In the King's Court, Daniel 2

In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp teaches from the book of Daniel, focusing on chapter 2. He explores the theme of living as the people of God in a hostile culture, drawing parallels to the challenges faced by believers today. Pastor Aaron emphasizes the importance of remaining faithful to the biblical worldview while seeking the peace and prosperity of the city in which one lives. He highlights the significance of Jesus as the fulfillment of the story and the hope of the kingdom. Pastor Aaron encourages listeners to build their lives on the kingdom of God, which will never crumble.

Takeaways

• Living as a believer in a hostile culture requires navigating the tension between assimilation and separation.
• The kingdom of man, built on crumbling foundations, will eventually be destroyed by the kingdom of God.
• The local church is the visible representation of the kingdom of God on earth and plays a crucial role in manifesting the already but not yet nature of the kingdom.
• Jesus is the fulfillment of the story, the perfect expression of living as God's people in the world, and the cornerstone of the kingdom of God.
• Believers are called to stand firm in the hope of the kingdom and boldly declare this hope to the world.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Reading of Daniel Chapter 2
05:14 Living as the People of God in a Hostile Culture
08:04 Daniel in the King's Court
09:02 The Wisdom of Daniel's Two Names
10:00 Living Faithfully in a Pagan Culture
13:22 Seeking the Peace and Prosperity of the City
19:15 Thinking Through Difficult Questions
21:08 Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Interpretation
25:21 The Kingdoms of Man and the Everlasting Kingdom
28:28 Building Our Lives on the Kingdom of God
32:03 The Already But Not Yet Nature of the Kingdom
36:22 The Imperfection of Local Churches
40:17 Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Story
41:47 The Hope of the Kingdom

Creators & Guests

Host

Aaron Shamp

Lead Pastor of Redeemer City Church

What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?

Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.

Aaron Shamp (00:00.526)
called Courageous Faith. We're gonna be in Daniel chapter two, and I'm just gonna read the middle portion of this chapter today. It's a long chapter, it's a long story. I'm gonna read that middle portion that kinda gives us the gist of what's going on here, and then we'll jump into the teaching. So we're gonna be in Daniel chapter two, and I'm gonna read starting in verse 24. If you don't have your Bible with you, or you're having a hard time finding it, we'll have the words on the screens next to me, so you can follow along there.

Aaron Shamp (00:37.058)
So as I said before, we'll be in Daniel chapter four and starting in verse, sorry, chapter two and starting in verse 24.

Aaron Shamp (00:50.402)
Alright, so remember, like I said, if you're having a hard time finding it, Daniel's a small book and it's kind of hidden there amongst the weeds of all the major and minor prophets, so you might have a hard time finding it. We'll have the words on the screens next to me so you can follow along there. And Daniel chapter 2 verse 24 says, Therefore Daniel went to Ariok, whom the king had assigned to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He came and said to him, Don't destroy the wise men of Babylon. Bring me before the king, and I will give him the interpretation.

Then Ariok quickly brought Daniel before the king and said to him, I have found a man among the Judean exiles who can let the king know the interpretation. The king said in reply to Daniel, whose name was Belt-Shazar, Are you able to tell me the dream I had and its interpretation? Daniel answered the king, no wise man, medium, magician or diviner is able to make known to the king the mystery he has asked about.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has let King Nebuchadnezzar know what will happen in the last days. Your dream and the visions that came to your mind as you lay in bed were these. Your majesty, while you were in bed, thoughts came to your mind about what will happen in the future. The revealer of mysteries has let you know what will happen. As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but in order that the interpretation might be made known to the king.

and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind. Your majesty, as you were watching, suddenly a colossal statue appeared. That statue, tall and dazzling, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was terrifying. The head of the statue was pure gold. Its chest and arms were silver. Its stomach and thighs were bronze. Its legs were iron, and its feet were partially iron and partially clay. As you were watching, a stone broke off without a hand touching it.

struck the statue on its feet of iron and fired clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the fired clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were shattered and became like chaff from the summer thrashing floors. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream. Now we will tell you the king's interpretation. Your Majesty, you were king of kings.

Aaron Shamp (03:16.354)
The God of heavens has given you sovereignty, power, strength, and glory. Wherever people live or wild animals or birds of the sky, he has handed them over to you and made you ruler over them all. You were the head of gold. After you, there will rise another kingdom inferior to yours, and then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which will rule the whole earth. A fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron, for iron crushes and shatters everything, and like iron that smashes, it will crush and smash all the others.

You saw the feet and toes partly made of fired potter's clay and partly of iron. It will be a divided kingdom, though some of the strength of iron will be in it. You saw the iron mixed with clay, and that the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly fired clay. Part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. You saw the iron mixed with clay. The peoples will mix with one another, but will not hold together, just as the iron does not mix with the fired clay.

In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. And this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever. You saw a stone break off from the mountain without a hand touching it, and it crushed the iron, bronze, fired clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told the king what will happen in the future. The dream is certain, and its interpretation relies.

Okay, so this is a long story in Daniel. Like I said, we just kind of read the book, the meat of it there, in Daniel chapter 2, but we're taking the first couple of weeks of this year to look at the book of Daniel, just the first half of the book of Daniel, where it tells the stories. There's stories in the first half, and then there's a lot of prophecies in the second half. In the first half, we're looking at these stories because it gives us a really unique picture of how the people of God live in a hostile culture.

You see, what was happening here is that Daniel, along with many other people, we'll talk about this a little bit more in a second, were brought as exiles from Judea into Babylon. And now they have to figure out how are they going to live as the people of God in a pagan culture? How are they going to live faithfully as the Lord calls them to in a culture and society that is hostile to their faith, their values, and their way of life?

Aaron Shamp (05:41.098)
That is valuable to us because we as well today live as the people of God in a culture that is hostile to our faith. We live as people who are dedicated to the gospel, who are dedicated to living according to the biblical worldview in the midst of a society that is increasingly becoming more, um, more differentiated, more hostile, more opposed to that gospel and that Christian worldview. You know, several decades ago, it was pretty easy or

Not pretty easy maybe to say, but it was a lot easier to live as a Christian in Western society because much of Western society held many of the same values that Christians hold. It was a more Christianized culture. And so you as a Christian and your neighbor who was a non-Christian still had a lot of common ground and things, even if your neighbor or your coworker was not personally committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is true in the broader culture of well, the Christian worldview, even if it was not, you know,

personally held as objective truth, much of it was assumed as at least plausible. So, living as a Christian in your neighborhoods and schools and work was not as difficult because there wasn't as much opposition, and it was also easier to make a case for the faith to explain the faith because you were talking to people who already shared a lot of the same presuppositions as you. But today, that's no longer true, and by the...

week and by the month is becoming even more not true because we have a culture that is more and more turning away from its previous adoption of the Christian worldview and its sort of generic plausibility or you know this attitude of plausibility towards the Christian worldview. So today you're now more likely to be seen as strange for believing in the gospel.

going to church, maybe not just seen as strange, but it's seen as a bad or negative thing. It means, perhaps, that you are a, you're an unsophisticated person, or maybe it means that you are a bigoted person, you know, or maybe it means that you are just a, you know, you're just a blockhead, whatever else it might be. It makes it much harder to live as a Christian today and also to be on mission, because the Lord calls us to go into this world to spread His kingdom, and that is why

Aaron Shamp (08:04.63)
declare the lordship of Christ, you know, his rule in his kingdom over this earth to all of Acadiana. But how do we do that when we live in a culture that is hostile to what we believe? Well, we can look at the book of Daniel. Believers of God, you know, the people of God who are living in a similar cultural circumstance as ours and learn from their example. And today we do that by looking at Daniel here in the King's court. So we're gonna look at a couple of things here. We're gonna look at the Judean in the King's court.

And then we're going to look at the kingdoms of clay and then the everlasting kingdom. So first, we're just going to do a quick little meditation on Daniel there in the court. We're going to look at the and we're going to look at the dream, the kingdoms of clay, and then that rock that struck the statue, which is the kingdom that would never end the everlasting kingdom. So to take a note of something that, you know, just reading, we might be able to pass over it easily because it just seems as like a little historical detail. But there's actually some.

wisdom to be gained from him. And that's in verse 26. The king said in reply to Daniel, whose name was Belt-Jazar, in the azimuth he's able to interpret the dream. Let's just take note of that. Daniel, whose name was Belt-Jazar. Daniel had two names, Daniel, his Hebrew name, and Belt-Jazar, which was his Babylonian name. I think there's a little bit of wisdom to be gained here if we just meditate on that for a moment. You see, Daniel, his Hebrew name,

was Hebrew, and it translated to mean something along the lines of, God is my judge. But whenever he was brought into Babylon as a captive, one of the things that the Babylonians did as he was brought into, as he was brought in as an exile, as a captive, and he was brought into the king's court and put through the king's education program so that he might serve in the king's court, one of the things they did is they gave him a new name. They didn't allow him to keep his Hebrew name. His Hebrew name, remember, meaning that

God is my judge, God there being Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, the God that was in covenant with them. Instead, they changed his name to give him this Babylonian one, which was Belchazar, a Babylonian name translating to Belle, which was one of the Babylonian gods. Belle is my God. They gave him this different name to signify to him, you know, you are no longer living under the authority of Yahweh. He is no longer your judge.

Aaron Shamp (10:29.378)
Bell is now your God. And so Daniel, for the whole time that he lived there, lived by these two names. In the court, they called him Belchezar, but he knew he was still Daniel. I think there's some interesting things here, you know, because who is he, whenever he considers himself, wherever he considers the choices he's going to make, wherever he considers what is he going to participate in as he works in the king's court, what is he going to say to his

co-workers, to his peers, what is he going to say to his supervisors whenever he has the conviction, or what is he going to say to Nebuchadnezzar? Will he speak as Daniel, right, the one who is still living under the rule in obedience to the God Yahweh, who is his judge, or will he speak as Belt-Shazzar? That's a difficult situation to be in. And it's a picture of the situation that all of the exiles were living in. You see,

at least a couple of decades before this, Nebuchadnezzar, the emperor, the king of Babylon, who was spreading his empire, was at war with all these other empires, and one of those was the Egyptian empire. And as he was going into battle with the Egyptian empire, trying to push their influence and their rule back as far into Egypt as he could, he was making his way through Israel, through Judah, going at war with them, and he sacked Jerusalem, he destroyed Jerusalem.

And whenever he went in and destroyed them, we talked about this last week, he pillaged the city, he pillaged the temple, took many of their treasures and find things from the temple, brought them back to Babylon. But he didn't just do that. He ordered his generals to take many people from their ruling class, as well as their best and brightest among their youth, to bring them back to Babylon. He was utterly destroying Judah's ability to be able to have a present, which was all their treasures or a future.

He was taking the best of the best. He was taking all of their political class, their ruling class, and bringing them back to Babylon. I know as Americans living today, we read that and we say, well, how can that be so bad? You know, sometimes maybe we think we'd like for someone to come into America and take all of our political class and bring them somewhere else. You know, wouldn't that be nice sometimes? Sometimes we think we just need a fresh start, but no, it's different. No, he destroyed the nation. They were...

Aaron Shamp (12:53.21)
unable to recover for decades after this. It took a very, very long time for them to recover. Daniel was among those captives. Now, they find themselves living in Babylon. What are they going to do? What are they going to do while they're living there? Do they just try to live as much as they can outside of the city, outside of Babylonian culture, as far removed from it as they can, not participating in any aspect of the culture, the economy?

and so on to keep themselves separated and pure or do they just go ahead and blend in? You know, we're here, maybe they did destroy Yahweh, and so we might as well just go ahead and assimilate. When we read other parts of the Old Testament, we know that these were the debates they were having among themselves. It's particularly, there's this great part that you can read about in the book of Jeremiah in chapters 28 and 29. There were these prophets who were among the exiles

God has revealed to me that we are about to be rescued from here. Very, very soon, we are going to be rescued from Babylon and taken back home to live as we are supposed to in covenant with our God. So soon, don't even untie your sandals. We're about to be out of here. Don't get settled down. Well, but then God spoke to Jeremiah and had Jeremiah, Jeremiah was still left in Judah. He had he spoke to Jeremiah, had Jeremiah send a letter to them in Babylon. Once again, you can read about this in Jeremiah.

28 and 29. And he told them, Your prophets are wrong. Do not listen to them. God says, Your deliverance will come, but not anytime soon. He said, And so therefore, in the meantime, settle down. Untie your sandals, build houses, have families, plant gardens, establish roots. And specifically what he tells them, he says, and while you were there in exile, in that pagan city that wants to destroy your identity, that wants to crush

your values that wants to make you a Babylonian, he says, I want you to remain faithful to me and settle down in the city. He says specifically, I want you to seek the peace and prosperity of the place that you are in. You see, God shows to them, on the one hand, I don't want you to just assimilate and become Babylonians. No, you're to remain faithful to me. But on the other hand, I don't want you to just separate from the city to which I have sent you. He says it six or seven times in the letter, I sent you.

Aaron Shamp (15:18.694)
I deported you there. I have a purpose for you there." He says, don't just become a Babylonian and assimilate, but don't just separate. He says, you are to be in the city, and you are to be for the city that you are living in. Seek its peace and prosperity, for in its prosperity, you will find your blessing. That's the champ paraphrase. And Daniel is a picture of what all the people are supposed to be doing. You see, Daniel, who was.

having to navigate the challenge of being both Daniel and Belshazzar was living not just in Babylon, but in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Those magicians and those wise men that Nebuchadnezzar was speaking to that he expected to interpret his dream, Daniel worked with all those guys. He went through the same education as all of them. He was he was he went through a the best Babylonian liberal arts education that you could get.

and yet he still retained his identity as Daniel.

Aaron Shamp (16:22.582)
God wants them to learn that their only options aren't just assimilation or separation from the city, the place that he has them in. He has a plan both for his people and for the city to which he has sent them. He tells them to seek the peace and the prosperity of the place they are living. He has a purpose for them there. Daniel is the picture of what they are to do. He mastered his Babylonian education, yet he retained his biblical worldview.

And so therefore, what does it mean for us as we are trying to live as the people of God, as the people living under the lordship of Christ, dedicated to the gospel of Jesus Christ, committed to a thoroughly biblical worldview, obeying what God's Word says about all of life in a country, in a culture, in a city that does not agree? Are we to just pull back and separate, retreat from the culture, retreat from the city so that we retain our identity?

Or do we make compromises to make ourselves more understandable, more appealable to the culture around us? Neither. We neither assimilate nor do we separate. Rather, we are to remain faithful to our biblical worldview, to the gospel, and seek the peace and prosperity. In other words, stay on mission in the places that the Lord has sent us. God has sent us all. We're all in life here. So God has all sent us into this city. He has sent us. He has sent Redeemer City Church into Acadiana.

just like he sent those exiles into Babylon. Whatever workplace that you work in, whatever office that you find yourself, classroom that you find yourself, work site that you find yourself throughout the week, whatever you find yourself doing, God is sending you there to neither assimilate nor separate, but to be a light, to be on mission, to be someone who can be like Daniel, thoroughly understanding the nuances and the life and the culture of the place that you're in, the Belcher czar.

yet remaining faithful in your identity to who you are in the Lord, being a Daniel. This isn't an easy thing to do. I don't want to act like it's an easy thing to do. In fact, it's going to be very difficult. It would be a lot easier to just separate from the culture, to not engage in the mission in our city. It'd be a lot easier to do that, to just separate. On the other hand, it'd be a lot easier to just compromise, to loosen our commitment to the biblical worldview and go along with more of what

Aaron Shamp (18:46.646)
our culture values and what our culture believes. That'd be a lot easier. It raises a lot of difficult questions if you're going to live like Daniel, right? How do I live faithfully as a Christian on mission in the school, in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the social circles that God has placed me in? There's a lot of questions that you're gonna have to be thinking through. And you know what? I don't have the answers for you this morning because each of you guys have your own set of questions.

Here's what, here's all I'm trying to get you to do. Start thinking through those questions. If you're not thinking through them now, then you are either, you have either been assimilating or separating.

If you have not been wrestling through those questions, you're doing one or the other. You're not acting like a Daniel. If you are acting like a Daniel, you'll be wrestling through those questions. Think through those questions.

Daniel is living out what Jesus prayed on our behalf. In John 17, in verses 15 through 16 and 18, Jesus prayed to the Father for us. He said, I am not praying that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. And in verse 18, as you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. Jesus does not pray just for our deliverance.

from the challenges of living in a culture that is difficult to live in as a follower of Christ. He doesn't desire for us to be pulled out of it. In fact, he says he is sending us into the culture that we are in, into the society, into the conflicting, warring worldviews that we are living among. He sends us, and yet he prays that as we are in the midst of it, that we might be protected. He prays that we might be sanctified in the truth, in verse 17, and he prays.

Aaron Shamp (20:38.422)
that though we are in this world, we are not of this world. That's what Daniel lived out there. Now, let's consider the dream. So, if you go back and read later, the first part of chapter two, you'll see that Nebuchadnezzar had this dream that gave him an incredible amount of anxiety. We're not told what the dream was until Daniel interprets it because all we know is that Nebuchadnezzar, who, once again, remember, was the king of Babylon, he essentially has his empire set at this time.

There are still a couple of skirmishes happening on the outer edges of the Babylonian Empire at this point in Daniel, but most of his empire is set and he is resting in his sovereignty over his new empire. And as he is resting in his sovereignty of his new empire, he has this deep insecurity within himself about the stability of his power, and that insecurity God uses to send a dream to speak something to him, and the dream freaks him out.

The dream freaks him out so much to the point that he takes in all of his wise men. So these were these were diviners, magicians, mediums, as Daniel listed there, who would have been thoroughly educated in the art and science that they viewed it of interpreting dreams. You see, the Chaldeans, who were kind of a subgroup of the Babylonian people, believed that all dreams could be interpreted down to a science. They had these extremely large.

like textbooks, manuals that would go through every scenario in a dream, the imagery and the sequencing of events, and like for every for every input they can make an interpretation for, right? And so these men of whom it seems that Daniel was somewhat among them, we don't know if Daniel's job in the kingdom was exactly being one of these wise men, he does seem to be somewhat familiar with what they do. They were to take the dream,

what was in it, what happened, how did it go, and then according to the education, study and say, okay, so this is what's gonna happen. This is what the dream is telling you. But in this case, Nebuchadnezzar has the dream that freaks him out and he refuses to tell them what the dream is. Now scholars have debated, did Nebuchadnezzar forget the dream? I'm sure you've had that before where you wake up after a nightmare and you have the ongoing feeling of the nightmare but you don't necessarily remember.

Aaron Shamp (23:01.622)
what happened in the dream, or sometimes the opposite. You had a great dream, you wake up feeling with, you wake up with the ongoing kind of blissful feeling you have, but forget a lot of the substance. Some scholars say that Nebuchadnezzar forgot the dream, which is why he told them, you have to tell me what it was. On the other hand, and this is where I fall, I think Nebuchadnezzar was just being a capricious tyrant. Capricious tyrants are often insecure and they're untrustworthy, and so Nebuchadnezzar was wanting to make sure that none of his wise men were just telling him something he wanted to hear. He wanted to confirm that they were

absolutely telling him the truth in their interpretation by proving that they could know what the dream was without him telling them. I think that's what was going on here. It was a test for them, but they can't do it. You go back and read it, and they are unable to do it for him until God gives the dream to Daniel because Nebuchadnezzar said he was going to kill all the wise men in his kingdom if they could not do it. I know that sounds a little harsh, but once again, that is what tyrants do.

That's what Stalin did as well. If you go back and you read some of your 20th century history, Stalin had all of their scientific class and their best doctors executed whenever they would tell him things that he didn't like. So that whenever he came down to the end of his life and he was in great need of medical care, they couldn't find a doctor. That's a historical fact if you look at it. They couldn't find a good doctor because they had all of them either executed or banished to the gulags, right? This is what tyrants do.

going all the way back to Nebuchadnezzar. He was gonna have all of them executed if they couldn't tell him what to do. So here comes Daniel. He prays to the Lord. The Lord gives him both the dream, right, with the statue and the interpretation for it. And he goes and he tells Nebuchadnezzar the meaning of the dream. You see, because Nebuchadnezzar had this dream of his kingdom that looked a lot like that statue. It was this great, towering, tall statue.

made of gold, not in the dream, it was only a head of gold, made of gold that stood over all the earth, right? In a sense, ruling over all the earth. But, Nebuchadnezzar was, once again, like all tyrants, insecure in his power. And so, that statue was destroyed in the dream. He had this dream of this kingdom that would be secure, established, but it comes crashing down, and he's worried about the meaning of that for himself. So, Daniel comes in, and he tells him the meaning of the dream.

Aaron Shamp (25:21.994)
And he tells him something really difficult. He tells Nebuchadnezzar, he says, your great and mighty empire will fall.

Do you want to be the guy to go and tell Nebuchadnezzar that message after what he just decreed with all of his wise men that they're going to all be executed? Do you want to be the guy or the gal to go and tell this insecure tyrant, your kingdom is going to end. It is going to fall. Right? That's a hard message to go and tell him. Now, as it turns out, if you go and you read the last several verses of the chapter,

Nebuchadnezzar just ends up being happy to know that at least it's going to happen after he's gone. Okay, so once again he's an insecure tyrant and he's a narcissist, so as long as it happens after his lifetime, he seems to be somewhat okay with it. He's just happy to know it's not going to happen when he's around. But that's still a hard message to go and tell this guy. Your kingdom and all the other kingdoms of man will fall before a kingdom that will come that is supernatural.

and that kingdom will be without end. This is the meaning of the dream. You know, you can go and try to point, well, what was the silver kingdom in history? And what was the bronze kingdom? And what was the iron and the iron and clay kingdom? You can try to go do that, and there's probably some merit to those things. But the point is, is that all of the kingdoms of man are instable because the feet, which would hold up the entire statue, was made of a mixture of iron and clay. Now, you...

I don't know a whole lot about metallurgy, but I assume that a mixture of iron and clay is going to be pretty unstable. That's not going to hold up very well. Daniel is saying all of the foundations of the kingdom of men are instable and will eventually crumble. And he says, and it will happen by a rock that was not cut by human hands. So in other words, a kingdom that is going to come that is not a kingdom of man, but a supernatural kingdom that is going to come and destroy it. Nebuchadnezzar's dream of building his own kingdom, his dazzling dream.

Aaron Shamp (27:27.17)
told him that it will come to an end. And you know what? The same is true for the dust heaps of the king, of all the other kingdoms of human history. All of the kingdoms of man will come to an end that includes the American kingdom, that includes any other empire in existence today, that includes all the kings who are in existence today throughout history, they will all eventually crumble and they will all eventually be crushed by the kingdom of God.

which will not be destroyed by any other kingdom. No matter how dazzling or grand the dreams of tyrants, they will be crushed by the kingdom of God. This is a part of our message to the world. This is a part of our message to the tyrants and those who would try to build their own kingdoms based upon their wisdom in a kingdom that is not submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ, that it will come to an end. It will...

crumble.

Will you be as bold as Daniel and willing to stand firm whenever you are called to give that kind of a message? Now, you may say, look, I'm never going to be called before a king or tyrant or governor to tell them that they are building the foundations of their kingdom upon something that will crumble. You're probably right. However, even if it's not a tyrant sitting in a political office, we are surrounded by people, and we ourselves often.

act like little tyrants and kings over our own life. Many of us in our own personal lives, in our careers, in our education, in our homes, and whatever else it might be, in our social circles, desire to build a little empire for ourselves. We desire, we have dreams of grandeur, dazzling dreams for our own little empires as well, and our own little kingdoms. We often do it, right?

Aaron Shamp (29:24.33)
And our neighbors in the world around us that are not obedient to Christ and are building their little kingdoms and empires upon things that are not Christ are doing that same thing as well. So, look, even if you were never called to stand before a governor, king, or tyrant, or president, wherever else it might be, right, we are called to give the same message to our neighbors around us who are all building their lives upon iron and clay, things that will crumble. No matter what you build your kingdom upon, no matter what you build your life upon.

And this might be some of us in here even this morning. If it is not the kingdom of God, if you are not building your life upon the kingdom of God, if you're not building your home and your family, your career, your future hopes upon the kingdom of God, you're building it upon something that will crumble. That is the message to Nebuchadnezzar and the message to us and the message to the world around us. Are you doing that? And have you been warning those around you?

of the folly of doing that as well. Once again, we hear echoes of this in the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he tells us you have two choices. You can build your house upon the sand. And what happens if you build your house upon the sand? Well, it's gonna fall apart. And if rain and wind and storms come and blow upon it, it's especially going to fall apart. It's not stable to begin with, and it's especially not stable whenever the suffering and chaos of life comes into the picture. So Jesus says you can build your house on the sand or you can build your house.

the rock. What's the rock? It's Jesus, who is the king, the sovereign over the kingdom of God. You can build your house on the kingdom of God and it'll be stable, it'll withstand the storms, it'll be something that cannot be destroyed, or you can build it, hear this, on anything else. That includes good things.

There's a lot of people, maybe some of us in here, and there's a lot of people around us in our neighborhoods and in our peers, in our career and so on, who are building their lives on some good things. It is hard to tell them, look, even though you're building your life upon maybe some good values, family-centered values, upon, you're building your life upon the value of hard work, like those are all good things, are on honesty, integrity, that's wonderful. But if it is not Christ,

Aaron Shamp (31:44.491)
It will fall.

Right? You need to build your house on Christ, and then with him, honesty, integrity, hard work, you know, love, all those other wonderful things. But all those things, minus Christ, sand.

Aaron Shamp (32:03.978)
I love what the late pastor, Tim Keller, said. He said, therefore, if you want to understand what it means to be a Christian in a non-Christian world, look at your foundations. Don't just ask what rules you're breaking or not breaking. Look at the foundations. Ask those basic questions. Why are you doing X, Y, or Z? Look at the foundations of your life. Is it a life that is built upon a kingdom of sand or is it built upon the rock? And even in our...

non-Christian culture, which is telling us what we ought to build our life upon, what are you actually building it upon. If you're building it upon anything other than the kingdom of God, it will crumble. This is what we believe, and it is our message to the kingdom of man. Now let's look at the everlasting kingdom. Daniel says at the end of the dream you have this tall dazzling statue, and a rock comes, and that rock destroys it. So just some observations about the rock, and then implications we're going to close. So first of all, obviously the rock

is the kingdom of God. This is what he is talking about here. It is a completely supernatural rock. It is not cut with human hands, no human hands pick it up in the dream, it just comes and it destroys all those other kingdoms. This rock is the kingdom of God that Daniel is talking about there. So that's the first thing. Secondly, the rock, if you consider it, is the least valuable substance in the dream. It starts off with the most valuable gold and then silver.

and then bronze, and then iron, and the mixture of iron and clay. You have all of these different metals and substances that are decreasing in their value to man, right? With gold being at the top. And then you have a rock, which is the least valuable of them all. We walk upon rocks. We drive upon rocks. We sweep them out of our homes and off our sidewalks. It is the least valuable of all those other things. But then a rock comes in, and that is the one.

that crushes all the others, that is the one that is the kingdom of God. Something that shows us is that likewise, by the perspective of the kingdom of man, the kingdom of God will struggle to see its value. They will not understand it. It will be difficult for them to understand because the values and the beauty of the kingdom of God is in contrast and is often the opposite of the values of the kingdom of man.

Aaron Shamp (34:26.978)
which is why it is difficult for them to see the value in that, which is why we need the help of the Holy Spirit in making our case before the world. And then finally, the rock, it says, grows into a huge mountain. It destroys the stone, but then it grows into a mountain that fills the whole earth, and that kingdom will never end. So consider this. The rock goes, and obviously it starts out smaller than it finishes. There's some big implications for us in that. It starts out small.

then it grows. But it is not less of the kingdom of God whenever it is smaller than when it's a mountain. It's a kingdom of, it is the kingdom of God wherever it is just that rock and it's the kingdom of God where is that mountain. But it takes time to grow, to expand. What this means for us is that the kingdom of God until the day that the Lord Jesus returns and he fully consummates and establishes his kingdom for all time, until that day,

The kingdom is something that is a reality which is already but not yet. This is something I've talked about a lot over the years. The kingdom of God is in a sense already here. The rock has come in Jesus Christ and established and begun the work of the kingdom. Right. But it is still growing. So it is already here. But there's a sense in that there's a not yet to the kingdom because it is going to continue to grow. It is still working towards that stage.

that will come one day whenever it is the mountain that fills the whole earth. And all of the kings of the earth fall on their faces in obedience to King Jesus. Right? All other empires fall in submission to the kingdom of God, and all people are worshiping Jesus as Lord. That day is still yet to come. So the kingdom is here, but it's also not yet in a sense. And we live in that in-between period. Is there a few things?

that means, and one of those is that, you know, we as the church are the visible representation of the kingdom of God on this earth. Because when we talk about what is the kingdom, is it something that's a little ethereal, you know, because it is wherever the rule of Christ reigns. Well, how do we see that? Where's the kingdom of God something concrete that we can see and touch and experience? It's this. It's the local church. It's you guys.

Aaron Shamp (36:50.446)
That's why you got to be a part of a local church, by the way. It's this. And so if we are the concrete, visible, real representation, or should we say manifestation of the kingdom of God on Earth, and the kingdom of God is something that is an already but not yet, well, then it applies to our churches as well. And all of us here, all of our churches, whether that be Redeemer or any other church, has an element of that already but not yet-ness in it. So one thing that means is that you will never

ultimate church. Some of you guys are brand new here. This is your first Sunday, and if you love it today, that's awesome. I'm so happy. And maybe some of you guys have been here for a couple months, a year, and you're just loving, you're saying this is the best church. I can't imagine myself going anywhere else. That's awesome. But some of you guys have been here for a while, and you've been through some periods of disappointment. One of my sermons just didn't land, or it was really

or I was more in eloquent than usual. Or maybe the worship wasn't just as good, or maybe you're disappointed that you're just feeling disconnected from the fellowship, or maybe you're disappointed in church leadership because we're not providing a program or service or this or that in one way or another. And so there's a little bit of disappointment there. If you're here for long enough, it's gonna happen. You know why? Because there's no such thing as the ultimate church. No such thing.

because all local churches, being a part of the kingdom of God, have an element of that not yetness to them. That not yetness. They're going to be imperfect. They're going to be works in progress and so on. However, Redeemer and all other true churches that are following the gospel of Jesus Christ are, and it do have an element of that all readiness, which means you must be a part of a local church. You need to be committed to the local church or else.

You will not be experiencing the fullness of the kingdom of God in the sense that it is already here.

Aaron Shamp (38:52.194)
So remember, it is not, it is not, the local church, including Redeemer, will never be ultimate. And I am gonna let you down at some point, will let you down at some point, because we're all still works in progress. However, it is so important that you are in a local church. The last thing I wanna say before we close is that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that we see in this story. You know, we talked about how Daniel is, is a man of God living

in the city of man, you know, Jesus was the absolute perfect expression of that, being both God and man, being the Son of God living in the world, in the kingdom of man. And yet, he, in a way that even Daniel never could have been, was perfectly obedient to the Father in his time on this earth. As he was sent into the world and not rescued from the difficulty of living in it, he was absolutely perfect in his mission here in obedience to the Father. He was truly in the world.

but not of the world. He was the perfect expression of that. He also is the glorious king that is represented by the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. However, he is the glorious king who is not built on a foundation that will crumble, and he is the one who is made from gold from top to bottom. Absolutely priceless and precious in his perfection and his glory. And then finally, he is the rock that the builders rejected.

It is foretold in the Old Testament and in the New Testament they obviously saw it as a picture of Jesus that he was the cornerstone, right? He was the rock, the cornerstone that all the foundation of the house of God ought to be built upon. He was the one who came to be that foundation for the kingdom of God and yet he was rejected by man and crucified on a cross. He was the rock that the builders rejected. Jesus is the fulfillment of all these things which is why he is our

Lord, our King, He is our Savior, the only one to redeem us out of the kingdom of man and into the kingdom of God. What that means for us now is we live in between the already, but not yet, is that we live according to this hope of what Daniel talked about here, that the rock has come and it has struck the statue. All other empires of man that have existed from Daniel's time until ours and that will be in the future are built on crumbling foundations. No matter how strong they appear,

Aaron Shamp (41:15.722)
No matter how strong the forces against the church appear in America, and among our political class, they are a crumbling foundation that the rock will strike, and that rock will never be defeated. The tyrant's nightmare is the believer's hope. Stand upon that hope this week, and do not be ashamed to declare that hope to the world around you, to your neighbors.

who no matter what good things they are building their lives upon, if it is not the kingdom, it is sand and it will crumble too. So stand upon that hope, stand firm and be bold in that hope. And let us obey our Lord where he told us to pray, thy kingdom come. Let's pray.

So Father, we do come before you this morning and we pray in the midst of the city of man, in the midst of a world which is still filled with rebellious forces against you, we pray, thy kingdom come. Help us to see Jesus as not only the fulfillment and the perfect image of all the things we've talked about this morning, but Lord, the one who makes it possible for us to walk in obedience to these things. Fill us with the hope of the kingdom. Let us not be intimidated by

by the forces and kingdoms of man that would wage war against your king, kingdom and your servant.

Blessed be filled with joy, hope, and stability, and the fact of knowing that the rock has come and that we are standing upon the rock, that he will never be defeated, and that one day his kingdom will be established and consummated in full. We pray this in your name, amen. Let us stand together now and respond to this gospel message of the kingdom and worship together.