You would please stand with me as we hear the word of the Lord from Revelation chapter one, beginning in verse four. Word of God says this, John to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom priest to his God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds. And every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him. And all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. Even so, amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. This is the word of the Lord. All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. Grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever. Amen. Oh Lord God, as does all of history, this moment falls within the span of time that is controlled by Him who is the Alpha and the Omega, and the end, the first and the last. He who is the faithful witness and the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. God, this moment falls under the purview of the foreordination of your purpose. It falls under the sovereign control of your providence. So God, let us confess and believe and know and affirm that from before the foundation of the world, this moment here to hear your word was ordained by you. And surely God, every moment in our lives has been ordained by you and your sovereignty and your providence and your loving care. But God, in this particular kind of moment in preaching, You pledge to come where Your Word is opened. You say that You will send Your Spirit, and You will attend Your Word, and Your Word will go forth and will accomplish the purpose for which You send it out. So God, we pray at this moment in time where Your eternal plan is being manifest to set forth Your Word, we pray, dear God, that You would help us to attend to it, help us to heed it, Help us to consider its weightiness as opposed to what seems like the utter vanity of our living. Help us consider its truthfulness as it intersects with the lies that we so often believe and convince ourselves of. God, help us as held forth in these pages is the hope for all mankind being the glories of the Lord Jesus Christ, Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. When we come, God, with our own self-inflated views of our own sovereignty and our own power. Oh, God, I pray that you would help us these moments that we would consider the profoundness, the beauty, and the power and the purpose for which your word is given, God, to bring your name, supreme glory, and to usher us into supreme joy, for which our souls do not find the answer in this world. So we ask God today to grant, grant this in accordance with your will in Christ Jesus, we pray. Amen. Well, if you would take your copy of God's word and turn with me to the Old Testament book of Daniel. From time to time, I get little messages in my junk mail. You get those too. And they don't call it junk mail for nothing. It's that. And I forget it's there. And then all of a sudden, I look down and I notice you've got 20 things in your junk mail. And I go, OK, what is that? And the only comfort is it's going to be easy to delete things really fast. Well, every now and then, I get ads for the Hallmark channel in my junk mail. which probably means that I like to watch sentimental, sad chick movies or whatever, you know, and I might be a likely candidate to subscribe, so they send it to me. But my filter on my email with the discerning wisdom of God sends it to the junk mail, And keeps me from having to think about it all the time. But I get them every now and then. And I think the reason they send that is because they think that I'm going to bite on something like that. I've never received any ad in my junk mail for Court TV. Because I wouldn't be the kind of guy at all that would bite for Court TV. And probably you wouldn't either. And I don't mean the kind of real court that might intrigue some, but cheesy court that would border on the crass and try to get us to draw in a Judge Judy or whatever the latest one is. I don't even know. But the reason we're not too intrigued by those kinds of things is because, one, we know they're not real, and two, we know they have really no bearing whatsoever on our lives at all. But what if we were to consider something like Supreme Court TV? Well, that would be real. And that might even be, to a few people, interesting. But I don't even think that would be a very big draw for the majority of us in this room, or even in the world. It would be a sleeper of a show. watching those people up there in big long black robes talk about boring things that none of us probably are ever going to be faced with. Every now and then something big and huge comes across the Supreme Court desk that seems to impact our lives. But for the most part, Most of us don't really seem to know, or it would seem, even on a practical level, care what's going on every day in the Supreme Court. You might think, well, that sounds kind of harsh or whatever, but really, when was the last time you looked up the latest rulings on the Supreme Court? Probably not many of us have. Why? Because we really don't think that what they're doing there has a lot of bearing on what we're doing here. That may be wrong. But that's why we don't check in and see what's happening. At least we have this kind of thought that, well, it's not really too important. Well, the reason I mention that is because today when we come to the book of Daniel, we enter the court. We enter a court initially that is a human court, but we are quickly transferred to a heavenly court. And what transpires in these courts is of ultimate importance. And I don't mean just huge importance, but I mean ultimate importance to our lives and should be to the way we live our lives today. When we come to this book, this book that we call the book of Daniel, we come into a legal world. We come into a legal world of kings. Not a world that we might think of when it comes to a court where there's a judge and there are lawyers present presenting cases, and there's a jury that is going to decide the end verdict of 12, you know, either, as Henry Ford might have, angry men, or, you know, 12 happy people on a court that have been sequestered to come and do jury duty. That's not the kind of court we come to. And Daniel, it's the kind of court that's a king's court. It's not made up of a judge and independent lawyers and a panel jury that decides things. It's made up of one individual who sits on a throne who declares things from his throne for all to hear and to which all should respond. It's a lone king making decisions for his kingdom. And specifically, we come into the courts of human kings, and there are three in particular. And finally, we come though into the court of a heavenly king. And it's with this court, this heavenly court, and its authority over human courts that we are ultimately concerned with today. The decisions of this court that are handed down, they touch us all, and more deeply do they do so than we might have ever imagined. There is a prevailing court imagery and the verdict of these courts that encourages me to take a title this morning. I don't usually focus on titles for the sermon, but if you want to think of a title this morning, you might think of heaven, heathen, and the hope of the nations. heathen, and the hope of the nations. I want us to look at a few things, however, in regard to the whole of the book of Daniel that might help us kind of get a grip on the book itself as we come. I had been looking forward to Daniel because it was shorter than Ezekiel, but it really didn't help much having a shorter book. So I still have a little hope for Obadiah, but it's probably not going to help much either. I still had the crippling experience of trying to put it all together. But a few things I want us to think about in regard to the book as a whole. First, I just want to overview the whole of the book. It's 12 chapters long, so that shouldn't take us very long. That's a little easier than the book of Ezekiel. And when we come to overview the book, I want to give maybe what we call a big picture view of the book and then kind of a narrow lens view. If we thought of the book in a big picture kind of a way, we might think of two different points or two scenes being played out. One is present history, or if you and I were Daniel in exile, it would be considered present history. For us today, it's past, all right? Our past history. But the present history for Daniel and those who were with him in exile is considered in chapters one through six of Daniel. The second scene is what we could call prophetic history. It's history that from Daniel's vantage point has yet to happen, hence it's prophetic history. From our vantage point, a lot of it has already transpired and taken place, although, as we'll see, there is some yet to be disclosed. So those two scenes, present history and prophetic history, but if we break that down a little bit into a narrow lens, we come to these two scenes again, and each scene consists of several parts or several acts. thinking about the present history scene. There are six different acts, or six different things that unfold, and they unfold for us neatly in chapters one to six of the book. Act one, we might think of in terms of the captivity. It opens up with the exiles, much like in Ezekiel chapter one, they are there in captivity in the realm of the kingdom of Babylon, and several individuals have been taken captive. Out of these captives, the king, Nebuchadnezzar, wants certain individuals selected, young men who can be trained and fed and bred, if you will, to be the cream of the crop of his land as well. He picks four individual representatives, and they're mentioned there in chapter one. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Those are their Hebrew names. They are then given sometimes the more commonly heard of Babylonian names, Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These individual men, these brothers in arms, if you will, come together And they concoct a plan not to take the king's food and not to eat his delicacies, but to remain pure and to remain kosher, if you will, in these days of captivity. And they think this will pay off better for them in the end. They convince the guy that's in charge of them to let them do it for 10 days. And you know the story. They eat the fruits or the vegetables and drink the water and not the king's wine and choice meats. And they are healthier. God prospers them in that first scene. or the first act. The second act in chapter two begins with a dream by the king Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. He falls asleep. He dreams a dream. It terrifies him. He calls in his magicians, if you will, his dream interpreters of the day. He calls the 1-900 number there in Babylon and sees if he can find somebody who's going to know how to do this. And he decides that he doesn't trust these squirrely fellows. And so he says, you know, look, I'm not even going to tell you what the dream was. If you're so smart, well, then you can just tell me the dream. And on top of that, you can tell me the interpretation. And on top of that, if you don't, I'm going to kill you. And they're like, this is a bad time to be a magician. This is a bad time to be an interpreter. I wish we hadn't told him we could do all these things all these years. We've been lying to the guy after he tells us his dream. Don't you love that when you hear somebody calling, well, I had this dream. What does it mean? Oh, well, let me just make something up. I mean, I can come up with that, but here they've got to come up with the dream too. So there's no pulling the wool over Nebuchadnezzar's eyes. They can't give the interpretation. They say this is not known among men. He's gonna kill them all, and this is where word gets to Daniel, who's also kind of part of this group. He's gonna get killed too, and he says, look, give me some time. I'll figure it out. I'll go ask God. He goes and prays. God reveals to him the dream, reveals to him the interpretation. Lo and behold, at the end of this chapter, Daniel is promoted. Act three of scene one. We come to another scene or another part of this scene as it unfolds. Nebuchadnezzar again in chapter three, he decides he's going to make an image of gold. And what's kind of humorous almost about this is at the end of each chapter, the king makes an amazing declaration about the glory of God, and then in the next chapter he does something again absolutely foolish. But here, he's going to make a big statue to himself. He sets up an idolatrous image. There is a plot that is then, kind of begins to unfold. They say that the only, you got to come bow down before this image when you hear the sound of the flutes and the lyres and when the band starts to play, you need to come in and bow down. Some individuals find out that Daniel, or rather, excuse me, not Daniel, but Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are not bowing down. King brings them all in and finds out that they will not bow down to this image. They will not bow and worship him. And he heats up the fire. Remember the story of the guys in the fire. And lo and behold, they go into the fire. Nothing happens to them whatsoever. The guys who throw them into the fire, they're burned. And their clothes aren't sins. They don't smell of smoke. They come out. There's one in the fire the king sees that looks like a son of the gods. and he brings them out, he's amazed, and he promotes them. So everything continues to work well for the people. Act 4, which is also coincident with Chapter 4. Nebuchadnezzar, this chapter, is a confession. This chapter is a confession of Nebuchadnezzar himself, confessing his own ignorance and his own arrogance that kept him from seeing clearly who the true God of all creation was. Daniel comes and warns him that in his arrogance, thinking that he was the one who was supreme over Babylon, he should repent and give glory to the God of heaven. Daniel says, if you don't do this, if you don't repent, seven years of judgment are going to come over you. Remember the story, he doesn't repent, and he's walking on his balcony one night, he sees Babylon that he's made, and he beholds his glory, rejoices in his glory, and while those words are still in his mouth, God sends judgment upon Nebuchadnezzar, and for the next seven years, he crawls around like an animal. At the end of which time, his judgment is restored, his reason is restored, and he praises, it says in the end of chapter four, the God of heaven. Chapter five, either the son or the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, an individual named Belshazzar, Belshazzar throws a party. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar, when he brought the exiles from Jerusalem to Babylon, he had plundered the temple. He had taken out of the temple all the beautiful vessels, and he'd stored them away, and Belshazzar has those vessels brought out, He throws apart, he begins to indulge in all kinds of revelry and drunkenness. And in his pride, God sends a vision to Belshazzar. And this is the handwriting. on the wall. A little hand begins to come out, actually begins to etch something into the wall, and Belshazzar sees this, and he is terrified, doesn't know what it is, it's a mystery, he isn't sure, and someone reminds him that there is an individual by the name of Daniel, in whom are the spirit of the gods, and he can reveal great mysteries to the king. So he sends for Daniel. Daniel comes and reads, reads the writing on the wall, and then interprets it as a judgment against Belshazzar, and that next evening, he dies. He's dead. The final act in this first setting, this first scene of present-day history is in chapter 6. In chapter 6, we come to an individual by the name of Darius. Darius is a mead he decides that he is going to divide up his kingdom amongst three presidents, Daniel being one of them. And the other presidents, not liking Daniel, decide that they're going to create some bit of a trap for him, and they get the king to sign up on a plan that says nobody else can pray to anyone except you, oh king. And it sounds like a wonderful thing for the king, oh great, nobody's gonna pray for me for like 30 days, nobody's gonna pray to anybody but me for like 30 days. And this sounds good, but he forgets and doesn't realize there's Daniel, and he seems to like Daniel and favors Daniel. And these guys come and they say, well, King, didn't you sign a decree that said nobody could pray to anybody but you? Oh yeah, I signed that. It stands by the law of the Medes and the Persians. Oh, well, Daniel's been doing some praying. And now the king realizes he's trapped. The law of the means of the Persians must stand. Daniel's then thrown into the greatest story we seem to know from this book, Daniel in the what? Daniel in the lion's den. It's in every little kid's Bible. And there it is, Daniel sitting there with the happy lions, you know, in the lion's den. Looks like a nice, happy, clean story. In all truth, these are ravenous lions and hungry lions, and God has shut their mouths so that they cannot eat him. But by the next morning, the king comes and calls out to Daniel, lets Daniel out, and the lions are rather hungry. And so he takes the men who have tricked and conspired against Daniel, throws them, their wives and their kids, into the lion's den, and before they hit the ground, the lions crush their bones. It's quite a devastating story. That's what happens in these first six acts of this first scene. And it's important that we see that because this is the human court. This is where human decisions are made. This is where men revel in and operate by the principles of human wisdom over and over and over again. In the second scene, We might say there are three acts, there are six chapters, but we could kind of break them up and group them together just a little bit. Act one would consist of chapters seven and eight. They occur during the reign of Belshazzar, and they deal with the fall, or the rise and the fall of various kingdoms. We're not going to get lost in all the horns and the rams and the things going here and there. But suffice it to say, it is dealing with kings and kingdoms and peoples and nations that rise and fall at the decision, not of earthly kings, but at the decision of God himself. In Act 2, which is chapter 9, it's the prayer of Daniel that occurs during Darius' reign. Daniel prays a glorious prayer of repentance and affirmation of the greatness of God in Daniel chapter 9. If you've never studied Daniel 9, you ought to study Daniel 9. You could study it from the angle of what should true prayer consist of. It's a wonderful, wonderful prayer. A great paradigm for you and I to use as well. He starts with the glory of God. He moves to his sin. He confesses his trust and confidence in God. It's a wonderful prayer. The third and final act of this scene is chapters 10 through 12. It occurs during the reigns of Darius again, but also Cyrus, the Persian king, And it consists of visions of the end. Each one of these series of visions that deal with kings and kingdoms that rise and fall, they are all somewhat cyclical in nature. They parallel much the book of Revelation, which we'll see later when we study the book of Revelation. But they all repeat similar realities where God's enemies are all destroyed. God's enemies seem to have great power. Beasts rise up out of the sea. All kinds of things seem to happen that seem to thwart God's plan for his people, but when all is said and done, God overthrows all of his enemies. So that's just like a quick snapshot of the overview of the book. The book itself, Daniel, is not a book that we would typically think of as prophetic. Now, when I say that, that might sound kind of strange. It is a narrative history, those first six chapters. It's simply recounting what goes on in those chapters. It's not specifically prophecy. Matter of fact, in the Hebrew Bible, it was not included with the prophets. It was not included with Isaiah and Ezekiel and the other minor prophets. It was included with the writings. And the reason for that was, is the book of Daniel, unlike normal prophecy, Daniel is not a prophet of God sent to the people with a message to call them to national repentance in order to be back in the good standings and the good graces, if you will, of God. Daniel is a prophecy in the sense that it gives visions of the future But he's not a prophet in the sense like an Isaiah or like a Jeremiah. He is a prophet, and rightly so. Jesus refers to him as such in Matthew 24 15 as Daniel the prophet. However, in the Old Testament, Daniel is never called a prophet, unlike the other prophets. So he has a little different and distinct kind of a ministry. We need to think a little bit about the purpose of the book. Why is the book even written? The book is written to a group of people in exile. It seeks to instill hope in his exiled people who are waiting to return to the land in fullness of glory. We might see these people as a pilgrim people once again. They are wandering away from home. They are in a place of captivity and they want to return. One more thing to kind of mention about the book of Daniel and the type of literature it is. It is a type of literature that we find in the Bible rarely. It is apocalyptic literature. We've used this term before and it's important to mention it again here because we're trying to use the study of the prophets somewhat to prepare us for the study of the book of Revelation. The book in the Bible that is the most clearly apocalyptic is the book of Revelation. Daniel is an Old Testament apocalyptic book. Apocalyptic literature was a literary genre. It was a way that the Jewish people often wrote. There are many extra biblical books that have apocalyptic writing in them. But in the Bible itself, The book of Daniel and the book of Revelation seem to be the most clearly apocalyptic. What's interesting about that, all right, you're thinking, okay, that sounds great, apocalyptic, can't even spell that. What does that matter? It's because of what apocalyptic literature was designed to accomplish. You and I operate on a horizontal plane. Every day we get up, we get dressed, we go to work, we deal with our kids, we go eat, we watch the news, we go to a movie, we go out to dinner, we work on the yard. All the different things that you and I deal with, we often function on a horizontal plane. The first six chapters of the book of Daniel deal with things by and large on a horizontal plane. Here are the people in exile. They're being ruled by these pagan kings, these heathen kings who don't know God. They're being persecuted. They're suffering in the here and now world that they find themselves living in. You and I live in a world much like that as well. simultaneous in operation to this horizontal world is a whole nother plane of transcendent existence. And yes, this world is real, and this world, this life that we go through is very real, but what transpires in this world is overseen and determined by a greater reality than just what we see in this world. This is the whole intention of apocalyptic literature. It seeks to remind God's people that in the midst of this world that they're functioning in, there is something more glorious, more grand, more eternal, more sure going on at the same time. If you think about the book of Revelation, the first two or three chapters are what? They're dealing with what's going on here, especially in chapters two and three, the seven letters to the seven churches, all kinds of situations going on in the churches. In chapter four, verse one, John is taken where? He's taken up He's taken up into heaven to get a glimpse of what's really going on in that super reality. Richard Bauckham has written a book on the revelation of John and he has several comments on apocalyptic literature and I simply want to read them because I think they fit in what we're dealing with here. He says that John in Revelation, and we might see the same with Daniel here in the book of Daniel, is taken up into heaven in order to see the world from the heavenly perspective. Heaven is given a glimpse. He has given a glimpse behind the scenes of history so that he can see what is really going on in the events of his time and place. The effect of these visions, hear this, is to expand his reader's world both spatially into heaven and temporally into the eschatological future, or to put it another way, to open their world to divine transcendence. The world seen from this transcendent perspective in an apocalyptic vision is a kind of new symbolic world into which John's readers, or Daniel's, are taken as his artistry creates it for them. But really, it's not another world. This is not Greek dualism. where what we're dealing with here is not real, and the only, or the really real stuff is what's unseen. No, this is real. And he says it's not really just another world, it is John's reader's concrete day-to-day world seen in heavenly or eschatological perspective. It gives a vision of what God sees when he looks down on the world. I don't know what it's like when our kids come, or little people come, and they lack perspective. They can't see certain things. And you come in with your adult view of things and you paint a bigger picture for them of what's going on. Well, we're often down here in this world where our view is limited. We're very temporal. Our memories of the past are foggy. Our vision of the future is completely dark because we don't know what's going to come tomorrow. And our understanding of the present, well, it's rather skewed by our limited understanding. But God's vision is perfect. God's vision is perfect. It sees over all things. It gives a very clear vision of what's going on now, and it gives a vision for the future. Apocalyptic literature counters a false view of reality by opening the world to divine transcendence. All that it shares with the apocalyptic literature by way of the motifs of visionary transportation to heaven, visions of God's throne room in heaven, angelic mediators of revelation, symbolic visions of political powers, coming judgment, and new creation. All of this serves the purpose of revealing the world in which John's readers live in the perspective of transcendent divine purpose. This is, this is what we lose. This is what we lose every day. You ever gone through your day? All right. Here you are and you're feeling hopeful and you're feeling strong and you can do this. You can get through the next five minutes. All right. But lo and behold, two and a half minutes into your resolve to make it the next five minutes, something happens and what happens? It's over. You're suicidal once again. You can't make it to the end. You're throwing up prayers to heaven and you're wondering, can I even make it the next two and a half minutes of my five minute commitment to make it to the end? And you feel like you can't. All the hope that you began to build for yourself seems like it was constructed out of Legos. Not concrete, not steel, not iron, not something formidable. You feel much more like the feet of Nebuchadnezzar's statue, iron and clay mixed together than you do like the head of gold. It begins to crumble. What do you need? Once again, you find yourself appealing to God for a greater perspective and a greater vision of what's going on in your little bitty world. and the bigger picture of his plan for the nations. This is what something like the book of Daniel floods us with. And it floods us with it in bizarre imagery. You go read the book of Daniel. Daniel looks up and he sees a ram with two horns. He sees a ram with another horn, running very fast and speedily toward the other one. They crash into each other. Two horns are broken. The one with the one horn prevails. You're like, that makes no sense to me whatsoever. That's supposed to give me hope. Bockham goes on to say, that there is a sense in which Revelation stands in the tradition, and Daniel we would say also, stands in the tradition of Jewish apocalypse in a sense that it shares the question which concerns so many, who is Lord over the world? Jewish apocalypses, insofar as they continue the concerns of the Old Testament prophetic tradition, were typically concerned with the apparent non-fulfillment of God's promises. You ever begin to question? You ever begin to wonder if all the promises of God for you are yes in Christ? Promises of hope, promises of joy, promises of peace, promises of life to the full, promises of triumphing over sin and the grave. There is apparent in this world a non-fulfillment of God's promise, and the prophets come in dealing with the judgment of evil, the salvation of the righteous, and the achievement of God's righteous rule over his world. The righteous suffer, the wicked flourish. The world seems to be ruled by evil, not by God. Where is God's kingdom? The apocalypse, the apocalyptus, those people who wrote apocalyptic literature, sought to maintain the faith of God's people in the one all-powerful righteous God in the face of the harsh realities of evil in the world, especially the political evil of the oppression of God's faithful people by pagan empires. The answer to this problem was always essentially that despite appearances, it is God who rules his creation. Now, with all that in mind, I want us to think about this courtroom drama of heaven, heathen, and the hope of the nations. It's going to unfold for us in these chapters. And the first thing I want us to notice is this perspective of heaven. And when I say heaven, I mean God in this sense. The New Testament writers would often write about the kingdom of heaven. They would also write about the kingdom of God. Interjected into the midst of these human court sessions in chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 is a perspective on God that Daniel needed to see and I think would be helpful for you to see as well. Turn to your Bible and turn to Daniel chapter 2. In somewhat of a crash course in theology, chapters two to six unfold in rapid fashion, holding before the reader or the hearer a view of God that changes everything that one thought before. God is seen to be, in chapter two, as all-knowing. It is not that God is unaware of what is going on. You're tempted to think that sometimes in your life. Maybe God is forgotten. Maybe God has just forgotten about me, or my family, or my church, or my situation, or my job. God is seen in Daniel as all-knowing. Look in Daniel 2, verse 47. When Daniel gives the dream itself and the interpretation of the dream, The king, Nebuchadnezzar, makes this declaration in Daniel 2, verse 47. Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery. It would be no small task to, quote unquote, guess what the dream of the king was. Now, if you can guess right, if you will, and we're not guessing here, but if the magicians and sorcerers that he'd had around him had been able to guess right on the dream itself, then they could have simply made up an interpretation. What amazed him was that Daniel could actually tell him what the dream was, even though it could not be known in the realm of man. Look back in chapter two, the magicians The enchanters, the Chaldeans in chapter two, verse 10, answered the king and said, there's not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand. For no such great power, for no great or powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. Can you hear it now? This is what? This is not fair. What you're asking, we can't do. No one can do this. Verse 11. The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. They understood anew that mere men could not achieve the level of knowledge and intimate awareness of what the king had dreamt. It remained with the gods. The king, though he probably shared this view, wasn't too sympathetic and decided to kill them all until Daniel makes an appeal. So we find God to be, in this particular setting, to be an all-knowing God. Truly, your God is the God of gods. And notice he didn't say, Daniel, you are more wise than my enchanters. You are more wise than my magicians. You must be a really smart boy. It's not what he said. Nebuchadnezzar fell, verse 46. He fell on his face and paid homage to Daniel and commanded that an offering of incense be offered up to him. And the king said to Daniel, truly your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, a revealer of mysteries for you have been able to reveal this mystery. Secondly, in chapter three, we find not only is God all knowing, we find that God is all powerful. Chapter 3, verse 28. Nebuchadnezzar here. Remember the vision or the making of the golden image? And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will not bow down. They're thrown into the fiery furnace. They're not burned. One with an appearance of the gods shows up in the furnace. Nebuchadnezzar comes near the door, calls out to them. He has them released. And in verse 28, he answered and says, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He doesn't sit there and say, you guys must be made of something that is superhuman. Are y'all real? He knows they're real people. He doesn't attribute this ability to not burn to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He doesn't attribute it to the gods that he has named these men after. And they came with their Hebrew names of Hananiah there, Mishael there in chapter 1, and Azariah. He renames them after Babylonian gods. He doesn't attribute their ability to not burn to the gods that supposedly they are being watched over by. No, he says in verse 28, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own God. Therefore, I make a decree. Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no God, no other God, who is able to rescue in this way. Look back in chapter three in verse 15. Now, this is a radical change from Nebuchadnezzar's earlier comment. When they refused to bow, notice what he says in chapter 3, verse 15. He says, when you're ready and you hear the sound of the horn and pipe, etc., Then you need to bow down. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast in a burning, fiery furnace. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands? He saw no one more powerful than himself. Who could possibly, who could they possibly be trusting in that would deliver them out of his hand? In chapter three, verse 17, notice what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say to him. If this be so, If you throw us in our God, we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand. Oh King, so and asking what God could deliver them, they they tell them, tell him what what God it is. It's it's their God, the Hebrew God, the God of the Jewish people is able to deliver them out of his hand. But notice what they say in verse 18. But if not, and he's not, they're not saying, but if he's not able to deliver us, It's not a matter, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do not question God's ability here. They question their understanding of God's will. God may not be willing to rescue. And if He is not willing to rescue, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. When they, in fact, do not burn, God does deliver them out of His hand. This shows that God is not only all-knowing, as we found in chapter 2, He is all-powerful. What God is able to deliver out of the greatest king in the realm of men? The God of the Bible. He is able to deliver. Thirdly, we find something else in chapter 4 about God. He is supremely sovereign. He is all-knowing, He is all-powerful, and He is supremely sovereign. And keep in mind, these images of God, these revelations of God, are building one upon another. He is supremely sovereign. In chapter 4, this is again, this is Nebuchadnezzar's confession. Nebuchadnezzar is reflecting back. Chapter 4 is written by Nebuchadnezzar after the seven years that he has been punished. And he's reflecting back and he says in verse 2, it seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and his dominion endures from generation to generation. He would not have said that about this God before his judgment. In chapter four, verse 24, we read this word from Daniel. Again, keep in mind, this is Nebuchadnezzar, quoting what Daniel had said to him, it is a decree of the Most High. He refers to God again as the Most High. Verse 25, till the end, seven periods of time shall pass over you until you what? Until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will. Chapter 4, verse 32, repeats the same thing, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will. Verse 34 and 35, probably one of the most profound statements about God in the Old Testament. At the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done? If you've ever had the idea that God is not absolutely sovereign over everything that is, you ought to memorize those two verses. You need to chew on those and meditate on those for a little while. None can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done? The conclusion of it all for Nebuchadnezzar in verse 37, he says, now I, Nebuchadnezzar, pagan, heathen king of the nations, I've become a convert. I praise and extol and honor the king of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble. God is supremely sovereign over all that is. Number four, he is the absolute ruler and judge over all that is. In chapter five, this is Belshazzar when he sees the writing on the wall. Notice what Daniel says to this king. O King, verse 18, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty. And because of the greatness that he gave him, all people's nations and languages trembled and feared before him. Whom he would, he killed, and whom he would, he kept alive, and whom he would, he raised up, and whom he would, he humbled. Daniel wants Belshazzar to know that God is the one who gave his father, Nebuchadnezzar, this great power. He reminds him in verse 21 of the same text that was quoted twice in chapter four, that this came as a result of him discovering that God, the Most High, in verse 21, rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will. But you, his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this. You have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven." Notice again in verse 23 at the very end, "...the God in whose hand is your breath and whose are all your ways you have not honored." Earlier in the chapter, Belshazzar had called for people to come in and read this writing to them, and he is reminded that Daniel is able to do so. He has called Daniel in, and notice what he promises Daniel. Oh, let's find it here. Verse 16, I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve problems. Now, if you can read the writing and make known to me its interpretation, you shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around your neck and shall be third ruler in the kingdom. And Daniel does that. He reads it for him in verses 24 through 28 and interprets it to them as well. Belshazzar then comes through on his promise. He gives the command, and Daniel is clothed with purple, a chain of gold put around his neck, and a proclamation made about him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. Now, we don't know exactly where Belshazzar's heart was on this. We don't have some glorious statement from Belshazzar like we do of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar says, I now praise and extol the God of heaven. We don't have that from Belshazzar. But what we do have is at least Belshazzar comes through with his word. At least he does for Daniel what he says he would do. But the consequence of his sin was fixed. And that very night, Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed, and Darius the Mede took over. We see God to be the absolute ruler and judge over men. So whether Belshazzar gets it or not, the message is written down, and the message builds on the previous message. It builds to a climax in chapter 6, the fifth thing that is revealed to us about God. In chapter 6, here's the story again about Daniel and the lion's den. the king, who was reluctant to throw Daniel in the den of lions originally, but either lacked the courage or the political fortitude to take the hit and undo what he had done that was wrong. Maybe he knew Jephthah and guys who make rash vows, you know. And so here, he doesn't undo it, but he then After throwing him in the lion's den and bringing him out the next day, notice what he says in chapter six, verses 20 through 22. The king declared to Daniel, he rose, went with haste to the den, came near and said, O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the lions? And then Daniel said to the king, O king, live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him and also before you, O king, I have done no harm. And notice what King Darius then writes. King Darius, verse 25, wrote to all the peoples of the nations and languages that dwell in the earth and all the earth, peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God. Enduring forever, his kingdom shall never be destroyed and his dominion shall be to the end. And he delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and earth He who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions. It's interesting to me that when Daniel greets the king, you notice the phrase that everybody uses when they greet the king, O king, what? O king, live forever. O king, live forever. Now for the lousy, cheesy political friends of the king's, it was probably just a political kind of a statement that you would like, you know, brown-nose and schmooze up to the king. Oh, king, live forever. I was listening this past week, and one of the ways I often read is I'll have my, the Bible on CD or online, and I'll read along with it. The guy who was reading this past week, he couldn't resist that when he got to the little guys, I thought he might have like switched into VeggieTale mode. You know, he kind of got this little sarcastic, oh, king, live forever. And I thought, okay, that's a little too much. But he knew the sarcasm. He knew the political, you know, advantage they were trying to get. They weren't really honoring the king. They weren't really loving the king in that regard. But when Daniel comes and says, oh, king, live forever, He's not just giving some brown nose into the king because he wants to get one up. He doesn't need that. He has God. But notice what the king says. You might say, oh, king, live forever. But I now what? I declare that God is the living God. How can I ever live forever? I can only live because God what? Because God lives. This is the heavenly king in his court that stuns the courts of the minds of men. It completely, radically transforms everything these kings had thought previously about kingship. But that makes us think about a second point here. We want to consider not just heaven, we want to consider the heathen. In each one of these stories, in chapter 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6, we find things told us about people. The first thing that I found in looking at chapter 2 in particular is that man is arrogant in his ignorance. This is where we find the king. The king is arrogant in his ignorance. Not only is the king like that, the whole nation is like that. And not only are the Babylonians like that, all people are like that. Our arrogance contributes to our ignorance. And we fail to remember and see that God is the all-knowing one. Daniel serves a great purpose here to keep us all what? To keep us all humble. To keep us all small. To keep us all little. I love that phrase that John the Baptist uses in John 3, verse 30. When people come and they want to know if John's going to be worried about Jesus growing in popularity, and John looks like he's on the decline, and John says what? He must increase, but I must decrease. Arrogance springs from the sinful heart of man, and it keeps us in our ignorance. A second thing we find about the heathen, though, in this particular passage or this series of passages is that man has put his hope in weak things that cannot deliver. We find this in chapter 3 with the kings and where Nebuchadnezzar has set up this glorious golden image. Remember what they say? What God can deliver you out of my hands? Sin is very deceptive. Sin begins to make us feel very powerful. And the things that we surround ourselves with, that we put trust in, that we put hope in, we find here, like the king in the book of Daniel, that man often puts his hope in weak things that cannot deliver. much like the one who put his hope in money, put his home in his produce, put his hope in his produce. Remember the guy in the Gospels, the parable that Jesus teaches about the man who has amassed a great amount of grain and wealth to himself, and he says, I'll build what I'll build, bigger barns, and that will be my security, and that will be my hope. Man has put his hope in things that are temporal and things that are weak. You and I need to consider Are we tempted to become arrogant before God? In our ignorance, in our arrogance, it will breed an ignorance. Our arrogance will make us inflated in our eyes, make God smaller. That will make us ignorant. That will rob us of hope. That will rob us of our joy. When we begin to put our hope in weak things of the world that cannot deliver our own ingenuity, our own planning, our own manipulation of our environment, A third thing we find here about man's pride is that man's pride prevents him from seeing and savoring the true source of all of his blessings. If we were to consider in chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar has in his pride, he doesn't savor the source of all of his blessings. God is supremely sovereign over everything that is, and Nebuchadnezzar has forgotten that. And God is able to humble those who walk in pride. We shouldn't read that, though, as just a lesson that an unbeliever needs to learn. Doesn't a believer need to learn the lesson of pride? Pride prevents us from seeing and savoring God as the source of all of our blessings. A fourth thing to consider here is that man seeks the temporal fleeting praise of man rather than the enduring honor that comes from God alone. In chapter 5, Belshazzar has set up this drunken feast. Why? To win the honor and the praise of his fellow man. He had invited a thousand guests to come to this glorious party. and he seeks the temporal fleeting praise of man. He wanted to show his guests that he had conquered over the Jews in Jerusalem and bringing out all these goblets, the silver and the bronze. And what was interesting is Belshazzar didn't do anything. He wasn't even around then. Nebuchadnezzar was the one who conquered. Belshazzar just ate the fruits of his father's labor. But man seeks the temporal fleeting praise of other men rather than the enduring honor that comes from God." Notice he says in chapter 5, in verse 23, that God, in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored. God was not honored by Belshazzar. The scripture says that the one that honors God, God will what? God honors the one who honors him. So in seeking the honor of people, he ended up with the honor of no one. One other thing I considered here in chapter 6 is that man's self-dependence prevents him from seeing his full dependence on God for life and breath and everything. Fortunately, Darius realizes this, that the only way he can live is to worship the true and the living God and see that he is the one who endures forever. Darius knows his kingship will eventually come to what? Will eventually come to an end. Paul brings this kind of message in Acts chapter 17 on Mars Hill, the Areopagus to the pagan philosophers. What does he say? In him we live and move and have our being. What's interesting about that, when Paul quotes in Acts chapter 17, he's quoting one of the pagan prophets, one of the pagan philosophers. Men are tempted though in their self-dependence to forget that. you and I must remember it. These opening chapters of the book of Daniel have great enduring lessons for us, but the only way we can attain to those kinds of lessons out of those opening chapters is by having the perspective of a greater vision fall upon our present existence. I want you to turn to chapter seven. Obviously, we don't have time to go through chapter 7 through 12, and my intention is only to look a little bit at chapter 7. We've seen in chapters 1 through 6 the kings of the earth in their courts. Chapter 7 is the opening vision for the second half of the book, but it interestingly is a book or it is a chapter that ushers us into the court where God sits in judgment. Chapter 7, there are several things we see. The first is in verse 1, The first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions in his head as he lay on his bed and he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. Daniel declared, I saw in my vision by night and behold, four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. Often in apocalyptic literature in particular, the sea is a restless place that's dark and it's filled with evil. And arising out of this sea, he sees four beasts, four great beasts that come out of the sea. The first like a lion, the second like a bear, the third like a leopard, and the fourth terrifying, dreadful, exceedingly strong. It's not important for us to pick apart the beasts. and build a picture in our mind about what beast is this and what beast is that, most likely and most simply, the beasts represent authorities. They represent powers. They represent kingdoms. And if we were to take history, we could trace the rise of the Babylonians, the rise of the Medes, the rise of the Persians, and the rise of the Romans. And we would see these four great world-dominating empires. And from the perspective when you were there, if you'd been a member of the Babylonian Empire, you would have been tempted to have said things like Nebuchadnezzar. Behold Babylon. Look at what we've made. If you were one of the members of the Mede or the Medo-Persian Empire, you would have looked around and you would have thought, look at the empire we have. If you were part of Rome, the Roman Empire, who would have ever thought that Rome could what? Fall. We actually saw that, did we not? Last week, looking at the statement by Jerome, one of the early church fathers, if Rome falls, what's left? From the perspective of that temporal way of existing, everything about their empire seemed impregnable. Everything about it seemed unassailable. Everything about it seemed great and powerful, until what? until another kingdom rose up that was greater than the one before. One would think that we could look at history and we could see that nations rise and nations, what, they fall. And we're tempted in our own country to celebrate, what, the power, you know, how many times have you heard America called the last great superpower? We're just a country. And if the Lord tarries, and the world goes on for hundreds of more years, America's going to what? It's going to fall. Countries rise and fall. They don't last forever. But don't just think of that on a national scale. Think of that on an individual scale. The pride that wells up in the nation is simply the accumulation of the pride of human hearts. And here we sit as people. And we feel impregnable. We feel unassailable. We feel like we can. And everything about our world, everything about our culture, and everything about our fellow people try to encourage us to do that same kind of thing. Yesterday, somebody comes in and This is a young couple, and they were thinking about getting married, and she looked at me, and I asked them, they wanted a study they could do, and I asked them, well, what kind of stuff have you done? Just trying to get a little feel for who they were and stuff. She said, well, do you have some good studies on self-esteem? And I said, well, no, we don't. And I thought, well, I don't know if that was completely honest. I could have probably gone and searched self-esteem in the database and might have found a book or whatever. But I did not know of any right off the top of my head that were on self-esteem or self-confidence. And this is what she wanted. Why? Because she thought that was a great thing to have. If she could just have that, if she could have esteem and confidence, then she would be successful. I began to talk to her about the gospel. I said, that's what we need. I didn't sit there and like, you know, smash her and she wouldn't like lay it out on the floor in Lifeway or whatever. But I began to talk to her about the gospel. I began to get some resources that she and this guy could go through that I hoped would be helpful for them. Why? Because welling up in the heart of every person is this pride. Babylon's not the only one with a problem. Nebuchadnezzar's not the only one with a problem. Belshazzar is not the only one with a problem. Darius is not the only one. Cyrus is not the only one. It's Bob and Sue and Mary and Larry and Jason and put in your name. Pride wells up in the human heart and we begin to feel invincible. But notice what happens. Notice in the midst of this onslaught of these kingdoms that rise up with this boasting and this power I looked. Verse 9 of chapter 7. I looked. Thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was fiery flames. Its wheels were burning fire, and a stream of fire issued and came out from before him. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. Do you get the impression that we're just heaping up numbers here because we don't really have a real good head count on what's going on? Notice verse 10 at the end of it. The court sat in judgment and the books were open. In the midst of the rise of these glorious powers among men, there is a glorious power that supersedes all of them. And God himself comes and takes his seat A court, he sits in judgment and books are opened and these are books of judgment. John talks about these books in the book of Revelation. The books that record the deeds of every person who's ever lived. Jesus says that every idle word is recorded for us. What's the result of this court sitting in judgment? Notice what begins to happen out of this picture of chaos and this session of a court There is a glorious transfer that takes place. In verse 11 he says, I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beast, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time. God systematically begins to take from the power of the nations. And notice to whom the power is given. Verse 13, I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man. And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom and to all people's nations and languages that they should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. The rest of the chapter. simply unfolds the power being systematically taken away from these world powers and given to the saints, those who follow this One like the Son of Man. It is this passage that John borrows from in Revelation 1 that I had Paul read to you from earlier, where he says in John 1, verse 4, John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come. and from the seven spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom priest to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him, even so, Amen. Who is this? This is Christ. This is Christ. Before the New Testament ever is written, the Old Testament is written, and it gives a picture of the glories of Christ. And God says there in Daniel chapter 7, that I am going to be taking power from the nations, and I'm going to be systematically, one by one, submitting and subduing these kings of all the earth under the foot of My Son, and He will rule with power and glory that knows no end. The Old Testament vision of Christ and this kingly rule was shown in Psalms. In Psalm 110, You'll recall the Psalm. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I what? Make all of your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely in the day of your power and holy garments from the womb of the morning. The do of your youth will be yours. What is God doing? God is systematically one by one, taking all the enemies of Christ, not just the national enemies, not just the Nebuchadnezzars and the Babylonian empires, not just the Persians, not just the Cyruses or the Dariuses, but he's taking all of the enemies of Christ, people, and he is subduing them to Christ. And Christ is going to use those nations as a footstool. In Psalm 2, all the nations, all the people, all the individuals, perhaps even some of us, who may rage against the God and the King of heaven. He asked this question of them in Psalm 2. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? Why do people rage? Do you rage? Do you rage against God? And that's a valid question to ask even to a group like this. And you might think, well, we're the same people that were here last week. Don't you remember who we are? Sure. I remember who you are. I remember who I am. And within the heart of every one of us is sin. that if given opportunity to well up, it will expose itself in prideful rebellion against God. Why do we do that? The psalmist asked that question as if it's just got to be the stupidest thing to ever do in the world. Why would you do that? Why rage against God? Whether you're a child or an adult, why would you ever rage against God? You can't win. You cannot win against the God of heaven. Why do the nations rage? Why do the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together. In other words, they get all their stupid friends together and it's a pooling of ignorance. What do you want to do? I want to storm the gates of heaven. Yeah, I'll take over heaven. Yeah, I'll rise up against God. Yeah, I don't have to listen to what God says. Yeah, I can do what I want to do. And then you find some friends who are just as dumb as you, and you go, do you think like I think? Oh yeah, I think like that too. And so, you know, light attracts bugs, and so you begin to amass people like you around you, and then that's what you want to do. You wanna assert yourself over God. Why do we do that? The rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us, and he who sits in the heavens laughs. It would be comical if it weren't so sad. The Lord holds them in derision. And then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage. and the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now the exhortation, therefore, O kings, rulers of the earth, be what? Wise. Individual people, you and me, let us be wise. True wisdom, true wisdom in this passage is to submit your heart to the lordship of Jesus Christ. I can't see in your heart, you can't see in mine, but we can take for granted and know on the basis of what God's Word said, all of us wrestle with sin. All of us wrestle with pride. And here this pride, this pride compels and moves people to amass other people around them just like them so they might find encouragement in their foolishness. True wisdom, friends. True wisdom is to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ at every point in your life. You will not win against the God of heaven. And you need not fear the God of heaven in submitting to him, because the one over whom he rules, he rules as a gracious, kind, forgiving, merciful, tender king. Isaac Watts wrote of this glorious picture from the book of Revelation in verses five through seven that we just read from. He wrote of Christ, our high priest and King. He said these words now to the Lord that makes us know the wonders of his dying love. Be humble honors paid below and strains of nobler praise above. "'Twas He that cleansed our foulest sins "'and washed us in His richest blood. "'Tis He that makes us priests and kings "'and brings us rebels near to God. "'To Jesus our atoning priest, "'to Jesus our superior King, "'be everlasting power confessed, "'and every tongue His glory sing. "'Behold, on flying clouds He comes, "'and every eye shall see Him move, "'though with our sins He pierced Him once. Then he displays his pardoning love. The unbelieving world shall wail while we rejoice to see the day. Come, Lord, nor let thy promise fail, nor let thy chariots long delay. Friends, do not, do not rebel against the one who is the everlasting king. Submit to him. Rejoice in his rule. It's a tender, gracious rule to the one who submits to him now. It's a terrifying rule to the one who waits only to submit to him one day when he is destroyed. Let's pray together. Father, we see the glorious pictures in your word of your son's kingship, of his rule, of his authority, of his dominion. And God, we don't come to this book today just to learn about history, to see what happened to the Jews in exile. We come to draw and to glean from this, God, a picture and a revelation of our own heart, our pride, our arrogance, our rebellion. And God, but for your grace and your mercy, we would still be in that. But God, we don't just wanna get a picture of our own hearts, we wanna get a picture of yours. Your heart that is glorious and wise and powerful and awesome and worthy of honor and fear and reverence. God, I pray that you might stir our own hearts today with that glorious picture of the hope for all the nations, seeing the hope to be found only in submitting to that great King, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is presented before the Ancient of Days and is crowned with glory and honor and splendor. God, we pray that You would help us to catch a clear glimpse of His glory and of His beauty, of the riches of His grace. God, help us see, even today, the great extent to which You have gone to paint for us the power that you have over sin and over rebellion. God, when Christ himself, this glorious King, first came as a humble servant, he was offered up as a sin offering for the sins of the people. God, he was crushed. for our iniquities. He was bruised by you. God, he was set up as the one who would bear our iniquity. He would suffer the punishment for our pride and our rebellion. God, before you sent him or set him forth as a great king, you sent him as this atoning sacrifice for our sin. God, help us see and taste something of the the gravity of our sinfulness, the extent to which you would go, God, to judge and punish rebels by punishing God, even your own son, who died on behalf of the people. God, we pray today that you would help us as we come to this table, not just to have a sense of our sinfulness and our waywardness and the great cost of our rebellion, but God, also to savor something of the sweet gospel of grace that has come to us For by the stripes of Christ, we are healed. By him being crushed, we are held tenderly by a saving God. Thank you, Father, for this meal. Thank you, Father, for this time. God, strengthen our hearts in the promises of the gospel that we have in Jesus Christ as we come. In Jesus' name, amen.