Let's read through this. In the third year of the reign
of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim,
king of Judah, into his hand with some of the vessels of the
house of God. and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to
the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of
his God. Then the king commanded Aspenaz,
the chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both
of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish,
of good appearance, and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge,
understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the king's
palace and to teach them literature and language of the Chaldeans.
The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the
king ate and the wine that he drank. They were to be educated
for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand
before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael,
Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs
gave them names. Daniel he called Belteshazzar. Hananiah he called Shadrach or
Shadrach. Mishael he called Meshach. And
Azariah he called Abednego. But Daniel resolved that he would
not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he
drank. Therefore, he asked the chief
of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave
Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the
eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear
my Lord, the king who assigned your food and your drink, for
why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths
who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head
with the king. Then Daniel said to the steward,
whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah,
Mishael and Azariah, test your servants for 10 days. Let us
be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our
appearance and the appearance of the youth who eat the king's
food be observed by you and deal with your servants accordingly
to what you see. So we listen to them in this
matter and tested them for 10 days. At the end of 10 days,
it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh
than all the youth who ate the king's food. So the steward took
away their food and the wine that they were to drink and gave
them vegetables. As for these four youth, God
gave them learning and skill and all literature and wisdom,
and Daniel had understanding and all visions and dreams. At
the end of the time when the king had commanded that they
should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in
before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king spoke with them,
and among all of them, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore, they stood before
the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about
which the king inquired of them, He found them ten times better
than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom.
And Daniel was there and to the first year of King Cyrus. Now,
here we have the opening to the book. That is what I would say, wrought
with frustration. The book of Daniel. is one of
those Old Testament books that is seen in such a way as to parallel
many other prophecies, especially that in the Apocalypse of John.
Now, without getting into the details of what I think about
those things, I would say for the purpose of Daniel, for the
purpose of us looking at Daniel. We want to see that the reality
of Daniel's narrative is not for us to continue to look forward
to things, test the signs, look at the papers, look at the clouds
and consider is Daniel right and are we there for there's
no instruction given to us in that way. But more importantly,
we're to look at the Gospels of Jesus Christ and see how perfectly
Daniel illustrates this gospel. How perfectly the life of Daniel,
in some sense, is akin to the life of Job, akin to the life
of Joseph, and most certainly akin to the life of Jesus. Here,
Persia had conquered Babylon somewhere around 530, 520, and The Jews were brought into captivity
into Babylon, they were exiled there around 600 well before
that, and about middle of middle of this time, maybe 30 to 40
years. Don't know exactly when it's
hard to say these Israelites, these Jews were brought into
Babylon because they were slaves. They weren't free people, it
isn't like they just volunteered to come to Babylon. And so here's
Daniel and these other three who we will know as Meshach,
Shadrach and Abednego and other other places of scripture. We
see them and we see them in a situation where this is the introduction
to this narrative about the life of Daniel, where Daniel and these
other boys will defy the king's commands. They will not listen
to what is given to them, ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar, because
in doing what he orders, they will defile themselves before
Yahweh. And so Daniel is one of these
books that in some sense, it's just it doesn't seem to fit the
nature of how many people like to make it fit. Yes, there are
prophecies as we see there. God gave Daniel great wisdom
and the ability to understand all visions and all dreams, not
just his own. And as you'll see in the narrative
of Daniel, if you read it all, Nebuchadnezzar would would try
to help. God gave Nebuchadnezzar dreams
and his own magicians and his own scribes and his own enchanters
could not understand. We don't know. And so Daniel
was placed there by God that Nebuchadnezzar would see what
these visions meant. And you might say, well, why
would he do that? Because God had an overarching
purpose in the life of Daniel and in the life of Nebuchadnezzar
that's very applicable to us today as the people of God, as
Israel, in Jesus Christ, as the church. And so there's a lot
that could be taught here for a matter of practicality. A lot
of times people take Daniel and they pull out several things.
And if they're not going into let's read the headlines and
see if we're in the end times or let's measure out these things
and see what date Jesus is going to return or let's. And it's
been done time and time again. By false prophet after false
prophet after false prophet. And the only difference in the
false prophets and those who claim to be Orthodox that still
treat Daniel in that way is that those who claim to be Orthodox
not dare put a date to what they believe. But that's the same
garbage. Maybe I should even accept that.
But the purpose that we want to see here is that is that we're
not going to look and see now be like Daniel. That's not the
purpose of learning. the book of Daniel. It's not
the purpose of looking at the life of Daniel and say, be like
Daniel, eat vegetables. You know how many times I've
heard Daniel as a proof text for eating vegetables, for being
a vegetarian? Really? Oh, nice. Well, we eat
the king's food, which is everything else, but God grew the vegetables. I've even heard it said in some
corners that that's why marijuana shouldn't be illegal, because
God grows it. So we might as well partake of it. God makes
coal, too. I don't want to eat it. You get
the point. Let's don't use the Bible. Let's
make we can make good, logical, rational arguments for the benefit
of vegetables. And this is one. But this is
not what the Bible is teaching us to do. It was not it was not
in as much as what they Daniel ate. Is that what he did not
eat and why? So let's take a look here at
the early introduction to the life of Daniel as we know it.
He was 15 years old approximately, and he and these other teens
were brought in because the king wanted the Israelites to not
be a separate people. Because here's the deal. You think about a culture who
is enslaved. What happens eventually when
that culture overpowers their enslaver in number? They rise
up. And so any good king would say,
let's find the nobility, let's get the young men of the noble
class and let's bring them in and sort of adopt them, per se,
that they may stand before the king. And let's make sure they're
a good pedigree, make sure that they're not deformed, make sure
they're strong and they're not they're not the weaklings and
make sure they're good looking because we don't want any ugly
integration to our people. I don't want to look at ugly
people. I mean, can you imagine? Why did he say that? Make sure
they look good. Make sure they're strong. Because in my mind, I'm
thinking the king and his court and everybody around him. He's
just prejudice based on appearance. That's what royalty does. That's
why the White House, you have to wear certain things. Have
you seen in the news lately about how President Obama had on a
tan suit? And it's all over the news. I
mean, people are dying all over the world and starving and being
murdered and shot in the streets. And we're going to worry about
what color the suit is on the president. But that's what's
important in our fallen, depraved mind. And we give time to some
of these things. Well, there's no different in
the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Now, what good is that? I just
wanted to show you that there's some real naturalistic things
that are expressed in short narratives in Scripture. There are things
that people say and do in our conversations that if we just
paid attention, it would give us a lifetime of understanding
about their condition and about their thoughts and about their
belief systems. You can see what they really
think about certain things by how they talk about them and
what they do in response to certain things. And so the Lord here
in verse 2, I want you to see what's going on here, is that
the Lord gave the king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.
Now there's a deep doctrine here, theologically, that teaches us
that the Jews were not, the Israelites were not, enslaved because they
failed or because that Babylonians were greater. They were enslaved because God,
Yahweh, gave them to them. Gave Babylon siege over Judah. It says there that the Lord gave
Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. And
not just the king, but where the king goes and falls, the
people also go. So the whole nation of Judah
was sent by God to be enslaved in Babylon. To be exiled. And not just the people, but
their worship. The vessels that were necessary
for their worship were sieged and were taken and put into the
treasury. Those things that manage themselves
into the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant and other
relics of the Jewish faith were taken and put in just a piggy
jar, put into a piggy bank, per se. To be esteemed as treasure,
not as articles of worship. So something is showing us something
here is showing us about who God is. God in his sovereign
goodness and his sovereign justice, the cause of the disobedience
of Judah. He allows Babylon and not just
allows, but purposes and sins, Nebuchadnezzar into Judah to
overpower them and besiege them and conquer them and take them
into their own. And so there they are. And not
just the people, it isn't like, OK, we're exiled and we'll just
worship God as a separate people. God took that away. We looked
at Amos a few weeks ago and we saw that God, as he spoke to
the prophet Amos, he says, I do not like, I detest your offerings. Your singing disgusts me. Remember
that? Because you are praising Me with
your lips and with your hands. But what would Jesus say? Your
hearts are far from Me. And so God does not require our
liturgy. God is not requiring our assembly
in order to honor Him. Yes, it is something that we
do and we must do. But we don't have to have these
books. We don't have to have this podium. We don't even have
to have a whole Bible. We can get together with what
we do have and study and grow and live life as God's people
and the religion of man, even though it was commanded by God.
God took it away. Why? Because sometimes we put
our hope in these things. We put our hopes in kings instead
of the king of kings. We put our hope in religion instead
of the absolute grace of God through Jesus Christ, who brings
us into right standing into a relationship with the Father. So all of this has taken place,
and then the king commanded his chief unit to bring the royal
family and the nobility, some of the people, youth without
blemish. Why youth? Why not the old guys? Because you're not going to change
them. You're not going to change the mind of an 80-year-old rabbi. You're not going to change the
mind of a high priest. He's not going to sit there.
And so in the king's mind, he's thinking, I can mold these young
Jews into the ways and customs of Babylon. And this exile, this
enslavement won't be as much as an enslavement as it will
be an integration of people. But they must be these. They
must be skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, endowed
with understanding, learning and competent to stand in the
king's palace and to teach them the literature and the language
of the Chaldeans. Now you see what's happened.
The king wanted these youth, but he also did not want dumb
youth. He didn't want the farmers. If
you would, I'm not saying farmers are dumb, but he wanted those
who were educated, the scholars, the thinkers, not necessarily
the craftsmen. Matter of fact, the word wisdom
translated in Hebrew means skill. And so there are skills that
these young men have that aren't necessarily considered unlearned. So the point now comes to this. Here's this king, an enemy of
God, used by God to bring God's people into captivity. And then
this king, an enemy of God, used by God to bring the noble youth
of his people into the presence of himself and his gods. He took
the religious relics and he took them into the storehouse of his
God. He took the people out of Israel,
out of Jerusalem, out of the land of Judah, and He brought
them into the land of His God. And so in His mind, He's going
to bring the generations to come out of the worship of their God
into the worship of His God. And I would submit to you that
that's exactly what the world is doing today. That the enemy,
the God of this world, The father of lies through every, every,
every, every institution other than the church of Jesus Christ
is at work to orchestrate an integration with God's people
and the world. Now, see, there's a separatist
mentality like the Puritans, there's a separatist mentality
like the cults. that tell us that we are to not
just not be of the world, but not even to be in the world.
We just sort of have to exist among the world. Friends, there
is nowhere in Scripture that teaches such things. Oh, yeah,
be you separate, come from a part of them and come out. Well, because
Israel was purposely wanting to go in and become like the
world. But even an example, we see that
these youth, number one, were learned. And number two, we're going to
be taught the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.
Now, why would any good respecting person of God want to effectively
put in their mind anything about another culture or another language? Maybe because God put Daniel
and these young boys into this position so that they might proclaim
the excellencies of his mercy. And the language of the people.
Now, this speaks against a lot of different things, it speaks
to a lot of different things which aren't necessarily the
purpose of our sermon today, but let me let me get your brain
thinking just a minute. What about the people who would
say that there are only specific languages that the Bible is truly
the Bible? What about those who would say
that only a certain English translation is really the word of God? I'd
say they've never read it. But there are no words equivalent
in our language as to other languages, there were there are no words
that are actually equivalent from the original language of
the scripture to our language, it had to be translated by people
who died, who had their heads chopped off and who were burned
alive. To bring the Bible. To the people. of every culture. And it started
in the first century with the people of God, with the apostles
and their disciples, as churches were planted all over Asia Minor,
and then Spain, and then over into Europe, and then over into
the Americas, and then here we are today, and then now the Far
East. We see that people die to copy
and translate and distribute the text of the New Testament.
In every language, in every tongue, in every tribe, it's important
to understand that even when God put His own people in captivity,
He did so so that they would infiltrate the culture there,
not the other way around. I want to give away the punchline. Let's keep going. And so the
king, in an attempt to take care of these youth, decided to give
them a portion of his food. Now, imagine his food, the food
that he ate, not slave food, not leftovers, not crumbs, but
his food. My table is set and all of my
court eats from this table and these young men shall eat from
this table, too. And I guarantee you that the
food was good. The food was filling. The food
was tasty. It was appealing. It was rich.
And it was probably very valuable. It'd be like going out for steak
and lobster or caviar. I mean, I'm not going to impose
the types of food. Of course, they didn't have that
type of stuff in ancient Babylon. But imagine the equivalent. It
wasn't the food of the common people. It wasn't even the food
of Israel. And so here is the king with
an attempt to provide for these youth for their good. This earthly
king provides for them his food and then says, I will not only
provide for them in food, but I will provide for them in learning. For three years they'll learn.
Then they'll stand before me having been fed and educated
in our culture. And then they will stand before
me and be a confidant with me. The people of Babylon will see
these Jews as a partner with us. And so here's this world's provision,
and it seems right, doesn't it? It seems right that if you're
enslaved and then you're dragged off to the palace and you're
dragged off into a godless area where people worship the sun
god and the moon god, the Chaldeans, which is where Abram is from. The land of Ur. It goes, it stands to reason,
well, at least we can enjoy ourselves while we're here. At least we're
taken care of. At least we're living the high
life. At least we're the elite. We're the entourage of the king.
For Pete's sake, let's live it up. Let's enjoy it. We don't have to be in sin to
enjoy food. But what does Daniel do? Well, let's keep looking. This
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, the tribe of Judah. And they
gave them names. So we don't only want to change
them. We want to change their health, want to change their
mind, want to change their language, their philosophy, their ideals.
We want to change everything about them so that they'll be
proper to stand before Nebuchadnezzar. And we can't go and we can't
go and have a man named Daniel stand before the king. It's an
offense. Daniel Daniel's name in the sense
talks about the trustworthiness of Yahweh. The other the other
names have have deep Judaistic spiritual so-called Christian
wasn't Christian then understanding. We reflect Yahweh. We reflect
truth. We reflect grace. We reflect
glory. All these names mean something else. And so what they did is
they changed their names to fit their own culture. They changed
their names to what? Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego,
Belshazzar, which have religious meanings for their own gods. So here's this transformation,
the world's worth, the world's wisdom being offered, the world's
food and provision and health being offered, the world's titles
and prosperity being offered. I mean, would you like for your
last name to be Manson in the 60s and 70s? Of no relation to
any Mansons in the news? No, because just in similarity,
just in spelling, people look at you and all they think about
is that crazy guy. Would you want your name to be
Hitler? No. And so the same thing is true
with with these young men. These Babylonians did not want
their names to be offensive to the people of Babylon. They changed
them. The world decided to choose their
purpose and it wasn't a lot they could do about it. They still
had their original names, but then from the sense of the Babylonians,
they were called something different. Now, here's the interesting thing.
What's going to happen later in Daniel is that the king has
groomed these men and it's sort of like his it's sort of like
his proof. Wow, here's what I can do with
a savage, barbaric, ignorant, stupid, God-fearing Yahweh people,
these idiots who we overtook. If their God was truly God, they
wouldn't be with us right now. You see that mindset? The world
looks at the church and says, if their God was truly God, they
wouldn't be poor, they wouldn't be sick, they wouldn't be frustrated,
they wouldn't have hostility, they wouldn't have all these
things. They'd live it up. And that's why the prosperity
gospel is so wicked at the core. It's just Babylon. And there's
no way to mistake the reason that John in his apocalypse refers
to the entire world as Babylon. Because the whole world acts
just like it. The world wants to take our name and not just
ours, but the name of our Savior and change the meaning of it.
Jesus is a genie in the bottle for most people. Jesus is a sweet,
mamby-pamby wimp of a man who walked around weeping, hoping
people would listen to his soft voice as he was arrested, wrongly
tried, wrongly killed and martyred. Oh, woe is me. That's not Him. But that's what the world does.
How does He do that? The world does that by changing
the name of His church. The world does that by changing
the sense of the gospel. If we as the church are to feed
the sheep of God, the truth of God's Word, how do we do that
when we come to the place of Daniel and we teach people to
eat healthy? That's nothing wrong with eating
healthy. It's a God-centered thing. As much as we're able
and as much as we can to eat as healthy as we know how. But
Daniel's written not to give us a commandment of what to eat
and how to eat. Oh, it'd be nice to say, don't
you pray to a false god. Yeah, it happens. But I guarantee
you that the rule is if somebody throws
you into a fire, you're going to burn. In Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,
when they were cast into the furnace, The men who put them
in there burned on the outside of the furnace. They were engulfed
in flames because of the heat of the fire. And yet they did
not burn. And the king peered in and saw
four men. He saw Jesus Christ in the fire. And they came out
and did not even have the odor of smoke. That's the exception. It's not the rule. Because throughout
all of Christendom, People who refuse to bow down to the idols
of the world are marked on their head and on their hand with the
name of the God Yahweh, Jesus Christ the Lord. And they don't
have the name of the world, of man, of the beast, of Babylon. They don't do with their hands
the worldly things and they don't love and think with a worldly
mind. So therefore, they're hated.
And when they're thrown into the furnace, they're consumed.
But yet they do not die. Verse 8. Daniel was presented with all
of these things. He could not say, you're not
calling me that. He did not feel compelled to
say, I'm not learning and go... and sit there like that with
his ears plugged up and not listening to the teaching of the literature
and the language of the Chaldeans. But he could control what he
put in his body. And in his mind, for whatever
reason, And there's a lot of. I say commentators, because you
can't commentate what's not written, commentation is you see what's
written and then you you derive what's written and say something
about it from what's written, but historians. and archaeologists
have all debated a lot of different things about what this food was.
Maybe the food was offered to idols. Maybe the food was really
unhealthy. Maybe the food was a symbol of
prosperity. And in Daniel's mind, he's thinking,
I don't want to eat better than my people. As they suffer, I
too will suffer. Or maybe, just maybe, God gave
him wisdom. He was skilled in discernment
to sit there and realize, I don't want to just jump head first
into being like this kingdom. And I know if I eat this, I will
not be healthy. I will be sluggish. I will be
overweight. I will be whatever. And wonder how he knew that,
because he looked around at the other youth of Babylon and he
saw how they were. Because what does he say there? I will not, he resolved, I will
not defile myself with the king's food or the wine that he drank.
Therefore, he asked the chief priest to allow him not to defile himself. Now you see that? Would you please
allow me not to eat this? Now there's something there.
Because Daniel doesn't do that when he prays. and is thrown into the lion's
den. He defies the king. He doesn't ask permission. And
so that's why I think in my mind it's not necessarily it would
have been wicked for him to eat this. Because he did subject
himself to his master that God had placed him under by His sovereign
hand. And he says, you are my chief and could you allow me
not to? What happens in verse 9? And
God gave Daniel favor and gave him compassion in the sight of
the chief of the eunuchs. Daniel did not negotiate these
terms. God, by his spirit, changed the
heart of the chief of the eunuchs to listen and have compassion
on Daniel. We've dragged you out of your
place. You've grown up as an exile, really. And now you're
a young man. And we've taken you from your
family and we've put you here. We've changed your name. We're
about to change your culture. And now all you are asking is
can you just eat differently? Who does that? God can do that. What's the significance in it?
God wanted them to see something. But the chief of the eunuchs
said to him, I fear the king. I fear Nebuchadnezzar. I fear
the One who ordered me to do this because He's going to see
that you're in bad shape and then I'm going to die. You see
that? I can't. I have compassion for
you, but I cannot do this or I will die. I can't defile. I
can't defy my King to keep you from defiling your body. And Daniel said, just test us.
Test us and test your other servants for ten days. A week and three
days. For ten days. Would you just
let us eat this for ten days and then line us up and check
us out? So there's something significant
about the realization of what's happening here. All I want to
do is eat vegetables and drink water. I don't want wine and
I don't want meat and breads. I just want vegetables. And then
look at us. Let our appearance be compared
to the appearance of the youth who eat the king's food. And
then you deal with us as you see fit. He didn't say, let me
prove something to you. He says, in ten days we're going
to be better than they are and you're going to have to let us
eat this. He didn't say that. He says, just look at us. Just
give us ten days. And then you decide what to do.
You saw what to do. So in this reality here that
Daniel doesn't put his faith in the ways of the world, but
he puts his faith in the wisdom that God alone has given him.
And he has faith. Therefore, God has given him
favor, grace. Because without God's favor,
Daniel could have never had the faith and the wisdom to trust
in what he could not see. The world sees hopelessness,
but God's people see absolute certainty. And this eunuch, I fear the world. I fear the king. And Daniel resolved
to fear no man because he knew the true king of all kings. He
knew that there was a king over the king of Babylon that put
them under his hand. And that only God's power could
change the hearts of a fearful man and change the outcome of this.
So, verse 14, He listened to them. Friends, I believe this
is a partial grace. This is the grace of God to this
eunuch to be able to hear and listen so that at the end of
ten days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and
fatter in flesh than all the youth who ate the king's food.
And when I say fatter in flesh, it means they were filled out. They weren't
scrawny and their bones weren't showing, per se. So the steward took away their
food and their wine and gave them vegetables to drink. Vegetables
to eat and water to drink. And this is God's grace for them
to live in a wisdom that's not their own. They knew something that these
other people did not. And then look at verse 17, God
gave them what? Learning and skill in all literature
and wisdom. And Daniel had understanding
in all visions and dreams. So God not only gave them the
skill to live through dietary restrictions, God gave them the
skill to Turn away from the lust of the eyes and the lust of the
flesh. God gave them a skill to learn the customs and the
literature with wisdom. With wisdom. To look into the
pagan gods of Babylon, to look into the scripture of the Babylonian
gods and not be wooed by the writing, but have resolve that
they would not defile themselves, not only with the king's food,
but with the king's learning, with the king's culture, with
the king's worship, with the king's God. And so this, just as we see in
the gospel of John, where the food that Jesus talks about in
John four and John six is not physical food, neither is this
physical food. the soul issue. But we eat that
which we listen to, we eat that which we see, we eat that which
we long for, which we learn. It's food for us. Is it food? Is it satisfying our souls or
is it discerned and wisely, carefully graded and sorted so that we
do not defile our hearts and our worship? At the end of the time, when
the king commanded that they should be brought in, the chiefs
of the eunuchs brought them before Nebuchadnezzar, and the king
spoke with them. And among all of them, none was
found like these four. You see that? And in every matter of wisdom
and understanding about which the king inquired, He found them
ten times better than all the magicians and the enchanters
that were in all his kingdom. Now what's the point of all this?
What's this narrative going to do for us? Daniel was there until
the first year of King Cyrus. You know what happens when Cyrus
takes the throne? He lets him go. From this day that the third
year of the reign of Jehoiakim to the year of King Cyrus was
65 years. Daniel's entire life was spent
as an exile captive, the right hand of the king of Babylon,
as his advisor. That's a lifetime. And God had a purpose in it.
God had a purpose in it. Let's recap it real quick in
closing. God had a purpose because God in His justice had to give
consequence to the rebellious people of Judah. So He calls
them to be exiled to Babylon. He calls it. But not every Jew
was wicked. Not every Jew was paganistic. Not every Jew was rebellion.
But as a whole, that group was. But God in His sovereignty was over this. He oversaw it. And one of the main things that
we see is that God was doing something that no one else could
do. He was planting these young men
in the presence of the King of their captor. So that this King,
Nebuchadnezzar, would see that God is Yahweh. That Yahweh is God. Secondly, we understand that
the world, even in times of trial, will present their wisdom. Sort
of like Job. and his friends. In the context
of Job's suffering, the only worldview that Job and his friends
had was that if you're suffering, it's because you sinned against
God. And that is what the wisdom literature teaches. That's what
Ecclesiastes tries to rebut a little bit. But it's what Job teaches. It's what the Proverbs teach.
If you're wise, you live. If you're stupid, you die. If you work hard, you eat. If
you're lazy, you starve. If you're kind to people, they'll
be kind to you. If you're mean, they'll be mean
to you. That's just sort of the proverbial little Chinese fortune
cookie type stuff you see in the Proverbs. And so we have this idea that when Israel went into slavery,
Israel went into exile because they were sinning. That's true.
But at the same time, there were some of those who were not guilty
of that sin. But God had a bigger plan. The
world's answers, just like Job's friend, this is where I was.
Well, you must be in sin. You must have a problem. You
need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do that.
But God himself said of Job, have you considered my servant,
Job, whose righteousness compares to no one? Daniel wasn't guilty of being
pagan. Daniel did not even eat the pagan food of the king, but
rather subjected himself. To changing that at the will
of his master and God purpose to change the heart of his master.
There's a lot of life, but see how easy it is to teach practical
stuff out of this. But theologically, the world
presents answers to our needs, but God's answers are wise. It makes no sense why they wouldn't
eat his food. It makes no sense why they wouldn't
just bow down to a statue and get up and go pray in their privacy. You say, well, I've never bowed
down to a statue. Yes, we would. And I believe
that as the American church, and I'm not specific with saying
us in this room, but the people who claim to be the church of
Jesus Christ has bowed down to the God of Babylon. with the
stuff that they put in their churches, with the stuff that
they preach in their pulpits, with the stuff that they allow
to be fed to them, they bow down. Well, you know,
it's hard to change. Something else we understand
from this passage here is that God's people are faithful because
God is faithful. God's people are faithful to
trust in him because God is faithful to be trusted. No matter what learning that
Daniel and his friends learned about the gods of Babylon, those
gods were not real, but the true God of Israel is. And he's trustworthy. And so they knew they knew that
God had placed them there for a specific reason. and that they
could trust in Him, not only for their health and safety,
but for the changing of the hearts of not only the servants of the
King, but the King Himself, as you'll see. Fourthly, we understand that
the Lord's ways are certain. They're absolute. And they always
go against the wisdom of man. It's like Brother Dave Hanson,
who in one of his first sermons that he ever preached, he used
the illustration as a pilot. when you're having some trouble,
and I don't know all the technical terms, and you're in a spin,
and you're in a dive, and you're spinning, you can't... He says,
what you want to do is pull up. He said, but what you have to
do is push down. It's counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive. You're going to the ground, and
so your mind and everything in you says, get this plane up!
But in order for the plane to correct, you have to push it
into the ground where it's going. So the plane doesn't fight itself,
but levels off. And then you go up. That's sort
of like the way it is with the wisdom of God. It goes against
everything. Don't go there and do that because
that's dumb. Don't preach that because people
will hate you. You don't want to be hated, do
you? Let's steal away some phrases that have been said to me in
the last three years. If you know what's good for you, boy, you
won't go there. If you just stop being so polarizing,
I say, with what? With just expositing Scripture
verse by verse in a small little building next to a restaurant? Don't answer that. Don't take
that job. Don't do that ministry. Don't
let go of that career. That's ludicrous. That doesn't
make sense. How are you going to afford it?
How are you going to do it? How are you going to feed your
family? Because God called you to it, Supply your needs. Surely you're not moving. Surely
you're not taking my children or my grandchildren away. Surely
God hasn't called you. God wouldn't do that. God does
that. Why would you drive to Claxton
for church? The Lord's ways. Not just but
against, but go against every every fiber of the culture and
its wisdom. Fifthly. The fear of the world
and the fear of the flesh and the fear of what the world might
bring is foolish. Because God has established All
things for the good of his people. So whatever life Daniel could
have had. By the age of 80. Is when he
left Babylon, probably by death. 15 to 80, that's a life sentence.
Oh, Daniel could have had a better life. What? Kicking a rock in
the desert? Starting a family and just growing
old and they dying and growing old and them dying and growing
old. That's better than this. Establishing a home for orphans
is a good cause. George Mueller and others throughout
history who have been called by God to do good godly things. That would have been a better
thing for Daniel to do. See, that's the nonsense talking
that Jesus heard when he was in the world. Surely you're not
going to die You could overtake Rome. You could establish our
people again. You could bring back faithfulness
and worship and holiness. You're crazy. You could have a much better
life, Jesus, if you just get with the program. But the good thing is, is what
I would say finally. God's grace provides courage
and faith to Daniel. And God's grace will provide
courage and faith for us. Because God has a better plan
than just survival. God had a better plan for David,
I mean, for Daniel than just surviving in Babylon under the
radar. God had a better plan, and He
established Daniel to be the proclaimer of greatness, righteousness,
divinity. And many times through the life
of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar agreed that Yahweh is God and
that no one should hurt these Christians. And that everyone... What happens when Meshach, Shadrach
and Abednego come out of the fire? He decrees that everyone
will pray to Daniel's God. I don't worship that. Worship
Him. It's short-lived, but it happened. It's not just surviving. But
in the midst of mire and death and misery, and the world would
look on and say, y'all are fools. We're actually living the fullest
life. We live the fullest life in spite
of what is seen around us. Let me go to 2 Corinthians 4
and read that. And so what's the parallel? I
thought we were looking at the Old Testament so we could sort of
see the face of Christ. Well, I want you to see the face
of Christ. I want you to see the face of Christ in Daniel. I want you
to see the parallel in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that empowered
Daniel not only to be in captivity and caused him to be in captivity,
but caused him to trust fully in the sufficiency of God. Through
Christ Jesus, just like Daniel, Christ subjected himself to the
creation, Christ was born of a woman into the world that he
created, he created, he created Mary, he created her womb and
he put himself there to be born through creative means as the
Creator. God subjected Daniel. God the
Father subjected the Son to the world. Like Daniel, Christ was seen and He was offered the wisdom
of man. He was offered this way. You should do this. You should
do that. Even His own mother. Jesus, all the wine is gone. This party is a bust. This family
is going to be ridiculed and ostracized forever. They won't
even be able to worship in the temple. This wedding is a failure. And so their lives are over.
What am I to do about it? I didn't come here, Mother, to
keep people from suffering in society. Jesus, You don't have to die. Jesus, we're going to make You
our King. How many times has that happened? You need to be glorified. Let's
tell the world about what You've done. He says, no, I came here
to give glory to the Father, the One who sent Me. My time
for glory is not yet done. It's not yet here. Like Daniel,
Christ obeyed the Father instead of listening to the culture.
As crazy as it might sound, even when the culture is morally aligned
with Christ, it's spiritually opposed to Him. Because it's
not of Him. Religion and morality is not
a kinship with Jesus Christ. Righteous works and doing things
that are even what we consider Christian is not because they're
of Christ. Even coming to church does not
prove anyone's a Christian. Like Daniel, Christ survived death. And Christ's purpose was for
the glory of the Father. And God used Daniel for 65 years
in Babylon to bring judgment, understanding, worship, fear,
all sorts of things for the sake of God's glory and an establishment
of God's justice on the earth. Jesus Christ is God's justice
on the earth. As God has placed the sins of
all who believe on the Son, God is just because he has crushed
the Son to satisfy his judgment so that he can forgive. But Paul
says in Romans 3, he's not only the just, but he's the justifier
of all who have faith in Christ Jesus. And so Jesus is not just bound
to his earthly ministry, but Jesus' success and victory is
eternal, not just six and a half decades. I guess the question is, how
can we worship Christ? Even looking at the life of Daniel.
What does Paul teach us to do? And whatever you do, In word
and deed, do it for the glory of Christ. Whatever you eat or
drink, do it for the sake of the name of Christ. Do it for
the glory of God. You know what heaven is full
of? Small, unnamed nobodies that have ever or nor will ever be
heard of who make up the fullness of the body, who together worship
the King." Jesus is going to receive glorified worship from
His body. God the Father will be worshiped
from the church. Not just me. And my praise isn't
going to shine above anybody else's. Because the louder I
praise, the louder your praise is and vice versa. When our lives
live as a light to the example of the grace of God, we ought
to shudder in our shoes and we ought to celebrate in our hearts.
Because if it weren't for His grace, we would not live for
His glory. And if it weren't living for
His glory, we would not be set for glorification at the coming
of the Son. So I guess, what are we looking
for? What are we looking for in the
pages of Scripture when we go there? What are we looking for
when we come to assemble together? What are we looking for when
we pray for each other and engage each other? Are we looking to
be a people for God's glory, by His grace? Or are we looking
to prove to God that we can? when God Himself has already
proven He has. Don't fear. Don't fret. Don't follow the world's ways.
Trust in Christ alone to satisfy your hunger, to satisfy your
fears, to satisfy your desires, to satisfy your itches, to satisfy
your needs, to satisfy everything. And that which we think we want
to see, where we wish we were, for the sake of Christ, God has
a time for that. And it's not in our shoes to
take us there. It's in His shoes. So that at the day when we celebrate
the coming of the Lamb, there is no credit on our ledger of
how we've affected any of it. But yet it all goes, all glory,
all honor, all worship, all wealth, all credit goes to Christ. And here's the other side of
that amazingly beautiful coin. As Christ is exalted, so are
we. And we don't deserve to be there. All the credit is His, and He
snatches us up as His body, and as He is worshipped, as He is
exalted, as He is glorified, as He is set up high above all
things, we as His body set high with Him. And if you understand the marriage
supper of the Lamb that we see in John's Apocalypse, the mighty
King of Kings, just as He served His people on the cross, will
serve His people in eternity as their forever King, who is
their forever Lamb, who was slain for them. Let's pray. Lord, we can learn a lot from
Daniel. And I pray, Lord, that as we
leave this introduction to this that we would see now that the
rest of the narratives and the dreams and the visions and all
of these things hold and come out of this reality that you
purposed to place your people in captivity so that the gospel
of Jesus Christ could be shadowed, could be foreshadowed. that while if it weren't for
just those three pages of tissue paper that we have in our Bible,
we would not even know Daniel existed. But you did put it there. And Lord, in a spiritual way,
Let us test our lives, our bodies, our souls, our ears, our minds,
and show us where we defile ourselves. Where we defile ourselves as
Your body. As Your people. Individually.
Corporately. Regionally. Nationally. Lord, I pray that That you would
really just do a work, a mighty, supernatural, powerful work to
bring a zeal and a passion with peace and steadiness to your
people. And you'd start here among us. And that as you plant that fire
in the hearts and souls of yours, that we would meet in the middle
as we burn. for the sake of Your name. In Jesus' name we pray,
Amen.