Do You Want to be Great?

An exposition of Daniel 8

What Is Greatness?

It is right to seek to be great, provided you know what greatness is. Attaining greatness is built on a commitment to excellence and a rejection of mediocrity.

The qualities of greatness are commitment, passion, daring, and responsibility. These qualities can be used for being great at anything, good or bad. If Christians serve a great God, then we should strive to be great!

To hear how to be great, click:

To hear an exposition of Daniel 8, listen to the YouTube video linked above.

Know Your Place

History is “His Story”. In Daniel 8, we have history in advance. Daniel chapters 8-11 tells the history of what happened between the Old and New Testaments.

Daniel 8 is about two empires: The Medo-Persian Empire (8:20), symbolized by a ram with two high horns (8:3) and the Greek Empire (8:21) led by “Alexander the Great,” symbolized by a fierce male goat (8:5).

When he died, his empire was broken up into four parts. From one of those smaller kingdoms came Antiochus Epiphanes, of the Seleucid Empire (175 BC -163 BC).

Antiochus reportedly murdered 40,000 believers in the Lord, sold others into slavery (8:12); out-lawed following God’s Law; burned copies of the Old Testament (8:12); set up a Zeus idol in God’s temple: the transgression that makes desolate (8:13); called himself “God manifest”.

To learn more about Antiochus, listen to the YouTube video linked above.

On The Way to the Manger

Daniel is looking as God takes us on the way to the manger (where Christ was born) and so ending the beginning. He sees much of the history between the Old and New Testaments, about the end of the beginning.

Know Your Person

You’re not the goal of history: God’s Prince born in a manger is. We so often spend our lives trying to make ourselves great – great money makers, great business people, great scholars. The tragic irony of human life: we strive to be great and yet we don’t know what greatness is.

Know Your Prince

Antiochus used his power to try to be as great as the “Prince of hosts” (8:11). He is the model for all godless rulers, striving to be great, above God, anti-christs.

To learn about the anti-christs, listen to the YouTube video linked above.

Antiochus Epiphanes is the model of future anti-christs.

Antiochus attacked the people of God, first. An attack on God’s people is an attack on Him. The way you treat the Church is the way you treat Christ

Some people work hard to be great but they treat the Body of Christ as if it were nothing. They’ll choose to skip church to make more money. The way you treats the Body of Christ is the way you treat Christ Himself. If you’re not committed to the church, you’re not committed to Christ.

Do you want to be great?

Be appalled at these three great rulers who did as they pleased. Know that the Prince had to do what didn’t please Him.

“Not My will but Yours be done.” — the Prince of princes

Know that He came to serve and served all the way to the cross and from there became great. So that now His Body is not dust, but alive, and His tomb is not lost, just empty. Know Your Prince.

To start to become great, listen to the YouTube video linked above.

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church is Caswell County’s/Danville’s Reformed church.