The Forgotten Dream and the Unforgettable Daniel

Daniel 2:1-30

     We're going to be looking tonight at the Daniel 2.  What a wonderful time we've had in the first chapter and now we're going on to look at this wonderful second chapter.  And by the way, it's a rather lengthy chapter, to put it mildly.  It has 49 verses, and so I'll let you know that we'll not cover the whole chapter tonight.  I'm sure you're quite aware of that anyway.

     But we're going to begin to look at chapter 2 and we'll get as far as we can in unfolding this tremendous message.  We've entitled this The Forgotten Dream: The Unforgettable Daniel.

     George Washington once said, "Few men have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder."  He was right.  Most people have a price.  A truly uncompromising man is a very rare commodity.  But that is exactly the kind of a man and the kind of a woman that God looks for to do his work.  When it comes to very special tasks, when it comes to very great privileges and opportunities, God wants uncompromising people with character.

     God wants choice servants for choice ministries.

     Daniel was such a person.  Daniel was a man who wouldn't compromise.  Daniel was a man who had amazing character qualities.  And God uses Daniel as the vehicle through which he reveals the unfolding of the redemptive plan of the history of the world.  Now that's a monumental assignment.  To be the vehicle through which God gives a prophetic perspective on all of human history.  What a calling and what a privilege.

     In chapter 2 we begin to see that calling unfolding.  Chapter 1 has been preparatory really.  In chapter 1 we have simply seen the circumstances that set Daniel in the right place.  We have seen something of the quality and the character of the man that equips him to be God's very special man in this particular assignment.

     We have learned that Daniel has set an uncompromising standard for his own life.  We have learned that Daniel had an amazing commitment to virtuous and righteous character.  And because of that, he becomes God's chosen man.

     Now looking back at Daniel 1:17, we draw upon a very important point.  It says it's for these four youths - and that would be Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, his three friends.  But as for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.  And listen to this: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

     Now that little statement sets Daniel apart from the rest.  Daniel was given the unique capacity to reveal visions and dreams.  In other words, Daniel was to be the agency of God's revelation.  Daniel was to be the instrument through whom God would speak.  This amazing teenager, in fact, in a way beyond any other Old Testament saint is given the most complete, the most comprehensive and the most extensive, prophetic picture of human history ever given in the Old Testament.

     An amazing prophesy that begins to unfold in verse 31 of chapter 2.  And given this not only because he was gifted - now mark it, folks - not only because he was gifted but because he was of such character that he would receive God's highest service.

     His life was useable.  As I mentioned earlier in my prayer, a scripture in 2 Timothy 2 that tells us that we are to be purged in order that we might be vessels fit for the master's use.  Such a vessel was Daniel.  Daniel was a man who influenced the world.  This kind of uncompromising virtue, this kind of amazing character, put him in a position to influence the whole world.  And that is precisely what he did and what he still does through his book, his prophecy.

     The whole marvelous plan of God for the nations, the Gentiles, the whole marvelous plan of God for Israel is very special people is all unfolded to this wonderful man, Daniel.

     Now as we divide chapter 2, verses 1 through 30, which will be the text we're focus on tonight - I don't know we'll get through all of it.  It's narrative and we'll move pretty fast.  But as we divide the first 30 verses, they divide, obviously, into two very simple thoughts.  First is the forgotten dream and secondly the unforgettable Daniel.

     The first 13 verses - the Forgotten Dream - verses 14-30, the Unforgettable Daniel.  And what we have here is this - and mark it, folks - we have really two things going on.  One is a divine commission to be the vehicle of God's revelation.  And the other is a crisis that's going on.  This is God's man to reveal a message in the midst of a crisis.  So he is not only a messenger of God, he is a man in the midst of a crisis.  And it takes the kind of uncompromising character that Daniel had to withstand the crisis that he's going to get involved in.

     Now let's look at the first 13 verses, the Forgotten Dream.  First, we're going to see the dream then we're going to see the dilemma then we'll move to the deficiency and finally the decree.  The dream, the dilemma, the deficiency and the decree.

     First of all, look at the dream in the first three verses.  "And in the second year of the rain of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams" - notice it's plural - "and his spirit was troubled and his sleep went from him."  Now we'll stop there for a moment.  Nebuchadnezzar is currently the kind of Babylon.  He is the king of Babylon because he has succeeded his father Nabopolasser.  Nabopolasser, before he was the king of the whole Babylonian empire and the whole area of the world around that place and that time, before that was simply sort of a minor ruler in an area known as Babylonia, which was a southern province of the great Assyrian Empire.

     But Nabopolasser, while he was in that southern Babylonian area, part of the great empire of Assyria, decided that he would rise to a place of total ruler ship.  And so he put together an army and he began to conquer.  And before he was done, Nabopolasser had in effect taken that whole part of the known world.  He had dealt with all of the peoples that were involved.

     His son, Nebuchadnezzar, had become a deportation of the Jews from the land of Israel, particularly the southern part, Judah.  In that first deportation came the young man, one of whom was Daniel.  There would be two more deportations, finally making that land nothing more than a wasteland as far as the people of Israel were concerned.  He would remove for all intents and purposes the vast majority of the population.

     Now Nabopolasser died in the midst of all of this and he was succeeded on the throne by his son Nebuchadnezzar.  Without question, Nebuchadnezzar gets more ink in the Old Testament than any other pagan king.  He's discussed more than any other monarch in the pagan world.  He was a masterful man in many areas.  He was a genius, he was an educator, he was involved in academics, he was an architect, he was a great military mind and on and on and on.  Amazing man.

     Now it is Nebuchadnezzar that God selects to be the instrumentation of this dream.  Let's look at the historical note at the beginning of verse 1.  "In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar" - stop there for a minute.  Lots of people get confused about this because they know that Daniel was brought to Babylon to undergo three years of training.  Tell us that in verse 5 of chapter 1.  They were to be there for three years.  And the training ended at the end of chapter 1.

     Now if Nebuchadnezzar brought Daniel over there and he was there for three years, how could this be the second reign of Nebuchadnezzar?  Would have to be at least the third year.  Well, the answer we gave you when we discussed chapter 1, verse 1, and that is this: in the book of Daniel, you do not have Jewish reckoning, you have Babylonian reckoning.  And it comes up several times so we might as well get used to it at this point.

     The first year of any monarch in the Babylonian system was not considered a part of his reign.  It was his year of accession.  And when they dated their kings, they dated them from the first full year to the last, any portion of which they were still on the throne.  So Nabopolasser dying in Babylonian reckoning, the rest of the year would still have been his year.  And officially even though Nebuchadnezzar had come to the throne, it was called his accession to the throne and they never started counting until the beginning of his first full year.

     So really if you want to look at it from the Jewish perspective, this would've been the third year and would've fit together with the three-year period of training.  So there really isn't any problem with that at all but that's just a historical note.

     I really believe that the events of chapter 2 - and this is another footnote historically - happened immediately after chapter 1.  Some people think there was a long period of time, some people even think that the things that happened in chapter 2 really believe in chapter 1 during the three-year time of training.  I don't feel that way.  I feel that when you come to chapter 1, verse 17, after they've had all their training, it says, "God gave them knowledge and skill and all learning and wisdom and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams."

     Now at the end of the days if the king had said he should bring them in, and now you're at the end of their days.  Just prior to the end of their days, Daniel is given this gift somewhere.  We don't know the exact timeframe.  But he's given this gift.  Their training then ends and they are placed in the king's court.  Now I think they would still be considered as apprentices as wise men but they've been trained to be wise men in the Babylonian court.  They're still on an apprentice level, and I believe immediately God moves to establish Daniel's capability in the vision and the dreams.

     In other words, Daniel 1:17 is illustrated in chapter 2.  And since it says the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, it must've been a very immediate thing.  It is possible, and I would grant this, that it actually did occur toward the end of the three-year training.  But if we can grant to Daniel any crinology at all, it seems as though the training ends at chapter 1, they meet the king at the end of the chapter, the king puts them up to stand before him, as it says in verse 19, and then it makes the note in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, which would be that same year which they finished their training, this particular dream was dreamed.

     Now let's look at another thought.  Since when does God reveal great historical prophetic truth through pagan kings?  Since when?  That's really a new thing.  And why a pagan?  Well, let me tell you why.  Remember this: Israel at this time was morally and spiritually just about as bad off as the Chaldeans or the Babylonians.  God frankly had little to chose between.  Only if you want to really look at it in a Biblical perspective, Israel was worse-off than the Chaldeans because Israel had become apostate.  It is one thing not to know the truth, it is something to know it and forsake it.

     And so Israel had come to a place where God was finished dealing with them for the time.  God's people had degenerated into gross idolatry.  Judgment was falling on them in the Babylonian captivity.  What an amazing rebuke it was to God's people for God to chose the single greatest revelation of the history of redemption that he ever gave and to have a vehicle a pagan king.  What a rebuttal and rebuke to the sins of Israel.

     Furthermore, the captivity of Israel began a period of history known as the times of the Gentiles.  Luke 21:24 calls it that.  So it is fitting that as the times of the Gentiles begin the outline of that period prophetically is given through a Gentile king.  But I must hasten to add that the plan was not just for the Gentiles and the prophecy is not just about the Gentiles, that's why Daniel's also included in this situation because God had not forsaken Israel either.

     Now back to verse 1 - so Nebuchadnezzar, this king dreamed dreams.  Now how did this happen?  Well, go down to verse 29 and it kind of gives you a footnote of it.  Verse 28 ends with the statement that he as dreaming on his bed.  And then verse 29 says, "As for the O King thy thoughts came into they mind upon my bed."  This is his thought right here: "What should come to pass hereafter?"  That was basically his thought.

     He was lying in bed one night and he was thinking to himself, you know, I'm not going to live forever.  I wonder what's going to happen when I die.  I wonder what's going to take place in the history of the world.  Cataclysmic things have taken place - the Assyrians have been wiped out, the Egyptians have been decimated, never to rise from their own ashes.  The land of Israel had been completely taken into captivity and never returned.  Judah was now in the process of its dissolution.

     And Nebuchadnezzar is saying to himself from the vantage point of ruling the world as he knew it, "I wonder what'll happen to this whole thing as I die."  And as he went to sleep, God gave him the answer and he dreamed dreams.

     Now notice it's plural there in verse 1.  He had several dreams.  And apparently these dreams were so shocking and they were so deeply alarming that he was unable to sleep and his sleep went from him.  He couldn't sleep.  The dream was so devastating.  Now I believe he had several dreams because of the plural but I think it was one particular dream that gave him the greatest amount of anxiety.

     The world troubled there means a very deep disturbance.  Now ordinary dreams would trouble us but not in the intensity that it's meant here.  This was really, really deep trouble of his soul.  And I believe that was because God had ordained this dream.  And you say, "Well isn't it a little strange for God to reveal things in dreams?"  I mean didn't he usually just write the Bible?  Didn't just tell somebody in their heart and their mind while they're awake?  I mean this dream sounds like kind of a cultic thing.

     But it's not abnormal at all for God to do that during periods of revelation.  He did it a lot.  In Numbers 12:6, the Lord said he would speak to Moses face to face whereas with others, such as prophets, in visions and dreams.  In Genesis, Jacob saw a dream that promised him the land of Palestine.  In a dream God appeared to Joseph.  In a dream God spoke to a himelec.  In a dream God appeared to Solomon.  In a dream God spoke to Pharaoh and revealed the seven years of plenty and the subsequent seven years of famine.  In a dream God spoke to one of the soldiers of the Midanites and gave a vision for the encouragement for Gideon.

     It was not abnormal at all for God to speak in dreams.  Now I would say it's abnormal today if God has finished his revelation.  So don't go to sleep at night hoping you'll get a revelation from God in your dream.  I don't think God is in a business of revelations anymore since Hebrews 1 says He's spoken unto us finally in his last days through his son.  I don't think there is any more revelation but in those days God chose to speak through dreams.

     Now the king had this dream and it panicked him.  And what was even worse, really amazing, he couldn't remember the dream.  I think what he remember were some bits and pieces.  I think he vaguely remembered some things that sort of efformaly swept through his brain but he couldn't grasp the dream again.  And I believe that as much God gave him the dream so much that God remove it from his memory.  Now you say, "Wait a minute.  That makes no sense."  I had enough trouble figuring out why God gave him a dream, now you say the same God that gave him a dream took it away from him?  Well, yes essentially.  I think God had a purpose for both and we'll see it as we go.

     I think he remembered the terror of the dream.  I think he remembered the fearfulness of the dream.  But I believe the specifics somehow floated out of his mind and he couldn't recover the memory of it.  Only the fear remained and the sleepless hours added to his anxiety and his fear.  By the time the morning came he was a wreck because of a dream he couldn't even remember.  And so he asked - verse 2: "Then the kind commanded to summon all the magicians, astrologers and the sorcerers and the Chaldeans to show the king his dreams.  So they came and stood before the king.  And the king said onto them, 'I have dreamed a dream and my spirit was troubled to know the dream.'"

     Now he gets all the brain trust of the Babylonian empire and he pulls them all in.  He appealed to the intellectuals because he couldn't figure out his dream and he was afraid.  You know, he's not like, he's not unlike many people who look into the future and they find it very foreboding.

     I was reading this week's IBM's latest publication on the future.  And they have endeavored to consult with famous futurologists, scientists, fiction writers, all kinds of people who study the future and come up with a whole big picture of what the future is going to be like.  Some of it is very fearful, very, very fearful.  There isn't much to fear and Nebuchadnezzar knew that.

     And so he calls for the brain trust of his nation.  The terms here are kind of interesting.  The magicians - there's two possibilities for this.  Basically the term can refer to fortunetellers but sometimes we find it seemingly associated with people who are scholars.  In one sense it would be more academic, in another sense it would be more occultic.  For the kind of society of that it's very possible that they were engaged in both.

     And then there are the astrologers.  And those are the stargazers, those are the monthly prognosticators, those are the people who charter the course of the stars and determine destinies on the basis of how they arrange themselves like horoscopes do today.  And then the sorcerers.  The sorcerers are the spiritualists.  They are the enchanters.  They are the mediums.  They are the ones that talk with the dead.

     And then the Chaldeans.  And the Chaldeans are the leading group because they do the talking.  They, I suppose, were the wisest of the wise.  By the way, originally, the Chaldeans were simply a group of people in southern Babylonia.  They were simply a group of people who eventually, under Nabopolasser - that's where they came from, Nabopolasser being a Chaldean - conquered the whole thing and sold this one particular group of people rose to be the highest in the courts of Babylon.  They were supposedly the wisest and most knowledgeable in all of the arts and science of Chaldea or Babylon.

     And so everybody came together with all of the scholarship that was available, with all of the occultism that was available, with all the demonism that was available, with all the human wisdom that was available.  He got all of the brain trust - the fortune tellers and the futurists and the palmists and the tea leave readers and the crystal gazers and the horoscope people just like we do today trying to get a hedge on tomorrow, trying to figure out what was going to happen.  It's amazing that that's what our world does.  Because we don't know God, whenever somebody in our society wants to know what's going to happen in the future, they pull all the brain trusts and try to figure it out.

     Now they believe that dreams were very important in that day so they were very anxious to help the king in this matter.  And when they saw no doubt how concerned he was, they were even more anxious.  And let me add something that's I think very interesting. 

     He announces to them his problem.  Verse 3 singularizes it: "I have dreamed a dream and my spirit was troubled to know the dream."  Now he had a lot of dreams but only one the dreams really hit him.  And he said I want to know that dream.  Now let me tell you about these Chaldeans.  They had a dream reading system.  Are you ready for that.

     They worked on this principle - and I think this is so fascinating.  I got into reading this and it just was amazing to me.  They worked on the principle that - now watch - and their sequels follow an empirical law, which given enough data can be established.

     And so what they did was they kept records of all dreams.  And they charted after a person had a dream the way their life went.  And so they concluded a guy had this dream and his life went like this.  A guy had a very similar dream and his life went like this.  And they found out the similarities and said if you have a certain kind of dream, your life will go like this.

     It wasn't a lot unlike what happens in the legal profession today.  They base the current interpretation of the law on how it was interpreted in the past.  I don't know if you've ever gone to an attorney's office and seen the volumes and volumes and volumes of books that give you all these law cases, all this stuff, data on what's gone on in the past.  And when anybody wants to interpret the Constitution now, wants to interpret the law now, they go in there, they check all the pasts.

     Well, believe it, the Chaldeans and all the sorcerers and all these people had manuals.  They had massive libraries.  We've even found their dream manuals in archaeological studies.  And you could go to a dream manual and you could look up the elements of your dream and they would tell you what it meant.

     Now of course it's a bunch of hocus-pocus because they really didn't know.  But they had tried in their human ingenuity to devise a clear system.  They had a very systematically arranged, easy referenced dream manual.

     Now let me tell you something: there were so many of these books apparently and there was such a huge amount of material to follow that they needed some time.  And we'll see a little later that the king wasn't about to give it to him.

     These dream manuals apparently covered every eventuality possible and they had to spend time looking through to find out all of the little parts and pieces to put the guy's dream together.  But the problem was this - I love this - he forgot the dream.  That's their problem.  They can do pretty good with their stuff, they can pull out their bag of tricks and pull their chicanery if they got a dream to work on.

     But he tells them, "I don't know what the dream is.  You tell me the dream and then interpret it for me."  And that leads us from the dream to the dilemma, point 2.  That's a little tough.  Verse 4: "Then spoke to Chaldeans, to the king in Aramaic."  And this is kind of an interesting note: from here on through chapter 7:28, the whole section is written in Aramaic.  Aramaic was a common language at that time in the courts.  Later became the common language of that whole part of southwest Asia.  And because it was the court language of Babylon, this particular section, which involves the court of Babylon is written in Aramaic, which is a language similar to the language Hebrew, although different in many ways.

     So then spoke the Chaldeans in Aramaic, and they said this: "O king, live forever."  You always say that to a king, right?  That's just standard fare.  O King, live forever.  Long live the king, you know, court etiquette.  And so they go through with that deal and they said, "Tell thy servants the dream and we will show the interpretation."  What confidence.  Just tell us your dream, king, and we'll tell you exactly what it means.  We'll go back and we'll get our dream manuals and we'll find out what your dream means.  We'll show you the interpretation.  All they needed to know was the dream.

     But the king wasn't about to operate on their conditions.  Look at verse 5.  The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, "The thing is gone from me."  It's gone from me.  "If you will not make known unto me the dream with the interpretation of it, you shall be cut in pieces and your houses shall be made a dung hill."  Now he is upset.  That dream has really disturbed him.

     You see, and then he says in verse 6, "But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor.  Therefore, show me the dream and the interpretation of it."  You got two choices, he says.  You cannot show me the dream or its interpretations and I'll turn your houses into dunghills after I've chopped you to pieces.  On the other hand, just tell me the dream and its interpretation and I'll give you great reward and great honor.  It's easy.  Ooh, he's putting them on the spot, see?

     You know, I believe basically Nebuchadnezzar was a cynic.  I believe Nebuchadnezzar was too smart to buy his own system.  He must've thought the whole pile of them were a bunch of charlatans.  And he finally got his moment where he'd really lay it on them heavy.  You're so smart, you've got all this supernatural information, you're always saying you speak for the gods, you know the destinies of men.  All right.  Tell me the dream and it's interpretation.  Let's see if you can pull it off.

     And so added to his frustration and his irritability he decides to put a test on his court wise men in order to find out whether they've been telling him the truth in the past and if they're worth anything in the future.  By the way, in the Orient it was considered ominous to forget a dream.  It meant the gods were angry with you so he was really panicky.

     He makes the statement in verse 5, "the thing is gone from me."  Now some people have translated that differently.  Some say that it can me that I am sure of it and say the very opposite.  That he does know the dream and he's holding it back from them.  It's so difficult for me, you know, in studying all these commentaries, one goes one way, one goes another.  I think the weigh