We should gather before the throne of God. All right. So we pick up our study in the book of Daniel in chapter 2. Daniel chapter 2. And so we're in verse 19 this morning. It is believed, of course, that Daniel is the author of his own book. And so he refers to himself here when he's writing. Those willing and able, I'll ask that you stand as we reverence the reading of the Holy Word of God. Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel said, Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to Him. What a grand statement. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity just to open the Word of God once again. We've done so many, many, many times in our lives, not only in this building and other former buildings, not only I pray in our own personal devotional times. It's a pleasure and a grand opportunity to read your Word and to study it. I pray, Father, that you will speak boldly to our hearts today, that our hearts will be malleable, that you'll take these words from your Word and help us, Heavenly Father, to apply them to our daily lives. Help us, Lord, to be bold and courageous in the way that we live for you and stand for what is righteous. and what is good. We're often challenged in those areas more and more as this world becomes darker and darker. Help us not to be afraid of what men say or what men shall do, of what we shall lose or what it shall cost us to stand for you. We have an eternal home, an eternal abiding place in heaven. And it's going to be filled with all joy and wonder and contentment when we get there. We look forward to it. Thank you again, Father, for the gathering together of your saints tonight, this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you and please be seated. I apologize for my reoccurring theme as I preach through the book of Daniel. For some reason or another, I can't get away from it. I don't know if it's because of the culture or the climate of our country today, but it just seems to be so applicable. so contemporary, the book of Daniel, to where we are in the United States of America. I can't think of a timelier book to preach from today than the book of Daniel. I'm amazed when people try to make a big deal, and particularly Christians try to make a big deal out of the fact that you ought not to allow your faith to be part of your politics. And that seems to be a recurring theme in our culture today. I don't know of a book that deals more with governments, that deals more with dominion, political power, rulers and kings, and even presidents than the Bible, the whole Bible in itself. When you really think about the Bible, the very essence of the Bible is the Kingdom of God. When Jesus Christ came, He preached the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is here. That was His message. The Bible is the Kingdom of God versus the Kingdom of men. The kingdom of God versus the kingdom of man. The whole Bible is about dominion, power, sovereignty, authority. That's the theme of the Bible. Some people say, you know, preacher, you just need to stick with the gospel. I mean, the most important thing in life is whether people have eternal life or not, right? And yes, it is. It is. And I agree with that. I would not argue that point at all. But at the same time, I have to say, how much of the Bible deals with how to live the Christian life? How to demonstrate that we've been changed by the gospel? So much of the writing of the Apostle Paul and the other New Testament writers deal with how you express your salvation in this world now that you know God as your personal Savior. So, you know, we worship the God who created the government. We worship the God who created all authority. You know, how can you say that somehow or another we need to separate what we believe from our view of how a government ought to operate? If there's going to be authority that's going to dictate to me or to dictate to my children or dictate to my grandchildren how they're going to live, I want that authority to be based on biblical principles, folks. I want it to come from a true, righteous, just ideology. Not man's ideology, but God's ideologies. And I want His values represented in my government. I want there to be righteousness. I want there to be justice in my government. And the only place I know that you can genuinely get those kinds of characteristics are from the Word of God. doesn't come from man. Man's incapable of those things. Unfortunately, Daniel was living under a government that did not have righteousness, that did not have justice. It was living under the government that was ruled by every whim of John Nebuchadnezzar. You know, whatever he said, whatever laws he made up, whatever rules he made, that's what went. And when you look at history down through the years, most of the governments that were established were ruled by godless, ruthless, evil men. And their governments were that way because those were the values of the men. that ruled in those governments. So, until the United States of America. The United States of America truly is the light on the hill, built on biblical values. Don't believe those idiots that try to tell you that America was not established on biblical values. Okay? You know what a fool is? A fool is somebody who can look at facts and deny them. That's a fool. And a lot of people in America are fools, foolish. You can look at the history of America and you know, you can even go to Washington, D.C. and see the evidence that our country was founded on biblical principles. And to deny that is foolishness. Well, let me add this because this is where I want to go. I think we need to understand that even evil kingdoms were raised up by God. Okay, and I'm going to apologize for that. I believe God raises up evil kingdoms, and I want us to look briefly at a principle in Genesis chapter 15 that speaks to this particular issue. In Genesis chapter 15, God is calling Abraham to establish the nation of Israel. And in doing so, he laid down a principle that I find quite compelling. In Genesis chapter 15 and verse 16, God speaking to Abraham says to him, he says, and this is after a long discussion, this is the end, this is the conclusion that God makes actually. He says to Abraham, then in the fourth generation, they will return here, he's speaking here to the promised land that he's promised to Abraham. For the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete." And I've always looked at it. I wondered about that. God is explaining to Abraham that he's going to eventually take his seed into Egypt, okay? and they're gonna stay in Egypt for 400 years. God is going to use the pagan nation of Israel to make the nation of Israel, to make a nation out of Israel. So they're gonna be down there 400 years until they become a great and become a mighty nation. And then at the end of 400 years, God said, I'm going to take you, I'm going to bring you back into this land where you are. But he said, and then he makes this statement. You're going to return here. It's going to take 400 years for the iniquity of the Amorite to be complete. 400. The Amorite tribe was the representative tribes of the several other tribes that lived in the land at this particular time. And so he just uses them as kind of a representative of all the other tribes. He just brings all the other tribes under the umbrella of being Amorites. OK, because they're the greatest tribe at this particular time. particular time. So he says, look, God says to Abraham, it's going to take 400 years for the iniquity, for the sins of the Amorites to reach their zenith. Okay. He says, the Amorites, he says, eventually they're going to reach the maximum potential of their sin. They're going to go as far as they can possibly go. And when they do that, I'm going to bring you, I'm going to bring your descendants back into the land, and they are going to destroy, they are going to annihilate, and they are going to completely demolish the Amorites. Okay, now when we get to the book of Joshua, we find that there are a bunch of other tribes that fly under this flag. But this is what he's saying to Abraham at this particular time. He says, they're not ready to be destroyed. They're not ready for me to wipe them out yet. Their sin has not reached its full potential yet. But when it does, it's going to take 400 years. But when it does, I'm going to bring you back in here to destroy them. This is a biblical principle that God has used for the nation of Israel time and time again. Over and over, when you read in the book of Judges, what do you read? Well, Israel gets close to the Lord, and they start serving the Lord, and God starts blessing them. And then what happens? Well, they start sinning, right? They start falling away from God. They start falling away from His laws. What does God do? God brings in another nation to destroy them and basically punish them for their sins. And then they get right with God. And then they go back to the law. They start serving God again. God blesses them. What happens? Well, God brings another nation in to destroy them, to punish them for their sins. And then they repeat that principle over and over and over again. And this is a spiritual principle. The United States of America is not going to escape this principle at all. We're going to fall under the same principle of being risen up by God and just going away from God and then God punishing us with another nation that comes in to destroy us. It's a spiritual principle. You ever read the prophets? The prophets talk all the time about nations being destroyed, especially when Babylon was going to come through, when Assyria was going to come through. They came through and they wiped out, God used Assyria and Babylon to totally wipe out nations that had gone so far from Him that He used them to destroy. because of their iniquities. God is using evil men, evil empires, and evil kingdoms to bring sin to a crescendo. God is preparing the world for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when sin reaches its maximum, Jesus Christ is going to come back. America is not going to escape this sequence of events. This is a spiritual principle. America is going down this path at an exponential rate. We are doubling our sins daily, if not seconds in America. So what do we do? Well, we do what God's people have always done. We're looking for the coming of Jesus Christ. We're praying for the coming of Jesus Christ. It is imperative that we keep our eyes on the ultimate hope of the coming of Jesus Christ. We pray until our hope becomes a reality. That's what we do. As a matter of fact, that's where Daniel is at this particular time, and that's where his friends are. They are praying. What we're reading this morning is the result of a prayer that Daniel prayed. Daniel had done everything he could do. They had all done everything they could do. The only thing left that they could possibly do was pray, and that's exactly what they were doing. They knew that the king meant business at this particular time, and if the king didn't get an answer to what he dreamt and what that dream meant, he was going to kill all the wise men. This guy was meaning business. Daniel knew he was meaning business, and if there's one thing that'll get you on your knees, it's when you're being threatened that your life is gonna be taken, and that's exactly where they were. And so they've been praying, they've been praying, and it brings us to verse 19 of our text this morning, where it says in verse 19, then the mystery was revealed to Daniel. So Daniel's been praying, his three friends have been praying. In verse 19, it says, then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. And then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. You know what's so interesting about this verse, about this whole passage, as a matter of fact, is I'm interested in what the answer to the prayer was. You know, to me it's like Daniel is on a diversion here, you know, because I want to know what the answer was. But Daniel doesn't do that. That's not what he talks about, first of all. He stops and he begins to write about his experience with God. I want to know what the answer is. You know, if I was Daniel, I'd be running in and waking up the king and saying, hey king, wake up, wake up, wake up. God spoke to me. I know what the answer is. I can tell you what your dream was. I can tell you what it meant. You know, but Daniel doesn't do that. That's not important at this particular point. God has spoke to him all right, but instead of running up to the king, getting him out of bed and telling him what the answer is, he stops everything and he what? He blesses God. He praises God, why? Because he knows that he's heard from God, because he knows the answer he's heard is the answer that the king is looking for. He knows that God has done what he's asked God to do. And so he begins to bless God. It's what the scripture says. It's easy to bless God when you get answers to your prayers, right? So, you know, somebody might say, well, you know, preacher Daniel got what he prayed for. And so, yeah, of course, he's going to bless God. Of course, he's going to be excited about going in and praising God because he got an answer to his prayer. It's easy to do that. You know what, there are a lot of people that don't get answers to their prayers, and you're probably one of them, and I'm probably one of them. We don't always get the answers to our prayers that we want. I'm sure Job, you know, God took everything poor Job had, left him with nothing. And Paul prayed three times that this thorn in the flesh would be taken away from him, and God didn't give him the answer that he wanted. So there are times, yeah, when we don't get the answers that we want, that we ask for, but whether we praise God that we get the answers that we want or whether we don't get the answers that we want, you've got to realize there's a principle at work, and that principle in both cases is the sovereignty of God. Whether we get what we ask for, whether we don't get what we ask for, we've got to believe in the sovereignty of God, and that the sovereignty of God is always good. The crux of our joy and happiness, even in prayers, is the sovereignty of God. Our ability to bless God rests on the sovereignty of God. You know, I don't know... Daniel Daniel, I think, would have been good either way. I believe that Daniel would have been good if he didn't get the answer to his prayer and didn't get an understanding of what Nebuchadnezzar dreamt and have lived. Or if Daniel didn't get an answer from the Lord, and didn't get an answer about what Nebuchadnezzar dreamt, and he died, I believe that Daniel believed so much in the sovereignty of God, that either way it went, he would have blessed God anyhow. Either way, either way, he was that kind of man, he had that kind of faith in Almighty God. Let's go on to verse 20 then, and pick up what he says. Daniel said, Let the name of God be blessed forever and forever. That, you might look at that and say, well, you know, that's nothing, not a big deal. But you got to realize, you got to realize that that there was a God in Babylon that was considered to be the main God that you prayed for. Daniel, by saying this, that his God is the God be blessed forever and forever, that little phrase forever and forever sets Daniel's God off from the gods of the Babylonians. Have you ever thought about that the Greek mythologies and the Roman mythologies, they're all filled with stories about gods who have sex and then have baby gods. It's so odd to me. You know, you read about mythology and they're all having little baby gods. But this God that Daniel is worshiping is forever and forever. You see, a Babylonian would never attribute this characteristic to their gods because they couldn't think of their gods as existing forever and forever. It was outside of their ability to conceive of their gods having no beginning and no end. What Daniel is doing here is he's setting his God, Yahweh, Jehovah, apart from all the other Babylonian gods. His God was the only God that existed forever and forever. Eternity dwells in God. He is outside of time. He has no beginning. He has no end. He has always been, He will always be. He is not bound by time. He's not bound by years or months or days or minutes or hours. He's not bound by any of that. A day is a thousand years and a thousand years is a day with God. Time means nothing to God. He dwells in eternity. He is in a timeless existence. And when Daniel prayed, he prayed with that kind of concept of God. That was the concept of God at the forefront of his mind. Why? Because when you pray to God, you must believe that you're praying to a being who exceeds natural boundaries. You see what Daniel is doing here? Why do we pray, why do we believe, we are praying to a God who exceeds all natural world boundaries? Because when we pray, our prayer by nature is asking for something supernatural. That's what we're doing when we pray. You're going to a supernatural God, and you are asking for something supernatural, even if it's simply doing the will of God. When you are praying by nature, you're asking for supernatural help. That's what you do, and every time we pray, and we forget about what's going on in prayer. You remember when the disciples came to Jesus Christ, they said, Lord, we want you to teach us how to pray. And you remember what the Lord said, the first thing out of His mouth was, our Father, what? Who art in heaven. The first thing Jesus told His disciples was that you're praying to a God who's outside the natural world in which you live. We are praying to a God in heaven. If your prayer life is sagging, if your prayer life is lethargic, and your prayer life is pathetic, you need a shot of spiritual whiskey concerning who God really is. Daniel blessed his God forever and forever. That was Daniel's way of saying that he is praying to the God who needs nothing for his existence. He depends on nothing and nobody. He exists in eternity for eternity and needs nothing to sustain him. That's how independent he is. When you're praying with that kind of a concept of God, that's when you're praying with power. Then notice what he says. He's not through describing God. He goes on and he says, for wisdom and power belong to him. If you're going to pray to a God, if you believe there is a God in existence, It only makes sense to believe that he is the source of all wisdom and the source of all power. What Daniel said here was quite amazing because the Babylonians had a god of wisdom. His name was Nabu. And Nabu was a very involved in their decision-making processes as Babylonians. They believed that Nabu was the source of wisdom, that he could reveal secrets hidden from man, that Nabu had prophetic insights, and he could unravel the mysteries of life through oracles and through divinations. But Daniel set his god, Yahweh, apart from the Babylonian god, Nabu, and claimed that wisdom comes from One God, the eternal God of heaven, from Yahweh God. You see, Nabu had failed. Nabu had failed Nebuchadnezzar. He had failed to reveal his dreams to him. But Daniel knew that there was a God who could reveal his dreams. His God, Yahweh God. You know what's interesting here, and I'll just make this as a side note. is that this part of Daniel's Aramaic, and he uses a double pronoun. It's strange to see that in the scriptures. And so it caught my attention. And I began to look at that. I began to investigate that a little bit. Why does he use this double pronoun here? And what I found out was that he was saying that not only is God the source of all wisdom, but all wisdom leads back to God. Not only does wisdom come from God, but if it's genuine wisdom, it is going to take you back to God. If you claim to have wisdom and that wisdom does not take you to God, you don't have wisdom. You do not have true wisdom. You cannot have true wisdom. You may have some pithy saying, you may have some philosophy of some kind, you may have some happy sayings, you may have some knowledge, you might even have a degree on your wall, but you don't have wisdom. Science is not wisdom. Science can help us, you know, analyze and categorize and develop physical resources of the earth and even our physical bodies. But that's all it can do. Science cannot give you wisdom, beloved. There is no wisdom in science. Men in their lost estate cannot discern true wisdom. 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2. So Daniel went to the only place we could find true wisdom, and that is the God of heaven who is the source of wisdom. And Daniel has a mystery, right? He has a mystery that he needs to solve. There's something here that he cannot see, something that he needs to see. He's in a conundrum here. He needs to know what the king is dreaming, and the only source that can do that is God. Reminds me of a spiritual principle of the New Testament. As a matter of fact, if you'll turn to 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 7, we find that principle in the New Testament. Same principle in Daniel as Paul was struggling with in the New Testament. Different circumstances, but the same God, same principle. So in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 7, Paul is coming to a conclusion here about his ministry, and his preaching, and his teaching to the churches. And he says this when he gets to the end, he says, we speak God's wisdom, right? Wisdom comes from God. We've already established that. We speak God's wisdom, what? In a mystery. Uh oh, here's a mystery. What did it say in Daniel? That Daniel had solved the mystery, right? God had solved the mystery, right? So here we are, same principles that work in the New Testament as in the Old Testament. The hidden wisdom of God predestined before the ages to our glory. Now I haven't covered the background so real quickly let me go back here and fill in the details because I'm just kind of giving you a verse out of context here. But God needed the wisdom of, Paul needed the wisdom of God to solve a mystery, to reveal a mystery. The Greek word for mystery here does not refer to something that's quizzical, or puzzling, or completely not able to understand, or confusing. The word mystery here is referring to some truth that man has not previously known, but is now revealed. That's what the word mystery means. Something that was previously unknown, but now that is revealed. So that's what he's talking about here. God was revealing to Paul, and what's going on? God is revealing to Paul Something that was not seen in the Old Testament like the Gentiles and the Jews joining into one body called the Church. The Church was unknown in the Old Testament. The Church was a body of people that was revealed in the New Testament through the preaching of the Apostle Paul and the other Apostles to the Gentiles who were now coming into the Church as one body. This was something that was never seen before, but now Paul has seen it, God has revealed it to him. And through the preaching and teaching of the Apostle Paul, now the whole world understands that we are saved, all saved, Jews, Gentiles, doesn't make any difference. Even in the Old Testament, you're saved the same way as you are in the New Testament, okay, through the blood of Jesus Christ. But Paul comes preaching the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of all men, which was not so clearly seen in the Old Testament. Now, they had the sacrifices, that's true, and the blood was there, that's true. But when you come to the New Testament, you get a very clear understanding of God's plan of salvation that was not seen in the Old Testament. So this is what he's saying here. God has revealed, his wisdom is being revealed through me and now I'm sharing it with you so that this mystery is now known to everybody, okay? So that's what he's saying. So the same principle is in Daniel. God was using Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar to show the world, to show the world his plans for the world. Up to this point, God had not revealed his plans for the world, but now he's unveiling to them the whole and to the whole world what the future holds for them from this point forward. All prophecy is merely a revelation of the wisdom of God. God reveals His plans for the world. And the book of Revelation is another good example of how God reveals His wisdom to the world for what's coming. In the book of Romans, in chapters 9, 10, 11, God reveals His plan to use the Jews to bring about the salvation of the Gentiles. And then at the end of that collection of chapters, chapters 9, 10, and 11 in Romans, Paul makes this great statement after those three chapters reveal the plan of God to use the Jews to bring about salvation to the Gentiles. Paul says this, of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable are his ways." In that whole passage of scripture there, in those three chapters of Romans, Paul talked about predestination and election and God's purposes in setting aside the Jews for a time in order to allow the time of the Gentiles to come in. So he says, this is the wisdom of God. He's revealing his plan at this particular time. We, I will add, in application of this principle, have access to the same kind of wisdom that Paul and Daniel had. We are not prophets. We don't need any new revelations. The Bible is complete. Nobody has the right to say, God told me. If anybody comes up and says, God told me this, you need to run from them. Beware of those kind of people. But we have access to supernatural wisdom, folks. The Bible says this, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously without reproach, and it will be given to him. You will get God's wisdom if you ask. And I'm not promising you that. God is promising you that. God is telling you that. You say, well, what does God's wisdom look like? How do I know? How do I know if I have God's wisdom? The same book, the book of James, in chapter 3, describes God's wisdom. It says in James 3.17, But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. The seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Take a hard look at that description of God's wisdom. This is how God's wisdom operates. It is pure without immorality. If you're trying to make a decision between doing something immoral or not, God's gonna give you the right answer. It is peaceable. It is gentle. It is reasonable. That doesn't mean compromising. It is full of mercy and good fruits and unwavering. It is without hypocrisy. You're genuine. You're genuine. And it has the fruit of righteousness. So here's my question. Does this passage describe your life? Does this passage describe your life? Because this is what it looks like to apply the wisdom of God to your life. This is it. When you ask God for wisdom, He is going to give it to you. But let me make one more statement. He's going to give it to you through His Word, okay? He's going to give it to you. The more you know, the more you know this book, the more wisdom of God that you can have and that you're going to get. Whatever wisdom you get from God is not going to exceed the boundaries of the Bible. It's going to fall within the teachings of the Word of God. If you claim something to be wisdom and it does not line up with the teachings of God, it is not God's wisdom. It's not. It's not. As Christians, you know, we look around and we see the turmoil in the world in which we live today. Jesus told us, right, that there would be wars and rumors of wars. And truly we are seeing that happen before our very eyes. But what I want you to know, what I want you to leave with is this, that every war and every conflict is by the will and design of God. What's happening in Israel today, what's happening over there with the fight and the war and the conflict between them and Hamas and the rising of the ire of Iran and all that stuff is of the will of God. God is putting everything in place, folks, for the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The King of kings and the Lord of lords is going to come back. Jesus is coming back. Always got to keep that in mind. Secondly, we need to pray to a God who exists outside the boundaries of time. and space. A God who is eternal, neverlasting, immortal, infinite God. Who is above all things and who is over all things. And we need to pray with confidence and boldness and power for our God is immortal. Our God is existing even in and of Himself. He needs nothing else. This is the God unto whom we are praying. And because of the reality of eternity, there's coming a point when we will all enter a timeless existence. And either you're going to enter into a timeless existence in heaven or hell, but it will be timeless. And the wisest thing you can do is trust God as your personal Savior. The wisest thing, God will give you wisdom folks. The wisdom of God was manifest when God sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross in your place because you cannot pay for your sins. That's the wisdom of God. God did the only thing that He could do to save you, and He sent His Son to be born of a virgin, to live a sinless life, and die on a cross, so that your sins, past, present, and future, could all be paid for, and give you eternal, everlasting life. That's the wisdom of God. If you have not repented of your sins, and put your faith in Jesus Christ, you are hell bound. And that is also the wisdom of God. I'm going to ask Brother Artie to come. He's going to help us with an invitation hymn this morning. And as he does so, I know that I may not have spoken directly to your needs or your desires, but I believe God can do that even in this message this morning and encourage you. I'm going to ask that you stand with me, please, as we prepare for the invitation. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we come before you and thank you so much that you are a God who is outside of our existence. That you're a God way far above us in heaven above. As you see everything that's taking place on the earth right now, there is not one thought, there is not one desire, that is so hidden in the hearts of men that you cannot see it. You know what every man is thinking. You know what every man is doing. And Father, we know that you are the master chess player, and that you're putting everything together for the coming of Jesus Christ. And we find great comfort in the fact that you are sovereignly controlling this world. We certainly do not see everything. We certainly do not understand everything. But we find comfort and peace in knowing that your sovereignty is always good. In our individual lives, in our personal lives, everything that happens in our individual personal lives, even though we may not understand it, and even though it may be painful, We know that You can use even the painful things to bring us closer to You. Help us, Heavenly Father, to grow in our faith. We want greater faith in You. We want to trust You more with our everyday problems and struggles and difficulties, Father. And we want to live for You more. We want the Holy Spirit to have more control of our lives so that we can demonstrate to this world, yes, We believe in an almighty God, a holy God, a righteous God, a God of all power. We appeal to you for wisdom, Father. We believe that you will keep your word. When you said that you would give us wisdom, we believe that. I just pray that we will practice it, that we will practice it more. It's not that maybe sometimes we don't doubt it, but we certainly fail to practice it like we ought to. And help us to do that, Lord. Now God, save the lost, strengthen the saved. In Christ's name we pray, amen.