Text: Daniel 2:1-30
When I was working in corporate America one of our major activities was fielding the impossible request. When I worked the impossible request was always a balancing of three items: usually increase unit revenue, increase unit gross profit and do that without impacting cross unit sales. All sales were cross unit, so there was always another internal group involved. Getting two out of three was easy. We could always increase our revenue by raising price and the %GP would go up also, but that would hurt ancillary sales. We could raise revenue (by selling more widgets) and leave the other units untouched by taking a hit to our %GP (The revenue per widget was less). We could even leave the other units untouched and raise our %GP by raising price accoss the board (the demand curve was not that elastic), but then our total revenue would decline. We always eventually ended up in “come to Jesus” meetings where the total deal was skinned and the cross unit executives stopped being parochial and had a heart warming kum-bah-yah moment each giving up what they could at the moment. But until that moment, the internal fighting was brutal. We would spend 80 hour weeks making up arguments for why we should get the bigger portion. Just scheduling the meeting was “giving up your side” and no deal could be made until the end of the quarter anyway.
The King of Babylon has a dream and he tells his advisors tell me and interpret my dream. What? How can we know what you dreamed? An impossible request. And this guy is serious as heads were on the line. Daniel and his friends pray, and God reveals the dream. Notice who Daniel gives the credit too and what he tells the king. Nobody here can grant your request. But there is a God who can and has given us the revelation. Daniel confronts the King and tells him this is from God. This guy is fearless. That is not how humans work. But Daniel is not ultimately serving humans. He is a minister to the King, but he serves God first.
In many ways that is God’s impossible request. He says live in the world, but don’t be of it. And we botch that all the time. But, Jesus Christ lived in this world. God lived among us, but he did the will of his Father. Jesus didn’t grab for the glory first. That is what Satan offered him at the start of the Gospels. Jesus lived in this world to the cross to fulfill the Father’s will. Daniel is an OT shadow of that service. Jesus is the fulfillment to for our benefit.
