Daniel 8 • A Real Goat Curse

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

Let me ask that you would look in your bibles at Daniel chapter 8, Daniel chapter 8.
I've wondered how to introduce this to you.
So here we go.
You ready?
So a ram and a goat get in a fight.
[Laughter]
Not in a bar; in the Bible.
[Laughter]
And the ram has two horns.
The goat has one horn; he's a unigoat.
[Laughter]
And the goat beats up the ram, but its horn gets broken and is replaced by four horns that are eclipsed by one horn that decimates God's people and desecrates God's temple and then is itself broken but not by a human hand.
Now, what does that mean?
We don't have to guess, because the angel Gabriel comes to Daniel who has had this vision and explains it to him.
Let's stand and we'll read together as the angel Gabriel is explaining to Daniel what his vision means.
Daniel 8 and we'll start at verse 20 as Gabriel is explaining.
"'As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia.
And the goat is the king of Greece.
And the great horn between his eyes is the first king.
As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power.
And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall rise.
His power shall be great, but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints.
By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great.
Without warning he shall destroy many.
And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken, but by no human hand.
The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.'
And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for days.
Then I rose and went about the king's business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it."
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, if even the prophet who had the vision says, "I did not understand it," then we recognize the challenge before us.
But we know that every promise, every verse, every line, converges in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That what You are doing from beginning to end for Him who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, is You are making known Your nature, Your grace, Your provision for Your people, even in a real world of hard things and real hurts.
So grant us vision of the Savior and the God who sent Him, that we might have strength for today and hope for tomorrow.
This we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
Brian Nichols had already killed four people when he broke into the apartment of Ashley Smith, his intention to take her hostage, and when the word got out and the police gathered around the apartment, he would kill as many as he could before taking his own life.
That was the plan.
Ashley Smith, who was in the apartment, was having her own struggles with crystal meth.
Addicted, she had sought to break the habit, had turned different directions and had even turned to Rick Warren, the pastor's book, "The Purpose Driven Life."
It was lying out.
And as she was scared and frightened, to calm her down a little bit, Brian said to her, "You can read your book."
And so she began to read out loud the chapter on spiritual gifts that claims from Scripture that every person, regardless of who they are, have gifts from God to fulfill His purposes.
Brian said to her, "Read that paragraph again."
She read the paragraph again that said, "Every person has spiritual gifts designed by God to fulfill His purposes."
And then she said to him, "What do you think is the purpose of your spiritual gifts?"
And he said, the one who had already murdered four, "I think my purpose is to talk to people about God."
Do you mind my saying he's not exactly a credible witness?
But in a remarkable sense, this man who had no right to say it, no claim upon that truth that God has given us gifts for the purposes of proclaiming Himself to others, was actually speaking truth:  that God had called him to a moment, even there, that God had called Ashley to a moment, even there, for purposes that God Himself would know and despite the meth habit and the murderous past, each could still have a purpose in the plan of God.
If that sounds impossible, then you have to only read Daniel chapter 8 to remember again a goat has a purpose in the grand scheme.
And the goat, we will discover, is a murderous, awful person.
And, yet, God is saying to His people through all ages, "If I could use even this one," then for the messed up and the fallen and the frail, for the people whose children have fallen, for the people who have been forgotten, for the people who are ill, for the people who are sinful, God can still say, "I can use you."
There is still a purpose for every person in the plan of God.
Now, why do we doubt that?
We doubt it because we look around and we see what is so obvious to us that was also evil--, was also obvious to Daniel.
And that is:  But, Lord, evil holds slay.
How can You say there is purpose unfolding and that there's purpose for everybody when we actually see that evil is having such a great day?
I mean, it was plain to Daniel.
His people have been in captivity for 70 years.
And the reason they are in captivity is because they rebelled against God; they turned to idolatry.
In their lives, evil is certainly ruling.
And evil doesn't just have its day in the life of the people of Israel.
It has had and will have its day for many days to come.
Chapter 7 reminded us of the rule of Babylon.
Remember, the lion with eagle's wings that would have such power upon the earth.
And now between this account, we learn that there is a ram that has two horns that will be the kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians.
And they will have their day of great cruelty and evil.
And they will be supplanted by the goat, which represents Greece.
And Alexander the Great who will conquer the world before he's age 33 with such great speed will himself be supplanted by the four generals who divide up his empire after he is gone.
And they have their day, until the four generals are replaced by the most evil enemy that Israel will ever know until the coming of Christ:  Antiochus Epiphanes whose murder and torture is almost unspeakable even in our day and age.
Evil has its day and it clearly unfolds even in the pages of Scripture.
And that's just the grand scheme.
So that we will know that God is speaking truth when He says, "I know evil will have its day," he even begins to focus in with laser precision on what this prophecy is saying will happen in the day of the great evil of Antiochus Epiphanes.
Verse 10 that I did not read to you but it explains some of the later verses explains of this horn that supplants the four:  "It grew great, even to the host of heaven.
And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them."
There would be this great force of evil that would come, this Antiochus Epiphanes, and he would even displace the prince of the host, which refers to the high priest of Israel.
And he would throw down the stars and trample on them.
Do you remember that the Bible when it talks about the promise that was given to Abraham so many centuries before?
God said to Abraham, "Your seed, your children will be as the," what?
As the stars of the heavens.
And now we are told the stars, which are also called later in the same chapter the saints of God, the people of God, they are going to be decimated and trampled upon.
God saw it happening centuries earlier, and that's not the end of it.
Verse 11, "It," that is the horn, "became great, even as great as the Prince of host."
What's the evidence of that, the prince of host, the reference to the great high priest of Israel?
He was murdered by Antiochus Epiphanes.
"And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him."
Antiochus stopped, after centuries of them going forward, the sacrifices in the temple of Israel.
No more sacrifices unto Jehovah.
"And the place of his sanctuary was overthrown."
Verse 12, "And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offerings because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act with such power."
Antiochus Epiphanes is embarrassed.
He goes down to Egypt and is defeated.
And Israel stands on the sidelines.
He's embarrassed by that, so in vengeance, coming back from his defeat in Egypt, he goes through Israel, not only killing one in every ten people but declaring that if anyone gives to their child the mark of the Jews, circumcision, that person shall be tortured and crucified, which he actually did to the mothers of the boys of the Jews.
He stopped the sacrifices.
He took the scrolls of the law, you see, and threw truth to the ground.
He tore them up like confetti and spread it over the temple floor and then put a pig upon the altar, the abomination of desolation, and then overthrew the purposes of the temple by putting in the place of the altar a statue of Zeus to be worshipped.
It was awful.
And in detail, it is described by God years and years and years before it happens.
It happens with such specificity, the nations as they will rule in order, the generals who will come and go, the great king he will displace, the throwing of the law on the floor, the pig on the altar:  So much specificity happens centuries before the events that the skeptics say, "This can't possibly be true.
I mean, if this really were a prophecy, the Bible would be supernatural."
[Laughter]
Yup.
[Laughter]
But even we can forget how supernatural that is.
For us to recognize what God is promising to such level of detail is not like "Back to the Future" predicting the Cubs taking the World Series a little bit later:  It's like Columbus predicting the Cubs would win the World Series and being right.
[Laughter]
God is saying, "It's a mess, but even though evil has its day, I know the way of things."
And because we know that God knows the way, there is hope for us.
You see, what we can do at times, we look, take a book like Daniel, and we look at the far stretch to the future horizon.
We begin to think, "That's great; that's wonderful, but it's got nothing to do with me."
And what God is doing when He actually takes a little step back and says, "I want you to recognize I know down to the infinite detail what is going on," is He's saying there is a purpose in every event and there's a purpose in every person.
Did you find it odd?
I don't know if you read this in the week between, verse 1 actually has Daniel taking a step back.
Verse 1 of Daniel chapter 8 says, "In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel."
Belshazzar is somebody who's already off the scene.
Remember, he was the king with the writing on the wall.
He's already dead and gone.
He's been superseded by Darius and Cyrus.
But it's as though Daniel says, "We need to go back a little bit.
This is the vision I had back then about things that are happening now and will happen in the future."
This is back to the future, as though Daniel was saying, "You need to know that God has known all along what was going to be happen.
And this vision I had precedes what is happening right now and it will go far forward," so that you will trust tomorrow because you know God knows today down to the nth detail.
What was happening in the apartment of Ashley Smith with Brian Nichols was somewhat in microcosm what is happening on the world's stage as Daniel is unfolding it.
What began to happen in that apartment as Ashley was reading, as she began to believe that despite her knowledge of the great God, there was purpose in the details of her life right in that moment.
She wrote after the occasion the things that began to unfold.
Brian Nichols, in order to relax before killing cops, probably killing Ashley and killing himself, asked her if she had anything to make him relax.
She said, "I've got some drugs."
She said later, "I don't know why I told him that.
I was trying to get off the meth."
But she said the words and then said later, "It had killed my husband already.
It was an idol in my life that I had started to worship.
It rotted my teeth.
It thinned my hair.
It made me give away custody of the child that I loved more than anything in this world.
I lost so much.
I lost my family.
I lost myself.
And here I was in the moment of crisis turning back to it.
And I suddenly recognized that was my god."
And so she shared it with Brian Nichols, but she herself did not partake.
She began to explain why that made such a difference in her heart to recognize maybe in this moment God was speaking to her.
She said, "For a long time, I thought God doesn't want anything to do with drug addicts, that He's just not big enough to handle addiction."
But she began to say, "If Brian Nichols was here at the appointment of God to make me make a decision about whether I would take drugs at this moment, then God had put him into my life, into the apartment with a purpose."
And she began to ask him, "Why did you pick my apartment?
Why are you here?"
And then he said, "Maybe you're my angel sent from God to make me stop."
Do you see the irony of that?
She's thinking the murderer is in her apartment as a purpose of God to stop her from doing drugs, and he's thinking he's in her apartment because God has sent her to stop him from murdering people.
Neither deserves to be an agent of God, but both think the other is there at God's hand.
And both are being used despite undeservedness, despite disqualification.
Both are being used by God for the purposes of eternity in the life of the other.
It's God reminding us that He does pay attention to the details.
Ashley said, "I believed that it was God's purpose for me to help Brian turn himself in.
And I also believed God had a purpose for him coming into my life and changing my life too.
If he had not come into my house that night and had a gun and me to be faced with a decision whether I would use drugs or not, I don't know if I ever would have stopped.
God saved me by Brian Nichols, and God saved him from hurting other people by me."
There was a plan for each, and the plan wasn't over.
Ashley would write later, "I've had a lot of people come up to me and say, even if they don't have an addiction to drugs or something like that, 'You've helped me realize that with all the junk that's in my life I need God to guide me and to believe again that He can use me.'"
You and I need to remember that:  that despite all of the junk, all the wrong, all the things that dishonor God that have hurt us, that God can say, "But I have not abandoned you.
I can still use you.
The purposes are greater than you know.
I can use goats for glory.
I can use the people who have messed up so terribly and still fit them into an eternal scheme and eternal plan far beyond their own predicting, far beyond their own knowledge, because, after all, I am God."
And we believe Him, because it's not sugarcoated.
He says, "Evil may have its day.
It is a fallen world.
It is a broken world.
People do mess up.
You mess up."
He's not denying any of that.
What He is saying is, "Supernaturally, I rise above that, and in the grand scheme, I know the details and I know the individuals and I even know what's going to happen in particular events and I can use it all for a glory and a purpose greater than you can know."
It's the great affirmation of the scriptures that not only shall evil have its day, but God has the final say.
And that final say unfolds here as well in remarkable ways as God looking at the evil says, "The reason you can trust Me is I know its measure and I also know its end."
The measure of the evil that God is demonstrating in this prophecy that is happening hundreds of years before the events themselves culminate are first in just what He says will happen in a measured way.
Israel will not rise to glory again, not the same way.
But this Alexander, this king of Greece who rises with such power so quickly, he will be broken.
He will only have, we know, 33 years before he's gone.
And then the ultimate horn that replaces his general, the power source that comes after him, we are told specifically here how long his evil shall be.
I read to you verse 26, the vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true.
If you hadn't read the earlier part of the chapter, you won't know what that's about.
What evenings and mornings?
If you will look back in verse 14, you'll see.
Gabriel speaking in the vision says, "'For 2,300 evenings and mornings.
Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful righteous state.'"
Two thousand three hundred mornings and evenings the evil horn, the horn that's described as having a bold face and understands riddle will hold sway, every phrase to be fulfilled.
Bold face:  Antiochus Epiphanes distributes coins in the time of his realm.
They have his face on one side.
On the other side, they have his title, Antiochus Epiphanes, but with another word:  Antiochus Theos Epiphanes, Antiochus Theos, God, Epiphanes, made manifest.
He speaks with a bold face:  I am equal to any god, as just is said here.
He claimed himself equal to the high priest of Israel, in fact, murdered the high priest of Israel.
He speaks with a bold face.
He understands riddles.
It's deep sarcasm, even coming from God, as Antiochus Epiphanes believed that he could discern the future, believed that he could by Eastern mysticism, that he would also engage in, begin to discover things greater than God Himself knew.
But, remember, he would himself only have 2,300 days.
Do you know why?
Because from the day that he murdered the high priest until the day that he gets sick and dies is 2,300 days, a little over six years, that he had sway over the temple.
And God had it all measured centuries before.
And when God says that that horn shall ultimately be destroyed but not by human hand, did you catch that?
It's the end of verse 25.
"Without warning he shall destroy many.
And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken, but by no human hand."
It's not just a statement of evil's measure but of evil's end.
Nebuchadnezzar would rise and fall.
Belshazzar will rise and fall.
Darius will rise and fall.
Cyrus will rise and fall.
The Medes and Persians will rise and fall.
Greece, through first Alexander and then through the generals, rise and fall.
And now comes Antiochus Epiphanes who will be broken but the first one not by military might:  by no human hand.
The one who has put a pig on the altar, the one who's put Zeus in the temple:  Do you know what happens to him?
He falls off his chariot.
He is broken.
He has so many bro--, bones broken inside of him that the wounds began to fester.
He is infested with maggots.
And the stench becomes so terrible that his own troops do not want to be around him anymore.
He is broken but by no human hand, as God is reminding us:  Evil has its measure and God knows its end.
And He can bring it about as He knows is right and best.
Now, if you knew all that, that God was saying, "I'll take care of things; evil may have its day, but I know its measure and I know its end, " what would be your response to all of that if you were Daniel?
Wouldn't you be kind of happy?
Wouldn't you kind of go, "Oh, this is good news"?
Except you begin to recognize he's talking about a prophecy that is centuries into the future, which means there's a long time of hurt before evil will have its end.
Maybe that explains verse 27.
"And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days.
Then I rose and went about the king's business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it."
God, why don't You just fix it right now?
God, why do we have to wait so long?
What about all the suffering in the meantime?
"I was appalled at what the vision is now truly revealing."
And what Daniel is doing for us more than just kind of showing details of history unfolding down the line:  He's actually doing something much more important in terms of the gospel message that is unfolding to God's people.
He is reminding us of the big lie that's too easy to believe and is sometimes preached in our own age.
And the big lie is that big faith will mean no problems.
Does Daniel have big faith?
Sure, he does.
He's been faithful in action.
He has such faith that he sees centuries of history unfolding.
And, yet, you begin to see that it is a broken, fallen world that even he must exist through and his people must exist through, and there are awful things to face.
And what he is saying and reminding us:  Big faith does not mean no problems.
Do not buy that trash that says if you're just faithful enough you will not face evil or hardship in a fallen world.
It is a world in which we are broken, in which sin rules for a time.
It's not the final chapter.
But we live by faith in this world that is broken and that has problems.
In fact, we only survive in this world by the faith that allows us to see the context of the problems and that is not their erasure until the day of God's choosing.
Why does it make a difference?
Because we do face hard things, even as Daniel had to face hard things, and we have to face it with true faith.
I think of the testimony of Tony Snow.
Some of you may remember that name.
He was the Press Secretary under George W. Bush.
Tony Snow, a Christian, who had terminal cancer while George W. Bush was still in office.
And he died at age 53, leaving three children.
But while he had the national stage, he wrote profoundly of what Christians believe about the nature of their God in a fallen world.
He said, "We want lives of simple, predictable ease, smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, but God likes to go off road.
He provokes us with twists and turns.
He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension.
And, yet, they do not deny Him.
When a doctor says, 'It's cancer,' the natural reaction is to turn to God and ask Him to be a cosmic Santa Claus.
'Dear God, make it all go away.
Make everything simple.'
But another voice whispers:  'You have been called.
There is purpose even in this.'
Your quandary draws you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter and is dragged into insignificance the empty matters that occupy our normal time.
The moment you enter the valley of the shadow of death, things change.
You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft.
The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, epiphanies where we see God.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us, that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others:  the others in this fallen world, the others facing the hopelessness that we don't have to face because we know of a God who claims with truth, 'Evil has its day, but it will not hold sway.
I have the final say,' says God.
And for that reason, we take hope and we endure and we share the hope with people who must endure an earthly life until a heavenly reality.
And for that reason, we still have purpose."
Tony Snow said, "God doesn't promise us tomorrow:  He promises us eternity filled with life and love beyond anything we can comprehend."
And that promise is for those in the throes of sickness, so that the rest of us looking at them can experience the timeless truths that we must also weather when we face future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us choose:  Do you believe or do you not?
That's what the trial always does, doesn't it?
It makes us question, even ourselves:  Do you believe or do you not?
"No matter where we are, no matter what we do," writes Snow, "no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us who believe each and every day lies in the same impregnable place:  We each lie in the hollow of the hand of God for eternity."
Remarkable that when earth's heartaches are stripping away a temporary reality, as hard as it may be, as evil as it may be, as awful as it may be, that what you are left with is to look at the reality of eternity.
And that reality of eternity is so dear and so precious and the God who provides it so loving that our hearts are strengthened and made able to endure the world that is hard, that is evil, that is fallen for the moment.
What Daniel is reminding us:  Yes, there is a big scheme, yes, there is a whole history unfolding, and you need to know that, but you need to know God is the God of the details too.
And He enters into our reality, and no one and nothing is without purpose in the plan of God as we truly believe we have that purpose, that we are not random goats, that somehow God is using each and every one of us for the ministry of those around us in ways that are beyond our fathoming but right within His plan.
And we remember that when we deny the lie that says big faith means no problems.
But at the very same moment, what Daniel is telling us when he not only gets sick but when he then gets up to do the Lord's business is he's reminding us that at the very same moment that we deny that big faith that says there are no problems, we deny that big problems erase all faith.
Rather, the tears of our trials are offren the--, are often the watering of faith to drive down its roots deep, so that it can flourish in our hearts and the hearts of those that we love and the hearts of those that God loves around us.
Over and over again, that is the experience of God's people when we recognize what God is actually doing is using the trial to deepen faith, in my heart, in others' hearts, for the world, that all of us must face where evil has its day but not final sway.
You know the name Brit Hume, news anchor for FOX News for a number of years.
You may not know that he became a believer, seriously a believer, during his time at FOX News and at the same time faced the greatest challenge of his life.
Challenges sometimes we think will drive people away from faith.
It's not usually how it happens for those in whom God has planted purpose.
James MacDonald, much more experienced pastor than I, said at a conference I was at one time, he said, "You know, he said in the decades that I have ministered to people, when God brings someone to faith, there is a common denominator."
You think, we'll how could that be?
People come for so many different reasons.
He said here's what happens.
He said, "In all my years of being a pastor, this is what happens when people come to faith.
They say this:  'I've just gone along and life was easy and I was on a smooth path.
And then suddenly this big rock came and fell on me.'"
He said, "That's always the story.
And you would think that would make people say, 'Then I don't want God or need it.'
Instead, what they begin to say is, 'Then I need God.'"
And some of you know precisely what I'm talking about.
The big rock has fallen on you.
It may be fear.
It may be addiction.
It may be family undone.
But life was just going, and suddenly this big rock fell on you.
And what you must recognize is if there is purpose in your life and God's love for you is still intact, God is not wanting to make you run away:  God is wanting to make you run to Him.
For bit--, Brit Hume, the rock was the suicide of his son, Sandy.
In an interview on C-SPAN, he explains.
He said, "I grew up in Washington.
I went to St. Albans School 9 years.
I--, it was a church school.
I was baptized.
I was confirmed.
But I was a nominal Christian all of those years.
Suddenly, this unspeakable tragedy hits.
And at a moment like that, you find out what you really believe.
And the one thing I recognized almost instantly was that I believed in God.
And I believed that God would come to my rescue.
I had to remember, and I said to people, it was kind of half in jest, that there was truth that I believed that God would come to my rescue."
He said, "I kept believing that someday my phone would ring and I would pick it up and God would be on the other end.
And He would say, 'Brit, this is why this happened.'
But," he said, "that phone call never came.
It was so undeserved for Sandy, for me, for everyone in our family.
And I wanted explanation.
I didn't get it exactly.
But somewhere in the middle of all of that, I felt closer to God and closer to Christ than I'd ever felt in my life.
It was paradoxical," he said.
"I was denied so much.
But what I had believed just a little bit became so much more dear.
I became closer to Christ than ever before.
When all that seems to matter gets stripped away, God matters most.
The empty gets revealed and gives way to the real."
The Lord did something special for Brit Hume.
He wrote about it.
He never got the phone call, not from God.
Instead, he said he got letters, prayer cards, notes of encouragement, 973 of them.
And he wrote later, "It was like a miracle."
He said, "I mean, I just felt so buoyed up, so supported, so loved.
And even though we had suffered so much, with 973 letters I just said, 'Thank You, God, for being in my life.'"
Some of you think you have suffered a lot.
And you don't have 973 letters.
But you do have 66, book after book after book where God from eternity, from heaven, and from His heart says, "You are important to Me, and I sent My Son for you.
And I'm not blind to the details.
I know them.
And I still have a purpose for you:  to love you and to have you share that love with others so that you might be with me for eternity and they would be too."
God calls you to a purpose, even in the hard things, because He knows evil's measure and He knows its end.
And He has called you and me to tell the world that through Jesus Christ.

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