Daniel 1:1-21
I love travel books. Whether it is John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie or just a second-hand book I picked up yesterday at an antique store, I love to read travel books. They are guides to places I have never been, or when they are really good, they are insights into things I see all the time, but I get to see them in a new way.
The Book of Daniel is a divine travel guide for pilgrims who are passing through Babylon. The six stories and four dreams that make up this apocalyptic book of the Old Testament are many things to us.
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They are clearly prophetic. Daniel prophesies the coming of Christ down to the year. Daniel prophesies the kingdoms of the Medes, Persians, Alexander the Great and his successor, Rome. He paves the way for a fifth monarchy which will be out of this world and will never go away, clearly showing the birth and growth of the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ. Daniel prophesies desolations, and Daniel prophesies deliverance.
Some wonder whether Daniel is just an allegory written by a later scribe seeking to encourage faith in the Jews. But in Matthew 24:15 Jesus Christ says that Daniel is a prophet. So the book, placed between the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets, is in a perfect place. Yes, surely, this is, like the book of Revelation, an apocalyptic book describing what will happen. And like Revelation, it is more.
Daniel is a great theological book. The subject of Daniel is not Daniel, nor is it Nebuchadnezzar the king. The proper subject of Daniel is God. And the late great Old Testament scholar, Gleason Archer, had it absolutely right when he summarized this book, “The principal theological emphasis in Daniel is the absolute sovereignty of Yahweh, the God of Israel.”1 And one cannot approach this book without coming into contact with the mystery and the glory and the certain reality of Almighty God ruling and reigning even through evil kings over all of mankind.
But the Book of Daniel is the place where prophecy and theology meet in a teenage boy named Daniel in captivity to a foreign king. Along with Daniel’s friends, the reader comes face-to-face with the realities in his own life:
How a believer must live in times of apostasy
How a believer may follow the Lord in the most secular of conditions
How a follower of Christ can trust Christ even when it seems He is not in control
How a disciple of Jesus can meet the demands of discipleship in the tough, hard places of life
This part of Daniel grips me as your pastor. So I am back to why I love travel books. Think of Daniel as your divine guide to living for God in those times when it looks like God is nowhere to be found. And if we are truly becoming the secular nation that many say we are, then Daniel is God’s guide for our lives as we stand up for Him in this generation.