Son of Man | A King Like No Other - Daniel 7 | December 08
Generated Transcript
Thanks, Sarah. Morning everybody. I'm Eric. If you don't like the sermon, the other guy is usually better, and you probably won't see me for like, six months. So, you know, don't worry about it.
So yeah, we just read Daniel seven. Obviously, we were in Daniel for, I guess, 11 weeks before last week, right? And we're jumping back to Daniel seven a little bit for this Son of Man series, I'm going to talk about the biblical theme of the Son of Man and how it relates to the importance of the Incarnation. And I actually want a little bit of audience participation, so we're going to do something different this week. So I'm going to read from Proverbs, 17 eight, a bribe seems like a magic stone to its owner. Wherever he turns, he succeeds. Now I would bet that this is probably not a top 100 preached on passage in scripture. I'm also not going to preach on it. Instead, I'm going to bribe you guys to answer questions. Okay, so I'm badly misinterpreting this verse and taking it out of context. Don't take this as an example of good scriptural exegesis, most verbs, most verbs, most verses in Proverbs or the Bible about bribery, talk about the wicked taking bribes. It's wicked to take a bribe. The righteous don't take bribes, or they're like examples of wicked people taking bribes. So this is a proverb that talks about how the world is not how the world should be. All right, moving on from that. Oh, and also, for my bribery, I'm using peppermints of some kind. And what's that? They're the melty ones, Sam says, and I think they're like, gluten free and everything. All the things are basically just sugar. So if you're not allergic to sugar, you should be able to eat them. And I will give preference to under eighteens for my question and answer time. But you know, adults, you can, you can jump in there too. First question is a pretty easy one, who is the Son of Man? Raise your hands. Jesus. Awesome. Here you go. So how? How do we know that the Son of Man is Jesus? What are some bits of evidence that we have, he gives miracles. Okay, oh, you can have candy for that. It's not what I had in mind. Okay, the Bible says it. How does the Bible say it? You don't know. All right, where Here you go.
So, yeah, a son of man is a way to say a human one. So you're right about that. And I was actually going to mention that in a minute, so I'll give you candy. I have lots of candy so I can afford to be generous. There we go. Double candy. Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man more often than any other title that's used that he uses for himself right elsewhere in the New Testament. He's largely referred to as the Christ, which is another word for the Hebrew word, the Messiah. But he himself refers to Himself as the son of man more than any other title. Job Description for the Son of Man given in Daniel seven and he, he kind of matches the description. Among other things, he rides at a cloud to be seated at the right hand of the Ancient of Days, which is something that we see describing Jesus in the gospels as well. Jesus is the Son of Man referred to in Daniel seven, as he refers to himself. He matches the job description. He rise on the cloud. I just want to establish that, because it's basic, kind of foundational thing for what we're going to talk about. Zach talked about this some last week as well. And like Cole mentioned, Son of man is, in one sense, just a way of saying a human one. Okay, so son of is like of the kind of. It's like a set Hebrew phrase for of the kind of. So an example of a verse where Son of Man doesn't refer to Jesus is like numbers 2319, it says God is not a man that he should lie, or son of man that he should change his mind. So there it's that's just an example of how Son of man can often be used just to mean a human person, you know, but in this case, this son of man is obviously special, because he's going to go be seated at the right hand of God and to rule with Him. So I'm going to jump around a bit with my questions, but I'm going somewhere with it, so just trust me first. Next question is, What does God first say that he's creating man to do way back in Genesis to steward it. Okay, yeah, that's pretty, pretty close. Stuart is a good word. Grown Ups anybody to rule? So, yeah, Genesis 126 God says, Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, livestock, and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth. So what kind of rulership is this talking about? That wasn't a question for candy, unless somebody has a you know, answer, no, I would say that we're not being called here to lord it over the animals, right to, you know, beat our dogs and throw darts at the elephants and put tigers in little cages. And I don't know if anyone actually throws darts at elephants. That's just an example. We're not supposed to rule them with an iron fist, right? And the reason I say this, it is important. It's also not, well, yeah, I'll get to that. It's it's also not about like, eating meat, although perhaps that sort of flows out of it later. But really, in this past. Passage, everyone's a vegetarian right. Later in the passage, it talks about the food for the animals and the humans. The humans are given the sea for the plants yielding seed, and this fruits from the trees yielding seed, whereas the animals are given every green plant for food. And I actually think that implies that the humans in their rulership have a responsibility to provide for all the animals as well, and to rule benevolently, to steward as Cole, as Cole said, I think stewardship is an excellent word. Another reason, I don't think it's a an iron fisted rule. I just want to, I'm getting somewhere with this. Go ahead and go to Deuteronomy, 1716, through 20. This talking about this is instructions for the kings of Israel. Okay, and so this is before they even had kings. But God, God provided for that when he gave them the law. So it says, In any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, you shall never again return that way. And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away, nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. Now it shall come about, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests, and it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully following all the words of this law and these statutes so that his heart will not be haughty toward his countrymen, and that he will not turn away from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may live long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel. This passage, again, shows this. This king is supposed to be a Bible nerd, basically a Bible scholar, right and study the Word. But also, he's not supposed to gather horses for himself. And this isn't because God has something against people with a lot of horses. Horses, at this time, when this was written, were kind of like the height or, you know, one of the main representations of military technology and military power. So to gather horses, to yourself, is actually to amass a great and powerful army. Okay, so he's not supposed to be a, you know, conquering war making King, who gathers a big standing army and takes over other countries. He's not supposed to gather a bunch of women to himself. And, you know, do that he he's not supposed to, he's not supposed to gather riches to himself. He's not supposed to be running towards these human idols, really, of money, sex and power, right? He's he's supposed to be a scholar of the word and to rule benevolently. And then, of course, we have the example of Jesus, who, speaking of the Son of man, said, The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Or in another passage, says, the greatest among you shall be your servant. So I want to highlight the style of rulership, and we'll, we'll come back to this in a little bit, but it's going to be important later, as we examine the Son of Man's victory over the beast that we read about just now in, uh, in Daniel seven. So God makes the humans to rule. How does that go poorly? You didn't raise your hand, but do you want a candy? Okay? It goes pretty it goes pretty bad right right away, basically, at least in the terms, at least in the the storyline, right away, a snake convinces them that they should rule on their own terms, right? Or the terms that he convinces them are in their favor, that they should see what is good in their own eyes, this fruit, right, and take it and that they should learn good and evil, that a difference, or they shouldn't have the knowledge of good and evil right without, without being taught it by God. They should take it for themselves. And so instead of ruling the beasts, they're tricked by a beast and and this beastly way of ruling, if you will, is introduced to humanity in Genesis 315, is a passage from the or as part of the passage that we typically call the curse that comes after Adam and Eve take the fruit. Sure you're probably all familiar with it, but part of what God says to the snake is, I will make enemies of you and the woman and of your offspring and her descendant. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise Him on the heel. So God's giving this promise of an eventual descendant of the woman who will crush the head of the snake, right? Or it says this translation says bruise, others say crush, I think also strike is sometimes used. And they all basically kind of give this picture of like he stomps the head, but he gets bitten in the process, right? And if you've ever, you know, if you lived in a place with poisonous snakes, which we technically do, but if that was something that was maybe a more everyday part of your life, you might recognize this as, like, oh, getting bitten in the heel by a snake. That's like a way people die. So there's maybe a hint of his, of his death in this, in this promise as well. But this pattern starts over the course of Scripture. Now, where the the seed of the snake, which is like, you could look at it, kind of like evil in humanity is, is fighting against the seed of the woman, which fighting against humanity itself, really, and people start to rule in the way of the snake, or the way of the beast. They see what they want, and they take it and. Pretty quickly. This turns into not just, you know, picking fruit that they're not supposed to pick, but doing what they have to do, to take from other people, what they want from them, right? And so kids, how quickly does somebody kill somebody after after this passage with Cain and Abel right? Right away that basically the next chapter, Cain kills his brother, Abel because of jealousy, because he doesn't get what he wants and and that that pattern just continues. And you know Kane's Kane descendants, particular one in particular, Lamech is even worse than Kane. He brags about killing multiple people. He takes multiple wives. So even though this is before Deuteronomy, we're starting to see this, this way of kings, of killing and taking what you want, women and countries and riches. And you start to wonder, you know, like, when is this? When is this snake Crusher going to come? And you realize God would be entirely justified in destroying the whole human race and starting over. And he almost does that right pretty quickly. After this we have, we have an A near destruction of the human race. What's, what's that, kids, the flood? Yeah, exactly. God destroys almost the whole human race. But he is completely committed to his promise. He has decided that he's going to rule the world with a with a beautiful, benevolent rulership, and he's going to do it through humans. And so He preserves Noah and his family through the flood. And he's made this other promise too, that he's going to send a snake Crusher. He's going to send a seed of the woman who's going to stomp out the snake. And so if you were, we all are, of course, probably familiar with these stories from childhood, right? And so we're, we're incredibly blessed to I think most of us have grown up with the stories about Jesus and known, you know, for a long time who Jesus was, and you know his the message of salvation that we get through him. But if you were reading this for the first time, and just starting from Genesis, going all the way through, you might start to think like, Who's this? Who's the snake Crusher going to be right? And so you you start to encounter characters that you're like, oh, maybe, right, maybe, maybe Noah. And Noah doesn't. Noah doesn't cut it. He gets drunk, and something weird happens in a tent.
And so we'll move on then. But how about, how about Moses? God uses him to do these great deeds, right? He leads the people out of Israel. He, like performs these size signs and wonders that God empowers him to do, God parts the Red Sea by Moses's arm or staff arm, I think. But so is Moses the one. No. Okay, why not? What? What's wrong with Moses, yeah, but he's supposed to speak to it, right? He murders a dude, right? Yeah, that's not cool. So yeah, you're right. Though, the things I was particularly thinking of are Moses strikes the rock when God tells him to speak to it, and Moses, Moses murders a guy, which, you know are both not, not great. Murdering the guy is kind of a beastly way of of trying to accomplish what God actually did want him to accomplish, which was to to free the the people of Israel, right? Okay, so it's not Moses. What about David? David gets a lot of screen time, and he's like, but okay, here Hear me out. Though he's God's anointed king of Israel, okay? Israel, like, really prospers under him. He's super righteous in the way he waits for his taking the kingship. He doesn't kill Saul when he has the opportunity, which he could have totally done. Pretty cool. What does he do? Well, yeah, he, you're right. He didn't take too many wives. That's, that's one. What about what else? Not just, essentially, he just straight up committed adultery, yeah, yeah, and then he murders the girl's husband, right? Yeah, really, woman's husband, okay, well, we don't know that for sure, but you're probably right. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, really, really uncool. Beastly, wave rolling, right? Murder, taking women for yourself, seeing what is good, seeing something that's beautiful, which that passage uses that same phrasing that, you know, Eve saw that the fruit was, was good to see, and took it well. David sees that Bathsheba is, you know, pleasing to the site, and takes her right. And so, so he's doing that same he's falling in that same pattern. Okay, so David doesn't make it. How about Solomon? He is the richest man, the wisest man. He builds the temple, a place for God's for God to dwell among his people. Does he do something wrong? Lots of wives, multiple wife thing is really killing these kings. I tell you what? Anything else that he does wrong? His wives make him turn away from God. And, okay, go ahead. Yeah, he erect idols for those other gods. Here you go. Whoop. And not only that, but he gathers a bunch of chariots and horses. He actually does basically the exact inverse of that passage in Deuteronomy that we read. He builds this huge army and chariots where, you know. Military technology had evolved, and so now chariots are, you know, better than just horses. So he has a bunch of chariots. He has horses for the chariots. He has stables for the chariots, and he amasses a bunch of wealth for himself, which It also mentions in Deuteronomy, and, of course, lots of wives and concubines. And he worships other gods. He really screws it up. So Solomon doesn't do so great. Then there's a whole line of kings after him. Some are better, some are worse. None of them cut it. So we're now in Daniel. Daniel is actually pretty awesome. He like he doesn't eat the king's food. He doesn't bow, presumably, doesn't bow down to the the big idol that the king erects. It doesn't really talk about him in that passage, but I think it's safe to say he didn't worship the idol. He continues to worship the Lord and to pray to him when that's outlawed and survives a trip to a lion's den because of it. What about Daniel and oh, and we know from the first chapter that he's of the royal line. He said like I skipped over a promise, but there was now a promise to David as well, right? That the line of David will will continue into forever, basically anyone think of anything that's wrong with Daniel. Daniel's an unusual character. He has no apparent moral failings. But ultimately, Daniel gets old, gets sick, gets weak and dies. He doesn't overcome death candies for me, no, I'm just kidding. Daniel's not the snake Crusher, even though he's he's pretty great, but ultimately he has the same human weaknesses and failings that the rest of us do. So none of them are the guy. We're left wondering, who's going to fulfill God's Genesis one mandate, to rule, who's going to crush the snake? Who's going to rule as God intended? Now I want that was a rhetorical question. You can ask your mind what that means, if you don't know so, and Daniel is wondering himself, actually. So we come back to Daniel seven, and we actually see God's promise repeated in Daniel's night vision, and I would say, kind of with the volume turned way up. So we've gone from a snake, Which, admittedly, snakes are scary. I've almost been bitten by a poisonous snake along with Canaan Cole Asher and Jack. Yeah, it was scary, right? Boys, did I scream? Boys run away, yeah. Oh, you were a different time. Okay, so you were with me. Anyway. Snakes are terrifying. These things in Daniel's dream are a lot worse than snakes, right? We've got like, these hybrid monsters coming out of the chaos waters. They've got like, heads that don't match their bodies. So one of them's got multiple heads. One of them has a horn with eyes, which is weird. One of them has 10 horns, which is like, I don't know of any creature with 10 horns, but they're like, they've got wings, but they're land animals coming from the sea. They're like, hybrid monster creatures, right? And we're told these, these beasts, is the term that's used. They represent earthly kingdoms. That's the the interpretation is given to us, which is super helpful, because if I had this dream and didn't get an interpretation, I'd be like, Whoa. I was that was weird, right? But it's gone from just like again, gone from just taking a fruit and eating it, to like, empires that stomp out whole cities and peoples to get what they want. And we see the these snakes, or these, uh, these beasts, slash snakes, in a way, are are devouring and and crushing, right? And so this, this lust for power of human kingdoms, has just gotten way out of control. But the promise of the snake crusher is also repeated, and we start to find out more about him. He's going to be the king of an everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. And when the beastly kingdom of the seat of the snake is destroyed, then the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints, of the highest one. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the Empires will serve and obey Him. So in other words, he's going to take that rulership. He's going to take that seat beside God's throne to rule as humanity was originally intended to rule. And apparently, from this passage, it seems there's going to be other kingdoms under him. All the Empires will serve and obey Him. All the greatness of all the kingdoms will be given to the people of the saints, of the highest one. So humanity, he's going to restore humanity to rule in the way that they were intended to as well. It's not going to be just him. He's going to bring other people to life with him. And man like this is an awesome hope. Like for Daniel, he's been like. He's seen he's seen this, this, this vision, which is scary, but he's also seen the interpretation of the vision in real life, like one of these empires. I don't know if Babylon was one of the four that are that are mentioned, but that's not really the point. An empire has come and taken his city and killed his people and taken him into exile. He has lived this firsthand, and frankly, it's probably not that unfamiliar to us. In the 21st century. There. We still see this happening all around the world, if we're if we're paying attention,
and yeah, this hope. This hope is amazing to to quote part of the passage from the Advent reading last week, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. Daniel seeing a vision of the of this dawning of the light. And that's it brings it brings amazing hope. So I want to switch gears a little bit here and bring it kind of into the the Christmas season, if you will, the Advent season, because I think the way God fulfills this prophecy is super surprising, even to this day. And so I want to remind you of how shocking it is, because I think we need to be reminded of that repeatedly. So if the sermon was a click bait article on the internet, it would be titled something like, good and loving. God gives a beautiful world to humanity to steward and care for, but they trash the place. You'll be shocked by what God does next. Okay? So because, what do we what do we expect? Like, how do we think the beasts will be overthrown? Basically, we think, like, when we think of an empire being destroyed, we think of a conquering right. We think of an overthrowing, usually by violence. Andrew Peterson has a song called so long Moses, where he said, where he imagines the Israelites saying we want a king on a throne full of power with a sword in his fist, right? And that's what we're I think that's what even we are also guilty of imagining we that's exactly what we want a lot of the time. We want someone who will, by strength, take power over our adversaries and destroy them, right? And, and I think a lot of people who claim to be the Messiah, because other people claim to be the Messiah, claim to be the Christ, besides Jesus, who kind of didn't exactly claim to be the Messiah, but instead use the term Son of man, but he does affirm when other people say he's the Messiah. Just, I don't want to preach any heresy here accidentally, but other people claim to be the messia, and they did just that, right? They they got swords to themselves and their followers, and they they tried to overthrow Rome, or whoever the the ruling Empire was. And even some of the disciples seem to expect that based off of what we read in the gospels, based off some of the stories. But amazingly, God actually doesn't overthrow these beastly Kingdoms by violence, at least not by violence against them. The Son of Man comes, not as a king on a throne full of power with a sword in his fist, but he comes and submits himself. He comes as a baby, which we'll talk about, but he submits himself to the violence of of the empire, right of one of these beastly empires that's described in Daniel seven, and submits to the point of death. And he even he rejects the violence option. He rejects the violent overthrowing. And he could have an army of angels at his command. In Matthew 26 it talks about when, when he was taken in the Garden of Gethsemane to go to the cross. And it says, And behold, one of those who were with Jesus reached and drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way, and so he he rejects kind of two violent options here. One was Peter trying to take a sword, and like, Peter's plan wasn't good, okay, so, like, even just from common sense, Jesus probably would have rejected that one. But you know, like Peter was about to get Peter was about to get stabbed, but Jesus steps in, fixes the guy's ear, right, and tells Peter, hey, that's, that's not how we're doing things. But not only does he not go with the like, little band of guys with swords against, you know, contingent of Roman soldiers, he also points out, like, Hey, Peter, I could have 12 legions of angels, which I looked this up, a Roman legion was 6000 men. So for assuming the same kind of Legion, that's 72,000 angels, which I think would have done the trick. But he didn't. He didn't take that right. He renounced that right. In Philippians two, six through 11, it says about Jesus, he as he already existed in the form of God. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a bond servant and being born in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a cross. For this reason, also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. So of course, again, I mentioned this, but we benefit from this hindsight, right? We know, we know the end of the story, and maybe even sometimes we look down a little bit. It on the disciples and other people who thought like that he was going to come, you know, with a sword in his fist, because we know what actually happened. But really, like, if you look at their situation, why wouldn't they think that they knew as well as we do today, God would have been totally within his rights to just wipe the slate, clean, destroy humanity, start over, right? Humanity was full of violence. That's why he destroyed it in the flood, but he preserved Noah, right? That's he could have done the same thing in the era of the Romans. I'm sure humanity was full of plenty of violence back then too. I know it was, but he didn't. And I don't think our Hindsight is really quite 2020, I think we often again, can be just as prone, sometimes more so to to believe in the power of redemptive violence, the myth of redemptive violence, as other people can. But God was so, so devoted to his plan to rule the earth through humans, that the Son of God, the second person, the Trinity, right, who was in the beginning with God, the Father, by whom all things were created, right in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, we have all these passages that describe him. He became a man. He became this, the Son of Man, right, a son of man, a human one. He came as a baby, and like imagine in this baby, according to another verse, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He came and made himself helpless and innocent. Of course, he was innocent. I guess God is innocent of sin, that's anyway. But he became this. He became this helpless baby. He wasn't even a royal baby, right? He wasn't, he was but like, he wasn't, right? He wasn't a pampered Palace baby born to a king, right? He he had a he had a hard life. And he, I'm sure, like, none of us in here probably have had as hard of a life as Jesus had, and I'm not even talking about like that. We've got refrigerators and flush toilets and stuff, okay. He, like, immediately became a refugee, went to Egypt for a while, came back, grew up in this, like backwater town in our, like Roman colony on the edge of the empire, where there was, like, a bunch of rebels hanging out, because Nazareth was kind of like a hub for for rebel rebel activity. And then ultimately, you know, walked around Israel for a few years and then died a humiliating death on a public torture device like a criminal. And that was counter to all our intuition. That was his in from it, right? That's when he said, Just prior to that, from now on, you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of the Father. So this, it's, it's the moment. This the crucifixion is the moment, basically where this Daniel seven prophecy is fulfilled of the Son of Man, riding on the cloud, seated at the right hand of the Father. And instead of using violence and force to overcome the violent kingdoms of the world, the light of the world submitted to their very violence. And somehow, and this is kind of a mystery, like, I can't even explain this, really in words, but somehow, by doing that, the light and life of God overcame the darkness and death, which is why, like by God's by God's power, by the Spirit. How, however it happened, he rose from the dead, right? And the defeat of the the beast was not by a king on a throne full power with a sword in his fist, but by like a submission, a death of of a of an innocent man. I don't have like more of a wrap up than that, like now that now that man, the Son of Man, one of us, and yet, of course, also God, is seated on a throne, ruling forever with the kingdom of peace, of which there shall be no end. So I'm going to finish by reading one of my favorite Psalms, and it meditates on God's design, design for mankind, but it also looks forward to the arrival of the Son of Man who now rules the world. Psalm eight, oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens, out of the mouths, out of the mouth of babies and infants. You have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place. What is man that You are mindful of him, and the Son of Man, that you care for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.