sitting back in Daniel this morning, Daniel chapter seven. But before we hear from prophet Daniel, or speaking through Daniel, let us ask his blessing on the reading, the preaching, the hearing of that word. Take a moment of prayer with me, would you? Dear Lord, we come again before you, Lord at this time, We pray that indeed you would reveal Christ to us through the word and through the work of your Holy Spirit at this time, and that you would work in our hearts, and that you would bury the seeds, as it were, of the gospel deep within, and that you would produce fruit thereby, the fruit of the Spirit in our lives as a result. We pray, Lord, that you would now anoint the lips of your servant, protect him from error, and that he would bring us the unhindered word of God, that you would speak directly to us. Lord, we come, and we wait, and we hear, and we wait expectantly, Lord, joyfully. And so we ask, Lord, speak to us, for your servants are listening. We pray and ask these things in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and all of God’s people said, Amen. Amen. Daniel chapter 7. Daniel chapter 7. I’ll bring you verses 1 to 8 this morning. Daniel 7 verses 1 to 8. Once more, this is the word of our God. Please give full attention to it now. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. Daniel declared, I saw my vision by night and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagle’s wings. Then I looked and its wings were plucked off. It was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man. And the mind of a man was given to it. Behold another beast, the second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And it was told to arise, devour much flesh. And after this I look and behold, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. And after this, I saw in the night visions the hold of fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth that devoured and broke into pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it. and it had ten horns. And I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.” The word of the Lord. As I reflected upon Daniel 7 last week, This of course is apocalyptic genre. We’ll talk about it in a moment. But I remembered as I was reflecting upon this chapter, when I was younger and some of the songs that… that were popular at the time that kind of interlaced with what we’re going to see today. Songs like World Destruction was one of the songs. One of the songs was titled The End of the World As We Know It. Or the movies I think of when I was a child as well have this apocalyptic theme to them. Movies like Mad Max or Day of the Dead or Terminator or Blade Runner, right? You can go on and on with the movies from that time. And I thought, wow, what a bunch of downers they were at that time. But it’s not just at that time, of course, right? This is true of older movies and stories as well. Movies that have been, began as stories a long time ago and were made into movies. Movies like, stories like The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, I Am Legend, I think was written in the 50s. One of the most terrifying to me when I was a child, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you remember that, there was a dog with a man’s face that terrified me. But these are perpetually made over and over again. And there’s this interest that seems this common theme that is in the heart of man that’s curious and inquisitive and wants to express their views on what the end of the world is. This end of the world theme is prevalent throughout culture, history, story, and music. And the degree of interest in the end of the world goes up and it goes down, but it never really goes away, never really goes away. And it would do well that all those people who are obsessed with these things, things having to do with the end of the world, it would benefit them if they would pay more attention to Scripture, all of their attention really, on the word of the sovereign Lord of history, on the mighty creator and Lord of time, the Lord of the universe, the Lord of the whole scope of history from beginning to end and beyond. You know, God’s holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, inspired, perfect Word is the place to go, always, and indeed for this theme as well. If you want to know how the world will end, what’s coming and how it will shake out, The Word of God is your guidebook, it’s your answer, right? And so because it’s the same Lord who is sovereign and controls all of history, right? It’s the same Lord. And so if we jump back into this Old Testament wisdom book in the second half here of Daniel, verses seven, chapter seven to 12, remember that the second half is apocalyptic. It’s apocalyptic, and for some that is a scary word. It’s a strange and confusing and incomprehensible thing, apocalyptic literature. But if we slow down and look at the big picture, the macrospective view, and we work through it thoughtfully, we will certainly find what the Lord has for us there, what he intends for us to learn from it. And just a hint, it’s not to confuse us or to trouble us, right? That’s not the purpose of apocalyptic literature. And as we look at this text and we dig into this, we’ll try to avoid some of the pitfalls that people so easily fall into and that can distract us from actually what’s being given to us. in this text. And so let’s first reorient ourselves to where we are and where we are and what’s going on in Daniel as we make this transition from the first to second half there. And then we’ll try to define what type of writing this is, right? What is apocalyptic literature? This is genre, this type of kind of writing. And then probably that will guide us to receive the blessing that the Lord has given to us in these chapters, right? What we’re going to learn from this. When I thought about a title for this sermon, I thought appropriate something like encouragement from the end of the world, right? Or just the line from that song, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. And I feel fine. Not my favorite song, but it’s a great line. And so we’ll see as we dig in here to Daniel 7, that though this present evil age to the end is beastly, nevertheless, a day is coming. A day is coming. when the beasts and beastliness of this age will receive justice and judgment in God’s final victory and God’s final victory is consummation. And so we see Also here that God is not only powerful and in control, but he’s faithful and he is just, right? He is a sovereign God. So often we look at texts like this and we fail to grasp what’s going on because of the oddness and the differentness of it or our familiarity with some of the sensationalized things that are going on, sensational things that are going that have been sensationalized, I should say. But we need to learn as we do so We need to learn as God’s people in exile needed to learn. And we’re encouraged, we too, that because of these things, we can have hope in our waiting while we live in the longing of these final things, when we live in the longing of that final victory that is to come. right, longing for the end of the beastliness of this age to be done away with, and the beginning of a final state in a sinless country, beholding the beauty and glory of our Savior, right, with no more tears, no more pain or suffering or death. And that’s a wonderful promise of God. It’s a glorious promise. As you know, Daniel, as we have seen, is a wisdom figure. He’s a wisdom figure. And remember also, Daniel comes to us, you’ll recall back when we began, we talked about this. He comes to us in the third section of the Hebrew Bible, right? The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. He comes from the Writings section, right? That last third that we see in this categorization. And remember, those books, the Writings, are the books that deal with covenant life, right? Life in covenant, how we’re to think and to live in light of the covenant. Daniel is a wisdom figure. In our English Bibles, of course, he comes to us after the major prophets, right? You have Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and then Daniel. One of the reasons for this is because he has apocalyptic dreams, as we will see going forward. And he interprets dreams and visions of others. There’s information about the future going on here. He’s a wisdom guy living in exile. gifted by the Lord for a purpose. And he’s an example for us, even in this pilgrim land, as we sojourn through a land that’s not our own. He’s an example of what it looks like to live a life of faith in exile, a life of faith in exile. And it’s also very important as we think about Daniel 7 to 12, Daniel 7, right, apocalyptic literature. It’s important when we do so, we never lose sight of the reality that this is history, right? This is history. The Word, this Word was written and preserved for us, right, for our protection and encouragement and education. And you say, well, how do you know that? Where do you get that from? Well, the Apostle Paul tells us as much in Romans chapter 15, right? He says, for whatever was written in former days, was written for our instruction, right? That through endurance and through encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope, right? And there it is, there it is. What was written in former days is written for our instruction, that through endurance and encouragement of those scriptures, we might have hope, we might have hope. And this is the goal of the apocalyptic writer, literature writer, right? The author is to give hope. And we have to remember too, right? We can never let ourselves think little of God’s word. I think little of God’s word, or to think little of parts of God’s word, right? It’s all the Word of God, and it was given for us, right? All of it. And when it’s intended to teach us how to think, What posture we are to have in the world in which we live, which that’s what apocalyptic literature does, we must pray that God would give us hearts and minds to receive and to learn what he has for us there. To learn, hearts and minds to learn. Because after all, the author of history is most reliable. This is what is most real and true and meaningful, what the Lord has given us, preserved for us. not cable news, not the details of geopolitics, certainly not anything from social media. I’m afraid far too many believers give more of their lives and time with their smartphones than before God’s word. And this is something that we should be aware of as well, right? Our diet affects our health. And for our spiritual health, we need spiritually healthy diets. We need to take in the truth, right, not spiritual junk food or spiritual poison, even worse. And so with that, may we renew our commitment and focus and our use of our time in a way that would please our Lord and protect us and bless us, and all, of course, for His glory. Right, okay, so the book of Daniel, as I said, you remember, there are two clean halves, right? There’s chapters one to six, and then chapter seven to 12. We’ve seen in chapters one to six that we have there these narratives, right? And that’s the genre there. It’s like narrative, right? Giving of the stories of what happened, these events of Daniel’s life. And we have there, to summarize, is the life of faith in exile, right? Those chapters are a picture of life and faith in exile. And then 7 and 12, the second half, we have the hope of faith in exile, right? The hope of faith in exile. And that’s where we are. 7 and 12 is where Daniel has these apocalyptic visions, which we get into today. And as we begin, it’s imperative that we keep ourselves from freaking out and running to the door, because there’s some far out stuff that’s going on in these chapters, right? And as we begin, we need to not jump to conclusions or fly off the handle, right, as the saying goes. And literally, you could read yourself crazy, looking at all the, taking in all the commentaries offered on these chapters of Daniel. I know this because I’ve read a lot, and it’s dizzying. It’s dizzying. And frankly, very much of it is unnecessary. Very much of it is. We really don’t need to jump through all of those hoops and go through all the acrobatics to get to many of those conclusions. As a friend of mine said, jumping through hoops is for circus animals. It’s not for the people of God. I’m not pretending it’s not easy. I’m not pretending it is easy, because it’s certainly not. But I am saying that we can make sense of what what’s going on to the extent that the Lord desires us to understand what’s going on, right? And so let’s have confidence as we broach these chapters. Apocalyptic literature, what is apocalyptic literature? We need to understand this kind of writing, this genre. If we’re able to understand these chapters, right, if we misunderstand what the genre is, we’re not gonna hit the goal. We’re not gonna derive from it the goal that’s given, intended for us. And so what is that goal of apocalyptic literature? What is apocalyptic literature? This kind of literature has several parts to it. And I want to paraphrase one theologian. He said this. He said, biblical apocalyptic literature is a revelation of the ending of this present age of conflicts. And it’s replacement by the final age of peace, right? That’s a mouthful, but you get it, right? It’s apocalyptic literature is a revelation of the ending of this present age, characterized by conflict. And it’s replacement by the final age, characterized by peace. He goes on, it shows us ahead of time, the end of the kingdoms of this world and their replacement by the kingdom of God. This, and this is key here, he says, this revelation is unfolded in complex and mysterious imagery. That’s true. And he says, and its purpose, right, the purpose of this literature is exhorting and comforting the faithful, right? And so we have to keep that in mind. That’s the intention of the apocalyptic writer in this literature. It exhorts and comforts the faithful, the people of God. Very helpful. And it’s helpful to ground us as we’re working through this material. It focuses our eyes on where they should be. Not grasping wild-eyed at newspapers and maps and charts. Might look like an engineering schematic. Not filled with despair and hopelessness. Rather what? It declares hope to God’s people, right? These visions, when God is giving, declares hope to God’s people, not hopelessness, but hope to those who suffer, right? In their hearts, in their relationships, in their bodies, in this world, and to focus And the purpose of this kind of writing is to bring us back to the truth of what? Of God’s reign, right? God reigns. He rules and he will triumph over any and all of the monsters and beastliness of this age. And that’s a glorious thing, right? It’s a glorious thing that very often we don’t like allow ourselves to sink in and meditate upon it. That’s a glorious truth, brothers and sisters, for you, the people of God. He will triumph over all of these horrifying things that are told, that we read up here and that are going on even in our world. He will triumph. He rules. And that is most true, right? That truth is most true. It’s more true than the grotesque idols that are thrust in our faces and our minds and on the minds of our children constantly all around us. These truths of God are more true than the world’s insistence that we believe and accept and champion all that is vile in God’s sight. And by true, more true, that’s what I mean, that God’s will and weight, his heart, shown in history, shown in his word, is actually what matters most. It’s of what is greatest importance. And the lies of our enemies, like the world, the flesh, and the devil, insist on dictating to us what’s important, what’s true, what’s right, what’s acceptable. what we are to believe, the language that we use, the ethic that we are to embrace and live by. But as far as that is contrary to God’s word, it must be rejected. It must be resisted, brothers and sisters, right? His word says what? He says, let God be true though every man a liar. And we cannot compromise either truth or love, right? Or speak the truth in love. We must hold fast to the truth in love. That’s our commandment. That’s our commitment. We must take diligent care about what we follow and what we allow into our minds and our hearts. Sadly, many do not do this. Many take greater care about what they put on their bodies than what they put in their minds. And I think you would acknowledge that we see this all around us, right? Think about the thoughtful, careful people They wouldn’t pick up off the ground food and put it in their mouth at a bus stop, for instance. But they very easily, without much thought, open their minds to the thinking of the world and the world’s conditioning, uncritically, just allowing it to come in and let it bathe over them, taking it in without discernment, without care. And it shapes us. It influences and programs people who do this. We almost resist this reality, this truth, this danger. Scripture tells us what? In contradistinction to that, that we are to be transformed by God’s Word, be washed by that Word, not the world’s. And so our world, we must comport with God’s Word, regardless if it’s at odds with the world. Again, Paul says in Romans, let God be true, though every man a liar. And also we see that literature like Daniel 7 to 12, this apocalyptic literature is there to teach us that while in this world and in the suffering of this world, even when it hurts, that allegiance and obedience to the Lord is what we do. Allegiance and obedience is what we do despite what the world can do to our bodies, right? And so the writer of the apocalyptic literature holds fast to the Lord. and does not roll over to a Christophobic, Christ-hating world. He’s seen the end of the story, and he looks forward and upward with hope, right? Hope in the sure coming of the final day of that consummate age, ushered in by the victorious king of glory. And we should too, right? We should too. Let us look forward and upward in confidence and hope. Brothers and sisters, this is what apocalyptic literature is for. It’s for our hope and our encouragement while in exile, while strangers and aliens in this land. There remains a day, right? There remains a day. And that day yet is coming when the pain and losses of life will be blown away by the inexpressible glory and wonder of our true home in the presence of our powerful Savior, Jesus. So let’s look now for a moment, just to start at Daniel 7. And we see here this vision and dream that he has, the monsters and the mayhem of what’s going on here. Verse 1 says, In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. And then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter, right? And so right at verse one, right at the start, we see in terms of chronology, we’ve moved back, right? We moved back from where Daniel left off in Daniel chapter six, back to the time where the Babylonians ruled, right? Belshazzar. Babylonians ruled the known world. And so for time’s sake, I’m not gonna read this vision again. I’ve already read it, but I will, I’ll summarize some of what’s going on here. What’s going on is this vision that Daniel sees. He sees the four winds that says, stirring up, like the four winds of heaven, stirring up the great sea. And this is one of those concepts that should, you know, a bell should go off about the sea, right? Because we need to recognize that in scripture, and indeed in the surrounding peoples in the ancient Near East of this area, for them the sea was what? It was a symbol of terror and dread and chaos. And it was a symbol of chaos and rebellion against God. We see this in places like Psalm 89 and Psalm 93. And so fear and chaos and the unknown, and therefore the sea was considered to be the natural home of creatures, like monsters, like the leviathan, for example. And just by the way, remember at the end of Revelation when it says, there’ll be no more pain or tears? What does it say also? And the sea was no more, right? So this image of dread and chaos and terror and unknown is done away with, right? There’ll be peace. But it’s not natural. This is the perception of the sea and the waters, the terror chaos waters of these peoples. And at this time, it makes sense that this is where these strange and terrifying creatures, monsters, if you will, like Leviathan, would reside. And so these monsters were large and dangerous and dreadful. But also they were so because they’re evil, right? They’re seen, they’re depicted as opposed to God, and they’re agents of chaos and destruction, as we heard in the vision. And so we have here again Daniel’s vision, the stirred up sea bringing forth horrific creatures, one after the other, after the other, four in all, each more disturbing and terrifying than the previous one. And these huge mashed up misshapen animals were like nothing that we would have come across in our nightmares. Just to summarize, the first was like a lion. It had eagle’s wings. The wings were plucked off and he was made to stand on two feet like a man and the mind of man was given to him. It sounds like something we’ve heard before in Daniel. And then the second one comes and it says it’s like a bear. It was raised up on one side and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth and was told, arise and devour much flesh. And so these visions that we see in Daniel, they’re not like fun visions. They’re not like we would think of like cartoon creatures. They’re disturbing. They’re only terrifying, but they’re disturbing. The third one it says is like a leopard in verse six. With four wings of a bird on its back, and the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. And as frightening and as disturbing as these three creatures were, Beasts, right? The most hideous creatures yet to come. And the force beast couldn’t even be described in terms of earthly animals, you notice. It’s different. It’s frightening and it’s dreadful. It’s incredibly strong. There’s great iron teeth that devoured and crushed. And it trampled down whatever it didn’t eat. Right? And so this is the kind of thing, this is, you could say, is an attention getter, right? This kind of thing, this vision of it, this is the way that Dan Downs disturbed within himself. And then to add on to that, it had 10 horns. Right, 10 horns. And we know that horns are symbols of strength in scripture. And that there are 10 of them symbolizes that the strength is, it’s like uber strength. It’s multiplied, right? And it’s truly hard for us to imagine or even think about what’s going on here. And then it gets even more bizarre. Daniel is looking upon this beast and his horns, he sees another small horn coming up among the other horns and it uproots three of them. And his horn, to make things worse, had eyes and its mouth spoke arrogantly, boastfully, great things it says. And at this point, the appropriate feeling would be fear, right? Fear at these creatures at this time. And Daniel himself said, again, verse 15, he admitted that he was troubled in his spirit And the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me, he says. In Daniel 7, 17, it tells us that these beasts represented what? Represented teens. Those who are in control of the world in which we live in history. And this vision proclaims that our world is run by a succession of these beastly-like individuals, these terrible monsters, if you will, that go from bad to worse, each one more frightening than the one that came before it. We’ll get into this more next week. what these symbolize, what they stand for, and what we’re supposed to glean from what’s going on when we’re being told these visions. We’ll unfold more of that big picture and how it fits together with what’s going on in Dan. But for now, brothers and sisters, remember the end of the story. Remember the end of the story. And the end of the story is the same as the beginning of the story, and that is that God reigns. God is sovereign. God is in control. God is a great God. And as difficult as it is at times for us to believe in our weakness, in our lack of faith and trust and hope, we must remember, we must plead with the Lord to give us faith to believe that it is true. It’s true. Despite the things going on in the world, despite the world and the culture that outcases itself in evil and the downwards file by orders of magnitude of wickedness, still, nevertheless, brothers and sisters, our God reigns. He rules. He is powerful. Not the wickedness of the world. That is not all powerful. The Lord God is all powerful. He is our God. If you believe in Him, if you place your faith in Jesus Christ, He is your God, He is your Heavenly Father. And though we doubt and we are slow of heart to believe, remember the apocalyptic writers, right? Remember Daniel. They’re there to give us hope in exile, hope in our failings, right? Hope even while under persecution of the enemy. Hope when the world really does seem to be spinning off its access. and hope to remind us that actually, it’s not spinning out of control, but it’s controlled perfectly. It’s in perfect control according to the providence of our great God and Savior. And that, brothers and sisters, is truly good news, right? It’s good news. It’s good news because the sovereign God who’s in control is also a good God. It’s a good God, and he’s faithful, and he is true. a God and Father who loves his children and will see them through to their eternal home that awaits them in glory. So rejoice, brothers and sisters. If you belong to Jesus, this life’s suffering and pain and stuff will come to an end and it will be no more. And it will issue forth unto glory at his second coming. And on that day, he will put all things right, all things right. And it will put to end forever all of your suffering and crying and turmoil and dread. And that’s an amazing thing. That’s an encouraging thing for us in this world at this time, indeed at all times. But we feel as though things are falling apart all around us. Remember these things, right? God is in control and he loves you and he promises if you are his, you are united to Christ. And just as surely as you are sitting there, more surely you will reign with him in glory. That’s an amazing thing. And so as we remember and reflect and believe these things and pray, beg the Lord to give us, to increase our faith, let us go back from here, back into the land of our pilgrimage, taking the love of this King Jesus, our King and our Lord, and let us live for Him forever and ever in this life and the next. Amen. Let’s pray. Almighty and loving God, we thank you and praise you.