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0:20 Babylon, 539 BC, and it's the middle of the night. 0:24 So inside the royal hall there are a thousand drunken nobles, and King Belshazzar is drinking wine from golden cups that were stolen out of God's temple. 0:33 And then the fingers of a human hand appear and start writing on the wall. 0:37 And I mean the king is just absolutely frozen by this, but nobody can read what the hand wrote on the wall. 0:43 So they sent for an old Jewish exile named Daniel. 0:46 The king makes Daniel an offer. 0:48 Read the wall, tell me what it says, and then I will give you purple robes, a gold chain, and the third highest seat in the kingdom. 0:55 And without hesitation, Daniel says no. 0:59 So, guys, welcome back to day three of the Daily Blade this week, where we're looking at the life of Alexander the Great to help us really remember for whose glory we should be striving. 1:08 And so some of you might remember this, but where did Alexander the Great die? 1:12 He actually died in Babylon, in Nebuchadnezzar's palace. 1:16 And those are the same halls where Daniel walks for several decades. 1:20 He served the Babylonian kings, and then when they were ousted, he served the Persian kings. 1:25 And remember, the Persians were the very empire that Alexander would come to destroy. 1:29 That's what he set out to do. 1:31 But the thing to keep in mind about Daniel is that his entire adult life was spent inside the machine of worldly glory, and yet the desire for personal glory delivered by this world never infected him. 1:44 Now let's go back to Daniel and King Belshazzar. 1:47 We see this recorded in Daniel 5, verse 17. 1:50 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another. 1:57 Nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and make known to him the interpretation. 2:03 So Daniel told the king that he could keep his gifts, but that he was going to tell him the truth, and the truth was pretty brutal. 2:09 He told the king that he had been weighed in the balances and had been found wanting. 2:13 And wouldn't you know it, King Belshazzar was killed that very night. 2:16 And this wasn't the first time that Daniel had seen something like this. 2:20 Years earlier, King Nebuchadnezzar stood on the roof of his house or of his palace and said, This, as we see recorded in Daniel 4 30, isn't not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty? 2:37 And guys, that's the same energy as Alexander, 200 years before Alexander. 2:42 It's all about my power and my glory. 2:45 God drove him out to live like an animal until he learned. 2:50 And then Nebuchadnezzar said this in verse 37 Those who walk in pride, he is able to humble. 2:57 Then if we keep going back in the book of Daniel to Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a giant statue, right? 3:04 So the heads made of gold, the chest is of silver, the belly of bronze, and the legs of iron. 3:09 And so there are four kingdoms represented here, right? 3:13 There's Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. 3:16 And the bronze belly is Alexander's empire. 3:19 Daniel saw it coming generations before it actually happened. 3:22 We actually see this in Daniel 2, verses 34, and then we'll go on from there. 3:27 As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 3:36 Now let's go down to verse 44. 3:38 And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. 3:46 It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. 3:52 So Alexander in Greece, you know, that that was bronze, right? 3:56 Daniel served the stone. 3:59 But there was a cost to all of this for the great Daniel. 4:02 So he was kidnapped from his house when he was a teenager. 4:05 He was given a different name. 4:07 He was forced into a regiment of re-education. 4:09 But we see this in Daniel 1, verse 8. 4:12 But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food. 4:16 So even here we can see that Daniel is the kind of man that predecides that he will remain strong before the pressure comes. 4:25 And then some decades later, his rivals made a law that would forbid people from praying to anyone but the king, and the punishment was the lion's den or death, right? 4:34 In Daniel chapter 6, it says that he went from home, or that he went home rather, and then he opened his windows towards Jerusalem, and then he knelt three times a day, as he had always done, and he prayed to Yahweh. 4:47 So he didn't close his windows, he didn't try to hide, he basically said, Bring on the lions, right? 4:52 But if we go back to the poem from Lucan that I read on Monday, Lucan called Alexander a dark star hanging over the entire world. 5:00 Now let's hear how God describes men who live for his glory. 5:05 Let's go to Daniel 12, verse 3. 5:07 And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. 5:17 So, guys, the star that was Alexander burned out. 5:21 But Daniel will shine forever. 5:23 And guys, I just got to tell you, most of you are living in a sort of Babylon, right? 5:28 This could be, you know, it could be your algorithm, it could be your social media feed, it could be the industry that you work in, it could be the office building that you report to. 5:35 Every system you encounter will offer you purple robes and gold chains if you just bend a little bit. 5:42 Just bend a little bit. 5:43 We should use Daniel as our example. 5:47 He stood firm. 5:48 He worked with excellence. 5:50 As we see in Daniel 6, he became distinguished above all the other high officials because an excellent spirit was in him. 5:58 And you can decide to be that kind of man right now. 6:02 And you should decide. 6:03 Resolve now, before the pressure comes, that you will keep the windows open and that you will continually serve God. 6:11 Say no to the purple robes and the gold chains because Babylon went bye-bye. 6:16 Persia is long gone. 6:18 Alexander's empire fell, and Rome fell thereafter. 6:21 But the kingdom of Jesus Christ is still filling the earth, and that's where we should plant our flag.