of wood and iron and stone from the vessels taken from the temple of the Lord, this Belshazzar. The time was probably 553 BC, about 200 years before Alexander the Great and he said that this vision came after the previous vision. Well, what vision was that? It's the vision, we just discussed over the last two weeks in Daniel chapter 7, the vision of the four beast that came up out of the disturbed and turbulent sea. And we saw that these were four great world empires; the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire and then the Roman Empire.

We also saw the vision of one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven to bring in a kingdom that will never end. And we saw that this was Jesus Christ, the Son of Man whose kingdom will never end. The place of the vision is given as the citadel of Susa. Now, this is visionary language, and so we're really not sure if he was physically in Susa or just traveled there in the Spirit as Ezekiel from time to time, would travel in the Spirit or as the Apostle John would travel in the Spirit to see visions, of heaven, but he may have been physically there because he was a high-ranking official in the Babylonian Empire, and Susa was an important city. It was the capital of the Elamites, the ancient capital of the Elamites about 250 miles east of Babylon. It would later become the capital of the Persian empire, it was the home of Nehemiah, for example, and of Queen Esther wife of King Xerxes.

And as he was standing there, he was by the Ulai canal. It says this was a wide artificial canal connecting the Choaspes and the Coprates river. This is a physical place and that's where he was in his vision, so in the vision he's kind of tied to an actual city and a little detail of the city, a small canal and that's where he has his vision and what does he see in the vision?

The Ram with Two Horns (vs. 3-4, 20)

Well, he sees a ram with two horns. In verse 3 and 4, "I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns standing beside the canal and the horns were long, and one of the horns was longer than the other, but grew up later." Well, this must be the Medo-Persian Empire, and we know it because it says so down in verse 20, look down at verse 20, the two horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy goat is the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes is the first king. The four horns that replaced the one that was broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation, but will not have the same power. So we get Gabriel, the angel coming and telling us literally what this means. So we don't have any doubt at all. This is the Medo-Persian empire.

And one horn is longer than the other because the Persian power was greater than that of the Medes, very specific, and then suddenly the conquests, are described in verse 4, of the Medo-Persians, "I watched the ram as he charged toward the west and the north and the south, no animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power, he did as he pleased," it says, "And became great." So the Medo-Persian empire was the greatest empire that the world had seen, up to that time. It spread from northern Ethiopia, all the way to the Black Sea. It spread from the Asian or the Aegean Sea near Greece, all the way as far as the Indus River almost to India and China. It was an incredible empire, it traveled westward, northward, southward and it was totally dominant. Nobody could stand against its power.

It says of the kings of Medo-Persia that they did as they pleased, or he, the goat, did as he pleased and became great. This is the ultimate desire, isn't it of human beings in vaunting themselves against God. We want to do as we please and we want to become great. We want to be worshipped like gods. That was the original temptation in the Garden of Eden. And so we see its fulfillment in these human empires, these tyrannical reigns, these kings who want to do as they please and conquer and dominate; the essence of human rebellion, against God.

The Goat with One Horn (vs. 5-8, 21-22)

Well, as he's watching all of a sudden comes this goat. Now, you think in a contest between a goat and a ram, the goat has no chance. The ram is bigger, it's more imposing, it's more powerful and it's got these strong horns. And along comes this goat with just one horn. Look at it again in verses 5-8. "As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. He came toward the two horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him. The goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. So Daniel is pondering this ram with the two horns, he's intensely interested, the Hebrew is very strong, he was very interested in this vision of the ram, he's mystified by it and not sure what it is. And then all of a sudden comes this goat and it's moving fast. I mean, it's flying, it's almost like a missile, it's a goat missile. Can you imagine a goat missile? And it's coming fast from the west.

Versus 5 and also 21 describes him with a single prominent horn coming up from between its eyes and the origin of the goat, it says it's from the west. Well, it just so happens that Macedonia is from the west, it's coming from Greece. The Persians were never able to settle the Greeks down, there was an ongoing struggle between the two, and they never quieted them down and there was a great deal of bad blood between the Greeks and the Persians, a lot of history there. And so from the west came this goat and it's moving fast, it says it's crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. Remember in Chapter 7, what represented the Greek Empire. It was a leopard with four wings, speed, agility, that was the picture. It moved fast and it conquered fast. There's an enraged charge of the goat in verse 6-7, and a complete conquest by the goat in verse 7, and then at the height of his power, that prominent horn is cut off and the kingdom is divided into four, four equal parts, a four-fold division of the kingdom. This is the vision.

Now, what is the fulfillment? Well, you don't read the fulfillment in scripture, you have to go to secular history, classical history to understand what happened and there is no shortage of accounts of the life of Alexander the Great. You see, Alexander was intensely interested in his legacy. He was intensely interested in history. He knew who he was or at least who he thought he was. And so it came about, his father Philip II of Macedonia had organized a coalition of Macedonian troops and they began to conquer Greece. His first conquest was over a small mining town, right near his area. This is Phillip now, his father, changed the name of that town to Philippi and we have the book Philippians from Alexander the Great's Father Philip, that was the first conquest, but at the height of his power, he was assassinated and his young son, Alexander, a mere 19 years old, took over Greece at that point. So in effect he was the first king of a united Greece because the conquest wasn't completed yet and Alexander took over.

Rise to Power

Now, Alexander had been born July or August perhaps 356 BC. After Alexander's life, there are lots of myths that grew up about him, about supernatural birth and other things like that but he was just a man, human being, his father was obviously wealthy and powerful and had him tutored with the best tutor available who happened to be Aristotle. So Aristotle tutored Alexander. Aristotle, one of the most famous philosophers of ancient Greece, and he tutored him in the ways of Greek culture and he became, in effect, a disciple or an apostle of Greek culture and everywhere Alexander went, he spread the Greek language and Greek culture. He had a vision of the supremacy of Hellenism of Greece and he got that from Aristotle.

When he was eight years old, his father bought him a mighty war horse, a charger, a steed named Bucephalus. Nobody could even get near the horse. It was a very proud and powerful horse. Alexander was just eight years old, and he watched for a while, and he said, "Father, I'd like to try to ride him," and his father just stared at him and he said, "You're going to get hurt." He said, "I want to do it." And so, he got down there and he took the horse and turned it toward the sun and it kind of blinded it, right in the sun, and then while it was blinded and somewhat confused, he jumped up, he jumped up on his back and he conquered that horse just like that. Bucephalus rode with him everywhere he went. He became his horse and as he conquered, he went everywhere he went and his father Phillip said to him after that you'll have to find another kingdom. Macedonia, won't be big enough for you. So from the very start of his life, he was kind of groomed with visions of grandeur and conquest.

Vengeance on the Persians

The time came for him to invade Asia. I don't know if it was because of that vision I had mentioned earlier, where he had a dream of somebody saying, "You will conquer," but off he went. His armies crossed the Dardanelles, and they spread over into Asia Minor. Alexander the Great, went to Troy, ancient Troy, the enemy of the Greeks and he went there and he took the shield of Achilles that ancient Greek hero and he carried that with him everywhere he went, he had delusions of grandeur, always thinking of himself in this way and everywhere he went, he wanted eternal glory. That's what his biographer said, he was seeking eternal glory. In lightning fashion, he went down, he conquered down the coast down into Egypt, went back up and defeated Darius the King of the Persians in two key battles; Issus and Gaugamela, two battles. And within three years, the whole world lay at his feet. Three years. Lightning conquest.

Lightning Warfare, Lightning Conquest

He continued to march for another 10 years, went all the way to the Indus River. His army marched with him for 20,000 miles in 10 years. Think about that 20,000 miles in 10 years. Average of 2,000 miles a year, that's a full army marching with all their equipment, incredible speed. And everywhere he went, he had victories. He never lost a battle, never a single battle. Finally, his men said, "Enough is enough. What we're going to go on into the Himalayas? We're going to go, going to continue going east?" They wanted to stop, they wanted to go home, enough was enough, and he sat down and wept because there was no where else for him to conquer. Incredible speed of assault, three years Persia destroyed, 10 years the known world, conquered. Some days he pushed his army to march 36 miles in a single day.

Zeus-Ammon: the Symbol of the Horn

While he was in Egypt, he was crowned Zeus Amun, the son of Zeus. On the cover of your bulletin, there's a coin there, a picture of Alexander the Great and coming out of the side of his head is a horn. This is an ancient coin from Alexandria, Egypt, the city that he established. It's still the finest port in Egypt. It's named after himself. And by the way, everywhere he went he planted cities which he named Alexandria. There are 30 Alexandrias that he started but Alexandria Egypt is the most famous of them all and there he was crowned Zeus Amun and he was declared to be a God, the son of Zeus. Do you see the horn coming out? It looks a little bit like the hair. You have to look at it a while but you see it curving around, it represents his power. It's remarkably like the vision that Daniel had had 200 years before hand.

World Domination

And so, he conquered from Yugoslavia to the Himalayas, 3200 miles about the distance from LA to New York and he organized an efficient Empire, and he had future dreams to build a thousand warships and conquer North Africa beyond Italy, all the way to Gibraltar; to build a road supply along Southern Mediterranean coast for all of his ships. He had a vision of a harmony of all of Asia and Europe, an intermingling of all peoples and languages and tribes. He wrote about this often. A vision of one world and one culture under the Greeks, and he would be its eternal king because he believed himself to be a God. And then he came to Babylon. Came to Babylon. No where else for him to conquer just to organize his empire that would be the seat of his power.

Self-Destruction

Verse 8, "The goat became very great, but at the height of his power, his large horn was broken off." Well, this is how it happened. They were having a feast and somebody brought to him. So it goes, the story goes, the Hercules bowl, a huge bowl and no one had ever been able to drink a whole Hercules bowl of wine, and so he was challenged and he never backed down from a challenge, that's what his pride was, his ego and so he drank it to the bottom in order it to be filled again and always filled the second time, and he drank it to the bottom and died several days later from alcohol poisoning. He conquered the world, but he couldn't concur himself.

Kingdom divided

The height of his power is cut off now, he left no heir and so his foremost powerful generals divided the kingdom among themselves. Cassander ruled in Macedonia and Greece. Ptolemy in Egypt, Selecus in Babylonia and Lysimachus in Thrace in Asia Minor. This is a clear fulfillment of prophecy maybe the clearest detail of this entire vision, the fact that his kingdom was divided into four parts, the goat became very great verse 8, but at the height of his power, his large horn was broken off and in its place, four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven. Verse 22, The four horns that replaced the one that broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation but will not have the same power, clear fulfillment of prophecy.

Impact

Now, what is the significance of Alexander the Great to us as Christians? Well, he's unified the world under Hellenism and therefore all of you who have studied the Bible know that the New Testament is written in what language? In Greek and why is that? Because Alexander conquered Palestine. And so many Jews were Greek speakers and the New Testament was written in Greek. Above Jesus' head when He was crucified, there was written, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews, in what languages? In latin because that was the power language of the time. In Hebrew, Aramaic because that was a religious language, and then in Greek, because that was the language of commerce and culture, and why because of Alexander the Great. But he did not leave an empire that endured for ever rather he died and his empire was divided and was never that powerful again.

The Description and Rise of the “Little Horn” (vs. 9-12, 23-36)

Now, in verses 9-12, we have another vision, a vision of a little horn. "Out of one of those four horns the four kingdom that was divided, came another horn, which started small, but grew in power to the south and the east, and toward the beautiful land. It grew until it reached the host of the heavens and it threw down some of the starry host to the earth and trampled on them. It set itself up to be as great as the prince of the host. It took away the daily sacrifice from him and the place of his sanctuary was brought low, because of rebellion the host of the saints from the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did and truth was thrown to the ground."

This rise of the little horn parallels that we've already seen in Daniel 7, the description and rise of the little horn also seen in verses 23-26. In the latter part of the rein, it says in verse 23, "when rebels have become completely wicked, a stern faced king, a master of intrigue will arise. He will become very strong but not by his own power. He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy the mighty men and the holy people. He will cause deceit to prosper and he will consider himself superior. When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the prince of princes. Yet, he will be destroyed but not by human power.

The War on the Saints and the Desecration of the Temple

So there is a horn to grow up, out of this, one of these four Greek sub-empires, this little horn and who is this little horn? Well, it is Antiochus IV called The Ephiphanes. He lived in the 2nd century BC, he was not a mighty conqueror. Rather, he was a usurper, a master politician. He had the ability to work intrigue and to gain positions of power, and influence for himself.

In the year 175 BC, he secured the high priesthood from the Jews and he pressured the Jews to show loyalty to Greek culture and to idolatry. Many Jews were persecuted, and put to death. Antiochus then was guilty of blasphemy, he ascended himself up to be an incarnation of Zeus, just as Alexander before him acclaimed to be, and not only that, he went into the holy of holies, into the temple itself, he cut off all animal sacrifices, all the sacrifices of God for 2300, it says mornings and evenings. Now, some people think this was 1150 full days, 1150 mornings, 1150 evenings. I think that fits better with history. We know that the Jews were commanded to offer morning and evening sacrifices and Antiochus cut those off. God had no sacrifices because of Antiochus. Rather Antiochus wanted to be worshiped. He set himself up as an incarnation of Zeus. He had an idol put in the holy of holies and even worse, he had pigs taken into the sanctuary and sacrificed, and pigs blood anointed all over the altar and in the holy of holies.

Can there be a greater defilement of the temple than that? Antiochus totally usurping power, setting himself up to be worshiped and then desecrating the temple. This was a direct assault on God Himself, and the scripture says very plainly that he also will be cut off but not by human hands. Now we're going to learn more about Antiochus in Chapter 11 in Daniel 11.

The Hanukkah Story: The Reconsecration of the Temple

But basically what happened was he was on a trip and God struck him dead with a disease. He was dead within a week, suddenly he died. God will not forget this kind of open rebellion, and in 164 BC, just three years after he had desecrated the temple, Judas Maccabeus, (this is written in the apocryphal I Maccabeus) reconquered Jerusalem, took over the temple, had it cleansed ceremonially from all the pigs blood, and the idolatry. Re-established worship to God and they found in one part of the temple, a little vial of oil that had not been desecrated, a little bottle of oil that they could use for the burning for the light within the Holy of Holies, just enough for one day.

But yet, so the story goes that, miraculously burned for eight days. And so, our Jewish neighbors celebrate Hannukah every year. Eight candles for eight days, the eight days that the temple that that oil burned miraculously after the temple had been cleansed. Specific fulfillment.

 Now, as you look at Daniel 8 and Chapter 7, who are these little horns? Well, you have to compare them. There are some similarities. Both of them arise out of Gentile kingdoms coming from one of these beasts. There is a similar career a conquest of rivals, war against the saints, blasphemy against God, desire to be worshipped in God's temple and its demise not done by human hands, but there's some significant differences too, aren't there?

This one arises out of the third beast, doesn't it? The Daniel Chapter 8 horn arises out of Greece, but the Daniel Chapter 7 horn arises out of the fourth beast. And so, what is the relationship between the two? I think it's a relationship between pattern and fulfillment. Things were acted out in history, in the 2nd century BC that we will see again at the second coming of Christ. Things were acted out by Antiochus IV fourth called epiphanies which means manifestation of God that's what he claimed to be, acted out in a small scale just in a little part of the world, that it's going to happen again at the second coming of Christ with the true anti-Christ.

Type and fulfillment. It says in 1 John 2:8, "Dear children. This is the last hour. And as you have heard that the anti-Christ is coming, many anti-Christ, have now come." And so this pattern is set and it would be replayed again, just one generation after Jesus Christ when the temple that Jesus visited was destroyed and he called it the abomination of desolation. We'll learn about that in Daniel 9. But the Romans came in that fourth beast, and they destroyed and desecrated the temple, and it has never been rebuilt. Some scholars believe that the temple will be rebuilt. II Thessalonians 2 says, The anti-Christ, the man of sin will sit in God's temple and make himself out to be God in God's temple, II Thessalonians 2. And so we have a pattern, a kind of an acting out in history by Antiochus of something that's going to happen, yet in the future.

Now, as we look at this, Daniel 8, all these details, you think, "What does this have to do with me? What does this have to do with my life?" Well, first of all, I think we have to understand it relates to God's ability to know in detail the future. Does it matter to you what happens to you in the future? Does it make a difference? Would it make any difference to you to know whether you're going to heaven or hell? Would that make a difference to you?

I think it would make a difference to me. I don't think it's possible to live until you're ready to die. And we know that death is coming for all of us. It came to Alexander the Great and it's coming to us. Are you ready for that? But God has given us specific promises, whoever trusts in Jesus Christ will have eternal life, and no one can take that life from us, and so God has declared the future before it has even happened. Further more, it says that some day he will return in glory to set up his kingdom. Are you waiting for that? How can you pray the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," without believing in a God who knows the future. And say, it absolutely will happen, and so we can pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come." And know it will certainly happen, because God has shown his track record, his specific performance in the past.

I think we also need to realize that history matters. Only a handful of you are really that interested in Alexander the Great. Some of you would watch a documentary about him in UNC-TV or something like that. Others couldn't be bothered. But I think the fact of the matter is, that God cares intensely about history, he cares a lot. This is Christianity, the only religion that's woven together through historical events. Do you realize that it? It makes a difference whether Adam and Eve ever lived. It makes a difference whether there was someone named Abraham, who was called out and promises were made to him. It makes a difference whether the Jews ever lived in Egypt and were slaves, and then led out by Moses. It makes a difference. It makes a difference whether there ever was a Joshua, conquered the promised land, whether there was or was not a king David makes a difference.

It makes a difference, whether there was a Jesus of Nazareth born in Bethlehem of a virgin, lived for 30, some odd years, ministered, died on the cross, rose from the dead. It makes a difference. History matters because if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, we're still in our sins. History makes a difference but your personal history makes a difference too.

Remember, last week we talked about in Daniel 7, the court was seated and the books were open or what's in the books? Your history, every word you've ever spoken, everything you've ever done, it's all written down. God is a meticulous and careful historian, he cares about history and so we need a savior. Because we could look at that. Daniel said very clearly that the Alexander the Great came and was cut off in the height of his power. He needed a savior, and so do you. Jesus Christ said, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. What would a man give in exchange for his soul?" Has there ever been a man who came so close to conquering the whole world as Alexander the Great and yet he could not conquer himself. But Jesus Christ came to give eternal life to all those who claimed him. I want to finish by giving a comparison.

"Wisdom cries aloud in the street" ...Andy explains the personification and the cry of wisdom as seen in Proverbs chapters 1-3 and 8-9.

Why don't you open to the Book of Proverbs, we're gonna be looking this morning... Or this evening at Proverbs 1, 2, and 3, and also a little bit in Chapters 8 and 9. But before we do, let's turn to the Lord and ask him for help. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We've had in your presence a day in your house. We're grateful O Lord, for the fellowship we've had with one another, it's very precious to us, O Lord, to know that we have brothers and sisters in Christ who take a genuine interest in our welfare. Take a genuine interest, O Lord in our lives. They're praying for us and caring for us, and who would, if needed, bring resources to bear into our lives as your Spirit directs. We thank you for sweet fellowship. Thank you that we hold in common certain truths that we've gotten from your Scripture, which are equally precious to each one of us. 

And so, when we see each other, there's automatically a smile and a connection from one to another, because we're all children of God by your spirit. We're grateful for that, and I thank you for the time of worship that we've experienced together O Lord, there's nothing like it Lord throughout the week, the time we have in your house O Lord on Sundays to sing praises to you and to pray and to lift our hearts to you, and to focus on you and to acknowledge your greatness. And Lord, it's refreshing to us because the world is offering us all kinds of counterfeit treasures and distractions and allurements that are designed by Satan to take our minds off of you so that you somehow seem less valuable, or less satisfying, somehow prompted we are to wander away from you to other things, and we ask your forgiveness for this. 

We're grateful that on Sunday we can be restored, our view can be lifted up and we can see you again. And we thank you for your precious word, which gives us the faith that we need to see you as you really are, and to see the world as it really is. Father, we thank you for the wisdom that comes from studying your scripture, and now as we turn our hearts to that wisdom in the Book of Proverbs, we pray that you'd open it up to us, O Lord. As spiritual beggars, we ask you again to teach us Lord, we're ready to receive from you. So instruct us by your Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.  

This evening what I would like to do is talk about the cry of wisdom. In which wisdom is personified as crying out to us and beckoning to us to come follow her. We see wisdom personified three times, Chapter 1:20-33, so please turn there, that's where we're gonna start this morning... Or evening. That's the second time I've done that. Is it evening or morning? I'm not quite sure. Sunday has an amazing effect on my brain, all you have to do is talk to my wife, there's not much left of me mentally at the end of this day. But at any rate, if I say morning, alright, you know I mean evening. The rest of the way, I'll set on that. Would that be sufficient? Alright. 

So we're looking at Proverbs 1:20-33. We're also gonna take a look at Chapters 8 and 9 to look at this call. Now, wisdom is personified here as a woman out in the streets beckoning to us to follow her, alluring us and enticing us to follow in her ways. And it's a phenomenal thing when compared with Chapter 2 as we're going to see. Wisdom is personified, is available, accessible, enticing, satisfying, and available for any who will seek with a pure heart. Let's begin at Verse 20 and look through to Verse 33 and see what Solomon says to us. Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares, at the head of the noisy streets, she cries out. In the gateways of the city, she makes her speech.  

“How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you, but since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand. Since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I, in turn, will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you, when calamity overtakes you like a storm when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind when distress and trouble overwhelm you. Then they will call to me, but I will not answer. They will look for me, but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the wayward-ness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm.”  

In verses 20 and 21, Wisdom is making an appeal. She's crying aloud in the streets, she's not silent. Neither is wisdom hidden in the halls of academia, for PhDs, or for kings, or for doctors, or for specialists. Wisdom is personified as out in the streets, basically begging for an audience. It's an interesting thing here. Wisdom calls aloud in the street and raises her voice in the public squares, at the head of the noisy street, she cries out, in effect saying, wisdom is available for anyone. It's there for you. If you just reach out. And as Wisdom is calling out, reaching out in everyday life, in effect saying, I'm available for anything you're going to face, this basically unfolds the whole themes of the Book of Proverbs.  

Now last week, we saw that there's no... Almost no area of everyday life or practical life that's not covered in the Book of Proverbs. Isn't that true? You all perhaps have some favorite Proverbs that you've memorized. I like one that's very useful. A gentle answer turns away wrath. Isn't that powerful? In other words, somebody comes to you and they're distressed with you, and just to respond gently with humility, can end that controversy before it even starts. But all of you have some other ones. The point is that there's no area of life that's not covered by the wisdom that God offers, reaching out. But along with it, wisdom offers not just a beckoning or an invitation or an appeal, but also somewhat of a complaint.   Look at Verse 22. “How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery, and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you, but since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I, in turn, will laugh at your disaster.”  

So there's a complaint here, and what is the complaint that wisdom is making? They're not paying attention. They're rejecting her, as she reaches out there, basically loving their own ways. It seems no one wants to listen to wisdom, because as you look around in all the areas of life that Proverbs is dealing with, the workplace, the home, family relationships, dealing with money or time, labor, any topic addressed in the Book of Proverbs, we see foolishness abounding, don't we?  

We see it around us, and sadly we see it in us, and so wisdom has a kind of a complaint against us. In effect she's saying, How long is it gonna go on like this? I've got everything you need. If you'll just turn. How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? So, she addresses three types of people here, the simple... These are simple people, it doesn't... There's nothing wrong with the simplicity in one sense, but these are people that should know better in effect. The simple means people who know nothing or are untrained neophytes in effect. And then there's scoffers or mockers. This is somebody that hears the truth and hears the wisdom, but rejects it with a laugh, thinks of it as humorous really. It's a joke in a way. And then there are the dullards or the fools. Now, we said last time that we were going to have two escorts through the Book of Proverbs, one is the wise man and the other is the fool. 

Now, in the Book of Proverbs, a fool is not just somebody who doesn't do well on a test, it goes a lot deeper than that. A fool is somebody who has a serious moral problem. Basically at heart, they do not fear the Lord. Remember, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So they do not have a right relationship with the God of wisdom, they're in rejection of His wisdom. In effect, they've turned the whole thing around and they are wise and God is the fool. That's the way they look at it. And so, basically, the foolishness runs right to the heart of their relationship with God. They don't fear the Lord, and then it plays out in all these arenas, doesn't it? The fool does this, the fool speaks that, the fool does the other. So it plays itself out in various ways, but at heart, it's a spiritual problem. And they all have one trait in common, they hate wisdom, and they love foolishness. They hate wisdom and love foolishness. 

Now, Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon entitled ‘Treatise on Religious Affections’, said that true religion, in the end, consists in affection. Affection, passion. Basically, religion comes down to what you love and what you hate. I'll show you what I mean. Look over at Hebrews Chapter 1, take a minute and turn there. In Hebrews Chapter 1, the writer to Hebrews is speaking of the superiority of the Son of God to angels, and Jesus Christ is superior to every created being.  He Himself is not created. There was never a time that He did not exist. And here, God Himself, the first person of the Trinity, the ancient of days, from Daniel Chapter 7, is speaking to the second person of the Trinity, fascinating chapter. And he's speaking words of scripture to Him and He's speaking straight from prophecy. Basically saying, The Father says this to the Son, the Father says this to the Son. So we're kind of listening in on a conversation from the Father to the Son, and the intensity and the passion is strong. 

And this is what he says in Chapter 1:8, “But about the Son, he says, your throne, O God, will last forever and ever. Do you see that? Look at Verse 8, about the Son, he says, well, who says this? God the Father. And who is he speaking about? God the Son. And what does he call him? Well, he calls Him God, Your throne, O God, isn't that amazing? God the Father calls God the Son, God, your throne, O God, will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. Look at the next Verse though. “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.”  This is what Edwards meant when he said, True religion consists in what you love and what you hate. It's not enough just to love, we have to love and hate, why? Because there's evil in this world, isn't there?  

We can't be ambivalent about evil, we have to hate it. And we can't be ambivalent about good and wisdom, we have to love it. And because, according to this Verse, Jesus loved righteousness and hated wickedness, God loves him and sets His throne above all others. That's how the logic of the Verse works. Go back to Proverbs 1.   

What I'm contending to you is that as you grow in spiritual maturity, as your character develops, it's going to be developing along lines of love and hatred, isn't it? Not just love, and certainly not just hatred, but love and hatred. You're going to love righteousness more and more, and you're going to hate wickedness more and more. You see how it is? 'Cause, that's the way God is. And so in effect, what's going on here in Proverbs 1 is that the simple, the mockers and scoffers, the fools, love what?   

They love wickedness, they love their simple ways, they love anti-wisdom. They're not ambivalent about it, mind you, they enjoy it. This is what brings them pleasure, and they continue to love their simple ways, the ways of un-wisdom when they should have loved wisdom. This is the core issue. And so, therefore, wisdom speaks regretfully as we already read in Verse 23, “If you had responded, if you had responded to my rebuke,” isn't that amazing? If you had only listened to me, you would not be in the bind you're in right now. [chuckle] And you know the funny thing is, we get in binds, don't we? Sin leads us to interesting places in our lives. And you wonder, how did I get here? What series of decisions did I make that led me to this place that I'm in now?   

And if you just would take the time to unravel it, and if you knew the Book of Proverbs thoroughly, wisdom would say, I told you. I told you. I told you, if you'd only listened, we wouldn't have gotten in this problem. And so, wisdom is in effect out in the street saying, please listen to me, I don't want you to get there where you are. If you had only listened to my rebuke, etcetera. Now, very interesting what she says. If you had listened to my rebuke. Note this word is in here three times. If you had listened to my rebuke, it says in Verse 23. And then again it says in Verse 25, “Since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I will laugh at you.” And then again, it says in Verse 30, “Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways,” etcetera. What is a rebuke?   

Correction. Strong correction. Yes. There's correction and then there's rebuke, so it's a correction with a stinger in it, isn't it? I mean, there's a kind of a sting to it, and wisdom is in effect offering a rebuke. And we're gonna find out, we're not gonna look at it tonight, but kind of one of the keys to being a wise person is how you handle a rebuke. Isn't that true? How you handle a correction. How, when somebody comes to you and says, brother or sister, I see this in your life and it's going to cause X, Y, and Z, please stop. How you respond to that shows whether you're a wise person or a fool. If you become prideful and defend yourself, it's a certain thing. If on the other hand, you listen and respond and accept, then you're wise. And so, the path of wisdom is a way of listening to rebukes according to wisdom. Now, what is the rebuke? I think there's a key rebuke right at the start of the Christian life.  

Look at Chapter 3:5-7, this should be familiar to you. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” There it is. That's a rebuke. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. But keep going, Verse 7, “Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil.” It's the same thing, don't think of yourself as knowing what you're doing, [chuckle] 'cause you don't. And that's the same thing, all of us basically need to come to wisdom, humble and open like a child and say, teach me because I don't know what I'm doing.  

And that's kinda hard to take, isn't it? I mean, after all, we're such and such years old, we've been at this for a while. Things are kinda going along, and yeah, we have some bumps along the way, but I mean, it's going, isn't it? And so, we in effect have to turn our back on our own wisdom, our own ways, and say, I don't know what I'm doing, and that's a little bit hard to take, isn't it?  

Look over at Chapter 12:15. Somebody read this for me. Big, loud voice, Herbert. But read it in English.  You can read it it in Spanish, it's International Sunday, so you can go ahead and do that.[chuckle]  It's 12:15, right?  

 Okay. “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.” 

The way of a fool seems right to him. It seems like it's going all right, doesn't it? But is it? Is it? And so, the kind of entry rebuke that wisdom gives us is, you don't know what you're doing. [chuckle] You don't know what you're doing. You're going to mess it up if you lean on your own understanding. Check your understanding at the door and come in ready to learn and we will be fine. And then even stronger, 14:12, somebody read 14:12 to me.  “There is a way that seems right to man, but at the end of it is the way of death.” 

There is a way that seems right to man, but the end of that way is death. Now, it doesn't just mean physical death, but I think eternal death. We actually think we know what we're doing. We're navigating very well, thank you very much, but we're not. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” And so, we've got this wide paved road, and pride just feeds it, doesn't it? I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing. There's a way that seems right. But then there's these problems that keep popping up, and wisdom is gonna say here, I'm just gonna laugh at you, because I told you what was going to come of it. Because you would not check your own understanding at the door, because you trusted in your own ways and did not lean on the Lord, because of that, all these things have happened to you.  

And so... this is the rebuke, in my opinion, that you have to pay at the beginning in order to have the way of wisdom. Basically, you don't know what you're doing. Let me instruct you. And that's what He's saying, Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him. What does it mean to acknowledge Him in all your ways? Basically, I need you, Jesus, to tell me what to do. I need your help. Or else I'm gonna mess it up. And that takes humility. Doesn't it? And that's why Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, spiritual beggars, for theirs, and theirs alone is the kingdom of heaven.”  

You're just gonna come in day after day and say, Teach me Jesus, I don't know what to do, teach me and teach me. And he does, and that's the beauty of salvation, He gives you an indwelling Holy Spirit to be your teacher and your guide. Listen to this in Isaiah 30:20, “Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more. With your own eyes, you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, This is the way, walk in it.”  

Isn't that great? Do you know how many non-Christians are looking for advice, watching TV shows, advice shows, call-in shows, reading columns, 'cause they don't know where the way is, and they don't have anyone saying, walk in it, but we have the indwelling Spirit and we have the scriptures, and the way is clear ahead of us saying, This is the way, walk in it. Isn't that a blessing? Life gets complicated, and in effect, wisdom is standing here like a woman kind of noisy woman in the street saying, Follow me and I'll take you to good things if you'll only listen. And so wisdom makes an appeal, very loudly, expresses some regrets about the fact that she's not being followed.  

Now, look over in Chapter 8. Says the same thing again, wisdom is personified, beginning at verse 1. It says, “Does not wisdom call out, does not understanding raise her voice on the heights along the way where the paths meet, she takes her stand beside the gates leading into the city, at the entrances, she cries aloud: “To you, O men, I call out, I raise my voice to all mankind, you who are simple gain prudence, you who are foolish, gain understanding. Listen, I have worthy things to say, I open my lips to speak what is right, my mouth speaks what is true for my lips to test wickedness, all the words of my mouth are just. None of them is crooked or perverse. To the discerning, all of them are right. They are faultless to all who have knowledge. Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies and nothing you desire can compare with her.” ” Stop there. So wisdom is in effect saying, Here I am, listen to me, pay attention to me, she's out kind of aggressively in the streets. Same thing as Chapter 1. 

Now, look at Chapter 9, does the same thing. Chapter 9:1. “Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out its seven pillars, she has prepared her meat and mixed her wine, she has also set her table, she has sent out her maids and she calls from the highest point of the city, “Let all who are simple come in here,” she says to those who lack judgement, “Come eat my food and drink the wine, I have mixed, leave your simple ways and you will live. Walk in the way of understanding.” ” Stop there. 

So here, in effect, wisdom has a beautiful house that she's made, and she's laid out a sumptuous feast, and then she sends out messengers in the street saying, Come and eat the best of meats and the finest of wines. Just invites, it's just a wide proclamation for anyone to come and enjoy a good life. But look at the next verse, verse 7, “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults. Whoever rebukes a wicked man, incurs abuse.” Have you ever experienced this? You try to share something with somebody and this is what you get in return? Well, this is the mark of foolishness.  

The question is, have you ever done it? That's the real question. Somebody just wants to try to help you out and what comes out, we call it in our family, the viper, it's inside us, it's like a snake, and it comes out and goes...ssssss... Like that, Oh, it's ugly. And there's only one way to kill the viper, starve it. Death by starvation, 'cause every time you give it a meal, it gets bigger and stronger. You know what I'm talking about? And what is the meal that the viper likes? Pride. Pride, right? Every time you feed it, boy, it just ate and got a little stronger. I want my viper like a little earthworm, [chuckle] said of one of those big boa constrictors inside me. 

But that viper needs death, we need to kill it and it's within us. It's that pride that says, I know what I'm doing, leave me alone. And so we respond, we don't accept criticism well, we don't take the rebuke, we don't take the correction, we do it our own way. And so wisdom says, Look, this is something I've noticed by the way, all your messengers going out in the street to invite people to come to my banquet, this is what you may find when you invite them: Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults. Whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse, Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you. Rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still, teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning. Verse 10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Do you see that? In effect, this is evangelism, isn't it? It's somebody going out in the streets and saying, repent, turn away from sin and come to Christ, turn away from your own ways, they're leading to destruction. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is death. Turn away from it. And what are you going to get? Well, you're either going to get a wise man or a fool listening to you, and if you get the fool, what are you gonna get in response?  Persecution. 

They're gonna be all over you. Why? Because you're saying they need a savior, they need something other than their own ways, but a wise man becomes wiser still. Well, up to this point, we have seen basically Wisdom aggressively pursuing us, right? I mean, she's out in the street, in Chapter 1, she's out in the street again, in Chapter 8, she's spreading a banquet, she's sending out messengers everywhere. It seems like wisdom is readily accessible, isn't that true? That's what we're getting from Chapter 1, Chapter 8, Chapter 9. Wisdom is everywhere and easy to get to. But now look at Chapter 2, beginning at Verse 1, “My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight, and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”  

Now, what is the image here? Basically, you need to kinda go out and look for it, you need to search for it as for fine treasure. You need to kinda get your pick and your shovel and go in the mine and dig it up.  

It implies almost like it's kind of hard to find. Have you noticed? Chapter 2 seems somewhat out of sorts with Chapters 1, 8 and 9. I don't think it is. We'll talk about that in a minute, but in effect, you need to search for wisdom as for fine treasure. For silver and for gold and rubies, it's got to be valuable to you. Gotta look for it, be hungry for it, searching. And notice again, the writer of Proverbs here, Solomon, basically tells us what wisdom you're gonna find. Verse 5, “Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” That's basically what we're finding.   

Now, we're gonna get really nuts-and-bolts-ish. Is that a word? I don't know. We're gonna get very practical in our looking at everyday life, and that's good. We wanna know how to balance the checkbook and whether we should give to this or that, or whether we should go into a business deal or arrangement, or how we should deal with various temptations that come our way. We wanna get into the nuts and bolts of everyday life and Book of Proverbs is great for that. But the bottom line is, you're gonna find God in all those details. That's what you're gonna find, you're gonna find the ways of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. He says it again.  

Alright, well, how do we reconcile, then? We've got the image of wisdom being readily accessible, easy to find around everywhere, making a feast, spreading a banquet, sending out messengers, you can't turn around, but you bump into her. She's everywhere. But then in Chapter 2, you've gotta search for her like fine silver. How do you reconcile these two? Yeah? (audience comment) Chapter 2 addresses the priorities of your heart, Herbert said, But Chapter 1, 8 and 9, what God has made available. He's lavished it for us, hasn't He? And it's not a small amount. It's right here. 31 chapters of Proverbs, and that's just one of 66 books in the Bible. It is here. This is the feast, isn't it? It's a banquet spread and it's right there. Right on your shelf, right available for you, the answers were in there.    

I really believe any problem in your life, you can trace it back to some way that you stepped off the wisdom clearly articulated in Scripture or just in the book of Proverbs. If you only knew. It's there. But the fact is you're going to miss it unless you're really looking for it as for fine treasure and silver, do you see what I'm saying? It has to do with what kind of heat your heart has to be up to in order to accept the truth. You've gotta get up to a certain level of desire and yearning and hunger, or else you're not gonna look and you'll be one of those ones walking right by her in the streets, and you'll never find her. 

So what is it that creates a yearning for wisdom? Well, I think one thing, maybe the sting of sin, don't you think? When you sin and it hurts and you start having mess in your life, troubled relationships, maybe husband or wife, parent, child, or employer, employee or with your neighbors, some problems. Or you're having trouble in your finances. Trouble physically in your life, not getting enough sleep or other things, you begin to say, Boy, sin is causing me some trouble, and it creates a certain hunger in your life for the answers. And then all of a sudden the Lord starts to give you a good word. It's called The word of wisdom, and it comes through a passage of scripture, and you started saying, "Wait a minute, that's perfect, it's what I've been looking for all along." And then you start getting hungry and you start to search for it as for fine treasure. 

I think that's what happens. Sin is causing all the hurt in your life, and mine too. It's the enemy, and the answer is the wisdom of God, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Now, the rest of Chapter 2, the writer basically unlocks the benefits of wisdom: knowledge of God and His protection. 

In Verses 5-8, it says, You'll understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. The Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. Verse 6, by the way, there is no other source of wisdom. It's God or it's no one. It's God or it's foolishness. Isn't that true? Either God gives it or it's foolishness. So the Lord gives wisdom. In Verse 7, “He holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless.” This is talking about success in your life and protection in your life from the enemies. Isn't that what you yearn for in your life? Success in the things you're doing, and protection from the enemies that surround you? God is making that available to you. And he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand what is right and just and fair, every good path. Look at that, Verse 9, you'll know the way to go, you won't be confused and say, What should I do? I don't know what to do, I'm overwhelmed and discouraged, I don't know what path to take. Verse 9, “You will understand what is right and just, and every proper path you'll understand it.”  

Verse 10, “For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.” I like Verse 10 and compare it back to Verse 23 of Chapter 1. If you had responded, 1:23 says, “If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you.” Think about that, I would have poured out everything I know to you. I'd be a teacher, I would never run out of things to say. I would have poured out my wisdom to you.  

Okay, back to Chapter 10, Verse... Chapter 2:10, “Wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul, discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.” That's everyday life. And then in Chapter 2:12-15, we have protection from the evil man, and then in Verse 16-19, protection from the evil woman. There's a comprehensive protection here, and then finally in Verses 20-22, a summary, thus you will walk in the ways of good men and keep to the paths of the righteous, for the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the unfaithful will be torn from it. It's a good life, it's a life of wisdom, it's a life of blessedness. 

And what is the one thing we need for it? We need to accept the rebuke, don't we? We need to basically accept that we're simple and we don't know what we're doing. We need to stop relying on our own ways. And that is hard to do.  

I wanna finish tonight in 2 Corinthians Chapter 1 with the Apostle Paul's experience. 2 Corinthians 1:8 and following. Here, Paul is talking about one of the hardest times in his life, a terrible time of persecution. “We do not want you to be uninformed brothers about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We are under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired even of life, indeed in our hearts, we felt the sentence of death.” Now, look at this, “but this happened, that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.”  

Are you telling me, Paul, you had to go through all this to learn the lesson of Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding? Yeah, it's that hard to give it up, isn't it? It's that hard to say, God, I don't know what I'm doing, I trust in you. Lead me, I lean on you, I rely on you at every moment, and if you don't help me, I will surely fall, and if you don't guide me, I'll surely go astray. It is that hard, and Paul said, I had to go through this to learn the lesson, to not rely on myself, but on God who raises the dead. 

So how do we become wise people? Ask for trials and persecutions, difficulties and distress? Whether he gives you the bread of affliction or not, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, This is the way, walk in it. God prepares your heart for wisdom, and then all of a sudden a feast that's delicious. God spreads out a feast and every area of your life is sanctified to his wise ways, and you don't have to taste the bitter fruit of sin any longer. Won't you close with me in prayer?  

 Heavenly Father, we thank you for the time we've had tonight. And looking at Proverbs and the value of Wisdom, I thank You for Chapter 1, 8 and 9, which makes it so clear how aggressively wisdom is seeking us out to find us. Father, we thank you for that, we thank you that she's out in the streets making herself available, we thank you that she's calling to us, and that She spread a banquet for us and inviting us, enticing us to a wise and profitable life. But father, we know from Chapter 2 that we need to search for it as for hidden treasure. We need to yearn for it, and we need to pay the price of listening to wisdom's rebuke, namely that we don't know what we're doing and that we need God to teach us and lead us. Father, make us all spiritual beggars that we might walk in your ways. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Good night, God willing. We'll see you again next week. Thank you for coming. 

Andy gives an introduction to the study on the topic of wisdom as seen through the book of Proverbs.

Open your Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians 1. We're beginning a series tonight in the Book of Proverbs, and we're starting therefore in 1 Corinthians 1. Does that make sense? Now, you may wonder, "What in the world does 1 Corinthians 1 have to do with Proverbs?" But it has everything to do with Proverbs. The common theme is wisdom. We're gonna be talking tonight about wisdom, and I wanna start at the center of our wisdom, and that is Jesus Christ, Himself.

The Apostle Paul made a statement in 1 Corinthians 1:22, and he said there, "Jews demand miraculous signs, and Greeks look for wisdom." Wisdom. I think we're very Greek people. I really think that we are in love with what the human mind can achieve and accomplish. We're in love with our own technology, with our achievements, with our ability to reason things out and think things through. We have think tanks and experts, and for any problem, any time that there's a dispute or a difficulty, there's never a shortage of experts to come in and give us some insight from all their study and some wisdom. And so, we are, I think, in this sense, very much like the Greeks of old, when Paul said that Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom.

The Greeks were full of famous philosophers. Can you think of some Greek philosophers that were... Socrates, Aristotle. That's right. Plato, perhaps the most famous. Many others, Pythagoras. I bet you didn't realize that he was a philosopher, but he really was, in addition to the Pythagorean theorem. I'm sure you all remember what the Pythagorean theorem was. That's right. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. Yes, and that's exciting, but Mr. Pythagoras did other things besides that, and he was a Greek philosopher. Democritus, Parmenides and others. There are famous Greek philosophers, and there were schools of Greek philosophy throughout the history of Athens and Greece. Atomism, for example, the idea that all of matter is made up of little particles called atoms. That sound familiar? Now, the Greeks were the first ones that thought that up. And Epicureanism, Platonism, realism, stoicism, hedonism. That's a big favor today. Life is about pleasure. Let's eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. That's Greek philosophy.

But it's interesting, a statement that Paul makes here in 1 Corinthians, and look at it in verse 21. 1 Corinthians 1:21. Let's begin at verse 20. It says, "Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." Now, that's an amazing statement he makes there. The Greeks were looking for wisdom, they were looking for God as well. Plato had statements about God and they were trying to find him through their intellectual achievements, but the amazing thing about the statement is that it was the wisdom of God that they could never find him that way. You can't find God that way. By thinking deeply and meditating about the world and about yourself, and working through axioms of truth. You're never gonna find God that way. And it's wisdom from God that you can't find God that way.

In the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know him. But a simple slave, or a common man or woman who hears and believes the gospel of Jesus Christ, they have the wisdom of God. Isn't that amazing? He says later, "We have the mind of Christ." We have the mind of Christ. We have the true wisdom. Paul says in Romans 11, one of my favorite passages, he says, "Oh, the depth of the riches, the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" Think about that. Who's gonna be chief counsel or giver to God? His right hand man, to give him some advice when he needs it. He calls him in, 'I'm having a little trouble with creation, I'm trying to work through this DNA thing, and I've kind of lost my way a little bit. Help me out here.' Who's gonna be God's counselor? Who's gonna give him some advice and some wisdom? Does he need one? No, his wisdom is infinite, it's unsearchable. It's unsearchable. 

I always think about the unsearchable wisdom of God in terms of plumbing the depths of the ocean, and thinking about the amount of string you have in your pocket and tying it up to a rock and just keep going and going and keep adding other pieces of string and it goes deeper and deeper, and you ask your buddies or some other people for some string and it just keeps going. You'll never plumb the depths. That's the wisdom of God, it's unsearchable, it's deep, the wisdom of God. And the Greeks weren't gonna find it simply by thinking a lot and by talking to one another.

In verse 25 of 1 Corinthians 1, he says, "There's no true wisdom apart from God." It says, "The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." Isn't that wonderful? God's foolish moments is wiser than our best moment. Does God have any foolish moments? No. What is Paul doing here? He's really speaking tongue-in-cheek, and you know why? Because he went and preached the gospel to the philosophers, and they said it was foolishness. Utter foolishness. The idea of a Jewish carpenter, dead on the cross, put into a tomb and risen from the dead on the third day, what is that? That's utter foolishness. And so he says, "Okay, foolishness. But the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom." Wiser than man's wisdom. Christ is our wisdom, isn't He?

Look at verse 30, 1 Corinthians 1:30. "It is because of him... " Actually, I can't do this unless I read the whole section. Verse 26, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you are wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world, and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus." You could meditate on that for years. Just that one sentence. "It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus." Think about that. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us, what? Wisdom from God. Our wisdom is Jesus Christ. He is our wisdom. He has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

And so God is our wisdom. Jesus Christ is our wisdom, and we're going to be skating across perhaps the surface of Proverbs, there's no way we're gonna go verse by verse through 31 chapters of Proverbs. But Proverbs lends itself very well to a topical study, doesn't it? You really don't know why Proverbs 22:17 follows Proverbs 22:16. And so what we can do is go topically or thematically through and draw them out, and try to understand some wisdom from God. But I wanted to start here so that you would know the ultimate wisdom of God is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It's the cross of Jesus Christ and the empty tomb. That is the wisdom of God, and we have the pleasure of having that wisdom if we've simply believed the gospel of Jesus Christ. You're as wise as you need to be. Isn't that wonderful?

So stop studying! What else is there to learn? You know everything! Is that true? Well, no, there's some practical wisdom that we need, isn't it? And that is because sin has deep roots in our lives, it affects everything we do, and we need some expulsive wisdom, don't we? To get in there and start adjusting the way we think about some things. Yes, we've been saved. We acknowledge that we're sinners, we acknowledge that we needed a savior, we acknowledge that we needed Jesus Christ, but we still have some problems, don't we? Are you all done being saved? Well, you're done being justified. The moment you trusted in Jesus Christ, you were justified, right? If you're a believer, that's finished once for all, but are you done being saved? No, according to Paul, he says, "Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." So our salvation is still being worked out, and it's yet to come, on judgment day we'll be saved.

There's a whole salvation package, and part of that is a daily practical wisdom from God, isn't it? And I don't think you're gonna find it any better than in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs deals with some issues, doesn't it? How do we deal with our money? Or, how do we raise our children? Or, how can we have a good marriage? How can we be a good employee? How can we look at life rightly? That's the wisdom of Proverbs, and I think we need it. But I think before we go on, I wanna remind you of a verse I spoke about this morning. Where does wisdom come from? If you lack wisdom, what should you do? You should ask God. How is it that we keep coming again and again to a simple theme that we need to be spiritual beggars? Again and again and again, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," spiritual beggars, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." If you want anything, simply ask God.

James 1:5, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God. And He gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given." And do you know what he might do? He might direct you to the Scripture. "Read it," He might say. "Read the instruction book, and there's some wisdom in there for you." Now, who wrote the Book of Proverbs? Other than God, of course, we know that it's inspired by God, but humanly speaking, who wrote Proverbs? That's right, Solomon. Turn to Proverbs 1:1, and He tells us right off who wrote it. Proverbs 1:1, and it says there, "The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel." So that solves it. Now, we know that in the Book of Proverbs, there are some sayings from other wise men, and we'll get to that later on. But in general, most of the Proverbs in the 31 chapters were written by Solomon, are inspired by Solomon.

Now, where did Solomon get his wisdom? Well, he got it from God. And you remember the story, Solomon was young and inexperienced, and he was having a dream, and in that dream, God came to him and said, "Ask for anything you want and it'll be given to you." What would you ask for? I've talked to others before about that. If you had that carte blanche, that blank check with God's signature at the bottom, what would you ask for? Seriously, what would you ask for? Godly heart, that's a good one. Other thoughts? What would you ask for? If you were in Solomon's place, what would you ask for? To know God. Now, this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God. So you want eternal life, Bob, it sounds like. Alright, something else? What would you ask for? 

Okay, all your loved ones that they might be saved. Paul says, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved." Yearning and a hunger for that, alright.

That you might be active and available to God the rest of your life in spreading the gospel, that would be a wonderful thing to ask for. How about, I'd like to be in heaven now? [chuckle] Okay, yeah.

I remember when I was a child and reading those Aladdin lamp stories, and it's like, if you get three wishes, what would you wish for? Wish for infinite wishes, that kind of thing. Well, you can't trick him with that. I think that might be wonderful to say, "God, I like the wisdom to answer the question. I don't know what I should ask for. Doesn't the Scripture say that? We don't know what to pray for." That's right. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. Frankly, all of these answers that I'm getting have been instructed by the Scriptures, haven't they? We've been told to ask or yearn for a godly heart or eternal life, or that your friends may be saved, etcetera. These are coming right up out of the wisdom of God, the Scriptures themselves. I'm glad to hear that none of you said, "Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?"

Ah, that's encouraging. And there are these moments that have gladdened the heart of a pastor, and that was big, and I appreciate that. But Solomon asked for wisdom, and I think he felt it acutely, didn't he? Why would Solomon be yearning for wisdom at that particular moment in his life? Yeah, it's a big job to be king. And he's a young man, he's inexperienced, he's got the humility to be a beggar there, doesn't he? To say, "I don't know what to do, I don't know how to be a king." And I'll tell you something, I have thought about it many times as a pastor in the last couple of years, as a matter of fact. I don't know how to be a pastor, I don't know how to be your pastor. There's no shame in that. I'll tell you, I'm young and inexperienced, I've come to God numerous times on my knees and say, "What do you want me to do? I don't know how to go. Give me wisdom." Why would God forsake that kind of prayer? That's James 1:5, He said, he'll give it generously to anyone who asks, and there's a certain confidence in knowing you can go to God any time with an open heart, as long as you're willing to do anything He says, to hear anything he might say, He's gonna give you that wisdom.

But that's what King Solomon did, and God gave him incredible wisdom. You see, this is the way God is. He doesn't give a little, okay? He's gonna lavish wisdom on Solomon more than anyone that had ever lived before or has ever lived since, save one, Jesus Christ, we'll get to that. But Solomon was lavished with the gift of wisdom. Incredible wisdom. Now, what is wisdom? A little while ago, we bought an 1828 Webster Dictionary. Now, why is the 1828 version important? Well, Noah Webster was a Christian, and almost all of his definitions of words have some Bible quote in them, it's an incredible thing. So you're reading through, and that's a great book to look up the definition of wisdom, and he did a great job. Noah Webster in 1828, wisdom in terms of an act, or effect, or practice, listen to this, is the right use and exercise of knowledge, the choice of laudable ends, that means good ends or praisable ends, and the best means to accomplish them.

In other words, to know where is a good place to go and then to know what's the best way to get there, that's wisdom. To know where it is you wanna drive to, and then what's the shortest route to get there are the best route. Well, that's the definition, that's an act, effect, or practice. Also is a faculty of the mind, Noah Webster tells us, wisdom is the faculty of discerning or judging what is most just, proper, and useful. There's a real moral side to these definitions. Have you noticed? What is righteous, what is just, and what is best and useful, that's the ability of the mind to discern those things. Also as an acquirement, something you can gain, wisdom is the knowledge and use of what is best, most just, most proper, most conducive to prosperity and happiness. You can become a wise man or a wise woman by immersing yourself in Scripture under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. You can discern what is best, discern what is just and right, and not only that, but how to bring it about, what's the best way to perceive. That is God's gift. Practical wisdom is discretion.

Now, prudence, for example, is a form of wisdom according to Noah Webster. Prudence is the exercise of sound judgment in avoiding evils. I like that. The exercise of sound judgment and avoiding pitfalls and trouble, avoiding evils. He says it's a subset of wisdom. Wisdom is the exercise of sound judgement in either avoiding evils or attempting good. Both. So that's wisdom. Thank you, Noah Webster. But I think in best, we see wisdom lived out in daily life, don't we? If you know a wise man or woman, you just watch how they live. How do they organize their affairs? What do they do with their checkbook? How do they organize their time? How do they administer their office? Let's say. How do they train their children? How do they organize their affairs? It's best seen in everyday life, and thus I believe in the Christian church, mentoring is crucial, don't you think?

To have a wise man, if you're a man or a woman, if you're a woman, who can just show you how to live in everyday life. Practical wisdom comes from experience, walking with Jesus through things. That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ." As we go through the Book of Proverbs, we're gonna have two very helpful tutors or mentors. One of them is the wise man, and what's his counterpart? He's very much instructive as well. The fool. That's right, we're gonna learn a lot from both, aren't we? The wise man is gonna teach us some things and the fool is gonna teach us some things, and we're gonna learn from both. Sometimes they appear, both of them, in one proverb. Wise man does this, the fool does that. And so, we're gonna learn by contrast and by comparison. What is a wise life in practical situations. We're gonna see the wise and the fool in various settings. For example, Proverbs 12:15, "The way of the fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice." Alright, what is that teaching about a fool? "I don't need to hear anything from anybody, I've got this thing scoped, got it figured out. I don't need anything from anybody."

What does a wise man say? "Do you have any words of wisdom for me? I could use some advice here." You see what I'm saying? So we learn right away from our tutors: The wise man and the fool on the issue of taking advice. Proverbs 12:16, the very next one, "A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." Well, what does the wise man teaching a prudent man? Overlooking insult. Don't take it to heart. Alright, but what does the fool teaches? As soon as somebody irritates you, say something about it, show in a flash of anger, demonstration of power. We live in a foolish age, don't we? We live in a very angry age. As soon as somebody insults or crosses you, we're gonna show it. Well, Book of Proverbs has dealt with that thousands of years ago. 'A wise man overlooks an insult, but a fool shows annoyance at once." Or Proverbs 12:23, "A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly." So a wise person tends to be kinda quiet, they don't say as much, kinda keep their wisdom to themselves until it's needed. But a fool blurts out his folly as soon as he thinks of something to say.

Or this one? Proverbs 15:19, "The way of the sluggard," we're gonna be meeting the sluggard. What's another word for sluggard? Yeah, a lazy person. That's right. A lazy person. "The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway." In other words, a lazy person who doesn't do his business and get his things done has a difficult life, a hard life, there's always trouble, there's always difficulties. But a wise man is like a paved road, when you get your things done on time, etcetera. So it's a case study of everyday life. What is wisdom like? And what is it not like?

Now, Solomon's greatest exports in his kingdom was wisdom. Do you know that? That's what they exported. People came from around the world to listen to Solomon. The Queen of the South, for example, came and she brought her whole retinue and they brought all kinds of stuff, gold and silver and rare woods and spices and all that, and they traded it all for what? Some words of wisdom. Just some advice, just to be able to sit and listen to Solomon. And Solomon was amazing, it said in 1 Kings 4, "God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom was greater than all the wisdom of the East, the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than any other man, and his fame spread to the surrounding nations. He spoke... " Get this, "3000 proverbs." We have just a sampling of his wisdom here, 3000 proverbs and songs numbered a thousand and five. So he was a composer.

He described plant life from the cedar that grows in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the walls. He also taught about animals, birds, reptiles, and fish. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world who had heard of his wisdom. So people from all around came to listen to Solomon, and we get to sit at his feet and listen to him too, don't we? We get to listen to his wisdom, as written in the Book of Proverbs. The Queen of the South, Queen of Sheba, came to listen to Solomon's wisdom. This is what she said, "The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true, but I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told to me. In wisdom and wealth, you have far exceeded the report I heard. How happy your men must be, how happy your officials who continually stand before you to hear your wisdom." So that's amazing. God, as I said, gave lavishly to Solomon.

But later on, another one would come, a descendant of Solomon, through his father, Joseph. And it was Jesus Christ. And you remember what Jesus said about Solomon? He said, "The Queen of the South," this is Matthew 12:42, "came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now One greater than Solomon is here." One greater than Solomon is here. Jesus Christ's wisdom far exceeds that of Solomon. Solomon described plant life, cedars and hyssop, Jesus designed them. Think about that. Solomon observed the mating rituals of certain kinds of fish perhaps, or animals, categorized them into categories, Jesus created them and sustained them. That is the wisdom of Jesus Christ. And by the way, you have Jesus Christ living within you. You have the mind of Christ. Isn't that amazing? Stop and think that someday your wisdom and your knowledge of God will far exceed the head of Solomon, when you've seen Jesus face to face, and you know as fully as you are fully known.

Now, let's look for the first seven verses of Proverbs, and we're gonna just work our way through these, and that'll set us up for our future study. Proverbs 1:1, we've already read. "The proverbs of Solomon son of David, King of Israel: For attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight; for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, for doing what is right and just and fair; for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young, let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance, for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and discipline." Now, as you look through these seven verses, he tells you at the beginning why he's written these down, what are the Proverbs for. And listen to what he says, "Therefore, attaining wisdom and discipline." What is discipline? In a moment, he's gonna talk about attaining or acquiring a wise and disciplined life.

What does that mean? Discipline. Okay, using your time well, resources well. Go. Self-control. Okay, other thoughts on discipline? Teaching, okay. I think it's really related to the word disciple. There's a close relationship between discipleship and discipline. Self-control is a big theme. How many of you feel that... Say again. Okay, obedience and submission to God's leading in your life, okay. That would be good. I think what Max said in terms of stewardship, there's a sense in which God has given us these resources and we're supposed to be wise and disciplined stewards of them. We're supposed to know what they are and how to use them best. And so, how many of you feel that you would like to grow in self-discipline? Okay, one or two of you. And for the rest, it speaks of you because it says, Let the wise hear and increase in their learning. So all of those of you who have reached that level of self-discipline that you would like, you can continue and increase your learning.

The thing is that the Book of Proverbs is written, no matter what your level of discipleship. Look what it says, it says, "For acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair. Giving prudence to the simple." What does that mean? Simple. He is simple. What is a simple person? Right, not proud. Calmer, say again. Naive, right? Or could we say a beginner in the journey of wisdom? Naive, just starting. Okay, you're just a beginner when it comes to wisdom. Well, this book's for you. It's for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young. So there's a parallel there, between simple and young, but then also in verse 5, "Let the wise listen and add to their learning." We're never finished, are we? Some of you have been alive for many, many more years than I have, and your gray hair testifies to the years you've been alive, and you've experienced things that younger people have not experienced, but are you done learning? Are you finished? Not at all. And so there's a practical wisdom still waiting for you in this book. "Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance." That's a beautiful word, isn't it?

I like to think in my life of the way of wisdom. There's a way, a path in front of us, isn't there? And sometimes it's hard to see, it's hard to know what direction to go. We need wisdom, we need guidance, and we must learn to turn to Scripture, and the Book of Proverbs, gives us some very practical wisdom and guidance for that journey, the way of wisdom. And then he says, "for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise," so you're gonna understand some things that you wouldn't have understood without studying. And then comes the motto for the entire book, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." The fear of the Lord. What do you think of when you think of the fear of the Lord? What does that mean? The fear of the Lord. Respect, okay. A common word would be awe. People think of awe.

Is there any terror involved? Well, in one translation, 2 Corinthians 5, it says, "Since then we know the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." So there's some terror of the Lord. Every time you look in the Book of Judges or some of the other places where the Spirit of the Lord comes, or there's an appearance of the Lord, terror comes over those who come close to God. And yet there's an attraction, isn't there? There's a yearning to be in the presence of God, a sense of His presence and the awe and the power of God, and yet a sense of fear as well.

Now, Romans chapter 8 says that we're not made a slave again to fear. It's not a slaverish-type fear, it's just who he is and who we are. That's all. And so, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You wanna start on the journey, you start by fearing the Lord. And the contrast is just as clear, the fool despises the whole thing, they despise the journey, they're not going to listen, even if you tell them a thousand times, they're not going to listen, because they don't fear the Lord. So this book will profit you and benefit you as you fear the Lord, but if you don't fear the Lord, you're not even on the journey, not even walking along the way. So the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Come into this book, fearing the Lord, and he's got wisdom for you.

Now, what we're going to do in our study beginning next week, is we're gonna begin looking at some topics. We're gonna go through and find some things out, very practical things on what Proverbs has to say about daily life, talk about character traits. We're gonna talk about good business practices. Perhaps, we're gonna talk about eating and drinking habits. Book of Proverbs speaks to these things. Sexual purity, how to watch out for the adulterous or the sexual tempter that will come in your life. The Book of Proverbs has a great deal to say about this. Work ethic, being a disciplined, hard-working person. Speech patterns, what to say and what not to say, when to speak and when to be silent. Handling money and wealth, controlling your emotions, raising your children, avoiding trouble spots, common trouble spots in people's lives, secrets to a blessed marriage.

So all of that next week and then the following, we're gonna look at... No, no. We'll take one top. Alright, we're gonna zero in and we're gonna go through and find the Proverbs that speak to those. We're gonna try to plumb the depths of the wisdom of God so that we can acquire a disciplined and prudent life. So please come next week, come with an open heart, come with the fear of the Lord and let's be instructed by God. Let's close in prayer. Is there anything else, Bill? Alright. I'm gonna close in prayer. 

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the time we've had to look at your word tonight. Thank you for the Book of Proverbs and the things we're gonna learn. But Father, tonight, we just wanted to remind ourselves who wisdom is, not so much what wisdom is but who wisdom is, and the wisdom is Jesus Christ. And we thank you that by faith in Christ, we have received wisdom from God, our righteousness, Jesus. And we have been given the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of knowledge. Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters here and for myself, that we might hear what you have to say, not be like the fool that despises knowledge, but rather one who is teachable, one who can learn and grow in wisdom. Father, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Good night.

If you would and open to Daniel 7, which describes what we just sang about. The second coming of Jesus Christ is one of our great doctrines and as we look this morning at Daniel 7:9-14, we come to what I consider to be one of the peak, one of the pinnacle verses of the Old Testament. Scripture says that all stars shine but some shine more brightly than others. And as we come to Daniel 7, the Son of Man vision, we come to, along with Isaiah 53, the two greatest verses in the Old Testament or passages in the Old Testament that testify to the glory of Jesus Christ.

In 1987, I was on a mission trip with some friends from Gordon-Conwell seminary, we were ministering to Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and I had the opportunity to go into China and we traveled through the mountains, Karakoram mountains, and saw some of the most majestic scenes that I've ever seen in my life. The Karakoram mountains are the second highest mountains in the world, behind the Himalayas and well over 20,000 feet high, many of these peaks. And as we drove through and crested through the Karakoram mountains and came down, into the tundra, the far, far western part of China, very few people live out there, we came to a wide valley, it seemed to stretch out as far as I could see, it was the biggest valley I had ever seen in my life, and it took us six hours in a bus to drive across it. And as we made our way halfway across, we saw four men standing with shovels and they were digging a ditch along the road, and I just shook my head and I said, How long is it going to take them to finish that ditch with shovels? We had been driving for three hours on the road, we had another three hours to go. I thought they must have been perhaps criminals of some sort on a work detail.

Well, it just so happened, we had with us some tracts and some New Testaments in the local language, the Uyghur language, and we gave them out to them, they were overjoyed to receive them, they could understand them. We couldn't say a word to them, but we had the materials to give them. Well, as we crossed that valley, we got to the other side, we were detained at a way station, this is common procedure, and the government authorities just wanted to be sure that we weren't bringing anything into the country, that shouldn't be brought in. I don't know what that would be, a variety of things, I suppose, but they all had machine guns, AK-47s, and it was very unnerving to see them go through my bags, all of the things that I had, and they put them back together. They didn't touch our printed material. I was surprised at that. There's been numerous testimonies of people who have brought Bibles and other things into countries where they're not welcome and the guards inspecting just don't even see them, for some reason.

And we were able to distribute them in the city of Kashgar for a little while until one of our team members stood in front of some Muslim clerics, and just said the name Jesus until he got arrested. Now, you may say that's not the wisest thing to do, but that's exactly what happened. He spent the day in jail. And yet we were able to get the word out, we distributed all of those New Testaments, the tracts that we had, and then we went back into Pakistan.

Now for the last three weeks, we've been talking about the Voice of the Martyrs, we've been talking about persecution, we've been talking about governments that oppose the advance of Christianity, you heard earlier what's happening in Kazakhstan. Oh, by the way, I don't know if you noticed, their pastor is from South Korea, is that right? Isn't that beautiful? South Korean pastor, ministering in Kazakhstan, the name of Jesus Christ.

Do you realize that God has an eternal plan for Christ's international glory? And the very question that they asked, namely what about other religions? What about other truth systems? What can we say? We can say that we have at least two things to offer that no one else has. We have the Scripture and fulfilled prophecy, and we have the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, amen? Two things, the fulfilled prophecies of Jesus Christ, which I have been working through for the last nine months through Psalms, Isaiah and now here in the Book of Daniel that no one else has. And the empty tomb, which answers the question everyone around the world is asking, What about death? What happens at death? What about myself? What will happen to me when I die?

We have the fulfilled prophecies and we have the empty tomb of Jesus Christ and therefore we have the answers to give to the nations and the nations are hearing, aren't they? They're listening and they're coming to faith in Jesus Christ. God has an eternal plan for Christ's international glory and it's eternal because we read it in passages like the one we're looking at today. Daniel 7:9-14, read along with me as I read.

"As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took His seat, His clothing was as white as snow, the hair of His head was white like wool, and His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before Him, thousands upon thousands attended Him. Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated and the books were opened. Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking, I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire, the other beasts had been stripped of their authority but were allowed to live for a period of time. In my vision at night, I looked and there before me was One like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence, He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed."

And so you have heard one of the two great passages in the Old Testament that explain fully the first and the second coming of Jesus Christ, the other is Isaiah 53. For example, in verse 6, "All we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." The suffering servant of Isaiah 53, bearing sin, bearing iniquity on His body on the cross that we might have eternal life, and then in Daniel 7, the glorious coming Messiah, riding on the clouds of heaven, coming back to rescue His people from a persecuting power. The glory of the first coming in Isaiah 53, the glory of the second coming in Daniel chapter 7.

Now the context here in Daniel 7, we covered last week. We have the story of a nighttime vision. Daniel has a dream at night or a vision in the first year of Belshazzar, and he sees the ocean, and the ocean just represents humanity I believe, all the nations, and we see the four winds striving on the surface of the ocean, all the turbulence stirred up, and up out of all that churning turbulence come four beasts, each different from another, one after the other. The four beasts we saw were four world empires, human empires, the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. The fourth beast received special attention, the fourth beast had 10 horns and then one little horn that grew up and overthrew three of the horns and then took control and then grew to be awesome and powerful, to speak blasphemous words. And we saw that this is the antichrist. In the second half of the chapter, the fourth beast receives even greater detail and attention, for this beast is there at the second coming of Jesus Christ. And so therefore interpreters believe that there must be some kind of revival of the Roman Empire for the fourth Empire must be Rome.

The first coming of Jesus Christ happened during the Roman Empire. And so here we have this fourth beast, some kind of perhaps revival of this, and we see a time of great persecution unlike any that has ever been seen on the Earth. Not different in kind, because Christians are suffering all over the world even now, aren't they? Suffering persecution, being kicked out of their home cities, unable to worship in their buildings, incarcerated, even surrendering their lives, that's going on now, but apparently it's going to escalate greatly under the reign of this final human Emperor who we call the antichrist. And so we're left asking two questions which I referred to last time, Why does the Lord permit this to happen? And how long will it go on, will it go on forever? Will there be no end to the persecution and suffering? And we answered the first question last time.

2 Peter 3:15, "Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation." Aren't you glad He waited until you were born? Aren't you even gladder that He waited until you were born again through faith in Jesus Christ? And so, there are others that will be called and they will believe and they will come from every tribe and language and people and nation. The Lord's patience means salvation, but it's patience with a world that hates Him, and that hate His people, and so there's this attack on the people of God, and it's going on. Well, will it go on forever? No, it will not. And this vision that we have here is the answer, it's the end, when Jesus Christ comes in glory on the clouds and He interrupts that reign of antichrist and He overthrows him by the word of His power, simply by the breath of His mouth and establishes His kingdom forever and ever. And the time of suffering for His people ends. All of that is found in the vision that we have today.

Look at verse 9-10, we have the heavenly courts, and the Ancient of Days. Now, it's right in the middle of the words of blasphemy spoken by that little horn, the antichrist, right in the middle of the speaking of blasphemous words, the court is seated. Look what it says again, ""As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took His seat, His clothing was as white as snow, the hair of His head was white like wool, and His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before Him, thousands upon thousands attended Him. Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated and the books were opened."

Thrones Established

This is a heavenly court seated right in the middle of the reign of antichrist, and it says thrones are established. In the era of the Kings, they understood who the judge was, it was the king. The king was the judge, he was the lawgiver, he was the ruler. In the American system, we have a division of branches don't we? We have the legislative branch and the executive branch and the judicial branch. But in medieval Europe for example, they're all in one, the king, and so it is with God, He is the king, He is the lawgiver, He's the judge, and so His throne is seated, but He's not alone. There are other thrones around it. Look what it says, thrones, plural, are set in place. And so this is somewhat of a heavenly court. There are other rulers, perhaps archangels, perhaps even Christians, it says, "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?" So perhaps these are thrones of the elders, for example, in Revelation 4:4, The 24 elders on their thrones seated.

The "Ancient of Days" takes His seat

And so He takes His seat. And who is it that takes His seat? It's the Ancient of Days. "As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat." Now this name describes God's eternal nature, His unchanging nature, the Ancient of Days. Moses wrote a Psalm, Psalm 90, and it says, "Before the mountains were born, or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." He is the Ancient of Days and we in our human arrogance and our pride in all of our empire building, we forget that there was a time when there was only God and God alone, there was a time when Father, Son and Spirit were in perfect happy fellowship with one another and not one thing had yet been created. There was a time when there was no light for He had not yet said Let there be light, when there was no Earth, there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no seas, no beasts and no man, when God alone existed. And you know, He hasn't changed at all from that time, He's the same, He's always the same, the Ancient of Days eternal. And we see the attributes of God, we see His holiness in His white clothing, and the fire that surrounds His throne, we see His eternity, as we mentioned in His white hair, and the title Ancient of Days, and we see His mobility. His throne has wheels. What are these wheels?

Well, in Ezekiel, the vision of God, the expanse moves and it's got these wheels and they're turning but not turning and they're always moving. You get the image of a throne just set and that's where it is, and maybe you'd get the mistaken idea that His authority is just kind of out from that throne and it gets weaker as it gets further from the throne, but God's throne can move. He's everywhere, He's omnipresent, there's no place that He doesn't exist, He brings His power right where you are. He moves and we see His judgment, fire, fire, fire. It's a throne of fire and a river of fire flows from the throne. The fire does represent God's absolute holiness, but it's an active holiness. It moves out in judgment against evil, it's not going to tolerate this blasphemy, this human empire that's blaspheming and attacking His people. There's going to be a river of fire flowing out.

It says in Hebrews 12:29, "Our God is a consuming fire." And in Isaiah 30:27-28, it says, "See the name of the Lord comes from afar with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke, His lips are full of wrath and His tongue is a consuming fire, His breath is like a rushing torrent rising up to the neck, He shakes the nations in a sieve of destruction." This is our God. And a river of fire flows from His throne to judge the nations. And He's not alone, is He? He's got an angelic host, a big army, so big that no one can count them. Thousands upon thousands attended Him. 10,000 times 10,000 stood before Him. Don't bother multiplying it out. The answer is 100 million. But that doesn't really matter, the point is that there's countless angels ready to do His bidding. Anything He asks, they will do.

They stood before Him ready to serve. They stand before to serve, they stand before to worship. And they will stand before Him as warriors, won't they? They're ready to go at a moment's notice. Somewhat like all those men and machines coiled up like a spring on January 5th, 1944, right before D-day, ready to go. Just give the word and we'll go. And so the angels are, they're ready any time, send the word and we will go. Jude 14-15 spoke of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, that's a long time ago, isn't it? Seventh from Adam. Adam's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson. That was a long, long time ago. What was he looking ahead to? Second coming of Jesus Christ. "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of His holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way. And of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him." Enoch saw it, that the Lord is going to come with His angels and He's going to judge sinners. And Jesus Himself said in Matthew 16:27, "The Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and He will reward to each person according to what he has done." Second coming of Jesus Christ.

Judgment Day: Court is Seated, Books Are Opened

And then there's this little phrase that has been burning in my mind. "The court was seated and the books were opened." Write that on a card and put it on a mirror somewhere, put it in your car, put it where you work next to your computer. "The court was seated and the books were opened." Do you realize that every single solitary human being is going to face God on His throne, on Judgment Day? The court was seated and the books were opened. What are in these books? Well, everything we've ever said and done, everything we didn't say and didn't do, everything we thought, every careless word, Jesus said, Matthew 12:36, every careless word we have spoken, written in the Book.

Revelation 20 speaks about this. "I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from His presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened." It's the same teaching. Books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. Oh, may your names be written in the Book of Life, because if your name is not written in the Book of Life, God the Judge will look at what's written in the other book, everything you've ever said and done, every sin. Well, I can't remember everything I've said and done. That's alright, you don't need to, the Judge does, and He won't forget anything. He's a meticulous God, He's very careful, He notes everything.

With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, that's a real slow day. Have you ever had a day like that? Every day is like that to God. One day is like a thousand years. He studies everything minutely, and it all goes in the book. Oh, that you may not be under that book, but free through the blood of Jesus Christ, your name written in the Book of Life. Well, who else is judged? The antichrist. That's the context here. Let's not forget, He's coming because of the Antichrist's blasphemy and his attack on the people of God. That's why the Second Coming occurs, the time is full, the time has come and Jesus returns, so the court is seated, it's intervening judgment.

Verse 11 and 12, "Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking, I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time." Do you realize that God actively rules now on earth? Look at Verse 12 again, "The other beasts had been stripped of their authority but were permitted to live…" for a little while. Well, what were the other beasts? Well, Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece, they are able to continue living, but without their authority and power, isn't that what happened? It's exactly what happened. Babylonians continued to be Babylonians and Medes continued to be Medes. Persians continued to be Persians and Greeks to be Greeks. But they no longer had authority and power, they lived. They were permitted to live for a period of time.

But that final beast, the final form of human government, in opposition to Jesus Christ is the focal point of the second coming and of the wrath of God and the judgment. So God actively rules now but He's going to actively rule then. In Verse 11, "I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking, I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire." The boastful words come to an end and Jesus Christ comes back and the court's decision is enacted. Look at verse 26. I know it's not in our text this morning, but it's there. Verse 26 it says, "But the court will sit and his [that is the Antichrist's] power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever." That's the verdict, it's the judgment. And what judgment is given? The blazing fire.

Do you remember Nebuchadnezzar's boast to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? "But if you do not worship it [the statue], you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" Do you remember that? Did God give him an answer? Oh yes, I can do it, God said, This is the God who can deliver from your hand, Nebuchadnezzar. I want to ask you a question, what God can deliver from God's hand when He throws this beast into the blazing fire? Is there any? There is none. Is there a higher court of appeals? There is none. Is there an appeal process? There is none. Deuteronomy 32:39, "See now that I myself am He, there is no God besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand." Do you understand? Isaiah 43:12-13, "'You are my witnesses,' declares the Lord, 'that I am God, yes, and from ancient days, I am He, no one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?'"

And in Daniel, the book we've been studying, verse 35-36, Nebuchadnezzar himself testified in this way, "His dominion is an eternal dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation, all the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back His hand or say to Him, 'What have you done?'" Judgment Day is final. And when God makes His decision, it's final. Our God is a gentle, compassionate merciful God to all who humble themselves and ask for mercy but He's a terrifying enemy to the unrepentant rebel. Oh, may God be your Savior and not your Judge. May God be your Savior through Jesus Christ and not your Judge.

The Beast is slain. Its body thrown into the fire, eternal fire. This is a consistent testimony of the Scripture. And some have said, "Well the fire is just a metaphor." What is a metaphor? It's comparing something to something else, because we don't have words for it. Is the reality less than the words or the metaphor? No, it's greater, we just can't get the words. It's just like a lake of burning sulfur, that's all... That's all it's like, it's just a metaphor. No, the reality is worse than the metaphor. It's just that we don't have any other way to experience it, to get hold of it. Alright, the beast is destroyed, the antichrist is destroyed, the lake of fire is their destiny.

But how does it happen? It happens with the coming of the Son of Man and in verses 13-14, we have the Son of Man, the incarnate King for an eternal kingdom. "In my vision at night, I looked and there before me was One like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence, He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed." The antichrist is destroyed by the Son of Man. The antichrist wars against the saints, he assembles his forces possibly to destroy them forever, so he believes. Jesus Christ returns, the Son of Man returns, from heaven on a white horse with the armies of heaven. Final battle is Armageddon, read about it in Revelation 19. I'm not preaching on Revelation 19 this morning, so I'm not going to read it to you, but read it. It's all written there. Jesus Christ returns, and He defeats him simply by the breath of His mouth.

2 Thessalonians 2:8 says "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming." That's all it takes. That's why in Revelation, it shows Him with a sword coming out of His mouth. He doesn't literally have a sword, it's just that's His weapon. He speaks and it's done. That shouldn't surprise us, that's how He created the universe. He spoke and it was done. That's all. This is the full story, but let's not miss the significance of this text, verses 13-14, the Son of Man text, because this is the greatest text in the Old Testament for the deity of the Messiah, this is the greatest text in the Old Testament for the deity of the Messiah.

Now think about this, the Jews were expecting a Messiah, weren't they? They were expecting one who would come, they called him the Son of David, they thought he would be another physical king like David was. Maybe greater, maybe not, but just another time like we had with David. Well, they didn't read Daniel, they didn't understand the Son of Man vision. Look at the Son of Man. First of all, His humanity is clearly established by the term Son of Man. He's a human being, right? Or else He wouldn't take the title Son of Man. He's a human being. But look at it, He rides on the clouds like Jehovah God. He approaches the Ancient of Days, He comes right into His immediate presence, and yet He is not the Ancient of Days. Do you see that? The Ancient of Days is there on the throne, and here comes the Son of Man into His presence, so He's not the Ancient of Days in the Daniel 7 vision. And He's given sovereign authority over all nations and He's given glory and He's worshipped by all nations and languages and peoples, they all worship Him. And He's given an eternal kingdom over which He rules forever and ever.

Who is the Son of Man? Who is He? This is a deep problem for modern Judaism, isn't it? It's a big problem, the Old Testament testifies that there is one and only one God, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And there is no one like God, Isaiah 46:9. "Remember the former things, those of long ago. I am God and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me." And God gives His glory to no one else, Isaiah 42:8, "I am the Lord, that is My name. I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols. My glory is My own and I will give it to no one else." And no other gods can be worshipped, for that would be idolatry.

In Jesus' temptation the devil took Him to a very high mountain, showed Him all the kings of the world in their splendor. "All this I will give you if you will simply bow down and worship me," and Jesus said, "Away from me, Satan, for it is written 'Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." And yet here is the Son of Man riding on the clouds of heaven, coming into the presence of the Ancient of Days, receiving glory, sovereign power and dominion, and guess what else He receives? Worship. He receives worship, the very thing that no one else can receive but God.

Who is the Son of Man? Well, Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of Man, He used the title for Himself over and over. We looked at that this morning, you remember? In Mark 2, in your Sunday school classes, the Son of Man? Jesus called Himself Son of Man 30 times in Matthew's Gospel alone, 80 times all together. Matthew 8, "Then a teacher of the law came to Him and said, 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.' Jesus said, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'" Who's He talking about? Himself. Matthew 9:6, He says, "The Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins." Matthew 12:8, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." In Matthew 17:22-23, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men, they will kill Him and on the third day, He will be raised to life." It was His favorite title for Himself. The Son of Man.

Only once in my research did I find that this title was used by anyone but Jesus. None of the disciples used it, Paul doesn't use it when he writes about Him. Calls Him the Christ or other things. Jesus used it about Himself and He's about the only one that did. But, once, John 12:34, "The crowd spoke up, we have heard from the law that the Christ will remain forever that he's not going to die. So who is the Son of Man?" The Jews asked him that. Well, that's the burning question, isn't it? Who is this Son of Man? Jesus was standing right in front of them. He is the Son of Man. The Jews couldn't deal with it, couldn't accept a suffering Messiah, couldn't accept certainly not a crucified Messiah. Their big problem with Jesus was that He claimed to be God in the flesh, He claimed to be God in the flesh. And so they arrested Him and they brought Him before the tribunal, before the high priest, and the high priest was listening to false testimonies from false witnesses. None of it was making sense. Finally said, Let's cut to the heart of the matter. "I charge you under oath, [he said to Jesus] by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God."

It's a key moment, isn't it? A key moment. And what did Jesus do at every key moment? He quoted Scripture. He does it over and over and over again. Do any of you have too high a view of Scripture? Every time Jesus needed it, He quoted Scripture. Tell us if you are the Christ the Son of God. "Yes, it is as you say… but I say to all of you, in the future, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." What Scripture did He quote? This one. This is the peak, this is the pinnacle, this is the one Jesus reached for when He is about to be rejected by the Jews, to prove His deity. In effect, He said, Who do you think, Mr. High priest, that the Son of Man of Daniel 7 is? Who is He, if not Me? Well, they killed Him, because the time of Daniel 7 hadn't come yet, it was time for Isaiah 53, wasn't it? "All we like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." And so Jesus died. He suffered and died.

And the whole problem with Judaism back then and now is that they didn't understand the glory of the first coming, neither do they understand the glory of the second coming. What is the glory of the first coming? To die on a cross and then to rise again on the third day. So that sinners like you and me can survive Judgment Day.

And what is the glory of the second coming? It's power, far greater power than they ever expected, the power of Heaven unleashed in wrath on the earth for all those that reject, for all the rebels, and to rescue His people, and to give them an eternal kingdom that will never end.

Verse 21-22, "As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints and defeating them until the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the saints and the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom." And then in verse 27, "Then the sovereignty and power and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints." That's you and me, brothers and sisters, we get the Kingdom. And it's an Earthly kingdom 'cause it's under heaven. And we are under Him because it's His kingdom, and we will reign on earth.

It says in Matthew 5:5, "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." We get the Kingdom, but no more rebels, no more beasts up out of the sea, just a kingdom forever and ever, and the saints will submit to Christ and it will never end. Well, what application do we take out of this? Well, first, if anyone says to you, How do you know that you have the right truth system and that all the other religions are wrong, we have fulfilled prophecy, do they? We have an empty tomb. Do they? We have the truth, brothers and sisters, and people from every tribe and language and people and nation are seeing it, aren't they? And they're coming to faith in Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of this prophecy. But please, don't miss the description of God here. The throne of fire and a river of fire flowing from the throne. I've come to the conclusion that all of us has to stand under the fire. All of us do. And the fire will either burn our soul eternally, or it will burn up all of our works done in the flesh, done not by faith. That's what's going to happen, it's going to burn something, that's just the purity of God. He can allow nothing into His presence that doesn't glorify Him.

Now, how do you escape the fire burning your soul? Through simple faith in Christ. That was the purpose of the first coming, through trusting in Christ. You will have what we've called the asbestos robe of Christ's righteousness, protecting you from the fire that will come. But what of the second? Can I urge you to live your life, live your lives in the light of that fire, that nothing you do be consumed on that day, that everything you do be for the building and the glory of this kingdom that we have described today. Everything, no wasted time, no wasted words, no wasted money, no wasted gifts, no wasted moment, everything for the glory of Jesus Christ. Won't you close with me in prayer.

Please take your Bibles and open to Daniel chapter 7. We come to one of the truly incredible chapters in the Bible, a chapter which has a clear view of all of human history, and also a clear view of the deity of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. But there's also a jarring picture as well, in Daniel 7, of the persecution of the saints at the hands of human governments, the suffering children of God.

Recently, I've been learning more about that from the Voice of the Martyrs. There's information in your bulletin, if you want to find out more about them. They need our prayers. And I want to tell you a story about one who lives in Indonesia. Her name is Rika, she's a teenage Christian girl, she lives in Indonesia. She has a beautiful faith in Jesus Christ, but recently, that faith underwent the most severe testing imaginable, leaving her with some terrifying memories and with a greater trust in Jesus her savior. Rika's homeland, Indonesia, you may not know, is the largest or the most populous Muslim land in the world. 13,000 islands, huge number of Muslim people. The Indonesian government requires everyone, all their citizens, to carry ID cards, which indicates, among other things, their religious preference.

Approximately 10% of the country claim to be Christians, identify themselves as Christians. Recently, however, the accounts of persecution at the hands of some Islamic fundamentalist groups reads like a horror story that seems to have no end, including rape and torture, burnings of buildings and of people, even beheadings. This program of religious cleansing by Muslim extremists is well-organized. It's an attack on church buildings and a desire to purify their country, as they believe, from Christianity. Recently, Rika's high school, Christian high school, had a Bible camp, and they had... It was the first one they'd ever tried, and it was going very well. They had an evening worship service, and they were assembled to worship, they were singing praise songs and giving glory to God, and the local government official came and said that they were singing too loudly, and if they didn't sing more quietly, it was possible that they might be attacked. Well, they sang a little more quietly, they weren't trying to offend their neighbors, so they did quiet down a bit, but within an hour, a stone crashed through the window, beginning a night of attack by these Muslim extremists. One of the large rocks hit Rika in the head and knocked her to the ground.

It wasn't long before the Muslims were in the church building itself. The leader begged the Christians, don't panic, just pray, and so the Christians got down on their knees, and they're praying. But the Muslims had come in at this point, and one of them grabbed her by the arms and lifted her to her feet, and was shaking her, and said, "Are you a Christian?" And she said, "All of us are Christians." The man, she said, was tall, with long hair. She was crying as she told this story. I saw this on video tape and the beautiful face and just tears pouring down her face as she told the story. The man picked up a large shard of broken glass off the ground and pressed it to her stomach, and he said, "Repeat after me." And then tried to force her to deny her faith in Christ. She cried out in her heart, in prayer to God, that she would not deny her faith, but rather that she would remain strong. And when Rika did not answer this man, he became enraged, even more angry, like Nebuchadnezzar when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego wouldn't turn their back on their faith. And so he pressed even harder with this shard, starting to puncture the skin and said, "Do you believe your God can help you now?" Can you imagine that moment? "Do you believe your God can help you now?"

"Yes," Rika answered. "I belong to God and I believe he will save me." Then he grabbed a stick and began to beat her across her shoulders. "You think I am not strong?" he said, "You think I am not stronger than you?" he shouted. She just kept praying to God for strength. Finally, when the man realized he was not going to get her to deny her faith, he stopped and he said, "You are stronger than I am." And he left the building.

Rika, as I said, was crying as she recounted the tale. With tears coming down her face, she said this, "Jesus was willing to die for me, and shed his blood on the cross. He did this for all of us, so it doesn't matter what happens to me, I am willing to suffer for him."

Now, that's a tremendous story, isn't it? And it's a story of deliverance, not unlike what we just read about last week in Daniel chapter 6. We like stories of deliverance, don't we? Daniel 6 is a very popular story. Daniel 7, not so popular. Because in Daniel 6, Daniel escapes the lion's den, doesn't he? He makes it out. God delivers him miraculously. But in Daniel 7, it seems that the saints are given over into the hands of a world ruler, who's going to make war on them and be successful for a period of time. What do you think that means? Well, it means the death of many saints. And how do we understand that? How do we put that together with the vision that we're seeing of God, that we have seen so far in Daniel, of a sovereign and a powerful king, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one who just speaks a word and empires rise, and then he speaks and they sink back down into the dust from which they came. How do we orchestrate, how do we organize that thought, of a God who rules so powerfully, and yet his saints are left to suffer at the hands of these governments?

Now, that is what is being addressed in Daniel chapter 7. In order to understand the context, look at verse 1, it said, "In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying on his bed, he wrote down the substance of his dream." Now, this sets the historical context. We're in the first year of Belshazzar. You remember Belshazzar, of course, he was the one that threw that banquet, that feast that was interrupted by some writing on the wall, you remember? And that was the night that the Medo-Persian empire conquered Babylon and put an end to the Babylonian empire. Well, this is approximately 14 years earlier than that, about 14 years from the fall of Babylon. Political circumstances are of upheaval. Nebuchadnezzar has died. He had died nine years before that. There had been a series of rulers, but none of them could hold the power of the Babylonian empire. None of them had his influence, his authority, and so there were assassinations and they were coups and it was just one leader after another, a time of instability, a time of political upheaval.

And so, Daniel, at that point, one night, went up and lay down on his bed, and whether he was awake or asleep, we don't know, but he had some dreams, and the visions passed through his mind and he wrote them down. Now, this is a fascinating thing. God, just like the writing on the wall, is in the business of writing things down ahead of time and then seeing them come to pass. This is the idea of predictive prophecy. It can't be explained by human explanation. There's no way to understand it, how God can know, so specifically, the future. It is the glory of God to know the end of the matter before it happens, and it is the glory and the encouragement of God's people to read about it in the Bible and to see God's sovereign control and his knowledge of all history. And so he gives Daniel a vision and Daniel writes it down. Reminds me of what Jesus said in John 13:19, similar time, in a way, he was predicting to his disciples persecution and difficulty. And he said this, "I am telling you this now before it happens so that when it does happen, you will believe that I am." That I am what? "Well, that I am God, that I know the end from the beginning. I'm telling you about persecution ahead of time before it happens, so that when it happens, you will know that I am." That's what Jesus said.

And it says in verse 1 that Daniel wrote down, in effect, the sum of the matter. He couldn't get it all down. How do you put a vision on paper? There's nothing wrong with scripture, there's no errors in here, that's not the issue. The issue is, you just can't put a vision perfectly down in writing, but we have enough, we have enough to generate faith. We have enough to see the sovereignty of God, we have enough to believe, but he puts down, it says, in effect, the sum of the matter, and we have these visions.

Now, we're at a key juncture in the Book of Daniel, aren't we? The book really just divides in half. Chapters 1-6 and chapters 7-12. 1-6 are the historical accounts of Daniel in the courts of the Gentiles, he's an important administrator in one Gentile leader after another's court. And so these are court tales, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, just stories of things that happened as he interacted with important Gentile leaders, emperors and kings. In chapters 7-12, we have what's known as the apocalyptic section of Daniel's book. Apocalyptic means the unveiling, the revealing, the pulling away of the future. Now, we've already had some of that, haven't we, in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, in chapter 2, it was a dream of a great statue in which all of human history was just unfolded. And if you want to do some careful study, just compare Daniel 2 and Daniel 7. There's a great deal of comparison between the two. But this is the apocalyptic section of Daniel.

And there's a book, of course, in the New Testament very much like it, and that's the book of Revelation. And the two are closely related. So we're going to see some visions, visions of the end. Now, what is happening in Daniel chapter 7? If you want a summary of the entire chapter, look down at verses 17-18, and that gives, I think, a perfect summary of what this book or what this particular chapter is about. The four great beasts, which we'll meet in a moment... The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will arise from the Earth, but the saints of the most high will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever, yes, forever and ever. That's a great summary of what's going to go on in Daniel 7.

Chapter Overview

There are four beasts. They rise up out of the sea, they really come up out of the earth, they are human kingdoms. One follows another. The final form of that is given great power to make war on the saints and persecute them, but in the middle of the chapter's is a vision, which Bill read so beautifully for us, of a heavenly court, not an earthly court, but a heavenly court. And the Ancient of Days seated on his throne. The throne is a fire, and there's a river of fire flowing from that throne. And then there's one who's not the Ancient of Days in that vision, but one like a Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven. He comes into the very presence of the Ancient of Days. Who is the Son of Man? We'll talk about that next week. You can't do it in one week.

But the Son of Man comes, and we know who it is, it's Jesus Christ, the second person of the trinity. And he's given great authority and power, and people from every tribe and language and people and nation will bow down and worship that one on the clouds. And he brings in a kingdom at a key moment in history. When the persecution's at its worst, he comes in and he establishes a kingdom, and he gives it to the saints, and they rule over it, forever and ever, under the authority of the most high God. That's a summary of Daniel 7.

Now let's look at the details, 'cause the details are glorious. In verses 2-8, we meet the beasts, four beasts, from the sea. Daniel said, "In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven, churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea. The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off, and it was lifted from the ground, so that it stood on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it. And there before me was a second beast which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides and it had three ribs in its mouth, between its teeth. It was told, 'Get up and eat your fill of flesh.' After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard, and on its back, it had four wings, like those of a bird. This beast had four heads and it was given authority to rule. After that, in my vision at night, I looked and there before me was a fourth beast, terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth, it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts and it had 10 horns. While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully."

The Sea: Symbolic for Turbulent Nations

So the setting is a sea. Daniel sees a vision of the sea, and he sees the winds playing on the surface of the sea, moving the surface of the ocean or the sea back and forth, and suddenly, up out of the sea, come these four beasts in succession. Now, what is the sea? The sea is symbolic for the turbulent nations of the world, symbolic for the nations of the world. Isaiah said it very plainly in Isaiah 17:12-13. Listen to these verses. "Oh, the raging of many nations, they rage like the raging sea. Oh, the uproar of the peoples, they roar like the roaring of great waters. Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters, when he rebukes them, they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills." Isaiah 17:12-13.

So the ocean is just all the peoples and nations and languages, swirling around with all of their conflicts and all of their difficulties, and up out of that turbulence come these four beasts. The four winds are symbolic, perhaps, of God's sovereign judgement and his initiatives, and all storms and turbulences on the sea are caused by the winds from the four directions. And I love what it says in Revelation 21:1. It says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new Earth, for the first heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea." The sea is gone. The turbulent nations are stilled. There's nothing but the people of God. There's nothing but the kingdom of heaven at the end. Oh, how we long for that day. But now all you need to do is just get a newspaper or watch CNN, you can see the raging of many nations, the turbulence.

What Are the "Beasts"?

And up out of them come these beasts. Now, what are these beasts? Well, in verse 15 and 16, Daniel is confused, he's troubled in spirit, and so he asks for information. We've already read, in verse 17, the four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise up out of the earth. Well, why are the kingdoms called beasts? Why the vision of beasts for human kingdoms? Well, I think it's that human empires of this sort, these kind of huge empires that conquer, usually represent humanity at its worst, humanity at its worst, most bestial, and dominant, raw power, savage fury, total dominance over lesser adversaries, most unlike God, in whose image we were created.

And also, I think we have a contrast between the kingdom of Christ and human kingdoms. Human kingdoms advance by conquest, like a beast, they consume. Christ kingdom advance by self-sacrifice, like a lamb, he is slaughtered. And so it is also for us, and I think it explains also the persecution that Rika and others experience in this world. The kingdom of God is different than the kingdoms of humanity. They advance by ripping and tearing flesh, but our kingdom advances by self-sacrifice. We take up our cross, we follow Jesus, we lay down our lives, we're willing to witness for him.

The First Beast: Babylon (vs. 4)

Now, the first beast, verse 4, can be none other than Babylon. The description is of a lion with eagle's wings, a lion as majestic and regal, the king of the beasts. Nebuchadnezzar had a preoccupation with lions. Excavation of Babylon has shown that there were lions decorating all the walls, everywhere they look, there were lions. The Ishtar Gate, for example, had blue ceramic tile with golden lions, and interestingly, the lions had wings, they found a lion with wings, and it was the main entrance to the city, to the royal area of the city. So Daniel must have walked by it all the time. Daniel must have known right away what that lion with the wing was, it was Babylon.

The wings represent mobility, sovereign power. Just as a lion is the king of the beasts, so eagles are kings of the birds. And so there's a sense of regality here, being a king. But then judgment from God comes on this beast, the wings are torn off, the beast is lifted up from the Earth, interesting. And there's a human stance given to the beast and a human heart. I really think this refers to what happened to Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 4. You remember what happened? His mind was turned into that of a beast, until he repented and acknowledged that the most high is sovereign over the kingdoms of men.

Do you remember what Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar before that happened? He said, "King, be pleased to accept my advice. Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed…." Stop oppressing people. Stop ripping them to shreds. Show justice for the oppressed, and mercy. Could it be... We don't have a record of it, but could it be, after his repentance, that he was a different man? Could it be he had the heart of a man, and some compassion? There's no record in archaeology, one way or the other, but I'm just trying to understand what happened to this beast, the heart of a man was given to it. Could it be that we'll find Nebuchadnezzar in heaven, and we can ask him about it? I hope so.

The Second Beast: Medo-Persia (vs. 5)

The second beast, verse 5, is Medo-Persia. The description is of a bear eating ribs. A bear is not so regal or elegant, perhaps, as a lion with eagle's wings, ponderous and slow, powerful and strong. Nothing can stop it, but there's no sense of lightning quick movements. It's up on one side, there's a split kingdom here, perhaps, you've got the Medes and the Persians, and, at one point, the Persians gained dominance over the Medes. And so, most of the great leaders of the Medo-Persian empire were Persian, like Cyrus the Great.

Now, this beast is eating three ribs, the commentators are divided, it could refer to three tracks of land that were conquered by the Medo-Persian empire, Lydia, Babylon and Egypt. But the empire's self-serving brutality is evident here, and so also a command given, "Get up and eat your fill of flesh." This is what I'm talking about, human kingdoms ripping and tearing, gluttonous, never satisfied.

The Third Beast: Greece (vs. 6)

Now, the third beast, Greece, verse 6, a description is of a leopard with four wings. The leopard is sleek and agile, deadly, a sense of lightning quick movements, even more than happened with Babylon. And not one set of wings but four wings altogether. A sense of lightning quick conquest. We're gonna talk more about that in Daniel 8, when we meet Alexander the Great, perhaps the greatest military conqueror of all time, who conquered the entire region in four years. Lightning quick conquest. Speed was of the essence, because Alexander did not have long to live. So Greece. The fourth, and also with four heads, could it be it's referring to the fact that his kingdom would be broken into four sections, as we'll learn in Daniel chapter 8.

The Fourth Beast: Rome (vs. 7-8)

And then, finally, the fourth beast, it's not described. There's no title, it's not called a gorilla or some other kind of animal. As a matter of fact, it's so terrifying that there's no animal on Earth that could be used to describe it. That's why Daniel said that he wrote down the substance of the matter. He said, "I couldn't get it down on paper. It was a terrifying beast." Two words are used to underscore just how terrifying it was, and how much fear Daniel felt. It had iron teeth. This harkens back to the vision in chapter 2 of the fourth kingdom, which is Rome, that iron kingdom which crushed everything under its feet. Strong and powerful, it was. Unable to be bent, unyielding and dominant. Iron teeth, it had.

Able to destroy. And there are these 10 horns. Now, I'll tell you something, we're getting into the heart of eschatology, end time teaching. And it's really hard to understand all the symbolism, isn't it? Do you know anyone that's got the end times all figured out? I don't. And people say, "Pastor, I can't wait till you preach through Revelation, so that we can know what it means, and I'll say, "I don't know what it means either." We just preach through and we try to understand it. End time visions are very difficult. But what are these 10 horns? Some commentators believe it was just 10 emperors in the Roman Empire, one after the other.

The problem is that, in the final form of the vision, one of the horns, the little horn, uproots three of the 10 horns, so they kind of are living all at the same time. And that's the image, also, in Revelation 17, of the antichrist, which overthrows three rulers, and the other rulers give their power to him, so that he can rule over the whole world. So, this is a complex vision, and some commentators have tried to put it together, because we have a vision of the second coming of Jesus Christ in this chapter, don't we? And Jesus returns to set up his kingdom, and he returns during the time of the fourth beast. The fourth beast has to be Rome, and so, some commentators put the two together and say there's going to be a revived form of the Roman Empire, in some sense. Don't fully understand that, but there's a continuity, and also a discontinuity.

Now, in the middle, verses 9-14, we have the verses that were already read for you by Bill, but they're so good, and I'm going to read them again. Verse 9:

"As I look, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow. The hair on his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and his wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him, ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened. Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time. In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me was one like a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days, and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed."

Oh, there's so much in here. The vision of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, one like a Son of Man riding on the clouds of heaven. But what is the purpose of this little section in the middle of the chapter? The point is that we've got this little horn speaking blasphemy, making war against the saints, and a heavenly court is seated. It is God's court, it is the Ancient of Days, and he will not tolerate this forever. He will not allow the war on the saints to go on forever.

But he's going to intervene, he's an interfering God, or else his sovereignty would mean nothing. And he does interfere with the events on Earth. We've seen that already, with King Nebuchadnezzar, he gets involved. And so he renders a decision. And so the final form of the empire is destroyed, Jesus Christ returns, and his kingdom is set up. We'll talk about that more next week.

Now, in verses 15-28, we have a zeroing in, a focus on this fourth beast and the little horn. Daniel has an anguish request. He doesn't get it, he doesn't understand. In verse 15 and 16, he says, "I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. I approached one of those standing there and asked him the true meaning of all this. So he told me, and gave me the interpretation of these things. The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the Earth, but the saints of the most high will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever, yes, forever and ever."

23:28 S1: So Daniel doesn't understand, he doesn't get it. And he does the right thing, he asks for wisdom. James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." And Jesus said, "I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, because everything I've heard from the Father, I've made known to you." Isn’t that beautiful? Jesus isn't holding back any secrets. Anything you need to know, he will tell you, so you come and you ask. If you lack wisdom in your life, come and ask. If you want to understand the Bible, better, come and ask. If you want to be fruitful, come and ask, and he will give wisdom.

Our God is a giving God, and he says, in Amos 3:7, "Surely the sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing it to his servants, the prophets." Isn’t that beautiful? Amos 3:7. And so, he gives information. We have the terror of the fourth beast, verse 19, Rome caused terror all over the world. And he said, in verse 19, "I wanted to know the true meaning of the fourth beast, which was different from all the others, and most terrifying. With its iron teeth and bronze claws…the beast that crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. I also wanted to know about the 10 horns on its head, and about the other horn that came up, before which three of them fell, the horn that looked more imposing than the others, that had eyes, and a mouth that spoke boastfully. As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints and defeating them, until the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment in favor of the saints of the most high. And the time came when they possessed the kingdom.

Verse 23, "He gave me this explanation. The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on Earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms, and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it. The 10 horns are 10 kings who will come from this kingdom. After them, another king will arise, different from the earlier ones. He will subdue three kings. He will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints, and try to change the set times and the laws. The saints will be handed over to him for a time, times, and half a time. But the court will sit, and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, the power, the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints, the people of the most high. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him. This is the end of the matter. I, Daniel, was deeply troubled and my face turned pale, but I kept the matter to myself."

He wanted to know more about this fourth beast, which we know to be Rome. Verse 19. Not merely content to conquer, Rome had to crush its adversaries underfoot. In the Second Punic War, when they defeated Carthage, they weren't satisfied with just destroying the city, but instead, they went systematically through all the fields around the city, and sowed them with salt, so that nothing would ever grow there again, and nothing has.

This is Rome. It crushes under feet, and it devours its victims, and it tramples what was left underfoot. And then we have these 10 horns. The horn is a symbol of strength and power, usually represents a king, the 10 horns or 10 kings from the fourth beast, the angel actually gives us very little information of them. If you want to know more, you have to read in Revelation 17. I believe that these are four leaders or 10 leaders that exist in the fourth beast, the final form of what we could call the Roman Empire, right before the time of Christ, right before the days of the antichrist, the final antichrist. Others disagree, but I think this is the best interpretation, because they fight against the antichrist all at once, and three of them are conquered, so they must be existing all at the same time.

The Rise of the Little Horn (vs. 20-21, 24-25)

Now, in verses 20 and 21, and also 24 and 25, we have the rise of the little horn. The horns' descriptions are that it is little, but then, later, it says it's imposing, more imposing than all the others. How could it be little and then imposing? Well, I think it speaks of a kind of a growth. It grows up. It starts little and then gets greater, more powerful, more imposing. It has the eyes of a man. There's a knowledge to it, a sense of wisdom, a kind of an earthly wisdom, and it speaks boastfully. This is a big theme with the antichrist, speaks boastfully against God, especially against God, "He will speak against the Most High." And what does the horn do? Well, it rises up out of nowhere, and it uproots and subdues the three kings, but, most specifically, it wages war on the saints. Look at verse 21 and verse 25, "As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints, and defeating them." Verse 25, "The saints will be handed over to him for a time, times, and half a time." This is not the triumph of the lions' den. This is the suffering of the saints. And the scripture is clear, in terms of the church of Jesus Christ, first the suffering, and then the glory.

First the suffering, and then the glory. First, we have persecution, and even martyrdom, and then we have the glory of a worldwide kingdom. Now, this antichrist is permitted by God, for a short time, to persecute the saints. It says, for a time, times, and half a time. As we look across the scripture, we find numerous times referred to a three and a half year period, 1330 days, 42 months, a time, times, and half a time. For three and a half years, this has been called the Great Tribulation, and the saints are crushed and destroyed during this period of time. And it says he changes the set times and the seasons. There's a rejection of that cycle that was set up by God, six days of creation, and on the seventh, a Sabbath rest. And you are here now, the Sabbath moved over to the first day, because we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the new creation. But there's a seven-day cycle, isn't there? He overturns that, set times overturned, because he has power.

Now, we have, therefore, described the issue of the antichrist. Now, where does this term antichrist come?  I believe the scripture teaches that there is a present antichrist or antichrists, and there will be yet a future antichrist. There are antichrists alive today. Some will say to me, "Do you believe the antichrist is alive today?" And I'll say, "Who knows? Maybe you're the antichrist?" Oh, I hope not. Is the antichrist alive today? I really have no way of knowing. But is the final antichrist alive? That we don't know, but we know there are antichrist today, now. How do we know that? Because we're in the final hour. 1 John 2:18, it says, "Dear children, this is the last hour. And as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, that's the future antichrist, even now many antichrists have come."

Now, what is an antichrist? Well, he gives us a definition, 1 John 2:22. "Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ, such a man is the antichrist, he denies the Father and the Son." So John gives us, really, an effective theological definition of antichrist. 2 John 7, it says, "Many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ is coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist." So the antichrist is anyone who denies, in a powerful way, perhaps, as a teacher, as a leader, that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. They deny the incarnation. They deny the deity of Christ. This is the spirit of antichrist.

As I've said before, Satan has three great attacks on the church, you should know by now what they are, persecution, worldliness, and false doctrine. Those are the three, persecution, worldliness, or corruption by the world, and false teaching. This is the work of the antichrist, and it's going on right now, even as we speak. But there is yet a future antichrist called The Man of Sin. If you want to know more about him, read 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

In 2 Thessalonians 2, it describes the Man of Sin. The word antichrist isn't used there, but this is what it says, "Do not let anyone deceive you in any way, for the final day will not come until the rebellion occurs, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God. 2 Thessalonians 2:8-9, it says, "The lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan, displayed... " Listen to this, "In all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders." So the antichrist, the future antichrist will come with great power that no one can explain, a supernatural miracle-worker he will be. And he will sit in God's temple, and he will proclaim himself to be God. And for, I believe, three and a half years, he will attack the saints, and the saints will be given into his hand, until Jesus Christ comes and overthrows him with the breath of his mouth.

Now, application. What does this have to do with my life? Is this going to help me be a better employee tomorrow? I'm having trouble with my joints and physical problems. Recently, I've had some illness, or I know somebody that's got an illness. What is this going to do about them? I've had car trouble recently. Is this going to help me solve my problem with my car? I've had financial trouble. Tax day is coming up. I don't know how I'm going to pay my taxes. What does Daniel 7 have to do with all those things? Well, nothing, in one sense, nothing, everything, in another sense.

First, I want to say could it be that what God is doing in the world is bigger than any of those problems you listed? Could it be that what God is doing in the world is bigger than even our own lives itself? Even bigger than Rika's life? Could it be that God is working a plan so majestic and so glorious and we only see one part of it? And so, Daniel 7 lays out a majestic tapestry of all of human history and the second coming of Christ, and that there is no connection to your car trouble, immediately, but there is a connection to how you fit into world history if you're part of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He's giving you a kingdom that will never end.

Well, what does that mean that will never end? Well, we've seen kingdoms that have ended one after another. They rise and they fall, but we know that there's a kingdom coming that will never end. So, in one sense, this chapter has nothing to do with all those problems I've listed, but, in another sense, it has everything to do with them. And how is that? Well, I think the verse that I printed in the application section here explains plainly how this verse connects to your life. John 16:33, Jesus said this, "I have told you these things so that, in me, you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world." This is a perfect summary of Daniel 7, "I have told you these things," he says. He's given it to us. You know what's going to happen. It shouldn't be shocking to you when persecution occurs. I have told you these things ahead of time, in many different places and ways. I have told you these things. Well, Jesus, why did you tell us these things?

So, that, in me, you will have peace, not in your earthly circumstances, not in whether your car is running well, or your body feels good, not in whether your finances are all dealt with properly, no, in me, you will have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. If you live in Indonesia, it may mean the end of your life. Stop just a moment. Why is that? Why do Christians die? Why doesn't God interpose himself? Why doesn't he stop every time that a shard of glass is pushed to the stomach of a teenager and make sure that she doesn't die? Why not? That was a good ending, wasn't it? But others haven't been good. Why do they die?

Well, God answered that as well. 2 Peter 3, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief…" In verse 15 of 2 Peter 3, "Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation." He's waiting and waiting until the full number comes in, he's waiting and waiting until all who will come to repentance have the opportunity to do so. Every passing generation people get born. Aren't you glad he waited until the year you were born? And he's waiting. And meanwhile, there's suffering. And, by the blood of martyrs, the seed of the church springs into eternal life for many. Daniel chapter 7 unfolds a plan of history which cannot be derailed. God is sovereign over it, and it means salvation for people like you and me. It may be that you have never come to personal faith in Christ.

Can I urge you to not put off a decision or a commitment to Jesus Christ? In a moment, I'm going to stand down here in front. If you have never given your life to Christ, don't wait. Come to faith in Jesus Christ. He is the Ancient of Days. He is the Son of Man who will come and rule in your life. His death is sufficient for all your sins. Please come. I'm going to close in prayer now, and we'll have our closing hymn.

We are looking this morning at Daniel Chapter 6, perhaps one of the most familiar passages in the Old Testament. It's right up there with Noah's ark, and David and Goliath, but I think the Lord still has more light to break forth from His word. And I think it's important for us to look at this passage in its proper context, that we see exactly what kind of trial of faith that Daniel went through and what it represents for us today.

Recently, I've come across a Christian group entitled the Voice of the Martyrs, and I've got a magazine here that they put out, "Voice of the Martyrs." And if any of you are interested in this group, I think it would be well worth your time to write to them and they'll send you a free subscription to their magazine. And in there, in that magazine and in a video I received, there's information about people who are giving their lives for Jesus Christ around the world. Now, you may think, "How can this still be going on today? How could it be the governments are persecuting and actually taking the lives of people simply because they trust in Jesus Christ?" But it's still going on today. For example, we feel perhaps that communism has reached its end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but that's not true. There are many communist nations today, and Karl Marx, the father of communism, had this to say about our faith, "The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization, it must be destroyed." And so communist nations, throughout history, in the last 100 years and up till today, do everything they can to eradicate, to destroy faith and believers.

And I heard about a particular tribe in Southeast Asia, throughout the region of Southeast Asia, but centered in the northern part of Vietnam, the Hmong tribe, they live in the hills there, and in 1990 they heard the word of truth, they heard the Gospel and they believed. A revival broke out and many of them came to faith in Christ. Immediately, the communist government in Northern Vietnam began to persecute them, to arrest them, to try to persuade them to go back to worshipping evil spirits and tribal deities, but they were not successful. At present, even while I speak today, as far as I know, 23 Hmong pastors are in prison today for their faith, and they can go anytime if they renounce their faith in Jesus Christ.

Last year, one of them was killed by having a knife pushed through his mouth. I don't want to shock you, but this is the kind of thing that's going on right now. Other Hmong Christians have been killed by having boiling water poured down their throats simply for having a Bible, simply for owning a Bible. And this is the kind of thing that's going on around the world. One Hmong woman said, "We've been persecuted by the government so many times, we are no longer afraid of what they can do to us. We trust instead the Scripture and the truth, that our faith is being tested, and the gold and silver of our faith is being purified." Incredible. But then she said, "Please remember to pray for us."

Now, Hebrews 13:3 says that we should remember those in prison as if we were their fellow prisoners, and those who are suffering persecution as if we ourselves were suffering that persecution. We need to hear the Voice of the Martyrs, and the reason I bring it up today is because Daniel suffered the same kind of persecution, but God miraculously delivered Him. He was attacked by the government and God delivered him. But it is not always going to be that way. And as we go on in the Book of Daniel, we're going to see, especially in Daniel Chapter 7, with the rise of the anti-Christ and the tribulation and the suffering that's going to go on as depicted in Daniel 7, the war against the saints, that God is not always going to pluck Daniel out of the lions' den, but rather they are going to be martyrs for the faith. And we, who are not suffering that kind of persecution, must remember to pray for them and realize that God holds them dear, and that their deaths are precious in His sight.

The context in Daniel

So, how does this fit into the Book of Daniel? Well, understand that the Jews were taken out of their promised land because of their sin and brought into the land of Babylon. And immediately they were put under the authority of a pagan government, and immediately there was a pull toward doing evil things, violating conscience. Remember in Daniel 1, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and Daniel resolved that they would not defile themselves with the food provided from the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar's table. And so there's a pull immediately under the government toward doing evil and doing wrong. That was just the first pass, the first glancing pass. By the time it got to Chapter 3, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had to choose between life and faith in God, with the threat of a burning fiery furnace hanging over their head and a very real threat, the battle had been joined between that pagan government and faith in God. And so they were delivered also. And so we have here also, in Daniel 6, a struggle between a godly man and a government which seeks to take his life.

Now, as we're going to look through this, we see the passage breaking into two sections. Verses 1 through 17, we see the godly, namely Daniel, viciously trapped. And in verses 18-28, we see God vindicating His servant and His name. Let's look first at the first section. I just propose to move through this section by section, and understand what God is saying to us here.

A Godly Character and Promotion (vs. 1-3)

Beginning at Verse 1, it says, "It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now, Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom." So, in Verse 1 through 3, we see Daniel elevated to a position of power.

Now, realize just the incredible shock and the amazement that this would even happen. When last we saw Daniel last week, Daniel was made the third highest ruler in the Kingdom of Babylon the night that Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian army. Now would you want to be wearing that purple robe and that gold chain around your neck the night the Medo-Persians go racing through the palace looking for anyone in charge? Absolutely not. What happens to the previous administration in these pagan kingdoms when they're toppled? They're almost always killed, executed, at least exiled where they can do no damage. I don't actually know of any case where the third highest ruler of one kingdom, in the ancient world, was made the third highest ruler of the next kingdom. But it shouldn't surprise us. What is the lesson that we have learned from the Book of Daniel? That God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men, and He gives throne so whoever He chooses. And so if He wants Daniel to be the third highest ruler in Babylon, and then Daniel the third highest ruler in the kingdom to topple Babylon, He can do that. And that's exactly what happens here. It's really remarkable.

And so Darius the Mede comes in and takes control of Babylon. We don't know much about Darius. I think there was probably a co-regency with him and Cyrus the Great, and so He's ruling over that area of Babylon and the Medo-Persian Empire. And so he has a plan to organize his empire. He's going to structure it so that he will not suffer loss. This problem means loss of revenue but loss of anything. These are the resources of the empire. And he wants to administer, he wants to structure it and arrange it so that it will be well run. Well, it isn't long before Daniel, through his exceptional qualities, through his wisdom, through his character and his ability, designates himself or shows himself to be better than any of the other administrators. And so Darius has a plan to raise him to be probably the third highest ruler behind Cyrus the Great and himself.

A Godless Cowardly Plot (vs. 4-9)

In Verses 4 through 9, we see the godless, cowardly plot. "At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy, and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, 'We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.' So, the administrators and the satraps went as a group to the king and said, 'Oh, King Darius, live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or man during the next 30 days, except to you, oh, King, shall be thrown into the lions' den. Now, oh, King, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.'" Verse 9, "So King Darius put the decree in writing."

Now, Jesus has made us many promises in this world, hasn't He? One of those that we don't cherish necessarily or hold to our heart is John 16:33. In this world, you will have, what? Trouble. You're going to have trouble in this world. The Apostle Paul says the same thing when he says, "Everyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." And so Daniel has some enemies.

Now, what are the roots of this plot? It's jealousy. They're jealous over Daniel. They're jealous over the fact that he is going to be elevated, that he's going to have an important position, "that it wasn't me chosen. Why wasn't it me? I'm a good administrator. I've known Darius for years. Why this foreigner?" And so there's probably a racial aspect as well, "This Jewish exile, and he's going to be third highest in the kingdom. How can it be?" They're jealous. And so they launch out in a plot to destroy him.

Now recently... I'm not making any political statements. I'm not able to do that anyway, but I wouldn't make it. But recently, Linda Chavez, who was one of the new president's designates for a cabinet post, was found to have some improprieties in her life and she had to withdraw her candidacy for that post. And she talked about the politics of search and destroy. Well, I see the same thing here in this chapter. It hasn't changed at all. Human nature has not changed much in all these years. We know God hasn't changed at all, but have humans changed that much? And so there's a searching and a destroying for Daniel. They're looking for something they can find to destroy him, but amazingly they come up with nothing.

Now, nowadays, if you're going to search somebody's life to try to find a skeleton in the closet, you use electronic surveillance equipment, maybe some bugs, maybe look through their emails or something on their computer, try to find some skeleton in their closet. But with Daniel, they can find nothing. Maybe they've got some household spies and they've got... They're hiring some of the servants. "Daniel, we've got some servants for you." "Oh, great I'll put them on my staff." Next thing you know, they're giving reports back to these enemies. And the report comes back and say, "Well, what do you find? Does he have any bad habits? Any immorality? Is there anything... Is he taking any bribes? Is he doing anything on the side?" "No, can't find anything." "Nothing at all?" "Well, he prays a lot and he's working all the time. Other than that, really nothing." So, he's kind of a problem for them. They can't find anything wrong with this guy. The more they look, the more they are convinced that there's no skeletons in the closet. They say, "We will never find anything against Daniel, except that it has something to do with the law of his God." What a testimony.

If you had such an enemy, I mean a human being, searching your life for something to destroy you, will they find something? If they followed you and looked 168 hours a week, would they find something that could be put in a headline and ruin your life? With Daniel, they found nothing. They couldn't find anything. And they say, "How? How is it possible for a human being to be so pure that his enemy can find nothing wrong with him?" Well, I think it's that he believed he was being watched. Daniel believed he was being watched but not by them. By God, watched all the time. Just like Job said. This is what Job says, in Job Chapter 7 Verse 17. "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every moment? Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for an instant? If I have sinned, what have I done to you, oh, watcher of men?" Job called God a watcher of men. Is that what God is? Does He observe all the time everything you do? Oh, absolutely. And we're going to find next week that He's keeping a careful record of everything, too. Daniel Chapter 7 the court is seated, and the books are opened. And so I think Daniel knew very well he was being watched. It didn't matter to him what people thought. It mattered what God thought. And so he was pure, no sins of omission, and no sins of commission. He wasn't negligent.

Nor was he corrupt. He did everything the office required of him, with foresight, with diligence, with dedication. Anything the king wanted to do that didn't violate his conscience, he did it promptly and skillfully. On the other side, he wasn't on the take, he wasn't taking bribes. I've been in many places in the world where everything done by the government must be lubricated with a bribe. Government officials are in it for themselves, they're in it for the take. And if you don't give a bribe, you're not going to get the plane ticket you need or the visa, or any of the things you need from a government agency. Daniel wasn't that way. He had no interest in earthly wealth. He settled that back when he decided to eat only vegetables and water, and not eat any of the delicacies from the king's stable. He wasn't living that kind of a pleasure-seeking life, and so he was not corrupt. His personal holiness was at the root of everything he did.

And so they approached the king and they hatched a plot, a cowardly plot. They look in and they say, "Well, we're going to do something with the law of his God, and we're going to try to manipulate the circumstance." And they trick Darius.

Darius Should Have Known Better

Now, Darius is 62 years old, he should have known better. But he was manipulated by these advisers into issuing a decree that anyone who prayed to any god, other than to him, for the next 30 days would be thrown into the lion's den. And so they use flattery and pride, "O King Darius, live forever."

And then there's this law of the Medes and the Persians. You've heard about the law of the Medes and the Persians. It cannot be changed, it cannot be altered. Now, Nebuchadnezzar, he was a law unto himself. If he issued a decree, so it was until he changed his mind and went back the other way. That's just the way it was. Nebuchadnezzar was the law in Babylon. But the Medes and the Persians were different. If the king issued a decree, and it was written down in writing, it could not be changed even by the king himself. There was not absolute sovereignty or power in the Medo-Persian Empire.

And so Darius makes, in Verse 9, a dangerous decision. And you say, "Of course, it's dangerous to Daniel. Daniel's life was threatened by this. He would be thrown in the lions' den if he continued to pray to God." But I really think the real danger here is not to Daniel. Daniel has eternal life. He's not afraid to die. Who's the one threatened by Darius's decree? Well, it's Darius. Darius is threatened by his own degree, because our God is a jealous God and He will not have any rivals. "I am the Lord, your God… You shall have no other gods besides Me." And so there is to be no worship of Darius, no praying to Darius, and Darius put himself in a very dangerous position by doing this.

And this is the essence of the beast of Revelation 13. Government is supposed to be a good gift from God, established by His authority, to uphold His principles and retard unrighteousness in society. But instead we have the beast of Revelation 13, not the gift of God in Romans 13. And what is the essence of the beast in Revelation 13? That it takes the place of God, that the leader thinks himself worthy of worship. And so we're going to see over the next couple of weeks, as we study about the anti-Christ, that that's the essence of his reign as well, that he be worshipped. And so Darius, at a much lower level, wants to be prayed to.

A Godly Courageous Prayer (vs. 10-11)

Well, what does Daniel do? Well, Verse 10 and 11 tells us what he does. He prays, "Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room, where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before."

Now, Daniel has his proper priorities. In 1 Peter Chapter 2 Verse 17, Peter says that we are to "fear God and honor the king." Can I say to you, as Christians, that you are to fear God and honor the king, in that order? Fear God and honor the king. And where the king issues a decree that is in harmony with God's laws, you must obey. But where the king issues a decree that breaks God's laws, you must disobey. And so Daniel respectfully disobeyed. He went into his room, and he knelt down, and he prayed. And this is godly civil disobedience. And here we see Daniel willing to die for his daily quiet time. Stop and think about that. He's willing to die for his daily prayer life. What are you willing to die for? Think about that.

There was a poll recently done of youth, and less than one-third of the youth they polled could find anything worth dying for. Their lives were too comfortable, to pleasure-filled. Why would they ever want to trade that in for anything? There was no value, there was no truth, there was nothing that they felt it was worth laying down their lives for. Nothing. Martin Luther was willing to lay down his life for a doctrinal truth, justification by faith alone. He really thought he'd be burned at the stake. The early Christian martyrs were willing to lay down their lives rather than burn incense to a Roman Caesar. Modern Chinese Christians willing to lay down their lives rather than give up their house fellowships and churches. 19th century missionaries, who went to West Africa, packed up their things in their coffins because the ones that preceded them had died from tropical illnesses, willing to die rather than the West Africans should die without hearing of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul said, "I consider my life worth nothing to me, except that I may finish my race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." I'm willing to die for that. Jesus would rather die than that you go to hell. Jesus would rather die than disobey His Father. What about you? What would you be willing to lay down your life for? It says in Revelation 12:11 of the martyrs, "They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." Do we love our lives too much? Is there nothing we'd be willing to die for? Daniel was willing to die for his daily quiet time.

And here in Verse 10 we get a glimpse of his root system. "Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God just as he had done before." Three times a day. "Well, I'm too busy for them, an important, an important woman. I've got important responsibilities." Daniel was in line to be third highest ruler in the Medo-Persian Empire with 120 districts to look over. Are you that busy? Really?

Three times a day he prayed and he got down on his knees. And we see his consistent private prayer is the source of his courage. It got him into trouble. He's about to be thrown in the lions' den, but it gave him the courage to respond properly. We're going to learn more about Daniel's prayer life in Daniel Chapter 9. We see his humility, he's down on his knees. And we see him praying, his passion for God's glory, his passion for God's people. He's praying toward Jerusalem. We'll find out more about that in Chapter 9, but He's praying for the restoration of God's people back to the Promised Land and for the plan of God. He's a godly man. How was your root system? How is your daily prayer time? How is your daily time in God's Word? This was strength for Daniel when it got him into trouble.

A Godless Consummated Plan (vs. 12-17)

Now, in Verses 12 through 17, we see the consummated plan, the godless consummated plan. "So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree: 'Did you not publish a decree that during the next 30 days, anyone who prays to any god or man, except to you, oh, King, would be thrown into the lions' den?' The king answered, 'The decree stands in accordance with the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be repealed.' Then they said to the king, 'Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O, King, or to the decree you put in writing. He still prays three times a day.' When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed. He was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him. Then the men went as a group to king and said to him, 'Remember, oh, King, that according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed.' So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den. The king said to Daniel, 'May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you.'" Verse 17, "A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of the nobles, so that Daniel's situation might not be changed."

So, here in this section, we see the trap sprung. They've laid the trap, they've baited it, and now it's sprung. And they go to the king, and it comes down on Daniel. And we see again, I think, a racial side here in Verse 13, one of the exiles from Judah doesn't obey you, pays no attention to you, and so again, I think, that's some of the roots of their jealousy. And they make a false accusation. "He pays no attention to you. He's a godless kind of guy, a lawless kind of guy, he does whatever he wants to do." Well, that's a lie. Daniel lived to carry out Darius's commands, just as long as they didn't violate his conscience. And so Darius was thrown into immediate agony. What would he do? He knew he had been trapped. Not just Daniel, but he had been trapped. And he tries everything he can, he hires the best lawyers he can, but there's no escape. There's no changing the laws of the Medes and the Persians, and so Daniel must be thrown into the lions' den.

Now, what is this lions' den? You've all seen the children's Bibles. I'm sure you know what it looks like. Right? Well, there's this many different pictures as there are artists and imagination. I don't like the ones that show that lions looking too friendly. They look like stuffed animals, that's not good. Those lions were ferocious 600-pound beasts. And you understand something about a lion is that there's nothing you can do to intimidate it. Unlike other types of animals, and there's a fear of man within the heart of the animal, it's not there in terms of a lion. Not afraid at all. And if you keep them just hungry enough, they might devour somebody before they hit the ground. And that's exactly what happened to Daniel's accusers, and his enemies and their families, thrown down and devoured before they hit the ground. These were not tamed beasts. These were ferocious life-enders, is what they were.

And I think it probably was some kind of a cavern, with a hole in the ground, 'cause he was lowered down into it. And it was covered up by some kind of rock. It really is somewhat like a tomb, isn't it? And down he goes. And then the signet ring, which is such an interesting touch, basically it's the authority of King Darius that no one can move that stone or do anything to save Daniel until that night is passed. Do you remember another time when there was a cavern, and then a rock and a signet ring? Do you remember that? Jesus' burial. And Pontius Pilate issued a decree that no one should move that rock, and he sealed it with the Roman seal? Do you know who broke that seal? An angel. An angel broke that seal. Human government has jurisdiction up to a point, but God has ultimate authority. And He breaks that seal if He so chooses. He has ultimate authority to counteract anything issued by a government or a king.

Now, in Verses 18 through 28, God vindicates His servant and his name. Look at 18 through 20, we see Darius's compassion and his hope. "Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions' den. And when he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, 'Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?'" I wonder how long Daniel waited before he answered.

But there's a tremendous amount of compassion, some friendship here. I don't think he wanted to destroy Daniel at all. I think he was respecting him, Daniel probably already witnessing to him. He respected him. Daniel was probably, at this point, almost 90 years old, if not older. I know that's shocking. I know the artists always show him as a young man, but he was at the end of his life at this point, an old man. And Darius respected him, and I think maybe even loved him. And so he spends all night, no entertainment, nothing to eat, he's pacing the floor back and forth. And then finally the morning comes, and he runs down there as soon as he can, and he calls out. And he's got faith, doesn't he? He's talking to a dead man, a pile of bones. But there's a chance. Maybe he's heard about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If God can rescue them, maybe He can rescue Daniel out of the lions' den. And so he calls out, but the Aramaic gives strong indication that he doesn't think he's going to get an answer. He calls out in an anguished voice, "Daniel, are you there?" He doesn't think so. He doesn't think he's going to respond. And so there's a mixture of faith and unbelief here.

Well, we get the vindication. Darius is about to get the jolt of his life, and I think he'd probably never forget it the rest of his life. Verse 21, "Daniel answered, 'O, King, live forever!'" What a triumphant response. "Oh, King, live forever." "I'm going to live forever, King. What about you?" We'll get to that in a minute. "'Oh, King, live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O King.' The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted up from the den, no wound was found on him because he had trusted in his God." Isn't that beautiful? The vindication of God, the vindication of faith, and God vindicating His own Holy Name.

Now, I've thought about this, I use my imagination. I'm not an artist, so I'm not going to use my imagination to draw a picture. But I use my imagination about Daniel's night in the lions' den. Now, we know in a moment that his enemies are going to be thrown down into the lions' den and they're not going to make it to the bottom of the cavern before they're killed. How long do you think it was before Daniel realized he was going to survive that night in the lions' den? A minute? Maybe two. And he knows this is going to be "not the worst night of my life but the best night of my life. This is going to be the greatest night of my life." Sitting on a rock in a cavern, hearing the lions breathing in frustration but restrained, an angel there for conversation. And what did they talk about? Who knows? We will never know.

Why do we fear persecution so much? Why are we afraid of spending that night in the lions' den? That was the greatest night of Dan's life. And so we've got Darius pacing the floor back and forth, anguished. And we've got Daniel sitting on a rock, having a conversation with an angel. Why do we fear persecution? Why are we afraid? What are we afraid of? What can man do to me? The greatest night of his life. I think we fear the wrong things.

The Apostle Paul spoke of a lion. You remember this, 2 Timothy 4, mentioned it before? He was to give testimony to the Roman Emperor. And he said, "At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. Yet the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack will bring me safely into His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory for ever and ever." The Apostle Paul knew he was about to die.

"Delivered from the lion's mouth" does not mean "I got to live another day." He said, "The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely to his to heavenly kingdom." How do you get to heaven? Well, you die, unless you're in that final generation when the Lord returns. He is not afraid to die. What is he afraid of? He's afraid of the lion, Satan, who's going to convince him somehow, at that critical moment, when he should have preached the Gospel to the Roman Caesar, to wimp out of fear, out of trembling. That's the lion he was delivered from. And the Lord was proclaimed boldly right in front of Caesar. "The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack." I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of death, nor am I afraid of Satan perverting me so that I'm not able to finish my race and complete the task God gave me to do. We fear the wrong lions. We should be afraid of failing God.

Now, why was he indicated? Because he was innocent. He said, "I never did anything wrong against... God first, always God first. Neither have I done anything wrong against you, oh, King."

The Pit-Diggers Fall In (vs. 24)

Now, in Verse 24, the pit diggers fall in. Psalm 7, David said, "He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made. The trouble he causes recoils on himself, his violence comes down on his own head." Now, I preached on this passage recently, and afterward I had time with some college students, and they said, "Now, we're troubled by the children being thrown in." First of all, we have to understand, it was Darius that threw the children in. There's no approval of this in the text. It's just what happened. These ancient near-eastern potentates were tyrants, wicked, and evil men. And what he did was wrong, but the text doesn't say one way or the other. Just realize that this behavior was common back then, and these potentates were evil tyrants, and this is not indicated in the text. But rather it shows a principle. If you attack and slander God's people, whatever attack you use, whatever plan you concoct, it will come back on your own head.

Darius’s Decree and Praise (25-27)

And then in Verses 25 through 27, there is this final poem of praise. "Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations and men of every language throughout the land, 'May you prosper greatly. I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. For He is the living God, and He endures forever. His kingdom will not be destroyed, His dominion will never end. He rescues and He saves, He performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.'" What a poem of praise. He is the living God. His Kingdom is the eternal kingdom. He is a powerfully interfering God who does miracles on earth. He can do anything. He rescues His chosen people, and He does it by signs and wonders. And along with it, we're going to get a government decree that everyone should worship this God. Well, there's no separation of church and state back then. We had to wait 20 centuries for the Anabaptists to come and teach us about that, but there was a decree issued that everyone should worship God.

And then finally, in verse 28, "Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian." God completely vindicated Daniel.

And what applications can we take from this? First, concerning human government. Human government, as I've said, is a gift from God, Romans 13. But if it seeks to set itself up as a worshipped being, it becomes the beast of Revelation 13. Yet our government will flourish or fall, depending on the integrity of our leaders. We must fear God and honor the king. But we are in a participatory government. We are involved, aren't we? We get to influence the process. If our government leaders are negligent, if they are corrupt, if they are unrighteous, we will pay for it. And we are partly to blame.

President James Garfield, 1976, said this. "Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless or corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption." If you want that kind of government, keep electing those kinds of leaders. We are involved in the process. Why not have a bunch of Godly Christian leaders like Daniel? Do you notice that we're getting more and more marginalized? If we even say the word "Jesus Christ," we're not allowed to be involved in government any more? We've got to stand up and say that we want men and women of the character and courage of Daniel to lead the nation. Christian magistrates, Anabaptists said no Christian leaders, but Daniel is a role model for those who believe that we do have a place in government.

Secondly, concerning personal godliness, the grace of God produces holiness and godliness in you, but He does it through certain means. Personal prayer, personal Bible reading, attendance at worship, are these things working in you? If someone picked over your life, what would they find? How is your root system? How are your spiritual disciplines? Is there some habit pattern that's sucking strength from your spiritual life?

Thirdly, concerning workplace witness, Daniel was an evangelist in his job. Do you realize that the old ways that Southern Baptist have of come-and-see evangelism is not where we're heading? We're going to what it should be go-and-tell evangelism. And whereas the marketplace used to be the place of witness, now it's the workplace. Most of you have jobs, or many of you do, and you interact with far more non-Christians there than you do any other place. You have to be courageous enough to lift your voice for God at the workplace.

Now, there are rules about these things, but they can be worked through. It's possible to have Bible studies in some cases. It's possible to be a witness, at least to be praying for co-workers for an opportunity to witness. Workplace evangelism. And be a good employee, the way Daniel was, so that they search over your work record and find nothing but good, hard work skillfully done.

Forth, concerning persecution. We're going to talk more about this, the Voice of the Martyrs, but realize and pray for the martyrs around the world, and realize and fully expect that you are going to suffer for your faith, if you do what I just suggested, be a workplace witness.

Fifthly, concerning God's passion for His name and His people, why did God rescue Daniel? For the glory of His own name and because He loved Daniel, in that order. God does all things, first and foremost, for the glory of His name. And so God will vindicate His Holy Name as well now.

And then sixthly, concerning eternal life, He said, "O King, live forever." In Daniel Chapter 12, he referred to a time when those who sleep in the dust will come out of the dust, some to eternal life and some to eternal condemnation. Many people look at Daniel in the lions' den like a metaphor for troubles in your life. Well, let's go with that for a second. Someday you're going to stand before God. Imagine if you would, all of your sins surrounding you, threatening to tear your soul eternally. There's only one power in heaven or on earth that can silence those sins, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ. Do you know Christ as your Savior? And are you preaching that witness to those who don't? What will they do when their sins surround them on Judgment Day, with no one to answer and no one to save?

We're going to go down to a time of prayer, and after that, we're going to have the Lord's supper. I want you to reflect and think about the things we've talked about and prepare yourself in your hearts for the Lord's supper. Let's close in prayer.

Turn to Daniel 5. We continue in our study in Daniel and we come to Belshazzar's last feast. Now around this room, there are many timepieces, aren't there? Some of you may even be checking them right now. There are many different ways to mark time, and we're getting better and better at it. I saw an advertisement in a magazine which has a wristwatch, which automatically changes its time as you change time zones. I don't know how that works, but it's got some kind of a receiver within it, that takes data from an atomic clock somewhere, and wherever you are, you know exactly what time it is, you don't have to fiddle anymore with adjusting, isn't that incredible? We're very conscious of time and interested in telling time. And so it has been really from the beginning of the world, since God created the sun, and the moon, and the stars to mark time and as we see the sun come up and set, we're interested in the passing of time, so we see the moon's wax and wane. We're interested in the passing of time. Some of the earliest timepieces were water clocks. I was reading about one in Egypt, which had a certain rate that the water flowed out of a vessel and they were able to mark the time within a day that way, there was a remarkable water clock in China that lasted for over 100 years and kept very accurate time.

But we're going to see that God's ways of marking time are different than ours, although He has them and there is a timetable that God is keeping though we don't know what it is. And God has given us insight into time, but His times are His own. Jesus was born in the fullness of time it says in Galatians 4:4, at just the right time in history. We know that today is given to us for a purpose, isn't it? For repentance. Today is the day of salvation, that we might call on Jesus Christ, and be forgiven of our sins. That's what today is for, for repentance and day passes upon day and time is marked. But in God's time, the judgments come and at just the right time, they come. God gave a promise to Abraham that he would own the promised land in the future but not yet. And why? The sin of the Amorites had not yet reached its full measure. God had a certain measure and when the sin of the Amorites had reached that measure, judgment would come by the sword of Joshua and the invading armies, in the Book of Joshua but not yet. God has His timetable and so He had for the ancient empire of Babylon. There was a right time for judgment and until that time came judgment would not come, but when that time came, the judgment fell and nothing could stop it.

Now, about 60 or so years before the chapter we're reading today, there was a strange ceremony carried on by a Jewish refugee, his name was Seraiah and Seraiah stood by the flowing river Euphrates, as it flowed through the center of Babylon, and he read a scroll in Hebrew, the scroll was written by a prophet, a Jewish prophet and it had some words in it. Now, I don't know what went on when the scroll was read. I don't know if the Babylonians were hurrying to their jobs, maybe some of them were late going to and fro but here was this group of refugees, standing by the river Babylon or the River Euphrates in the center of Babylon, and the scroll being read. And when the reading was finished, Seraiah wrapped it up and tied a stone to it and threw it into the center of the Euphrates River and there it sank. Ceremony was over. What did it mean?

Well, the meaning was contained in the words of the scroll. We'll get to that. But some time later, the waters of the Euphrates River started to dwindle on one given night, got a little bit dryer. Dwindled down from a river, a mighty river to a stream, to a trickle and then it was dry, river bed just mud and there perhaps, 60 years later, the stone that had been thrown in by Seraiah was there. I'm sure the scroll and its string was disintegrated. That's what time does. But maybe the rock was still there, testimony that the time had come for judgment. Babylon would fall that night.

And it just so happened while that river was dwindling down and running dry, there was a big party going on. We can relate to that, can't we? We're a partying people? We enjoy a good party. And Belshazzar was throwing the party, the feast. It would be his last, his last feast, but he was throwing a party. Fascinating. With judgment impending, they're throwing a party and a feast. And so we're going to look tonight or today at Belshazzar's last feast, Daniel 5 and we're going to see a specific and accurate fulfillment of prophecy that God had given through His prophet Jeremiah. We have up to this point in Daniel seen many prophecies laid out, which have not yet been fulfilled, haven't we? Future prophecies that are going to be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ. But Daniel 5 is not of a future prophecy, but of a past prophecy and it's fulfillment, the fall of Babylon. And we're going to see how accurate it is.

Now, instead of reading through these verses all the way through and then going back and explaining them, I think we're going to look at it section at a time, but before we do it, we're going to get the historical context. What had gone on now is that Nebuchadnezzar has died. The head of gold, you remember the statue in chapter two. It was a statue, which represented the flow of human history and the top was a head of gold and according to Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar himself was that head of gold, he represented the Babylonian Empire. Well, Nebuchadnezzar has now died, we don't know how he died. We don't have any record of him being assassinated, perhaps he died through an illness, but he died 562 BC. In the words of David, he went the way of all the earth, the way of all potentates, all his power is gone and now he's going to stand before the Judge. We pray that in Daniel 4, he came to repentance and came to faith in Christ, and we hope we see him in heaven but his time on earth has ended. Nebuchadnezzar's successors however were not like Nebuchadnezzar. He was the head of gold, his successors were nothing like him.

There was incompetence, there was intrigue, there was idolatry, there was not strong leadership. His son Evil-Merodach or Amel-Marduk ruled for only nine years and then he was assassinated by one of the generals in the army, Neriglissar. Neriglissar assassinated Nebuchadnezzar's son, and then took the throne. Eventually he died and his son was placed on the throne for nine months. There was a conspiracy and his son was assassinated. Just one toppling after another, it became very weak, very unstable.

Finally, the leader of the second conspiracy Nabonidus took the throne and ruled until the end of Babylon. Along with him he took a wife Nitocris who was a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, she was a direct daughter of Nebuchadnezzar and the two of them had a son and the son's name was Belshazzar. And when Belshazzar was old enough Belshazzar became co-regent ruling together with his father Nabonidus. Now, going back in time, Jeremiah 27, you don't have to turn there, but there's a clear prophecy given about not only the fall of Babylon but when it would come. Jeremiah the prophet gathered a bunch of small kings including the king of Israel or Judah to him. This is before Nebuchadnezzar had conquered anything. He gathered all these kings together and said all of you kings are given into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. This is what he says, "Now I will hand all your countries over to my servant Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, I will make even the wild animals subject to him, all nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes then many nations and great kings will subjugate him."

Do you see the time table? Three generations. And in the third generation, his grandson, the end would come. Belshazzar was his grandson. The accuracy of prophecy, very clear how long it would last. And so, Belshazzar was ruling. Now around that time, the Medes and the Persians started getting powerful. Cyrus the Great became the leader of that budding empire. And he began to conquer. He began to ride out over Babylon and began to win victories and he defeated Nabonidus in a critical battle and Nabonidus fled to Borsippa where he was captured. Cyrus the Great then turned his attention on Babylon itself, the city of Babylon. The armies of Babylon had pulled back inside the walls of that fortress. Belshazzar was pretty much all that was left, but that city had never been conquered. In all the history of the military annals there's never been a city like Babylon, a fortress it seemed unconquerable and so they pulled in and they thought it was time for a party. And so they threw a feast.

Now, let's look at verses one through four. "King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine he gave orders to bring in the gold and the silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone." Here, we see Belshazzar's defiant feast. The historical context couldn't be clearer, right at the walls of the city is the combined army of the Medes and the Persians, they're right around the walls, they're ready to conquer the city, but the Babylonians defy them with a feast, a celebration, a party, Belshazzar leading the way.

But not only do they defy the armies of the Medes and the Persians, they defied God Himself, God Almighty, the Creator of the ends of the earth by calling for the golden goblets and cups from His temple that Nebuchadnezzar had taken out. Nebuchadnezzar never did this but Belshazzar did and they took them out and they drank, they drank celebrations to gods of gold and silver, of bronze, of iron, wood and stone. Now, massive banquets are part of the ancient Near East tradition. It shouldn't surprise us that everyone in Babylon was at a party. The ancient historian Ktesias said that Persian monarchs who came later frequently were known to dine daily with 15,000 people, that's a big feast. Earlier the Assyrian emperor Ashunasirpal II gave a feast to 70,000 people. In 485 Persian king Darius had a feast in which a thousand animals were slaughtered including, get this, oxen, zebras, gazelles, stags, Arabian ostriches, geese, game cocks and camel. Turns out that smoked camel hump is a favorite Persian dish. So those are the kind of things that they ate. They also served rice pilaf with meats, nuts, spices and fruit. Shish kebabs of mutton, fish, poultry, vegetables seasoned with special yogurt sauce. The guests at that banquet even enjoyed sugar brought by caravan from distant lands as at that time sugar was eaten only by kings. But it was lavished on all the guests. Now, that was a later feast, but this is the kind of thing that was going on as the armies were surrounding the walls of Babylon.

Now what brings this on? Well, it's a base innate hedonism, a desire we have to enjoy things. We like pleasure, don't we? We like to eat good foods, we like to have fun with our friends. Is there anything wrong with that? Well, no, as long as it's in its proper order with God at the center. But hedonism for its own sake is destructive. And so it says in Philippians 3:19, think of the Babylonians now, "Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame, their mind is on earthly things." That was Babylon that night, wasn't it? One of the most amazing things I found about the history of World War II is that as Berlin was about to fall and Hitler and all his leaders were down in a concrete bunker and the whole city was surrounded by the Red Army and the forces were crumbling at that moment, even after Hitler had committed suicide, the Nazi officials had a party, a big celebration.

There's something innate inside us that wants to be happy, we want to celebrate, we want to have fun even if death is imminent. And so from the Scripture comes this slogan, "Let us eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." And nothing could have ever been said more truthfully about Babylon. Actually, it wasn't tomorrow, it was tonight. What should they have been doing? They should have been taking the time repenting. They should have been on their faces before God, seeking His forgiveness, not drinking from His vessels and praising idols of gold and wood and stone, getting drunk. But you know, it's not very different in God's own people either. Isaiah 22, writing about the fall of Jerusalem they did the same thing. This is what Isaiah says about the fall of Jerusalem, "The Lord, the Lord almighty called you on that day to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth but see there's joy and revelry, there slaughtering of cattle and eating of meat, killing of sheep and drinking of wine. Let us eat and drink you say for tomorrow we die. The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing to your dying day this sin will not be atoned for." When it's time to repent, you need to repent. It's not time for a party, it's not time for celebration, it's time for repentance.

The Greatness of Babylon

But you know something. I don't think the Babylonians felt they were going to die tomorrow. Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we... I don't think they thought so. I think they felt confidence. They were able to perhaps before the party began at least stand up around the walls of Babylon and defy the Medo-Persian army and say, "You'll never get in here. Never. These walls have never fallen and they're not going to fall tonight." Now in siege warfare there are three ways to win. If you're the army besieging a city what are three ways to win? You can go over the wall, you can go through the wall or you can starve the city within the wall so they come out. Those are the three ways you win siege warfare. But according to Herodotus, the ancient historian none of the three were possible because the city was monstrously huge. 14 miles square on a side, that's big. Think of how far it is from here to Raleigh. 14 miles on a side was the city. It had huge outer walls, 350 feet high. That's a 35-story building. Somebody tell me, is there a 35-story building in downtown Durham? I don't think there is, 35 stories is big.

So imagine the highest building in Durham and even higher and you're looking up, and that's the wall, you're not going over that wall. I don't care how much structure you bring you're not going over. How about going through it? Well, according to Herodotus at the top of the wall, you can drive a chariot with four horses. That's at the top. Do you think the top is thinner or thicker than the bottom? It's got to be thinner, that's the way a wall is. It's got to be built almost like a pyramid. Some of the walls were 87 feet thick, 87 feet thick. You're not getting through that way. Well, what about the starvation route? Well, the problem is that the city was so big that it encompassed fields, areas that could continue growing for years and they had huge store houses. And what about drinking water? Plenty of it, you've got the River Euphrates flowing right through the center of the city, plenty of drinking water, you're never getting in here. Ancient Babylon was unconquerable. It had a 100 great bronze walls, gates in the walls, the inner and outer wall system had a series of moats, the river water was diverted around the wall so that you couldn't get through that way. Within the walls, there are a beautiful avenues and parks and palaces. A great bridge spanning the Euphrates connected the eastern and western parts of the city. There was the famed, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, beautiful to look at, and it gave them confidence.

It's the same thing that Nebuchadnezzar said when he said, "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as a royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" This is an incredible place and nobody's ever getting in here. And so they held a party. They had a banquet. It's really shocking when you stop and think about it. When you're in siege you want to conserve food, you don't want to have a banquet but that's exactly what they did. So, they defied the armies of Persia, they also defied the living God. Now this is particularly shocking because God had given Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire a lesson into His greatness. Daniel representing God had interpreted a dream that no one else knew. Miraculously he had read the king's mind. In Daniel 3 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had been rescued from the fiery furnace, God had showed His power. In Daniel 4 the most powerful man perhaps in the history of the world in terms of a monarch, a single ruler was turned into an animal for seven years by the God of Israel, and Nebuchadnezzar gave credit to Him, gave credit to the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Was the one who did that. "He rules over kings" he said. But none of that meant anything to his grandson, Belshazzar. Didn't think a thing of it. And so he said, "Who was that God we beat? Bring his cups in here, let's drink from those too." Defying God right in His presence.

Jonathan Edwards in his famous sermon, Sinners in the hands of an angry God, said this and I think the words really strike to their situation. He's talking about God's power and he says, "There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God. Though hand joining hand and vast multitudes of God's enemies combine and associate themselves they are easily broken in pieces. What are we that should think to stand before Him at whose rebuke the earth trembles and before whom rocks are thrown down."

Oh, the folly of human beings to defy God. Now in verses 5-9, there is the terrifying warning, the writing on the wall, the apparition appears. Now look up at the wall next to me, see that plaster up there, how would you feel right now if while I'm talking suddenly a hand appeared and started writing on it? What would you do? Would some of you scream? Would you run out? Would you stay and wonder what the writing said? Well, that's what happened in middle of the party. Right in the middle of the party the hand appears look at verse 5, "Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the Royal Palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote, his face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way. And the king called for the enchanters, the astrologers and diviners to be brought and said to these wise men of Babylon, 'Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.' Then all the king's wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. So King Belshazzar became even more terrified and his face grew more pale and his nobles were baffled."

Right in the middle of the party, the music stops. Now when the Titanic went down, the music kept playing until that it was the last possible moment, but music stopped a little early this night because people were terrified. What did the writing mean? What was it? What was the significance of these fingers and what were the letters? And terror and confusion reigned and no one knew what to do. And so the wise men were called in but nobody could read it. Maybe it's on the cover of your bulletin. Have you seen that little odd thing? Can you read it? There it was, something like that. And no one knew what it said.

The Queen Mother’s Advice (vs. 10-12)

And so the Queen Mother comes in verse 10-12, and gives some advice, "The queen hearing the voices of the king and his nobles came into the banquet hall. 'O king, live forever' she said. 'Don't be alarmed, don't look so pale. There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father the king I say, appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners. This man Daniel whom the king called Belteshazzar was found to have a keen mind in knowledge and understanding, and also the ability to interpret dreams and explain riddles and solve difficult problems. Call for Daniel and he will tell you what the writing means.'" It's very interesting this woman is not at the banquet, she's the Queen Mother, I believe Nitocris, Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, and she hears probably screaming from the banquet, she hears the voices of the nobles and others, and so she comes in and, "What is going on?" and she finds out and she says, "Listen, don't worry about it, just get Daniel and he'll come in and he'll interpret it for you."

Interesting that Daniel didn't come with the other lot, did he? That group of enchanters and... He didn't have anything to do with them. He came in on his own to interpret. And it's interesting what the Queen Mother said to him, do you notice what she said when she first came in. What did she say, "O king live forever." Isn't that ironic? Would the king live forever? No, actually he's hours away from his death. Hours away, he wouldn't survive the night.

Daniel’s Appearance (vs. 13)

And so Daniel appears in verse 13, as usual he refuses to be associated with them. Verse 13, "So Daniel was brought before the king and the king said to him. 'Are you Daniel? One of the exiles my father, the king, brought in from Judah? I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that you have insight, intelligence and outstanding wisdom. The wise men and enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and tell me what it means, but they could not explain it. Now, I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck and you'll be made third highest ruler in the kingdom.'"

So, Belshazzar gives him a quick account of what's going on and of the failure of his counselors and he makes him that offer. Now, what are the three things that the world has to offer? We've said before, power, prestige and pleasure, those three I'll give them to you, they're mine to give. I can give them to anyone I want and I give them to you. And what does he say? Verse 17, "Then Daniel answered the king, keep your gifts for yourself and give your honors to somebody else." I have no interest. Now, I wonder if Daniel knew that that would be the night. I wonder. According to archaeology they have found a large banqueting room on the ruins of Babylon. They found a recessed area elevated where there may have been a throne. Interestingly enough, they found plaster on the walls. Some of the plaster was gone, decayed by age, I'm sure or maybe something else raked it off. You can't really tell, but there was a window in that room and it overlooked the Euphrates River. And if they had just taken the time and go look, they would have noticed something about the river, the river was dwindling, the river was drying, the river was gone. Where is the river? Maybe Daniel knew where the river was. Maybe he knew what was going on, maybe he knew that that was the night.

Daniel Teaches History (vs. 18-21)

And so, Daniel teaches the king some history, verses 18-21, "O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor. Because of the high position He gave him all the peoples and nations and men of every language dreaded and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death, those he wanted to spare he spared, those he wanted to promote he promoted and those he wanted to humble he humbled. But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal, he lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like cattle and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until he acknowledged... " until he acknowledged what? What is the lesson? What is the lesson of the book of Daniel? "that the most high God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and He gives them to anyone He pleases."

How many times have we heard the lesson? Over and over. And Belshazzar, you've not learned your history. Well, I never did well in history. Well, you need to do well in history. God isn't going to do an Exodus every generation. He's not going to have Jesus die every generation, He's not going to have Him rise from the dead every generation. He's going to give you a book and the history is written in the book, He's not going to do these same things year after year. He's going to give you a book and you read it in the book and you believe it or you don't. But here's the history and we need to learn from history. Belshazzar, you should have learned from what your father learned. What happened to your father? God was gracious and gentle to your father because he survived. But instead you defied Him. You set your heart against Him.

And so Daniel preaches judgment verses 22-24, "But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from His temple brought to you and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways. Therefore He sent the hand that wrote the inscription." Is it still true that this God holds in His hand your life and all your ways? Are there many gods or is there only one God? And is that one God eternal or does He die? Does He change? Is He changeful or is He always the same? You have not humbled yourself, Belshazzar, you should have learned, but you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways and therefore, the inscription has been sent.

Now why, why does God send the inscription? Why doesn't He just bring the judgment? Well, sometimes He does just bring the judgment but God delights to tell you ahead of time what He's going to do. He writes it down in Scripture and tells you ahead of time what's coming so that you will know that He tells the truth. And so we have prophecies in the Old Testament fulfilled in the Old Testament, in the New Testament or yet to be fulfilled still. That's the way God is. He tells us ahead of time what He's going to do, and then He does it and so the writing comes on the wall and so we can read it and understand what God will do. This is the way he is, He writes and then He fulfills.

Daniel Interprets the Writing

And so then, Daniel interprets it. "This is the inscription that was written: Mene Mene Tekel Parsin. Now this is what the words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians." Look at that middle one. You've been weighed on the scales and found light. God's tested you and you've come short. "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." What is the Hebrew word for glory? 'Kavod', which means weight, heaviness you don't have the glory of God. You come short of the glory of God, and you're found wanting.

Now back in the ancient Near East, they had scales, and merchants would have a scale and they'd have weights. Woe to you if you had a deceptive weight or a tricky weight, but they put the weight and then they'd weigh out whatever they were selling. Belshazzar, you've been weighed and you're found wanting, you're a lightweight. You have not the glory of God in your heart and so your kingdom is brought to an end and your days are numbered, they're counted out. They will serve the father, the son and the grandson and in the days of the grandson the judgment will come. Your days are numbered out and they've come to an end and your kingdom is divided out and given to the Medes and the Persians.

Well, verse 29, "At Belshazzar's command Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom." Oh, I'm sure that made Daniel feel so happy and proud. Go home and tell his friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, "Look what the king gave me, isn't this wonderful?" Do you think so?

How worthless are the baubles the world gives? They mean nothing. The honor and praise of the world means nothing. You get to be the third highest ruler of a kingdom that's going to fall tonight. Now, by the way what usually happens to the third highest ruler of the previous regime when the new regime comes in?

Usually, but not Daniel, he's going to survive into chapter 6. We'll see him, Daniel, in the lion’s den and he gets made the third highest ruler in that kingdom. Only the hand of God can do that. Daniel survived this night because he trusted in God. But there he is with his gold chain and his purple robe and he survives the night. How can it be? And then in verse 30 and 31 "That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom at age 62." Judgment comes suddenly, just like that. Even while going about his business, suddenly it ends. Reminds me of Jesus' parable about the rich fool, remember? The guy has lots of stuff and his house is too small and so he decides to build bigger barns, you remember? I've got lots of years to come, plenty of time to enjoy all the good things of this world, I'll build bigger barns. And remember what God said, "You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you." And so it was for Belshazzar.

How It Happened

Now, how did it happen? Well, it's not recorded in the Bible, you won't find it anywhere in the Bible except in prophecy. It's set ahead of time in prophecy, but you have to go to the ancient historians, Herodotus and Xenophon. The date was October 11th and 12th, 539 BC. Cyrus the Great of Persia was surrounding the walls, and one of his generals Ugbaru was his name, noticed something. He saw an old canal that it turns out that queen Nitocris had dug and he got an idea and he said, "Why don't we divert the Euphrates River through this canal system so it doesn't flow under the wall and we'll crawl under the wall and into Babylon." That's an amazing idea, isn't it? The only problem with it is that obviously the Babylonians thought of that, so they placed traps around where the river flowed in so that the soldiers could kill easily, anyone crawling under the wall. So we have to be sure that there's no soldiers on the wall. So you need two things: You need a dried up river bed and you need no soldiers on the walls. And then the city will fall.

Well, that is exactly the thing that God had predicted would happen. Now, I'm not going to go through the prophecies carefully. I'd like you to read them yourself. Isaiah 21:5. In Isaiah 21:5 two hundred years beforehand this is what the prophet Isaiah said, Babylon is going to fall, and this is Isaiah 21:5 Isaiah said this, "They set the tables, they spread the rugs, they eat, they drink. Get up you officers, oil the shields." What is Isaiah saying? Why are you feasting? You should be fighting. Isaiah 21:5, two hundred years beforehand. That's not bad, is it? How about Habakkuk 2:16, Habakkuk's wondering, "God, when are You going to bring judgment on Babylon?" He said, "I'll bring it. I'll bring it." And he says in Habakkuk 2:16 speaking to the Babylonians, "You will be filled with shame instead of glory, now it is your turn, drink and be exposed." They're going to drink, they're going to get drunk and they'll be exposed to destruction.

But the best of all is in Isaiah 51 and I want to ask that you turn there and read it along with me. Jeremiah 51:36. Chapter 50 and 51 of Jeremiah are all about the destruction of Babylon. So if you want the full story, read those two chapters, prophesied sixty to sixty-five years before it happened. Jeremiah 51:36, "Therefore, this is what the Lord says…" Speaking of Jerusalem, "See, I will defend your cause and avenge you. I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry." Do you see what that says? I'm going to dry up her river. He actually says it twice in this whole section. "I'm going to dry up her river." And down in verse 39, "But while they are aroused, I will set out a feast for them, and make them drunk so that they will shout with laughter, then sleep forever and not awake." Do you see that? A dried up river, drunken soldiers, prophesied 60 years before it happened. Look at verse 57. He says it again, "'I will make her officials and wise men drunk, her governors, officers and warriors as well. They will sleep forever and not wake up.' Declares the king whose name is the Lord Almighty." They'll get drunk, they'll go to bed, they'll fall asleep and they will never wake up. And so, the two things necessary for the fall of Babylon were provided in prophecy, a dried up river and drunken soldiers, both of them provided clearly.

And then finally, as a final touch, Jeremiah, the prophet, wrote it all out, this particular prophecy on a scroll, rolled it up and handed it to Seraiah, and he said, "Go to Babylon." He was on his way to Babylon. "And when you get there, stand in downtown Babylon, near the Euphrates River and read the words of the scroll ahead of time, so that when it comes, I will say or they will say, He warned us. He said it ahead of time." This is our God. He declares it in advance, and then He does it. And so, look down at 51, verse 59, chapter 51:59, this is the message Jeremiah gave to the staff officer, Seraiah, son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah. When he went to Babylon, with Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fourth year of his reign, Jeremiah had written on a scroll about all the disasters that would come upon Babylon, all that had been recorded concerning Babylon. He said to Seraiah, "When you get to Babylon, see that you read all these words aloud. And then say, 'O Lord, you have said you will destroy this place so that neither man nor animal will live in it, it will be desolate forever.' When you finish reading the scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the Euphrates. Then say, 'so will Babylon sink to rise no more because of the disaster that I will bring upon her and her people will fall.' The words of Jeremiah end here." This is Jeremiah's final word, Babylon will fall though drunken soldiers and dried up river.

So what? So what? Well, so this. God hasn't changed, He's the same God. And I want to ask you, as you look at this, what walls are you trusting in? As you look around your life, are there some walls that you're trusting in, protecting you from the day to come, the day of judgment? Are there some walls you're looking at? What constitutes your walls? What are you trusting in that will enable you to survive that day? Good health, success, your intellect, your ability, your resume, your friends, your family, your good works, your basically good character. What are you trusting in? And what are you waiting for? Today is the day of repenting. Today is not the day of feasting and celebration. Today is the day of repentance. It's a day of humbling yourself before God and asking for His forgiveness. Don't put it off till tomorrow. I'm speaking to those who claim to be Christians. I'm not saying that you're not Christians. All of us are, but we need to walk day-by-day in repentance and humiliation before God.

James 4, he said very simply, he said, "Weep and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom." It's not a time for celebration. It's a time for humbling before God. What walls are you trusting in? What are you waiting for? And also, realize we live in a nation full of mockers. Do you understand that? People who mock God. Maybe they don't have the vessels to drink from, but they would do if they could. The talk show hosts mock God. The late night comedians mock God. The political pundits mock God. And so do some of the politicians. The major media outlets mock God. Time, Newsweek, all of them, they mock God. We live in a nation of mockers. And God will not, cannot be mocked. Because whatever we sow, we reap. God is just waiting and He's patient. The sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. There's a ticking clock.

And what of the future fall of Babylon? In the book of Revelation, and this is picked up again, Babylon has fallen, has fallen. "Woe, woe O great city of Babylon, city of power." And so, I say to you, Babylon still lives though the city has fallen. There's still a world system in opposition to God. "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him... The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." There is one place of safety. There is one wall, a set of walls that will protect you on judgment day, and it's Jesus Christ. Flee to Him. In a few moments, we're going to sing 398, Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, Zion, city of our God, listen, With salvation's walls surrounded, thou mayest smile at all thy foes. Your sins will be paid for. No wrath, no judgment, nothing but eternal life, just through faith in Jesus Christ. Close with me in prayer, please.