God’s Word for You

Daniel 10:8-9 The Word of God

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, December 29, 2025

8 So I was left alone, and I saw this great vision. I had no strength in me, and my appearance changed to very pale, and I had no strength. 9 Then I heard the sound of his words; and when I heard the sound of his words, I fell into a deep sleep, with my face to the ground.

Daniel calls what he experienced “a great vision.” Only one time in the Bible is similar language used, when Moses says, “I will go over and see this strange sight” (Genesis 3:3), when he saw the burning bush. But the previous visions Daniel saw had all left him weak. Here the same thing happened. The New English Bible translated somewhat freely, “I became a sorry figure of a man.” “The trance experience,” says Baldwin, “was not one to envy.” Just as Isaiah had said, “Woe to me! I am ruined! I have seen the King, the LORD Almighty!” (Isaiah 6:5), so also Daniel was overcome with dread. Many of the Lord’s servants, both prophets and apostles, have had similar reactions. Younger men are frightened because they do not know how to speak the message (Jeremiah 1:6). Others fall to the ground and have to be helped up (Ezekiel 2:1-2). Still others are overcome with dread (Joel 1:15-16; Habakkuk 1:12-13). Jonah ran away (Jonah 1:3). The common experience is to be terrified because of one’s own sin before God, to be filled with dread and terror, which is why God and his angels so often begin with the words, “Do not be afraid.”

He hears the voice of the Lord, but he cannot understand what was being said yet. Twice he says “the sound of his words.” There are times in a dreaming state when a person hears the sound of a voice—a familiar voice, perhaps, like a parent or spouse who is no longer living. The sound is more important and familiar sometimes than the words themselves. But this was different. This was the overwhelming voice of the Word of God, the Son of God, whose voice is “a sound like the roar of a multitude” (verse 6).

One application we can make here is not about volume, although volume comes to mind, such as when God spoke to Job from the storm (Job 38:1). But here we are reminded of how much is packed into the words God speaks. Miraculously, as if there are many voices speaking with many different subtle variations of intonation, inflection, and many other details, the same words mean so many things all at once. Not conflicting things, as if Yes and No collide with one another, but rather law and gospel, compassion, command, invitation, concern, joy, delight, fatherliness, friendship, and so on. There is wisdom that is beyond our thoughts; peace beyond our understanding (as Paul says, Philippians 4:7). This is why, when we read that God said, “Let there be,” we consider his power, the way he provides for us, the way that he shaped the world for our sake, for our bodies, for our souls, for his church, for his plan of salvation, for the little old lady who lives down the street, and so many other things. The cross itself is in those words, and the empty tomb of Easter, and our empty graves, as well.

So when Daniel heard just the sound of the words that God was speaking, he swooned. He collapsed, and he tell face down on the bank of the River Tigris.

Here is a moment, surely here on the bank of the Tigris, when we can pause to consider the Son of God before he took on human flesh and the name of Jesus. Here we can still call him Christ, and the Son of God. Here, we confess, “He is God, eternally begotten from the nature of the Father” (Athanasian Creed §29), “Equal to the Father as to his Deity” (§31). What was his role before he took on flesh for us? Don’t we see it, at least in part, here in this fabulously bright man clothed in linen, with a belt of Uphaz-gold around his waist, with a body like topaz, a face like lightning, eyes like burning torches, and arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze? For what does he do? He speaks words; powerful words. “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1), and this is who he is. He took part in the creation, for “through him all things we made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). And in him is life, life itself (John 1:4), and the Apostle can also say: “this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). His identity is that of God: “eternal, incorporeal, indivisible, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the maker and preserver of all things, visible and invisible” (Augsburg Confession I:2). His role, his task, is to be the Word of God, the Word of truth, the Word of life. What he speaks is not for the benefit of God, but for the benefit of God’s creation, and most especially of mankind. He commands and commends the angels, but he saves mankind, and this salvation is accomplished through his word. For the means of grace is not the two sacraments, but the Gospel, that is to say, the saving Word of God, that is the holy Scriptures and that gives its power to the two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The Word saves, both the Deity, which is Christ, and what he speaks to mankind, which is the Word of life, and the Word of truth, because is it his Word, God’s Word. Listen to his Word, and trust his message. For this is the way to everlasting life.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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