Daniel 10:1
All right, turn to the book of
Daniel, chapter 10, one, and we’re gonna read through chapter
11, verse two. Chapters 10, 11, and 12 go together,
and we probably should be covering all three chapters all at once,
but we’re not. We’re going to look at Chapter
10 tonight, Chapter 11 next week, and then Chapter 12 the week
after that. So three more nights of Daniel,
but the next three weeks really go hand in hand together. So
remember, the first half of Daniel has been his firsthand experiences.
As a young teenager, he was exiled with the other exceptional or
gifted or good-looking fellows from Jerusalem. He was brought
into the house of the king of Babylon. He was pressured to
maybe not live for God, but he’s remained steadfast. Now we fast
forward through the events in political service to several
kings, several different leaders, and he’s now an old man serving
under Cyrus, the king of Persia. There’s been a shift in national
dominance. It’s gone from Babylon to Persia.
But in the last several chapters, the visions that Daniel has received
have been visions of hardship for the people of God. Yes, visions
of a return from exile to Jerusalem from Babylon. But as we see tonight
and in the coming weeks, lots of hardship coming. So, Let’s
read together Daniel chapter 10, beginning at verse one. Hear the word of the living God.
In the third year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, a word was revealed
to Daniel, whose name was Belshazzar. And the word was true, and it
was a great conflict. And he understood the word and
had understanding of the vision. Those days I, Daniel, was mourning
for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat
or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all for
the full three weeks. On the 24th day of the first
month, as I was standing on the banks of the great river, that
is the Tigris, I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold,
a man clothed in linen with a belt of fine gold and gold from Uphaz
around his waist. His body was like beryl, his
face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches,
his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the
sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. And I, Daniel,
alone saw the vision, for the men who were with me did not
see the vision, but a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled
to hide themselves. So I was left alone and saw this
great vision and no strength was left in me. My radiant appearance
was fearfully changed and I retained no strength. Then I heard the
sound of his words. And as I heard the sound of his
words, I fell on my face in a deep sleep with my face to the ground.
And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands
and knees. And he said to me, oh, Daniel,
man greatly loved. Understand the words that I speak
to you and stand upright for now I have been sent to you.
And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling.
Then he said to me, fear not Daniel, for from the first day
that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before God,
your words have been heard and I have come because of your words.
The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days,
but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for
I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you
understand what is to happen to your people in the latter
days, for the vision is for days yet to come. When he had spoken
to me according to these words, I turned my face toward the ground
and was mute. And behold, one in the likeness
of the children of man touched my lips. Then I opened my mouth
and spoke. I said to him who stood before
me, O my Lord, by reason of the vision, pains have come upon
me, and I retain no strength. How can my Lord’s servant talk
with my Lord? For now no strength remains in
me and no breath is left in me. Again, one having the appearance
of a man touched me and strengthened me. And he said, O man greatly
loved, fear not, peace be with you. Be strong and of good courage. And as he spoke to me, I was
strengthened and said, let my Lord speak for you have strengthened
me. Then he said, do you know why
I have come to you? But now I will return to fight
against the Prince of Persia. And when I go out, behold, the
Prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is inscribed
in the book of truth. There is none who contends by
my side against these except Michael, your prince. And as
for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to
confirm and strengthen him. And behold, now I will show you
the truth. Behold, three more kings shall
arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all
of them. And when he has come, strong, Through his riches, he
shall stir up again against the kingdom of Greece. Amen. This is God’s word for us. Well, back in the year 538 BC,
there was the first Build Back Better program. It is not unique
or new to our current president or his current administration’s
It’s not their original idea. The Build Back Better program
was Cyrus, the king of Persia. And as he took over after winning
the battle in 539, as he won against the Babylonians and became
the leader of the Greek, or the great empire, the Persian empire,
we’re told in the book of Ezra that the Lord stirred in the
heart He stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia,
so that he made a proclamation. Now, before we say what the proclamation
is, Back in those days, a proclamation was important because it was
put on file in the book of records of the king. And that’s going
to become very important a little bit later in Israel’s history.
I’ll tell you why in just a moment. So this proclamation is no small
thing. Well, here’s the proclamation.
The proclamation is this, any exile in Persia, any exile from
Jerusalem and Judea, is welcome to go back, and they will have
the resources of the vast empire of Persia. They will have the
resources of Cyrus, king of Persia, to go and to rebuild Jerusalem,
to rebuild the city, to rebuild the walls, to rebuild the temple,
and to rebuild their houses, and to begin again to offer sacrifices
to Yahweh. The book of Ezra tells us this
was to fulfill the word of the Lord as prophesied through the
book, through the prophet Jeremiah. But Yahweh stirred in the heart
of Cyrus, the king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation.
I’m still going to come back to that in a few minutes. So
just hold this proclamation thought in the back of your mind. The
book of Ezra speaks of the survivors of the exile. It speaks of the
survivors who God stirred, his spirit stirred, and they were
sojourners back from Babylon, back from Persia to Jerusalem.
Their Brothers and sisters, not all went, some stayed, but they
gave them gold and they gave them silver. They gave them beast
of burden and they gave them free will offerings and said,
though you are going, we’ll stay here, but here is our wealth
to return and to build with. So the spirit stirred people,
they went. But they also went with the treasury
of Persia being opened, and every pan, every vessel, every pot,
every censer, every piece of gold, every piece of silver that
had been taken when Jerusalem was sacked in 605 and 586, and
during that Babylonian terror that was God’s judgment for Israel’s
disobedient, all of these things were returned to the people of
God. And so thousands of people and
thousands of vessels made this long journey from Persia, from
Babylon, back to Jerusalem. The numbers in Ezra are over
42,000 men They were servants, they were
women, they were children. So this could have been a hundred
thousand people. And then also over 5,400 vessels
from the temple were returned back to Jerusalem where they
might be used in service again. And so they made their way back
after about seven months from traveling and kind of getting
settled in the land back in their towns, checking things out and
making things safe, getting provisions, getting, The fridge full again
and those sorts of things. They don’t have a temple. It’s
still laying there in ruins, but they build an altar. And
it’s very interesting when you read the book of Ezra that the
reason they build an altar, well, the first one is so they can
worship God and offer him sacrifices. They had not done so in over
70 years. But the second reason they wanted
the smoke rising up into heaven is it was to let all the surrounding
nations, all the rabble around Jerusalem, it was to let them
know this is our city. This is the city of our God.
You keep away for our God, though he has judged us, he has brought
us back and he is mighty to save. Well, seven months in, they build
an altar, but about two years in, they begin to build the temple.
And as they get the foundation for the temple laid, they get
the priest and the Levites together. They have their horns, their
trumpets, and they have a little celebration. They sing a little
rendering of Psalm 136. Oh, give thanks to the Lord for
he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. But this is also the passage
where And it’s always this way, isn’t it? In the life of the
church, there were some old men. They remembered the temple back
when it was big. They remembered the good old
days. They remembered the church back when it was this way and
that way. And these men wept aloud. And so you had the mixture
of the weeping for the old temple and the joy for the new temple. Isn’t that the way it always
is? There’s some people that say, oh, the good old days, back
when so-and-so was the preacher, back when this was going on and
that was going on. And yes, we should look back
and be thankful, but God is always doing something new. We look
at the present and see God’s present blessings. But I wonder
if that wasn’t maybe a harbinger of things to come. little division
in the camp. Well, we remember the good old
days. We remember when the carpet was green and not red. You know,
we remember when the building was bigger and more people were
here and all the rest. Well, not only are these old
men going to be unhappy with Israel coming and rebuilding
the temple, the Samaritans, remember, the Northern tribes were exiled
first by Assyria. And as the Northern tribes were
exiled, 11 tribes were taken out and the Assyrians brought
in people. They expatriated the Israelites
and they repatriated the land with what in Jesus’ day, we’re
going to call the Samaritans. Remember the story of the good
Samaritan? It wasn’t the priest that helped the man robbed and
beat up. It wasn’t the Levite who helped the robbed man who
was beat up and left for dead. It was the Samaritan. Do Jews
like Samaritans? No, they hate Samaritans. The
Samaritans are from the north. They’re the repatriated people
who live in the country. Well, as Babylon destroyed Jerusalem
and expatriated the tribe of Judah 100 or so years later,
those people filtered down. What happens? when a city lies
in ruins or there’s a vacuum in power, well, the rabble comes
in. And so as Israel has gone back
in to Jerusalem and Judea to rebuild the temple, there’s chapter
four of the book of Ezra. We are in the book of Daniel.
Yes, I do know that. But chapter four of Ezra tells us a lot of
the story going on and it says something like this. Now the
adversaries of Judah and Benjamin saw the foundation of the temple. So you got these old men within
the camp, they’re fussing. It’s not as big as Solomon’s
temple. And now you got the outsiders, the adversaries. And they come
and they say, let us build with you. For we serve your God also. Well, the people of the North,
they do not serve Yahweh. They serve all sorts of gods. But you know, you get tempted
to be ecumenical. I can remember getting out of
seminary and we had a Thanksgiving service in our little town. We
were a little farm community on the outskirts of Charlotte.
A little Thanksgiving service with the Methodist. A little
Thanksgiving service with the Baptist across the street. A
little Thanksgiving service with the other Presbyterians down
the street. And it was a tradition for years. And you know how these
services go. You’ve heard of them. One year,
the Methodist person preaches. The next year, it’s the Presbyterian.
The next year, it’s the ARP guy. The next year, it’s the Baptist.
Well, we got to where we couldn’t participate. We really don’t
worship the same God. We have a sanctuary, it looks
the same. We have both opened Bibles and preach, but the inerrancy
of scripture is the fault line. And so differences quickly came. And I think the straw that broke
the camel’s back was maybe when the United Methodist preacher,
who not only differed in ordination concerns, but differed really
in scriptural things, began to say something that it just wasn’t
biblical. So the elders had to say, no
more. We like to be ecumenical. We like to think we’re all the
same. And not only do we say, oh, we’re
the same as the Methodists and the Baptists and all, and that
used to be true a couple hundred years ago, not true any longer.
But we have, y’all have read it in the paper, the Presbyterians
want to be kind to the Muslims. And so we let them break fast
in our fellowship hall. You’ve read the stories in the
news, and it can’t be done. We serve God, we serve Him, and
we serve Him alone. And if there’s a fault line,
particularly the inerrancy of Scripture, and then it leads
to other things, ordination issues, views of creation, views of worship,
views of salvation, views of who is included, who’s not included,
you just can’t worship together. And so Zerubbabel, who is the
priest, he is the leader of this group, he says, no. We alone,
we are the people of God. We alone will build a temple
to Yahweh our God. Well, that wasn’t the answer
that they wanted, and so they discouraged the people of God.
In fact, it literally says they weakened their hands from building
the temple. They bribed governors from Persia. They frustrated the rebuilding
of the temple, all the days of Cyrus, the King of Persia. Now
I’m getting a little bit more to Daniel here. Daniel was under
Cyrus. Cyrus was over Israel. Cyrus
was the King of Persia for about eight years. And so this was
in about year two. And so for six years, you had
not only a little rabble in the camp. We remember the bigger
temple. We remember when the carpet was green, not red. We
remember when the heat was at 72 on Sundays and the air was
never colder than an Eskimo. We remember the, I mean, fill
in the blank. You know how these church couples
go. And they’re significant, but these outsiders are frustrating
the work of the rebuilding of the temple all the days of Cyrus. And it’s going to get worse,
but we’ll stop there. And we’ll go back to Daniel.
Daniel’s now an old man. Daniel’s now in service to Cyrus,
the king of Persia. He loves Judah. He loves Jerusalem. He loves Yahweh. We’ve seen that
in his worship. We’ve seen that in his prayers.
We’ve seen that in his steadfastness to keep God’s covenant, even
though in a foreign and strange land. And you can imagine Daniel
in the court of Cyrus, the king of Persia, he hears the rumblings
as the couriers go back and forth these thousand miles and give
news. Cyrus, he’s the ruler, the emperor of Persia, this vast
empire, but news is coming in from the roads and the couriers
and the governors and the satraps and all. The news comes back
and Daniel, as he’s a man in the court, he hears these things
and so we find him in prayer. And prayer is the first thing
we want to think of tonight. I know we’ve talked about prayer
a number of times in recent weeks, but prayer is one of the biggest
activities in Daniel’s life. It’s one of the least activities
in our lives though, isn’t it? Daniel, it says, prayed for three
weeks. He was on his knees for three weeks. He was fasting for
three weeks. He was in ashes and sackcloth. He was in mourning
for three weeks. Could we give three minutes? He’s watching and praying. We
remember Jesus’ words to the disciples the night he was betrayed.
Could you not stay awake to watch and pray? Well, Daniel could.
And maybe Daniel is one of the few people in the Bible, if not
one of the only ones in the Bible, where we see him at prayer, and
it’s a lot like Christ, isn’t it? He’s steadfast in it. He’s faithful in it. He’s persistent
in it. And I don’t know if you caught
this when we read through, but the angel appears. to Daniel. And he says, as was echoed from
last week’s study, your prayer has been heard. A dispatch has
been sent. A decree has gone out. God hears
your prayer and you are much loved. And here comes the answer
to your prayer. I’ve been sent to tell you. I’ve
been sent to help you with understanding and wisdom and insight. But did
you catch that this angel was delayed and coming to see Daniel,
why? Because he was striving in the
unseen world with the powers of darkness who favor Persia
and not God. If you caught that, it ought
to have made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It should have sent shivers through
your body. We often think that all there is is what we can see.
We often think that all there is is what we can lay eyes on,
the grass and the trees and the sky, but the Apostle Paul and
others in the scripture speak of the battles we face with cosmic
powers, the powers of darkness, the powers of this world that
hates Almighty God. And so Daniel has this angel
come to him while he’s in prayer, while he’s in prayer, striving
before the Lord, making his pleas before the Lord known. Gabriel
has appeared to him and now it’s a man clothed in linen. And did you catch while Daniel
is in prayer, this vision comes to him and it’s a man clothed
in linen. It’s a angel most likely. And he’s undone. He’s, uh, has
to sleep it off. That’s what the scripture tells
us. He falls on his face and this is often the case say with
Mary when Gabriel appears to her or Zechariah when he’s in
the temple and He’s told that he will be the father of John
the baptizer or John on the Isle of Patmos Isaiah and his call
and the sixth chapter on and on we can go every time somebody
has an encounter with the holy with the Almighty or with his
angels his messengers they are undone. They don’t write a bestseller
and go on tour. They literally fall apart, but
notice the comfort. The angel of God sets his hand
upon him. And so there’s, again, the importance
of prayer in this passage with Daniel, but there’s a second
thing I think this passage tells us, and it’s what’s gonna be
unfolded over the coming weeks as we look at chapters 11 and
12 also. It’s hardship. I don’t know who
told us that the Christian life is rosy. It’s not. I think it’s
better to live in, well, it’s not better, but it’s better from
a human perspective to live in ignorant bliss, eat, drink, eat,
drink and be merry for tomorrow you die. That’s how most of the
world lives. And they just happily do it. They’re not concerned
about eternity. They’re not concerned about judgment.
They’re not concerned about righteousness. They’re not concerned about lost
souls and all the rest. But when you become a Christian
and you become aware of not only the troubles of this life, but
the troubles of the life to come for those who do not bow their
knee to Christ, It brings hardship on us. It troubles us, but also
it brings hardship because the world hates us. Jesus said, if
the world hates me, it’s going to hate you. And if I’m gone
to heaven and you’re my representatives on earth, you’re going to be
hated. In fact, Paul says to the Colossians, I am in my present
ministry filling up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings. So the
insults, the misery meant to be heaped on Christ are heaped
on his servants. And so the people of God always
are under hardship. But in chapter 10, verse one,
it says that the word was true, the word that came to him, the
word was true, and it was a great conflict, or it was about a great
conflict. If you were to write a book today
in 2021, set out to write a Christian bestseller, you would not write
a book called Your Worst Life Now. You would not write a book
about suffering and pain and hardship. You would not write
a book about losses and crosses. It would not sell. It doesn’t
matter how white your teeth are on the cover. It would not matter
if there was a doctor before your name and a junior or senior
after your name. It does not matter how good your
PowerPoint presentation is. It won’t sell books. We’re ruined
in America. People don’t want suffering.
They don’t want hardship. They don’t want difficulty. But I think it’s good to be painfully
honest, and that’s what Daniel’s gonna get. We won’t get it all
tonight. We’re just getting a glimpse of it next week, and the week
after, more is to come. I remember sitting in the doctor’s
office. We had a lady in our church named
Caroline whose husband had died and she had cancer. And so she
wanted someone to go with her to her oncologist. And so somehow
I drew the short straw. I went with her and we’re sitting
there in the oncologist office and this doctor comes in. He
has no bedside manner whatsoever. He just told her the bare truth. And he said, you’ve got cancer.
This is your treatment. And he said, it’s going to hurt
like hell. That’s what he told her. And I thought, what a jerk. And we walked out of the office
and she said, well, at least he was honest. And she went through
a very difficult stretch of chemotherapy and radiation. And he was right,
it hurt like hell. It was painful and miserable.
And that’s in a sense what Daniel is going to hear and communicate
to the people of God all the way through the coming of Jesus.
You’re going to live for God and it’s going to hurt like hell
because all the powers of hell and darkness through the Greeks
and through the Romans and through all the powers and principalities,
both of this earth and the demonic powers of the unseen world are
going to come upon you. But this shouldn’t surprise us.
The best-selling book in Christianity should be based on Genesis 3,
verse 15. The seed of the woman and the
seed of the serpent will battle, and they will battle, and they
will battle, and they will battle until the very end when the seed
of the woman says to the seed of the serpent, you go to hell
forever. And that’s the lot of the Christian
life until Jesus comes and puts Satan in its place forever. It’s just going to be hard. And
so we think about our own nation’s demise. You look at the fall
of Rome and all of the harbingers that pointed to the fall of Rome,
the promiscuity, the exchanging of identities, the political
classes ruling, the wealth and the poverty and the just the
demonic powers at work in the nation of Rome. It’s headed our
way. Who knows when it will fully
take root in America. It’s coming. Should we be surprised? No, hardship. I read an article
some years ago. It’s called, Hello Hardship,
My Old Friend. And that ought to be the way
we think as Christians. Life is hard. We do get petunias
and roses and sunny days. Fun days at the swimming pool
or at the beach or the seaside. We have wonderful times of worship
and friendship, but it’s a dark world at times also. But think
about not just Christianity in the context of America, being
a Christian in Afghanistan, being a Christian in Iran, being a
Christian in China, being a Christian in Eritrea, being a Christian
in other parts of the world that are hostile. We walked in this
morning and we smelled coffee. There were no chains on our doors.
No bulldozer has nipped at the corner of our building to knock
it over. Our steeple has not been toppled. Your pastor has
not been jailed. And maybe some of these things
will come in our generation, who knows? But that leads us
to the third thing. So we see Daniel’s prayer, we
see hardship. But the third thing we see is
the call to be steadfast. We live in a wartime effort.
Most of you were not alive during the last World War, but the posters
we still see, the women with their sleeves rolled up and their
biceps showing. We can do it, right? The men
were off at war. The women had to continue manufacturing. We had to do what we had to do
to make life work. You watch some of these PBS shows
about life during the wartime. You had to buck it up. You had
to do what you had to do to get through, to keep your wits about
you, and to keep food on the table. Christianity is not rosy. We got it pretty doggone good
here in America. There may be times where it’s
not that way, but we need a dose of reality. And that dose of
reality will help us be steadfast. You know, if you’re gonna run
a foot race, if you’re gonna run a marathon, you’re gonna have a coach and
he’s gonna tell you to train. She’s gonna tell you to tighten
your shoes, to lighten your load, to pace yourself, to eat the
right foods beforehand, to breathe in a certain way, to run in the
tailwind of another runner. And as we understand these realities,
we need to be coached in the word of how to run this race. in the midst of darkness and
hardship. And one of the ways we can remain steadfast is to
remember the purposes of the Lord. We heard tonight in our
shorter catechism, God is a spirit. He’s infinite, eternal, and unchangeable
in his being, wisdom, power, his holiness, his justice, his
goodness, and truth. We serve a God who does not change. He is all that he is, all the
omnis, right? He’s all that he is and that
does not ever change. We learned of his sovereignty. He has ordained whatsoever comes
to pass. And I’m not sure why Christianity
has tried to poke a hole in God’s sovereignty. I guess sometimes
our humanistic minds can’t get around the fact that there is
a God and he is in complete control. and he ordains whatsoever comes
to pass, the good, the bad, the in-between, and he uses it for
his holy ends. He uses it for his holy purposes. His purposes will ripen, will
sometimes look back and see his purposes. Think of being steadfast
in light of Martin Luther’s, a mighty fortress is our God.
Though the mountains give way, though the earth fall into the
sea, we can be still and know that our God is our fortress. He’s given us the church, the
spirit, the gifts, the word, and the sacrament. And just like
Genesis 3 15, he announces the fall of Satan. One little word
shall fail him. And that little word ought to
give us great confidence in hard times. That’s what this is meant
to do. So stay tuned until next week.
Pray with me. Our Lord, we thank you for this
chance to think on the hardship of the people of God back in
the days of Babylon and Persia and how, how it helps us now. And so remind us it’s a wartime
effort. Remind us of reality. It’s not
always rosy, but the purposes of the Lord will ripen before
our eyes and we will see what you have for us. We pray for
your grace to live a faithful Christian life before a crooked
and depraved generation. And we ask for your help and
grace in the name of Christ. Amen.