Anxious Dreams (Daniel 2:1-28a)

Going outward from there. We want to welcome you in the name of Jesus. If you are new to our church, make sure you find one of these welcome pads. They're at the end of the row. If you'll take those out, everybody, and pass them down, we'd love to welcome you into the life of our church.

And today, we're back in the book of Daniel. We're in Daniel chapter two. And as is our custom, we're going to read God's word aloud together. So you can find that either on the bulletin, which you've maybe clicked on on your device or read it on the screen. Let's read God's word aloud, 2:1 through 28.

In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams that troubled him, and sleep deserted him. So the king gave orders to summon the magicians, mediums, sorcerers, and Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. When they came and stood before the king, he said to them, "I have had a dream, and I am anxious to understand it." Spoke to the king. Aramaic begins here. "May the king live forever. Tell your servants the dream, and we will give the interpretation." The king replied to the Chaldeans, "My word is final. If you don't tell me the dream and its interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb, and your houses will be made a garbage dump. But if you make the dream and its interpretation known to me, you'll receive gifts, a reward, and great honor from me. So make the dream and its interpretation known to me." They answered a second time, "May the king tell the dream to his servants, and we will make known the interpretation." The king replied, "I know for certain you are trying to gain some time because you see that my word is final. If you don't tell me the dream, there is one decree for you. You have conspired to tell me something false or fraudulent until the situation changes. So tell me the dream, and I will know you can give me its interpretation." The Chaldeans answered the king, "No one on earth can make known what the king requests. Consequently, no king, however great and powerful, has ever asked anything like this of any magician, medium, or Chaldean. What the king is asking is so difficult that no one can make it known to him except the gods whose dwelling is not with mortals."

Because of this, the king became violently angry and gave orders to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. The decree was issued that the wise men were to be executed, and they searched for Daniel and his friends to execute them. Then Daniel responded with tact and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king's guard, who had gone to execute the wise men of Babylon. He asked Arioch, the king's officer, "Why is the decree from the king so harsh?" Then Arioch explained the situation to Daniel. So Daniel went and asked the king to give him some time so that he could give the king the interpretation.

Then Daniel went to his house and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah about the matter, urging them to ask the God of the heavens for mercy concerning the mystery so Daniel and his friends would not be destroyed with the rest of Babylon's wise men. The mystery was then revealed to Daniel in a vision at night, and Daniel praised the God of the heavens and declared, "May the name of God be praised forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to Him. He changes the times and seasons. He removes kings and establishes kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals the deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him. I offer thanks and praise to you, God of my ancestors, because you have given me wisdom and power. And now you have let me know what we ask of you, for you have let us know the king's mystery."

Then Daniel went to Arioch, 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 Arioch quickly brought Daniel before the king and said to him, "I have found among exiles who can let the king know the interpretation." The king said in reply to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, "Are you able to tell me the dream I had and its interpretation?" Daniel said to the king, "No wise man, medium, magician, or diviner is able to make known to the king the mystery he asked about. But there is a god in heaven who reveals mysteries." — Daniel 2:1-28a

Alright, we'll stop there. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

What Do You Do With Your Anxious Thoughts?

I want to ask, what do you do with your anxious thoughts? Your worries?

There's research that was done a couple years ago by the Pew Research Center on how Americans view life in 2050. Are we more optimistic or pessimistic? Are things getting better or worse? And this is what the overwhelming results of this were: as we thought about the future, most Americans expect income equality to get worse. They say that the economy is going to get weaker. The nation's debt burden will be heavier.

The environment will be in worse condition. Health care will be less affordable than today. America will play a less important role in geopolitical events worldwide. And about two-thirds predicted domestic political divisions will become more pronounced. Yikes. Are you surprised by those results? That's what people think of life as they think about the future.

You know, it makes me wonder, how are you sleeping these days? And to be completely transparent, me, not so well, not so much. I have a hard time sleeping. I get the sense that the Pew study hits pretty home with us. And whether or not those are your particular burdens and worries, or if they are much more personal within your own household, about your own future, things that you're trying to pursue. I get a sense that I'm a pastor of a pretty anxious congregation. And you're a congregation that has a pretty anxious pastor.

I got good news for us today as we look at Daniel two. Daniel two highlights two people who both face a future that is unknown and uncertain with forces beyond their control. And yet one of them is sleeping and the other one's not. And it's funny when we open up this story, we read about a king who we would think has everything that helps him to sleep at night and yet can't.

So let me remind you, it's been a couple of weeks since we were in Daniel. Let me remind you of where we are, especially if you're new today. How did these young Jewish young men get to be the advisors to the most important dictator in the world at that time? So just a brief review. Daniel and his friends were in Babylon because they were taken forcibly there. The nation of Israel, what was left of it, Jerusalem in the South and the Southern Kingdom was wiped out by King Nebuchadnezzar the second of Babylon in the year 586. He'd gone through three stages of destruction. First, destroying the city walls and then pillaging all the material goods of the city, and then taking the best and brightest, taking 10,000-ish young people from Israel, anybody who had any smarts or leadership, and exporting all those people several thousand miles away to Babylon where they are now in captivity, where they're now working in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. And Daniel and his friends have achieved some prominence within this as we read a couple weeks ago.

But here's what I want us to think about. When the king made this move and said, "Ashpenaz, chief of the eunuchs, here are your young men. I want you to make them into good Babylonians." I bet he had no idea, no imagination that he was inviting into his court emissaries of the living God. When he asked these counselors to interpret the dream and tell him the dream, he had no idea what he was inviting. He was inviting God Himself, who had planted that dream in Nebuchadnezzar's mind. And He had a message not just for Nebuchadnezzar, but for the Israelites themselves in this dream. But he was just a man filled with anxiety. We would think of this incredibly successful king as a man ruling over his people, but what we find is a man ruled by anxiety today.

And I want us to think about what is the nightmare of anxiety that many of us struggle with?

Dream Interpretation in Babylon

In Babylon, dream business was big business. Dream interpretation was a big industry. And I know that's a weird thing to say it's an industry, but they had made scientific observations, written manuals. We have some of those in some of our museums today that are well preserved that describe the science behind dream interpretation.

So dream interpretation went like this. They would chronicle what people in power, particularly the king, would dream. They would write that down, then they would see what came afterward. And over and over, they began to come up over centuries with these kind of connections. So for example, dreaming you're going into a tunnel meant one thing. Someone hands you a glass of wine. That means something else. They even applied this to life in the daytime. So things like seeing a flock of birds flying in a very odd formation had a particular meaning. Or one of your horses gives birth to a foal that's kind of deformed. That means something else. All of this was cataloged and became a scientific study that Daniel and his friends were actually trained in. The literature and language of the Babylonians, of the Chaldeans, as we read at the beginning of this book.

So Nebuchadnezzar's dream, though, here it becomes a nightmare, and not just a nightmare for him, but for the rest of the court. Because the king requires—I want you to make sure you notice this—not only that they understand the interpretation of the dream, which is what they're trained in, but the dream itself. He's asking them to tell him not just what it means, but what was the content of the dream. What was it that I dreamed?

Now, I want you to think about why he would ask that. It might be that he'd forgotten it.

I don't think you've probably had this experience. You wake up and you were terrorized by something, and you begin to tell somebody what it was, and it just slips away—you can't quite remember what you dreamed. Or maybe you have kids, and the kid is recounting some dream, and you start to ask a question. It's clear. It's all gone, right? This happens regularly. And maybe that's what's going on.

It's very clear in the passage, though, that Nebuchadnezzar is particularly worried that they're trying to swindle him or fool him or get something over on him. Maybe that's what's going on—that he had a bunch of yes-men in his court who said yes to everything, and he's like, well, let's see how good you really are. Can you tell me the dream? What the actual dream was? But regardless of why he's asking for this, this is what we see with Nebuchadnezzar: anxiety is no respecter of wealth or rank or power or privilege.

Anxiety and Success

Back in 2016, the comedian Jim Carrey was hosting the Golden Globe Awards. And he gets up and opens his monologue this way: "Thank you. I am two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. You know, when I go into sleep at night, I'm not just a guy going to sleep. I'm two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to sleep to get some well-needed shut-eye. And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dreams. No, sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey, because then that would be enough, and I would be enough. It would finally be true, and I could stop this terrible, terrible search for what I know ultimately this won't ultimately fulfill me."

That's a transparent moment by a comedian up in a microphone in a very public event. But what is he saying? He's saying you're only as good as your last success. And it's very transparent of him to show us that privilege and power and wealth and success don't mean that anxiety goes away. Those are no respecter of persons, right?

You think Jim Carrey of all people could sit back and enjoy what he had amassed—his fame and all that he built. But no, he can't sleep. That's what he's saying.

And this really challenges the assumptions that we make in our anxieties. Because we always think that anxiety is about a lack of something—something missing. And if only we had that thing, we wouldn't have anxiety, right? But it isn't about lack.

Have you heard yourself say things like this? "If I just had a little bit more money, if I was just a little bit higher up at work, if I had a better house, car, family, kids"—keep going down the line—"body, all those things." We think just a little more, a little better is going to make things better. And the truth is, even if you got a better job or were higher up in the company or had more money or had a better house, body, kids, car—any of those things—we are still anxious people. We're still people who are deeply anxious, and more and better don't make it better, right?

Anxiety is no respecter of wealth or rank or power, or privilege.

Anxiety is Contagious

And the second thing we see here is anxiety is contagious. This kind of stinks for us, but anxiety is contagious. Anxiety in a system—and any system, if that's an office, if that's a department, if that's a family, if that's a team—it's contagious. It spreads.

Think about what happens here. First, Nebuchadnezzar's anxious. Then the rest of the imperial court is anxious. And they're anxious because his anxiousness means there's an expectation of them. And it shows us in this passage—it's funny. There are two types of anxiety. I want you to listen close to this. Two types of anxiety.

For Nebuchadnezzar, it was stress of unknown forces outside your control. For the court, it was the stress of unknown forces outside your control. I mean, really, all of them had the same anxiety—the stress of unknown forces outside their control. Whether for Nebuchadnezzar it was this dream, whether for the rest of the court it was Nebuchadnezzar. There's something outside their control they don't know how to handle, and so they're anxious.

Anxiety Sees a World Without God

Anxiety sees a world without God in it. And, you know, even here when the court catches anxiety from the king, I want you to think about the language that they say when they turn back to the king with their response to him. This is verses 10 and 11, if you're following along.

There are three statements: the nobody statement, the never statement, and the impossible statement. Let me walk through those.

The nobody statement. Verse 10: "The Chaldeans answered the king. They said, there's nobody who can do this, who can answer the king in this way."

The never statement. Also verse 10: "A king has never asked anything like this of any magician or astrologer or Chaldean before. Never."

And finally, the impossible statement. Verse 11: "It's a difficult thing that the king requests."

There is no one who can tell the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. Have we used those same words? When you think about some of the stress that you are under, is it not "never, nobody, impossible"? I mean, we say things like this: nobody could do what they expect of me. That's never been done to somebody else. That's impossible. That's absolutely impossible. And those words imply that we have a world that we see without God in it at all. I'll come back to those in a minute.

There's an opposite to those. Fourth, helplessness breeds hostility. Helplessness breeds hostility. You know that difficult circumstances, fear of the future, uncertainty, they'll lead us to sometimes do some weird things. And in this passage, Nebuchadnezzar does some weird things. He makes some very violent statements. You know, this is the most powerful man in the world, and he can't sleep. He suddenly becomes vengefully angry about this.

The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is known for this same kind of anger. He rose to power between 1922 and stayed in power to the mid-1950s, mostly by killing off all his rivals over and over again. A man who deeply longed for the Soviet people to love him, and instead he got them to deeply fear him. Because his sense of helplessness brought a lot of hostility, his insecurities. That seems extreme for us, doesn't it? I mean, people like Stalin and Nebuchadnezzar. But isn't there something about you that when you're feeling helpless, that makes you mad? Maybe I'm the only one here, but it makes me really mad. I hate feeling helpless and that hostility comes out toward the people, especially the people we love the most in our safest relationships.

Do you want to know why, as a married couple, you are fighting so much in the place of uncertainty and fear? It's helplessness. You know, you're in school as a kid, and you are struggling every day. And do you want to know why you come home and get so mad and take it out on your siblings? It's helplessness. Helplessness that we feel comes out the most with the people that we feel the safest with. We hate feeling helpless.

And the problem, a lot of people think, well, that's an anger problem. No. There's something beyond anger. Anger can be a really healthy emotion. I'm talking about rage. Rage is anger plus helplessness. And it's blind and kind of crazy sometimes. And that's what we see in Nebuchadnezzar, this kind of anger, this kind of rage.

The Anxious Mind Doesn't Know Itself

Finally, what else do we see? The anxious mind doesn't know itself. The anxious mind doesn't know itself. There's a little throwaway line here in verse 30, which we didn't read for next week. It says this:

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 noted to the king, that you may understand your own mind. — Daniel 2:30

That's a profound statement. He tells the king, "King, you don't even know you. You don't even understand your own mind." And in our anxiety, we think, gosh, we are so certain of ourselves. But the reality is in our anxiety, we don't even know ourselves very well. We don't understand us and what makes us tick. You know, something is fundamentally off. And that's why we just ruminate and chew on this.

But here's what I want you to see: of course, it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. Anxiety doesn't have to take over. It doesn't have to be contagious. Helplessness doesn't have to turn to hostility. We can know our own minds.

I mean, we see Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel in the same position. Both of them facing uncertain circumstances, both facing something they don't understand and know how to grapple with. And yet one of them is sleeping and one isn't. And you know why? Of course, you expect me to say, it's Daniel trusts God, Nebuchadnezzar doesn't. But I want you to notice something. Let's not overread our Bibles. It doesn't say Daniel was always cool as a cucumber. Daniel never stressed. Daniel was never sweating. There's no statements about that. And I don't want to make it seem like you're either really got this or you don't.

We are people who live in a fallen world, and we are very fallen people. And even when we're trying to trust God and we know the right answers, it is hard. So let me hold this out for us. Here's my hope for us. This is my hope for me: that we would become more and more people who are a non-anxious presence. Still in that phrase from a pastor named Mark Sayers, who wrote a book with the same title, Non-Anxious Presence. He's an Australian pastor, wrote this in the middle of the pandemic. And it was all about, hey, guys, can we, in the middle of this uncertainty, look to the Lord?

Sayers holds this up as such an important posture for Christians. How do we become a non-anxious presence? Daniel shows us a picture of a non-anxious presence in two ways in this passage.

First, in verse 15, it's fascinating. A non-anxious presence is someone who is not in a hurry. Daniel was not in a hurry. When they finally find Daniel and they say, "Daniel, would you tell us the dream and the interpretation?" Daniel responds at verse 15 this way. He says, "Why is the decree from the king so harsh?" Now, in your little Bible, there's a little note beside that that says a better translation is "urgent." Because Daniel is asked the question, what's the big rush? What's the urgency here? And Daniel is somebody who shows himself in this passage to not be in a hurry. A non-anxious presence is able to sit still and say, time out. We don't need to make this happen right now. Let's slow things down. Let's pause and wait just a second. Daniel is not in a hurry.

Second, Daniel is not alone. This is the other thing we see about a non-anxious presence. A non-anxious presence is one who knows you're not alone. Daniel was not alone. He goes to verse 17:

Daniel went to his house and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah about the matter and urging them to ask the God of heavens for mercy concerning this mystery. — Daniel 2:17

There's something about anxiety that's incredibly isolating. Not just because you're the person who's up in the middle of the night, but because you're chewing on something, you're gnawing on something, you're turning something over and over again that you think is only yours to know how to fix or process or solve. We think nobody else can understand what I'm going through right now. There's no way they can possibly understand this. I see this regularly in our church. No offense, y'all are not great at asking for prayer. Y'all are not great at asking for help. Maybe it's because people don't grow past where their pastor's maturity is. I've heard that. But we're not great at saying, "Help! Drowning over here." We're surrounded in a room by people. Did you notice you're not in a room by yourself this morning? God has given you all kinds of resources in people. Your phone is not just for games or death scrolling. Call a friend like Daniel does here. Help me. Not alone. A non-anxious presence is not alone.

A Different Power Dynamic

So how might a non-anxious presence contradict the wisdom of the advisers to the king in Nebuchadnezzar's court? A non-anxious presence rooted in God knows that the kingdom of God operates by a completely different power dynamic than the rest of the world.

A non-anxious presence doesn't use the words "nobody," "never," and "impossible." Think about some of the things that we read in scripture that remind us that nobody, never, and impossible don't fit in the kingdom of God. I'm just going to give you some verses here:

The weak are strong. — 1 Corinthians 1:25

Nothing is impossible with God. — Luke 1:37

Is the arm of the Lord too short to save? — Isaiah 50:2

How much more will He not give us all things? — Romans 8:32

My God is able. — Daniel 3:17

He is a refuge and fortress. He is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. — Psalm 73:26

Those who trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion. They will not be moved. — Psalm 125:1

The one who knows the Lord has no fear of bad news. He will never leave you or forsake you. — Deuteronomy 31:6

I mean, y'all could add to this. What's your favorite memory verses? They're all about these things. They're all about a rock, an anchor, a strong tower, the fortress who is our God. Those are words of courage. Those are of seeing God in a place where nobody else is seeing God. God is absent, but a non-anxious presence sees God in the room.

Finding the Lord in Anxiety

How do we find the Lord in our anxiety? How do we find Him? Sometimes I'll ask people this question: Where is God right now? This is a question my wife has taught me to ask people. Where is God right now? Because people generally in anxiety, we can't see the Lord. And Daniel helps us here. I just want to tell you, pretending don't work. Muscling through leads to burnout. How do we find the Lord? Where is the Lord?

Look at what Daniel says. He helps us. He says in verse 28:

There is a God in heaven. — Daniel 2:28

Can we just park it right here for a second? There is a God in heaven. That's a really helpful statement that implies a question. Is there a God right now in heaven? Do we believe that? Has He something to do with us on Earth? Does He have something to say about what's going on in our lives right now? Is there a God in heaven? Wouldn't that change how you saw your problem if you could see, "Oh yeah, the God in heaven"?

One pastor puts it this way: You've tried to make the relationship work. You've tried to fix what's broken, and it's all failed and you feel like there's no hope. I got good news. There is a God in heaven, and His power starts where yours ends.

You've tried to make the kid turn out right, and you've laid down the rules, and you had all the conversations, and you've done all the things, and there's nothing you can do to make him choose what is right, her choose what is right. And yes, but there is a God in heaven. You have tried to overcome that addiction. You've tried to find the missing piece. You failed so many times you started to think there is no point in even trying anymore. And yet, there is a God in heaven. You look around and there's like disease and death everywhere, and things have been taken away from you this year of what you think, I'm never going to recover from this. What's the point of everything? Won't death just take it all in the end anyway? Yes. But there is a God in heaven. You disappointed in politics, dismayed by our leaders. Democrats disappoint us. Republicans disappoint us. There's no third party that's really awesome out there. Guess what? News flash. If you were running for office, you would disappoint us too. But if yes, there is a God in heaven. Do you believe that? I mean, wouldn't that make a difference? Take hope, anxious ones. There is a God in heaven.

He's the Revealer of Mysteries

And second, He's the revealer of mysteries. He's the revealer of mysteries. There's more. The general message, yeah, there's a God in heaven. But this is really beautiful. He is the revealer of mysteries. Think about these counselors, these advisors were the wisest and smartest and best trained people in the kingdom at the time. And yet they couldn't figure it out. Neither can you. There is so much of this life that is discouraging and confusing. It is hard to figure out relationships. It is hard to discern major life decisions. Care of parents, where do I go to college? Who do I marry? What happened? What am I doing here? Why am I still stuck here? We have so many questions. We can't make sense of God and His purposes. But yes, there is a God who is a revealer of mysteries.

And this is the thing I'm really encouraged by. Christianity is a revealed religion. The word revelation is really all over Christian theology. There's general revelation, what God says about us, who He is when you look up in the sky and you look out at the ocean. And there's special revelation, which God reveals to us in His Word. Christianity is a revealed religion. And we would never come up with this one. We would never come up with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In human terms, our way of thinking about the world is meritocracy. You get what you deserve. This is what humans love. This is why in every language across the world, little kids know two words that they say all the time: no and fair. Because we have the system of like, what's right and what's not. You get the lumps if you deserve the lumps, you get the grades, the thumbs up if you deserve the thumbs up. So the gospel where God puts himself on the hook for human suffering, human sin, that didn't make any sense to us. We would never come up with this one, where God substitutes Himself in the place of sinners, where because of a self-sacrificial substitution, Jesus gets what we deserve, no fair, and we get what He deserves, also no fair. Praise God, it's no fair. Right? This is not anything we would ever come up with. And yet God loves to reveal mysteries.

First Corinthians tells us that God has concealed these things from the wise and powerful and revealed them to little children. It's Jews demand signs, Greeks look for wisdom. We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to Gentiles. But to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Of course, God doesn't reveal everything, and that's really hard sometimes. So many things in this life we would like God to reveal. Hey, God, what's the overlap between human choice and divine sovereignty? Haven't made that one crystal clear. Right? God's ways and natural disasters, suffering in its various forms from infertility to cancer, to dementia, to male pattern baldness. So many more. But I really believe that the reason God has not revealed everything has more to do with our humanness and being people limited in space and time than it is God holding back on us because scripture says absolutely otherwise. God loves to reveal. You know what's the last book of the Bible? Revelation. Yes, thank you. He loves to reveal. He loves to disclose, especially to the weak. This is what our God is like.

The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our children forever that we might follow the words of the law. — Deuteronomy 29:29

Do you hear that? God loves to reveal. He loves to give himself to us. And those are gifts that we prize. We give on to our children.

Another version of that, Second Peter 1:3:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him. He called us by his own glory and goodness. — 2 Peter 1:3

God loves to reveal. So don't you think we who are people whom Jesus invites us to come and pray, using the very personal name of God—Father—that when we ask and we go to him, doesn't he love to reveal himself to us? Doesn't he love to disclose? Doesn't he love to answer our prayers and show us what he's already revealed to you in Christ? He is the revealer of mysteries. And next week we're going to see this: He's the King of the rocky kingdom, not the rickety kingdoms. More on that next week.

A Story About Anxiety

Let me close this way. There's a man in a hurry to catch an airplane. He was running through the airport at RDU, huffing and puffing. And as he runs by, there's a guy dressed in a pilot's uniform, pulling his bag, and says, "Hey, man, where are you going?" The guy says, "Well, who are you? I'm almost—I'm going to be late." And the pilot says, "Stop running. I'm the pilot. You're going to be just fine. You know, if the pilot is chilling out, so can you. You don't need to stress yourself out on things that are unnecessary."

I can't help you sleep at night. I'm not doing a great job doing that for me either. But while we're up at night, while we're wrestling with our anxious thoughts, can we remember? There is a God in heaven. He is the revealer of mysteries. He is the King of the rocky kingdom. And so my invitation: cast your cares upon the Lord because He cares for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. There is nothing like your word that tells us the truth about who we are and the truth about who you are. Father, we are a very anxious people. There's a lot to be worried about in our world and to be afraid of. Lord, would you meet us in the middle of the nights in the things that we cannot carry? Lord, teach us to be a non-anxious presence. Help us to cling to what we know of you. Help us to call upon one another. Help us to slow down. Lord, we pray and give thanks for your word today, in Jesus' name. Amen.