Daniel 2:36-38 36 “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. 37 Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; 38 in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.
There are moments in life when we miss the obvious, or at least I see other people missing the obvious. It is right there in front of them, and they walk right by it. They are there in the room, but their lights seem to be dimly lit! How could they miss that!
All of us have these types of moments. It is a normal part of living in this world. We get distracted in our own world, caught up in our own thoughts, and we miss what is right in front of us. We miss an important lesson in life. We fail to see the train wreck before it happens.
Even the king in our text missed it! It was right there in front of him, and he missed it. Let me explain.
The king of Babylon was given a dream and he wanted to make sure he got the official answer, the real answer, not the politically correct answer. So he refused to tell the content of the dream to his usual advisors. If they really knew what the dream meant, they would be able to tell him the dream as well. They failed.
There was a small group of Jewish exiles who were part of his inner circle, his trusted advisors. One of them, Daniel, took the matter to prayer with his friends and the LORD revealed both the dream and the interpretation to him. He did this so that the king would stop serving his gods and turn to the LORD, the only One who could answer this unreasonable request.
The dream involves a statue that symbolizes the future succession of kingdoms and their final defeat by the LORD when He establishes His eternal kingdom. Each successive kingdom is defeated, replaced by a kingdom of inferior quality. Only the LORD’s final kingdom survives.
Now instead of gleaning the intended message, that only the LORD is worthy of worship, the king decides to set up a statue of his own, one to celebrate his own greatness. We know there is a connection in the author’s mind between these two, the dream and his actions, comes from the language. Both the king’s part in the dream as the head of gold, and statue that he sets up being made of gold, connect them in the narrative.
The king thinks he is something worth celebrating. How quickly he forgot the message. Even the head of gold got smashed by the final kingdom, the one established by the LORD.
Did you notice the language of our verses? The place of the king sounds like the place humans were to occupy in the Garden before the Fall. We as humans were to have dominion and power as we ruled as His images here on this earth. We were given the job of ruling over the beasts and birds. That was our place, and in the dream the king has achieved that status.
But those words must have gone to his head. He must have begun to believe his own PR people, rather than the truth. Even the head of gold gets smashed and blown away like chaff.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to miss the point of the story. He is great, I am not. He is faithful, I am not. He loves perfectly, I do not.
We know this to be true because of the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection. With out the reality of the resurrection, we have nothing. We might grasp and polish our own gold heads, but they are just fleeting reminders of our future fate. Only one kingdom lasts, and it isn’t ours!
So matter how successful we are in life, it will all be smashed to pieces. Nothing of our glory will be left. Wood, hay, stubble. It will disappear. Only Christ will last.
The Arnold Journey 