Good Morning! - Daniel 7:3-4 & Daniel 7:17 - Daniel Had His Act Together - 2009.11.18

Good Morning!

 

And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from

 

another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till

 

the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth,

 

and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given

 

to it (Daniel 7.3-4).

 

These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth (Daniel 7:17).

 

In verse one of this chapter, Daniel is old, perhaps ninety, and has been moved to the outer edge of Belshazzar's kingship. The king counts him as a useless relic of the past. Daniel has no pressing duties so he has time to pray as he did every day for much of his life …his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did formerly (Daniel 6:10b).  And he has time to write and sort things out.

 

God always knew where Daniel would be three times a day—on his knees, so He met with him. Do you think you can sincerely bow to meet with God and He won't show up? You don't have to have an earth shattering request to make of God for the meeting to be important to Him. Do you wonder if God knows about you and your circumstances? We do not have to call in a loud voice to bring God down from a great distance. Daniel's daily meeting with God reminds me of David's observation: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1).

 

His was not an occasional encounter with God. It was a way of life with Daniel and somewhat with David. When David slacked off in his meetings with God and met with his neighbor's wife he really got in bad trouble. That's a good thing to remember. We are told The Secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant (Psalm 25:14). Daniel had told Nebuchadnezzar many years earlier … there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days (Daniel 2:28).

 

We need to understand that Daniel had his act together. He was not an on again off again fair-weather servant of God. He had been castrated when he was seventeen, and had taken a lot of guff off of some of the most arrogant human beings on the face of the earth almost every day of his life. But his bond with His God was so strong that come the south wind or the north wind, he was steady. This man knew God as well as he knew the back of his own hand. He was not self-sufficient. His sufficiency was of God (2Corinthians 3:5).

 

Now then, God is going to tell His old servant a few things that are going to be written down and translated into untold numbers of languages and last for many centuries and bless the hearts of millions and millions of God's people.  God has already told King Nebuchadnezzar the whole of human history in advance. Now He is going to tell His old faithful servant the same thing but with animals. "Daniel, let me show you this lion. Did you ever see a lion with wings?"

 

But I must return to the first paragraph. In verse one of this chapter, Daniel is old, perhaps ninety, There is something buried there that we cannot skip over. In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters (Daniel 7:1).  Told the sum of the matters.

 

Daniel did not write all the details that he saw. He wrote a summary of all that he saw.  Strauss quotes Leupold who "suggests this to mean the essential content of the dream.  The essential features were culled out of the great variety of details that a long dream presented so as not to present a bewildering array of detail to the reader." We must obey everything God shows us but we often cannot tell everything God shows us.

 

Paul was caught up by the Lord and saw things not lawful to be uttered (2Corinthians 12:4). When Mary was visited by the angel, she could not run to the well and tell all the women in her village that she pregnant by the Holy Ghost. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19). God may show you things you cannot run out into the street and tell everyone.

 

OK, I reckon we're ready now to plunge into the story of the winged lion. We'll need more space than we have left, so we'll look at this tomorrow.

 

Memory Verse for this week:

 

(Hebrews 3:12,13)  Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in

 

departing from the living God.  But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest

 

any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12,13).

 

 

Digging Deeper

 

"Exhort one another daily…" This is one of the "one another" phrases of the Bible. God calls pastors and other church leaders for special function in the church but He also ordains the use of the rank and file people in the church to minister to each other. Here the activity is to exhort or urge or encourage one another and to do it daily, constantly. The pastor often cannot reach personally everyone in the congregation so it is up to each one who is touching or close to another person to exercise influence on that person. The urging is not to be bossy or cantankerous but gentle, loving encouragement.

 

 

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