We'll turn to Daniel chapter two for the reading of God's word. This evening we're going to look at verses 17 to 30. This is a section that we started to look at a couple of weeks ago before I went to Texas. Just reminds you of the context here, Daniel, has been exiled to Babylon and he's been trained up in the ways of the Babylonians and embraced into the circle of the wise men of the land. During this time, the great king over Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, issued a decree that he had a dream and he expected the magicians, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans, and the wise men to interpret the dream for him, which may not necessarily be a problem, but as part of the stipulation, he said that he's not going to reveal the dream, they have to reveal the dream itself, and then the interpretation, and they cry out, this is an impossibility. If they don't do it, he threatens to kill them all. And at that point, Daniel steps in and requests the presence of the king so that he might reveal the dream. And we see his preparation for that in verse 17 as he cries out to God to reveal the dream to him. Daniel 2.17 Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah his companions, and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise. and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we ask of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter. Therefore Daniel went in to Ariok, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him, do not destroy the wise men of Babylon. Bring me in before the king, and I will show the king the interpretation. Then Ariok brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him, I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation. The king declared to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation? Daniel answered the king and said, no wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these. To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this. And he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind. This is the word of the Lord. Two weeks ago, I started a sermon on this section, but I did not finish the second half of that sermon, so we're going to take a look at that this evening. Last time, we looked at the access that Daniel had to his God. in prayer and the confidence and the boldness with which he approached God. What we're gonna look at now in this second part of that sermon is his purpose, or we should say God's purpose through Daniel in this event. We see that Daniel and the people of Israel are a kingdom of priests to reveal the will of God to the world. The first thing I want you to notice is Israel's role in the world. When we look back at the time period of the Exodus, I want you to turn to Exodus chapter 19. This time period in the life of Israel is, or it marks the birth of the nation. There had been prophecies beforehand about how God would deal with the descendants of Abraham, but now they're starting to form into a nation. And in Exodus 19.6, we see one of the purposes of God in incorporating this group of people into the nation of Israel. In Exodus 19, verse six, we read this. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. Now Peter picks up this same theme and says that we as New Testament believers are to be a kingdom of priests and then you see it multiple times in the book of Revelation that we are to be a kingdom of priests and in Revelations we're taught that we will rule over this world with our God. What is the role of a priest? If you think about it, in your knowledge of the Old Testament and also the work of Christ, a priest represents the people before God, stands as a type of mediator between God and His people. And in order to do that, a priest must be purified so that he can have access to God. And if you think about the nation of Israel, all of the sacrifices, all of the legislation that was presented to them, it was to make them holy before the Lord. That was a distinction between them and every other nation. They knew the one true God, they worshiped the one true God correctly, although they failed many times, but they had the means of grace in the Old Testament to cover their sin, to purify them, and to make them acceptable in the presence of God. Last time, as I've already mentioned, we spoke about the access that Daniel had to God. How could he pray to God like he does? Daniel went to his house, he made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And what do they do? Think about it. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of this pagan state, issues a decree. He has no access to God. So Daniel, he's not the only key figure here. His three friends also, they do have access to God. And they enter into God's presence and they seek his face on behalf of this foreign pagan king. And he answers them. Now, we also see in this section that Daniel takes on the role of a prophet. He also speaks on behalf of God to reveal this dream to Nebuchadnezzar. The dominant theme in this section of chapter two is that of a mystery revealed. Look at verse 18. And he tells them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery. And then again in verse 19, then the mystery was revealed to Daniel. Verse 22. When Daniel was praising God for revealing, he says, revealing the mystery, he says this about God. He reveals, the one true God reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him. Verses 24. and 25, therefore Daniel went into Ariok whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said to him, do not destroy the wise men of Babylon, bring me in before the king and I will show, reveal the king the interpretation. So that's the dominant theme is about this mystery being revealed. But the most important key text are verses 16 and 30. And they just highlight the priestly role of Daniel in the nation of Israel. In verse 16 and verse 30, they are similar verses. Verse 16 we read, and Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time that he might show the interpretation to the king. And then again in verse 30, but as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order or for this purpose that the interpretation may be known to the king and that you may know the thoughts of your mind. Think about what's going on here. The sovereign God of the heavens and the earth, is condescending to this pagan, prideful, idolatrous king and is revealing to him a mystery through the agency of Daniel and his three companions. A mystery is revealed to Nebuchadnezzar. Now I want you to consider God's mysterious ways in how he operates. God wants to reveal the future of the world to this great king. How does he do it? How does God come into contact with this king? Well think, he doesn't just come in a night vision to Nebuchadnezzar. He could have, but he doesn't. Now he comes through his chosen people, Israel. They are the instruments he uses to reveal truth and we've got to start to see ourselves in that light as well. We are a kingdom of priests. How do the pagans around us, the people who are in darkness and ignorance learn about God? through the church, through our interaction. We are truly light to them. And God so often uses us to reveal the greatest mystery of them all, the purpose of the coming of his son for the redemption of his people. But I want you to think a little bit about the process here. How does Daniel come into contact with this pagan king? So unexpected. It just doesn't, it looks, if you look at the circumstances, it appears as if God is not working at all. God's will is outworked in what appears to be failure. Daniel is shipped off to Babylon through exile. His people have been covenant breakers. And it's through exile that they come into contact with this great king. This is a common theme in God's providential rule, and there is a great and comforting lesson that we can learn from it. Think of Joseph. How does God save his dearly beloved precious covenant people from starvation during a time of drought and famine? How does he do it? Well he takes Joseph and he works into Joseph's life a series of most unfortunate events. Joseph is wrongly treated by his brothers. Shipped out into slavery. Doesn't look good, right? Surely God has abandoned Joseph. And then Joseph is unfairly treated, unjustly charged for an attempted rape on Potiphar's wife. Goes to prison. And it's through his imprisonment that he comes into contact with some people in Pharaoh's house. And through helping them, he gains a reputation and eventually reveals a dream to Pharaoh, is put up in a high political position in Egypt, and has the power to feed the people of God. Paul. When he's commissioned as an apostle to the Gentiles, he's told that he is going to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, to the Jews, and to kings. How do you do that? You don't just have open access to high-ranking government officials in the Roman world. How did Paul get to speak to the great leaders of Rome? You know, if you read the book of Acts, all of those encounters were the direct result of his imprisonment. Every one. That's the only way that it would happen. God sovereignly takes what appears to be a tragic circumstance and uses it to reveal himself to others. The same thing is happening here. And the ultimate expression of this mysterious outworking of God's providence is Jesus Christ himself. Who would have thought that through the humiliation of death on a Roman cross, the devil would be defeated? Sin would be erased. God's people would be redeemed. God has a bigger picture than most of the Jews at that time realized. Israel often failed to grasp the expanse that God had, the vision that God had for the building of his kingdom. In the first chapters of Genesis, we're told that the race of Adam are to multiply and to fill the earth. To fill the earth. That's been always God's intended plan, was a kingdom that reached and touched all tribes, all people, all nations. It was never to be just about Israel. They were to be a tool in his hand to reach God. the nations of the world. And that plan is still very much intact. God has a plan to bring salvation, and he does it through his people, that priestly people, which is now the church, to bring salvation to Jews and to Gentiles, and that plan is most definitely foreshadowed here in Daniel chapter two. The second thing I wanted to point out in this text is this revelation before the revelation. In the section that we're looking at, verses 17 to 30, Daniel, He scratches the surface a little bit about the dream. He just says it's about the future. But we don't know what it is, not yet. That's gonna come in the next section, verses 31 to 45. But I would suggest to you that he reveals something far more profound in the section we're dealing with here than he does in the revelation. of the dream. Don't miss the subtle yet substantial revelation that is made in our text. What is said here is, as I've already mentioned, probably more important than the particular dream that Nebuchadnezzar has and that God reveals. Daniel reveals to Nebuchadnezzar the most basic truth of our understanding about God. John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion says this in his opening chapter. He says, the true knowledge of ourselves, the true knowledge of who we are, not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him. And what I'm gonna suggest is that that is precisely what Daniel is revealing to Nebuchadnezzar. He is putting in the face of Nebuchadnezzar a right understanding of who he is with a hope that Nebuchadnezzar will come to find the one true God, which he does in the book of Daniel. A right, Daniel reveals to Nebuchadnezzar a right doctrine of man. A right doctrine of man. Nebuchadnezzar, along with most pagan kings, thought of himself as a god, some type of a superhuman greater than all the rest. Look at chapter four, verse 30. is when things really start to heat up with Nebuchadnezzar and God. In chapter four, verse 30, Nebuchadnezzar says this. He's walking on the roof of his palace, looking out at, Babylon was supposedly just a magnificent city. And he looks out at the beautiful architecture, the massive city that he had sovereign and absolute, or so he thought, control of. And he says to himself, is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty? Self-idolatry. Nebuchadnezzar thought of himself as a god, or at least among the gods. He also expected too much from the men in positions of power in his kingdom. This whole series of events testifies to that. Verse 10. Nebuchadnezzar has laid out this absurd request. You're wise men? Okay, tell me my dream. Get inside my head. I'm not going to tell you what it was. You tell me my dream. And we're told that the wise men say this to him. The Chaldeans answered the king and said, there's not a man on earth who can meet the king's demands. You are treating us as if we are gods. It's unfair. Through an extreme demonstration of human pride, the line between the sovereign creator and the finite creature has been blurred in the mind of this great and majestic king, Nebuchadnezzar. And Daniel wields the sledgehammer that is going to crush that misconception and misunderstanding. And he does it here in this text. This way of thinking that we've just described about Nebuchadnezzar, it's the root sin of the human race. It's in the heart of everyone sitting here tonight. What is it that led to the fall? Well, Eve was handed a prospect that if she eats of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she will be like God. And that's what we all, in our sinful, that remnant of sin in us, we want to be God. We want to decide wrong and right. We don't want to be told that. We all have a tendency to lust for the control of our situation, our circumstances, our environment, our lives. We want to control it. We don't want to relinquish that to God. And that's what made Nebuchadnezzar so angry. He didn't control his circumstances like he wanted to. But look at verse 27. Daniel begins to reveal the limitations of the human nature. Verse 27, Daniel answered the king and said, no wise man, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked. These are mere men. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. Daniel, in a very, in an astonishingly wise way, has just sharply rebuked Nebuchadnezzar. Has just challenged his doctrine of man. Has just drawn a fine line between the creator of the universe and his creatures. A fundamental distinction, the creator creature distinction. Look also at Daniel's humility in verse 30. Daniel says, but as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king. When we understand ourselves correctly and our God correctly, we become humble. We become dependent. We become small. We become a people of faith. Nebuchadnezzar is to begin to see his own smallness, his insignificance, his powerlessness, and his finitude. Look at verse, in Daniel's praise to God, He says in verse 21 of his God, he changes times and seasons. He removes kings and he sets kings up. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who are of understanding. And that's at the heart of the dream that Nebuchadnezzar has. Nebuchadnezzar, you're nothing in the sight of God. He can, just as quickly as he gave you this glorious kingdom, He will take it away. And that's what the dream, as we will find out next week, is in part about. But not only does Daniel teach him about the doctrine of man, he also teaches him about the doctrine of God. Daniel reveals something of the being and nature of the one true God in his interaction with this pagan king. Verse 28 may seem to us as nothing big, but in fact it is. Daniel in verse 27 has brought a more realistic expectation of humanity. Men, astrologers, Chaldeans, wise men, they can't reveal dreams. Verse 28, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. And he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in latter days. A God in heaven. We run across that statement without really thinking about it, but this statement has profound and significant, profound and great significance. The God of heaven. When that term is used, and it's used several times in this chapter, it is a statement of the doctrine and understanding of who God is. God in heaven places the God of Israel outside of the created realm. He's not like us. His dwelling place, His home, His point of origin is over, outside of, and above the created realm. He is over it. He is outside of it. He's untouched by it. He rules over it. Daniel reveals the fundamental distinction between the unlimited creator and the limited creature. If you think about a lot of our names or characteristics of God, they're teaching us this very truth. They're teaching us that there is a God in heaven. In the beginning of our Lord's Prayer, we say, our Father in heaven. What is that teaching us? that we have a God who we have access to, who controls everything because He stands outside of it. Therefore, we can pray for our daily bread because He controls the weather, He controls the shipment of goods, He controls the growth of everything, all vegetation, plant life, animal life. He is our Father in heaven. Think about certain terms that we use, such as eternal. It's a negative term. We're not actually saying something positive, we're saying something negative. God is not limited by time. That's what eternal means. Not limited by time. Omnipresent. God is not limited by physical location. Infinite. God is not limited, constrained by space in any ways. He's the God of heaven. God exists outside the created order. He stands above it and he rules over it. But one thing that is unique about this God is that he being overall enters into creation so that he can have fellowship with his creatures. Yes, he is transcendent, but he's also imminent. He's great, but he also delights to be with his people. Now look at verse 11 in the understanding of the Chaldeans about God. And they complained to the king in verse 10, there's not a man on earth who can answer this dilemma that you've presented to us. And then verse 11, the thing that the king asked is difficult and no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling place is not with flesh. Now the gods, they don't deal with flesh. They don't want to get themselves dirty by coming close to us. But Daniel's saying, no, no, no, not my god. Not only has he revealed this so I could share it with you, but there's a time, and this comes out in the prediction of the son of man in the book of Daniel, where this very God dwells in the flesh among us, John chapter one. So yes, he is, there is a sharp distinction between the creator and the creature. But that in no way diminishes the reality that the great creator of the heavens and the earth has designed us so that he might have fellowship with us. That's a lesson being taught in Daniel chapter two. It foreshadows very significantly the coming of the son of God in the flesh. So these are the lessons that we learn from this middle part of Daniel chapter two. Daniel and Israel and now the church, we are a priestly people who are bearing the message of God's mystery to the world. And we are teaching the world about who they are and who God is. Let us pray. Father we thank you for the message that you have communicated to us through Daniel chapter 2 and we It's amazing to see your interaction with this pagan king, your condescending grace to reveal truth to him so that he might seek after you and knowing you, which ultimately it appears that he does in upcoming chapters in Daniel. We pray, oh Lord, that we would understand your will for us, that we are a kingly people, a priestly nation, and that we have an obligation to bear witness to the world of your son and what he's come to do. And we pray that you would enable us to do that for your glory and for your praise, amen.