PBPC Update - Sunday Sermon Available
Dear Friends,
Here is the link to today's sermon, and the manuscript is attached. Hope you can join us on Zoom next Sunday!
Blessings,
Pastor Chris
Sermon – "Mysterious Dreams" – Daniel 2:1-49
July 19, 2020
Chris Coon, PBPC
Have you ever had the dream where you find a coin, and then another and another, and it doesn't seem to end… until it does end? Or how about where you find yourself somewhere and you're missing something very important, like not having your homework at school? Or maybe your clothes…? For pastors, this might look like being in front of the church without any sermon prepared! Perhaps you've had a very meaningful dream, like a visit with a long-lost loved one, and it seems so incredibly real; but when you awake, no matter how you try to hold on to it, the details of the dream inevitably slip away. Today we will look at dream that required someone to find out not only the meaning of the dream, but the actual content of the dream itself.
We are spending some time this summer thinking about exile. In the early sixth century B.C. the Hebrews from the city of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah (the remnant of Israel) were conquered by the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar. The city and the Temple were destroyed, and the best of the people were hauled away into captivity in Babylon. This loss of home and national identity forced the Hebrews to search their own hearts and to grapple with the question: What does it mean to be faithful to God in a time of exile?
This is a question that we as Christians might well ask ourselves. Like the people of Israel, we long to experience the Promised Land, to dwell in peace and prosperity in the place that God has led us to after leading us out of bondage to sin. And yet… we find that we still live in a world that is damaged by the continuing effects of sin and conflict, and we cannot escape it. Worse yet, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…" We are each living in our own exile. We are not yet home. So we ask ourselves the same question: What does it mean to be faithful to God in a time of exile?
The book of Daniel helps us to answer this question, and specifically Daniel himself does. Daniel reminds us of another bibilical character, Joseph the son of Jacob, from the book of Genesis. Both Daniel and Joseph were taken captive as young men and transported to foreign kingdoms (in Joseph's case, to Egypt) to serve as slaves. Both of them were gifted by God with the ability to interpret dreams, as well as being given prophetic dreams of their own. And both of them, through their integrity and faithfulness, as well as this god-given ability of dream interpretation, brought glory to God and were eventually promoted to the highest levels of responsibility in the kingdoms they served.
2 In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed such dreams that his spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. 2 So the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. When they came in and stood before the king, 3 he said to them, "I have had such a dream that my spirit is troubled by the desire to understand it." 4 The Chaldeans said to the king (in Aramaic), "O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will reveal the interpretation." 5 The king answered the Chaldeans, "This is a public decree: if you do not tell me both the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you do tell me the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore tell me the dream and its interpretation."… 10 The Chaldeans answered the king, "There is no one on earth who can reveal what the king demands! In fact no king, however great and powerful, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king is asking is too difficult, and no one can reveal it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with mortals."… 12 Because of this the king flew into a violent rage and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. 13 The decree was issued, and the wise men were about to be executed; and they looked for Daniel and his companions, to execute them… 16 So Daniel went in and requested that the king give him time and he would tell the king the interpretation… 24 Therefore Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, "Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will give the king the interpretation."…
26 The king said to Daniel,… "Are you able to tell me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?" 27 Daniel answered the king, "No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or diviners can show to the king the mystery that the king is asking, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has disclosed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen at the end of days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed were these: 29 To you, O king, as you lay in bed, came thoughts of what would be hereafter, and the revealer of mysteries disclosed to you what is to be. 30 But as for me, this mystery has not been revealed to me because of any wisdom that I have more than any other living being, but in order that the interpretation may be known to the king and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind.
31 "You were looking, O king, and lo! there was a great statue. This statue was huge, its brilliance extraordinary; it was standing before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of that statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34 As you looked on, a stone was cut out, not by human hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, were all broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth… 44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall this kingdom be left to another people. It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever; 45 just as you saw that a stone was cut from the mountain not by hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The great God has informed the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation trustworthy."… 47 The king said to Daniel, "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!" 48 Then the king promoted Daniel, gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.
Now it is very natural to be curious about the specific meaning of this dream, so we'll take a moment to address that. The four portions of the statue could represent four kings or four kingdoms. The head of gold is clearly Nebuchadnezzar, and/or the current empire of Babylon. This kingdom was in turn conquered by the Medes, the Persians, and finally the Greeks under Alexander. The Greek empire was short-lived, and very quickly fractured into multiple empires that were at war with one another. Daniel himself lives to see a succession of kings and even serves under the great Persian king Cyrus. The stone which strikes the statue should not be thought of as a comet (although that is a dramatic and compelling image) but rather as rising out of the ground, destabilizing and toppling the brittle statue with feet of clay. This stone represents God's kingdom, which will overcome all the other kingdoms and last forever.
Now I want to come back to the person of Daniel for a moment, because apart from the plot and details of this story, we can learn a lot simply from looking at Daniel. Daniel put his trust in God, even in this dire and life-threatening situation. Daniel did not freak out or give in to fear; rather, he very calmly asked for time to seek God's guidance. And when God gave the answers that he sought, Daniel very clearly gave God the praise and the credit for wisdom and enlightenment that he provided to the king. In all these ways, Daniel is the model to us of what a faithful life in exile looks like.
From the larger story itself, we can take away three important points. I give credit to Dale Ralph Davis for this alliteration.
First, God reveals how futile pagan religion is. The king seeks answers from his wise men and counselors (by the way, we can think of these guys as the precursors to the Magi from the nativity story.) The request of the king that the wise men give him not only the interpretation of the dream, but also the dream itself, strikes us as unreasonable – in fact, we don't know why the king made this demand, whether because he was suspicious of the wise men or because he had forgotten details of the dream. Clearly the wise men thought this was an unreasonable request as well, for their response to the king was that no one could give him the answers he wanted because only the gods knew this information, and their dwelling was not with mortals.
Of course this is exactly the point – the wise men cannot provide this information because they don't actually have connection with the true gods, or God. This challenges one of the central ideas of empire and conquest: that when one nation defeats another, that means that their gods have defeated the other nation's gods. But Daniel reveals to the king that there is one true God, the God of truth and the revealer of mysteries, and that this one God is above the petty rivalries of nations. The conquest and exile of the Hebrews was not the defeat and replacement of the God of Israel, but rather it was the working out of God's plan for His people. God is still God.
As God's people, our experience of exile can lead us to believe the narrative that God is no longer unique, is no longer absolute, is only one of many gods who offer meaning and their own versions of truth. We may even feel that God is obsolete. But pagan religion finds its source in human efforts or even in dark spiritual forces, neither of which provides the ultimate source of truth or reality.
Second, God reveals how fragile human power is. The thing that really worries Nebuchadnezzar is what the future holds in terms of his hold on power. He seems to be satisfied with the picture that Daniel paints about his kingdom being replaced by another, perhaps because it will not happen during his own lifetime. We see during this era a series of empires that claimed to rule the whole world, and a series of kings who could claim the title King of Kings, only to be overcome and overwhelmed by another, greater empire. This sequence did not end with the four empires represented in Nebuchadnezzar's statue, nor has it ended. The Babylonians were not the ultimate power, nor were the Persians or the Greeks or the Romans, nor were the British or the Germans or the Japanese, and nor will be the Americans or the Chinese or anyone who comes after us.
While Daniel was engaged in the place where God had put him, and sought the good of the kingdom in which he served, he did not put his faith in the power of the king or the state to fulfill what was best. Human power may seem magnificent and impressive, may seem as strong as iron, but ultimately it has feet of clay – it is not something that can or will last forever. It is tempting to put our faith in the power of our earthly empires to save us, or achieve glory, or to create the utopia that we desire. But ultimately, human powers will shift, crack, and pass away, to be replaced by something else. This does not mean that it is meaningless to participate in the work of the earthly kingdom we are apart of – like Daniel, we seek the good, the blessing, and the flourishing of the kingdom where God has placed us. But we also remember that we are exiles, and this place is not the final reality.
Finally, God reveals how firm God's kingdom is. It is the stone that is not carved by any human hands that finally brings down the series of earthly empires. This stone then grows into a mountain that fills the whole world. This is God kingdom, and it is an eternal kingdom. For God's people, this is the true end of exile. And this was not achieved when some of the Hebrews were released from captivity and allowed to return to Jerusalem, which happened at the end of Daniel's life. We see that God's kingdom found its fulfillment not in the establishment of human government or even of Temple worship; but God's kingdom came near to us in the person and life of Jesus Christ. The gospel, or good news, was that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, or available and accessible to us, in Jesus himself. This is the kingdom that is everlasting, the presence of God with his people through his Spirit, the kingdom where God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This kingdom is the kingdom represented by the stone in the king's dream; this is appropriate, because Jesus himself was the stone that the builders rejected, but which became the cornerstone; Jesus is the rock of our salvation. God's kingdom in Christ is the eternal kingdom. Earthly kingdoms are human and changeable, and no matter how long they last, they will eventually pass away.
The message to the exiles is that we are part of a greater kingdom. We still belong to the God of heaven and earth, who has made his home among mortals. We do not look to other religions and philosophies to provide us with answers, because God is the God of truth and the revealer of mysteries. We do not put our confidence in the governments or powers of this world, because one way or another they will give way and pass away. As Daniel did, we recognize that God is still in charge, that even in the midst of our exile God is faithful and has good plans for us, and that in Christ God's kingdom is being realized in this world, will be fulfilled when Christ returns, and will last for all eternity.
July 19, 2020
Chris Coon, PBPC
Have you ever had the dream where you find a coin, and then another and another, and it doesn't seem to end… until it does end? Or how about where you find yourself somewhere and you're missing something very important, like not having your homework at school? Or maybe your clothes…? For pastors, this might look like being in front of the church without any sermon prepared! Perhaps you've had a very meaningful dream, like a visit with a long-lost loved one, and it seems so incredibly real; but when you awake, no matter how you try to hold on to it, the details of the dream inevitably slip away. Today we will look at dream that required someone to find out not only the meaning of the dream, but the actual content of the dream itself.
We are spending some time this summer thinking about exile. In the early sixth century B.C. the Hebrews from the city of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah (the remnant of Israel) were conquered by the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar. The city and the Temple were destroyed, and the best of the people were hauled away into captivity in Babylon. This loss of home and national identity forced the Hebrews to search their own hearts and to grapple with the question: What does it mean to be faithful to God in a time of exile?
This is a question that we as Christians might well ask ourselves. Like the people of Israel, we long to experience the Promised Land, to dwell in peace and prosperity in the place that God has led us to after leading us out of bondage to sin. And yet… we find that we still live in a world that is damaged by the continuing effects of sin and conflict, and we cannot escape it. Worse yet, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…" We are each living in our own exile. We are not yet home. So we ask ourselves the same question: What does it mean to be faithful to God in a time of exile?
The book of Daniel helps us to answer this question, and specifically Daniel himself does. Daniel reminds us of another bibilical character, Joseph the son of Jacob, from the book of Genesis. Both Daniel and Joseph were taken captive as young men and transported to foreign kingdoms (in Joseph's case, to Egypt) to serve as slaves. Both of them were gifted by God with the ability to interpret dreams, as well as being given prophetic dreams of their own. And both of them, through their integrity and faithfulness, as well as this god-given ability of dream interpretation, brought glory to God and were eventually promoted to the highest levels of responsibility in the kingdoms they served.
2 In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed such dreams that his spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. 2 So the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. When they came in and stood before the king, 3 he said to them, "I have had such a dream that my spirit is troubled by the desire to understand it." 4 The Chaldeans said to the king (in Aramaic), "O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will reveal the interpretation." 5 The king answered the Chaldeans, "This is a public decree: if you do not tell me both the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you do tell me the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore tell me the dream and its interpretation."… 10 The Chaldeans answered the king, "There is no one on earth who can reveal what the king demands! In fact no king, however great and powerful, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king is asking is too difficult, and no one can reveal it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with mortals."… 12 Because of this the king flew into a violent rage and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. 13 The decree was issued, and the wise men were about to be executed; and they looked for Daniel and his companions, to execute them… 16 So Daniel went in and requested that the king give him time and he would tell the king the interpretation… 24 Therefore Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, "Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will give the king the interpretation."…
26 The king said to Daniel,… "Are you able to tell me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?" 27 Daniel answered the king, "No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or diviners can show to the king the mystery that the king is asking, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has disclosed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen at the end of days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed were these: 29 To you, O king, as you lay in bed, came thoughts of what would be hereafter, and the revealer of mysteries disclosed to you what is to be. 30 But as for me, this mystery has not been revealed to me because of any wisdom that I have more than any other living being, but in order that the interpretation may be known to the king and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind.
31 "You were looking, O king, and lo! there was a great statue. This statue was huge, its brilliance extraordinary; it was standing before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of that statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34 As you looked on, a stone was cut out, not by human hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, were all broken in pieces and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth… 44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall this kingdom be left to another people. It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever; 45 just as you saw that a stone was cut from the mountain not by hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The great God has informed the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation trustworthy."… 47 The king said to Daniel, "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!" 48 Then the king promoted Daniel, gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.
Now it is very natural to be curious about the specific meaning of this dream, so we'll take a moment to address that. The four portions of the statue could represent four kings or four kingdoms. The head of gold is clearly Nebuchadnezzar, and/or the current empire of Babylon. This kingdom was in turn conquered by the Medes, the Persians, and finally the Greeks under Alexander. The Greek empire was short-lived, and very quickly fractured into multiple empires that were at war with one another. Daniel himself lives to see a succession of kings and even serves under the great Persian king Cyrus. The stone which strikes the statue should not be thought of as a comet (although that is a dramatic and compelling image) but rather as rising out of the ground, destabilizing and toppling the brittle statue with feet of clay. This stone represents God's kingdom, which will overcome all the other kingdoms and last forever.
Now I want to come back to the person of Daniel for a moment, because apart from the plot and details of this story, we can learn a lot simply from looking at Daniel. Daniel put his trust in God, even in this dire and life-threatening situation. Daniel did not freak out or give in to fear; rather, he very calmly asked for time to seek God's guidance. And when God gave the answers that he sought, Daniel very clearly gave God the praise and the credit for wisdom and enlightenment that he provided to the king. In all these ways, Daniel is the model to us of what a faithful life in exile looks like.
From the larger story itself, we can take away three important points. I give credit to Dale Ralph Davis for this alliteration.
First, God reveals how futile pagan religion is. The king seeks answers from his wise men and counselors (by the way, we can think of these guys as the precursors to the Magi from the nativity story.) The request of the king that the wise men give him not only the interpretation of the dream, but also the dream itself, strikes us as unreasonable – in fact, we don't know why the king made this demand, whether because he was suspicious of the wise men or because he had forgotten details of the dream. Clearly the wise men thought this was an unreasonable request as well, for their response to the king was that no one could give him the answers he wanted because only the gods knew this information, and their dwelling was not with mortals.
Of course this is exactly the point – the wise men cannot provide this information because they don't actually have connection with the true gods, or God. This challenges one of the central ideas of empire and conquest: that when one nation defeats another, that means that their gods have defeated the other nation's gods. But Daniel reveals to the king that there is one true God, the God of truth and the revealer of mysteries, and that this one God is above the petty rivalries of nations. The conquest and exile of the Hebrews was not the defeat and replacement of the God of Israel, but rather it was the working out of God's plan for His people. God is still God.
As God's people, our experience of exile can lead us to believe the narrative that God is no longer unique, is no longer absolute, is only one of many gods who offer meaning and their own versions of truth. We may even feel that God is obsolete. But pagan religion finds its source in human efforts or even in dark spiritual forces, neither of which provides the ultimate source of truth or reality.
Second, God reveals how fragile human power is. The thing that really worries Nebuchadnezzar is what the future holds in terms of his hold on power. He seems to be satisfied with the picture that Daniel paints about his kingdom being replaced by another, perhaps because it will not happen during his own lifetime. We see during this era a series of empires that claimed to rule the whole world, and a series of kings who could claim the title King of Kings, only to be overcome and overwhelmed by another, greater empire. This sequence did not end with the four empires represented in Nebuchadnezzar's statue, nor has it ended. The Babylonians were not the ultimate power, nor were the Persians or the Greeks or the Romans, nor were the British or the Germans or the Japanese, and nor will be the Americans or the Chinese or anyone who comes after us.
While Daniel was engaged in the place where God had put him, and sought the good of the kingdom in which he served, he did not put his faith in the power of the king or the state to fulfill what was best. Human power may seem magnificent and impressive, may seem as strong as iron, but ultimately it has feet of clay – it is not something that can or will last forever. It is tempting to put our faith in the power of our earthly empires to save us, or achieve glory, or to create the utopia that we desire. But ultimately, human powers will shift, crack, and pass away, to be replaced by something else. This does not mean that it is meaningless to participate in the work of the earthly kingdom we are apart of – like Daniel, we seek the good, the blessing, and the flourishing of the kingdom where God has placed us. But we also remember that we are exiles, and this place is not the final reality.
Finally, God reveals how firm God's kingdom is. It is the stone that is not carved by any human hands that finally brings down the series of earthly empires. This stone then grows into a mountain that fills the whole world. This is God kingdom, and it is an eternal kingdom. For God's people, this is the true end of exile. And this was not achieved when some of the Hebrews were released from captivity and allowed to return to Jerusalem, which happened at the end of Daniel's life. We see that God's kingdom found its fulfillment not in the establishment of human government or even of Temple worship; but God's kingdom came near to us in the person and life of Jesus Christ. The gospel, or good news, was that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, or available and accessible to us, in Jesus himself. This is the kingdom that is everlasting, the presence of God with his people through his Spirit, the kingdom where God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This kingdom is the kingdom represented by the stone in the king's dream; this is appropriate, because Jesus himself was the stone that the builders rejected, but which became the cornerstone; Jesus is the rock of our salvation. God's kingdom in Christ is the eternal kingdom. Earthly kingdoms are human and changeable, and no matter how long they last, they will eventually pass away.
The message to the exiles is that we are part of a greater kingdom. We still belong to the God of heaven and earth, who has made his home among mortals. We do not look to other religions and philosophies to provide us with answers, because God is the God of truth and the revealer of mysteries. We do not put our confidence in the governments or powers of this world, because one way or another they will give way and pass away. As Daniel did, we recognize that God is still in charge, that even in the midst of our exile God is faithful and has good plans for us, and that in Christ God's kingdom is being realized in this world, will be fulfilled when Christ returns, and will last for all eternity.