As I mentioned in the first 2 sermons, we have to cautious and attentive when reading biblical literature. If we aren’t careful, we can go in with our own agenda and answers and only find what we are looking for rather than looking for and listening to what is really there.
When I was little, one of my favorite books was There’s a Monster at the End of this Book. It’s a little Golden book staring Grover, the blue furry guy from Sesame Street. Now, the title indicates that there’s a monster at the end of the book and upon seeing that Grover gets scared. He’s scared the entire book and does everything in his power to stop you from turning the pages. He puts up ropes and boards and bricks to make it impossible to turn the pages. I tried to find it to share it with all of you, but must not have it anymore. Anyway, Grover is scared, and begs the reader not to keep turning pages. He doesn’t want to get to the end of the book because there’s a monster there! He doesn’t want to be attacked by a monster. Now, of course, as a kid, I kept reading and loved the more fervent pleas as I went along to stop reading. And then, at the end of the book, there is indeed a monster…do you know which one? Grover. That’s right. Huggable, lovable, Grover is a monster and he’s at the end of the book. All that time he was afraid of something and someone that should never have been feared.
To me, that’s how many of us read the book of Daniel, afraid because we’ve heard that there is something horrible in the book. We don’t want to persist in reading these scriptures because we are worried about the cataclysmic doom that will befall us if we dare to read on and hear what is going to happen to us. But just like Grover, we have no reason to fear. Our fears will not be actualized on the pages of the Bible, not in this book anyway. So, let’s read about some monsters and try and uncover what’s really there.
How many of you read chapters 7-9 and thought, “Good Lord have mercy! This is scary weird stuff!” How many of you felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz saying, “Lions, and tigers, and bears, Oh my!”?? Except they were worse. Not just lions and tigers and bears, but a lion with the wings of eagles, and a leopard with 4 wings like a bird, and a bear with 3 ribs in its mouth, and then a four headed beast. These sound like something out o Narnia or Harry Potter, not something from Ancient Babylon.
At this point in chapter 7, some of us check out—it’s just way too weird and there’s no chance we’re going to understand what happens. Right? But there is. All you have to do is read a bit further and get to the 2nd half of chapter 7 and it tells you what is really happening. Remember, much like parables, apocalyptic literature isn’t’ really about the thing that it’s about.
This vision isn’t about lions and tigers and bears. It’s not about mythological characters or a weird acid trip. It’s actually about power and authority and the rulers of the land. The 2nd half of Daniel tells us this, “The 4 great beasts are 4 kingdoms that will rise from the earth. But the saints of the most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes for ever and ever.” So the 4 beasts aren’t real. They weren’t going to appear in front of Daniel or the Israelites and take over the world. Instead, each beast is symbolic. Much like the metals of the statue we say in chapter 2. Remember? The gold head was Babylon. The silver chest was Medes. The Bronze body was Persia and the steal legs were Greece.
These beasts are much the same. Each one represents a succeeding kingdom. Chapter 8 has a similar vision-this one with goats and rams and horns, but all represent kingdoms we’ve already seen before (chapter 8 tells us that)—Media, Persia, and Greece.
Now, chapter 8 is one of those places where people get bunged up because they see and read certain words and hone in on those and then lose sight o everything else that is there. Can anyone guess what those words are?
They come from chapter 8 verse 17 when the angel says, “Understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.” My guess is that most of us hear that and are led to certain thoughts. Right? Like what?
· Destruction
· Rapture
· End of times
· End of the world
Lots of people make that connection, but I we do that here, we will get WAY off track. This isn’t about that. Not in our terms or our day.
This book and these visions are isolated to a very specific time in history--from around 680-650 BC to 160 BC. Daniel’s visions are not about our future. They were particular to the Israelites’ exile in Babylon—through each of the kingdoms represented by the beasts followed by a return to Jerusalem and the Promised Land.
The “end” that is spoken of is the end of Israelite suffering in exile. Chapter 10 chronicles what will happen in those kingdoms in the years after Daniel—who will rule, who will fall, who will be in power, and, in the end, how the suffering of the exile will end.
That’s it. No big scary monster. No mass destruction of the earth. No flying beasts. But the rise and all of powers, and the promised redemption of God’s people. After all that worry, it’s only the blessing and promise of a loving God.
Daniel is not a book to be feared. In a lot of ways, to us now, it’s a history book chronicling the cycle of power during the Israelite exile. It’s not a book of God’s wrath or destruction. It’s one that should bring us peace and hope. After all—what we see is that no matter which countries take power, their era will come to an end and God’s reign will overcome. That, my friends, is good news.
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