Exploring My Strange Bible - Faithfulness in Exile: Daniel Part 3 - Super Beast & the Son

Episode Date: February 14, 2018

The book of Daniel is a story about a group of Israelites who have been exiled from Babylon, and the whole point is to explore what it means to be God’s people when you’re a minority. This book is about the struggle to maintain faithfulness and the struggle to maintain hope. What does it mean to be people who maintain hope and a way of life that says that Jesus is the king of the world? Welcome to Daniel Chapter 7. This whole story is portraying the four characters as models or examples of resistance to the empire. One night Daniel has a dream that gives us a new perspective on things… Listen in to learn more..

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. Does anybody have weird dreams when they sleep? Does anybody have weird dreams when they sleep?

Today we're going to be looking at somebody's bad dream. And I don't know if it will seem weirder than the one you had last night or not as weird. But today we're looking at a character in the Bible's really, really bad dream. We have been exploring, as we go through the scriptures in our Sunday gatherings. We've been going through the book of Daniel, yeah? It's really awesome. There's so many great stories that some of you might remember from when you were kids, and I hope it's been one of those experiences where all of the things that you didn't know, you don't know. Like you thought you maybe really understood these stories about Daniel in the lion's den or the fiery furnace,

and you realize how profound, really profound this book is. As we go through the book of Daniel, the main idea, it's a story about a group of Israelites who have been exiled to Babylon. And the whole point of the book is to explore what it means to be God's people when you're a minority, right? When you're trying to be faithful as a minority in a culture that doesn't like your way of life, thinks you're stupid, and that's hostile to you and your beliefs and way of life. And so this book's about the struggle to maintain faithfulness. It's also about the struggle to maintain hope.

Because when you are a minority, you're aware of it wherever you go. And it's also a struggle to maintain hope when it seems like nothing in the world fits or is going the way that you think it ought to, according to what you believe. What does it mean to maintain hope, to be a people of Jesus, and actually believe that Jesus is the king of the world and the king of Portland? Does Portland look like a city where Jesus is king? Does our world look like a city where Jesus is king? Does our world look like a world where Jesus is king? Well, it's actually hard to believe that, isn't it?

It's hard to live like it, and it's hard to maintain hope. You know, when we, the world's attention, you know, right now is just on one section of the world, pretty much nonstop. And our news headlines, at least in the Middle East, and we're looking at the dissolution and the violence and chaos in Syria or Iraq. And that's just one part of the world. I don't know how many of you heard about the bloodbath in Chicago last weekend. Anybody?

64 people shot in the neighborhoods of Chicago. Huge number of those just people sitting on their front porches, enjoying the warm evening, and they get caught in the crossfire of an urban war. It's the highest homicide rate in the country right now, Chicago. And that's where we live, right? It's not like some other part of the planet. That's our country, and so what does it mean to be people who maintain this hope in a way of life that says Jesus is the king of the world, when not only the culture is hostile to you, but actually the way the world works doesn't seem to reflect the fact of what we believe, that Jesus is king. How do you maintain hope? Welcome to Daniel chapter seven. Daniel chapter seven. So I thought, Daniel seven, we're kind of at a watershed transition

moment in the book, so I thought we'd do a quick recap. You guys with me? This is about maintaining faithfulness and maintaining hope. So here's how the story's gone so far. This is where we've been. hope. So here's how the story's gone so far. This is where we've been. So let's start in the upper left, right? So it started in Jerusalem, right? The city of David and the people of Israel. And the big bad Babylonians came and they attacked Jerusalem, killed tons of people, and took thousands of Israelites into exile. And this story is about four of those. Azariah, Mishael, Hananiah, and Daniel. And so these four, along with a whole bunch of others, they get recruited to serve in Babylon. And you might remember that story. They get government jobs. They take Babylonian names. They learn to speak the language of the empire, which in their day was Aramaic. And all of a sudden,

they find themselves in these really compromising situations. It was about food in chapter one. And so they stick by their Jewish identity. They're not going to eat certain foods. And they're almost killed for it. You remember that? But they maintain faithfulness. And so what does God do? He delivers them. Then we came to chapter 2, which was a story about the king of Babylon. He had a bad dream that maybe was weirder, I don't know, or less weird than the dream you had last night. And it was about a big statue made of these four different types of metals. And then Daniel interprets the dream that the statue represents human kingdoms, and these four metals represent a train of four kingdoms,

and then a big meteorite comes and smashes the statue, and that's the symbol for the kingdom of God. It grows into a big mountain and fills the world. Now, that's good news if you're Daniel. Yeah? That will help you maintain hope and faithfulness, to know that even though I'm living in Babylon, which is hostile to me in my way of life, Babylon won't last forever.

God's kingdom will one day come here on earth as it is in heaven. After this, we had a story about the friends of Daniel. And just like in chapter 1, they're tested with their faithfulness. Are they going to bow down to this big, huge statue that's an idol of the empire? Or are they going to refuse and give their honor and allegiance to the God of Israel alone? And so that's what they do. And they are killed for it, so to speak. They're thrown into a fiery furnace, but they don't die. God delivers them, thrown into a fiery furnace, but they don't die. God delivers them, and the king takes them out,

and they're elevated to a place of authority. After that, we had two stories about two kings of Babylon, a father and a son, and they're both really prideful. And one king, Nebuchadnezzar, you remember, he was prideful, and so God humiliated him. Do you remember what happened? He turned into a caveman. He turned into a beast, actually. He became a beast, and he ate grass, and he had long claws and hair. You remember that whole deal? He becomes a beast. And as he becomes a beast, he realizes his place before God. So he humbles himself, and his humanity is restored to him when he submits himself to God's kingdom. And contrast that with his son in chapter 5. That's the handwriting on the wall. And he was also arrogant before God, and he didn't humble himself.

And so he dies that night with a knife in his back. At least that's our artistic interpretation of his assassination. And then last Sunday, we came around to chapter 6, which was very similar to chapter 3 and chapter 1, except it's just Daniel this time. And is he going to pray to the king as if that king is God? And he won't do it. He only gives his allegiance to the God of Israel.

And so, just like the friends, he's persecuted for it. He's thrown into a den, not of a fiery pit, but of a pit full of beasts, of lions. And God delivers him from the beasts, and the king exalts him to a place of authority and so on. And that's been the book so far. Yeah, you guys with me? That didn't take that long. So do you see how this whole story is portraying these characters, these four characters as models or examples of resistance to the empire, of resistance to Babylon and its way of life, and it's the struggle. And they don't go cloister away and make a monastery in the desert.

They're in Babylon. They work for the government. They speak in Babylon. They work for the government. They speak the language. They have Babylonian fashion all over them. So they engaged in Babylon, but at the same time they are maintaining that knife edge of faithfulness to the God of Israel as they're in Babylon. And it's very difficult.

Life is really difficult for Daniel and these four friends, and they're constantly, constantly being tested and challenged. And you get tired, right? You get tired. And then you see the king of Babylon go win another war and go wipe out another people group, and there's all this violence and tragedy, and you start to wonder, like, how long is Babylon going to last? And how long are the kingdoms of this world going to do what the kingdoms of this world do? Daniel chapter 7. It's another dream, which is parallel to the dream in chapter 2, but this time it's Daniel who has the dream. And we're just going to, this is so awesome. You guys, this is such a great dream.

And so I'm just going to leave this up here because it'll be kind of a visual guide in case you might have your own nightmares about it. Daniel chapter 7. That's the setup. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream. And visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. And he wrote down the substance of the dream. Daniel said,

In my vision, at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea, and four great beasts, each different from the other, came up out of the sea. The first beast was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. And I watched until its wings were torn off, and then it got lifted up from the ground and stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human being was given to it. Then there was the second beast before me, and that looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth, and it was told, get up and go eat your fill of meat. After that, I looked, and there was another beast before me, and it looked like a leopard.

On its back, it had four wings like those of a bird, so some leopard, right? Notice he didn't say it was a leopard. He just said it's like a leopard because leopards don't have wings, in case you haven't seen one at the zoo recently. It had four wings like those of a bird, and this beast had four heads, a mega leopard, deaf leopard, and it was given authority to rule. After that, in my vision, at night, I looked,

and there was before me a fourth beast it was terrifying frightening very powerful it had huge iron teeth and it crushed and it devoured its victims it trampled underfoot everything that was left. And it was different from all of the other beasts. It had ten horns. And as I was sitting there thinking about the horns, like you would too, there came up before me another horn, a sprouting horn, a little one, which came up among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted before it, and this horn had eyes, like the eyes of a human, and it had a mouth,

and it was speaking boastfully. How you guys doing? Was your dream this strange last night? How you guys doing? Was your dream this strange last night? Some of you have stranger dreams. I know it. And I do too sometimes. Okay. What on earth? It's a dream.

First of all, it's a dream. Right? He's not watching a movie. He's certainly not reading the Left Behind series. Right? It's a dream. Right? And dreams, this fits into a whole motif that runs throughout the Bible of people having

dreams, symbolic dreams. Think about Pharaoh's dreams in the book of Genesis, and it's all about these sheaves of wheat. And then another dream is all about weird cows, some that are healthy and some that are sick. So we're used to this as readers of the Bible, of people having dreams that often feature animals, and these are symbols of what? Well, it's going to play itself out. But first off, for Daniel and for the readers, early readers of the book of Daniel, they would not be as weirded out as you are right now, because their minds would be filled with the biblical visual imagination. And so for anybody who's read through the books of the prophets, like Daniel has,

images of powerful beasts destroying and trampling, like you've heard of this before. For example, I just picked one example at random from the book of the prophet Isaiah when he describes the kingdom of Babylon coming to town because God has brought Babylon as a consequence of Israel's sin. This is how Isaiah describes the kingdom of Babylon coming to Jerusalem. Isaiah chapter 5. Sorry, I should have set that up for you a little bit more. Isaiah chapter 5. You'll see it up here. The Lord lifts up a banner for the distant nations.

He whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Here they come, swiftly, speedily. Their arrows are sharp, their bows are strong. Their roar is like that of a lion. They roar like young lions. They growl as they seize their prey, and they carry it off for no one to rescue. So when Isaiah depicts Babylon coming, besieging, attacking Jerusalem, and taking the people into exile, he paints this image of a lion, right, emerging out of the bushes, Roar! It takes, you know,

someone and then drags them off into the bushes. And no one can do anything about it. And this is very common. I could show you 20 other passages in the prophets here where oppressive, arrogant nations that kill and ravage people, they're described in this kind of imagery, wild animal imagery. Remember in Daniel's dream, the first beast that he saw was what? It was a lion. It was a lion. But it's not just the lions. There's lions, there's a bear, there's a mega deaf leopard, right? And then there was, for lack of a better term, I've just come to call the fourth one the super beast. He's the super beast.

And he's not described as having features of any kind of known animal. He's like the mega beast, the super beast. And he's not just a super beast. What has he got growing out of his head? Horns. Now, again, so definitely don't think trumpets, right? So horns, like big animal horns. And this is, again, a very biblical image used by the prophets a lot. So think of like a big ox, you know, like that has big bull horns. And these

horns, they're a symbol of its power, of its strength, right? They can gore you and poke you with the horns. Poke. I guess a bull doesn't really poke you with its horn. It runs you through with its horn, right? But it's also an image of its power and so on. And so in biblical poetry, horns are often used as symbols for royal power and strength. For example, Psalm 75. The Lord says,

I have chosen the appointed time. It's I who bring justice with fairness. And so to the arrogant I say, this is God speaking to the arrogant in the time of judgment, boast no more. And to the wicked, God says, don't lift up your horns. Don't lift up your horns against heaven and speak so defiantly. I will cut off the horns of all the

wicked, but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up. So I could show you a dozen other passages in the poets and the prophets of the Old Testament where horns are this image of kings or powerful people. And here, it's of a horn that raises itself up and speaks arrogance against God, that puts itself in the place of God. And what does God do to such horns? He gets a hacksaw and chops off those horns. But he will exalt the horns of the righteous. So these are all of the images, right? Daniel grew up on the Psalms and the prophets.

And so he has a really bad dream one night about how horrible Babylon is and how horrible the kingdoms of this world are and wondering, are they going to last forever? And he has this dream about lions and bears and leopards and the mega beast and horns that speak defiantly. Are you with me here?

How you doing? The Bible's very strange, isn't it? So here, let me just pause for a second. So we come here throughout the week. You know, some of us have stories of pain and confusion in our lives. Some of us have stories of joy and life's going good

and we're trying to be faithful to Jesus. And we come to the Sunday gathering and you read some guy's ancient dream about mega beasts. Why are you doing this? Like, what does this have to do with anything? This has everything to do with our lives. To be a follower of Jesus is to read the scriptures as part of my family history and to see that Daniel's story

is actually my story because it's Jesus's story. We're going to see here in just a second that this chapter that we're reading here was one of the most important chapters in the whole of the scriptures to Jesus. He quoted from it many, many, many times. In fact, the name and the title by which Jesus called himself most often comes right from this story right here. This is a motivational speech. I knew you'd be weirded out by the dream. Can you hang with me? Verse 8.

Oh, excuse me, verse 9. It's not the end of the dream. I kept looking, and then I saw that thrones were set in place. And the Ancient of Days, it's a great Hebrew phrase describing the God of Israel, the one who is eternal. He came and took his seat. So it's God appearing as king, and he's on what I've come to call the Godmobile. It's like a hot rod, right?

It's this flaming throne mobile with wheels. And a river of fire was flowing out, coming out from before him, and there were thousands upon thousands attending him. 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him, and the court was seated, It's this powerful scene of God appearing amidst the beasts. And then God comes as king of history, and he comes as judge. He's going to bring justice. And so it's this king coming into the court.

The books are open. He's going to declare some innocent, some guilty, sentence the wicked. It's judgment day. Then I continued to watch because of those boastful words that that horn kept speaking. And I kept looking until the beast was slain. Its body was destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.

And those other beasts that had been stripped of their authority, they were allowed to live for a period of time. And then in my vision at night, I looked and there before me was one like a son of man. Now, if you've been around Door of Hope for a while, you know I like to teach you Hebrew words. Do you remember the Hebrew word for man or humanity? Adam. Adam. Now, this part of the book is not written in Hebrew.

It's written in Aramaic. Do you know the Aramaic word for humanity? Adam. That's a trick question. Adam. So they're cousin languages, like French and Spanish. It's the same word. Same word. A son of Adam.

It means human. a member of humanity. Amidst the beasts, God comes to bring judgment and justice on the beasts, and so he sentences the beast to destruction. But then Daniel sees that there is a human one. Daniel sees that there is a human one. And what happens to this human one? Well, he came with the clouds of heaven. Where is he going on the clouds? He's not coming down. He goes up, and he approaches the Ancient of Days on the cloud and was led into his presence. And that human one was given authority and glory and sovereign power and all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that won't pass away. His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed, and that's the dream. How you guys doing? So we've got this train of beasts culminating in the mega beast with this horn that speaks defiantly and sets itself up

against God. And then God comes as the king of history to bring justice, and he sentences the beast to destruction. And then we find this human one. This human one is, of course, among the people who have been trampled and destroyed by the super mega beast. And so God takes the human one and exalts the human one to share in his rule, right? The human one approaches God and sits down to rule over God's good world beside God. And all of the nations

worship this human one, and his kingdom lasts forever. I, Daniel, was troubled in my spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind really bothered me. And they would you too. So I approached one of those standing there. There's all these thousands of angelic attendants in God's court, and so in his vision, he goes up to one of them, and I asked him, what's the meaning of all of this? And he told me.

He gave me an interpretation of all of this. And he told me. He gave me an interpretation of all these things. He said, the four great beasts, they're four kings that will rise up from the earth. Now, you all are discovering that right now. That's no surprise to you. If you've been reading through the prophets and the biblical poets, you already know that one of the most common ways to describe kings and kingdoms is with horns and beasts and so on. So there you go. It's just unpacked for you. They're symbols of a train of four kingdoms. So if the beasts and the horn represent kings and kingdoms,

what's the human one? What does the Son of Man represent? Obviously, that's a symbol, too, in the vision. He says, The four beasts are four kings that will rise up from the earth, but the holy people of the Most High, they will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever. Yes, forever and ever.

So are you with me? Are you guys following? So the four beasts are four kings and kingdoms. Obviously the last beast in the horn will be a particular king or kingdom. And then that beast is trampling and crushing and devouring people. And then we discover that one of the people that he's trampling is the son of man, a human one. But then God comes as king and judge, and he vindicates and rescues the son of man. He sentences the beast to destruction, and then the son of man gets exalted to share in his

rule over the world. And who do we discover the son of Man is a symbol for? Verse 18, the holy people. God's holy people. Now, if you ever went to Sunday school as a kid, your Jesus radar was going off earlier. You're like, wait, I thought it was Jesus. Just hang with me. It's the right instinct.

But just hang with me for a minute. It's God's Jesus. Just hang with me. It's the right instinct, but just hang with me for a minute. It's God's people. So God's holy people have been trampled and persecuted by the beast, but God's going to sentence the beast to destruction and exalt his holy people to sit at his right hand and rule the world. Now, Ken, I think of a book in the Bible that tells the story of God's holy people who have been trampled and who are being persecuted by a beast? Oh, right. I think it's called the book of Daniel. And I think we read stories one, two, three, four, five about God's holy people getting trampled on and devoured by the beast.

Can you think of a story where one of God's faithful holy people was actually thrown to the beasts? Oh, right. It's the story right before this one. And what kind of beast was it? It was a lion. Are you with me here? So Daniel and his friends are this narrative example of what God's holy people have been through all throughout their history and as they live as a persecuted minority. And Daniel's sitting there wondering how long is this going to last? And he has this dream about how Babylon and the train of oppressive human kingdoms that come from it won't last forever. There's coming a day of justice where God will destroy the beast and he

will rescue and vindicate his holy people and they will share in his rule over the world. That's what this dream is all about. Now Daniel still kind of weirded out because of this talking horn. So look where he goes next. Verse 19. So I wanted to know the meaning of that fourth beast because it was different than all the others. It was terrifying with its iron teeth, bronze claws. Remember that beast

that crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left? I also wanted to know about those ten horns on its head and about that one horn that came up before which the other three horns fell, because that horn looked more imposing than the others. It had eyes and a mouth and it spoke boastfully. And I watched as that horn waged war against the holy people, the Son of Man, and was defeating them. And then I watched as the Ancient of Days came and he pronounced judgment in favor of the Son of Man, the holy people. And the time came when they were exalted and possessed the kingdom. And so the one standing there gave me this explanation. He said, that fourth beast, it's a fourth kingdom. The one standing there gave me this explanation.

He said, that fourth beast, it's a fourth kingdom. It's going to appear on the earth. It'll be different than the other kingdoms. It will devour all the earth, trampling it down, crushing it. And those ten horns are ten kings that will come from this kingdom. More horny. Oh, sheesh, I was about to say that. Holy cow. Horn kings.

Whoa. Just, my God. Horned kings. Whoa. Just, okay, we're clearly going to be putting the 1045 on the internet. Okay. After them, another king will arise. Just keep going. Different from the earlier ones. Three kings fall. Here comes the horn.

He will subdue three kings. Act like it didn't happen. He will speak against the Most High. He will oppress his holy people, trampling the Son of Man. He'll try to change, and the set times and the laws and the holy people will be delivered into his hands, trampled for a time, times, and half a time, for a time, times, and half a time, which would make a great song title, I think, in case you're musicians.

It could mean three and a half years, a year, two years, half a year. It could be a more cryptic way of referring to a set period of time. We'll talk about it. But make no mistake, even though the Son of Man is trampled by the beast, the court will sit, and his power will be taken away, completely destroyed forever. And then the sovereignty, the power, and the greatness of all of the kingdoms under heaven

will be handed over to the Son of Man, the holy people of the Most High. And his kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him. This is the end of the matter. I, Daniel, was really, really troubled by my thoughts. My face turned pale, but I kept the matter to myself. It's Daniel chapter 7. How you guys doing?

So there it is. That's the chapter 7. How you guys doing? So there it is. That's the bad dream. I don't know how it compares to the dream you had last night. And it worked through the storyline a couple different times, but do you get the flow? Do you get the flow of it? There's God's holy people who are the persecuted minority, and they're sitting there in Babylon wondering,

how long is the super beast horn king going to destroy the world? How long will beasts have run of the earth? And Daniel is reassured that it won't be forever, that those who become trampled by the beast that God is aware and that he knows, and that there's a set time when he's going to come and bring justice and rescue his holy people and sentence the beast to destruction. If you're Daniel, this is a strange form of good news, but is this dream good news to you? It is. It is. Now, what does this all refer to here? And let me just, very quickly, because there's been a whole library full of books worth of debate written on this question. There are lots of really smart people who I respect who think that this king and all these events refer to something that happened

about 150 years before Jesus. If the first kingdom, the lion, is Babylon, then the second kingdom is that of Persia, the third kingdom is that of Greece, and then the fourth mega beast refers to a kingdom that came after Greece and Alexander the Great, the kingdom of Syria in the 160s BC. And there was one particular king, a really nasty guy named Antiochus, who came in the 160s BC and he conquered Jerusalem and he actually made it illegal to practice Judaism in the city of Jerusalem. And he stopped the sacrificial system. He changed the set times and laws.

He made it illegal for the feast. And he stopped it all. He set up idols in the temple. And he actually started murdering and torturing Jews in the temple courtyard. It was a horrific time. It was actually the most intense form of persecution the Jewish people ever experienced up to that point, in their own city, in their own temple. And so there are lots of smart people who think

that's for sure what the book is focusing on, and that's the events that it's foretelling from Daniel's point of view. There are other really smart people, many of whom I respect, who think that it doesn't refer primarily to that, but rather it refers to something that hasn't happened yet from even our perspective. But rather this is describing a series of events that's going to happen in Jerusalem when Jesus returns and comes back. And that Jesus' return is going to be led up to by a king who's called the Antichrist, and he's going to come, and there's going to be a new temple in Jerusalem,

and it's all this persecution and horrible things are going to go down. And if you've read the Left Behind books, or seen any movies with Kirk Cameron in them, that's basically what's going on with that camp here. It refers to something in the future that hasn't happened yet. Are you with me? The two camps. So which one of those is right? And this is a question that I've, I'm a Bible nerd, and so I've pondered this question for many years now. And to me, I hit upon what I think is the most significant thing in reading and trying to understand this chapter as a Christian and figuring out how it refers to

things and predicts and so on. And that's the fact that we know that Jesus really, really had an obsession with this chapter that we just read out loud. He quotes from it many, many times in the Gospels. Here's a good fact. Use this one at a party this Friday night. We have come to call Jesus by a Greek word that summarizes his status, his royal status. It's the word Christ, Christos, or Messiah. And what's interesting is that Jesus accepted that title when people called him that,

but Jesus never once actually called himself the Messiah. Jesus called himself by a strange title multiple times. It puzzled people, but it's the most consistent title he used for himself. And what is it? It's the Son of Man. Where did he get this title to refer to himself? Daniel 7. Why did Jesus choose this strange title, the human one,

to describe himself throughout his mission and his ministry? Why did he do that? I want to show you just one example of Jesus using Daniel chapter 7. And I think it's significant because it helps me understand how Jesus read and understood this chapter. And it seems that Jesus would have some issues, I think, with this view and with this view. When Jesus was arrested by the leaders of Jerusalem, he was taken to a trial before the high priest. You remember that story? Let's just quickly recall it briefly here. It's in Matthew chapter 26. And watch what happens. Those who had arrested

Jesus, they took him to Caiaphas, the high priest in Jerusalem, where the teachers of the law and the elders had all assembled. And the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin, they were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. So let's just pause. Jerusalem. Who's the most powerful person in Jerusalem in that day? He's standing in the room. He's the high priest.

And it's all the elders. It's the Bible scholars. It's the leaders of the temple. It's like the White House and the National Cathedral and the president, right? And it's everybody all in one. And Jesus stands before them all, and they're going to knowingly execute Jesus for reasons that they know are not legitimate. So the high priest said to Jesus, I charge you under oath by the living God. Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.

You apparently say so, says Jesus. So awesome, cryptic. You say so, but here's what I have to say to you. From this moment on, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven. If you were a Star Wars fan, let's just say, and you were to go to the Star Wars convention and wear a black helmet and carry a lightsaber of the green variety, and you were to go up to people and sing to them, I'm your father. First of all, you're dumb, right? And people would make fun of you.

But in that moment, you are taking on the role, clearly, of what character? Darth Vader. Do you have to explain that to anybody at a Star Wars convention? That you're acting like Darth Vader? Now the person that you walk up to and you say, I'm your father, you're treating them like what character? Luke Skywalker. Do you have to tell them that? I'm just pretending to be Darth Vader

all you have to do is wear the black helmet carry the lightsaber and go walk up to somebody and say I'm your father and it's just very clear because they're all Star Wars nerds there Jesus is in a room full of Bible nerds they have the scriptures memorized and he

stands before the leaders the leaders of Israel, who are about to execute a man on false charges for going around leading a movement that he called the Kingdom of God movement. And all he did is say, God is truly the king of the world. And so he heals the sick. He preaches good news to the poor. He invites them into these celebrations of God's kingdom and this new family that he's creating around himself. And for this, they're going to execute him.

And Jesus stands before these leaders and he says, The moment that you condemn me is the moment that the Son of Man is vindicated and enthroned before God. Do you get it? Do you get it? Jesus is placing himself in what role of Daniel chapter 7? It's the human one, as the Son of Man. And if Jesus believes that he is the fulfillment and the true

representative of God's holy people who are being faithful to the God of Israel, despite persecution and despite threats of violence, if he's painting himself as that character. Who is Caiaphas? Do you get it? He's the super beast. He has just said, in as loud a terms as anybody in that room could say, he's just called them all the super mega horn beast. That's what he just said that they all are. Who's Caiaphas?

He's the high priest. Of what institution? The temple. In what city? Jerusalem. Do you get it? In Jesus' mind, the super mega horn beast doesn't refer to something only 100 years before him, and it doesn't only refer to something only a hundred years before him, and it doesn't only

refer to something that will happen thousands of years after him. The super mega hornbeast, it's like a set of clothes. It's something that humans and human kingdoms put on and become. It's what you would call a type. And in Jesus' mind, Daniel 7 isn't just a reference to one single event. It's a way of thinking about human history. It's a way of, and it's all rooted in pages one and two of the Bible, where God installed his image-bearing creatures, humans, to rule the world on his behalf, to share in his rule over the world and over the beasts of the field and the birds in the air and the fish in the sea. But of course, the way the story of the Bible goes is that human beings rebel. They reject God and they reject God's

vision and definition of good and evil. They want to define good and evil for themselves. And so they declare themselves to become God. And the tragic irony, this is all Daniel chapter 4, the tragic irony is that when human beings exalt themselves to the highest place of pride, and when they make their desires and their impulses and appetites ultimate and divine, and they give their allegiance and their lives to them, ironically, from the Bible's point of view, human beings become beasts. They become animals. And that happens on an individual level, and then it happens on this corporate level. And so human beings become so distorted that you can't even really call

them humans anymore. All you can call them is beasts. Beasts. So really think about this. I just spent a week in the Grand Canyon, multiple nights sleeping outside of a tent, which was wonderful until the family of skunks showed up in the middle of the night. That's another story for another time. Beasts, right? But I spent a lot of time in the last week thinking about the relationship between humans and beasts. What makes a human different from a beast? So beasts, like wild animals, they're driven by instinct, pure instinct. You don't have to tell the mountain lion to go hunt for food when it's hungry. You don't have to tell the mountain lion to go find a mate and reproduce and raise the pups and so on.

They're wired for it. It's instinct and impulse. And if you face a mountain lion in the wilderness, good luck talking it out of eating you. You can't reason with the thing. Because it's driven by its impulses. It's wild animals. And there's something about humans, right? We've developed this thing called consciousness and a moral awareness.

And from the Bible's point of view, human beings, we share a lot of commonalities with beasts. Nobody has to tell you to eat when you're hungry. No one has to tell you to eat when you're hungry. No one has to tell you to reproduce and so on. Those things are just impulses within human beings. But at the same time, human beings have this really unique ability to overcome the beastly impulse, right? In fact, I think most of us would describe a mature human being as a human being who has self-control of their impulses and can actually override their impulses and instincts

and live a life that is for others and live a life that benefits not just themselves and their appetites, but benefits other people. And I might actually forego things that I want and things that I have an impulse to do, but so that I can be of help for others to flourish, and so on. This is the Bible's vision of what human beings are. We share a lot with animals, and human beings very quickly and easily become beasts. But we're called to so much more, and you know it. You know it. You know that you're more than just your appetite and your sexual drive. We know this.

But from the Bible's point of view, there's this, every human has a war going on within itself. Is it going to become the mature human being that God called this human to be, or is this human going to reduce back to the level of a beast? And from Daniel chapter 7's point of view, every human kingdom eventually becomes the beast. It's just like this law of human history. A human, get a whole bunch of humans together, and will they be able to override their, like,

instincts to self-preservation at the expense of others, or will they become truly human, truly human, and not just work off of impulse and self-preservation, but actually exist for the benefit of others? And those kinds of communities and human beings are so rare that when Daniel has a dream to summarize all of human history and their kingdoms, it's a dream about beasts. And so what Jesus, how are you guys doing? So when Jesus looks at the high priest of Israel and when he looks at the holy people of God

who were called out of the nations and called to become the truly human ones and he looks at the high priest of Israel and their government and their temple as they persecute and are about to murder Jesus for healing people and preaching good news to the poor, what does he call them all? Beasts.

Jesus is here to conquer the beast. And what this vision, Daniel's dream, is about is about how God is going to judge and destroy the beast and exalt the truly human one to share in his rule over the world. And Jesus believes that he is bringing the story of Daniel and the vision and the dream of Daniel to its fulfillment. He's here to conquer the beast. And how does the beast get conquered? Well, in Daniel 7, the son of man, the human one, just gets trampled on by the beast. And then the beast gets destroyed, and then the human one gets exalted. And Jesus apparently took his title for himself. He took the roadmap for his vocation and what he was called to do from this story here. And Jesus says to the high

priest, he says, the moment that you conquer me is the moment that I conquer you. The moment that you give in to your instinct of self-preservation at the expense of the life of another human is actually the moment that you were destroyed. And it's the moment that I gained victory over you. Jesus is going to conquer the beast by letting the beast conquer him. Because, see, beasts only have one weapon. Teeth and fangs, right? They can kill you.

But from Jesus' point of view, his trust and he comes to embody the life-giving love of the creator that is more powerful than the beast and so from Jesus' point of view just like Daniel's point of view and the friend's point of view

in the book of Daniel they can look at the beast and say all you can do is kill me but your ability is kill me. But your ability to kill me can never separate me from the love and the covenant commitment of God. And so Jesus goes to his death with the confidence that his death is actually the way of overcoming the beast. That's how Jesus read and understood Daniel chapter 7. It's a way of thinking about the whole human story. And so, yes, Antiochus was the super mega horn beast, right, 150 years before Jesus. And yes, there were mega beasts of his day. It was called the empire of Rome, and it was also called

the high priest of Israel. And human history, since Jesus, has provided us with a whole bunch of mega super horn beasts. And if I'm truly honest with myself, I have a mega super horn beast inside of me, and so do you. And Jesus says the beast must die. For human history to become what God called it to be, the beast has to die. It has to. And that's what Jesus sees himself doing as he dies on the cross. It's letting the beast do its worst so that he can die on behalf of the beast

so that beasts can be transformed by the love of God to truly become human. I know this is a strange dream, but if you're honest with yourself, you know what this is talking about. We're talking about these moments where you and I give in to the beastly impulses inside of us. Right? And whether it's for an appetite of physical hunger, whether it's for sex, whether it's the drive to dominate and be more important and powerful than other people, it's the beastly impulse. And it's incredibly destructive.

And if we're honest with ourselves, we know that we're made for more than that. Because a mature human being who truly reflects the image of God doesn't have to win at the expense of others. A mature human being who's full of the Spirit of God is a human being who can control its impulses and actually live for the benefit of other people. But none of us actually do that,

or we do it imperfectly. And so Jesus comes as the human one to be for us what we could never be for ourselves, and he becomes what we are so that we can become what he is. Amen? So I don't know how this lands with you. I don't know how your week was, and I don't know how your week was and I don't know what

your dreams were like last night. But I encourage you as we go into worship and as we go to take the bread and the cup to ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate inside of you the beastly

impulses that remain and what it's going to take through the love and faithfulness of Jesus to you to kill off the beast so that you can become truly human in the love and the grace that Jesus has for you. for you. You guys, thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. We're going to keep exploring the book of Daniel. So powerful. Such a prophetic word, our contemporary moment. So let's keep rocking. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time