Please take a Bible in hand and turn with me to Daniel chapter 8 as we continue our intensive study of the book of Daniel – Sunday mornings and evenings and Wednesday nights throughout the month of January. This morning if you were with us, you saw we moved into the second half of the book of Daniel which contains a series of apocalyptic visions which Daniel first began to see in the first year of the reign of King Belshazzar of Babylon. This new vision before us tonight in chapter 8 takes place a few years later, according to verse 1, in the third year of Belshazzar’s reign. That puts it roughly at 548 BC. Daniel, you’ll notice, is transported in the vision about 200 miles east to the citadel of Susa. For a brief while a part of the Babylonian Empire, Susa actually became the winter residence of the kings of the Medo-Persian Empire, so it was a good place for a vision that, as we’ll see, has largely to do with the Medes and the Persians and their immediate successors. Now while the vision of chapter 7 really covers the entire history of the world from the fall of Babylon all the way to the rise of the antiChrist at the end of the ages, the vision before us tonight here in chapter 8 is much narrower in scope. It ranges over the next four centuries from the point at which Daniel was writing, and it details how empires will rise and fall and how one king in particular will bring special suffering to the Jewish people.
Now, I realize that ancient history communicated in apocalyptic code might not be everyone’s cup of tea on a Sunday night like this, but let me reassure you that actually the lessons of the chapter are full of sober hope and solid reassurance, which is the only kind of hope and reassurance exiles need as they live in Babylons, both ancient and modern. As we look at the text, I want to consider three themes with you. First, part of the design of this chapter is to help us develop the endurance God’s people need. The endurance God’s people need. Secondly, this chapter is about the confidence God’s Word affords. The endurance God’s people need, then the confidence God’s Word affords. And finally, we mustn’t miss the obedience God’s call demands. So those are our three themes – the endurance God’s people need, the confidence God’s Word affords, and the obedience God’s call demands.
Before we get to all of that, let’s bow our heads and pray and then we will read the text together. Let’s all pray.
Open our eyes, O God, we pray, that we might behold wondrous things from Your Law for the glory and praise of Your name. Amen.
Daniel chapter 8. This is the Word of God:
“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 had 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 behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man’s voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, ‘Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.’ So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, ‘Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.’
And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. He said, ‘Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand. The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.’
And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
Before we consider the three themes that summarize some of the key implications of this passage, let me quickly survey for you its basic message and then we’ll pick out those three topics I mentioned earlier. You’ll notice the passage essentially is broken into two. There is the vision itself in verses 1 through 14, and then the interpretation provided by the angel, Gabriel, in 15 through 27. The vision has three sections. First, in 2 through 4, Daniel sees a ram with two horns charging west and north and south. Verse 20, in the explanation part, tells us the ram with the two horns represents the kings of Media and Persia, though the king of Persia will be the greater of the two. The Medo-Persian Empire is what Daniel is seeing symbolically spreading west and north and south from its eastern base.
Then in verses 5 through 8, Daniel sees a goat. The goat invades from the west, moving so fast he seems almost to fly, and he has one conspicuous horn on his head. The goat, verse 21, tells us, is the kingdom of Greece and the horn is its first king, Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great defeated the Medo-Persian Empire in three decisive battles at Granicus in 334 BC, at Issus in 333 BC, and at Arbela in 331 BC. And so in just three years, Alexander topples an empire that had ruled the region for two centuries. And then suddenly, verse 8 says the great horn, Alexander, the great horn was broken and four others took its place. This is the death of Alexander that happened suddenly and mysterious in 323 BC. And as verse 22 makes clear to us, the division of Alexander’s Empire happened between his four generals – Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Ptolemy.
And then in verses 9 through 14, Daniel sees another horn, a little horn, arising from amongst those four successors to the Greek Empire of Alexander. So this is a king who descends from one of the other four. In verse 9, he makes conquest toward the south and the east and then westward toward the glorious land; that is, toward the land of Israel. And this little horn casts down stars, verse 10, perhaps echoing the promise of God to Abraham in Genesis 22 to make his descendants as numerous as the stars. Gabriel explains in verse 24 the stars are a symbol of the people of God, the saints. And so this king is going to hurt the people of God. And more than that in fact, this little horn, this new king will grow so bold as to challenge even the prince of hosts, verse 11, probably a reference to the angel of the Lord, the one that Joshua – do you remember in Joshua 5:14, Joshua met him and called him the commander of the Lord’s army. He speaks as God and yet is somehow distinct from God. I think we are right to identify him as the second person of the blessed Trinity, the one Gabriel calls in verse 25, the Prince of princes. And that tells us this little horn is so arrogant that he wants to be divine, he has divine pretensions; he wants to be as great as the prince of heaven. And he has set himself against God, so much so that in verses 11 and 12 he causes the burnt offerings at the heart of Jewish temple worship to cease and the sanctuary of God to be overthrown.
Now remember, at the time that Daniel was writing here in the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, the temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonian armies. And so this is a vision of a time still to come in the future from Daniel’s point of view, after the people of God have returned again to the land of Judah and have rebuilt the temple and restored temple worship and the sacrificial system. Gabriel calls it here “the time of the end” – not meaning the very end of human history, but the end of the period of the special focus of this vision. The Jews will go back to the land, but the vision says they will again be overrun and true worship will be perverted and destroyed.
Now while Daniel could not know who the little horn would be, as you read through the annals of history, his identity really is unmistakable. The descendent of one of those four generals who came after Alexander, Seleucus, a man called Antiochus IV Epiphanes, he matches in remarkable detail the behavior of this little horn. Antiochus Ephiphanies, his name on coins and things said, “Theos Antiochus Epiphanes.” “Antiochus,” “God Manifest” – that’s what he wanted to be known as. He ruled from 175-164 BC. He slaughtered 40,000 Jews in the space of just three days and sent as many into slavery. In 167 BC, he attacked the temple. He caused the regular burnt offerings in the temple to cease altogether, and on December 6, 167 BC, he set up an idol to Zeus on the altar of the temple. And then ten days later, on the sixteenth, he offered pigs in sacrifice upon the altar of God. It was an awful period of horrific persecution amongst the people of God. And then, look at verses 13 and 14. Daniel overhears a conversation between two angelic figures. One asks the other how long was all of this going to go on for. And he’s told it will last for 2,300 evenings and mornings. Probably the language of “evening” and “morning” there actually refers to the regular evening and morning burnt offerings, offered every day in the temple, which means that 2,300 evenings and mornings is 1,500 days, which is almost precisely the amount of time in which Antiochus Epiphanes terrorized the Jewish people.
Well alright, so much for the survey of the passage. The history lesson is over. If you’re still with me – are you still with me? Let’s ask why any of that should matter to us all these many centuries later. Why should you listen to any of this? Why not just flip right over from chapter 7 straight into chapter 9? Well as I said earlier, there are three lessons to learn. That was the introduction to the sermon. Now we’re at point one! First of all, we are being taught here about the endurance God’s people need. The endurance God’s people need. For the suffering exiles of Judah, still languishing under the tyranny of Belshazzar’s reign in Babylon, one lesson of Daniel’s overview of the next 400 plus years actually is crystal clear. While there will be bright spots along the way, like the implied return of the Jews from their exile back to Jerusalem and the restoration of the temple and the worship of the temple in verses 11 and 12, nevertheless, the big idea is unmistakable. “Get ready,” Daniel was saying to them. “One miserable tyrant will replace another miserable tyrant.” In effect, Daniel was saying to the exiles in the immortal words of Robert Plant, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” Get ready for the long haul. Or as John puts it in Revelation 13:10 and 14:12, “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints.” If you’re going to persevere, it sure helps to know what’s coming.
And although that’s not exactly a message of great joy, it is a sober and realistic message for life this side of Judgment Day that we all need to get ahold of. Now to be sure, the horizons of Daniel’s vision in this chapter only go as far as Antiochus Epiphanes in the 170s and 160s BC. But there is a reason, I think, that Antiochus is described as a little horn. You will remember from this morning the same description was given to an entirely different figure who would arise in the distant future. Daniel was talking in chapter 7 about the antiChrist, the man of lawlessness, who would appear near the end of human history. And he is called a little horn. Now why is Antiochus as well as the antiChrist at history’s end called a little horn?
I think it’s to make the point that what we are going to see here in Antiochus is the type and the template of what we are going to see much later when antiChrist eventually comes. And maybe even more urgently and practically for us right now, that the little horn of Antiochus anticipates the little horn of antiChrist makes the point that the apostle John makes in 1 John 2:18. “As you have heard that antiChrist is coming, so now many antiChrists have come.” That’s the point the apostle Paul makes in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 when he speaks about the lawless one who is coming. But he prefaces his remarks by reminding us that the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Antiochus is a mini-antiChrist and there have been echoes and iterations of him all through the ages. Haven’t there? We ought to pay careful attention to his character and his tactics here because while the final antiChrist may well await a future generation, the spirit of antiChrist is active all around us right now. Here, John says, is a call for the endurance of the saints. This is the context in which we are called to live out a life of faithful obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s sober and realistic and we need to see it.
On August 19, 1914, Ernest Shackleton led an expedition to cross Antarctica from a base on the Weddell Sea to McMurdo Sound via the South Pole. His ship, the aptly named “Endurance,” was soon trapped in the ice and it drifted, stuck in the ice flows, for ten months before finally being crushed beyond recovery and sinking to the ocean floor. The members of the expedition, now stranded on foot on the pack ice, they drift for another five months until they finally escape in boats that they had been hauling behind them this whole time, making it to Elephant Island. This, of course, was not their deliverance, just a new phase of their torment. They survive by eating seal meat and penguins and even their sled dogs, but the crew was in urgent need of rescue.
So Shackleton made the decision to take a boat and sail for south Georgia to get help. He took five crew members with him and sailed 800 miles, a sixteen day journey, across a stretch of dangerous ocean, before landing on the southern side of south Georgia Island. This is the wrong side of the island; there is a man stationed on the opposite shore. And so Shackleton and his small crew make the first ever crossing of the island over the mountains, on foot, to seek aid. Meanwhile, back on Elephant Island, every morning Frank Wild, whom Shackleton had left in charge, issued a call for everyone in the stranded crew to “Lash and stow. The boss may come today.” Every day. Lash and stow all your belongings. Get ready. Today’s the day. The boss might come today. Four months later, after making four separate relief attempts, Shackleton finally succeeded in rescuing his crew from Elephant Island, and throughout the ordeal none of the crew of the Endurance died.
Daniel 8 is telling us that the suffering people of God in Babylon, the suffering people of God in every age – you and me – we are like those remaining crew members waiting for months on the Antarctic ice on Elephant Island. That’s life here at times, isn’t it? Hard. Requiring endurance. But every day the Word of God comes to us and says, “Lash up and stow. The boss may come today.” You may have noticed how in verse 24 the little horn, Antiochus, has great power. But make sure you catch the side comment. Look at verse 24. “His power shall be great,” but not his own power. Antiochus, who sought to usurp the divine prerogatives and challenge even the prince of the host, wasn’t really master of his own destiny after all. The sovereign God ruled even him, which is why, verse 25, “he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes and he shall be broken – but by no human hand.” The sovereign God who allowed his rise will take him out when the time is right. The true Boss will come one day and He will judge justly. And so brothers and sisters, every day, lash up and stow. Be prepared. Who knows, the Boss may come today. Are you ready to meet Him when He does? The endurance that God’s people need.
Then secondly, notice this chapter’s history lesson teaches us about the confidence God’s Word affords. The confidence God’s Word affords. John Flavel famously said that, “Providence is like a Hebrew word. You can only read it backwards.” And that’s true, but isn’t it marvelously reassuring as we think about the unknown mysteries of providence in our own futures, to be able to look back over Daniel’s predictions about Antiochus Epiphanes and see how history played out exactly as God said it would. Past providence, following obediently the road map, marked out for it by the living God in Daniel chapter 8. We can plot Alexander’s final defeat of the Medo-Persian Empire in 331 BC on the timeline of history precisely. We know who the four horns were who succeeded Alexander – Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Ptolemy. We know precisely when the little horn, the seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes, came to power and terrorized Israel. He desecrated the temple in 177 BC with pagan rites. He “threw the truth to the ground,” as Daniel puts it in verse 12, by prohibiting the observance of the Torah, prohibiting circumcision, punishing Sabbath observance, requiring the Jews to adopt Greek culture and Greek pagan worship.
For Daniel and his contemporaries, these visions were forewarnings, preparing them for the long haul ahead. But for us, they ought also to be profound encouragements because they enable us to look back and see how Scriptural prediction and unfolding providence perfectly aligned. God fulfills His Word. He always does what He says He will do. If we are going to persevere and endure whatever hardships lie ahead of us, confidence in the Word of God is a vital tool we cannot do without. Daniel 8 trains us to look back at the Word and promise of God already fulfilled so that we can march into tomorrow, confident that He will yet keep His promises for all our days to come.
And we need to do that not just with Daniel 8 of course; we ought to look back especially at the fulfillment of God’s greatest promises in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and see there how He has kept His Word, as He always does. He has kept His Word to His people. Consider His birth. Promised in Isaiah 7:14, “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call His name, Immanuel.” Consider His crucifixion. Predicted in extraordinary detail in Psalm 22, “All who seek Me, mock Me. They make mouths at Me. They wag their heads. ‘He trusts in the Lord, let Him deliver Him. Let Him rescue Him for He delights in Him.’ I am poured out like water and all My bones are out of joint. They have pierced My hands and feet; they divide My garments among them and for My clothing they cast lots.” Consider His resurrection. Prophesied in Psalm 16:9-11, “My flesh dwells secure, for You will not abandon My soul to Sheol or let Your holy one see corruption. You make known to Me the path of life.”
It’s not just that one time God kept His Word in raising up and then destroying a tyranny like Antiochus Epiphanes long ago. It’s that He has sent His own Son to be born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures, just as He promised. Beloved, look back and see how Your God is a promise-keeping God. See how He does not flinch, not even from the cross, in order to keep His Word to you. And then turn to tomorrow, equipped with a Bible you can trust, to live by faith in the promises of God no matter what lies ahead. If Daniel 8 is generally a call for the endurance of the saints, confidence in the Word of God is vital endurance equipment and we won’t make it without it.
The endurance God’s people need. The confidence God’s Word affords. Then finally, this passage teaches us about the obedience God’s call demands. The obedience God’s call demands. Look at Daniel’s example. He shows us, first of all, how to live with incomplete answers. He shows us how to live with incomplete answers. As we’ve seen, Daniel “had understanding in all visions and dreams,” chapter 1:17. Nebuchadnezzar said, “The spirit of the holy gods is in you and no mystery is too difficult for you,” chapter 4 verse 9. Belshazzar’s mother said, “An excellent spirit, knowledge and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve problems were found in this Daniel,” chapter 5 verse 12. So if anyone is equipped to understand the harrowing visions from the Lord of chapter 8 it was Daniel.
And in verse 5, after the vision of the ram, Daniel was already working on it. “As I was considering, behold, a male goat.” He’s pondering what he sees. He’s trying to make sense and discover its meaning. You see the theme note again in verse 15. “When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it.” Understanding the Word of God really matters to him, as it ought to matter to every serious disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is diligent and engaged in its study; eventually Gabriel is sent to help him understand. He tells Daniel in verse 19, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation.” So Daniel, with the expository assistance of the angel Gabriel himself, is pursuing understanding. Never rest content with a superficial comprehension of the truth of God. Good enough isn’t good enough. Delve as deeply into the Word as you can go. Seek understanding as a principle duty of Christian faithfulness.
And yet, notice in verse 27, try as he might, some at least of what he was shown eludes him. “I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it,” he says. Now we know that he definitely grasps some of it. Gabriel was not entirely cryptic in his exposition after all. The Medo-Persian Empire was going to overtake the Babylonian Empire. That was very clear. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the thought that this part of the vision helped prepare Daniel to understand the meaning of the writing on the wall that appears a few years later to Belshazzar on the very night when this prophecy was fulfilled. And likewise, the goat is a symbol of a future Greek Empire. That wouldn’t have been difficult in itself for Daniel to comprehend. And yet even so, much of his vision remained obscure and impenetrable to him.
I think there is an important lesson here in intellectual modesty for all of us who seek to understand the Word of God and live in its light. We must, we must always pursue understanding, but while we live this side of eternity we need also to recognize that we will see only in a glass darkly. We will know only in part. I got a letter in the mail earlier this week from someone making the modest claim to be “America’s Prophet.” His epistle, he said, was as inspired as the letters of the apostle Paul, and it contained dire predictions confidently asserted of impending global catastrophe. At the bottom of the letter, there was a handwritten note just for me, assuring me that if I did not take his letter seriously and prepared all of you for the immediate arrival of judgment, then really bad things were going to happen to me.
Friends, the good news about Jesus is not obscure. He died for sinners and rose to everlasting life. He reigns at the Father’s right hand from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Salvation is offered to everyone, everywhere, freely. You may take it by faith in Jesus Christ alone. That is crystal clear. So let’s be dogmatic about that. We can be confident in that. But whenever someone asserts that Jesus is coming back next Tuesday, we need to remember Jesus’ own words in Matthew 24:26 and 36. Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Look, here he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. But as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father only.” Intellectual modesty, exegetical humility demand that we cling firmly to what is crystal clear and then learn to live meekly with what is not. So Daniel’s example, first, teaches us to live with incomplete answers.
Secondly, Daniel’s example teaches us to identify with the suffering people of God. These visions have been rough on poor Daniel, haven’t they? When Gabriel appears to him and comes near to where he stands in verse 17, Daniel says, “I was frightened and fell on my face.” Gabriel tells Daniel he’s here to help him, but his words don’t seem to have helped Daniel very much, do they? Because verse 18, “When he spoke to me I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground.” As a preacher whose voice seems to have a soporific effect, that’s a marvelously reassuring sentence to read. Even Gabriel managed to do this to poor Daniel! Daniel, I think the point is really, Daniel is overwhelmed. His brain can’t handle it. He shuts down. He’s out cold. Gabriel has to prod him and nudge him and help him stand back on his feet. And in verse 27, when the ordeal is finally over, you’ll notice Daniel says, “I was overcome and lay sick for some days.”
Now I don’t think it was just that the experience itself was so harrowing. I think it’s that Daniel was devastated by the reality of the judgment of God, sweeping across the ages of human history from which none may escape. As one commentator puts it, “Even though the judgment Daniel saw lay many years in the future, he could not simply pronounce it upon them from a comfortable distance. On the contrary, he physically identified with his people in their forthcoming suffering to the point of feeling their pains in his body. And in this, surely Daniel reminds us of the Lord Jesus, doesn’t he? We have in Christ, after all, a High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. This is the way of Jesus. It was the way of faithful Daniel. It was also the way of the apostle Paul. Do you remember Paul in Romans 9:1? “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” His Jewish compatriots did not believe in Jesus, and Paul is so distraught at the thought of their lost condition that he’s saying, “I could almost wish I could forfeit my own salvation if it would make room for a few more of them in the kingdom of heaven.”
What is there, brothers and sisters, what is there of the echo of the sympathy of Jesus Christ in your heart for those you know around you who are facing right now the judgment of God because they are strangers to His saving grace? Daniel had it and Paul had it. Do you have it? Learn to live with incomplete answers, identify with the suffering people of God, and finally, Daniel’s example teaches us no matter what’s coming to hold our nerve and fulfill our earthly callings. Don’t you love verse 27? “And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business.” What do you do when you know judgment is coming? If you knew Jesus really was coming back next Tuesday, what would you do?
Sinclair Ferguson tells the story of John Wesley who was once stopped on the way to a preaching engagement and asked what he would do if he knew that Christ would return at noon the next day. Reaching into his saddle bag, he retrieved his diary and read out his engagements for the next day. Then he snapped it shut and said, “That, dear sir, is what I would do.” He was already about his Master’s business. He was already being faithful. No course correction was required. He was ready. In Matthew 24:44 Jesus said, “You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” Wesley was already doing what he was called to do – faithful at his vocation. That’s how he wanted to be found, not deserting his post; doing the work God had given his hands to do. Daniel’s secular vocation was to be busy about the king’s business, despite the overwhelming visions of impending judgment that came to him. He rose and got about the work he knew for sure God had given him to do, not deserting his post. Faithful in his daily calling. Living for Jesus, we would say, where the Lord has planted us.
So, lash and stow. Maybe today the Boss will come. Will you be ready? Will you be ready? Faithful at the work that He has given you to do, not deserting your post? Rise and be busy about the King’s business. The endurance God’s people need. Confidence God’s Word affords. And the obedience God’s call demands. May the Lord give us all three. Let’s pray together.
Lord our God, we cry out to You for grace to be faithful in the daily work that You have entrusted to us, not to desert our post but to be diligent about the Master’s business. Give us grace to face with sober realism challenges of a dark world, but give us such grace that enables us to rest securely in Your sovereign governance of all things that Your perfect providence might be a pillow for our heads. Grant us faith to look always to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith – faith that is strengthened and garrisoned and made sure by seeing how again and again You have kept Your promises most conspicuously in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. For we ask all of this in His holy name, amen.