Dealing with a Crisis!
Daniel 2:1-49
It’s fairly common for a person to be going along in life, not realizing their need for God and then, suddenly, trouble hits.
It may be:
financial trouble
health problems
marriage problems
problems with the kids
problems at work
Most of us try and fix the problem our self.
But sometimes it’s more than we can handle.
Then we turn to family or friends for help.
But there are times when even they can’t help us solve the problem we are facing.
It’s then that people begin to entertain a willingness to open ourselves to things they haven’t considered before.
Perhaps for the first time, that person is willing to listen to what God might have to say.
Willing to listen to what you and I have to say to them about God!
This process of a crisis bringing the unbeliever to the believer for help, has been repeated over and over.
It seems to be a prime method God
uses to call men and women to Himself.
In out text this evening, we have one of those
“turn-to-God-in-time-of-crisis” stories.
The passage is Daniel, chapter 2.
Last time we looked at how we are to respond when the world calls us to
compromise our faith in and our obedience to God.
This message, “Dealing with a Crisis”, deals with how we should respond when
someone who doesn’t know God, comes to the end of his/her rope and reaches out
to us for help?
Often an unbeliever’s first serious consideration of his Maker comes in a time of crisis.
In this case the unbeliever is the king of Babylon, 600 years before Christ - a man named Nebuchadnezzar.
The crisis is a dream he had (to him more like a nightmare.)
We begin then, with the crisis of:
I. A Rattled King.
Daniel 2:1
That word “troubled” in this verse
in the original language means “to be beaten, compelled, or pushed.”
It was the kind of dream that causes one to sit up suddenly in bed, heart pounding, eyes wide, utterly terrified.
It was so troubling that the King couldn’t go back to sleep.
The plural “dreams” suggests that perhaps this same dream persisted night after night.
The King did what all people do when they hit a situation they cannot control.
He turned to his familiar, tried and true solutions first.
Daniel 2:2-4
Now get ready.
The king is about to put these men to a test that will expose the
limits of their power.
Daniel 2:5
The king wants not only the interpretation of the dream, he wants them to
describe to him the dream itself!
Without some sort of supernatural power, that is going to be impossible for them.
As you can probably imagine, it didn’t take long for these guys to
realize they were in deep trouble!
Daniel 2:6-10
What a revealing statement of the limits of human resources, in the face of some
crises!
“There is not a man on earth who can do what the King asks!”
That was the best their most advanced wisdom of their day could
produce.
Daniel 2:11
“Your predicament, O king, is outside the realm of man’s abilities.”
There is nothing surprising about such a declaration from our perspective.
Most of us here have realized that there comes a point when man’s solutions run out.
You have to wonder, though, what
these guys had been claiming to the king about their powers and abilities prior
to this, that would provoke such a violent threat.
What we’re talking about here is this:
all people, sooner or later, sense the limitations of human resources.
The Chaldeans state it well:
“It would take a god to do what you are asking!”
There comes a time in the life of every person when you realize you can no
longer dodge the bullet.
You can no longer sidestep or ignore the problem or dig yourself out of your predicament.
You’re in trouble and unless there is something beyond the power of man, you won’t escape.
At that point, perhaps for the first time, the possibility of a Supernatural Being who transcends human ability becomes relevant.
You think, “perhaps there is a God.”
Zig Ziggler quips that there are three things that are hard to do.
One is to climb a fence leaning toward you.
Another is to kiss a girl who is leaning away from you.
The third is to help someone who doesn’t really want to be helped.
That is how it is most of the time we deal with unbelievers.
They don’t want to be helped.
But in time of crisis in the unbeliever’s life, that changes.
How then do we respond to the world’s call for help?
We must first:
1.
Realize that unbelievers will come to us in a time of crisis.
To borrow a phrase from the movie “Field of Dreams”, “If you build it, they will come.”
If you build an authentic, consistent Christian witness,
unbelievers in the time of their crisis, will come to you.
God will see to it, just like He did here.
One man has said, “everybody has something that isn’t working in their life somewhere.”
We often look at the wealthy and famous people of our world,
and think that they have it all together.
But we have to realize that they
don’t have it altogether!
As one poet reminds us: “If each man’s care were written on his brow, how of
them who have our praise would have our pity now!”
You never really know what is going on in the life of that unbeliever next to
you,
until a crisis brings it out into the open.
Realize that unbelievers
will come to you in time of crisis.
2. Be A Ready Witness.
Knowing God as we do, doesn’t it make sense, that God would try and help those who are facing a crisis in their life, by putting them in contact with someone who can point them to Him?
In that day it was Daniel.
Today it just might be you or me.
That God would try and help them should be no surprise to us.
What is often surprising, is how He goes about it.
Daniel 2:12
If you’ve ever heard or made the statement, “God works in mysterious ways,”
you’ll recognize the truth of it here.
Those words “he ordered the execution of all the wise men of Babylon” would include Daniel and his three Hebrew friends, who proved so faithful to God in chapter one.
The Kings edict, amounted to a death warrant for them.
What is God up to?
Mysterious ways indeed!
Daniel 2:13
Doesn’t it seem a bit strange to you, that God would use a death warrant and the fear it would provoke in the minds of Daniel and his friends, to bring Daniel and King together?
Yet that is the way God did it.
Don’t ever think that the difficult circumstances in your life are without purpose in God’s scheme of things.
We’ll see here that God can even turn a threat to your physical life,
into a blessing and an
opportunity.
So Daniel got word of the edict.
When the king and his soldiers knocked on his door, he was
ready.
Daniel 2:14-16
Those words in verse 16, “asked for time”
are translated: “requested that he would
appoint a time for him.”
We saw back in verse 8, that the king had already denied the Chaldeans additional time to collaborate.
What Daniel is discretely and wisely asking for here, is an appointment with the king.
Rather than just sit there like a dumb ox at the slaughter,
oblivious to what is going on around him,
Daniel did the second thing we need to do, when an unbeliever is in crisis:
take the initiative with
discretion and discernment.
Now, you might notice that I didn’t say, “call the preacher and turn the unbeliever over to him.”
Of course, in some cases that might be appropriate, but I need to say a couple of things here.
First, the unbeliever likely doesn’t know your preacher.
He knows you.
If your witness was authentic enough that he was attracted to you,
he needs to hear what you have to say!
“What on earth could I say?”
You could tell him how God has made a difference in your life.
You could promise to pray for him.
If he sees the need for salvation, you could have a few verses handy and show him what he needs to do.
You could enlist a few other Christians to help you hold him up before God in prayer.
You could spend
time with him and encourage him to hang
in there and not give up.
God has given evangelists and pastors and teachers to equip you for service, not to do your service for you!
What am I saying here?
I’m talking about taking the
initiative with discretion and discernment.
When we recognize that God does things this way,
that He allows the crises to come into the lives of unbelievers so they will seek Him,
and that He uses believers like you and me to deliver His message.
Then we can move forward with enthusiasm, knowing that God is with us.
He can even help you in your ineptness!
What has always amazed me in reading Daniel’s response to all this, is the degree of confidence he had in God - not in himself
.“Before you kill us, Arioch, can you get me an appointment with the king?”
He didn’t know what God was going to do!
He hadn’t read the book of Daniel like we’re doing.
He just knew that the king’s life was spinning out of control,
and that God was more powerful than any man or
circumstance.
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY says of discretion:
“showing prudence and wise self-restraint in speech and behavior.”
When an unbeliever is calling for help, it’s not
the time to go out and club him over the head with the Bible.
Yes, Scripture will ultimately be important, but remember, the situation calls for discretion and discernment.
Before you hit him or her over the head with the Bible, you might pray for and with them.
You might tell them what God had done for you, and what He means to you.
Remember, its only when a person knows how much you care,
that they will be open to how much you know.
Of course, we should never face a situation like this alone.
Intercession from the rest of the body to invoke God’s help is important.
That is how Daniel saw it.
Daniel 2:18-19
That really brings us to a third thing we need to do when an unbeliever comes to
us in crisis:
3.
Solicit support from God's people.
In this case, we’re talking about prayer support of others, which led ultimately to answered prayer from God.
We must recognize that this whole procedure is primarily His, not ours.
We are simply His tools.
It’s only reasonable that we should go to God and seek his help and
guidance through it.
We need strength to do it right.
Someone has written, “In relation to his people, God works only in answer to their prayers. In prayer we exchange our natural strength for the supernatural strength of God.”
I like that, because at times like
this, we need that supernatural strength!
Solicit support from other believers and God.
Okay, an unbeliever has hit a spot where he has realized his need for God.
You or I, realizing this, take the initiative with wisdom and discernment.
We are confident God can help them, indeed,
He has probably allowed the circumstance for this very reason.
Then, God steps in and delivers them with a mighty hand!
What now?
Let’s look again to see what Daniel did.
Daniel 2:19-28
4. Pass on
the praise.
So who got the glory for all this?
Daniel gave the glory to God!
It’s a heady experience when God uses
you to make a difference in the life of an unbeliever.
It gets even headier if that unbeliever has fame or celebrity status, like the king here.
What do you think the temptation is at that point?
Yeah, the temptation is to take the glory for yourself.
This would have made an excellent opportunity for advancement in the king’s court for Daniel.
Had he simply claimed to have power and special abilities himself, from human perspective,
look at what he would have gained.
Ah, but Daniel realized that his
purpose was to glorify God, not himself.
In so doing, ultimately, God would honor him.
Daniel 2:46-48
Have you come to the place in your Christian maturity, where you are willing to
pass on the praise for anything you might accomplish to God?
That’s really what this is all about.
It’s to call attention to God, not us!
It’s His power the unbeliever needs to
see, not ours.
Conclusion:
Everyone has something that isn’t working in their life...
Everyone faces the reality of a crisis in their life sometime.
Everyone has a need somewhere, regardless of how together they seem to be….
It was true of King Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel was there.
It’s true of people right in the sphere of your influence.
People who have been watching your life and listening to you for weeks, months, or even years.
When the crisis comes, you need to be ready.
Ready to share the love of Christ with them.
Ready to pray with them.
Ready to tell them what God has done for your life.
Someone you know, who is not a Christian, is about to go through a crisis.
Are you ready to be their Daniel?