Daniel 2:31-45
Most scholars believe that what Daniel describes is the ‘Cosmic Prophetic flow’ of the Gentile powers that will follow Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire.
· Gold = Babylon.
· Silver = Medo -Persia.
· Bronze = Alexander the Great and the Greek Empire.
· Iron= Roman Empire.
The dream can also be looked at as a picture of the dreamer himself – Nebuchadnezzar.He was a towering colossus of a man who dominated the political landscape of his time.
He ruled for 44 years as Babylon’s King.
He ruled nearly twice as long as all of Babylon’s other kings combined.
Outwardly he was splendid and spectacularly successful, and yet inwardly he seemed haunted and deeply troubled.
Verse 2:1 “Dreams.” – Plural. This isn’t a one-off incident. It seems to indicate something of a process, a mindset.
There seems to be a deep insecurity that haunts him.
He has made a name for himself but it doesn’t seem to have produced inner security.
He is aware that he has, “feet of clay.”
His foundations are fragile.
The colossal structure rests on shaky ground.
The word ‘troubled,’ in verse 1 means, ‘to tap, to beat regularly like a drum.’
There is something ‘tapping’ away deep inside this outwardly successful man.
He is deeply aware of his tenuous grasp on success.
This is a frighteningly modern story.
People who are outwardly successful and yet inwardly insecure and frail can be found in every field of endeavour.
In the dream, ‘a stone, cut without hands,’ knock the image over and crushes it so that it is no more than “chaff on the threshing floor.” {Vs. 35.}
The threshing floor in Scripture represents a place of sifting and testing.
{Matthew 3:12}
Every dream and every life will be sifted and tested. They will be ‘weighed in the balances’ and if they are found to be resting on ‘feet of clay,’ or, as Matthew 7 states, ‘built of a foundation of sand,’ then they will be ‘found wanting.’ {Daniel 5:25.}
The key to thriving in the secular city {Babylon} is to build our lives and dreams on a solid foundation.
In Judges 13:25 we have a passage that speaks about samson’s early life.
It speaks of him being ‘stirred or moved by the Lord.”
This is the same Hebrew word that is used to describe Nebuchadnezzar as being ‘troubled.’
The drumbeat in Nebuchadnezzar’s life sounded out his emptiness, his inner fragility, his ‘feet of clay.’
In Samson it is the drumbeat of eternal purpose and of God’s call.
We all march to an inner ‘tapping,’ a ‘drumbeat.’
The question is, which one?
Of our own ambition, of the need to make a name for ourselves?
Or is it the drumbeat of God’s call and purpose?
- Don
