SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
9/5/2013 8:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Review of Daniel
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Daniel 1-6
&7
Message of the
verses: It has been almost a month
since we have looked at the book of Daniel and so I thought that it would be a
good idea to go over in review some of the highlights of the first six chapters
of the book and then look at a preview of chapter seven, as chapter seven is a
turning point in the book of Daniel.
In writing on the first chapter of Daniel before he
begins his actual commentary on it Dr. Wiersbe writes “The first chapter of
Daniel’s book gives ample evidence of the sovereign hand of God in the affairs of
both nations and individuals.” We
learned from the first chapter of Daniel as we studied it that Daniel was a
teenager when he came to Babylon, probably around 14-15 years old, and he came
in the first dispersion in 605 B.C. One
of the things that we first see about Daniel is that he is a person of great
integrity, and also a person with a great faith in the Lord. Daniel’s life was the Lord’s to use and we
see early on that if the Lord desired to take Daniel home to be with him, he
was ready, but he was never ready to compromise his faith in the Lord. There is a verse in the first chapter of
Daniel that shows its importance throughout the book of Daniel: “17 As for these four youths, God gave them
knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom; Daniel even understood all kinds
of visions and dreams.” As we go
through the book of Daniel we will see that Daniel is given this gift of
understanding visions and dreams in many of the chapters of this book.
In his introductory comments on chapter two Dr. Wiersbe
writes: “As you read this chapter, you
witness the God of Israel in complete control of every situation and
accomplishing His purposes even through divine activities that protected His servants
and brought glory to His name.” In this
chapter we saw that the king had a dream that he may have forgotten or may have
just been testing those who worked for him to tell him what the dream was and
what it meant. Daniel would receive this
information from the Lord and tell the king what his dream was and what it
meant. The dream he had is similar in
meaning to the vision that Daniel has in chapter seven. It seems that in chapter two we see the
kingdoms as man sees them, but in chapter seven we see them as God sees
them. Both the dream and the vision
speak of the different world powers that would come into the earth and would
end with the Lord ruling from Jerusalem in the Kingdom Age.
In chapter three Dr. Wiersbe writes the following at the
beginning of his commentary: “The
experience of these three men helps us examine our own faith and determine
whether we have the kind of authentic faith that can be tested and bring glory
to God.” This chapter is about the three
Hebrew friends of Daniel being thrown into the fiery furnace, but not being
burnt up as they refused to worship the idol that the king had set up. This took great faith and courage on their
part, but God brought glory to Himself through their great faith in saving them
from the furnace.
In chapter four we see something that is
autobiographical, that is we see what most commentators see is the humbling and
salvation of Nebuchadnezzar. Dr. Wiersbe
writes “There are five ‘acts’ in this extraordinary drams.” This chapter should teach us that God is
truly in the controls of the affairs of men and of nations, and also teach us
that humility is much better than pride.
In chapter five we see that it actually takes place after
the events of chapter seven and eight, but Daniel, through the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, put it before chapters seven and eight. In chapter five we saw another prideful man
who would not be humbled and thus not only lost his life, but lost the kingdom
to the Medes and Persians. Humility is
better than pride.
Chapter six is the famous story of Daniel in the Lion’s
den and we know that this chapter came after the events of chapters seven and
eight because of who was the king during the events of this chapter. Daniel again shows true faith in that if he
must die for the “cause of Christ” he was not afraid to do so, but again God
would save His faithful servant and thus bring glory to Himself.
9/5/2013 9:06 AM 9/5/2013
8:17 PM
We will now look at a short preview of chapter seven
before we begin on the next SD an actual commentary on the seventh chapter. I want to begin by looking at what Warren
Wiersbe writes for his introductory commentary:
“King Nabonidus was monarch over the empire, but he made his son
Belshazzar ruler over Babylon; and the first year of his reign was probably
553. This means that the events
described in chapters 7 and 8 preceded those described in chapters 5 and 6, and
Daniel was nearly seventy years old at the time these events occurred. Perhaps Daniel arranged the material in his
book this way so that the records of his interpretations of the dreams and
visions of others came before the visions that the Lord gave to him (7:1-2; 81;
9:20-27; 10:1ff). Except for
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great image explained in chapter 2, the other
visions in Daniel 2-6 don’t have the wide sweep of application as do the
visions granted to Daniel. The vision
explained in this chapter parallels the vision God gave to Nebuchadnezzar in
chapter 2.
“In this vision, Daniel learned about six different
kingdoms, four of them kingdoms of this world, one of them the kingdom of Satan
and the last one the kingdom of Messiah.”
I want to look at something I learned when studying to write
commentary on this chapter and that has to do with what is seen in Daniel 7:13
“I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One
like a Son of Man
was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him.” We want to focus in of “Son of Man” in this verse and trace it
through some of the times when used in the Gospels when Jesus is referred in
this way.
There are eighty references in the Gospels that use this
term and in many of them the context is speaking of the end times events, not
all of them, but some of them and what we have in Daniel 7:13 is a name for the
Messiah and Jesus calls Himself this these 80 times in the New Testament
showing that He was indeed the Messiah.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
Question: “Sychar” (John 4:5-6).
Today’s Bible
Question: “Who was Sarai’s handmaid?”
Answer in the next SD.
9/5/2013 8:33 PM
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