Daniel 6, and I want to focus on verse
20, on the question that Darius asked
Daniel. Daniel, servant of the living
God. Has your God, whom you serve
continually, been able to rescue you from the lions? Now this is a good question for
religious people. Has your God, whom you served,
been able to rescue you, been able to save you? Some need this question posed
to them, for they need to question whether it is their God who is
doing the saving, or they themselves. There are people, if you ask
them, why are you saved? You claim you are saved, why?
And their answer will be, because I believed. Well, they've made
a savior out of their faith. The proper answer to why are
you saved is, God saved me. That's the answer. That's why
I'm saved. We are saved through faith, but
faith is not the Savior. God, particularly God as He's
revealed in Christ, is the Savior. Most professing Christians are
not really trusting God for their salvation, they're trusting something
they have done in response to something God has said. And then
some need this question posed to them, for they do believe
that they have served, and that word, actually, in this context,
it means to worship. He has worshiped God. They're people, they believe
they have worshipped their God continually. They're always doing
the things that they believe that God wants them to do, and
they are seeking His face, all this kind of thing. But they
do not believe they have been saved, or at least they have
no real assurance of the fact that God has saved them. Some
of you may be able to identify with that idea, because some of you come from
churches that think that any kind of real assurance and confidence
in the gospel is somehow presumption. and that whether or not you have
been saved must be proven by some external experience that
you have or some such thing, that you cannot simply believe
God and have his salvation. I've often thought of such people,
and I wish that I had the opportunity to pose this question to them. particularly the older ones,
because I hear of them. And their entire lives, they
have devoted themselves to their religion. And yet, as they near
the end of their lives, they have no real confidence, no real
hope that they have actually been saved. And they face death
with nothing more than a wish, hope against hope that when they
die, they'll find out they've been saved. What a horrible way
to live. And I would say to such people,
if you have devoted yourself to the worship of a God and he
has not saved you, you need another God. You know, that's how confident
we can be. If we are worshipers of the true God, and by that
I mean we worship Him in the way He claims to work, or has
told us we need to worship Him. If we have come to Him the way
He says to come, which is through Christ, it's that simple. If we have come to God through
Christ, we have been saved. And if we have not been saved,
one of two things must be true. We have come to the wrong God,
or we have come to him through someone or something other than
Christ. Now, first thing to note in this
story is that the believer has bitter enemies in this world.
Daniel. Now actually, as we read the
story, you might have been able to pick up on some ways that
Daniel pictures our Lord Jesus Christ. I particularly noticed
that when they put him in the lion's den, they put a stone
over the opening and sealed it, which is exactly what they did
to our Lord Jesus Christ when they put him in the tomb. And
certainly we could preach this entire chapter and just show
the way that it brings out the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ
as Daniel pictures the Lord Jesus Christ in many ways. But here's
the wonderful thing about the gospel. Because the way the gospel
is designed, whatever is true of Christ is considered to be
true of the believer as well. And the believer experiences
many of the same things, outwardly speaking anyway, in this life,
that our Lord Jesus Christ did. Our Lord had enemies. There were
people that hated him. And he told his disciples, he
says, they're going to hate you, they hate me. And the student
is never above his teacher. Because the world hates Christ,
it hates those who trust Christ, who follow Christ. Now, we may
not experience much of that hatred. In fact, we don't. I'm glad for
that. None of us have had our lives
put at risk because we believe the Lord Jesus Christ. But that's
because the Lord has restrained people from being as wicked as
they can be. But He does not always restrain
them. But the believer has bitter enemies
in this world. Daniel did nothing worthy of
their hatred. These people hated Daniel without
a cause, just as they did our Lord. And if we live As we are
exhorted to live in this world, if people hate us, they will
hate us without a cause. Daniel had done nothing worthy
of their hatred. They are not his enemies through
any fault of their own. As believers, we are taught in
the book of Hebrews that we are to do all we can to be at peace
with all people. We are to remove from our hearts
and lives all malice, envy, unkindness, and selfishness, and we are to
exhibit love toward everyone. That's what we're supposed to
do. Now, we admit we don't do that perfectly by any means. But we are certainly called on
to reach for perfection in those things. As a friend of mine once
said, go for the gold. Run like maybe you'll get a gold
medal. In your heart, you realize, well, I'll never get the gold.
But I'm going to run like I'm going for it. Do the best you
can at this. And considering that most of
the world is not interested in doing that at all, you will certainly
stand out. as a person of kindness and love
and gentleness. Now the enmity of our enemies
is prompted by at least three things. First thing is their
hostility toward God. In Romans 8 verse 7, we read
this, the fleshly mind is hostility toward God. Now if they don't
like our God, if they're hostile to our God, eventually they will
become hostile toward us. Now when I say eventually, Notice what this hostility arises
over or how they're able to make use of their hostility. Back
then in verse five it says, finally these men said we will never
find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has
something to do with the law of his God. Now, what excites the hatred
of the world for the people of God is when the world finds out
what the believer believes, who the believer believes. That's the place of contention.
Because what we believe, without us even saying it, that is, without
even us saying, well, you're wrong and you're going to go
to hell. We don't even have to say that. Just by expressing
what it is we believe, what they believe is condemned and they
are condemned right along with what of what they believe. You know, it's written, the Lord
said to Peter and the other apostles, He said, I give to you the keys
to the kingdom. And whoever's sins you forgive,
they've been forgiven in heaven. Now, some have taken that, that
God gave Peter the authority to go around telling people whether
or not their sins were forgiven. And you know, the whole The priesthood of the Roman Church
is based on that idea, that they have been given the authority.
People go and confess their sins to that priest and they have
the authority to forgive them or withhold forgiveness. That's
not what our Lord meant. What are the keys to the Kingdom?
The Gospel. And when we go out and declare
the Gospel, which the Bible calls the word of God, when we go out
and declare that, that word, according to the book of Hebrews,
chapter four, I think it's verse 12, it says, for the word of
God, the gospel, is living and active, it's powerful, even to
the penetrating of the heart. even to the ability to discern
the thoughts and intents of the heart. When we go out and preach
the gospel, and that powerful gospel pierces the hearts of
those who hear it, and they don't like that. Because the gospel
itself reveals to them that they're lost. We don't have to tell them
they're lost. The gospel will tell them that.
We may preach with all the love and compassion that we can muster
up. We may hold back as much as we are capable of doing it,
all fleshly expressions of our personality that, you know, may
make us want to get up here and, you know, pound the pulpit and
jump up and down or whatever and act like we're really powerful.
We may be able to restrain ourselves from doing that. It won't matter. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation, and that power penetrating the heart of an unbeliever, it outs him. It reveals to him what he really
is, and he doesn't like what it says. And since they can't
reach the God of the gospel, they go after the people of the
gospel. They hate God because of what
He reveals about them. Therefore, they hate God's people.
And they have an envy toward the believer. They might be envious
of the life of a believer. Now, not all believers are equally
able to live out the grace that has been given to them. But the
more that a believer is able to live out that grace, to walk
according to the Spirit, to walk in the light of the knowledge
of how good God has been to him through Jesus Christ, the more
he's able to do that, the more the believer's life will be characterized
by love, joy, and peace. Now, once again, this is something
we never achieve with perfection. But the more we are able to consciously
and continually lay hold of the gospel in our hearts, the more
we love, because we call to mind how much
we've been loved. The more joy we have, Joy, real joy, joy that exists
even in the midst of the greatest sorrows. That joy is the product
of the Spirit of God applying the gospel to our hearts. Peace. This world is always troubled,
isn't it, one way or another. The believer can be at peace
because he knows that God has undertaken his eternal salvation,
and no matter what goes on in this world, when it's done, he
will be in the presence of God, faultless and full of joy. As Brother Scott Richardson said,
ever since I heard the good news, I haven't heard any bad news. The religious world is envious
of the freeness with which the believer enjoys the blessings
of God. The worldly religious person
is like the older brother to the prodigal son. You remember
that story? It's a shame most preachers never
say anything about the older brother of the prodigal son,
because there is as much taught in his reaction as is taught
in what went on with the prodigal son. What did that older brother do?
Well, here's his no-count brother who took his inheritance and
squandered it. And then he comes crawling back
home, a mess. You can imagine the marks that
that life left on him. I mean, you can't live like that
young man did and not get some marks. I imagine he was skinny.
He couldn't hardly find anything to eat. And wherever he'd ended
up, he'd walked the whole way home. This was a tough-looking
fella. And he comes home, and what does
the father do? He gives a party, invites all
his neighbors, puts on a lavish spread and has them all come
to rejoice with Him because His Son has come home. And who won't
come in and enjoy the party? The older brother. So his father
goes to him. Why are you so upset? He says,
all this time I've served you. All this time I have worked hard. I've been the responsible son.
I'm the one who did things right. I'm the one who worked your fields
for you, watched your sheep for you. I've done all this. You
never threw a party for me. And yet this boy comes in. This
good for nothing son of yours comes in and you throw a party.
And that religion hates that about believers. You and I, we're
that prodigal son. We're the no counts. And we confess
to it. We confess to it. But what did
the father do? Did he say, okay, you can come into heaven, You
ain't getting no mansion, you know. You're getting a little
old log cabin way out there in the back hill somewhere in heaven,
you know. No. He prepares a feast. There's joy in the presence of
the angels of heaven over one sinner that repents. And the
religious world is working so hard and they never get a party. And so they're upset about it.
And then, third reason we have enemies, and this might sound like it's going against
other things we've said, but hang on. The goodness of the
believer's life condemns the sinfulness of their own lives.
Now remember, we have pointed out that there is a difference
between righteousness and goodness. there is none righteous, we know
that. In our lives, even the things which may appear outwardly
righteous, we know that they're full of sin because we as sinners
have been the one to do them, so they must have sin in them.
So when I'm talking about goodness, I'm talking about that believers,
when they are walking as Paul calls it, walking in the Spirit.
He says, if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts
of the flesh. As they are walking in the Spirit,
as their lives become more and more characterized by walking
according to the gospel, there is a wholesomeness about
them, there's a decency about them, there's a goodness about
them that the world cannot replicate. I'm not talking here strictly
about morality. In fact, much of the religious
world is more strictly moral than believers are, because they
are bound up with lots and lots of rules and regulations they
feel that they must follow. But you know, when someone who is truly decent,
is in the presence of those who are only religiously righteous,
it makes it obvious that the religious person is a phony. The Pharisees said they loved
righteousness. They claimed they worked righteousness.
And yet when true righteousness came in their presence, Our Lord Jesus Christ, when the
true righteousness came in their presence, they hated it. They hated him. And they hated
in the believer as well. Now the second thing to note in this story is the
remarkable example of faith exhibited by Daniel. Faith is a miraculous
thing. And we must be careful, as believers
in sovereign grace, we must be careful that we do not diminish
the value and the importance of faith. Now, I've told you before, I
come from the free will southeast. I mean, you know, it's just... I realize most of you have been
raised in this area. Free willism is not something
that you commonly come in contact with, but I was raised in it. Free willism, of course, makes
a god out of faith. because freewillism teaches that
God has done the same thing for everybody, and the difference
between whether a person is saved or not saved comes by whether
they have believed or did not believe. And therefore, the action
of the sinner is what determines the destiny of the sinner. And
because of that, sometimes those who believe in sovereign grace
so diminish faith, trying to prove that faith is not the Savior,
they so diminish it, it almost becomes insignificant. No, we
must never diminish faith. You see, our problem with free
willers and faith is not over whether or not faith is
the means through which we lay hold of salvation, it's this.
They make faith to simply be a decision. Just like signing on the dotted
line to get an insurance policy. So that decision to them is faith.
That's not what the Bible calls faith. Faith is the gift of God,
it's a miraculous thing. It is a living thing. It is the
natural expression of a heart that's been born again. And it's
through that faith that a person lays hold of that salvation which
God has wrought for them. So we make much of it. It is
written in Hebrews 11 verse 2 that through faith the elders And
not as much as this was being written to the Jews, he was talking
about the patriarchs or even those before them mentioned,
say, in the time between Adam and Noah. But it said, by faith,
they obtained a good report. They were commended by God through
faith. So we don't want to make little
of faith. Daniel's faith is exhibited in several ways. He habitually
worshipped the Lord. The question of Darius, has your
God whom you serve continually? Faith expresses itself in a continual
worship of the God in whom a person trusts. Believers are not here
today and gone tomorrow. That's not their normal pattern. They can be distracted. They
can trip over things, spiritually speaking. But the Bible says
the righteous fall seven times, but they get back up. Why? Because the Word is not external
to them. They don't just get out their
Bible and say, okay, this and this, okay, I walk this way,
now I walk this way. It's in them. Their walk in faith is natural
to them because God has put that living faith within them. His habitual worship of God both
proved his faith and it strengthened his faith. People who struggle in the area
of faith, professing believers, and I'm not even saying that
they're not true believers, they are. I've said it plenty of times
before, we believers, we're a mess. But believers who talk, oh, I
struggle so hard with faith, I want to ask them, how often
can people find you in the worship services of the church? How much do you dwell upon the
gospel and Christ? The Bible says faith comes by
hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. And once again, it's
not talking about the Bible, it's talking about the Gospel.
Faith comes by the Gospel. If you're not exposing yourself
regularly to the Gospel, how would you expect that you would
have a strong, vibrant faith? Daniel's faith endured testing. All faith is tested. That passage our brother read,
I asked him to read that because of this point. If you have faith,
it will be put to the test. And it will be put to the test
in order to prove it. You don't want to leave this
world with an unproven faith. Now, the way God tries his people
varies dramatically from one believer to another. It could
be that what is a trial for me wouldn't even be a trial for
you, and vice versa. But I know this, God knows you,
and he knows what things try you. He knows what things put
you in a in unpleasant, even miserable
circumstances. Now there are people like me,
I'll tell you this, none of my trials are out here. I don't mean out here in church,
I mean external to me. It seems that my trials, the
things that bother me, they're all up in here. My trial of faith at least as
much as I can understand it, comes from an emotional system
that doesn't work right. It's just messed up. Consequently,
the things that would normally bring people joy, they don't
do anything for me. The things that might work to
bring a person a sense of peace, That's not natural to me. And
so I live under an almost constant sense of doom and destruction
and the fear that comes from that. You say, well, that sounds like
it's not faith. How is that faith being tested?
Well, try believing God when that's how you feel. I often recite to myself Brother
Martin Luther's poem, for feelings come and feelings go and feelings
are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God,
not else is worth believing. That's the way God tests my faith.
I don't know how it is he's testing yours. But I know this, if you
have faith, he puts it to the test. And as we confront these tests,
we always overcome. Well, wait a minute, I don't
feel like I always overcome. Oh, not right at the beginning.
Most trials, when they come our way, you know how I said the
righteous fall seven times? Normally, we fall seven times
before we ever get up. You know, that's just the way
we are. But the point is, we get up. And it proves that what is in
us did not come from us, because everything from us fails. You may be knocked down horribly.
You may be knocked down so much that you say, I'm tired of this. I think I'm going to quit. And
you might. You might just say, I give up.
And you go and sulk about your troubles for a little while.
Maybe you're not seen at the worship services of God's people
for a little while. But you know what? Eventually,
eventually, that living faith which is energized by God, it's
going to stand up. Going to stand up. His habitual service did not
change in the face of the king's decree. This is what I like. He didn't start praying three
times a day when the king made that decree. You know, back when
COVID came out. And then states were saying that
churches were not allowed to meet. Well, some churches said,
that's none of your business. You can't tell us how we are
to worship. But I wonder how many people
started coming to church regularly at that point who weren't coming
to church regularly before. You know what they were doing
if that was the case? Now, I don't realize a lot of them. They'd
always been faithful at church, and they just continued being
that way. But we must realize or must be careful that our religious
actions are not just a matter of us rebelling against the king. It says Daniel went to pray three
times a day as he'd always been doing. Daniel didn't change. His faith was not ignited by
the king's decree. His faith was unaffected by it.
He did not draw back in the face of death. Then the third thing
to note is the Lord's salvation. Darius asked his question well. He did not say, are you safe?
Were you able to escape the lions? Did you survive? That's not what
he asked. Daniel had been faced with a
problem for which there was no hope that he could resolve it.
He couldn't survive in there. When they did that, if they're
going to throw you to the lion's den, they made sure it didn't
feed the lions for a while before they threw you in. And anything they would have
thrown in, they would have eaten it. There was no hope in Daniel.
Darius realized if If Daniel is to survive, it's going to
be because the God whom he served rescued him. And so he asked
it that way. I once read a book in which the
author defined faith as this. And listen, I think this is a
good definition of faith. Faith is believing God or trusting
God to do what only God can do. Now, if I said I'm going to trust
God to walk from here back to the foyer, I suppose there's got to be a
little bit of trust, because I realize if God's not willing for me to
do it, I won't be able to do it. But let's face it, normally
speaking, I'm able to walk from here to there. Not a whole lot
of faith involved in me if I said I'm trusting God to get from
platform back there to shake your all's hand at the end of
service. Faith is trusting God to do what
only God can do. Note what God's salvation did
not do. God's salvation did not kill
the lions or cause them to sleep. All that night there sat Daniel
and there sat, wide awake, lions looking at him. God's salvation
did not silence their roaring or restrain their pacing. They were probably pacing around
looking at him, maybe licking their lips. I haven't had any Jew before.
This might be good. God's salvation did not remove
the lion's hunger. nor their desire to eat Daniel. What did the Lord's salvation
do? Number one, according to Daniel,
it sent an angel. An angel. Now I don't know if
this is one of the regular angels or was actually our Lord Jesus. Because our Lord Jesus is several
times referred to in the Old Testament as the angel of the
Lord. And he's also called the Angel
of the Covenant, or as some translate it, the Messenger of the Covenant.
And that's very simply because in both the Hebrew of the Old
Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, the word that
is commonly translated angel, its basic meaning is messenger.
A messenger, an angel was sent to Daniel. And then it says that
the angel shut their mouths, didn't kill them, didn't remove
their hunger. shut their mouths. In 1 Peter
5, 8, we read this. Peter says, be sober, be vigilant,
for your adversary, the devil, goes about seeking whom he may
devour. I like it that it says that the
angel shut their mouth. Sure shut their mouths, because
there were multiple lions. And I like it because in both
the story here and then what I just quoted from 1 Peter, while
the lions, you know, we might think of their mouths as being
dangerous because they want to eat Daniel, That metaphorical
lion, his way of devouring other ways comes by what he says. He is elsewhere called the accuser
of the brethren. In the book of Revelation, he's
called the accuser of the brethren. People think of the devil in
that red suit and pointy tail and horns and all that. And they
think the work of the devil is to get people to drink to excess
and carouse around. You know what? People can get
drunk on their own. They don't need the devil for
that. People can carouse on their own. That's already written in
us. We don't need the devil to tempt
us to that. You think the devil is, oh, what
a success he's had with something like the Church of Satan. No,
those are just idiots. And I mean, I've run into some
of them. Maybe I shouldn't use the word like idiot, that's kind
of negative. But really, they're kind of silly. When you talk
to them, they don't have any good sense. Or there are some
of them, and this is what was found out about Anton LaVey,
who back in the 60s wrote the Satanic Bible. And I remember
all the churches, oh no, Satan's got a church now and all this.
They weren't Satanists, they were atheists. And they plainly
said so. And they set up that religion
just to disturb and mock Christians. You know what the work of the
devil is with believers? It's to press guilt on them. Now, if he can do that by tripping
you up into some kind of sin and then going, aha, see what
you did? Oh, you can't be a Christian.
God's child wouldn't act like it, whatever. He's an accuser. The word devil means slanderer.
He slanders believers in the presence of God because he brings
their sins up before God, in the very presence of God. And
yet, what does the Scripture say about the New Covenant? I
will forgive their sins, their iniquities I will remember no
more. For the believer, his sin is gone. It's not real. It doesn't
exist in the presence of God. Consequently, when the devil
comes and accuses them, when he roars his guilt at them, or,
excuse me, roars their guilt at them. It's a lie. You say, well, yeah,
but I do the things. Well, yeah, you did, but they're
washed away. We're talking about in the court of God now. They're
not real. And what happens? His mouth is
shut. He still prowls around. He still
roars. He isn't dead yet, but God shut
his mouth. He cannot devour us. His word will not find purchase
in our hearts. It says that the accuser of the
brethren has been cast out. They overcame him. This is so
good. You say, well, I can't overcome
the devil. Yeah, you can. Not in your own
strength, surely not. It says they overcame him by
the word of their testimony. What was that? Their testimony
was the testimony of Christ. The gospel. Their testimony and
the blood of the lamb. How do you overcome the devil's
accusations of guilt? Devil, the blood of Christ washed
that sin away. Now you're right, I did it, but
it's gone. You can't make it stick. The scriptures say if we confess
our sins, God's faithful and just to forgive our sins. And
he's forgiven me. So you just be gone. Our hope is entirely in what
Christ has done, not in what we have done, and
that puts Satan to the rout. Has your God been able to rescue
you from the lions? All of your trials and troubles,
they're brought to you by God, but sometimes he uses Satan as
the agent, just like he did with Job, and they are brought to
test our faith, because every one of these trials can be twisted
by the devil to whisper in your ear something like, now if you
were really a believer, is this how God would treat you? If you were walking like you
should, would your Heavenly Father let this happen? If you were really a Christian,
would you have done that? And he roars. But blessed be our God, that's
all the devil can do to us. He's seeking some of us to devour,
but he won't be able to. Because that spiritual life that
God implants in the heart shall rise up in faith and stare that
lion in the face. and say, the blood of Jesus Christ,
God's Son, has cleansed me from all sin. Your roar is loud, but it's not
dangerous. Your mouth is shut. Has your
God been able to save you? I hope so. I hope that you worship
the true and living God, and He has saved you and given you
assurance of that through His gospel. But if you have no assurance
of eternal life, you need to ask yourself two
questions. Am I serving the right God? and do I approach him?