Text: Daniel 4:17

Title: Lessons from the captivity

Date: June 25, 2023 / VEC Da-Nang

Introduction

The Israelite entered Canaan, the land of promise, and spent the
period of the judges and the monarchy, betraying the God who saved
them and serving foreign gods... About 864 years later, Babylon
invaded the country and destroyed and the people became a captive
in Babylon. The temple of God was burned and the city of Jerusalem
was destroyed.
Q1. How did the foreign country who saw this incident at the time
evaluate this? Like the Bible, would they interpret like this, 'The
Israelite who received God's grace betrayed God and trusted in other
gods, and they were judged and put to shame.' Or, they misinterpret
like this, ‘Jehovah God become impatient so he gave up the betrayal
of the people he saved. Or ‘Jehovah could not save his people
because he was weaker than the gods of Assyria or Babylon’.
Gentiles who did not know Jehovah's character and power could have
this misunderstanding. Soon, they learn what kind of god Jehovah is
through the Jewish captives.
However, why did God accept this misunderstanding and hand over
his people to the Babylonian army? Was it to refine them and make
them thoroughly repent? Or did he really want to educate foreign
kings about himself? The obvious reason is that he knew that this
event was not the end of salvation work. God knew that Israel would
return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and experience spiritual
revival. Not only that, but also there will be still highlights of the
firmer and more complete work of salvation to be accomplished
through Christ Jesus.
In this big picture, we have to look at the era of captivity, Israel is
now being punished in Babylon, but God is still on Israel's side and
working through the people of Israel. The emperor of the conquering
nation meets Jehovah God through the captive Daniel and confesses
that Jehovah is the true God. Let's go into this amazing historical
site together.

Main subject

1. Daniel who received the grace of God

Among the captives taken from Judah was a boy named Daniel. He
was an intelligent child from a Jewish noble family. King
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon captured southern Judah and took
captives of talented workers and used them where necessary for his
kingdom. His amazing plan is to select a boy of high origin and
wisdom among the captives of Judah and teach them the Chaldean
knowledge and language for three years to make them a counselor
(political advisor) to the king. The idea of appointing talented people
from the occupied country as his political advisor was indeed an
idea worthy of an emperor of a great country. Daniel and his friends
were selected as students of this special school.
Daniel lost his country and was taken captive to Babylon, but he
did not lose his hope and faith in this dark age. His excellence
began to reveal at school, and during the training process, he
proposed a vegetarian diet and received permission to avoid polluting
himself with meat and alcohol offered to foreign gods. God gave
Daniel not only excellent intelligence, but also the ability to interpret
dreams and see future events. Excellence and the Holy Spirit are
gifts from God.
Application) No matter what age or status we live in, if we receive
the Holy Spirit, we can become people of God who can influence that
age. Wouldn't you like to seek that excellence and the Holy Spirit?
Daniel's God is now your father.

2. God’s work for two emperor

In the book of Daniel, the confession of faith of two representative
emperors is recorded, and two miracles are described. You are
familiar with the miracles of Daniel's three friends coming out of the
fiery furnace and the case of Daniel coming out of the lion's den.
Both are miracles that appeared when God's people trusted only God
rather than the emperor's command. Through this miracle, foreign
kings praise Daniel's God. But today I won't go into detail about this
miracle.
Rather than the miraculous event, I will focus on the incident in
which the two emperors came to believe in God and how they testify
to their people through edicts. The first emperor to experience
Jehovah was King Nebuchadnezzar. He was the second king of the
Neo-Babylonian Empire, who conquered southern Judah and drove
the power of Egypt out of Asia. To him, God began to intervene
from the beginning. God first showed the great statue and explained
the progress of the history of the human world. However, he was
arrogant and set up a large gold statue so that everyone would
worship before it. His second dream was also about him. He sees a
tree in his dream, which grows and becomes a tall tree that can be
seen from the ends of the earth and reaches to the heavens. The
tree was beautiful and plentiful in its fruit, and it became a habitat
for beasts and birds, and all living things found food there. But an
angel came down from heaven and cut down the tree, leaving only
the stump behind and fenced off and left behind for 7 years. Daniel
interprets the dream as something that will happen to the king and
warns him, but he again reveals his arrogance.
A year after having that dream, walking on the roof of the palace,
the day he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the
royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my
majesty?” (v. 30) He is chased by people, eats grass like an ox, gets
wet with dew, and becomes eagle's hair and bird fingernails for 7
years. He has a serious illness in him. The name of the disease is
insania zoan thropica, a mental disorder in which patients see
themselves as beasts and exhibit beast-like madness. Also, the desire
to be like a beast is the cause, and even the appearance becomes
like a beast to some extent. So Nebuchadnezzar lived like animals
and ate their food, and his hair became like eagles' hair and his
fingernails like birds' claws. Seven years later, his intelligence
returns and he sits on the throne, he writes this edict.
Who gave him this disease? For what purpose was this disease
given to him?
It was from God that Babylon prospered and emerged as the
strongest nation at the time. Through his first dream, God wanted
Nebuchadnezzar to realize. But Nebuchadnezzar was still proud
(Daniel 4:30). That's why God made him miserably dwell with the wild
animals and eat grass like an ox (Dan 4:32). And after 7 years, God
restored him. At that time, Nebuchadnezzar came to know that his
authority came from God, and God is the one who gave the kingship
to anyone at any time and abolished it whenever God wanted. (verse
17) And the king did not stop at that confession, but wrote a letter
by himself, telling all his people to fear Jehovah God.
Daniel 4:1-3 “King Nebuchadnezzar, To the peoples, nations and men
of every language, who live in all the world: May you prosper
greatly! It is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and
wonders that the Most High God has performed for me. How great
are his signs his, how mighty his wonders his! His kingdom is an
eternal kingdom; his dominion his endures from generation to
generation.”
The effect of this letter would have been greater than that of
hundreds of missionaries who entered the country and conducted
missionary work for many years. At the time, Babylon was the
largest empire in the Middle East and had a large population. All the
people of the country heard about the Lord God that the king had
experienced.
God's wisdom is amazing. At the same time he refined the people
of Israel in Babylon, he taught the kings of the nations that he was
the god who ruled the world. The king of Babylon did missionary
work to the Gentiles that no king of Israel had done. Isn't it
amazing?
The second king who met the Lord was King Dario the Medes. The
Babylonian Empire was divided into Medes and Persia after King
Belshazzar. Belshazzar arrogantly drank with the queens from the
cup offered to God in the temple of Jerusalem, and was forsaken by
God. And King Darius inherited his throne. Dario is the first emperor
of Medes. He heard the story of God from the death of Belshazzar.
And he saw with his own eyes that Daniel came out of the lions' den
alive, and he knew for sure that Jehovah was God. Dan 6:26-27, “For
he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom his will
not be destroyed, his dominion his will never end. He rescues and
he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the
earth.” Although he did not experience God as much as
Nebuchadnezzar, it is an incident in which the name of Jehovah was
raised once more through Dario and the emperor himself tells his
people to fear the Lord. It is an amazing event worthy of being
recorded in the Gentile missions. King Ahab of Israel did not repent
even when Elijah sent down fire from heaven and burned the altar,
but King Darius came to believe in Jehovah through Daniel and
wrote a decree (letter) to make his people fear God. We can see that
God's will to convey God to the Gentiles through the people of Israel
is happening more in the era of captivity than in the era of the
monarchy. (Fulfillment of Isaiah 55:5)
Lesson) What lessons does the captivity teach us? It is that in the
place where we think everything is over, amazing things that we
never thought of can happen. Note that God's will may be done
more in our failures than in our successes. So we must have the
eyes of faith to see the light in the darkness and God's mercy in the
midst of judgment.

3. The Coming of the Kingdom of Christ

There are people who saw the kingdom of Christ in the dark
reality of the captivity. In that dark reality, God gave us a message
of greater hope.
1) First, it is the cut-out stone vision shown to Daniel.
Daniel 2:34-35, “While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but
not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and
clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the
silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and
became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind
swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck
the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.”
It showed that Christ would come in the Roman era and destroy
the kingdoms of the world and establish the eternal kingdom.
2) The appearance of the Messiah and the kingdom of God
God foretold the coming of Christ through the prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the
LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the
captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Jesus entered
the synagogue in Nazareth in Luke 4, read this verse, and declared
that it had been fulfilled for Him. (Luke 4:21)
Isaiah also wrote how Christ would die for our sins. “But he was
pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the
punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds
we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) The moment of completion of the
salvation of the cross was announced through the prophet Isaiah in
this dark age. And the picture of the completed kingdom of God is
recorded in chapter 11. “The infant will play near the hole of the
cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They
will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth
will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the
sea.” (Isaiah 11:8-9)

Conclusion

The period of captivity was obviously a time of suffering for the

Israelite. It was the time when they sat by the rivers of Babylon and
wept while thinking of Zion. They were enslaved and had to attend
the invaders and sing for their joy. During their captivity, they
experienced with their own eyes how great their sins were. It was a
time to reminisce about how happy they were when they worshiped
in the temple.
At the same time, they experienced God who gives grace even in
judgment. Even in the midst of wrath, they learn that God is the
only place to turn to. God was preparing the cross of Christ for
them even while beating them with the stick.
The period of captivity in Babylon was not a retreat in the history
of salvation. Rather, it was a period of preparation for greater
progress. Thus Jeremiah sang like this: “Because of the LORD's great
love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are
new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The
LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him."” (Lamentations
3:22-24)