“Your Will Be Done” — Part One

I invite you to turn with me to Daniel and to chapter 8. Daniel chapter 8, and I’ll read from the first verse:

“In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.

“As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I[’d] seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.

“Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, ‘For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?’ And he said to me, ‘For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.’

“When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it.”

And so do we. We thank God for his Word.

Father, we bow reverently and humbly. We pray, as we have said in our song, that you might speak to us. Grant to us clarity of thought, brevity of expression, and humility of heart. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Well, let’s look at Daniel chapter 8. And as you turn to it, let me remind you of what we said just a few weeks ago when we began chapter 7. We said that teaching the Bible in a consecutive and expository fashion—in other words, reading the Bible the way it’s written—has a number of distinct benefits. One of them was that it enables us as a congregation to read the Bible in the way that it has been written and therefore to understand it in the structure that has been provided for us. Secondly, that it is a good exercise inasmuch as it demands that the teacher of the Bible will himself become a student of the Bible. There’s no possibility of being able to meander your way through Daniel chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, if you’re not studying your Bible, without everybody immediately knowing. And thirdly, that it prevents the preacher and teacher of the Bible from avoiding the difficult passages.

And you smiled as we began chapter 7. I’m not sure you’re smiling quite as much now, because you are down underneath the burden of the challenge along with me—at least those of you who are doing your homework. And if you thought 7 was tough, you ain’t seen nothing yet! And if you read ahead, you will understand that.

It’s a wonderful thing, though, to be teaching a congregation who understand that you expect to be fed—that the responsibility of the pastor-teacher is to feed the flock, not to please the consumer. There are a number of pulpits that apparently have adopted the position whereby the congregation are consumers—a potential market—and the preacher or the teacher is a sort of salesman, and his job is to try and overcome consumer resistance by some means, and often, that is by means of seeking to give the congregation what it is that they want to hear. And it’s not a good idea. Not only is it not a good idea; it’s not God’s intention. When in Deuteronomy he says to Moses, “I want you to gather my people together,” he says, “I want you to gather them together in order that they might hear my word.”[1] When Paul, as we saw in our studies in 2 Timothy, begins to take his leave of Timothy, he says, “Timothy, make sure that no matter what anybody else is doing, that you preach the word.”[2] And so, it is a privilege to do so.

In the 1950s, in his commentary on 1 Peter, Cranfield said then, “It is a pathetic feature of contemporary Church life”—1950s!—“that there are still plenty in the pews who clamour for shorter and lighter sermons and bright and easy services and not a few in the pulpits prepared to pander to popular taste. There’s a vicious cycle: superficial congregations make superficial pastors, and superficial pastors make superficial congregations.”[3]

Now, if you think about that, nothing other than a conviction about the absolute sufficiency, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture would cause us to turn to Daniel chapter 8. I mean, if you were operating on any other principle, you would say, “We’ll get to Daniel chapter 8—never! We will never have to deal with it!” Nobody’s remotely interested in Daniel chapter 8. There’s nothing in Daniel chapter 8 that anybody that I know has been asking about, not just last week but ever in their entire life! So why would you do it? Answer: because all Scripture is inspired by God, and it is profitable for “teaching,” for “correction,” for “reproof,” and for “training in righteousness.”[4] All of God’s Word is inspired; not every section of it is as inspiring as another section. Not every part of the Word of God is as plain as other parts of the Word of God. Therefore, we need always to come to it on our knees.

And I confess that in these studies, in my own personal study, I’ve derived significant encouragement from the reaction of Daniel to the visions he records. Look at how chapter 7 ended for us. It ended with Daniel looking pale, feeling alarmed, and keeping his thoughts to himself after he had gone through the process.[5]

You say, “Well, how did he do in chapter 8?” Well, look at the end of chapter 8: “And I, Daniel, was appalled. I was overcome. I took to my bed for a wee while, and I didn’t understand the vision.”

Well, I find that wonderfully encouraging! Because there was a couple of times this week where I’ve just gone to my bed as well. And my wife can testify to that. My desk is sitting there, it’s got paper all over it, and the odd Bible here and there, and she says, “Are you just going to leave it like that?” I said, “Yes. What else can I do? I don’t understand any better than three hours ago!” So I just took to my bed, covered my head with a blanket, and said, “I’ll try it again in the morning.” Well, that’s apparently what Daniel was doing.

And if it is daunting to try and teach it and understand it, it’s nothing compared to the burden that was laid upon Daniel in order to proclaim it. Because what you have here is Daniel, who is aware of the fact that the exile is about to end—because remember, he’s now deep into his seventies, maybe in his early eighties, and he knows that both Isaiah and Jeremiah have told that the exile will last for a period of seventy years. So he knows that we’re going to be going back to Jerusalem. But what he now knows as a result of these visions is that the returning exiles and subsequent generations are not going to have it all their own way. When they are finally put back in the place from which they have been torn, the events that are described here are going to befall them.

And the opening two verses set the scene. They set the scene: “In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar…” Well, you’ll remember, chapter 7 begins, “In the first year of [the reign of king] Belshazzar…”[6] So we know that this vision has been given to him two years after the panoramic vision of [chapter] 7.

Incidentally, it will be helpful if you keep this in mind. Those of you who have an iPhone or similar, and you take panoramic shots—if you manage, you know, to start standing where you’re supposed to stand. (Don’t worry about that.) But anyway… You have to, ʼcause otherwise you don’t get it. So, you take the panoramic shot. You also have a place in there where you can take a square, or you can move in on it. And so, in chapter 7, you have a panoramic that begins with Daniel and goes all the way to the consummation of the kingdom of God and the return of Jesus. In chapter 8, he now has been given a vision which is part of that panoramic but focuses only on two distinct elements of the overarching whole that has been provided there in chapter 7. And it will help you if you keep that in mind.

He sees himself in Susa. In other words, in this vision, he finds himself somewhere other than he is. He’s not in Susa. Susa was 220 miles east of Babylon, 150 miles north of the Persian Gulf, in what is today southwestern Iran. All right? So Daniel, five centuries before Christ, has this vision, and in his vision, that’s where he is. Those of us who studied Nehemiah together in the old days are familiar with Susa, because that’s exactly where Nehemiah was. Those of us who did Esther, most recently, will recall that we were also there in Susa. Susa was a strategic place—the winter residence of the Persian kings and the administrative capital of the empire under Darius. And it is in that context, you will notice, that he sees.

Now, verbs are important when you’re studying your Bible. Well, of course, so are adjectives. All the words are important. But you learn something: it was “a vision” that appeared to me. All right? It wasn’t something that was initially written down. He didn’t read it; he saw it. And the emphasis here on seeing is obvious. Verse 2: “And I saw in the vision; and when I saw …. And I saw in the vision…” Verse 3: “[And] I raised my eyes and [I] saw, and behold…” And verse 4: “[And] I saw the ram charging.”

You say, “Well, why are you making a fuss about this?” Well, I’m not actually making a fuss about it, but I want to reinforce for us again that when we read our Bibles and we deal with it in the genre of the text—the way in which the Scripture is given to us—this particular apocalyptic material is provided in such a way that we are supposed to—in reading it, in taking it to ourselves—we are supposed to be brought underneath the jurisdiction of the text, in the sense that it calls for us to see, right? It calls for us to see, it actually calls for us to hear, and it calls for us, if you like, to feel the sense of the impact. In other words, it’s a different way of describing things. It is a descriptive methodology for taking us into the realm of the indescribable. And that’s why you have these dramatic pictures which are provided.

Now, we quoted from Chesterton before, but only the end of the poem. I went to look for the rest of the poem, and it’s even better with the first part. Remember, Chesterton, writing in the foreword of a children’s book, put this poem there:

This is the sort of book we like
 (For you and I are very small),
With pictures stuck in anyhow,
 And hardly any words at all.

You will not understand a word
 Of all the words, including mine;
Never you trouble; you can see,
 And all directness is divine—

Stand up and keep your childishness:
 Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;
But don’t believe in anything
 That can’t be told in coloured pictures.[7]

Right?

That’s why I’ve said to you that I think I can probably do better through in the children’s wing with Daniel 8 than I can do with some of us in here, because we will not allow the text to do what the text is there to do: to cause us, first of all, to see, to hear, to get underneath the weight of it. Some of you—and I mention this in passing—but some of you have never really been able to deal with the apocalyptic passages because you never got the picture, because you fiddled around with inconsequential, inexplicable details, thereby missing it entirely.

Well, I don’t know how far we’ll get this morning, but we’ll get as far as we can. And we’ll notice, first of all, that there was “a ram” and “it had two horns.” “I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. [And] it had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last.”

Well, if you’ve been tracking, you say to yourself, “I think we’ve had an inkling of this before. We had that creature where it was leaning on the one side. One side was higher than the other.” That’s exactly right! And one horn, the one that comes out latter, is seen higher than the other—the kingdom of Medo-Persia, where eventually Persia supersedes the Medo part of it and triumphs in this immense way, so that Persia rules. You say, “Well, where’d you get that from?” Well, verse 20: “As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media … Persia.” So, you don’t have to be a genius. You just have to read your Bible. All right?

Now, the ram represents this empire, the higher part of the horn representing the dominance of Persia. “[And] I saw the ram charging westward … northward and southward.” You read of the story of history, and you find that these are the movements of the Persians as they conquered in their day. They were apparently invincible: “No beast could stand before him, … there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and [he] became [very] great.” All right?

So, verse 4 covers a tremendous chunk of time and a significant amount of geography. But the details of it are not provided for us there, because we don’t need them. This is where the empire went. This is how the empire conceived of itself. This is the way in which it dominated the then-known world.

Incidentally, you remember back in chapter 5, when Belshazzar is really distressed because of the hand that is writing on the wall—in fact, if you turn back a couple of pages, you can remind yourself of it there—and his mother says, “Why don’t you get Daniel in here? Because Daniel’s good at stuff like this, and he can help you out.”[8] And so “Daniel was brought in before the king,”[9] and the king explains to him what’s going on, how the hand was writing on the wall. And in 5:26, Daniel says, “This is the interpretation of the matter: … God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; … you[’ve] been weighed in the balances and found wanting; … your kingdom is divided and [it is] given [away] to the Medes and [to the] Persians.”[10]

Well, in actual fact, you see, that is exactly what happened. And Daniel had been made privy to that, and so he was able to address him in such a direct way. He had seen the collapse of the Babylonian Empire. It was a done deal. And God had pulled back for Daniel a little part of the curtain to give him a glimpse of the purposes of God.

So, verse 4 ends with a picture of invincibility, of a sort of unfettered greatness. But verse 5 begins, “As I was thinking about this, as I was giving it some thought, there appeared in my vision a male goat”—actually, literally, “a hairy goat”—“from the west came across the face of the whole earth, and it was as if it never even touched the ground in its movement. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes.”

Now, what is this? Well, verse 21 will help you: “And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king.” In other words, it’s a reference to Alexander the Great. History records it.

Incidentally, prophecy in the Bible—prophecy in the Bible—is not always future for us when we read the Bible. This prophecy was future for Daniel, but it’s history for us. Right? But that’s not a surprise, because Isaiah 53 was future for Isaiah, but it is history for us, who, in the person of the Lord Jesus, have been introduced to the one who is the Suffering Servant—in the same way that the prophecy of Isaiah concerning a virgin who will conceive and bring forth a son[11] is future for Isaiah; it is history for us. And in this we find that Daniel has been given an insight into what awaits those who are going to come after him. We, then, are able to read it with the ability of hindsight and put together some of the pieces that were inexplicable to those who were in the middle of it.

It is, incidentally, a testimony to the truthfulness of the Bible. Can God—can God—five centuries out, make these kind of predictions and be true? Did God actually give to Daniel a revelation that Daniel could not actually fully get his head around that was going to prove the reality that it did? The answer is yes! In fact, this is one of the evidences of the fact that the Bible is true: that that which is prophesied comes to fruition. But those who deny the Bible and deny God come to chapter 8 and say, “This can’t happen. God can’t do this. Therefore, what we have in chapter 8 is material that was written after the events that are described. Otherwise, nobody could ever describe them.”

You see the difference between bowing down underneath the authority of God’s Word as provided and setting ourselves up as an authority over God’s Word to determine what can and cannot be, what happened and what didn’t happen?

And this male goat with the conspicuous horn “came to the ram with the two horns,” which he “had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath.” This is what I’m saying to you: that you’ve got to get underneath this. I don’t think you can read this and go, “Oh, that’s very interesting.” You kind of read it and you go, “Oh, I’m glad I wasn’t there for that!” You’ve seen it on National Geographic when these things go at each other. Or you’ve even been in a field somewhere, and you’ve seen it actually happen, and the way in which they just go at each other. I mean, you recoil from it! You can hear the noise, almost, can’t you, of these horns going at one another, hitting one another? You’re supposed to. You’re supposed to! I mean, why should Daniel be the only one who’s appalled and freaked out and have to go to his bed? You’re supposed to sit here and go, “Oh that’s very interesting”? No! You’re supposed to go, “Whoa! That’s amazing!”

Says Baldwin—Joyce Baldwin—she says, “The sight and [the] sound of [the] horns breaking … [is typifying] the brittle” and ultimately fragile “nature of political might.”[12] I wish I could have written that sentence—just for once in my life, one good sentence. “The sight and [the] sound[s] of [the] horns breaking … typifies the brittle,” ultimately fragile, “nature of political might.” The kingdoms of the world clashing against one another, one superseding the other, one to rise up invincible—the power of the great king, or whoever it is. And then, eventually, history comes around, and he’s gone.

I was pondering this week, when I was thinking about this, the rise and fall of empires, the Third Reich. What a disaster! What an amazing period in history! The Nuremberg Trials. All of those proud, arrogant rascals finally on trial for the heinous things that they did—Goebbels and all of them sentenced to death, cremated, executed. Cremated. Their cremated remains put together, put together in one large tub, placed on the back of a truck, and driven out into the darkness of the countryside in the night, and tipped into a flowing stream. Months before, they rule the world. Now their ashes flow for people to walk on.

You see, only God’s kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Only God’s majesty is untrammeled majesty. Man as man continues to believe we will fix it, we will get it right, and so on. But no, look how the mighty are fallen.[13] The ram, who at the end of chapter 4 was apparently invincible. The Persian Empire, who… Nobody could rescue from the power of the Persian Empire. The king did exactly as he pleased in verse 4. But now we find that the same ram “had no power to stand before” the goat. The goat “cast him to the ground.” The goat “trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue … from his power. [And] the goat became exceedingly great.”

Only God’s kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Only God’s majesty is untrammeled majesty.

Oh! You see, Alexander’s victories are recorded well in history. Some of us had to try and study it in history. And the story here of Alexander’s movements… You see, “It was almost as if his feet never touched the ground.” When you read the conquests of Alexander, you realize that to that point in history, nobody had been as amazingly and dramatically and quickly victorious as Alexander had been. Within a decade, when he was still in his twenties, he ruled the world! By the time he was twenty-six, he had won these amazing battles—in his twenties! And you can find them recorded. One of them, at the Granicus River in 334 BC, Alexander takes 35,000 of his troops, and he goes against the Persian Empire—100,000 footmen and 10,000 horsemen—and Alexander’s forces kill 20,000 of the opposition, to the loss of only 100 Greek soldiers. That was then, in turn, followed by two amazing victories that established his territory and said, “Alexander is just absolutely on top of the world looking down on creation.” He was a hero at twenty-nine. He was dead at thirty-three. And the story of his death is a reminder of the fact that he ends in utter humiliation.

You see, we’re slow to pay attention to this, aren’t we? “As for man, his days are like grass,” and the glory of man is “like [the] flower of the field.”[14] “The grass withers,” and “the flower [falls].”[15] “The wind blows over its place, and he remembers it no more.”[16] Because, you see, it is the Ancient of Days, God himself, in chapter 7, who, says Isaiah,

  brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
 scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither,
 and the tempest carries them off like stubble.[17]

So, Alexander, at the height of his confident, self-proclaimed magnificence, is reduced to a state of utter humiliation. And portents and tales of intrigue and poison surround his death. Apparently, they found him dead in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. And he who is the great man of the day is then replaced: “The [great] goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken.” It’s the story of history. It’s the story of the Bible, actually. It’s a story of the fact that God doesn’t give his glory to anybody else. It doesn’t matter if you’re a politician or a pastor; he doesn’t share it! Why would he share it? He’s God!

Uzziah, the great king—seventeen years old, becomes the king. Everybody says, “Boy, this guy’s really got it. He has it militarily. He’s got it in terms of architecture. He’s got it in terms of the development of social networks within his nation. There’s nobody like Uzziah!” And his empire grew, and he was very, very successful. But do you know how he died? He was leprous! He died in humiliation. He didn’t die in his palace. He died, as it were, in a gatehouse at the bottom of the field. And the Chronicler tells us why. He says of Uzziah: “He was gloriously helped until he became strong. But when he grew strong, he became proud, to his own destruction.”[18]

You see, the seeds of his destruction were in his usefulness—a usefulness that was given him by God. The seeds of Alexander’s demise were grounded in the fact that he was so phenomenally great, but he believed that his magnificence was all of his own. And the great goat, “when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead … there came up four conspicuous horns.”

Now, we’ll have to come back to this. Let me finish in this way. Read history and you know that when Alexander the Great died, there were four generals that took over under him, managing all of the stuff that he had been lord over—Cassander, who ruled over Macedonia and Greece; Lysimachus, over Thrace and Asia Minor; Seleucus, over Syria and Mesopotamia; and Ptolemy (You remember the Ptolemies?), over Egypt. And out of the four, “out of one of them,” verse 9—and history records this as well—“came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great.”

Some of you are going, “Oh, good! We’re back on familiar territory. We remember the little horn from chapter 7.” Well, I’ve got bad news for you: this is a different little horn. In chapter 7, the little horn represents the antichrist. In chapter 8, the little horn represents Antiochus Epiphanes, who embodies all the characteristics of man’s rebellion against God. And once again, this little horn grows exceedingly great and goes to amazing extent in opposition to God and his people. And to that we will have to come back.

So, how can we stop? Well, you just stop. But, I mean, how can I end this just now, as it were, prematurely? Let me tell you what I wrote down for myself. I reminded myself that this vision is given to Daniel to forewarn Israel about a period of severe persecution which is going to come in the future and to assure them that their sovereign God will limit the days of persecution and destroy the persecutor. That’s what is conveyed in this vision. That’s why Daniel writes it down: so that when all of this unfolds, the people will be enabled to say, “But wait a minute! This is exactly what God said would happen.”

Don’t you think that that is pretty similar to the way in which Jesus prepared his disciples as well?

I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. … The [time] is coming when whoever kills you will think he[’s] offering [a] service to God. And they will do these things because they have[n’t] known the Father, [or] me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I have told them to you.[19]

So, God is doing the exact same thing now, all of these periods of time before the coming of the Lord Jesus. And the function of chapter 8, the function of the whole section, is not for our calendar but for our comfort.

We’ll come back tonight to the 2,300 days, which for some of you is like a red rag to a bull. You just can’t wait to get to the 2,300 days, and what are we going to do with them? Well, we’ll see. But let me tell you this. I wrote in my notes these things, and I’ll tell you, and I’m stopping.

The function of this highly symbolic chapter is not for my calendar; it’s for my comfort. That’s number one. It’s not for my calendar; it’s for my comfort. So if I go calendar, I miss why it’s there.

Secondly, God knows what’s up. I was at a Black church in Jacksonville this week, and many of the brothers said to me, “Hey, man, what’s up? What’s up?” And I said, “You know, God knows what’s up.”

Also, God is at work behind the scenes; therefore, stay steady, be prepared—and we ought to quote Yogi Berra at least once, since he just died—and it’s not over until it’s over. And it’s not over. And the reason it’s in here is so that we might understand that the God who looked after his rebellious children five centuries BC is the same faithful, sovereign God that will look after his rebellious children twenty-one AD. Take heart.

God is at work behind the scenes.

Father, thank you that you make these truths available to us in all kinds of different ways in the drama that is contained here in these visions. And we think of Daniel, so long ago, so far away, getting up in the morning and processing all of this and somehow or another recording it for the benefit of those who would come behind him, and you preserving it in the Holy Scriptures in order that today we might study it, in order that we might stand far enough back from it to learn from these great pictures that you are the sovereign God, that your glory you don’t share, and that at the end of the day, yours is a kingdom that will never come to an end and a dominion that will never fail.

Help us, then, to translate that from the macro to the micro. As we think about our lives and our hopes and our fears, the things that make us anxious, the things that destabilize us, may we bow down before your sovereign power. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Deuteronomy 4:10 (paraphrased).

[2] 2 Timothy 4:2 (paraphrased).

[3] C. E. B. Cranfield, The First Epistle of Peter (London: SCM, 1950), 32.

[4] 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV).

[5] See Daniel 7:28.

[6] Daniel 7:1 (ESV).

[7] “Lines Written in a Picture Book,” in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, vol. 10, Collected Poetry: Part I, ed. Aidan Mackey (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 304.

[8] Daniel 5:10–12 (paraphrased).

[9] Daniel 5:13 (ESV).

[10] Daniel 5:26–28 (ESV).

[11] See Isaiah 7:14.

[12] Joyce G. Baldwin, Daniel: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978), 156.

[13] See 2 Samuel 1:25.

[14] Psalm 103:15 (ESV).

[15] Isaiah 40:7, 8 (ESV).

[16] Psalm 103:16 (paraphrased).

[17] Isaiah 40:23–24 (ESV).

[18] 2 Chronicles 26:15–16 (paraphrased).

[19] John 16:1–4 (ESV).