Certainty in an Uncertain World

Mark Finley: If you could choose a single word to describe the mindset of this generation, what would that word be? I would choose the word uncertainty. It appears more people are uncertain about the future than ever before.
Announcer: This is Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message, certainty in an uncertain world. Enjoy, and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay up to date with Hope Lives 365 and Pastor Mark by going to hopelives365.com, and stay with us for a free Bible study offer later in this program. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.
Mark Finley: They're uncertain about whether some senseless terrorist attack or an arrogant hostile nation will suddenly snuff out their lives. They're uncertain about whether we'll suddenly be wiped off the face of the earth by nuclear war, or whether global warming will destroy them first. For millions, this sense of uncertainty is extremely personal. They're uncertain where their next meal's coming from, or where they'll sleep tonight. People are uncertain about their health, their marriages, and their future. Deep within the fabric of their beings, deep down inside, where it really, really counts. They have this sense of angst, this sense of anxiety, this sense that something just is not right in society. Something is not right in our world. They're concerned. They're troubled, deeply troubled. Moral principles that once were taken for granted are being seriously questioned today. The moral foundations of society appear to be crumbling. There is little we can count on and not much that's certain. Many have lost hope in a bright tomorrow and a positive future. Someone has said you can live days without food, hours without water, minutes without air, but no time at all without hope. When we lose hope, dark clouds of despair hang over our heads. The future appears gloomy, and everything about tomorrow seems uncertain. Talk about frightening. Terrorist attacks erupt without warning in the most unexpected places. The Middle East is embroiled in conflict. The world's media is dominated with its scenes of devastation and death. Car bombs, surface-to-air missiles, rocket launchers, drones, and suicide bombers wreck their havoc on innocent people. Cities most of us had never heard of have become commonplace household names as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and then Syria have come on to center stage in Iran. We think about this. You think about the war in Gaza, you think about what's going on in Beirut. Everywhere asking, where is all this leading? A psychologist writing in Newsweek magazine described our involvement in the Middle East as, quote, a step toward Armageddon. He's not the only one who's concerned. Are we in fact on the verge of Earth's last war described in the book of Revelation? What does the future hold? Where are we headed? Is there any place we can find hope? An ancient prophecy over 2,500 years old provides some answers. It reveals a hopeful picture about the future. This prophecy points us from what is to what will be. It paints tomorrow in bright colors. It lifts our spirits from the mud below to the heavens above. We can look forward by looking back. We can find answers to our questions by looking at history. Join me on a journey back through time to an ancient king's bedroom to discover hope for the future of mankind. The Babylonians, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, dominated the lands we know today as Iraq in the Middle East from 605 BC until 539 BC. One night, King Nebuchadnezzar had a terrifying dream. He woke up with an overwhelming sense of horror and doom. In desperation, he called for his royal advisors, the psychics and magicians of Babylon. I had a dream, he told them. It was terrible, but when I woke up, I couldn't remember what I had dreamed. Can you help me? And the magicians said, sure, king, no problem. Just tell us what you dreamed, and we'll tell you what it means. And Nebuchadnezzar said to them, now listen to me carefully. You claim to be psychics, to know all the secrets and understand all mysteries. Now's your chance to prove it. You need to tell me what I dreamed, because if you do, I'll give you great riches and honor. But if you don't, I'm going to chop off your arms and chop off your legs. Next, I'm going to cut off your heads and turn your houses to a pile of rubble. So make up your minds. The wise men, of course, had no idea what the king had dreamed, but one thing they knew for certain, they were in serious trouble. Among the royal advisors was a young Jew named Daniel. So they took him into the royal chambers, and he said, King, if you'll give me some time, I'm going to pray, and God will reveal the dream to me. Nebuchadnezzar wasn't going to miss the only possibility anyone had given him of finding answers that he was desperate to get. So he said, okay, you pray and let me know what happens. Daniel believed in prayer. There may be times in your life when your future is uncertain and when your problems seem overwhelming. Remember, the God who answered Daniel's prayer will hear your prayer as well. God came through in that time, a terrible crisis in Daniel's life. That's that night. God drew near and revealed to Daniel the king's dream and its meaning. When morning came, he went to Nebuchadnezzar and he said, and let's look at it, Daniel chapter 2 and verse 28. Daniel 2 and verse 28. Daniel comes into the king and he says, there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he's made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed were these. Now notice Daniel did not say there might be a God in heaven, or perhaps there's a God in heaven, or it's likely there's a God in heaven. He said there is a God in heaven. Notice the certainty. And what does this God do? He reveals secrets, and he makes known to King Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Daniel goes on, there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets. God has chosen to reveal to you the secrets of the future. He's going to show you not only what'll happen in your own kingdom, Babylon, but the rise and fall of empires, an outline of history to the end of time. Nebuchadnezzar's dream was a revelation, not only to him, but to us as well. It takes us on a journey down the stream of time. It gives us hope regarding the future. It takes us through 2500 years of history and reveals the next event in the great prophetic timetable. It is truly a breathtaking prophecy. So Daniel says to the king in Daniel chapter 2 and verse 31, you, O king, were watching, and behold a great image. This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you, and its form was awesome. Now you can imagine King Nebuchadnezzar saying, Daniel, that's it. That's what I saw in my dream. That's the vision I had of this great image. Daniel goes on, verse 32, Daniel 2. This image's head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of brass, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff from the summer threshing. The wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found, and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This is the dream. This is the dream. And the King Nebuchadnezzar, I'm supposed to said, yes, Daniel, exactly. That is the dream. Now, if you were Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel had just given you an exact description of your dream, what would your next question be? You'd want to know, right? What does it mean? I've heard people say, well, you know, Bible prophecy is just a matter of individual interpretation. One person says it means this, the next person says it means that. It'd be difficult to say that about this prophecy because Daniel explained it in plain terms to King Nebuchadnezzar. God didn't leave it to human imagination or mere guesswork. Here are Daniel's words recorded in Daniel chapter 2 and verse 36. This is the dream. Now we, now who's the we? That's God and Daniel, will tell the interpretation of it before the king. So let's get the dream clearly in our mind. King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. In that dream, this king of Babylon is shown by God to have a dream of a great image. The image's head is of gold, breast and arms of silver, thighs of brass, legs of iron, feet of iron and clay. Then he sees a rock cut out without hands that comes and smashes the image down to pieces, and that rock becomes a mountain that fills the whole earth. The same God that gave the dream to King Nebuchadnezzar interprets that dream. Daniel says, we will tell verse 36 and 37 of Daniel 2. We will tell the interpretation, and here it is from Daniel 2, verse 37.
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Mark Finley: You, O King, are a king of kings. You represent this head of gold. We don't have to guess what the head of gold represents because God, through Daniel, tells us plainly, gold was an excellent symbol for Babylon because Babylon was a lavish empire and a magnificent city. It had more than 200 temples dedicated to pagan deities. The temple to Belmarduk, the chief god of Babylon, was 300 feet high. The walls of this temple were covered with blue glazed tile. Everything inside was overlaid with gold. Someone has calculated there were 18 tons of gold in the altar and throne of Bel-Marduk's temple alone. Do you see why God told Nebuchadnezzar, you are this head of gold? Babylon was a well-fortified city. It was surrounded by two walls that were 60 feet high. That's about as high as a six-story building. The walls were wide enough for two chariots to race side by side. The historian Herodotus describes the size Babylon, the size of Babylon as 10 miles in circumference. If you hiked around the city, you had to walk 10 miles. By way of comparison, Rome was 6 miles around and Athens was only 4. The most important entrance into this city was via the Ishtar Gate. This gate has been reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, and it's truly amazing. When Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon from battle with his victorious soldiers, he marked through this, marched through this gate and down a broad avenue called Procession Way that was lined on both sides with images of dragons and lions with eagles' wings. The river Euphrates flowed through the center of the city, giving it a constant fresh water supply. Babylon was home to the famous hanging gardens that were deemed as one of the seven wonders of the world. These magnificently terraced gardens were graced with plants, shrubs, flowers, and trees from throughout the Middle East. On each side of the garden, tree branches and vines hung down over the wall's edges, giving the appearance of a serene natural setting. The garden may well have been a gift from Nebuchadnezzar to his Lebanese wife. She missed the mountains and the cedars of Lebanon, so the king built the terrace gardens in his desert capital as a gift of love, a reminder of her distant homeland. Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4, verse 30 says, is not this great Babylon that I have built for a royal dwelling of my mighty power and the honor of my majesty? He said that, of course, in pride and arrogance. Nebuchadnezzar was filled with pride. He had a super ego. Archaeologists excavating the city have uncovered thousands of mud bricks with Nebuchadnezzar's name stamped on them. It appears that the egotistical monarch wanted the world never to forget his legacy. So, head of gold represents Babylon, but the Bible then says that after you, Nebuchadnezzar, after your empire, we're looking here at Daniel, second chapter, verse 39. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours, then another third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. The image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream does have this head of gold representing Babylon, but the image was not all of gold. The head of gold was followed by the chest and arms of silver. To the king's absolute amazement, Daniel explained that Babylon would be destroyed, and another nation would rise to world dominance, the nation of the Medes and Persians. The Medes and Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC. Babylon ruled the then known world from 605 BC, that's before Christ, to 539 BC. Medo-Persia ruled from 539 to 331 BC, so the chest and arms of silver represent the second empire, the one that would overthrow Babylon, namely Medo-Persia. How did Babylon fall to Medo-Persia? The fifth chapter of the book of Daniel records that King Belshazzar, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, throws this wild party as a tribute to Babylonians' guards. The wine flowed, the music played, and the long-robed immoral Babylonian men danced with finely gowned, perfumed, seductive Babylonian women. As they danced, celebrating the supremacy of Babylonians' gods, committing acts of licentiousness and immorality in a drunken stupor, God said, Babylon, it's enough. That night, a bloodless hand wrote on the wall, many, many tekel you farson. God has numbered your kingdom and finished it. Your weight in the balances and found wanting. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. That very night, Babylon fell exactly as Bible prophecy predicted. Who was the Persian general that led his armies against Babylon? God identified him as Cyrus, the Persian general who'd attacked Babylon. Do you know that he was named before he was born? This is remarkable. This prophecy is recorded in the book of Isaiah, chapter 45, verse 1. Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before him and loose the armor of kings, to open before him the double doors so the gates will not be shut. Cyrus was God's anointed, chosen to attack Babylon and overthrow it. The book of Isaiah was written around 680 BC. The attack on Babylon would come in 539, so around 140 years in advance, God revealed the name of the man that would conquer Babylon. It's amazing. The prophecy says God would strip kings of their armor. Then he would open doors before Cyrus, and that the gates would not be shut. Does history confirm the accuracy of this? Remember that the river Euphrates flowed through the center of Babylon. Inner walls along the river protected the city. The Persians dug numerous channels upstream and spread the river out over the plains. The water level dropped. Cyrus marched his troops down the riverbed under the walls. They came up in the center of the city because the Babylonians were so absorbed in their drunken feast, the river gates were left open and unguarded, and in one night Babylon fell. The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient record uncovered by the archaeologist, inscribed in baked clay that was found in the ruins of Babylon. It confirms that Cyrus was the Persian ruler who attacked Babylon, as predicted by Isaiah's prophecy. It is an amazing record that from Babylon itself testifying to the fulfillment of prophecy. Head of gold, Babylon. Breast and arms of silver, Medo-Persia. Then we have the thighs of brass. Daniel 2, verse 39 says that after the Medes and Persians, a third kingdom of bronze would dominate this world's nations. Babylon, the head of gold, would be followed by Medo-Persia. Then came Greece, symbolized by the thighs of brass. Why did God choose bronze to represent Greece? It may be because the Greek armies often wore bronze helmets and bronze armor. Bronze was a fitting symbol for Greece, just as gold was a fitting symbol for Babylon. The Macedonian Greek general Alexander the Great overthrew the Medes and Persians in 331 BC. Alexander wanted to unite the world through the Greek culture and language and philosophy. A brilliant military strategist, ruthless warrior, and relentless fighter, Alexander himself often led his soldiers into combat. By the time he was 33 years old, the Greek Empire was a dominant world power. Nation after nation fell before its attacks. One historian states that Alexander lamented because there were no more worlds to conquer. History was following prophecy like a blueprint. What we've discovered thus far is that Daniel's prophecy has incredible accuracy. The Roman Empire overthrew the Greeks in 168 BC, and they ruled hundreds of years to 476 AD. The Bible predicted that this fourth kingdom would be strong as iron. Its imperial army dominated Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Romans united their empire with a system of Roman roads, the worship of Roman gods, Roman culture, Roman governors, and a strong, ruthless Roman military that immediately suppressed all opposition. Rome ruled with an iron fist. Edward Gibbons, in his world-renowned A Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, said the images of gold, silver, or brass that might serve to represent the nations and their kings were successfully broken by the iron monarchy of Rome. The historian uses the exact language of prophecy, but what does prophecy reveal would take place after Babylon, the head of gold, Persia, the chest and arms of silver, Greece, the thighs of brass, and Rome, the legs of iron? God predicted something else. He said after the legs of iron, there will be toes of iron and clay, and just as iron and clay do not mix, so the empires would never unite fully again. This is incredibly amazing. This part of the prophecy is just incredible. It says the Roman Empire would crumble from 351 to 476 AD. It exactly happened. The barbarian tribes came down from the north and attacked. But it says Daniel adds that after Rome was divided, there would be attempts through intermarriage to reunite the empire. Here are the words of the prophet. They'll mingle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere one to another, just as iron does not mix with clay. This refers to the way that the emperors and kings would intermarry. One king would marry off his son to a princess from another country. They were trying to bring the old empire together again. For example, Napoleon divorced his wife Josephine, married Louise of Austria in an attempt through intermarriage to unite all Europe through the Napoleonic line and the Habsburg line. You know, in the Fredericksburg Castle in Denmark, there is a courtyard, and in that courtyard there is the what they call the family tree of Europe, showing how the kings and queens of Europe, in their relationship through intermarriage, tried to unite all Europe. Bible prophecy is fulfilled before our eyes, but the Bible says that as these nations tried to unite and attempted to unite, that through intermarriage, that they would not be able to unite Europe again, that the toes of iron and clay that would never mingle. Think about military geniuses that tried to unite Europe. Babylon, Meda, Persia, Greece, Rome fell. Then the ten toes tried to, they would try to unite through intermarriage, but succeeding that, you take people like Charlemagne wanted to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire. You take Charles V, wanted to bring all Europe together. Or think of Hitler, who wanted to unite the Empire, or Mussolini, who wanted to unite the Empire. And those attempts have fallen. In fact, when Napoleon was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, Napoleon said this, God Almighty is too much for me. Down through history, for 2500 years, prophecy has been fulfilled. Prophecy and history have united, and history has followed that prophecy like a blueprint. But yet, there is one aspect left. The Bible says that there would be a rock cut out without hands that would smash the empires of this world down, and that Christ's kingdom would be established. Look, in the days of these kings, that in the days of divided Europe, Daniel 2, verse 44, the kingdom of heaven will be set up, and God will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. In as much as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, that it broke in pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure. What does the rock cut out without hands represent? It represents the kingdom of God that will be established. Babylon rose and fell. Medo-Persia rose and fell. Greece rose and fell. Rome rose and fell. We are living, my friend, right down in the toenails of that image.
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Mark Finley: One day Jesus will come. One day he'll stream down the course of the sky. One day sickness and suffering and sin will be over. One day there'll be no more war, no more worry, no more want. One day there'll be no more disease, no more disaster, no more death. One day there'll be no more clouds of sorrow and disappointment and devastation and discouragement. One day there'll be no more night because we'll see his face and live with him forever. There is hope on the horizon. The rock cut out without hands represents Jesus Christ, the rock of ages. It represents Jesus, the one who will come again to take us home. The dream is certain. The interpretation thereof is sure. Friend of mine, would you like to say today, Lord, I want to be ready when you come again. Lord, I know that there is hope for this world. I know there is hope on the horizon. I know in times of uncertainty, Bible prophecy indeed is certain. Let's pray together, my friend, and open your heart as I pray that the Spirit of God will touch you, that you'll make an eternal decision to be ready when Jesus comes. Father in heaven, we're not living in the days of Babylon, the days of Medo-Persia, Greece, or Rome. We're living right down at the end of time, right down before Jesus comes again, and I pray you that you'd help us to be ready. Open our hearts to receive your love and your grace and your power. Change us, I pray, and give us hope. In Christ's name, amen.