Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome back to Missions on Point, this is episode 237.

We are currently talking about preaching about missions. The goal is to see how the Bible, rightly interpreted, leads to a frequent touchpoint on global missions as an application for the church. This is often accomplished through acknowledging the universal fallen condition of mankind and our only hope in the gospel of Jesus.

The book of Daniel, like the book of Ezekiel, that we looked at last week, can sometimes be intimidating for preachers, especially as we seek to rightly apply God’s word to God’s church. But we ought to spend some time thinking about this book because it speaks to God’s kingdom in relation to the kingdoms of this world. And that is exactly what Jesus spoke so much about. While the Jews of Jesus’ day did not understand how the kingdoms of this world related to the kingdom of God, the gospel of Jesus in his death and resurrection should give the church understanding of how to rightly interpret and apply the book of Daniel. The main idea of this book is that God’s kingdom is the only everlasting kingdom. The church, today has entered that kingdom, and we go into the kingdoms of this world to see more of God’s children transferred from the kingdoms of darkness to the kingdom of God’s Son.

Missionaries are frontline emissaries of God’s kingdom. They enter into enemy territory, and sometimes they do so in opposition to the dictates of nations that oppose God and foreign missionary influence. The book of Daniel is especially helpful as we think about living in exile as a paradigm for Christian living now. Daniel wrote to encourage God’s people while they lived under foreign domination and to show them how to live during that time.

To see how the book of Daniel prepares the way for the church to do the work of global missions, I want us to first do a quick overview of the content of this book, and then I will draw five lessons for global missions.

The book of Daniel is very clearly divided into two major sections. The first section, in chapters 1 through 6, give the historical narratives that we are so familiar with from Daniel. Those stories include Daniel and his three friends and their commitment to not be culturally integrated into Babylonian culture, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a great statue, his building of that statue and forcing everyone to bow down to it, Daniel’s friends refusing to do so and being thrown into the fiery furnace where a mysterious fourth figure accompanied them, Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a toppled tree and the king subsequently losing his mind and acting like an animal, Belshazzar’s feast with the hand-writing on the wall, and finally and most famously, Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den for his faithfully praying to God. The second section of Daniel, from chapters 7-12, is full of apocalyptic images of which the book of Revelation relies heavily upon. We see visions of four great beasts and the heavenly court, visions of a ram, a goat and a little horn, and the last three chapters have a vision of a final angelic conflict. Right in the middle of these chapters though we have Daniel praying a prayer of repentance for the Jewish exile, lamenting their sins, and reassured that God’s anointed one would bring an end to it soon. And last we note that the end of the book has one of the clearest promises of the resurrection in the Old Testament. From this fantastic book, I would like to highlight five lessons we can learn that have implications for the church’s work in global missions.

1. Lesson number 1. Daniel teaches us that it is possible to live a faithful life in exile. It would do us much good to regularly remember that we are not at home. We are awaiting our salvation, and God’s people must be patient and faithful as they wait for God’s deliverance. And pressing against Christians here, there is a cultural project going on. Nebuchadnezzar’s goal was to extinguish the Israelite culture. He wanted to not only be their governor, but their god. Missions is a direct realization of these things. Missionaries are able to leave their home, because this world is not their home. They are able to live in foreign lands, because every land is foreign to Christians. Every nation is ultimately hostile to God and demanding allegiance contrary to God’s rule. One of the greatest temptations for missionaries is to capitulate to culture, to give in to the pressures of conformity, and not hold fast to the universal truths of God’s word. Furthermore, the paradigm of exile keeps Christians focused on the appropriate task that God has given to us. It is very tempting to want to make this world our home, to focus our energies on transforming the culture around us so that Christianity is more palatable. Cultural engagement, of course, is not necessarily wrong, but Daniel reminds us that our normal posture is one of not being at home in this world. We are waiting for our salvation. And the kingdom grows through evangelization of the lost, not the coopting of governmental powers. Faithfulness in exile means faithfulness to the mission that God has given to the church now.
2. Lesson number 2. God humbles the proud and raises up the humble. This theme is obvious when considering Nebuchadnezzar’s inglorious fall from grace as he crawled on the ground like an animal. What’s remarkable is how much attention and compassion God shows for this pagan king. God humbled the prideful king who went from being on top of the world to having the mind of a beast. And when God restored his reason, the king declared that God does according to his will and that none can stay his hand. He acknowledges that God is the sovereign king of the universe. Belshazzar, who came after him, refused to humble himself and to learn Nebuchadnezzar’s lesson. The kingdoms of this world who oppose God are built upon their own pride. Missionaries go into the world with humble confidence that we belong to an eternal kingdom. We recognize that pride is the underlying conflict that all men have in their rebellion against God. And we must be on guard against our greatest enemy, our own pride. The gospel call is a call to meekness. Humility is the currency of missions. We cannot have prideful missionaries. Churches must prioritize the sending of their most humble and submissive men and women.
3. Lesson number 3. God is in control of the hearts of kings, and he will judge all kingdoms. The visions of kingdoms rising and falling are paramount in this book. Darius the Mede is raised up to take over Belshazzar’s kingdom. And history plays out the vision of the beasts and the horns sequentially supplanting each other. An honest look at history recognizes how temporary the kingdoms of this world are. World missions must maintain this perspective of worldly kingdoms. Part of the message that we preach is against the kingdoms of this world. We defy the prideful powers of this world and call them to humble repentance, to kiss the Son. And when it comes to nations that oppose Christianity, we can say that the writing is on the wall. God will not let them prevail. We don’t fear kings and governments, for they are temporary and God holds their breath in his hand. Yet we can submit to governments, and even play integral roles in them, like Daniel did, because we know that there is no authority except that which God has established. Jesus told Pilate that he would have no authority over him, except that God had given it. The church outlives the kingdoms of this world. Though they come and go, the gates of hell will not prevail against the gospel advance of the church. Jesus tells us in Luke 12:11 that we will be called to give a defense before rulers and authorities. And because God holds the hearts of kings in his hand, he may choose to use them too. He may humble them and cause them to work for God’s purposes, like he did with Cyrus who financed the exile’s return. So, we pray for kings and all those in positions of authority that they would be amenable to Christianity. Governmental road blocks to the work of missions are sometimes our greatest obstacle. But we pray, because God has no obstacle that he cannot overcome. And he gets all the more glory when he does.
4. Lesson number 4. Israel’s history of rebellion and judgment serve as an important lesson for the church. It’s important for us to note that the exile was not the end of Israel’s history of rebellion and judgment. Daniel makes it clear that God is not done with Israel, and that Israel’s exile is pointing us to a judgment by God that is far more serious. The exile serves as a warning that God can and will judge the nation when they rebel against him. And they do rebel against him when they murder God’s Son. The rejection of the Jews and the acceptance of the Gentiles is the greatest judgment that God could give to that nation. Yet, even with that, God uses the exile to point to the greatest rejection that has ever taken place, when God turned his back on Christ on the cross. Israel’s seventy years in exile point us to Jesus’ three days in the grave. And with these lessons of exile and judgment and death, Daniel also teaches us a unique hope that is found in Christ alone: the hope of the resurrection. Judgment and death are not the final word. Missions is fueled by the hope of the resurrection. And right missiological thinking is rooted in this history. The rejection of the Jews means the acceptance of the Gentiles. This is the consequence of killing the Messiah and it’s the hope of the nations of the world. And right now in history we stand on the precipice of another judgment, this time of the entire world, and another resurrection, this time of the faithful to eternal life. And when we know our place in history, then we will understand that global missions is the job we should be doing right now.
5. Lesson number 5. Earthly events mirror cosmic angelic conflicts. One reality that Daniel makes clear is that there is more going on in this world than simply what we experience and see with our eyes. Spiritual warfare is a much-neglected reality in Western Christianity. Missionaries are often ill-equipped to face spiritual warfare well. But they ought to expect it. And while this awareness of a much larger conflict is good for us, what does that mean for the faithful Christian and missionary? What do we do about it? What action are we supposed to take when we put on the full armor of God? How does Daniel wage spiritual warfare? He prays. We don’t engage in the angelic conflict. Angels do that. Our role is to go directly to the greatest power and authority over all and beseech God’s throne for strength and help and wisdom. In fact, recognizing the spiritual conflict helps us to make sense of our posture toward earthly powers. We don’t appeal to and put our hope in the powers of this world because there is an infinitely more important spiritual reality at work. Missions work is aimed at the salvation of souls and not the gaining of this world.

The book of Daniel presents many thorny issues, but when we are rooted in right interpretation and right application, we will find many applications for the church today. And we might be surprised how often those applications touch on the church’s present mission to obey the Great Commission.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.