Sunday School Lesson

Have you ever wondered if someone was telling you the truth?  What did you do to try to find out if they were telling the truth?  Do you ever have doubts about God?  What can you do to overcome those doubts?

Today we are going to look in the book of Daniel.  Wednesday night we talked about Daniel and how he made his reputation.  We also talked about how we could do things to have a good or bad reputation.   Daniel and his friends had a good reputation and that is something we all want to have so we should be able to learn alot from Daniel.

Have someone read Daniel 2: 1-3.  Have you ever had a dream that bothered you?  Has a dream caused you to lose sleep?  Did you think maybe your dream was a message from God?

Why do you think Nebuchadnezzar was so troubled about his dream? 

Would God give Nebuchadnezzar a message through his dream?  (Read Daniel 2:37) God gave him his power so why not give him messages through his dream.

Let's look at Daniel 2:1 again.  How many dreams did Nebuchadnezzar have? (It said dreams so it must have been more than one)   Why do you think this is important to know?  (Well, it leads me to believe that he may have had this dream over and over and maybe that is why he thought it was such an important dream)

What kind of experts did Nebuchadnezzar bring in to fix his problem?  (magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrolegers)

Read Deut. 18: 9-12 to find out God's opinion on these kind of experts.

Let's read Daniel 2: 4-6.  What kind of a boss do you think Nebuchadnezzar was?  Would you like your school teachers to be like that?  Do you think they regretted what they said in verse 4?

Read Daniel 2:7.  Why do you think they said this to the king?  If we compare verse 5 with verse 7 we can see that Nebuchadnezzar had already made up his mind that he wanted them to interpete the dreams.  If he had already told them that he wanted them to tell him not only what his dream meant but also what the dream was.  And most of the time when a king made up his mind about something he did not change it, I think they were just trying to buy some time to think about what they would say to him.  They were probably desperate and scared because of what he said he would do to them if they could not tell him what the dream meant.

Read Daniel 2: 8-9  Why do you think he told them that they had to tell him his dream too?  Because he believed that they had lied to him in the past about things.  This was a test of both their honesty and their ability to correctly interpret the dream.  If they were not going to tell him the truth why keep them around.

Read Daniel 2: 10- 11.  Here we can read where they are trying to argue about why they should not have to tell him the dream too.  They knew that they couldn't so they were trying to convince him to change his mind.

Read Daniel 2:12  How does Nebuchadnezzar react to being told that he is unreasonable?   Can we learn anything from this? 

Read Daniel 2: 13-15.  How would you have reacted if you heard the decree from the king?  It says in verse 14 that Daniel answered with wisdom and tact.  Could you have responded the same way if someone had declared for you to die?

Read Daniel 2:16  Do you think Daniel was scared when he went before the king?

Read Daniel 2: 17-18.  What did Daniel do to prepare to tell the king his dream?"

Read Matthew 18: 19-20.  I think when we ask others to pray that will take out some of our selfish prayers.

Read Daniel 2:19  How did God reveal the dreams to Daniel?  What does Daniel do after God reveals the mystery?  (He praises God)  How often do we pray ernestly for something and then when God answers we never even say thank you to God.

How did Daniel even know that God would know the dream?  Read Daniel 2: 20 - 23.  (He believed that God knows even the deep, dark hidden things)