Episode Transcript
God willing we're going to finish Daniel chapter 1 this morning and we'll resume in our study next week in chapter 2.
We left off in Daniel chapter 1 verse 19 last week.
So we're going to begin there this morning to gain our context.
After training for three years to serve the king of Babylon, the men who were taken captive from Judah were brought before the king and verse 19 says the king communed with them and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
Therefore stood they before the king.
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were the four godly men who practiced the excellence of obedience to God.
We call this the excellence of obedience because what you gain from your obedience to God will always excel what you think you'll gain through your disobedience to God.
These four men whom God had given great wisdom and understanding because of their obedience to him now have direct contact with the king of Babylon whom they serve and moving forward in verse 20 now the Bible says and in all matters of wisdom and understanding.
Let's pause there.
Father we thank you for your precious word.
I thank you for each and every soul father who's sitting in the pews this morning and hearing father online Lord in different places of the world.
I pray for each and every one of them.
You'll feed us with the bread of God.
Teach us in your word.
In Jesus precious name may you receive all the glory.
Amen.
The Bible says and in all matters of wisdom and understanding.
If you'll take your pen and underscore those two words all matters.
All matters.
The Hebrew word translated matters here literally means words.
So in all words of wisdom and understanding meaning everything these four men were asked about in conversation when wisdom and understanding were desired of them.
You see as servants of the king these four godly men were sought out concerning all matters of wisdom and understanding.
That was their job.
They were advisors to the king of Babylon.
There's a lot more to it than that.
This is a story of the sovereignty of God in the chaos of men.
Repeat that again.
This is a story of the sovereignty of God in the chaos of men because of their unrepentant sin catastrophe had struck the kingdom of Judah.
Men had been stripped from their homes and taken captive to serve Nebuchadnezzar in the land of Babylon.
That is the type of chaos sin causes.
Sin brings chaos into the world and I'm sure most of you saw the tense meeting last week between our president and President Zelensky Friday afternoon.
There is war in Ukraine.
People are dying every day and people are arguing about how to stop it and all because of one thing.
People refuse to love their neighbor as themselves.
That's sin.
It's sin.
Sin brings chaos in the world.
We have a new timekeeping system where I work and the system is not working well at all and people are stressed because of it and if we could all trust each other to be truthful with the time that we claim we not even need a timekeeping system.
You know?
But it's sin that causes us to need the timekeeping system which brings the broken system which brings the chaos and the stress.
Sin brings chaos in the world.
The people of the fallen kingdom of Judah including these four godly men had been thrown into a state of chaos because of sin but what we need to understand is there's something special that's going on in the background that's not seen in the foreground.
These men are not simply advisors to the king of Babylon.
They are instruments of the king of kings.
See Babylon has just conquered the kingdom of Judah.
Babylon is the most powerful empire on earth at this time yet in the sovereignty of God the empire of Babylon is now being led by four Jewish captives.
Through the advice they're giving its king.
Isn't that amazing?
You see the Jewish captives they receive their wisdom from God and then the king of Babylon he was receiving his wisdom from the Jewish captives and unbeknownst to the king of Babylon God was using this process to ensure that his word was influencing Babylon's decisions in a way that God's people would be cared for and God's interest in the world were carried out.
So who was wearing the crown?
The king of Babylon.
Who was directing that crown?
The God in heaven.
Babylon was in charge but God was in control.
That is a principle you can take home with you.
Next time something happens to you and you get thrown into a state of chaos that you can't control like these four godly men Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, Misha, Misha something or another.
I can't remember all their names.
I gotta go back and look each time brother Shepherd.
I'm trying to erase Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego until we get to that point.
It's hard.
War like they were thrown into it.
When you get thrown into a state of chaos like those four men you tell yourself Babylon's in charge but God's in control.
The sovereignty of God rules in the chaos of men.
Christian when you were taken captive by the chaos of this fallen world you remember that the sovereignty of God rules in the chaos of men.
When John the Baptist was put in prison and he was decapitated for his preaching of God's Word the persecutor was in charge but God was in control.
So John lost his head.
Brother Richard how could God be in control?
John gained far more that day than he lost and his faithfulness is forever recorded in God's Word for us to see.
Sin brings chaos to our mortal bodies and it brought chaos to him then but God was sovereign in that chaos.
When the Apostle Paul was afflicted by disease and he prayed three times for God to heal his disease that man was an Apostle.
He had work to do for God.
He had epistles to write.
He had people to minister to.
He didn't want to be bogged down with the disease but he was afflicted by the disease and at that time the disease was in charge but God was in control.
And after having suffered through that disease the Apostle Paul said he'd much rather have that disease and the power of God rest on him.
Christian don't let the chaos get you down.
Every one of us goes through chaos.
Every single one of us.
We go through difficult times.
We go through scary times.
We go through uncomfortable times.
We go through times of great questioning and doubt.
Don't let this chaos that sin causes bring you down because the sovereignty of God rules in the chaos of men.
These men were captives in Babylon.
Has something ever taken you beyond your control and taken you captive by its power?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You get stuck in the hospital.
Your heart rhythm gets out of pace.
You get a cancer diagnosis.
Something gets you down.
You are taken captive against your will to the power of whatever chaos is in your life at that time.
Sickness, financial ruin.
I work at the bankruptcy court.
I see people coming in all the time bankrupt to file for the first time.
I'm thinking man they got a long process to go through.
What a sad thing.
Persecution, adversity, afflictions of all sorts.
These things can come upon us suddenly.
They take us captive by their power and we are powerless against them.
But in the chaos of our lives God is in control.
When these men were captive in Babylon, what all was God in control of?
Real easy.
Look back at those two words you underscored.
Say it out loud with me.
All matters.
Isn't that good?
What was God in control of?
All matters.
Here's a kingdom truth.
No matter who is in charge, God is in control.
The king of Babylon was in charge but God was in control.
Proverbs chapter 21 verse 1 says, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord.
As the rivers of water, he turneth it whether so ever he will."
Well you'd think the water was in control wouldn't you?
The water is powerful.
That water comes down and crashes and moves and all as it comes down the river.
But the water has the power.
But what's in control?
The river is.
The river tells that water where to go.
And no matter if that water decided it wanted to you know go somewhere else or go back the opposite direction.
Nope.
Ultimately it's got to go right back to that ocean.
And right back to the process that God put it through.
The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord.
You see the king has a heart.
What does God have?
He has a hand.
The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord.
The king has a heart.
God has a hand.
And that means God has a sovereign hand in every nation on earth.
God gave us a free will now.
God doesn't tell kings to sin.
Not everything Vladimir Putin does is good.
Not everything Donald Trump does is good.
People have a will.
Every king has a will.
And kings do what God doesn't want them to do sometimes.
It's just the way it is.
So God gave us a free will.
God doesn't control every thought and every action that people make.
Even kings.
And God wasn't doing that with King Nebuchadnezzar either.
King Nebuchadnezzar made some blunders while he was king.
And we'll see that as we go.
So did his children.
The king has a heart though.
And God has a hand.
And in that we have to understand that God doesn't control the chaos.
He keeps the chaos under control.
Does that make sense to you?
You don't blame God for what some evil ruler does.
But you can trust God that whatever evil that ruler does, God's going to keep boundaries on it.
And he's going to turn that king's heart in the direction it should go.
And to you, you may be seeing one angle that the king is doing something here.
Or the dictator is doing something here.
But through all of that, God is working out his will.
And when people die in war, a lot of times that's just the judgment of God being carried out.
As we learn as you go through first and second kings with Brother Shepard.
The turmoils came about as the result of sin.
And when Israel was right with God, God protected the nation of Israel.
So God doesn't control the chaos.
He keeps the chaos under control.
And God's hand was using Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to influence the king of Babylon at that time.
For these matters of wisdom and understanding were those, look back in your text, that the king inquired of them.
The king inquired of them.
These captives weren't bossing the king around.
They weren't telling the king of Babylon what to do.
The king was asking them for their counsel.
He was inquiring them.
What do you think I should do in this situation?
What advice do you give?
See, no ruler knows everything.
And the rulers know that.
And because of that, that's why every ruler has advisors.
President Trump has lots of advisors.
Vladimir Putin, I promise you, has advisors.
If you don't have advisors, you're going to fail.
Because nobody knows everything.
And after hearing everybody's advice, a ruler ultimately has to decide which advice, if any, he's going to follow.
The king inquired of them.
God gave these men wisdom.
And then the king inquired.
The king sought the wisdom God gave them.
That's another wonderful truth.
You see, God gives to us for the purpose of giving to others.
Isn't that wonderful?
God gave Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
I got it that time, brother Shepherd.
He gave them wisdom and understanding.
And then the king comes and inquires of them for their wisdom and understanding.
God gave to them that he might give through them to someone else.
God gives to us for the purpose of giving to others.
And that means God never supplies spiritual gifts without giving spiritual recipients.
You can mark that down.
God never supplies spiritual gifts without giving spiritual recipients.
I've thought so often of my ministry and of people who are given gifts, and a lot of times they just don't want to use those gifts.
And you know what that means?
It would be like me saying, "Brother Doug, here...
Oh, by the way, Brother Doug, do those people in the nursing home need a puzzle?
They ever want puzzles?"
Yeah, the lady at work, I told her about your ministry, and she has a nice big jigsaw puzzle.
She said she's going to give it to me, then I could give it to you.
Now, if that lady gave me that jigsaw puzzle, that's a gift, right?
Now, she's not giving it to Doug.
She doesn't know Doug.
She's giving it to me.
She's handing that gift to me.
That gift's in my possession, but she's giving it to me that she might give it to him that he might give it to them.
And that's how it works.
Brother Doug's in here getting fed.
God gave to me, so I can give to him, so he can give to them, so they can give to somebody else that could just keep on going.
God never gives spiritual gifts without giving spiritual recipients for those gifts.
And that means if you're walking in the Spirit of God, then people who want God's wisdom, they're going to be seeking out that spiritual gift in you.
They're going to.
And we're wrong if we do not put ourselves in the position of exercising those spiritual gifts.
Would it be wrong for me if she were to give me that puzzle, and I took that puzzle, and I said, "Well, you know, this is a really nice puzzle.
You know, I think before I give to Brother Doug, Miss Tammy and I will get here at the kitchen table, and we'll put it together.
And we work on it here and there.
Jigsaw puzzles, they take forever.
We work on it here and there, and we finally get that put together.
Grandkids come over, and they help us too, and it was just a wonderful time.
And say, "You know, that thing's so pretty, and we put so much time into it.
How about we frame that puzzle, and we hang on the wall to commemorate the good memories we have together, putting that picture together?"
And so, besides, I mean, if we gave that to Brother Doug, and he gave it to those old people, and those old people, they may not like it.
They may think, "Well, why would we want that puzzle?
He could have given us a better puzzle.
We might get criticized for the puzzle.
We'll just hang it right here, and we'll enjoy it here in the house.
Would that be wrong for me to do then?
Huh?
It would?
But it was given to me.
But it was given to me to give to somebody else.
That'd be like stealing, wouldn't it?
And if God gave these men wisdom, and then someone inquires that wisdom of them, and they don't share that wisdom, that's stealing too.
Every Christian has spiritual gifts.
Those spiritual gifts may be carnal in their action, but spiritual in their benefit.
Okay?
For example, someone comes in, and they perform some kind of work here in the church.
Brother Billy's over there putting a trim up next door.
He comes, and he mows up here.
You say, "Well, that's not a spiritual gift."
Oh, you better believe it is.
You better believe it is.
When we benefit, when anything we do physically that benefits the church spiritually, it is a spiritual gift.
And if we are given a spiritual gift, and we sit on it, and we put the puzzle together at the table, and we frame up in the house, and we say, "Well, hey, this is wonderful.
Look at all of this."
People have talent that God's given them, and they don't use it for God.
They're stealing from God just as much as if I took money out of that offering plate, and I took it home with me.
They're stealing.
God never gives spiritual gifts without giving spiritual recipients.
And that means if you are not giving your spiritual gifts away to the recipients, then you're stealing from God, and you're stealing from them.
When God hears the kingdom truth, when people walk in God's Spirit, wise people will seek out their spiritual gifts.
When people walk in God's Spirit, wise people will seek out their spiritual gifts.
I have people write me about salvation.
I've spoken to people this week about their salvation.
Why?
Because if I'm walking in God's Spirit, wise people will seek out those spiritual gifts.
God never gives spiritual gifts without giving spiritual recipients.
King Nebuchadnezzar inquired these godly men, look back in your text, and he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers.
Literally, he found them ten hands better.
Hands as in hand.
That's what the Hebrew word means, ten hands better.
In other words, their godly wisdom was ten times more helpful than the wisdom of the ungodly men.
God's advice is always better than the world's advice.
Always better.
Daniel mentions here magicians and astrologers, and when you see the word magicians, don't think of someone pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
We're talking about black magic here.
Magicians and astrologers, the Babylonians, they worship false gods, and they also worship the stars, as Brother Shepherd explained a few Sundays back.
That's called the host of heaven.
And so the Babylonians worship false gods, they worship the stars.
Magicians and astrologers were essentially the same thing.
They just practiced the occult.
And the occult, if you're not sure what the occult means, there's only one way to get spiritual truth.
Only one way to receive divine enlightenment, and that's from God.
Any time you attempt to receive divine enlightenment from anything other than God, that's the occult.
That's the magicians and the astrologers.
You're trying to get it from your horoscope, that's the occult.
You're trying to get it from a Ouija board, that's the occult.
You're trying to get it from the internal meditation from within, that's the occult.
Let me tell you, man, there's nothing to tap into in here, okay?
All you can get is some good imagination out of that.
There's nothing to tap, that's the occult.
It may look really, really spiritual and wise to have some skinny guy in an orange bathrobe with a long flowing beard, like that, up in the mountain doing something like that.
It's a waste of time.
Y'all ever lost something before?
I know this has happened to you.
You've lost something, maybe a set of keys or something, and you start checking your pockets.
That's the first thing you do.
And after you've checked your pockets, and you know it's not there, but you can't find it anywhere else.
Do you know what you do?
You start checking those same pockets again.
That's it.
That's all you do.
When you see it, they're just...
And there's nothing there.
It's the occult.
And the Bible says that whenever he searched out these men, these magicians and astrologers who were trying to go to the stars, who were trying to meditate, who were seeking Baal, you know, meditation to Baal or whatever, anything but seeking God for that enlightenment and direction.
He found the direction of God ten times better than anything they could come up with.
They sought out supernatural wisdom and experience from something other than the God who made them.
Underscore the word "all."
All.
Now that's the second time we have seen this word "all."
We first saw "all matters."
Remember?
You underscored that originally.
All matters.
And now we see all the magicians and astrologers.
Their godly advice was better in every matter than every magician and astrologer the king inquired of.
Now here's a third time that we see the word "all" in this text.
Their godly advice was better than all the matters from all the magicians...
Look back in your text now... that were in all his realm.
Underscore that word "all" again.
All.
All.
All.
All matters.
All magicians.
All places.
God's advice is ten times better than the world's advice no matter what the subject you inquire about, no matter what source you try to obtain the enlightenment from, and no matter what situation or what place you're in in your life.
It's always ten times better.
No exception.
There's never any time in your life you can say, "Well now in this instance instead of going by what the Bible says, I think it's better to go by what ABC&D says."
All.
All.
All.
The king asked everyone in every place in his vast empire.
And nobody could match the wisdom of God found in these four godly men.
He must have spoken to hundreds of men if not thousands.
But the great number of men couldn't match the great wisdom of God.
I'll repeat that again.
All.
All.
All.
This big vast empire he had.
And the great number of men could not match the great wisdom of God.
Here's a kingdom truth for you this morning.
All of these magicians and astrologers, and no matter how many they were, the four men out of all the hundreds of thousands that were in his realm advising, they couldn't match those four men.
Kingdom truth.
The world will always have more advisors, but it will never have better advice.
The world will always have more advisors, but it will never have better advice.
Truth is not found in numbers.
Truth is found in God.
The majority will almost always be wrong, but God will always be right.
These men gave godly counsel.
Look back in verse 21 now.
"And Daniel continued even as the first year of King Cyrus."
Now King Cyrus wasn't a Babylonian king.
King Cyrus was a Persian king, and that's important.
And this means now that it's saying Daniel continued, this means this book is focusing on these four godly men, but especially on this one man named Daniel, whom the book is named.
And this man Daniel, this godly man Daniel, he continued to serve as an advisor to the king right up until the first year of King Cyrus.
And King Cyrus, again, he wasn't the king of Babylon, he was the king of Persia.
And Persia conquered Babylon.
So Daniel's serving the kings of Babylon right up into the time when Babylon gets conquered themselves.
So Babylon conquers Judah.
Daniel and his three godly friends are taken captive.
They then give advice to the king of Babylon, and then the country that conquered them gets conquered.
And Daniel lives through it all.
He lived and he died in faith, Daniel did, knowing that one day the kingdom that conquered them that was conquered by Persia would be conquered by someone else, would be conquered by someone else, and ultimately the Savior comes and he conquers it all.
And that's what Daniel went through.
And so as we're going through our life as well, and we see turmoil in between nations and things like that, first of all, don't get proud and say, "Well, we're America.
We're tough.
We'll make it through it."
Babylon thought they were tough too.
And don't get troubled, second of all, and say, "Oh no, what are we going to do?
What if we get taken over?
What if this?
What if that?"
Well, they did get taken over.
But you know what?
The beautiful thing was the sovereignty of God rules in the chaos of man.
And we can enter our chaos, being taken captive by our circumstances, relying on our God that He's going to keep the chaos under control, and in the end, He's going to take over everything.
And the God who's in control will be the God who's in charge.
And what a wonderful time that's going to be.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious Word.
Thank you, Father, for teaching us these wonderful truths.
Thank you, Father God, that in all the realm, Lord, that we could seek in every country we could go to, every philosopher, every advisor, every counselor, every psychologist or psychiatrist, every single advisor in every place of this world we could go to.
Lord, it can't match the wisdom of God that's found in the Word of God, the Bible.
We thank you, Father, for giving us this wonderful truth.
There is no truth inside ourselves, but there is truth above us, which came down to us by your wonderful grace.
Bless each and every person who came this morning.
Bless the food we're about to receive, Lord, next door.
Help us to have a wonderful time of fellowship, and we thank you for it in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.
