When You’re Asked to Do the Impossible — Part 1

This is Pastor Rick's daily Hope. I'm so glad that you found us today. And whether you're at home or in your car, we're so glad that you're here. And we pray that God will give you hope in times of difficulty. Rick is taking us through the book of Daniel, and that's so we'll be equipped to handle whatever curveball life throws at us, even the most difficult trials. So let's join Rick with part one of a message called when you're asked to do the impossible.

You ever had a boss or a parent or a friend or somebody say, I need you to do this for me? And you go, there's no way I can get this done. I don't have the time, I don't have the money, I don't have the background, I don't have the talent, I don't have the connections. Your boss walks in and says, I need this by Tuesday. And you go, yeah, in the next life, many times in your life, you'll be faced with an impossible situation. What do you do in that situation? I get the title from today's message from Daniel, chapter 2, verse 10 and 11, where the advisors of this Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar that we've been looking at for several weeks, they say to him, nobody can do what you ask. What you're asking is impossible. What do you do when you're asked to do the impossible? Now, I told you in previous message in this series that that God always tests you before he blesses you. He tests you with stress, before he trusts you with success, before God gives you success, blessing, influence, power, whatever he wants to give you, he first sees, are you ready to handle it. He tests you with stress before he trusts you with success. And in this story of Daniel, we're looking at nine major tests in his life. These are common tests that you're gonna go through. He's already gone through three of them. Each one he passed. Every time Daniel passes a test, he gets promoted. Remember, he starts out as a 15 year old prisoner of war in a foreign nation. And by the time he's 85, 70 years later, he's the second most important man in the entire empire. And the Babylonian empire was the number one empire in the world at that time. Enormous power, enormous, enormous influence. And he gets promoted every time he passes a test. And this is the test of when you're asked to do the impossible. Now, the story starts out in chapter two of Daniel, and it goes like this. In the second year of King Nebuchadnezzar's reign. Now that means Daniel at this point is like 17 years old. He's been in his program, we talked about it last week, for two years, this training program of the king that he brought some POWs in. In the second year of King Nebuchadnezzar's reign, he had a recurring dream that frightened him so badly he couldn't sleep. So he called in all of his magicians and psychics and fortune tellers and astrologers and demanded that they tell him what he had dreamed. Now, this is not an unusual thing. I told you that the Babylonian culture was based on a cult. And the wise men, the advisors to the leaders in those days where all these magician guys, these mediums, these necromancers, these sorcerers and magicians and astrologers, not astronomers. Astronomy is a legitimate science. Astrology is a fake religion. And so he brings all these people in and says, I had this really bad dream and I need you to tell me the dream. The king said, I keep having this dream that troubles me. Tell me what I dreamed, then. Tell me what it means. Now the astrologers answered, okay, just tell us your dream and we'll tell you what it means. But the king said, no way. If you can't tell me what I dreamed, why in the world should I trust your interpretation? Good logic. You're a psychic. You can't tell me what I dreamed. How in the world can I trust you to tell me what it means? So he said, you tell me. If you can't tell me what I dreamed, you're just a bunch of fakes with no real power or wisdom. Now it says, then all of the king's fortune tellers, they're all joining in together. And they said, nobody anywhere can do what you ask to tell you what you dreamed without you telling us about it. And no king in history has ever demanded anything like this from any magician or, or medium or astrologer. So what you're doing is you're asking us to do the impossible. It's impossible. Now this made Nebuchadnezzar furious, okay? He's really ticked off and he says, I'm dead serious. If you can't tell me what my dream was, I'm gonna have you all so called wise men tortured and executed, and I'm gonna have all your houses demolished into rubble. That's going over the top. Would you say I'm gonna assassinate my entire court because you can't tell me my dream? This guy's mad. Now the advisors Begged. Just tell us the dream. Cause anybody can make up a meaning through it. If you tell us what it was, we'll make up the meaning. Then we'll interpret it. But the king said, no, not as if. No. You are all condemned as worthless. And he issued a decree to execute all his royal advisors, including Daniel and his three Hebrew friends. So they're obviously not involved in this. But their advisors. They're all gonna get killed. This is what you call friends? A crisis. The king is about to assassinate you, and they're all worried about what's going on here. Why is he so upset? One of the traits of human behavior is we all wanna know the future. You do? I do. You would love to know what's gonna happen next week, next month, next year, the next rest of your life. And the reason why is because when we think we can know the future, we think we have a little bit more control over it. We can be prepared for it. But God doesn't want you to have control over your future. He wants you to trust him. And that's why he doesn't tell you the future. But we think knowing the future somehow gives us a little grasp on control. And the more insecure you are in life, the more controlling you will be. Anytime you see somebody who's a high control person, you can know they are high insecurity person. The more insecure you are, the more you try to control everybody and everything around you. If you're secure, you don't need to control anybody. Go on, you do your thing, I'll do my thing, and we'll all be fine. Now, today, 2,500 years later, after this event in Babylon, people are still trying to figure out the future. And because they're desperate for control and they're desperate for hope, they're going to all kinds of kooks and quacks and seances and tea readings and palm readings and horoscopes and Ouija boards and seances and mediums and on and on and on and on, trying to find out what the future's all about and how to hold onto it. Now, before we look at how Daniel handles this problem, tell me my dream and tell me what it means. I'm gonna just pause here. Since we're talking about astrologers and mediums and psychics and seances, let me just pause here and give you three things God says about this. I want you to write these down. Three things that God says about predicting the future. Number one, you might write this down, is that God says, no One knows the future except God. No psychic, no fortune teller, no medium, no astrologer. Nobody God says knows the future except God. Anybody who tells you they know the future is lying. The day before the 911 attack happened, nobody would have predicted it. Most of the things that happen in your life that are major, you were surprised by both the good things and the bad things. God says nobody knows the future. Anybody who tells you they know are lying. And that brings me to these verses. Ecclesiastes 8, 7. No one can tell the future, you say, But I heard of a guy. Do you really wanna argue with God over this? No one. I could give you 50 verses from the Bible where it says nobody knows the future. I don't. You don't? Ecclesiastes 10:14. Fools claim to know the future, and they love to tell anybody who will listen, especially if you'll pay them. But no one knows what's going to happen. You see, God wants to reveal to me only enough that I can obey him today, in this moment and all the rest. He wants me to trust him, for he reveals only what I need to obey him in the moment. He wants me to trust him for all the rest. Now, here's the second thing God says about the future. All psychics and mediums are frauds and fakes. 100%. All psychics and mediums, fortune tellers, astrologers, are frauds and fakes. I didn't say this. God says it. And again, I could probably give you 50 verses in the Bible where God says, these guys are just conning you. They don't know anything. They don't know the future. They're 100% of them. And in fact, God says that they're used by Satan to confuse people and to get them off base. Let me show you a couple verses. The Bible says this. In Isaiah, chapter 44, verse 25. God says, I make fools of psychics and fortune tellers. And I frustrate the predictions of astrologers because their wisdom is foolishness. Let me show you a couple more. Leviticus 19:31. Do not rely on mediums and psychics, for you will be defiled by them. I'm the Lord your God, so I don't want you looking at anybody else. You wanna know the future, you come to me. You don't need to go to these people out there. You're gonna be defiled by them. In fact, this is so serious. We're not just playing around here, folks. Here's what God says. Look at the next verse. Leviticus 26. God says this. I am against God talking. I am against anyone who goes to mediums or fortune tellers for advice because that person is being unfaithful to me. So I will cut him off. Whoa, we just hit a tender spot with God here. If you're involved in any of this kind of stuff and you just say, oh, I'm just playing around, Tea. Reading, following reading, run from it, get away from it. God says he doesn't want you near it with a 50 foot pole because you're trying to control the future. And on top of that, they're just fakes, they're frauds. They don't know you're wasting time and you're wasting money. Because in fact, in the Bible, in the book of Deuteronomy, God tells us that anybody who was a false prophet should be put to death in Israel. That's how serious this thing was. And now here's the third thing I want you to know about the future. God says this. The test of a true prophet of God is 100% accuracy. That's how you know if somebody who claims to be speaking the future, foretelling the future from God, is they are 100% accurate. In fact, God in the Bible gives us two checks by which you can check anybody out and they say, well, I predict this is gonna happen. He said one of them is, is it accurate? Does it always happen? He said, not 90% accurate and 10% false. He says, if it came from me, it's 100% accurate. A true prophet is never ever, ever wrong. Not 99% right. And this got that one a little off. No, God says they're always accurate. And he says it also always matches what I've already said in my word. Let me show you two verses. Deuteronomy 18, verse 21 and 22. God says this, if you wanna know if a prophet or his message is really from God, you know, you're trying to test these guys, here's how you test them. If any part is false, any part of what this guy's message or woman's message predicting the future is false or does not come true, then he and his message are fake. And you should pay him no attention nor fear him. So the moment you mess up one time, you're a false prophet one time, one little bit. In fact, God not only says, there's the accuracy test, there is the Bible test right here. Look at the next verse. Isaiah 8, 20 says this, Check their predictions against my word. He goes, read the Bible and then hear what they say, and he said, check their predictions against my word, says the Lord. If their predictions are different from mine, it's because there's no light or truth in them. Whoa. So, by the way, what Nebuchadnezzar did with those so called psychics is the same way you can prove that every psychic is wrong. And here's how you prove them. Don't tell them a thing. Don't do their leading questions. Anybody can pick up a book on magic and read these leading questions and I can get you to pretty much say anything. If I know the right questions to ask and you'll tell me, then I'll tell it back to you. And you think, man, Rick Drew. I really knew that. No, psychics never give them any information. They came to Nehemiah, said, tell us your dream and we'll give you the meaning. He goes, no, no, if you're so psychic, tell me the dream. You should know. Don't ever give any information to somebody who claims to be a psychic. So if you're on the phone, which you shouldn't be, to the psychic hotline, okay, and you're on the psychic hotline, and their first question is, what's your credit card number? You say, well, you should know that you're a psychic. This is my test of you. If you're such a psychic, you should be able to read it. I'm holding it up right now. Okay. If they can't read your numbers, they're conning you, okay? If they ask to ask for the number, that's gonna pay them. They're not very psychic. And so, by the way, why should you pay anybody who tells you what you already know? Like, you know, you go to psychic and they go, you, you, you've got a brother. Yeah, I got a brother. Wow, that's psychic. And your brother is. I see M. No, no, no, A J. They're watching you and see if you flinch. John. John. Jim. Jim. Yeah, I got a brother named Jim. 50 bucks, please. Why would I pay you for something I already know? That's not psychic. I already know that I have a brother named Jim. Now in this chapter that we're gonna look at today, in the first part of the chapter, King Nebuchadnezzar has this disturbing nightmare and he keeps having it over and over and over. He calls all in all his occultic people and he says, tell me what my dream is and, and tell me what it means. And they all fail. And so he says, well, I'm gonna kill all you guys. You're Worthless, you know, you're out of here. And then in about 14, verse 14, about 30, Daniel shows up. He intervenes. He says, let me have a shot at this. And he goes off and prays and he talks to God. God reveals to him in a prayer time the king's dream. Now, this is supernatural. It's impossible to figure that out. They could have asked a thousand guessed a thousand different dreams and never guessed it. God gives Daniel not only the dream, but the meaning. He tells it to the king. The king honors Daniel, and Daniel and his friends get promoted. That's what we're gonna look at. But what we're gonna really look at is the eight things Daniel did when he was faced with an impossible assignment. When your boss walks in and says, I want you to do this, and you go, there's no way it's gonna get done. What do you do?

Hey, thanks so much for being with us today and listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. You know, your prayers and financial support are having a huge impact on millions of people here and around the world. So thank you. Thank you so much. And now Rick's going to share a letter from one of our listeners who says Daily Hope is making a real difference in their life today.

I wanna share with you a letter that I recently received from Denise, whose son was paralyzed in an accident. But she has seen God work in amazing ways in both her life and her son's life since that accident. She wrote this. Dear Pastor Rick, I've been listening to Daily Hope for months now, and I finally decided to write you and let you know what these messages have done for me. My son was nearly killed in a car accident two years ago. Our son almost died twice. Once at the scene of the accident and once on the operating table. But he did survive. But we were hit with the news that he was paralyzed from the chest down. And the doctor wasn't even sure if he could move his arms as he was in a coma. The next 19 days were spent in ICU. He was then flown to a rehab facility where he spent three and a half months. And I became severely depressed. And I was so angry with God that I just couldn't see through my grief. But I began listening to your program Daily Hope through your website. And about six months later, this changed my life. I'm now beginning to see all the good things coming from my sons. And accident and injury. God did protect his brain. He's as smart, he's as funny, he's as witty as ever. His body's broken but his mind is not. And my son had turned away from God when he was 16, but he's slowly making his way back to the Lord. While I'm not grateful for the accident and I'm not grateful for my son's paralysis, I am grateful for the turn that my son is making back to God because of all what's happened. So have a blessed day. I'm now able to look for, and I'm able to find God's blessing even in my pain each day. Denise. Well, Denise, you have learned a lesson that many people never learn, that God's purpose for your life is greater than the pain that you go through. And God's plan for your life is greater than the problems that you go through. In fact, it includes those problems. You know, as a father, I know.

How hard it is to see your.

Children hurting, but I'm glad to hear how God is at work, not just in your life, but in your son's life, too.

We're gonna be praying for you here.

At Daily Hope, and for those of you who support Daily Hope. It's your gifts that make these kind of miracles possible. So thank you, everybody.

We sure hope you've been encouraged by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And if you have, would you consider supporting us? We appreciate so much your prayers, and if you'd like to give a financial gift, we just go to pastorrick.com again, that's pastorrick.com be sure to join us next time as we look into God's word for our Daily Hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.