Truth Encounter: Living In The Lion's Den - Daniel Series

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks! Facebook was designed in 2004 ago as a social network for college kids. It’s the over 30 crowd who are its fastest growing demographic. See! You can teach a lot of old dogs new tricks, but the dog you can’t teach can be old or young. It’s the proud dog! The prophet Daniel concludes his prophecy with "but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand." Is Daniel saying that these folks never had a chance and that there is no point in trying to reach them? Let’s see if we can unseal some of the truth that Daniel sealed up when he put the clay closure on his parchment scroll.

Here are twelve chapters packed with great stories and mysterious prophesies. The point of it all is to answer the question-Who will be the King of the Mountain in the End? Want to know how to put the entire Book of Daniel together in a few minutes and discover the answer to this question?

You're trying to serve Jesus, live according to His will, and yet everything in life seems to have turned out badly. You lose your job while a deceitful fellow worker gets a promotion. Your neighbor who parties looks great even at forty. You’ve faithfully worked out daily for years and discover at forty five that you have breast cancer. What does our Heavenly Father have to say to us when being part of His family doesn’t look like such a good deal? Turn to Daniel 12:1-4 and let's ask whether or not God will make things right in the end.

Every good story has angels and demons--the good guys vs. the bad guys. For example, Dan Brown even titles his latest work to come to the big screen Angels and Demons. The catch is: How do you decide who is good and who is bad? God tells the ultimate Angels vs. Demons story in Daniel 11:36- 12:3 and He does know who is good and who is bad. Whose side are you on?

Do you like war movies? From John Wayne in The Alamo to Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, one thing I would never say about war movies is that they are boring. Filled with flags, canons, explosions, and life and death confrontations—how could they ever be boring? Yet when we turn to Daniel 11, a chapter filled with three hundred years of battles between the East and West and the North and South, it doesn't even give you the names of the Kings and Generals. Maybe God has a good reason not to tell the history of the world from Cyrus the Great to Antiochus Epiphanes in riveting dramatic narrative.

As believers in the 21st Century, Daniel teaches us not to isolate ourselves from the world, or be assimilated by the world, but to bring redemption to our world by living out our faith in the world. This week you will face the “brain washing” pressures that Daniel faced. Pressure to give in to idolatry, to compromise your moral values, to go along with the “system.” Will you dare to be a Daniel?

When God's people blow it, how do you react? It's easy to sit around a table in a cafe and get into one of those downer sessions, "And they call themselves Christians!" "It's never been this bad!" "Back in the good old days!" Five hundred years before Christ, it was a bad time for God's people. Most of them had not returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Those who did had fallen down on the job, and those still living in Babylon had simply joined the pagans. How did the Prophet Daniel respond and how did God respond?

The Antichrist. Millions will applaud and follow him. Those who refuse to join the juggernaut of success will be eliminated. His claim to world dominion will present the ultimate challenge to the King of Kings, and each of us must choose who our champion will be—a humble servant riding on a common donkey or a powerful, gifted ruler riding a wave of power and materialistic promises. Daniel nine speaks of a humble Prince who will be cut off and have nothing and a successful, conquering prince who will be invincible and appear to have everything. You have to decide who you will give your ultimate loyalty to.

The economic analysts describe the stench of poverty and corruption that plagues Gaza, political analysts sift through the history and catalogue the attempts at peace in the Middle East, but the angry cries to fight to the death continue. Few ask the deeper question raised by a 1st Century Jew named James, “What causes conflicts and disputes among you? Where do they come from?” The prophet Daniel answered this question in Daniel chapter 9. Down on his face Daniel confessed his sin and the sins of his people. God responded and sent Gabriel, a powerful angel, to reveal God’s answer to the problem of Jerusalem and His Jewish people. Let’s join Daniel on our knees in confession and listen to God’s answer.

All it takes is three numbers 666 in a movie title and you’ve got a blockbuster. The mention of Antichrist conjures up foreboding visions of an ultimate, arrogant, violent tyrant, and in my own life time everyone from JFK to Krushchev and others were identified as this Man of Sin. A little less than 200 years before Jesus an Old Testament Antichrist already strutted across the pages of history. Daniel 8 spends only a few lines to describe the entire career of Alexander the Great but many verses to focus our attention on this little known Syrian. What does Daniel teach us about persevering through times when it seems as if God has disappeared from our history and it looks like evil is going to win?

Animal fights rivet your attention, but the battle that Daniel saw between a ram and a he-goat predicted the result of a world war between Persia and Greece. Then he looked into the future of his Jewish people and saw the rise of a king who thought he could stop the holy sacrifices in Jerusalem and strut all the way to heaven. He was wrong. As we join Daniel to observe the hot war between ancient Greece and Persia, and the ensuing rise and fall of world powers, what do we learn about the conflicts between nations, and God’s point of view on the struggle?

I bet 90% of your conversations this week were about politics, and certainly the newscasts can’t stop speculating about the next U.S. presidency. But the most that Obama could govern in Washington is eight years. Daniel talks about a Candidate who will rule forever, and if you unite with Him, you, too, will rule with Him. What do we need to do to insure that we are on the winning side when the End comes?

I was raised fearing the Bear—Russia—and the British Empire was the Lion. Even our two political parties present themselves as an elephant and a donkey. The same thing was true in the Ancient World, and as we open up our Bibles to Daniel 7 to begin the prophetic section of the book, we are in the midst of a hurricane at sea. Looking out through the storm, four beasts emerge in succession out of the waves. Then our eyes are directed away from the tumult at sea to a sedate but fiery scene where a throne is set up, books are open, and judgment is pronounced.

Old Adirondack bear traps are treacherous. So are the traps the Evil One sets against us when we spend personal time with God daily and then live openly for Him in the marketplace. Turn back to Daniel 6 which records the famous “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” story, and pick it up at verse 11. Daniel’s enemies have set their trap against Daniel. They have caught him in the act of disobeying the command to worship only the Persian King. It’s time to deliver their prey to death.

Do you ever feel like everyone is trying to take a bite out of your life? This week in Dallas many teachers lost their jobs. Many of my contractor friends haven't been able to start a new house in months and things aren't supposed to improve until Spring, if then. Several of my brothers and sisters in our church here in Midlothian, TX aren't worried about the financial crisis because their personal health crisis is far greater. Can you have peace and sleep in your lion's den? Daniel slept in his. How did he do it?

Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar’s son. He should have learned that his father’s pride and defiant idolatry against the true God cost him seven years of sanity. Instead, in Daniel 5, we enter a Babylonian party where the sacred goblets from the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem are being used to drown the fear of the Babylonians and to praise their impotent gods on the very night when the Persian army was poised to end their revelry forever.

What a week! Does anyone in Washington or New York actually know what’s going on? It might all work out in the end for all of us tax payers, but if ever we needed to consider that maybe it is sheer madness to think that we are in control and that there is an expert somewhere who has the answers, this is the time. In the 6th Century BC Nebuchadnezzar believed he had the answers. He had built a powerful economic system and an invincible military machine. He believed he was King of the Mountain. Was he in touch with reality? Are we?

"Toleration" can mean that you must accept all morals and spiritual viewpoints as equally valid. To actually believe that you are connected with the ultimate God who is there is the height of arrogance and pride. Apply this kind of thinking to the fiery furnace account in Daniel 3. Is it a progressive, contextualized understanding of how things have changed to go ahead and bow before Nebuchadnezzar's god, especially when you consider that the Temple in Jerusalem has just been burned to the ground and Babylon now rules the world? Listen and learn from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Fear is a bad decision maker, and the fear that life as we know it will soon end is one of our greatest fears. The “gods” of earth, including the physicists, might be able to get some correct info about what happened soon after the beginning and even reveal the elementary children’s blocks God used to create this present time-space-matter world. What they can’t tell us is how history will end, and more importantly, who will sit on the throne in the last chapter. These are the questions that only God can answer, and He chose to do just that in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of destiny.

We can be driving along a smooth road in life on a clear sunny day. The blue sky seems to stretch forever when suddenly we have a flat tire, storm clouds gather, and a blue sky turns to rain and then sleet. How do you react when you face life’s threatening storms? In Daniel 2 Nebuchadnezzar explodes in anger against not only Daniel, but all of his wise men and threatens to murder the entire lot. How did this young seventeen year old respond just out of Babylonian grad school? What can we learn about how to handle the situation when someone explodes in rage and threatens us?