Utumishi Blog

I gave a youth talk this morning on Daniel 1-6. Never tried either of those before – speaking to Kenyan young people or preaching six chapters in one go! I don’t know how it was for them but it was good for me to work on it over the last few days. A few things that were new and fresh to me from Daniel:

• Nebuchadnezzar is not the real enemy. He’s the enemy of God’s people and he rules over Babylon, Shinar, the ancient city against God (Genesis 11) and he drags God’s people off into Exile, but I was really struck how the first few chapters of the book are really all about God saving Nebuchadnezzar – preaching to him, revealing himself to him, humbling him, bringing him to chapter 4 which is (extraordinarily) written by Nebuchadnezzar himself as a conversion testimony. In many ways Daniel has just as much a missionary theme as Jonah. We’re behind enemy lines but the battle is not against flesh and blood, it’s against the spiritual forces of evil – the useless Bablyonian gods and the demonic forces behind them – forces that have the power to enslave and enrage a king and a nation but who ultimately turn out to be powerless in the face of the true, sovereign, revealing, saving God.
• There’s a mirror-image structure to chapters 2-7. I learnt later that this has been noticed since at least the 1970s but encouragingly it did seem to jump out of the text for me. Chapter 2 goes with chapter 7 – both about dreams of 4 kingdoms; chapter 3 goes with chapter 6 – both about state persecution, resistance, jealousy, being bound and thrown into fire/lions, the Angel of the Lord / Son of God coming in and delivering, kings praising the saving God; chapter 4 goes with chapter 5 – both about pride and humbling. Which makes the centre of the first half of Daniel chapter 4v37 – Nebuchadnezzar’s Moses-like confession of faith (underlining the first point above).
• It’s full of Jesus. He’s there all through the book as promise, pattern, and presence – the promise of the rock (2:44-45) and the lowly king (4:17); the pattern of Daniel and his friends fearlessly praying and preaching and walking towards suffering; the presence of the one walking around in the fire (3:25), writing on the wall (5:5), shutting lions’ mouths (6:22). Let’s hold on to the promises, follow the pattern and enjoy the presence. That is spiritual warfare.

You can download the talk here. And the Powerpoint is here.