A Secret Revealed
Gordon J. Keddie
Daniel 2:17-23 (NKJV)
17 Then Daniel went to his house, and made the decision known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions,
18 that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven concerning this secret, so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
19 Then the secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. So Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
20 Daniel answered and said: "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, For wisdom and might are His.
21 And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding.
22 He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, And light dwells with Him.
23 "I thank You and praise You, O God of my fathers; You have given me wisdom and might, And have now made known to me what we asked of You, For You have made known to us the king's demand."
There are times in life when no amount of thinking will give us the answers we seek. Will I get the job? Will that sweet girl marry me? Will I recover from this illness? Such a time dawned in teenage Daniel’s life, and the question was a matter of life or death. There was no way he could think his way out of the problem. The problem was King Nebuchadnezzar’s bad dreams, which caused ‘his spirit’ to be ‘so troubled that sleep left him’ (2:1). He wanted to know what the dreams meant, but his ‘wise men’ could not come up with an answer. This infuriated him and, like the Babylonian despot he was, he decided to kill off all his not-so-wise ‘wise men’, which meant that his teenage Hebrew trainees – Daniel and his companions – also faced an untimely end. With this sentence of death hanging over them, Daniel went to Nebuchadnezzar, asked for time, and promised to ‘tell the King the interpretation’ (vv.14-16).
What he did then provides us with practical principles to apply in all the crises of life, great and small, seemingly solvable or clearly insuperable.
Practical Principle #1: Go to God for answers (v.17-19)
Daniel called for a prayer meeting. It looks like he asked the king for time so that he and his fellow believers could go to their heavenly Father in corporate prayer. He evidently thought that meeting for prayer had priority over his own private prayer. Christians ought to feel that way about their church’s prayer meeting: ‘The LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob’ (Psalm 87:2). Much as the Lord loves to see us one by one in the secret place of prayer (Matt 6:6), He says He loves ‘more’ our praying together as a church. Yet the ‘prayer meeting’ is a Cinderella in most church’s lives; if it exists at all, it is a faithful few that commit to it. Daniel is calling us to view the prayer meeting as the furnace room of the church, where the ‘prayers of the saints’ rise as a sweet incense before God (Rev 8:4). And should we not be found praying together while the sun still shines, before dark days come? God answered the young men’s prayer and revealed the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams. Will not God also answer our prayers when we come together to the throne of His grace (Heb 4:16)?
Practical principle 2: Praise the Lord as you go (v19-23)
Having received God’s answer, ‘Daniel blessed the God of heaven’ (v.19 – emphasis added). He gives us a beautiful example of God’s watchword for our trials; ‘Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth’ (Ps 46:10). These godly young men have a spiritual maturity that is manifestly lacking in many grown-up believers in our day. Daniel’s prayer is imbued with a humble composure that rests in a holy confidence in the truth that God – and not the high and mighty king of Babylon – is sovereign in His ‘wisdom and might’ (v.20). He ‘removes … and raises up’ rulers and politicians (v.21). He ‘reveals deep and secret things’ and knows ‘what is in the darkness’ as the One in whom ‘light dwells’ (v.22). If we pray in Daniel’s vein, we will also thank and praise the Lord with Daniel’s exaltation. Like Daniel we still live in the age of Psalms 2 and 110, but we also live in the age of the risen and exalted Christ – the ‘Son’ of Psalm 2:7 and 12 whom our rulers must ‘kiss’ if they are not to perish, and David’s ‘Lord’ of Psalm 110:1 and 5 who will ‘execute kings’ in the day of God’s wrath. This ought to give us a certain peace as we view the political world around us. The ‘kings of the earth’ can conspire all they like, but Christ will bring them down sooner or later – perhaps before our very eyes. Christian, take heart, and make the ‘prayer meeting’ a priority in your church life.
From: Gordon J. Keddie Prayers of the Bible Crown & Covenant (2017) pp.376-377