Daniel 7 | 2024
Does anyone have super vivid dreams? I don’t really have crazy dreams, or if I do I don’t remember them. Pregnancy however was a whole other thing. I don’t know if it was the hormones, or the extra blood flow or what, but my dreams were bananas when I was pregnant. The one I remember the most was when I was pregnant with Jada and I was working in the PACU at the time. PACU is the post anesthesia care unit, aka the post op recovery room. Some of you have heard this before. So in my dream, I went into labor at work and I was told the only way to get the baby out was a c section…through my back. So I got prepped for my c section face down on the operating table and the next thing I know I am in my own PACU and the nurse is handing me my baby girl…kitten. And I hold her just like a baby, like this is the most normal thing in the world, and show her off to Andrae, like look babe, its a girl…kitten. I was so happy. And then I woke up.
I don’t know if any of you have had strange dreams like that, but we are going to talk about dreams in the book of Daniel. And there are some seriously weird ones.
To catch us all up to speed, lets briefly walk through Daniel. I have to give credit to the Bible Project for some of the terms and ideas I am talking about today. Because if you are anything like me, most of what I knew about Daniel consisted of Sunday School lessons about the fiery furnace and the lions den. But there is so much more than that. The main theme of Daniel is how to live faithfully in exile. How do people maintain hope and live uncompromised in a society in which you are a minority? How does God provide comfort in the midst of oppression? How do we navigate the halls of power with faithfulness?
Daniel takes place right after the first Babylonian attack on Jerusalem around 586 B.C. They had destroyed the city and taken the first wave of Jewish people into captivity. Daniel and his three friends were recruited to work for the government. They take Babylonian names, they learn the language, they find themselves in compromising situations. Its about food in chapter one. They are almost killed because of it but they maintain faithfulness. God delivers them.
Chapter 2 is about Nebudchadnezzer who had a bad dream, which Daniel interprets. The king dreams about a statue of different metals, which Daniel interprets to be human kingdoms, then a comet comes to destroy the statue, the comet becomes a mountain which takes over the world. The comet is God’s kingdom. So this is good news for those in exile. God will ultimately destroy these kingdoms and God will deliver them.
Chapter 3 is a story about the friends of Daniel that Chip spoke about last month. They find themselves in a compromising situation, are they going to worship an idol or God? They choose to remain faithful and are basically killed for it, except they don’t die. God delivers them and the king ends up elevating them to higher stations of authority.
The next two chapters are about two kings. Both are prideful and resistant to God’s authority. The first one, Nebudchadnezzer was prideful and so God humiliated him. So he became a beast. Then he humbles himself and his humanity is restored to him as he submits to God’s kingdom. His son Darius was also arrogant, but he didn’t humble himself, and he was assassinated that very night.
Then we come to chapter 6, which is the story of Daniel and the Lions Den. Its similar to chapter 1 and chapter 3 in that Daniel again finds himself in a compromising situation, this time about prayer. He chooses to remain faithful and is persecuted for it. He is thrown into a den of beasts, lions, and again, God delivers him.
Are you seeing the theme here from these chapters? God’s people find themselves with a choice to make, they choose to be faithful which causes them all kinds of problems, and God delivers them. They don’t cloister themselves away, they don’t pick up arms and fight, they work for the government for pity’s sake! But they continue to struggle to walk along the fine line of faithfulness. It is very difficult. I’m sure they were tired. As Babylon continued to conquer more peoples and lands with violence and fear I’m sure Daniel and his friends wondered how long is Babylon going to last? Its a similar refrain to what the Israelites prayed before Moses led them out of Egypt, “How long, oh Lord, are we to live in exile like this?”
So we get to chapter 7, the turning point of the book of Daniel. Its another dream, but this time, instead of the kings dream, its Daniel’s. Buckle up because this is a wild one.
In his dream, Daniel saw a big storm on the sea, and out of that sea came four different beasts. The first one looked like a lion, but had wings like and eagle. Then the wings were ripped off, and it stood on two feet like a human. The next beast looked like a bear. It was gnawing on bones and it was told to go attack and kill. The third beast looked like a panther. Except it also had wings on its back, AND it had 4 heads. The fourth and final beast was the worst of all. It emerged destroying everything in site. It was massive and huge, a megabeast if you will. It had 10 horns. And Daniel is immediately intrigued by the horns. Like ok Daniel, you are having the scariest dream of your life and its the horns that finally made you pause and ponder? Wouldn’t have been my instinct but cool. Then another horn grow from the megabeast, a large one that then starts TALKING. Its arrogant and bossy, and eventually is killed. Then the Son of Man appears and is given power to rule for eternity.
Daniel is like, woah. He is used to interpreting dreams but he needs a little help with this one so he asks one of the angels on the scene. The angel tells him that the beasts represent kingdoms that will have temporary power. The megabeast will be the worst of them all, blaspheming God and persecuting his followers. But eventually, all power and authority is given back to the people of God and God will rule forever. And the Daniel chapter 7 ends with this gem. “And there it ended. I, Daniel, was in shock. I was like a man who had seen a ghost. But I kept it to myself.”
Ok Daniel. I’m going to need a moment.
There are two modern day thoughts about this interpretation. One says that these kingdoms refer to events that happened before the time of Jesus. Another states that they haven’t happened yet (think Left Behind series). But Jesus would have studied Daniel, and I am most curious about how Jesus would have understood the text. Turns out, Jesus was fascinated by Daniel chapter 7 and he refers to terms and themes throughout his ministry. But one of my favorites comes from Matthew 26:63-64
At the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus is taken before Caiphas, the chief priest, and the Sanhedrin, who are the religious leaders.
The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Jesus is in a room full of “bible nerds”. They know the scriptures. And they want to execute him under false pretenses. All Jesus has done is lead a kingdom of God movement in which He proclaims good news to the poor, proclaims freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. That’s it. That is Jesus’ entire “political agenda.”
Jesus does not refer to himself as the Messiah or the Christos (which is the greek term for messiah). But throughout his ministry, he refers to himself as the Son of Man. He got that name from Daniel 7.
So when Jesus sits in a room full of powerful religious leaders and evokes the imagery of himself as the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God coming from the clouds of heaven, the question has to be—who is the superbeast in this story? Its Caiphas. Its the high priest and the religious leaders and the religious institution who stood in direct opposition to this upside down Kingdom that Jesus was bringing about, where the first become the last, and God cares most about how we treat the least of these.
The beast represents the idolatry of power. So the beast is not just historical kingdoms. And it is not just a reference to future empires. Jesus considered to beast to be alive and well in his time. And it is alive in ours too. The beast can even live inside us.
We are familiar with the beasts of our society. We see it on TV, we see it on Capitol Hill and in the pulpits of our religious institutions. People have reached for power throughout history and will continue to power grab until Jesus returns.
Power is not bad in and of itself. I would argue that Jesus was the most powerful person to ever live. But the way Jesus yielded his power, and also how he DID NOT wield his power are critical to our understanding of it. He did not usurp the state institutions to implement his own kingdom. He did not use his power to hurt, harm or destroy. Jesus used his power to heal and teach and lead. And not just for the good of a few people for a short period of time, but for all of humanity for all of eternity. Our task then is to learn how to use our power in a similar way— to reject any other temptation to use power in a way that is antithetical to the way of Jesus, even at great personal cost. Like Daniel and his friends, who chose not to force their beliefs onto others but accepted the consequences of living a life of integrity with grace and faith. And like Jesus, who could have used his power to conquer the world but instead showed us that power should be used as an invitation to a better way of life. Like Jesus who literally laid down his life rather than sit on an earthly throne.
We are in an election season where the idolization of power is constantly in the forefront of our minds. Leaders and politicians are preying on our fear of other beasts to make us feel like grabbing power is the only option. My invitation for us is to reject the type of power that is being sold to us and try to walk that fine line of faithfulness. It is not easy and there are no simple answers. But the beauty of it is we don’t do this in isolation. We walk that line in community, in conversations and over time.