The Dream of the Kingdom

How can Christians stay faithful to God in a culture that doesn't share our beliefs? The ancient Israelites faced the same question when they were exiles and Babylon. Written during that time, the Old Testament book of Daniel addresses the complexities of living faithfully in a pluralistic society. Today, Tim Keller explores what it looks like to seek the good of the cities and communities God has placed us in while remembering that our true home is in his coming kingdom. And in the very, very beginning, just to make sure, since I'm not able to print the whole chapter and the whole narrative, I'll make a comment or two just to make sure you understand it. Daniel chapter 2 verses 24 to 35 and 44 to 46. Then Daniel went to Ariac, whom the king had appointed to execute, though the wise men of Babylon, of which Daniel was one. And Daniel said to him, "Do not execute the wise men of Babylon or me. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him." Another comment here is, "Nebuchadnezzar was about to slay all the wise men of Babylon because they couldn't interpret this great dream." So Ariac took Daniel to the king at once and said, "I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means." The king asked Daniel also called Belta Shazar, "Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?" Daniel replied, "No wise man, no enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about." But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that pass through your mind as you lay on your bed were these. As you were lying there, your mind turned to things to come and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. As for me, the mystery has been revealed to me not because I have greater wisdom than other living men, but so that you, O King, may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind. You looked, O King, and there before you stood a large statue, an enormous dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold. It's chest and arms of silver, it's belly and thighs of bronze, it's legs of iron, it's feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron to clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The winds swept them away without leaving a trace, but the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. Nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but itself will endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, not by human hands. A rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy. Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. Which means he didn't get it, so he didn't get the point. However, we can if we look at this. Now, why are we looking at Daniel? For four weeks, we're going to look at four narratives out of the book of Daniel. And the reason we do this is because it's traditional in the history of the church and it's my habit as well, how convenient, that after Easter, after good Friday, after a time of really spending a great deal of time considering the work of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life and death and resurrection, that you talk about practical Christian living. What does it mean to live the Christian life? How can we live out the Christian life? When you get to the book of Daniel, the book of Daniel is exilic literature. That means it's one of the books, Daniel, Esther, Ezekiel, parts of Jeremiah, parts of some other prophets. It's one of the books that talks about the time of exile. The Israelites were taken by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, into exile. They were taken away from Israel where the government, the arts, everything was all the culture believed in the God of the Bible. They were taken into a city, Babylon, and a culture that was, as we're going to see, hostile to the biblical God. Now the question comes up, how can I live a Christian life, or pardon me, how do I live the life of a believer in the biblical God in an unbelieving world? How do I live as a believer in a world in a society where all the cultural institutions are hostile to my faith and to the God I believe in? That's the question. And Daniel, Esther and some others, are very relevant today, extremely relevant. Because some years ago, we could say that in both Europe and America, basically these countries had cultures, the government, the arts, academia, education, most higher education, was very supportive of the Christian belief. It was either officially or informally supportive, but that's not true anymore. So we're all like Daniel, we're all as believers living a life and we're asking ourselves, how in the world can we live a life of integrity in a pluralistic, polytheistic, unbelieving world? Now when we ask that of Daniel, we're going to get a lot out of it for four weeks, we're going to look at Daniel and how he did it. First of all, I'd like to tonight look at this narrative and ask three questions about the narrative. There are three very odd things here. In fact, you say only three, but it is an interesting narrative. But the three things are this. First of all, we have to ask ourselves about the two names of Daniel. See, verse 26, Daniel, and that's a Hebrew name, meaning God is my judge, and Belta Shazar, which is a Babylonian name that means "Bel is my God," which is "Bel is one of the Babylonian gods." The question is, what is a believing Israelite, a man who believes in the God of Israel or what's he doing up at the very top of this pagan government structure? What's he doing being a wise man, a biblical, I mean a Babylonian wise man? The first question is, what's the meaning of the two names? The second question is, what's the meaning of this weird dream? The third thing is, what is the rock that strikes a statue? The statue doesn't have a foundation, but the rock strikes the statue. So the three questions are, why the two names, what is the meaning of the two names, what is the meaning of the dream, and what is the meaning of the rock? And every time we ask the question, we're going to get out of the answer a principle for living, a believing life in an unbelieving world. You get three practical principles. Now let's take a look at the first question and the first principle. What's the meaning of the two names? What is Daniel doing here? If you want to understand that, you have to get a little background, and we're going to get the background we've got to talk about, the background is the Babylonian exile, and the background too, even Daniel chapter one, we have to do background before this chapter comes along, and that's helpful anyway for the whole series. It's helpful for us to understand all of the stories of Daniel. Many of you have heard, and many people know, that Nebuchadnezzar the Great King of Babylon came and defeated Judah militarily and defeated Jerusalem and then carried its people off into exile. What most people don't know, and what I certainly didn't know until I started looking recently, was that Nebuchadnezzar came to Babylon twice, I mean, came to Jerusalem twice. Yes, in 587 BC, we know that he basically knocked Jerusalem down, raised it to the ground, and carried off most of its people into Babylon. But what most people don't know is that he came first ten years before, and he defeated Jerusalem ten years before that great destruction. But when he defeated him the first time, he did not raise him to the ground, he did not cart away everybody, he took 10,000 people back to Babylon with him. Only 10,000 out of the whole nation, but who are those 10,000? They were the 10,000 professionals. The first time he came, he took the professional class of Israel. He took 10,000 of the leaders of the military, the government, the arts, education, scholars, that wise, he took the 10,000 professionals and their families back to Babylon to live there. Why? But incredibly cagey of him. Instead of having to destroy the whole country, how do you make a vassal nation subject to the Babylonian will? How do you make it fit into the Babylonian empire? It's very simple. You take the professionals, the leaders of the culture, you bring them to Babylon and you Babylonize them culturally. Babylonized. I know it sounds like, I don't know, dry cleaning, but what it really meant was Babylon had a polytheistic, pluralistic culture, Israel had a monotheistic culture, and what he was trying to do was destroy the biblical worldview of the whole professional class of Israel. [BLANK_AUDIO] Ezra was going to try to dislodge him. He was going to have them live in Babylon, and they were going to take upon themselves the Babylonian culture. They were going to begin inalexually and socially and culturally and spiritually and religiously Babylonian. And that was the way to completely, in a sense, subjugate Israel. And so when the professional class got to Babylon, the first thing he did is settle down outside the city. And we know that they settled down at near Nipur on the K-Bar Canal, some distance from the city. And prophets rose up in that exilic community. And here's what they began to say. If you want to know what they said, you go to Jeremiah chapter 28. And the leading prophet was Han and I. And this is what they said. They said, don't move into the city. We're believers. That is the wicked pagan city. It's the source of the Babylonian culture. Have nothing to do with it. Don't move in there. Don't live in there. Stay out and pray against the city. And we prophets see, we foresee that God will judge the city. And we will come back out on top. We'll have the cultural power. God is going to judge the city. He's going to put us back in charge. So pray against the city and have nothing to do with the city. And Jeremiah, the true prophet of God, back in Judah still, heard about this and wrote them a letter. A revealed will of God for the exiles. And this is what the letter said. And it's amazing. And it became the blueprint for Daniel's life. That's why we're reading it. This is what he says in the letter Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 4. This is what the Lord says to the exiles in Babylon. Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters. Find wise for your sons and give your daughters and marriage. Increase in number there. Do not decrease. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city, to which I have carried you in exile. Pray to the Lord for it. Because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Do not let the prophets among you deceive you. Now this must have been absolutely astounding to the people who listened. This seems counterintuitive to what you think God would ever say. And he says three things that must have just been astonishing to them. The first thing was he said, he says, get a bigger picture for what I'm doing. This is a city to which I carried you. Remember that? He says to the city to which I carried you. Now this is what God is saying here. He's saying it's part of my plan that you lost the cultural power. It's part of my plan that now you as believers have to live in a pagan wicked city. It's part of my plan. It's part of my plan to renew you and to change you and to grow you. It's part of my plan to change them and to grow them and to renew them. It's part of my plan to get the word out, my word, out into the world. You are lost of cultural power. You are now needing to live as believers in unbelieving world as part of my plan. He said, I designed this. That's the first thing. So he says, move in there. Get you in there and don't stay away. Big plan. I took away Christendom. I took away the cultural power. I put you now. I disseminated you through the pagan cities of the world, he says. Now that's number one. Number two. Second thing he says is, I refuse to believe, I refuse to let you believe that the only choices you've got are assimilation or separation. He says, I deny that those are the only two choices. The prophets are saying, stay out or else you'll get in there and you'll assimilate and you'll lose your identity. So don't assimilate, separate. And God is saying in this letter, that's not the only two choices. On the one hand, he says, don't assimilate. Don't lose your identity. He says there. Let me read this. I just said it. You might remember. Increase in number there, do not decrease. Increase in number. That means don't lose your identity. Don't just melt in. Don't just become Babylonians. Know who you are. Know the number of believers. Stay in a covenant relationship with me. So on the one hand, he's saying, keep your identity. Do not assimilate. But on the other hand, he says, build houses. Settle down. Plant gardens. Eat what they produce. Mary and have sons and daughters. He says, seek the prosperity of the city and this is what he's saying. He says, I don't want you to assimilate, but on the other hand, is I want you to move in. I want you to be deeply involved in the life of the city economically, culturally. I want you to raise your families there, and I want them to raise their families there. And I want you to be deeply involved in the life of the city. So what is he saying? He says, I'm not saying assimilate, but I'm not saying I don't want to let you separate. I want you to be deeply involved, deeply engaged in the life of the city, but living distinctly as my people, holding onto your Christian, your monotheistic world, too. Now, how in the world can you do that? But that's what he's doing. In fact, what he's doing is he's calling the people to be spiritually bi-cultural. He says, I want you to move into the wicked city of man, but I want you to stay, citizens of the city of God, because I don't want you to love me and hate the city or love the city. Never get me, I want you to love both. And that leads to the third thing. The first thing he says is, I want you to see that my disseminating you in amongst the pagans is my plan. For both them and for you, if I'm going to benefit them and me, it's going to help you. It's going to help them. It's going to help me. Secondly, he says, I don't want you to assimilate or separate. I want you to engage deeply, but still live in the city, distinct as my people. And then thirdly, how? How can you do that? How in the world can you avoid assimilating and yet avoid separating? He says, right here, pray for the city. Seek the peace or the shalom of the city, because if it prosperes, you too will prosper. And that's the key, your motivation. If you see, the word shalom does not just mean peace, high, by, as people use shalom as a greeting, but the word shalom, the Hebrew word shalom in the Bible, means complete well-being, total well-being, multi-dimensional well-being and blessing and fulfillment. It means spiritual well-being, and physical well-being, and material well-being, and economic well-being. And what are you saying is this, I don't want you to just go in there and build your little churches and grow your churches in the city, and just, you know, just clock clock, you know, tut tut at all the things that are happening. He says, I want you to put your lives on the line to make this a great place. I want you to make it safe. I want you to, I want you to make it prosperous. I want you to, I want you to spread the faith, but I also want you to help people in need. I want you to do everything you can out of love for the city. I want you to pray for the city. So the false prophets were saying, don't pray for the city. Pray against it. Pray that it'll be judged, so we'll be back in power. And the true prophet, God Himself says, no, if you go into the city celebrating it and not seeing how broken it is, you're not really seeking its peace, you're not admitting how much, how neat it is, but if you go in just to despise it, just to shake your finger at it, you'll get nothing done either. Love the city. Love the city of man for the sake of the city of God. Live in both. Have two names. Now, that's the first principle. And you know, Christians don't, most Christians don't, don't even know that's there. Most Christians believe you either assimilate or you separate. Daniel was different. This is the blueprint. Daniel either was there and heard the letter in Daniel 29, I injured my 29, or else his parents, we're not totally sure how old Daniel was at the time of the exile. But this is the blueprint. Why? Because who is this guy? Now, look carefully, Daniel, we can see that he's a prophet Himself. We can see that he believes in God. Look at the things he says. He is completely monotheistic. He's utterly committed to this exclusive sovereign God of the Bible. But what did he do to get into this job? You can read about it in Daniel 1, but I'm not going to go into that right now. What did he do to get into this job? How did he get up here? He's in the civil service. He's in the civil government. The wise men were the people who ran things. And you'll see in Daniel chapter 1 that the way he got there was he went through a very rigorous liberal arts training in Babylonian culture. But let me show you something that's probably going to make some of your skin crawl. And I don't see how any way around it. You know that place in verse 27 when he says, "No wise man in chanter magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery has asked about." Now, you know what that is saying? That's what Daniel is. These are the people who run this country in Babylon. These are the advisors. These are the members of administration is the member of his counsel. And in order for Daniel to be get into his position, he had to study enchanting, magic, divining. He had to study all of Babylonian culture, including all that stuff. There are lots of Christians today who would say, "We mustn't touch any of that stuff. We mustn't be polluted like that." What are you going to say about this passage of the Bible? Daniel is a believer who mastered that material. And yet kept his distinctive Christian biblical worldview. And therefore he was living and working at the highest levels in that pagan structure. and that pagan government and that pagan culture and you're doing it distinctively as a believer in the God of the Bible. How did he do that? Why can't we do that? Because the blueprint of his life was Jeremiah 29 and the rest of us are locked into either assimilation or separation. Now this isn't easy. Of course this isn't easy. You know, here's one of the reasons why. Let's just take something. Let me take a nice practical problem that people have used given me over the years. Let's just say your Christian actor and I over the years people have asked me this question. What kind of roles can I take and not take? As a Christian are there roles that I shouldn't take? Are there roles that I should be seeking? Are there roles that I can take but not like? Are there roles that I shouldn't take under any circumstances? And what are they? Now, if you just come to New York or LA wherever you're working as an actor and you just never ask that question, you never ask the question. You never say, "Well, what's distinct about how does the cross, how does the resurrection, how does the gospel, how do the themes of my salvation influence how I do my acting?" If you never wrestle with that, if you never ask that question, you assimilated. You've moved in there. You've decreased. As Jeremiah said, "Don't do that. You've just lost yourself." But on the other hand, if you say, "Where's the rules?" Okay, well, I say, "Well, of course there's this book in the Bible that tells you, you know, here's the Christian acting book and it tells you what roles you can take, what you can't." They say, "Well, really?" I said, "April Fulp. There isn't such a book. There's also not a book for Christian businessmen. There's not a book for Christians in arts. There's no books like that. Why?" There's very few rules. Oh, there's some basic rules. There's a 10 commandments. Don't lie. See? Don't have sex outside of marriage. Be generous with your money. The basic rules. But you hear the problem. If you don't ask the question, what roles can I take and roles can I take? Are there any roles I can't take? Can I ask the question? You're an assimilationist. If you insist there's got to be rules or if you despair of the lack of rules, you're a separationist. You don't want the hard work of thinking this stuff out, thinking it out in community. You don't want to do it. And God calls us to be Daniels. I was a Lutheran growing up and I went to Lutheran Sunday School. I don't know if other Sunday schools did the same thing. But I used to study Daniel in my Sunday school and there was even a song about Daniel. Have you ever heard of it? It's called Dare to Be a Daniel. Have you ever heard that? It was a song that used to sing. You know, it's one funny thing. My Sunday school teachers never told me what it meant to be a Daniel. I never had a Sunday school teacher that ever said, "Oh, by the way, boys and girls, what this is teaching us is that you need to try. " The believers need to get into these pagan governmental structures and rise up as high in the pagan culture as you can and master the pagan learning and the non-believing literature and worldview, but do it with a distinctive, but still live and work in the city as a distinct Christian. And of course they don't say that because most churches are saying exactly what Hannah and I says, not what Jeremiah says. Most churches say to Christians, "Stay away. Pray against those cities. Stay away from those places that are the source of the polytheistic, relativistic, secular culture we have now. Stay away." It's not a good thing to live there. Jeremiah says, "No. God is calling you to do two things." One is he says, "First of all, I am sending you there for this prosperity of the city. The city needs Christians. The city needs people who will serve and who will minister and who will be salt in the city." But he also says, "I have carried you there. I've taken you out of power for your sake." How would your life change if you no longer had to prove yourself to anyone? We often live as though our value depends on our accomplishments, the opinions of others, or whether we're meeting our own expectations, leaving us trapped in a cycle of trying to measure up. In his short book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, based on a sermon from 1 Corinthians 3, Tim Keller explains how the gospel offers a completely different foundation for our identity. One that's free from insecurity and pride, and that allows us to rest in God's complete acceptance. This month, as thanks for your gift, to help gospel in life spread the transforming love of Christ with more people, we'll send you two English copies of The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, and one Spanish copy that you can share with a Spanish speaker in your life. Request your copies today at gospelonlife.com/give. That's gospelonlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. I want you to know, I have needed spiritually this city every bit as much as I think maybe the city has needed me. I come to New York City and I hope I've put something in the New York, but I want you to know I've gotten a lot more out of New York than I ever put in. And I can really say that's not hyperbole. Not hyperbole. For example, it's important to go to a place where Christians are out of power, where all your friends are non-Christians. I hope a lot of them are. If not, you have separated, even in the middle of New York. You see, there was a lot of answers I thought I had a lot of bad answers to how Christians should live, and when I actually spent time with non-Christians, I found a lot of the bad answers were stupid. Or I thought I knew why people didn't believe, and I came to find out that people who don't believe have some pretty good reasons why they don't believe. I found that raising my family in the city has been the best thing for them spirits or the best thing for my sons I ever did was raise them in a city, as opposed to raising them in some Christian enclave someplace. They're the ones who tell me that. I'm not the one that tells them that. We need the city. It humbles us. It refines us. We need very often to be taken out of power. The Christianity is a religion of the cross, and when it gets into power in a country, it almost immediately goes to seed. Every so often the reason that God revives us is the way God revives us. He takes us out of power, or Christians always do best, and puts us in the city so that we need a city in the city needs us. That's the first principle. Love the city. Be engaged with the city. Don't assimilate or don't separate. That's the meaning of the two names. The second principle is the meaning of the dream. If you go down to look at the dream itself. Again, Christians over the years have read this dream, and they have said, "Oh, this is going to tell us about the future." In a way, of course, it does tell us about the future, as Daniel says. But the way most Christians read the dream is they say this. They say, "Okay, there's the head of gold, and there's the silver kingdom, the silver kingdom, the bronze kingdom, and then there's the iron clay kingdom." And the rock smashes the iron clay kingdom. And so all we have to do is figure out what that kingdom is, and then we'll know when the kingdom of God is coming, or then we'll know when Jesus is coming back, and so on. That means the meaning of the dream is much more obvious than that. Why do you think Nebuchadnezzar is freaking out? Why do you think Nebuchadnezzar is trying to kill all the wise men because they can't immediately tell the meaning of the dream? Why do you think Nebuchadnezzar is exploding? It's because the meaning of the dream is more obvious than you might think. Nebuchadnezzar essentially knows what the dream means. He can't quite articulate it. He knows what the dream means. Why? Why is he so upset? This dazzling figure with feet of clay. Who's that? Now next week, if you're here, when we get to Daniel chapter 3, we're going to see that the reason Nebuchadnezzar is so upset about the dream is all his life, or at least for a number of years, he has wanted to build a huge dazzling statue, Statue of Liberty-sized monument of himself. He's always wanted that because he came to Babylon with a dream. Like most people, they go to the big city with a dream. It was a dream of the kingdom, but it was a dream of his kingdom. It was a dream to make himself something great. This dazzling figure is the way he wants the world to see him. A towering colossus astride the world, looming over it. Therefore, he's always wanted this. He has this dream of this great dazzling figure that he's always wanted in a sense that he came to Babylon to construct. That's why he goes to a big city with a dream of the kingdom, but it's your kingdom. And so he's been pretty successful. I mean, he's the emperor of the world, not bad. He's probably the most powerful man and single person in the world. Probably one of the most powerful, probably one of the most 20 people who've probably attained the most power in the history of the world. But the dream comes and says, you've got feet of clay. The dream comes in and says, as gold and as great and as viable as it looks, basically your week underneath, you have feet of clay, your foundation is crumbling, your foundation is flawed, your foundation is weak, so weak that even a stone, not a, not a big boulder, just a stone can come and knock the whole thing down. He's scared of death. He doesn't quite know what it means, but we do. Because you can read it both individually and cosmically, and here's what it is. If you go to the big city with a dream, most of us go like Nebuchadnezzar, most of us don't go with quite the same size goal as Nebuchadnezzar. Unless you're going to Wall Street, pretty much the same sort of thing. You know, I want to be a billionaire before I'm 30. That's close. But most of us are coming because we want to be dazzling. We want to create a dazzling image of ourselves. We want the world to see, you know, we're something special. Some of us do it with our looks. Some of us are literally trying to look great. I mean, you're going to walk around New York and see some people spend a terrific amount of obviously time in the exercise room and a terrific amount of money obviously on their appearance. And they do look incredible because that's why they came to New York. They came to New York. They came to the big city to be dazzling. A lot of other people don't do that. They don't work on their bodies in the same way. But they're still trying -- they've come with a dream. They've come with a dream of a kingdom. They've come with a dream to, you know, to build something, to show the world something. But what God is saying to Nebuchadnezzar, He says to all of us, He says, if you build your greatness, if you build your life on anything other than me, you're going to be haunted with these kinds of dreams, these kinds of fears. You're going to be haunted with anxiety because if you build your life on popularity, you'll be scared by the polls. Always afraid of what's happening in the polls. If you build your life on money, be scared by what's happening in the market. If you build your life on -- oh, he looks, he'll be scared by what's happening in the mirror. If you build -- whatever you build your life on, he says there's feet of clay and you know it. If it's not me, it's fragile. And he says, I'm going to bring it down. At some point, something's going to come into your life to show you what your foundation is. You have a dream of the kingdom, but it's your kingdom. And anyone who has a dream of any kingdom, but my kingdom, is coming down. And someday, he says, my kingdom will come and will smash the systems of the world. And it will grow into a kingdom that -- it's different. A kingdom based on not your glory, but my glory. A kingdom based not on oppression, but on justice. A kingdom based not on war, but on peace. And that's the meaning of the dream. Now, you see how this is actually a practical thing? If you're trying to be a Christian in an un-Christian world, we said one of the things that bothers us is there's none of rules, huh? You know, the actors, the musicians, the artists, the businessmen, and women, the people in law, people come and say, where are the rules that show me what Christian can do and not do? And you know, we have trouble finding the rules and everybody says, oh my goodness, I feel a drift. Well, here's -- look, look at this practical guideline. What is this? We're being told that the main difference between a Christian actor and a non-Christian actor, Christian musician, non-Christian musician is your foundation. Why are you doing it? This is the -- not the only thing, but this is primary. Why? Whose kingdom are you building? Are you constructing a dazzling self that you want the world to see? Whose glory are you working for? What's your foundation? And you know what? You may be a Christian and a lot of people are who come to the city and you look like everybody else, you just assimilate, you move right on and because you don't see it, you don't -- I'm not breaking any rules. But why have you really come? What are you really doing here? Now, this is very, very -- this is even true of ministers. By the way, or people that come here to do Christian ministry. You come to do Christian ministry? Why is one of the reasons why you come to New York to do Christian ministry? Look carefully. Deep down inside, you're saying, you know, if I can do it there, you know? Boy, I will feel so much more superior to all the Christian workers who are working in less difficult, less sexy, less exotic. Less difficult -- less difficult cities. We tend to come to the big city for the wrong reason. And even those of us who are doctrineally, you know, in our faith, we believe in Christ, we believe in the gospel. What we're really here to do is to construct a dazzling image of ourselves because we don't know. We really don't know. Our hearts don't really believe that we're already golden before Christ. We've got to do this. And therefore, what's the tell-tale sign? Our dreams are haunted. We don't sleep well. We're always afraid. We're always anxious. We're always nervous. There's not a peace. So, see, the second big -- the second question is, what's the meaning of the dream? What's the meaning of the dream? Is everybody's building somebody's kingdom? Everybody's got a foundation in what they're doing. The motivation and the foundation is really what sets the course. And therefore, if you want to understand what it means to be a Christian in and on Christian world, look at your foundations. Don't just look at what rules you're breaking or you're not breaking. Look at the foundations. Ask those basic questions. Now, thirdly, what's the rock? See, first of all, we looked at what's the meaning of the two names. And the first principle is love the city. Don't assimilate or separate. But love it. Engage it. Work for its peace in every way. Second, is the dream of the kingdom. And what we're supposed to be doing is look at your foundations. Ask yourself why you're doing what you're doing. Ask yourself what is the reason that you're doing what you're doing. But the third is, what's the meaning of the rock? The meaning of the rock is pretty interesting. Look carefully. What do we see about this rock? Three things. The rock, of course, is the kingdom. In the time of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. And, of course, up in verse 35, it says, "The rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth." Now, the rock, which grows into a mountain, is the kingdom of God. And the image gives us two or three things that we can see about the kingdom of God. First of all, the rock is not cut out with hands. Notice that twice it says, "This is not cut out with hands." The image is a work of human metallurgy and human craftsmanship, but the rock is a supernatural action. It's not the product of human ingenuity. It's not the product of human thinking. It's a supernatural revelation. It's a supernatural action. So, first of all, the kingdom of God is a completely supernatural thing. That's what it means when it says, "It's not cut with any human hands." Secondly, the rock is the least valuable substance in the dream. You've got gold, you've got silver, you've got bronze, you've got iron and clay. But even iron makes with clay would be something that takes processing. The rock, a simple rock, just a rock, is the least valuable of all the substances. And if that's the thing that God chooses in the dream to characterize his kingdom, why? In the eyes of the world, the kingdom of God is always poor. It's always less valuable. It's always weak. It's never something the world thinks that highly of. But the third thing we learn is the rock grows. You notice there's this huge statue. But it's not a huge mountain that matches the huge statue. The kingdom takes the place of the statue immediately. But rather, it's a small thing that crushes the world's systems and then grows gradually into a mountain that fills the whole world. And that tells us the critical thing and the last thing I want to press. You have to understand this if you're going to live in this city. The kingdom of God is a growing thing. It's a gradual thing. It has not come in one swoop. It does not come in and suddenly wipe out everything that's wrong. The kingdom of God comes in two stages. It came in when Jesus Christ first came, but it comes in weakness and in service. And it didn't wipe away all the evil of the world did it. Then his second coming, the kingdom of God will come in and total power and fill the whole earth. And what that means now is the kingdom of God is already but not yet. It's already here in reality, but it's not yet here in fullness. And that is, if I had the time, I obviously don't. That is so important for Christian to live in the big city, so important for Christians to live in a secular pluralistic society because it gives you both certainty and flexibility. Secularism gives you no certainty, infinite flexibility. Religion gives you certainty, but no flexibility. Secularism gives you flexibility without certainty, religion gives you certainty without flexibility. See, the religious person says, "I have the truth." That's why I'm saved and you're not. I have the truth. I am right with God. I am doing everything that I should be doing. And religious people have a condemning attitude in the city. They have a condemning attitude to people who are different than they are. They cannot flex. There's one way to do it and there's the right way to do it. I'm doing it. That's why I know I'm going to heaven. On the other hand, secular people have infinite flexibility, but they have no certainty. I've just recently read a very, very interesting article. about character education in public schools. You know, there's a huge movement now to begin to teach about values, teach why we should be honest and we should be caring, we should be compassionate, we should work for justice in society, and we're going to start teaching that in public schools again. But almost all the books, all the books that are written for public school teachers, they know that there's a bit, there's going to be a big, big, big problem coming. And the big problem is coming when you teach kids, education without teaching them anything about God or faith, is the kids are going to ask the big question. And it's in all the books for the teachers, get ready for this, get ready for this teacher, the kids are going to ask the question, why? Why should I be honest? Why should I be good? Why should I not ever lie? Why should I be kind? Why should I sacrifice for other people? Why? Why teacher? Why? And you know what the books say? Don't you dare answer that. And you know why? Because you see, unless there's a God, there is no reason. The communitarians say, "Well, because it'll be practical." Oh, teacher, does that mean that these things really aren't wrong or just impractical? So why can't I do it if I can get away with it out hurting anybody? Really, hardly, almost. Well, the psychologist say, "Well, the reason you ought to do it is because it'll make you feel better about yourself." Oh, teacher, well, what if it's okay? What if I can do these bad things and not feel bad about myself at all? Teacher, why secularism gives you no certainty at all? The manuals say, don't answer that question, just say, "Well, because we all just know it." Because you see secularism, no certainty is nothing we can be sure of. Religion, all certainty is no flexibility. But the gospel says that on the one hand, I'm a total terrible sinner. Still, I'm still sinning. That's the not yet. But I'm already complete in Jesus. The kingdom of God is not here, but the kingdom of God is here. It's all ready, but it's not yet. And that gives me, on the one hand, terrific certainty. There is a truth. I can work for the truth. There is something to die for. There are things that I'm going to stick with, but a terrific flexibility. In other words, the kingdom isn't here yet. And as a result, there's all sorts of reasons why I shouldn't always simply give you an example of this. Quick. One of the things that you're never going to be able to survive in a city, unless you have the already, but not yet, view of the church. On the one hand, I've got people who just flit around and they go to church to church to church, but they never get deeply involved in the life of any one church. You're never going to learn how. You're never going to be able to work out how to be distinctively live a Christian life in a city, unless you are not just coming to services, but deeply immersed in the life of a certain church. On the other hand, at the other alternative, I see people who say, "I'm in the true church. I'm in the right church. I'm in the only church. All the other churches are bad. All the other churches are wrong." Now, what's wrong with that picture? People who think, "I have the ultimate church. My church is right, and everybody else is wrong." They've forgotten the not yetness of the kingdom. They believe that they've arrived. No church has arrived. There is no ultimate denomination. Nobody's got all their teachings right. Nobody. Anybody that says, "We have the biblical teachings." They're just refusing to see the not yetness of the kingdom. They're in a legalistic religion. They're not going to survive in a city. On the other hand, the consumers, the people who just sort of flit around and go to the churches that make them feel good, when they want to, they're forgetting the already that the kingdom of God is a reality and it's in the church, and there's incredible things that can happen in the church. Your life can be changed. They're the word and the sacraments and the spiritual gifts of the people in the church. You're never going to survive in this city if you're not deeply involved in the church, but unless you also believe that other Christians and other churches are great as well, and that you don't just have these narrow-minded blinders on, that your church is the only right one. To be too committed in other words to your local church or not committed enough, means you're forgetting the alreadyness of the kingdom or the not yetness of the kingdom. It means you don't have that perfect balance of certainty and flexibility that only the alreadyness or not yetness of the kingdom gives you. It's a stone growing into a mountain. It's not there yet. One more. Tolerance. Tolerance. Secular people are not tolerant of anybody who says they have the truth. See, polytheism looks really, really, really tolerant on the outside. Hey, everybody's got the wrong God. Well, unless you say I've got the only true God and then they get very intolerant. Religion makes you very intolerant as well because religion, a religious person is someone who says my right behavior, my right belief, are what is going to get me into heaven. So they are really, really big on. I have the right belief. I have the truth. Totally the truth. Religious people then tend to be condemning. Secular people tend to be condemning. But the gospel is you are saved. You are really saved. There is a truth. So there is a certainty. There are some things that I can assist on, but you're a sinner. You're saved just strictly by grace. And the people who oppose you can be better people than you. There's no reason why just because you're a Christian, not Christians, that makes you better than them. Why would it make you better than them? You're a sinner saved by grace. That person can be a much better person than you. Probably is a better person than you. The reason that they're saved, that you're saved and they're not, has nothing to do with you being a better person. See, the gospel, what the gospel does is it gives you resources for tolerance in this city that neither secular people nor religious people have. It gives you resources for community in this city that neither secular people nor religious people have. Neither assimilationists nor separatists have. If you want to live the Daniel life, the life of engagement for the sake of the city, but a life of distinctness before God and a life of integrity before God, love the city, know your own foundations, really understand your foundations, and understand the overlap of the ages, understand that the kingdom of God is here, but it's not yet here. Be like Abraham, who was looking for the city with foundations whose builder and maker is God. Look to Jesus Christ. He actually is the fulfillment of all three of our points, right? Because, for example, Jesus had two names, God and man. He was the real son of God, but he came flesh and blood, real human being. Jesus Christ, of course, is the ultimate dazzling figure. He's the only one who's golden from top to bottom. He has no feet of clay. He's the only one that you really, really can bow down and worship. And last of all, of course, Jesus Christ is the rock. He is the stone that the builders rejected, but he's now become the cornerstone for a whole new world. If you understand Jesus in those ways, you can live a life like Daniel. There to be a Daniel. I mean, a real Daniel. What's bound prayer? Thank you, Father, for granting us in these books a vision for how you can call us into a wicked pagan city to love it. Not to see it as inferior to us. Not to see it as superior to us. Not to celebrate it. Not to despise it. To love it. To learn from it. To grow in it. We ask whether you show us a redeemer and that many of the churches in the city that are seeking the same vision, how we can do that. That's what we ask for. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us today. We hope this message was encouraging to you. We'd also like to share that today's sermon is one of the first of Tim Keller's sermons that we've translated into five additional languages through our translation initiative, the Global Reach Project. You can find and listen to the translated version of this and other sermons and learn more about this initiative at theglobalreachproject.com. Again, that's theglobalreachproject.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2000. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017. Well, Dr. Keller, we see your pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [Music]