Christ the King

Introduction

Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday to conclude our church calendar year. There’s a special providence for Christians in America who use the church calendar as well. Every couple years, our attention is captured by a major election cycle in early November, then we experience the grace of being recalibrated by this intentional focus on our true King. Whether we’re happy or not with election results, we have the opportunity to put worldly politics in proper perspective and to rekindle our hope in Christ’s eternal rule.

Let’s uncover what God might be saying to us today through Scripture. We are going to spend our time today in Daniel 7, and we’re not going to limit ourselves to the good stuff like thrones and kingdoms, while skipping the weird bits about beasts and horns. We’re going to roll up our spiritual sleeves and dig into the surrounding context so we can grasp some of what Daniel wanted his readers to grasp. We’re going to walk through three things in Daniel’s vision, then close with some practical applications. The three things we’ll see in Daniel 7 are:

The Vision’s Frightening Setting

Literary Context

The small section of Daniel’s vision we heard read earlier is nestled between a longer apocalyptic vision of animals and horns, followed by an angelic interpretation of that vision. First, four horrifying beasts come from a tempestuous sea (vv 2-8): Daniel is combining symbols of unrestrainable violence with a symbol of chaos and disorder. The first beasts to appear are compared to huge predatory animals. In his book Revelation for the Rest of Us, Scot McKnight suggests that where Revelation re-uses this same beastly imagery, “wild things” may be a better translation. I hear that and think of Maurice Sendak, so in my brain “monsters” may be a better fit.

One of these wild things looks like a bear, another a lion, and the next a leopard (some of them also have wings). However, the fourth of those wild things is shrouded in mystery. Daniel gives it no animal comparison; it is rather “terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong” with “great iron teeth” and “different from all the beasts that preceded it” (v7). It’s like a horror movie where someone is surrounded by monsters, but then something appears in the shadows and you can’t see what it is but it’s so big and so bad that all the other monsters are afraid of it too. It is covered in horns (10) but another horn appears greater than its fellows. This reads like a Russian nesting doll of terror: each beast gives way to a worse beast, and then you open the doll and discover a set of terrifying horns that give way to a worse horn. In the interpretation of the dream (v21), we learn that the final horn “made war with the holy ones and was prevailing over them.” At that moment, Daniel’s readers would’ve said, “Whoa, hang on, aren’t you supposed to tell us that God defeats the horn and it doesn’t prevail against God’s people?” Unfortunately, things get worse before they get better. I so appreciated Deacon Lisa’s sermon last week, wrestling with the reality that Jesus doesn’t always rescue us immediately; he walks with us in our suffering when things have to get worse.

What do the beasts represent, however? Dan 7.15 says “as for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth.” The four beasts represent four kingdoms or empires that rule on the earth. They’re described with the images of violence and death and cruelty. This surrounding vision is full of the stuff of nightmares!

Cultural Context

Let’s dig a little deeper and ask how this whole vision would’ve landed for Daniel and his readers.

Daniel was actually living in a series of beastly empires. The people of God had been in captivity for years. The northern kingdom (Israel) had fallen to Assyria 150 years before Daniel. Now recently, Babylon had displaced Assyria and conquered the southern kingdom of Judah, carrying young Daniel captive to Babylon. Daniel 7.1 locates this vision in Belshazzar’s reign, but back in chapter 5, Daniel interpreted the handwriting on the wall, predicting that Babylon would be overrun by the Medo-Persian empire. Then in ch6, Daniel has a wild-animal-themed run-in with that new empire. It seems to me that since Daniel had lived through and foreseen a series of monstrous empires set against God’s people, a vision where a series of monstrous empires gives birth to an even more dangerous empire is very relevant to Daniel and his readers.

Quick sidebar: for the theologically curious, I want to acknowledge that there is no universally-accepted interpretation of which empires each beast or horn represents. That’s tied to some complexity around the background to the book of Daniel. Trying to survey that would comprise a lot of information. If you want to chat more, I absolutely do not have all the answers, but I’d enjoy digging through things together.

Daniel and his contemporaries knew what it was like to live under a series of wild things; Daniel’s vision that an even wilder thing was coming (and that it would prevail in war against the saints) would have shaken them to the core. In fact, Daniel says exactly that: in v15, “My spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me” and v28, “My thoughts greatly terrified me, and my face turned pale.”

The Vision’s Climactic Hope

Thank you for bearing with me through a lot of context. Let’s look at the ray of hope that shines through.

In Daniel 7.9, thrones are placed into Daniel’s vision. Only one occupant is named, however: “the Ancient One,” sometimes translated “the Ancient of Days.” The plural “thrones” might indicate other members of the royal court who are not important enough to identify. Or, the plural “thrones” could be a Hebrew figure of speech where a plural word is used to emphasize the importance of a single thing: a single throne but with tremendous size, majesty, or power. Either way, the Ancient of Days is the only one worth paying attention to here. He’s clothed all in white, including his hair; he sits on a throne of fire set atop flaming wheels with a river of fire flowing from him. This imagery suggests many qualities. Age and white hair would reflect dignity, gravitas, wisdom, even patience. White may indicate purity or uniqueness. Fire often points toward purification or justice. This is a description of utter majesty, reminiscent of the throne room where Isaiah saw the Lord in Isa 6. In complete contrast to the violent empires who emerge from chaos to devour God’s people, God appears in majesty, strength, beauty, and dignity: power and shalom.

Countless attendants fill the royal court. They’re not identified specifically; they simply serve to show how much worship the Ancient One deserves.

In the ancient near east, kings would keep records of what happened under their reigns. In Esther 6, King Xerxes has insomnia, so he asks for these record books to be read aloud till he fell asleep. The Ancient of Days doesn’t intend to sleep, but to mete out justice based on what’s happened under his watch. Things are about to go very poorly for the wild things. The first three beasts lose their authority and eventually die. The fourth, however, is slain, then burned. Turns out the fire flowing from the Ancient of Days wasn’t merely decorative.

Then a new character enters the scene in v13: “one like a human being.” The phrase is literally “a son of man,” but it isn’t a Messianic title as Daniel utters it here. (It eventually becomes a Messianic title, but that develops from interpretations of this passage; it doesn’t mean “Messiah” yet.) “Son of” something was a common Hebrew way of saying that someone has the characteristics of that something. In contrast to the lionlike, bearlike, leopardlike, and indescribably wild beasts, this person looks human. He is presented to the Ancient of Days, then given authority and glory and a kingdom. One detail is added in v27:

The kingship and dominion
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven
shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High;
their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom,
and all dominions shall serve and obey them.

In v13, the son of man (the human one) receives the kingdom; in v27, the holy people of God receive the kingdom. The son of man acts as a representative of all God’s humans. When he is given the kingdom, all the saints are given the kingdom. So then, here is the hope in Daniel’s vision: the Ancient of Days will authorize a human representative of God’s saints to accept a kingdom over all peoples and without end.

The Vision’s Ultimate Fulfillment

I mentioned a moment ago that when Daniel wrote “son of man,” it wasn’t a formal Messianic title yet. But let’s fast-forward to Jesus’ life and see how the interpretation of this passage has shaped Messianic expectations in his day. Before the sermon, Deacon [x] read John’s account of how Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom was “not from this world.” That sounds like something you might say about a kingdom given to a human representative who arrived on some clouds from heaven? But Matthew and Mark make the connection even more clearly than John. In Matthew 26 and Mark 14, during Jesus’ trial before the temple leadership, the high priest asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah?” Jesus answers, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man … coming with the clouds of heaven.”

In today’s NT reading, John describes Jesus with words from Daniel 7 as well:

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
7 Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him,
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
~ Rev 1.5-7

So where do we find ourselves now? Like Daniel and his readers, we know what it’s like to live under wild beasts. In our polished modern world, many of our wild things feel more like abstract dangers than specific nations or armies: we live in a world full of war and unrest, rife with death and violence, broken by human sin and aggression. Under these wild abstractions, our hope is still what Daniel foresaw. When God’s kingdom comes, accepted on our behalf by the son of man, including all peoples and lasting forever, the modern “monsters” will be laid to rest as well.

Let’s think a bit more about Daniel’s experience, specifically with Persia. Babylon was rough, what with deportation and all, but eventually Daniel rose to become a respected advisor, even though he predicted Babylon’s defeat. Then he got along really well with Persian emperors. There was a mid-level bureaucracy issue that ended up with a lion’s den, but the emperor wasn’t on board. A later emperor even sent God’s people back to Jerusalem and funded their rebuilding efforts. God’s people lived under a global military superpower where they were welcome in high levels of government, enjoyed religious freedom, and even had access to government funds for religious projects. The Medo-Persian empire was a really nice empire for God’s people to live under, but no matter whose interpretation of Daniel 7 you go with, they match up to one or maybe two of the vision’s wild things.

Why does that matter for us, though? Given that John uses the beasts of Daniel 7 to identify the empire he lived under (see Rev 13), I think we’ve got biblical grounds to turn a critical eye, a prophetic eye to our world as well. I think America is a great place to live, but we must keep in mind that she’s not God’s kingdom. Just because we enjoy freedom of worship, relative safety, occasional government funding for church ministry, that doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to her faults, her violence, or her dangers. The son of man will accept a kingdom for us and, in doing so, he will rescue us from every human nation or empire. And that’s good news! If our nation were the embodiment of God’s kingdom on earth, I’m sorry, but that’d be an underwhelming kingdom. None of our political parties are God’s kingdom; the nation as a whole isn’t God’s kingdom. Someday when God’s kingdom comes in full, I absolutely guarantee, none of us will look back and yearn for this. Lot’s wife warns us not to look back at a human kingdom while God is trying to rescue us. That’s a hard truth to sit with. Even if a wild thing has neatly-combed fur, well-brushed teeth, and polished nails, it’s still just a human empire; it’s not God’s kingdom given to the son of man.

Application

Like Daniel, we recognize traits of wild-thing-ness surrounding us and we yearn for the final kingdom to come. Unlike Daniel, we’ve got a bit of an advantage. We know Jesus; we’ve seen the kingdom start to come. Daniel waited for the entirety of that kingdom; we know it’s been inaugurated and we wait for it to be fulfilled. Last week, Lisa pointed out how biblical prophecy and apocalyptic visions often work like layered mountain peaks. From a distance (like Daniel’s vantage point), we see what appears to be one mountain, but there are actually multiple peaks separated by distance and height. So how do we live as people between the peaks? I have a few suggestions.

First, we should expect to arrive at the kingdom on the same path as Christ our King. How does the son of man gain the forever kingdom? Not through human might or military conquest, but counter-intuitively, through the cross. We read Rev 1.7 a moment ago: the one who “freed us from our sins by his blood … is coming with the clouds” to be seen by “those who pierced him.” John uses the language of Dan 7 (and also Zech 12) to identify Jesus as the one who became king through suffering. Jesus claimed victory, not through crusade but through crucifixion. We should not expect to gain that eternal kingdom by human means of conquest and rule, but like our Savior, through suffering. As Jesus said, “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10.38). We should be wary of anyone, any party, any nation that promises us a kingdom without a cross.

Second, like Daniel and John, we share a prophetic calling as God’s people. I’m not sure it was easy for Daniel to record and share a vision calling Babylon and Persia “wild things” while living under those nations! Nor was it easy for John to use the same language to challenge Rome. As citizens of Christ’s kingdom, we have the opportunity (some of us, an obligation) to speak truth to power - no matter who’s in power. To get specific, no political party has a perfect, Christ-centered, problem-free platform. We don’t have to settle for voting for the lesser of evils, however. We can push back on wild-thing policies with our words and with our actions. Maybe we take time to call our elected officials about specific bills or policies. Perhaps we bravely risk a hard conversation with someone taken in by a lopsided partisan loyalty. Maybe we donate time or resources to charities serving people ignored by public servants who ought to serve them.

Third, we rest. If all we had were human kingdoms, we should work ourselves to exhaustion, driven by fear and anxiety to ensure that things last. The kingdom we gain is not accomplished by our effort. It’s simply given to the son of man for us. I appreciate this quote from theologian John Goldingay, “If God is not there, [I’d add “If Christ is not king”], everything is not all right, play is escapism, there is no hope, evil may triumph, there is nothing to laugh at, and no one has given us anything.” If Christ were not king, if it were up to us to make God’s kingdom come, if human politics were our only answer, we would have little hope, only stress and anxiety and toil. Our longed-for kingdom is a gift from the Ancient of Days, not a product of our own striving. This fact lets us rest, lets us hope, lets us love and play and work and serve and pray.