PODCAST

Courage in Exile

October 13, 2024 | Brandon Cooper

The sermon uses the story of Daniel in the lion’s den to encourage the congregation to be courageously faithful to God, even in the face of adversity. It highlights Daniel’s unwavering prayer life and trust in God’s sovereignty, in contrast to the powerlessness of the king. The sermon draws parallels between Daniel’s story and the life of Jesus, emphasizing the importance of being faithful to God rather than relying on human authorities. The sermon concludes by calling the congregation to develop habits of devotion and prayer and to boldly share the hope found in Jesus’ victory over death.

TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+

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And with that, you can go ahead, grab your Bibles and open up to Daniel chapter six. Daniel chapter six, famous, famous story that we’re going to cover this morning. As you’re turning there, I want you to meet Lubinka, who is a 21 year old living interestingly behind the iron curtain that Herb was just talking about in one of those countries that was not a big fan of Christians or the church, let’s say. And she’d been a part of Vienna bible school for three years. She was getting ready to head back for her last year at this Bible school. And if you know anything about authoritarian regimes, you know that you don’t just get to leave the country whenever you want. You have to get an exit you have to get an exit visa. So she went to get an exit visa at one of the, you know, local places, or whatever. And, you know, you go in, and it’s just bureaucracy at its finest. It’s like the DMV that kind of feel, and it’s fine. It’s whatever, whatever. What you don’t want to have happen is what she had happen, which is you get invited into the back room. The back room is a tricky one. You probably seen this in movies. Talked to people who’ve experienced this, and it’s just like the movies they got the big picture, not of Stalin in this case, but Tito, but, you know, one of these communist dictators there, and it’s just the sparse bear, I mean, of the fluorescent lights flickering and all that stuff just lends some atmosphere to it. And there’s a guy there, you know, the commander or whatnot, who’s trying to threaten and intimidate interrogate this 21 year old girl who is, of course, quite nervous at this point. And, you know, why are you going to Vienna, I’m trying to finish up Bible school. Why would you do something as dumb as that? You know, the Bible is like, why? You know, all this kind of stuff and, and she’s a little bit braver. You know, he was expecting her to break down pretty quickly, but she was okay. So he finally, kind of in frustration, slams her passport down on the desk in front of her and says, Don’t you know I have the power to keep you from going back to Vienna and finishing your schooling, which he’s right about, by the way. And she looks at him, and this is one of those, you know, promises of Scripture where, when you get hauled before the government, the spirit is going to show you what to say, kind of thing. This is definitely one of those stories. She looks at him and she goes, My God is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and if he wants to use you to keep me from going back to Vienna, then I surrender to His will. And he’s apoplectic, as you would expect at this point, you know, purple faced, eyes bulging and all that. And he grabs the passport and stamps the exit visa in it and says, I don’t want to be used by your God, which, of course, is funny because he was being used by God to make sure that you could finish your school and to go on and as there’s in ministry even now, by the way, the Vienna Bible College is where the lamps were serving just outside of Yugoslavia, and so this is a friend of theirs. They’re the ones who told me this story earlier this week. But I mention all of this because Church and State have had a fraught relationship through the millennia. Now, even back before the church was the church, but the people of God under Israel as well, the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world overlap, of course. I mean, the Bible even tells us submit to your leaders for the Lord’s sake. So there’s overlap here. But what happens when that overlap turns into conflict when governments deny visas for you to go do what you believe the Lord has called you to do, when they shut down churches, when they decree ungodly laws, when that happens, we always have a choice. We can choose cowardice or courage, cowardly compromise, to give in to whatever it is the government is pushing you to do that is contrary to God’s will, or courageous conviction, to be steadfast and immovable. Which will we choose as we live in exile, recognizing, of course, that we enjoy tremendous religious freedom in this country, for which we are grateful, but you never know. I mean, I could tell stories of people in this room who have lost or are losing jobs because of their commitment to Christ in His ministry. So if that happens to you, how will you respond? This story points us to how we can develop that courage as we look at it. So we’ll take it as we’ve been going throughout. Daniel, we’ve done this throughout the scene. So Scene one, first of all, the evil decree here, Daniel, chapter six, verses one to nine. Let me read it for us. It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now, Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom at this the administrators and. Satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel and his conduct of Government Affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. 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. So these administrators in satraps one is a group to the king and said, May King Darius live forever. The Royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisors and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next 30 days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lion’s den. Now, Your Majesty issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed. So King Darius put the decree in writing. So first question we have to answer, in part because I told you we’re going to answer it last week, and you’re expecting it now, is, who is Darius, the Mede? Exactly. We met him at the end of the last chapter. He took over the kingdom at the age of 62 so that’s all we know about him, right? He’s a 62 year old ruling over Babylon after Cyrus, the great conquered that empire on behalf of the Medes and Persians. The problem we run into is there is absolutely no record of him anywhere archeologically. So what are some possibilities here. One is that this actually is Cyrus the Great. And Darius the Mede is a throne name. We know from history that there are people, even around this time, who would take throne names, usually for political reasons, because you’re trying to keep subdued peoples subdued in all this and and Cyrus was about 62 when he took over the Babylonian Empire. And he was a mede. Also his mother was a Mede, although eventually it kind of becomes the Persian Empire. It was the Medo Persian Empire first. So could be Cyrus the Great. Could also be a regent that he’s put on the throne of Babylon for that first year. Especially, we do know there was a regent there. And again, would be a different name at this point. The other possibility, of course, is that this is a mistake, that this is not Darius the Mede. They got it wrong. There’s a Darius later. There’s actually three. Darius Dari. I I don’t know what the plural is, who who rule over Persia, so maybe this is somebody who’s historically uninformed, who put the wrong name down, maybe. But I doubt it. And why do I doubt that? Because that’s what they told us about Belshazzar too, remember, and then we found him in the archeology. So I think we just got to have that in our minds, that the absence of archeological evidence is not proof of a mistake when it comes to Scripture. Whoever he is, not terribly important. He sets up 120 sat traps, you know, governors, district superintendents, something like that, and then these three administrators who are going to be over them so that the king wouldn’t suffer loss. In other words, we’re worried about graft. We’re worried about not all of the taxes making it to the king, but some of them falling into the district superintendent’s hands. So no surprise, Daniel is one of the ones chosen for that role, and he’s actually going to be made chief among them, even because of his exceptional qualities, Daniel has the skills and the character to do this well, there is no corruption in him. He is trustworthy, as you’d expect of someone who trusts God, he’s not living for himself, so he’s not gonna be the kind of person who’s trying to get kickbacks for himself.
So what happens in verse four when they find out Daniel’s me in charge, all of his rivals try to find grounds for his dismissal. So it’s a little bit, we’re in election season, so we’ll use the election metaphor here. This is a little bit like, you know, hiring a private investigator to do opposition research on the other candidate so you can drop that October surprise. You know that this candidate, he’s a big fan of recreational whale torture, right? And then other of a sudden, goes, ooh, we can’t vote for that guy. And then you win the election. So that’s what they’re looking to do here. The only problem is that he is squeaky clean. There’s nothing. There are no skeletons in his closet. So they have to look elsewhere. And in verse five, they say, the only way this is going to work is if it has something to do with the law of his God. They use a specific word there. It’s actually the same word that Haman uses in Esther when he’s talking about what makes the Jews so different. They’ve got a different law, and so they are a different people, and that’s the problem, because it’s not just that they got different customs, but you know, it’s like they’re obeying someone else, almost. You might see them as enemies of the throne, even so we got to get rid of them, and that’s kind of the same idea that we have here. If he’s following a different law, that means he’s sowing disunity, which is a big problem in a big empire. This, by the way, is why, historically speaking and even. Today, across the globe, governments hate have so much conflict with the church, because the church just won’t get in line. Because we’re not supposed to. We are. We won’t act like the rest of the culture, because we are a part of a different culture. We are exiles, living in a foreign country, even if you’re in the country of your birth. Why? Because we are citizens of heaven, and so we have been set apart to be holy like we’re living Technicolor lives in a grayscale world. Spiritually speaking, we talk a lot here about the motto for kids city, which is to raise children that the world can’t ignore, and that’s just saying. We just want to raise church folk. That’s all we’re saying. Because we should be the sorts of people that the world cannot ignore. We should be strange pilgrims. I mentioned that Karis and I are going to Colombia tomorrow, and we will be different there. We will stand out. We look different. Karis in particular, looks different. And then we sound different, speak a different language, we act different. And again, that’s the whole idea. That’s what we should be, and that’s what Daniel has been. In contrast to Daniel’s integrity, though, we have this group of people who are committed to collusion and lying. You’ll see the lie right there in verse seven, when it says, we have all agreed that this is a great decree. Well, at least one person probably did not agree to this law, and that would be Daniel, but still, they’re willing to lie and then to manipulate this fault in Persian law. Persian laws were immutable. That was so that no subordinate could change them. Also, just partly had to do with how they wrote the law down, just to chisel it in stone. This is harder to change than, like, stealth editing a government website, right? Like, where different sort of things they kind of go, well, it’s there. Sorry, deal with it. That’s it. So they’re going to exploit that fault specifically by coming up with this decree. Now it’s a weird decree. Why would they have everyone in the kingdom for 30 days pray only to Darius, especially because this is a resolutely polytheistic culture, like we know we got different gods out there. You don’t want to upset people. And the quickest way to upset somebody is to tell them they can’t worship their god anymore. But that’s not really what’s happening here. Probably more the idea of petition instead of prayer, it says like that, no one can seek anyone except you, is more literal translation. So I like the way one commentator put it, this decree doesn’t deify the king, but designates him as the only legitimate representative of deity for a stated time. So he’s going to be the chief mediator between gods and humans for 30 days. Why this will help secure the throne? Because everybody’s focused on him now. So he’s the focal point of the Empire, and that is kind of the idea. Anyone who doesn’t do that, obviously, is making the throne insecure. That’s a bad idea. So you get tossed to the lions. Kings back then kept lions to hunt, meaning to slaughter, because they were just there, like unchained. It’s not that hard to hunt them then, but they would keep them in this cistern shaped pit with a little hole at the top, and so it’ll be really easy to drop someone in there. So that’s where we are so far. So good. Got the king to enact a law that flatters him and establishes his rule, and they know that Daniel will break this law. And some of you are listening to this going like, poor guy, right? Keep in mind, we started back in 605. We’re now in, like, 538, like, he’s 80. He’s 80 at this point, you’re like, hasn’t he earned a break yet? Like, why the Lord keep throwing this stuff on him? And it might be a question you’ve actually asked of yourself at various points. The reality is, you know, we think the older we get, the fewer trials we should have, but trials are meant to strengthen us, and so the older you get, the stronger you should be getting, spiritually speaking, so that you can lift a heavier burden. It’s like weightlifting, right? You show up at the gym the first time, you’re the scrawny guy who can’t even bench the bar, but a couple decades later, you got two plates on either side, and that’s what’s happening spiritually here, Daniel, at 80, is the strongest guy in the room. He’s the strongest guy in the empire by a long shot, as we’ll see, because Scene two, the king’s distress. Let me read verses 10 to 18 for us. Now. When Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room, where the windows opened toward Jerusalem three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. And these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree. Did you not publish a decree that during the next 30 days, anyone who prays to any god or human being except to you, Your Majesty, would be thrown into the lion’s den? 10, the king answered the decree stands in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed. Then they said to the king, Daniel, who’s one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, Your Majesty, or to the decree you put in writing. He still prays three times a day. When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed. He was determined to rescue Daniel. Made every effort until sundown to save him. Then the men went as a group to King Darius and said to him, remember Your Majesty, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians, no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed. So the king gave the order. They brought Daniel and threw him into the lion’s den. The king said to Daniel, may your God, whom you serve, continually, rescue you. The stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel’s situation might not be changed. Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him, and he could not sleep. So Daniel learns the law, he learns this decree, and yet he still prays. We can actually learn quite a bit from his example of a prayer here. First of all, you’ll notice how he prayed. He he kneels. You’ve got his window open and he’s facing towards Jerusalem. It’s interesting. None of those involve a specific command. You don’t have to kneel to pray or anything like that, but there’s a specific posture, physically that helps him focus in prayer. He kneels as a sign of humility, and then he is praying toward Jerusalem, kind of in line with Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, First Kings, 848, I’m not going to put it up there. It’s a long, long sentence, but you know, Solomon’s saying, If we sin against you, and you send us into exile, and then if we pray to you towards the city, you’ve chosen Jerusalem and toward the temple, Lord, you know, hear our prayer and answer from heaven. And so that’s what Daniel is doing here. Second, you’ll notice that not just the posture of his prayer, but the variety of his prayer is exemplary, like you’re in a crisis moment like this, we do petition, right, Lord help us. And yet, Daniel prays with thanksgiving, also, because gratitude is essential in the midst of crisis to guard our hearts in the bitterness that otherwise might come. And then third, most importantly for the story, notice that Daniel is just doing what he always does. Absolutely nothing has changed for Daniel. He has been praying three times daily for years, decades, really, three times a day. Why? Probably Psalm 55, verse 17, evening, morning and noon, I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice. So in other words, throughout the whole day, I’m constantly going back to the Lord to pray. Good idea. By the way, I know a lot of us today have kind of learned the idea of a quiet time speaking of things that are not specifically commanded in Scripture, but we kind of try and get it all done at once. That would be like just eating breakfast and then hoping that that sustains you throughout the day. We need food more often than that. We probably need spiritual food as well. Just to have these set times, like it’s lunchtime, I’m just going to check in with the Lord, or I’m getting ready for bed,
I’m going to check in with the Lord. That’s what Daniel has been doing, and he does not change it just because his circumstances changed. In other words, what’s remarkable here is not that a crisis drives him to prepare prayer. That’s not remarkable that happens to everyone. What’s remarkable here is that a crisis doesn’t cause him to break his routine. You have to love seeing that it is so important. This is not a new habit for him. He’s not flaunting his disobedience to the king, which some would do today. We get these ostentatious displays of rebellion that’s very different from Daniel. So we’re going to tease this out with like a little thought experiment here. So last week, or maybe the week before, I don’t remember, was take your Bible to school day. Which I get the idea of this, by the way, it’s probably not the idea I would have come up with. So I’ll just say that up cards on the table. Okay, but I get the idea you bring your Bible, which most people in high school don’t actually have Bibles anymore. They have phones. Terrible idea. So I like the idea right there. Okay, bring an actual hard copy of the Bible to school with you, and it’s meant to spark a conversation. Your classmate sitting next to you goes, you read the Bible, and you’re like, hey, this is perfect. What I’ve been praying for, for, you know, all year long, that I get to have this kind of comment. You really think that’s true. I’m so glad you asked. So great. Okay, like that. And then also, there’s a sense of solidarity. You can look around the room and go, Wow, they’re actually six Christians in my class, which is helpful, for sure. Now I’m hoping that both of those would have happened anyway, because the reality is, you shouldn’t need to have this with you for people to know you’re a Christian. That should be that whole Technicolor in a grayscale world kind of thing. Everybody should have gone. Of course, you brought your Bible with you. Yeah, oh, and of course, I know that those five are also Christians or something like that. So again, some of my concerns with it, but, but I like it, okay. But now imagine, and it’s not hard to imagine this, either that in, you know, Illinois or something like that, they banned bringing bibles to school. You didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable with, you know, cramming your religion down their throat. I could envision that happening. Would get struck down in the Supreme Court, yes, but it might be a law for a little while. What would happen, given our culture especially, this would not become a Christianity thing, a discipleship issue. This would become a culture war issue, and you’re going to have a huge group of people who are going to go on Amazon and buy a Bible, or at the very least pull the one down off the top shelf, dust it off and start bringing it to work, people who have never read their Bible certainly don’t believe the Bible. Don’t go to church and don’t live like the Bible is true, are going to be carrying it with them. That’s the opposite of what we get here. That’s the opposite of Daniel. Daniel doesn’t change because of the government. Rather, he won’t let the government change him. That’s a big difference. It is probably worth asking, though, even with that thought experiment, if our government banned prayer for 30 days, would it make any meaningful difference in your life? Or if they banned Bible study or evangelism, would that actually change anything about how you live your life, hopefully not when kingdoms conflict. Like Daniel, we obey God’s law and not the world. And that was easy for Daniel because he was always obeying God’s law. But again, we can imagine scenarios. Let me just throw out a couple so you’re thinking through this. It might be a parent who tells their teenager they can’t go to church or youth group because they don’t want their kid, you know, getting infected with that cult I’ve seen that one for sure. Or you may be let go because you’re unwilling to work on Sunday mornings, because you know that gathering with the people of God needs to be a priority in your life. Or it may just be as simple as bowing your head in the work cafeteria before you have your meal, even if it draws unwanted attention. Well, Daniel doesn’t mind the unwanted attention. Again. He does what he always does. He knows the law targets him, but he doesn’t care. So on the one hand, he doesn’t pray to be seen, which Jesus talks about in the the Sermon on the Mount. Of course, he doesn’t pray to be seen, but at the same time, he doesn’t hide what he’s doing, either. And so the conspirators pounce. Their plan worked to perfection. They’re very shrewd. They go to the king and they remind him of the law first. You just you had a law, right? Remember correctly, it was this morning. I know. But like you said, something about 30 days, right? And so do that first, and then they disparage Daniel. It’s not Daniel the chief administrator in the kingdom. It’s Daniel, one of the exiles from Judah, one of those guys. Well, he’s in trouble now, and the king is immediately distressed. He spends all day working on the problem and cannot find a way out. I don’t know what that means exactly. It could be that there is no legal loophole here. That’s a possibility, I think more likely, honestly, there’s no way for him to undo this without looking weak in front of the people he conquered like last week, and who probably he needs to look like a strong king for them at this point. So he feels stuck, and his stuckness is just so deeply ironic, too, because we had this law to test the people’s loyalty to him, and the law ends up rewarding his faithless subordinates and punishing probably the most loyal person in the kingdom, Daniel, who has been a faithful servant of successive dynasties, really. And then we set the law. We get this law to set the king up as the ultimate authority. And that law ends up imprisoning him in his authority, revealing his true impotence in the process. There’s your irony so that. And here’s the culmination of the irony. In verse 16, Darius says that he hopes God will save Daniel, the most powerful man on earth has no power to save Daniel, only God can do that. That’s a good lesson for us, isn’t it? Like, what about you in what do you hope? Like, I don’t know about you. Again, fraught political climate. All. That I am grateful for our government. I am grateful that they are here. I look at what’s happening in North Carolina and Florida, and I’m like, thank God we’ve got FEMA imperfect absolutely bureaucracies always will be but I’m glad they’re there and they’re doing the work that they are doing. But here’s the thing, FEMA can’t stop a hurricane. FEMA just cleans up after the mess. And even then there’s messes they can’t clean up because, you know what else FEMA can’t do. FEMA can’t raise the dead. Only God can do that. Or what about your hope for justice? I think that’s where a lot of us turn right. If we want justice, there’s injustice in this land. There’s injustice in the world. We want it done with that means we need better government, which would be helpful. Of course, we need to. If we get the right election, then we can get the right laws enacted, and justice will flow like a river and righteousness like a never failing stream. Except that that’s not actually how it works, because if you’re trusting in laws, what happens if an unjust ruler ends up on the throne, or what if the law isn’t passed, what then? What hope do you have? And hope is why Darius and Daniel respond so differently. We don’t actually hear from Daniel in this section, but it’s clear he’s not kicking and screaming as he’s being dragged to the lion’s den. Daniel is at peace because he knows that God is sovereign. So when he hears the law, he doesn’t prep for revolution. He just prepares himself for death. It’s fine, I’m going home, guys. So he’s at peace because he knows that God is sovereign. Darius is anxious because he knows he’s powerless. And so the king rejects food and entertainment. He tosses and turns all night long. He’s got no peace because he’s got no trust in the God who brings peace. And again, there’s the irony, the king has every pleasure available to him, and he can’t enjoy any of it, and Daniel has nothing but God’s presence and is satisfied. What a reminder for us today that true peace comes from knowing God. It does not come from money and entertainment, from power or security, especially against security, is kind of the big question, isn’t it, the only true security we have is our trust in God. Your Money can get swept away, your power can be lost, but your inheritance in Christ is kept in heaven for you, and your adoption as a child of God has been signed and sealed by the Holy Spirit. That’s so different from the vicissitudes of life. I love the way Sinclair Ferguson sums it up. He says this. He says, Darius, helplessness suggests to us that it is better to be a child of faith in a den of lions than a king in a palace without faith.
Yes, and amen, especially because let’s see how it turns out for Daniel, last section, scene three, the prophets deliverance. Let me read the rest of the chapter for us, beginning in verse 19. At the first light of dawn, the King got up and hurried to the lion’s den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice. Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions? Daniel answered, May the king live forever, my God sent his angel and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me because I was found innocent in his sight, nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty, King, was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. When Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God, the king’s command, the men who had falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the lion’s den, along with their wives and children. Before they reached the floor of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones, and King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language and all the earth, May you prosper greatly. I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom. People must fear and reverence the God of Daniel, for He is the Living God, and He endures forever. His kingdom will not be destroyed. His dominion will never end. He rescues, and he saves. He performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions. So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Comment right there. By the way, some of you are like, See, they’re different people. It can’t be Cyrus. You could also translate that the reign of Darius. That is the reign of Cyrus the Persian. You got a footnote in your Bible, if you’re curious about that. So what happens here at first light, Darius rushes to the den. He must have had a glimmer of hope that God had actually saved Daniel because of what he does. He doesn’t, you know, tell some lackey, hey, go see if, like, there’s a foot left or something, and we can bury part of him, you know, give it a proper burial. No, he thinks maybe this actually happened. And the hint about his hope is in that phrase, the living God. Uh, Daniel, this is verse 20, servant of the living God. Has your God saved you? Now, LIVING GOD meaning not a lifeless god of wood and stone, not a false god like an idol. Has the God who is actually alive, the God who is there saved you. This phrase, living God, is used often in the Old Testament, almost exclusively on the lips of Jews who are going up against a foreign adversary. So Joshua uses it, for example chapter three, because he’s talking about the living God, in contrast to the gods of say, you know the people of Jericho or the rest of the promised land. And so what’s ironic here is that we have one of those foreign pagan adversaries using it about a pious Jew. So there’s the change. What I think this means, though, is that Darius at least understands the whole getting tossed in the lion’s den thing, less as an execution and more as a trial by ordeal. So like you’re gonna get put in this trial and you should die, but if you are miraculously spared, then that means you were innocent. And that’s the lesson they learned. Verse 22 they didn’t eat him because he was innocent. It actually says the lions did him no harm because he had done the king no harm. Same word was used. So in obeying God, he was not being disloyal, but actually ferociously loyal. He was probably praying for the king, because that’s what you do. Of course, we see His spirit there when he answers Darius by saying, May the king live forever. And Daniel doesn’t lie. He says an Israelite in whom there is no guile, in contrast to his rival. So when he says it, he actually means it, all because he trusted God. That’s what brought him peace in his trial. And so he’s rescued as an innocent man, new decree is given, and punishment fits the crime. Those who falsely accused Daniel, the way you say falsely accused in Aramaic is to eat pieces of someone. Punishment fits the crime because they ate pieces of Daniel. Pieces of them will be eaten, is what just happened in the lion’s den. And so Proverbs, 2810, kind of comes to mind in terms of what just happened. Says, whoever leads the upright along an evil path will fall into their own trap, but the blameless will receive a good inheritance. We just saw that lived out here. Now probably some of you are wondering about the families, right? How come the wives and kids have to go in too? I get that. It’s a tough question. First of all, note that this is not the Lord who’s commanding that punishment, but the Persian king. Of course, sometimes it’s because families are complicit, though you do see that in Joshua seven with Achan, he sins by keeping back some of the stuff that was meant for the Lord, the family was complicit because he dug a big hole in the middle of their tent. They All Saw, well, Hey, Dad, what you doing? You know, like, they knew what was happening and didn’t stop it. But what’s happening here is just the ancient view of family solidarity, kind of the sense of, like, you know, Apple doesn’t far fall from the tree. So if dad’s bad, you’re all bad. You know, plague on both your houses, Mercutio and Romeo and Juliet, exactly, the whole house is rotten, so they’re all killed, and because they were not innocent, there is no divine deliverance, no angel to shut the mouths of the lions. The Lions break there fast. And so Darius then learns a lesson similar to Nebuchadnezzar, and sends out a similar proclamation. This sounds like what we’ve seen in Daniel three and four already. God rescues his people. He does signs and wonders. THE LIVING GOD IS TO BE reverenced, right, not just tolerated, but reverenced and feared by all people and His Kingdom, in contrast to the kingdoms of this world, His kingdom will endure, which we saw in the dream of the statue in Daniel chapter two. That’s kind of the main theme of Daniel as a whole, isn’t it? In spite of appearances, God is always in control, and God is always ruling wisely. But man, those appearances can be rough sometimes, can’t they like it really looks like he’s not always in control when you got enemies plotting against you and unjust laws and you’re being threatened with death. So in those moments, how do we move from cowardly compromise to courageous conviction? Because it’s gonna take more than be like Daniel, which is impossible, you know, like just grin and bear it, kind of thing like, that’s not going to work if we’re going to develop that courageous conviction. We need to see where Daniel points so let me review this story again. Jealous rivals frame an innocent man on trumped up false charge. Is they arrest him while he’s engaged in private prayer, bring him before the king. The king realizes he’s innocent, but feels like his hands are tied. He’s power. Tries to rescue him, but but has to bow to pressure, ultimately sentence the innocent man to death and then seal him in his would be tomb, really. You all know where this is going. Whom did I just describe the true and better? Daniel, Jesus Christ. Because what happens to Jesus? His rivals, the religious leaders frame him for sedition. They arrest him while he’s praying in Gethsemane Pilate knows he’s innocent, but literally washes his hands of him because he’s bowing to the relentless pressure. There’s only one difference in these two stories, and that difference is that there is not a scratch on Daniel when he walks out, whereas Jesus is tortured, crucified and murdered, scars on his brow, his hands, his feet and his side, never mind his back. But that difference just reminds us of what makes Jesus true and better, because he also walks out of that tomb. That’s the good news. That is the proof that God rules and rules wisely, because he has the power to subjugate evil to his good purposes. From the cross, he brings forth resurrection, not just for Jesus, but for all of us who hide ourselves in Jesus. And that is a point that Peter makes at Pentecost in Acts chapter two, he says this, this man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge. God is ruling despite appearances, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross, but God raised Him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him, God overrules evil finally and forever. That’s what we need to believe to know if we’re going to live courageously. That’s what will give us power to risk all for our faith. Daniel is not just an example to follow. Jesus is not just an example to follow. He is an example to follow. But what we get here is the foreshadowing of our final verdict.
We too will be found innocent and will survive our trial by ordeal if we trust in Jesus, not because we’re innocent, but because he was and he grants his innocence to all who trust in Him. His acquittal is ours as well. Here’s the way Iand do good put it, he says, When Daniel came forth from the lion’s den, he came out alone, but when Jesus came forth from the tomb, he came out as the head of a mighty company of people who have been redeemed from the pit through His death. I know we’re missing some of the Moody’s, but I am preaching better than you. All are Amen, and right now that gives us our big idea. Just pull it together, right? The big idea be courageously faithful even to death, because Jesus has conquered the grave already for us. Thank you. We are going to be in exile for a while, until we die or the Lord comes again. So we need to learn to live well in it, to trust and serve our God without fear, without wavering. We’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to do that in Daniel’s life, the importance of having community, the need for wisdom and consistent devotion to develop these habits of grace. We know that we need God’s power to reach the world, even our enemies, and that last word, enemies reminds us that that’s why we need to risk rejection. We’re going to have to count the cost that it will be we will be sorely tempted to take the easy way out. Again, it’s 30 days, 30 days without but whatever. Why die for this? Well, because he’s the living God. That’s why, that’s why we would risk rejection or dismissal by being bold with our colleagues. It’s why people all over the world continue to gather secretly for church and risk arrest and execution instead of just doing private worship, which would be so much safer. It’s why we defy the king. We would never defy the king unless we believe that there’s a king of kings who can and will deliver us if we’re going to be found faithful. To count the cost, we must know who God is, what he’s done and what he’ll do, and that is exactly what we learn in the gospel. We can count the cost, because Jesus counted the cost for us first, be courageously faithful, even to death, because Jesus has already conquered the grave. And with that. The narrative of Daniel comes to a close. This is the end of Daniel’s remarkable biography. We’ve seen him rise from a POW to an initiate, to a sage, to the chief state sage, to the chief administrator, to the personal advisor to the king, to third in the kingdom, to at the end of this chapter, second in the kingdom, second only, to the king. What have we learned in these six chapters, that God humbles the proud but exalts the humble, and that God is ruling history again, despite any and all circumstances, any and all appearances, the god of gospel is in control, and we need that narrative and those lessons to set the stage for what’s coming in the second half of Daniel, when we get the visions of the future, this is just your warning. Things about to get weird. Okay? Like Daniel one to six is like kids stories. I love this stuff. Daniel seven to 12 is prophecy, apocalyptic. Okay, so Kyle’s preaching next week. I’m not dealing with that. So pray for him as he gets ready for it. But let’s pray together now as well. Lord, would you help us to be courageously faithful to you? Because we know that we have nothing to fear. Ultimately, there are those who can destroy the body, but we would rather fear the one who could destroy the body and the soul. And we live in fear of you, Lord, knowing that you have rescued us from death and darkness and evil. Already, we know how the story ends, and so Lord, we have every reason to be faithful. And just as your son was found faithful and embraced death for our sake, will we be found faithful and embrace death and difficulty for your sake and for the sake of Your kingdom may be true of us, Lord, we ask Amen.

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