The King of Kingdoms - The Book of Daniel
Lanse Evangelical Free Church
January 19, 2025 :: Daniel 1:1-21
Daniel is a daunting book to preach.
I’ve put it off now for almost 27 years. I’ve preached the Gospel of John twice and Philippians three times from this pulpit, but I haven’t yet tackled the Book of Daniel.
It’s not because it’s bad book. It’s an awesome book!
And it’s a favorite of many. I mean kids love it, right? It has a fiery furnace that men get tossed into!
It has a disembodied hand that writes on a wall! It has man getting thrown into a den full of hungry hungry lions! The drawings and conversations at Snack and Yack are going to be so fun!
It has a vision of a Man who rides on the clouds! It has a dream of a giant statue being smashed by a flying rock and a visit of an angel with a metallic body, face like lightening, and a voice like thousands of people talking at once (Dan 10:6). It has visions of strange, mysterious, fantastic beasts. Daniel is where to find them!
Daniel is a unique book. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s classified among the Prophets in our English Bibles, but it’s in the “Writings” like the Wisdom literature in Hebrew Bibles. It’s got history and prophecy in it. It spans the genres. There’s nothing quite like it.
In the Book of Daniel, there are twelve chapters written in not one but two different ancient languages!
Six chapters with six stories of dramatic conflict and contest in the highest courts! And then six chapters with four major apocalyptic visions that explain the big plan of God for the world from the time of Daniel to the end of history!
It’s an awesome book. That’s what makes it daunting. Who can do justice to this?! Who can wrap your mind around it and show everything that’s there?!
It’s daunting because it is so beloved. Because it is full of apocalyptic prophecy and obscure symbolism, it can be very difficult to interpret. It’s tricky. And complex and surprising. It’s like the Book of Revelation for the Old Testament. (At least one of them.)
We just have to get ready right now to say from time to time, “I don’t know, and that’s okay.”
And Daniel can also be controversial. Not just with the people out there who have trouble believing in prophecy, that Daniel could be so accurate so far far in advance, but also controversial among Christians who believe in Daniel’s predictive power but disagree over what some particular symbols mean.
In the course of this series, I may say some things that are new or different than what you’ve heard before (if you’ve studied it), and you may disagree at times with my interpretation, and that’s okay, too. (At least on my end.) There is some tricky stuff in here.
I promise to stick close to the main thing as we go along and to show you what I see. We’ll talk about the side stuff, but we’ll camp on the central stuff. I promise to keep the main thing the main thing as we study the Book of Daniel.
And we are going to study it! Starting today. I’m not putting it off any longer.
And here’s why we’re going to dive in. Several reasons.
First, because it’s next.
Some of you are young or new to Lanse Free Church, and you might not know that since 2003, we’ve been on a long journey of studying the Big Story of the Bible. We break it up by toggling to the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament, but we’ve also been trekking our way through the Big Story of the Old Testament.
We’ve done Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and a couple of years ago we studied the Prophecy of Jeremiah together. Remember that? Jeremiah covers the same ground from a prophet’s perspective as 2 Kings does. And they both tell the story of the end of the Kingdom of Judah and the exile of the people of Judah into Babylon.
Guess where Daniel picks up? Right there. He overlaps those stories, too.
So, it’s next. And we want to study the whole sweep of God’s Word together as a church. Not just the easy bits but the hard and tricky bits, too.
But not just because it’s next but because we need it. We need the Book of Daniel today.
For one, we need the example of Daniel. We’re going to see that clearly today as we look at chapter 1. Daniel consistently shows us how to live as faithful believer during difficult times. And our times are difficult.
There’s a fun song that I’m sure the Kids Bible Class will be singing the next few months, “Dare to be a Daniel,” and that’s exactly right.
But more and deeper than that, we need the God of the Book of Daniel! We need the God Whom Daniel serves and Daniel reveals.
The title of our series is “The King of Kingdoms.”
And thank you, Jeff, for creating the graphic design for this series. It’s based on the Ishtar Gate in Ancient Babylon, parts of which still exist today in museums. It was built by King Nebuchadnezzar during the lifetime of Daniel. So Daniel would have seen and probably passed through the Gate of Ishtar! Maybe every workday?
Jeff has modified the design for our purposes. There’s a lot of detail worked in there about things we’re going study as we go through this series.
“The King of Kingdoms.” That has layers of meaning which we’ll get into as the series progresses. The big idea is that Daniel reveals to us the King of Kings. The king over all kingdoms, and that is God. And His kingdom will never end.
Our first memory verse in this series is from the very middle of the book. Chapter 7, verse 14. The last chapter written in Aramaic and the first chapter of the second half which is devoted to visions.
In the vision of chapter 7, Daniel sees a mysterious figure, he says, “[O]ne like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence” (Daniel 7:13).
So this mysterious Person comes into the presence of the Ancient of Days the King of Kingdoms. And He is given a kingdom! The Kingdom! Let’s say verse 14 together:
“He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14).
We’re going to drill that verse and that truth into our hearts in the next few months. Because we need it. We need Him. We need the King of Kingdoms.
Because it often seems like there is no King of Kingdoms. It often seems like the world is out of control. Does it seem to you like the world has gone crazy? There is so much chaos. There is so much strife. So much change. So much out of our control and so many things going wrong. Sometimes it seems like we’ve reached the end of the world.
That’s how it must have felt to Daniel when he was a young man. Let’s look and see what happened to him. Something pretty terrible. Let’s get down into Daniel chapter 1. Verse 1.
“In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god” (Daniel 1:1-2).
To Daniel, living in Judah at the time, this must have felt like the end of the world. Everything was crashing down.
For over a hundred years, the main world power had been the Kingdom of Assyria. Assyria had actually defeated and exiled the people of the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BC. But the southern kingdom of Judah has held on. They have successfully repelled Assyria whenever they came knocking.
But now in the year 605 BC, there is a new world power on the ascendency. It’s the kingdom of Babylon, and their king is named “Nabopolassar.” And Nabopolassar has a son who is the general in charge of Babylon’s armies named “Nebuchadnezzar.” A fascinating character!
And in 605 BC at the battle of Carchemish [which you have may learned about in your history class], Nebuchadnezzar wins! He beats the armies of Egypt allied with the remnants of the armies of Assyria, and Babylon effectively becomes the most powerful kingdom on the planet at that time.
And right about then Nabopolassar dies, and Nebuchadnezzar becomes the most powerful king on the planet at that time.
And he comes after Jerusalem. And he beats them. He beats them into submission. Judah is still a nation with a king, but they become basically a vassal state of Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar is the undisputed champion, and you know how we know? Because Nebuchadnezzar takes the Stanley Cup home.
It’s actually much worse than that. He takes some “articles from the temple of God.” Remember all of the golden stuff inside the temple that Solomon built? Gold plates. Gold utensils. Gold tools for tending the sacrifices.
Remember how Hezekiah when he was sick showed the beautiful golden stuff to the emissaries of the king of Babylon when he was allying with them in 2 Kings? Babylon has not forgotten!
Nebuchadnezzar takes those things from the temple of the LORD and puts them into the temple of his god! That was Marduk or his other name was Bel. B-E-L. The son of the god Marduk was hamed Nabu. And Nebuchadnezzar was named after him.
Which god had won this contest?
Careful how you answer that.
It looks like Marduk has won. He’s got the gold! But that’s not what verse 2 says, is it? What did verse 2 say? Look at it again.
“And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God.”
The word for “delivered” in Hebrew is “nawthan.” We get our name Nathan from it. Gift of God.
The God of Judah gave the king of Judah to the king of Babylon. And the God of Judah gave the the golden stuff to Nebuchadnezzar, too. For safe keeping at Marduk’s house.
I’ve got three points for us to apply this chapter of Daniel to our lives today, and here’s the first one:
#1. REMEMBER WHO IS THE KING OF KINGDOMS.
Get this straight. The God of Judah (who we know as Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God we worship here today) did. not. lose. this. battle.
It seemed like it to Nebuchadnezzar. “Take that Jehoikim!”
It seemed like it to Babylon. “We’ve got your god’s stuff!”
It probably seemed like it to the whole wide world.
It was reported in all of the media that Marduk had beaten Adonai, and that Nebuchadnezzar was the king of kings.
But that’s not how it was.
This was God’s doing. This was God’s plan. This was God’s punishment on His people.
Daniel doesn’t dwell on it here, but this was because of everything we read about back in Jeremiah, isn’t it?
Jeremiah was a broken record about a what? A broken covenant. For forty years Jeremiah called Judah to repent, and they just stuck their fingers in their ears. Jeremiah prophesied during the reign of five different kings in Judah. The first was godly Josiah, and then the next one was named...Jehoiakim.
Thumbs up or thumbs down? Two thumbs down. Bad king. Bad shepherd. Jehoiakim was the one that burned the Bible. Remember that story from Jeremiah 36? He had someone read to him from the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies, and then he would cut it off and put it into his fire to warm himself.
And eventually the LORD said, “That’s enough.” And he gave Jehoiakim to Nebuchadnezzar.
It’s interesting to think that Daniel was living through all of that. He had maybe heard Jeremiah preach. He was very young, and Jeremiah was getting old, but they lived at the same time and followed the same God. And that God is the King of Kingdoms. No matter how it seems.
And that’s good news! Because it really seems like there are all of these kings out there and all of this chaos, and it’s good to know that there is a king over all the kings that is working out His wise and holy plan.
The chief purpose of apocalyptic prophecy is not to give us all of the details. It’s to give us the big picture so to give us a right perspective. And that gives us hope and comfort and courage.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Just because we know and remember that the LORD is behind this defeat, doesn’t make it all better. Doesn’t mean it isn’t scary. And doesn’t mean that things won’t get worse.
They sure got worse for Daniel. Because it wasn’t just the gold stuff of the Temple that got carted off to Babylon in 605BC. It was also the cream of the crop of the nobility of Judah. Look at verse 3.
“Then the king [that’s Nebuchadnezzar] ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility–young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service.”
That’s where I asked Keagan to read to, and where we get the title of this message, “The King’s Service.”
These young men from Judah were selected to serve the king. Literally, to stand before him. Meaning to be a part of his court. His diplomatic corp. His royal administration.
It made a lot of sense. If you grab the cream of the crop from the nation that is under you and train them in your ways, then you have a big supply of help that can speak both languages and know both cultures and help you keep the under nation in check. Smart!
And verse 6 tells us that among those selected for this service were some pretty important names for us to know. Look at verse 6.
“Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.”
These four guys were selected to be trained to be in the king’s service.
Now, on one level, this doesn’t seem so bad, does it? I mean who doesn’t like to be selected? And these guys are obviously the elite. They are good looking and smart! They are the obvious choices for the team captains. And they get to be educated! They get degrees. And they get to eat food from the king’s own table!
There are worse things. Some of their friends died in the battles with Babylon. Some are going to die in the next set of battles with Babylon. And some the next.
In 597 BC, there will be more deportations. A guy named “Ezekiel” is going to be exiled. And in 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar is going to attack Jerusalem and just about burn it all to the ground. And he destroyed the temple. This time, he didn’t just raid it. He tore it down. And why we have the book of Lamentations. It was about the worst thing that ever happened in the Old Testament. That’s how they felt.
So Daniel’s fate wasn’t so bad.
But think about it from his perspective. Daniel was taken far away from his homeland. Do you remember what our sermon series on Jeremiah was called? “Uprooted.” Daniel was uprooted. He was taken away from everything he knew. He was probably 13 or 14 or 15? Somewhere in there.
If you are a young man of those ages, would you stand? Thank you. They were taken from their home, and Daniel never returned. He lived to be a very old man, but he will die in Babylon. He is marched 600 or more miles away and told that he has to go to school to serve the king who just beat down his kingdom.
And he has to study things he doesn’t want to study. He has to study the language and literature of the Babylonians. Literally, the Chaldeans which was ancient name for the main ruling ethnic group of Babylon and their wise-men.
He doesn’t get to study Hebrew. If he studies his Bible, it’s on his own time, and there may not be much of that. He has to study Akkadian. He has to speak Aramaic because that’s their main language for court affairs, but Akkadian was their scholarly language. It has like 100 different stick figures you have to memorize and be able to write. Cuneiform.
And he has to study astrology. Not astronomy though that would be helpful but astrology–how the stars rule our lives. Hint: They don’t! But he’s got to study it anyway.
And he’s probably got to study divination. My daughter is learning how to keep cats and dogs alive as a Vet Tech. Daniel and his friends probably had to kill animals like sheep and then predict the future by what their entrails looked like.
And he had study history (not Israel’s history but Babylon’s history) and law (not Israel’s law but Babylon’s law) and read Babylon’s books. Not Genesis but the “Enuma Elish” and “Atra-Hasis.”
He’s got to learn all of that to be effective in the king’s service.
He’s a hostage forced to attend to Babylon University. He doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t want to learn these things. And he doesn’t want to serve this king!
And on top of all of that, they slap a new name on him. And his friends. They had wonderful Hebrew names that reminded them of the LORD. Daniel means something like, “God is my judge.” And Hananiah means “The LORD shows grace.” And Mishael means “Who is what God is?” and Azariah means “The LORD helps.”
But look at verse 7.
“The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.”
And those names are tied to other gods!
Belteshazzar? That’s like, “The God Lady Preserves the King.” Or “Bel’s Prince.”
Shadrach is “Command” or “Illumined by Aku.”
Meshach is “Who or what Aku is.”
Abednego is “Servant of Nego (or Nebo).”
How would you like to be given a new name based on your enemy’s god? A new identity and not the one you would have chosen.
And it should also be said that these boys may have been castrated. The word translated “court officials” is often translated “eunuch,” and many though not all top officials in governments in that time period would have had that done to them [see Isaiah 39:6-7].
It might have seemed like Daniel’s world had ended. But somehow, in all of that, he remembered that the LORD was the King of Kingdoms. He never lost sight of Who God really is! He never lost sight of Who really is the King. He’s got to serve this king, but all the time, he never stops serving the King of Kings!
It’s truly amazing. I wonder who taught him this. Maybe some Jeremiah? Probably a godly Mom and Dad. And who knows who else. It wasn’t Johoiakim.
The key is that Daniel never forgets that the LORD is the King of Kings.
And he sets his heart on following that king no matter what. That’s point number two:
#3. RESOLVE TO SERVE THE KING OF KINGDOMS.
Look at what Daniel does in verse 8.
“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.”
Daniel set his heart. That’s what it means to resolve. It means that he decided in advance in his heart what he was going to do. Daniel set his heart to not defile himself because he served a higher king.
Now, it’s not obvious why the royal food and wine would have defiled Daniel. Scholars have a lot of opinions, and there’s some good theories out there. One is that a lot of this food would have gone against the Law of Leviticus and wasn’t kosher. It was “unclean.” But that probably wouldn’t have been true of the wine unless Daniel had taken a Nazirite vow.
Maybe it’s because this food was dedicated to idols like Marduk before being served out to the king’s table. That’s probably true. It probably was. But it was probably true of the vegetables, too.
Some have said it’s because it’s royal food for the king, and if Daniel ate that, then he was making a covenant of unswerving loyalty to the king. Like a covenant meal. True fellowship. I think there’s something to that.
Some have pointed out that if Daniel eats this then he’s becoming completely dependent on the king and just giving up everything to rely on him. And I think there’s something to that as well. Though all this food came from that same king.
It’s not really clear to us, but it was really clear to Daniel! Daniel knew in his conscience that this would defile him. I think that’s really important to see.
I’m amazed that Daniel could discern what he could and couldn’t do so clearly. He was willing to be called by a terrible name. He was willing to learn all the stuff that they wanted to jam down his throat.
He was even willing to serve before the king. And does with distinction for decades!
But this was too far for him at this point in time.
And we all have to figure out what’s too far for us.
You know what really jumped out at me was that Daniel decided that what he wasn’t going to do was eat all the good stuff. He wasn’t going to take the best of Babylon into himself.
He was willing to do the hard part, but he wasn’t going to do the easy part.
That takes discernment, and it takes courage. Because there was all kinds of pressure to conform. This whole program of re-education was to get Daniel and his friends to conform.
And that’s true for us today, isn’t it? Do you feel in this time of chaos all of the cultural pressures to conform to the world? We talked about this last summer during Family Bible Week in Romans 12:2, right?
“Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2, CSB). And therefore “walk in the truth.”
There are all kind of pressures to conform. But the most dangerous ones are the ones we want to conform to. The easy ones! The ones that all of our friends are doing. Not the ones that the culture is jamming down our throats, but the ones that look so tantalizingly good.
Like gossip? The ladies’ fellowship group has just begun a study of this book called Resisting Gossip. I’ve heard of it. (It’s okay.)
What does Solomon say gossip is like? “A choice morsel.” That’s the thing you want to eat. From the king’s table.
Or abortion advocacy. That’s popular! It’s super-popular to be pro-choice. Who would be against “choice” and “reproductive rights” and the unfettered access to elective abortion?
Maybe that one doesn’t tempt you.
How about nationalism? The idolatrous version of patriotism that says “My nation over other nations even if my nation is in the wrong. America first. America only. America, right or wrong. USA! USA! USA!” That’s very popular and very tempting to some.
Or dressing immodestly? For both men and women. “That looks so cute on you,” the world says. And we just want to believe it and do what we feel like whether or not it’s modest.
Or what we watch on our screens? “That show looks good! What is it rated? Oh well. Everybody else is watching it. It’s so well done. Amazing production values. The best stars!”
For me personally, it’s often gluttony itself. I want to eat like a king!
And maybe the line is at different places for different people. It probably is for some of these, and we shouldn’t stand in judgment over our brothers and sisters.
But we should be careful to not defile ourselves. We should know where our lines are and decide before we are tempted to not cross them. And we should know which of those things are tempting to us.
Some of the things I’ve just mentioned are not tempting to you in the slightest!
What is? What is Nebuchadnezzar’s royal food and wine for you? Resolve right now to resist it. Resolve right now to not give into the voices of the many kings out there that are offering you “the best of Babylon.” And resolve to serve the King of Kingdoms first and above all.
Dare to be a Daniel.
Now, notice that Daniel resolves in his heart to not be defiled, but he doesn’t get all huffy about it on social media. He doesn’t whine and complain or despair! In fact, he’s very respectful and courteous about it. He asks Ashpenaz for permission to refrain. And here’s the first miracle. Look at verse 9.
“Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel...”
You know what the Hebrew word for “caused” there? It’s “nawthan” (like in v.2). Gift of God. Here’s something else God gave. He gave favor (hesed) and sympathy (compassion) to the official to show to Daniel.
You see God doesn’t just live in Israel. And He’s not confined to the temple of Marduk. He’s actually working in the lives of his people and even in the hearts of His enemies!
You and I can pray like this today. We can pray for favor with our neighbors and co-workers and bosses and even enemies. And sometimes the King grants it.
Of course, the answer is “no.” At least officially. Verse 10.
“...but the official told Daniel, ‘I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.’”
There’s the stakes. “I like you, but the answer has to be no. If you don’t eat like a king, then you’ll get all skinny and scrawny. And I’ll get in trouble. Be a Babylonian and eat like a king!”
But I see some wiggle-room there. And so did Daniel. He didn’t actually say, “No.” Just that there can’t be a problem here. So Daniel asks the next guy down. He’s the “guard” or Hebrew is “Melzer,” which older versions take to be a name. And that’s possible. He could be a guard named “Guard.” Verse 11.
“Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, ‘Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see. So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days’” (Daniel 1:11-14).
By the way, this is the original VeggieTale.
Daniel proposes a test. He’s taking a lot of tests these days in school. Here’s another one.
“Let us just eat vegetables [which might include other things that are based on seeds like grains] and water to drink. For ten days. And then let’s see what we see."
Now, this is not some secret “biblical diet” that we’re supposed to follow. Just like we aren’t supposed to make sure we get our recommended daily dose of locusts like John the Baptist taught us.
No, this is asking for a miracle. The healthy wise man in Babylon was rotund. I read one scholar who said that the wisemen of Babylon were “bald, big-eyed, and chubby” (Tremper Longman). That was the ideal that Ashpenaz was going for. You don’t get that way on vegetables and water!
But the guard says, “Ok. We can do ten days. After that you have to eat the good stuff if you’re wasting away.”
And here’s the point where we have point out that this experiment might not have worked. Daniel and his friends needed to be prepared for the worst. That’s part of daring to be a Daniel. Not knowing how it’s going to work out in the short run. They might have lost their lives if they continued to play chicken with the king’s chicken cacciatore!
But that’s not what happened. No, instead, there was a quiet miracle! Verse 15.
“At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.”
Here’s our last point for today.
#3. BE REWARDED FOR FAITHFUL SERVICE TO THE KING OF KINGDOMS.
Expect to be rewarded for faithful service to the King of Kingdoms.
God was at work here. God is in control here. God is working in unexpected ways. And He is rewarding Daniel and his friends for serving Him faithfully above all others. And He continued to reward them. Look at verse 17.
“To these four young men God gave [nawthan again!] knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds. [That’s going to come in handy!] At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king [himself!] talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus” (17-21).
Now, we need to be careful to draw the right lessons from this. Not only are we not supposed to just eat vegetables, but we also are not supposed to expect to always be the class valedictorians. Top of the class. The reward for faithful service does not always come in the same way or in the same timing. Jesus was perfectly faithful, and He had to die before He got His full reward. Don’t turn this into a prosperity gospel of health and wealth if you just do all the right things and keep your nose clean.
But at the same time, we know that the true King loves to reward He faithful servants. We live for the day when He says, “Well done, you.”
Notice that faithful service to the King of Kingdoms often looks like faithful service to many earthly kings. God gave Daniel these gifts, and Daniel was accountable for what he did with them. He didn’t give the other three all the same gifts. Just Daniel. And Daniel used them in the service of King Nebuchadnezzar which says something, I think, about how we should view our earthly callings, our daily jobs.
Daniel entered into the service of Nebuchadnezzar and then several other kings for almost 70 years–even a king that wasn’t a Babylonian!
But Daniel never lost sight of Whom he was really serving.
And may we dare to do the same.
