Serving God in Babylon: Daniel 6

You know, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians that when the people of God worship in spirit and in truth, when the unbeliever comes in your midst, the secrets of his heart, her heart will be revealed.

And they will say, Surely God is among these people.

Lord, just as impressed that upon me this morning is my heart is already full.

My heart is full through our worship this morning already.

That's the power of the Spirit.

The secrets of our hearts will be revealed as we're in the presence of gospel worship.

And we will bow down and say, Surely God is among these people.

May that be true of this congregation every Sunday.

Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

I'm going to do something different.

I'm not going to read that long text.

I'm going to tell you a story.

The story of Daniel, but let's ask the Spirit first.

Holy Spirit, would you please just continue to speak through your word?

Lord, we need a word from you.

We get a lot of words from a lot of people.

We hear a lot of words from the media.

What we need most of all right now is we need a word from you.

Holy Spirit, would you speak what Jesus would have us to know?

In his name we pray.

Amen.

Let's talk about Daniel, whose name means God is my judge.

We're going to just do kind of a walk through the park of Daniel a little bit this morning for a few minutes.

Just going to set the background.

Remember, we're starting this new sermon series this month.

Thinking missionally.

Do I do that?

Praying missionally.

Are you reading this book?

I know we gave out at least 150 copies.

This is a great time to be reading through this book, A Praying Church, by Paul Miller.

To be talking about it in your CFGs, to be talking about it in your discipleship roofs, to be talking about it at your home around the dining room table.

Read it on your own.

This is a good book.

We want to learn more and more how to pray missionally as a church.

And we want to live a missional life.

That's what the Lord drew me to the book of Daniel for this sermon this morning.

If anybody demonstrated how to live a missional life, it was Daniel.

Let's talk about him.

Daniel was a teenager when he was minding his own business in his hometown of Jerusalem, and the big bad army of Babylon came as God had promised.

God had promised judgment on his people because his people were just talking about following him.

Their hearts were not following him.

They were talking the talk, but they were not walking the walk.

And God said, There's going to come a day when my judgment is going to fall on this city because of that.

Daniel was a teenager.

We don't know exactly.

Was he 15?

Was he 16?

No more than 17.

And he was deported.

The Bible doesn't tell us if his family went with him.

He might have gone alone.

To Babylon.

And Jerusalem was in fact destroyed because the Israelites were unfaithful to their God.

Again, although they still professed the Lord as their God, their lives told a different story.

Their allegiance was much more with the world than with God.

And that still happens today in churches.

So God did exactly as he promised.

He punished them for their sins.

And it didn't take long for Daniel to distinguish himself in this new land.

Here he is, uprooted, carried hundreds of miles away.

As I look around, I think I see some 15-year-olds.

16?

17.

Can you imagine?

If this happened to you, what would you do?

In a city, in a country that not only lived in rebellion against God, but they never professed allegiance to God.

The book of Daniel is one of, is a book of how a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, can serve their God in a pagan country.

Today that would be Iraq.

How do we do that?

There's a lot for us to learn here.

Many would say that the United States, if a Christian nation, perhaps in name only, we are more and more living in Babylon in this country.

You know that.

We are in Babylon.

Francis Schaefer prophesied of this, predicted this 70, 80 years ago.

Babylon's coming to America.

We see it through the legislation, we see it through the lifestyles.

I don't need to belabor this, you know that.

In our schools, in our city, we're sadly reminded of this almost day by day.

And that raises the question.

I read a book at Covenant College years ago that still rings in my head.

It was written by a theologian, Richard Niebor, who wrote about Christ and culture.

And this is not a book review this morning, but there's different options that every church and every Christian has before them.

Let's talk about those options.

Christ over culture, symbolized by the period of the Crusades, the Roman Empire for many years were the Pope was supposedly over a nation.

Imposing Christian values on our culture.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

Nor is the second option.

Christ apart from culture.

Many, many evangelicals have embraced this, whether they know it or not.

Retreat from culture.

It's ugly, it's dirty, don't get defiled by it.

So lock everybody up.

Keep them away from harm.

Be separatist to a fault.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

A lot of people do it, but that's not for us.

Christ's transforming culture is for you.

And it's for me.

What a church looks like when God's using that church and God's using individual Christians to actually be a part of the transforming of the city of Alexandria, Washington, D.C.

The United States, the world.

That's what we're talking about this morning.

We're talking about how God can use us like Daniel.

Let's just talk a little bit more about the story of Daniel.

It's a great story, right?

If you're looking for a story to teach your kids, if you're looking for a story in your CFG to talk about.

David and his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, three other godly young men, were under great pressure to conform to this new culture in Babylon.

One day, King Nebuchadnezzar orders his chief of staff to choose young men that would really best represent and help lead the nation.

And something caught the chief of staff's eye about these young men.

It seems that it had something to do with their appearance, it seems that it had something to do with their intelligence.

It seemed something to do with their character.

Hebrews living in a very foreign pagan culture, and yet something caught his eye about these young men.

And so they were chosen to be molded into their new culture and environment.

They were given a different diet, a different lifestyle, a different way of life.

They even changed their names.

The Babylonian culture wanted to strip everything they could away from these godly young Hebrew men.

They wanted to remake them in the image of the world.

They changed their names, but they didn't change their hearts.

Praise God.

Just because your name gets changed doesn't mean that your heart has to get changed like that.

Chapter 1, verse 8 of Daniel.

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food and wine.

That speaks to every one of us, it should.

Have you ever prayed that prayer?

God, please, my resolve is not to defile myself with the things of this world.

That's a good prayer to pray.

And then the chief of staff finds these young men and says, test these servants for ten days.

Test them for ten days.

And they're going to eat the king's food, they're going to drink the king's wine and learn the king's ways.

But these young men, these three young men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they say, No, we don't want your food, we don't want your wine, because they associated it with the pagan culture.

We are asking you for permission to eat our vegetables, to eat our diet, to be trained by God.

And after ten days, you know what happens.

They were examined.

And it was undeniable.

God had set these three young men apart from the other Babylonian young men, and they looked healthier.

They appeared to be more intelligent.

They passed the test.

They took a stand, not to defile themselves.

It says in chapter 1, in every matter of wisdom and discernment, they were ten times better.

That's quite a statement.

Talk about standing out in your culture.

They were ten times stronger, wiser.

They had set themselves apart to God.

Chapter 2.

Remember Nebuchadnezzar's dreams?

He had lots of dreams, right?

He says to his magicians, he doesn't say to the Hebrews, he says to his own magician, sorcerers, he says, I had a dream.

I want you men to tell me what my dream was and interpret it.

I'd like to have that assignment.

And if you get it wrong, you lose your head.

What did they say?

Oh king! Oh wise, beautiful king.

I mean, I'm sure they were, you know, trying to curry his favor.

Nobody can do that.

You want us to tell you what you dreamed last night?

And then interpret it?

He said, yes, you better do it.

Then it's to Daniel.

And Daniel comes to the king and he says, I'll do it.

My God has revealed it to me.

My God has revealed to me your dream and the interpretation.

And that was the dream about this great statue.

This big, huge statue that one day, night fell down.

Daniel says, Let me tell you about that dream.

Because my God has revealed it to me.

The head of the statue was gold, representing Babylon.

The chest of the statue was silver, representing the next empire of the Medes and the Persians, who would destroy the Babylonians.

The third middle portion of the bronze statue, the midsection, represented Greece.

Greece would follow conquering the Medes and the Persians.

The legs were of iron and the feet were of clay, representing Rome, the Roman Empire.

It's interesting what Daniel said to the king was each of these nations, the first will be the most glorious of the earthly kingdoms, but it'll descend.

But where they will increase is in military strength.

The glory will recede, but the might will increase.

And then he tells the king, can you imagine having the courage to tell the king?

Oh, by the way, this whole statue that got toppled down, that's your kingdom, Nebuchadnezzar.

This is your kingdom.

Do you think he had the thought, Daniel had the thought in his mind that this is the day I lose my life?

Tell that to the king.

He didn't lose his life.

God was at work in the heart of the king.

The king was able to receive this truth.

Receive this truth.

The climax of the dream was that there would be a rock that would strike this statue and break it apart and destroying it.

And we know who that what that rock represented.

The coming of Jesus Christ.

The rock.

Who would bring down all the kingdoms of this age?

Babylon, the Medes and the Persians, Greece, Rome, or any other worldly power that think it's God, think that it's the powerful, it's the mighty.

But he didn't kill them.

He didn't kill him.

Because he understood that God was speaking through his servant Daniel, and the king accepted the truth.

The story of Daniel.

This is the kingdom of God, he said.

And Daniel didn't see all of it like you and I see it.

We see it so much more clearly, so much more revelation.

But hear me.

Daniel responded to the truth God gave him.

How about us?

Are we responding to the truth that God gives us?

Or do we just put it in the parking lot and say, well, think about it.

Stop thinking about it.

Respond, obey.

Come to Jesus.

Submit to his kingship.

Nebuchadnezzar, after that, he wasn't transformed by the gospel.

But he did know because God was at work in him that he could receive.

On another occasion, he builds this image of gold, 90 feet high, nine feet wide.

The message he gave to his kingdom was when you hear the horn blow, everybody in my kingdom must fall down and worship this image, or they will be thrown into a fiery furnace.

Now he was he was snookered into this by Daniel's enemies, but he bought it, the king.

He said, This is the law of the Medes and the Persians.

Nobody can change this.

And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, once again, were in a tough position.

Their rivals were baiting them into this, but they refused to take the bait.

They said, no, we're not going to bow to this golden image representing the God of Babylon.

We only bow to one God, and his name is Jehovah.

We don't bow to any other gods.

No matter what culture we're in.

And so you know how the story goes.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into that fiery furnace.

And the king at this point was so enraged by their courage.

He was so enraged, he said to the people who kept the fire, he said, I want you to fire up the furnace.

I want it seven times hotter than it normally is.

The Bible tells us that it was so hot that the men who took them to the entrance of the fire were killed by the fire.

But you know what happened to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

They weren't, it's the Bible says not a hair on their head was cinched.

Does that take your breath away?

That's the power of God to protect his people.

No matter where we are, no matter what we go through.

That's the power of God to protect and to preserve.

You remember the king?

He looks from a distance, no doubt, because this is a very hot fire.

The king looks from a distance and he says, wait a minute.

I don't see three men in the middle of the fire, but the flames are not consuming them.

I see four.

And the fourth looks like the son of a God.

He was more right than he knew.

We believe that that was Jesus pre-incarnate.

It was the Son of God with him protecting them.

It was the Son of God watching over them, preserving them.

And then we come to chapter 6.

You know what chapter 6 is about?

Daniel's prayer life.

Relevant when we're talking about learning how to pray in a missional way.

Now it's not King Nebuchadnezzar, now it's King Darius.

Now Daniel's not a teenager, he's probably 80 years old.

He's an old man.

When he was thrown into the lion's den.

Why was he thrown into the lion's den?

Because once again his rivals had concocted this scheme and convinced the king that all glory ought to be given to him.

All glory ought to be given to the Babylonian Empire.

Daniel said, I can't do that.

And so the decree was issued.

For 30 days, nobody in my kingdom is going to bow and pray to any other God but the king.

And the Bible tells us that Daniel would have none of it.

The Bible tells us that Daniel was not going to capitulate to that.

And so now we actually get to the sermon outline.

It's brief.

Character formed, character tested, and character blessed.

This is what we learn from Daniel.

Character formed, developed through a life devoted to God.

By the way, we should we should, I guess, right, finish that last story.

Daniel doesn't change anything.

He goes back to his house three times a day.

He would bow and pray, and I don't think these were just sentence prayers.

I think it was intimate, nourishing conversation with a God he knew loved him, with a God he believed would take care of him.

It was rich prayer.

Three times a day that Daniel would open up his window.

Let's just tease us out a little bit more.

What would we have been tempted to do at that point with that decree?

Well, maybe go back to my apartment.

But close the windows, close the shutters.

Right?

God, I'm gonna still pray to you.

But I'm just gonna close the shutters so that what I do, I'm gonna do in the privacy of my own room.

That would have been tempting, right?

I'm not gonna deny you, but I'm gonna distance myself from you in the sight of the nation.

Again, Daniel would have none of it.

Daniel says, God, you are my God.

You are great and mighty.

You are omnipotent, you are omniscient, you are omnipresent.

I'm in Babylon, you're in heaven, but I know you're in my room.

Do you pray like that?

I know you're in heaven.

And how much more do we know?

Because Jesus came.

He didn't leave us alone as orphans.

He sent his Holy Spirit to live in us, to indwell us, to send us.

This is Daniel.

And so the spies run back to the king and say, Oh, Daniel, you know, he's one of your favorites.

And by this time he had risen to great power.

The Bible tells us that the king wanted to put him in charge of the whole kingdom.

I read that, he would have been second in command in the nation.

God had given him so much favor with the king.

And God will give you favor.

God will give you favor if you walk with Jesus.

But now the king had already given the edict of the laws of the Medes and the Persians.

He couldn't revoke the edict.

And the king, with his heart broken, as you read in the chapter, the king can't turn back.

The king says, throw my friend Daniel into the lion's den.

And Daniel seemed to be okay with that.

80-year-old man, probably.

Don't stop walking with the Lord, senior citizen.

Your best days might be in your senior years.

If your heart is drawn closer and closer to Jesus.

What does the psalmist say?

In my older days, in old life, may I be like the sap of the tree.

May I still bear good fruit in old age.

That's a good prayer.

Daniel's thrown into the lion's den.

And the lions leave them alone.

Why?

Because God shut their mouths.

And God is still shutting the mouth of lions today.

I don't know what that looks like in your life.

But God still has the power to shut the mouth of the enemy who would devour you.

But you have to trust him.

Trust him.

Ask him.

The king couldn't sleep that night, could he?

He was worried about his friend Daniel.

He couldn't sleep, but he prays.

I don't, I would have liked to eavesdrop on his prayers.

How much was the king influenced by Daniel?

The Bible doesn't tell us all that.

But the king rushes down early in the morning and he looks at the den of the lions and he sees that David, Daniel is unscathed.

In judgment, the king orders that the people that were after Daniel, they and their families, were thrown into the lion's den and they did not escape.

In our closing minutes, just well, let's just pause for a moment.

What does God want to say to you today about how to live in Babylon?

Babylon's here.

What does God have to say to you today?

In your situation, in your circumstances, what does it mean to live in Babylon?

How does God form Christian character, Christ-like character, through a life devoted to God?

As I've been thinking about this passage, I've just been thinking this week, somebody taught this man well.

As a child, somebody taught him well.

Someone taught him the word of God.

And God still raises up people to teach our children and our teenagers and our adults.

God still raises up teachers to teach people the word of God.

Somebody taught him how to pray.

This guy had a rich prayer life.

You don't have to wait till you're a senior citizen to have a rich prayer life.

You don't have to wait until you're an adult.

God started teaching me how to pray in my home for my father and my mother.

And God used it in a mighty way.

And God sent other prayer mentors into my life.

One of them was Jack Mailer, his dad.

Somebody had to do that.

Who's the someone in your life?

I mean, it's more than someone.

Who are the people in your life that took the time and dedicated themselves to teaching you the word of God?

How to pray, and they modeled it to you.

They didn't just tell you to go pray, they modeled to you.

We're asking God to teach us and to grow us.

As we pray, we want more.

I can promise you this.

As I stood in the elders' session meetings yesterday for four and a half hours, I can promise you this.

The elders want this more.

I can promise you that.

We want more for this church.

We want to see this praying church grow deeper in being a praying church.

Oh, I wish you would come to our session prayer meetings once a month.

I wish you would come for that one hour and just pray with us.

What you would hear typically is we don't jump into all the petitions, we don't jump into the needs.

Typically, there's many minutes of confessing our own sins and repenting of our own struggles.

And then there's just prayers of adoration, giving thanks to God, giving glory to God.

And then we get around to praying petitions for the congregation and for the city and for the world.

We get to oh, I wish you would come.

Just try it.

Someone showed Daniel how to live the Christian life.

Someone prayed for him.

Someone showed him how to pray.

It was written by a military man who fought in World War II, I believe.

His name was Arthur Matthews.

And it was really an encouragement to my faith.

He just talked about how the parallels between the Christian life and battle.

I haven't been to battle, but some of you have.

He talks about that.

He talks about the fact that, well, as the book of Ephesians tells us, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities.

And I think he was the first one that I read it or said it.

For we wrestle not.

He said, let's just stop there.

Isn't that true of many of us Christians?

We're not wrestling in prayer.

For we wrestle not against spiritual principalities.

This is not a war on this level.

This is a spiritual war.

And it's taking place in the heavens and the cosmos between the king of kings and the one who is Lucifer, the one who despises the kingdom of God, and yet his kingdom is going to be thrown down.

Satan is a defeated foe with a crushed head, Paul tells us in Romans.

Dr.

Stuart Holden says the true order of faith is not that we are to have an earthly life with a view to heaven, but we are called to a heavenly life with a view to earth.

That's true.

That's what the book of Ephesians is teaching.

That five times Paul says in Ephesians that we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

Do you see that by faith?

And so we're not on earth looking up to the Himalayas and thinking, oh, how would I ever get up there?

See, when you see it like that, your prayer life is not going to be very vibrant.

You're going to just be defeated, discouraged.

We are seated in the heavenlies now by faith.

And when you see that and you believe that, you pray bold prayers because you're looking down.

You're not looking up.

That's what Paul's saying.

So we go into battle not from the perspective of our circumstances here on earth, but our position in Christ.

God has already placed us at the top of this mountain, his kingdom.

It's not for us to fight for victory because we are more than conquerors through him.

Our fight is from victory.

That's what Matthew said.

Our fight is not for victory, but from victory, the victory of Jesus Christ.

And the more we believe that, the more we will live a Daniel-like life.

He says the devil is a panic artist.

The devil is a panic artist.

He loves to just stir panic in the lives of God's children.

Anybody testify to that?

Yeah.

He loves to get us all stirred up inside.

To feel discouraged, to feel isolated, to feel defeated.

But that's not what the Bible tells us.

That's not what the Bible tells us.

There's a woman that I've read some of through Rosemary Miller.

Her name was Florence Alshorn.

Anybody ever hear of her?

Boy, the more I've heard and read about her, the more I want to read about her.

She was a missionary.

Her prayer was the desire to be possessed of something beyond myself that can use me as God's channel.

The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as a result, as much as it is the significance of a deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God.

The purpose of this intimacy and communion is to discover a sense of God's power, to call on God's help to meet the need, whatever the need may be.

What's the need?

What's the need in your life right now?

Where do you feel like you've been thrown to the lions?

Where do you feel like everything inside of you is saying retreat from this pagan culture?

Play it safe.

You weren't made to play it safe.

We were made to be salt and light in a pagan world.

And the only way we'll do it is to learn from Daniel.

But this is not ultimately Daniel, is it?

I'm not asking you this morning to be Daniel.

I'm asking you this morning to look to Daniel's God.

This is not moralism.

This is not just be stronger, pick yourself up by your bootstraps.

We've tried that, haven't we?

It doesn't work.

This is to look to Daniel's God and to pray that the Spirit that revealed these truths to Daniel would reveal these things to us.

Your character and my character will be tested.

Count on it.

In many ways, at many times, our character will be tested.

And these tests and these trials will only reveal where our hearts already are.

The tests and the trials don't change us, they reveal where our hearts are.

They don't cause it.

When you start to believe that, it'll change your life.

Don't blame the circumstances.

Don't blame that God puts you in that lion's den.

God wants to prepare us, me and you, he wants to prepare us for the lion's den.

And he knows how to do that.

But we have to look to his God.

Our character will be revealed.

Our character will be revealed in the office when you go back to the office.

Our character is revealed in our homes.

Our character is revealed in our church.

When Christians gossip, when Christians complain and are bitter, we're revealing.

How do we stand out?

How do you stand out in your office tomorrow or this week?

How do you stand out in your neighborhood?

How do you stand out in your home?

By not doing the things that the pagan culture does, which is run people down with our tongues.

By putting in an honest day's work at work.

By being kind and gentle.

Controlling our tongues.

The softening of our hearts.

God will use you.

He will use you.

And you'll make a difference.

In this Babylon, you'll make a difference.

Finally, character blessed.

The impact of this.

I know some of you are facing some difficult situations and opportunities.

I read something by a theologian last week.

The place that God calls you is the place where your deepest joy in the world's deepest hunger meet.

I haven't chewing on that.

Your deepest joy in the world's deepest needs, meet, is a great place to serve God.

We can pray about that.

Character revealed, character blessed.

I want to close with an illustration that R.C.

Sproul used to tell.

A well-known professional golfer was playing in a tournament with one of the presidents.

Jack Nicholas, the pro, was there, and also Billy Graham was invited.

After the round was over, one of the other pros on the tour said to his friend, Hey, what was it like playing with the president and Billy Graham?

The pro said with disgust, I don't need Billy Graham shoving religion down my throat.

With that he headed back for the practice tee, blasting away at his golf balls.

His friend followed after the golfer had pounded out his fury on a bucket of golf balls, and he asked him, Was Billy a little tough on you?

The pro sighed and said with embarrassment, no, he never brought up religion.

His presence was enough.

Your presence can be enough.

To live a life for Christ, but to live the life of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Let's be his presence in Alexandria, DC and beyond.

Let's be his presence.

That's what I want to be.

How about you?

Let's ask him.

Father, we're coming and we're asking.

Where we have strayed, we repent.

Where we have fallen off, we're asking you to draw us back.

Where we have compromised with the world, we ask your forgiveness.

May we repent, because your arms are always open to receive us back when we come earnestly and sincerely.

Lord, today may some of us come back.

Lord, would you fill us with your spirit?

Thank you for putting us in Babylon.

And right now somebody may be saying, What?

Thank you for putting us in Babylon.

Lord, may we be more full of the Spirit than Babylon.

Lord, send us.

Use us for your glory.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.