Daniel 2:34,35

Daniel 2:34

I. We see in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar the great fact that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of truth, is at length to be supreme over all other kingdoms. Other kingdoms have always hitherto represented ideas and forces of evil. From the beginning, even down to the present moment, there has not yet been one kingdom which has aimed supremely at the well-being of the world. All of them, without exception, have been selfish and aggressive, aiming at the accession of territory and the augmentation of power and wealth. The image which Nebuchadnezzar saw did not fall of its own accord. It was not destroyed by a band of enemies. It was destroyed by miracle, by a stone cut out of the mountain without hands. We see in this a type of the fact that the great powerthe power which is to be dominant in our world, which is to grow and move and smite all evil is a miraculous, a heavenly power.

II. We note the apparent contrast between the agent which destroys evil and the evil which is to be destroyed. A stupendous image that is the evil; a stone, quite small at first, cut out of the mountain without hands that is the good. It has ever been so. That which is to destroy evil is at first little and despised, and men laugh at it and treat it with mockery. What was Christ to all appearance that He should assume the part of the destroyer of evil? He was as a root out of a dry ground. He was an obscure man, from an obscure city, in an obscure portion of Palestine, without what the world would now deem education. This was the man who claimed to stand forth as the great, the only conqueror of error and sin and death; whose name was to fill, whose love was to inspire, and whose work was to save the world. If that mighty stone moves with a menacing aspect towards all embodiments of evil, it becomes each of us to inquire how we stand in relation to it. Like the wheels of Ezekiel, it is full of eyes. Wherever it sees goodness, faith, love, it leaves them standing. It breaks not the bruised reed. But for them that resist there can be no escape. There is nothing more fatal than the defiance of love.

E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ's Garment,p. 219.

References: Daniel 2:35. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. ii., pp. 232, 244.Daniel 2:41; Daniel 2:42. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 310.