Sermons

King Nebuchadnezzar sees a statue in a dream. When none of the wise men can interpret it, Daniel comes to know both the dream and its meaning through prayer, and he sets them out before the king.

The head of gold stands for Babylon, the silver for Media and Persia, the bronze for Greece, and the iron mixed with clay for Rome. Through dreams and visions, and through a man of faith, God gave Nebuchadnezzar chance after chance and waited for him to turn back. A stone cut without hands struck the statue and brought it down. This means that every kingdom people build will fall, but the Kingdom God has set up will never be destroyed.

Cyrus and Alexander each rose to the height of their power, and each of them fell. Human history is made and unmade, but God’s plan, which he leads from beginning to end, remains the same. God’s people must rely on this unchanging God. Rather than looking only at what lies in front of them, they need to step back and live by the wisdom he gives.

Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom seemed the mightiest on earth, yet in a dream he saw ahead of time a tree being cut down. Belshazzar was feasting with the vessels of the temple when the fingers of a hand appeared and wrote upon the wall, and that same night he was slain. Through all the years in which one king gave way to another, Daniel remained chief minister, and even after the king’s seal had been set on the decree, he still knelt and prayed three times a day.

Power appears to rest with human beings, but it is God who raises it up and God who brings it to an end. Nebuchadnezzar was granted a year, yet did not turn back, and was punished by living like a beast of the field; Belshazzar knew what had befallen his grandfather, yet was every bit as proud, and that night he lost his kingdom. Daniel, by contrast, did not forsake God, though he knew he would be thrown into the lions’ den.

God does not judge even a king at once, but gives him chance after chance to repent. Yet those who let such chances go unheeded and carry on as they always have will in the end fall just as they are. Daniel’s unshaken faith brought him alive out of the lions’ den and led a pagan king to praise the living God with his own lips, and the sermon declares that in the new year, too, God’s people must live by the same faith.