Christianity Isn't Cool | Daniel 6

Amen.

We're going to be in Daniel chapter 6 this morning.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

If you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, you can go ahead and turn over to Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

If you don't have your Bibles, it'll be up on the screen for you to read along as well.

This is one of those longer passages, so I want you to feel the freedom to sit down if you need to.

So we're in Daniel chapter 6, starting in verse 1.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

This is the word of the Lord.

And it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps to be throughout the whole kingdom, and over the three high officials of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss.

Then this Daniel became distinguished above all other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him.

And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

And the high officials in the satrap sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him.

Then these men said, We shall not find any ground, we shall not find any ground for complaint against these this Daniel, unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.

And then these high officials and satraps came to an agreement to the king and said to him, O King Darius, live forever.

All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects, and the satraps, and the counselors, and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.

Now, O king, establish the injunction, and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.

Therefore, King Darius signed the document and injunction.

When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house, where he had windows in his upper chamber, open towards Jerusalem.

He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he had done previously.

Then these men, these men, came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God.

Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, O king, did you not sign an injunction that anyone who makes petition or any to any God or man within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.

The king answered and said, This thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.

Then they answered and said before the king, Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.

Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed, and set his mind to deliver Daniel, and he labored until the sun went down to rescue him.

Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, Know, O king, that is the law of the Medes and Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king established can be changed.

Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions.

The king declared to Daniel, May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you.

And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel.

Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting.

No diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.

Then at the break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions.

And as he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish.

The king declared to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?

Then Daniel said to the king, O king, live forever.

My God sent his angel to shut the mouth of the lions, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before them, and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.

And then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den.

So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

And the king commanded that those who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions, they and their children and their wives.

And before they reached the bottom of the den the lions overpowered them and broke all of their bones in pieces.

Then King Darius wrote to all the people and nations and languages that dwell in the earth Peace be multiplied to you.

I make it decree that in my royal dominion people are to tremble in fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever.

His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall never come to an end.

He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.

He is the one who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

Let's pray together.

Father God, I pray that you would open the eyes of our hearts that we would see you better.

Open the ears that we have, God, that we would hear from you through your word today.

Illuminate our hearts and minds so we might better know you, we might better worship you, might better follow you.

God, we give you all the glory and praise.

We ask for you to do what only you can do.

It's in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Share with you three quick praises if that's okay.

So you guys know I've been out the last two weeks.

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to preach an event at the University of Mobile.

Thank you for praying for that.

We had five professed faith in Christ.

We had like 50 teenagers express potential call to ministry.

And so God was at work there.

Praise God.

Secondly, I want to say a personal praise.

Like, I praise God to be a part of a church that cares about me as a person and my family, as real people, uh, not just as a figurehead or as a pastor or as a preacher or as a content machine, but you care about us.

And so thank you for allowing us to have time away as a family to refresh and have vacation.

We don't take that for granted.

And we praise God that our church family loves us and cares about us, that prayed for us and sent us away.

And then thirdly, I want to praise God because our team just did a fantastic job.

It it's one thing to be away, it's another thing to rest.

Uh, it's really hard to rest as a leader if you don't have a great team that's working back home, holding all the things together.

And Andrew and James did a fantastic job preaching.

The whole team did a great job.

Praise God, man.

I hope you guys saw how little I'm actually needed around here.

I really do.

I uh God was very, very kind.

You know, being a Christian is really no longer cool.

Uh at best, our culture views Christianity as being kind of one option among a thousand different ancient options of spirituality.

At worst, our culture sees Christianity as being an uneducated and unsophisticated type of bigotry.

So to live as a Christian according to the ancient tenets of the historical faith and not some new reimagined, re-invented version that is sensible to the modern palate, but to live according to the old historic tenets of this historic faith really is radically countercultural.

It's especially radically countercultural when you think that there's nothing that's less mainstream or more strange to our culture than to live submitting to the authority of an invisible God who is placing statutes and boundaries around your life, demanding your unconditional devotion to Him.

It's remarkably countercultural in a culture that worships autonomy and resents authority and treats commitment like it's an allergy or a disease to be prevented.

And so a lot of the people that I know in the church, they respond usually one of two ways.

On one hand, some people in the church tend to long to be able to figure out how to get culture back to a place where maybe Christianity and the cause of Christ is more mainstream.

I understand.

I'm sympathetic to that.

There's another movement within the church where Christians tend to think maybe what we need to do is figure out how to make our message more retrofitted for a modern age, more retrofitted for a modern palate.

A desire for contextualization.

I understand that, though I think there's great dangers in making it mainstream.

But the question that I don't hear being asked enough is what if it's good for Christianity to not be cool?

What if it's good that Christianity isn't mainstream?

What if it's good as out if our view is viewed as the minority view?

See, facing hostility tends to bring out the best in the church.

It's prosperity that typically causes all of our problems.

It's when times are good that our hearts tend to drift.

It's when times are good when all of the faithfulness of the church tends to dilute.

As a matter of fact, if you ask really any church historian, basically all of them will tell you the same thing that the church really began to weaken and dilute at the point in which Constantine is converted and Christianity becomes the state religion of Rome.

In fact, I think this aligns with what the apostles teach us.

Remember what Peter writes in his epistle?

Peter writes that the church is actually refined by the fire of its sufferings.

Paul would go so far as to allude to Daniel chapter 6 and say that the reason that the gospel went forward to the Gentiles was because God delivered him from the mouths of lions.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

Really painful suffering from persecution because Christianity was not mainstream.

So I think what we see in our text here in Daniel chapter 6, I think what we're likely to experience as the church in the postmodern world, increasingly more and more, is not considered exceptional in the history of God's people.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

Rather, I believe it's considered to be normative in the history of God's people.

The story that we come to is probably different than many of us imagine it, or if we haven't read it in a while, remember it.

Most of us, when we think about Daniel in the Lion's Den, we think about Daniel being in the Lion's Den as being a young man, maybe a teenager, maybe even a boy.

I think this gets back to our coloring sheets when we were in Sunday school.

I always remember them being a pretty young man in those pictures.

But the reality is that Daniel is actually very advanced in age.

He's likely 80 or 90 years old, which was a remarkably long age in antiquity.

And so here's Daniel, 80 or 90 years old, and he's still struggling.

He is still living as an outcast.

He's still living on the outside, looking in of what would be considered to be the mainstream.

Babylon has actually passed away.

Daniel, as we predicted way back in Daniel chapter 1, has outlived the empire of Babylon.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

He has outlived Nebuchadnezzar.

Now the Persians, Darius, Cyrus has come and he has taken, but he's still in hostile ground.

He's still in enemy territory.

He's still living in exile.

And I think what Daniel shows us here at an advanced age as a wise man is how to live faithfully in a hostile culture.

How to live faithfully in a hostile culture.

If we want to live faithfully in a hostile culture, Daniel shows us that we have to live honorably.

We have to live honorably.

Persia, you probably heard the word satrap coming up quite a bit as James was reading our text this morning.

Persia was really known for its brilliant system of administrating an empire.

They set their empire up as a series of provinces that were managed and governed by satraps.

And these satraps were then overseen by a cabinet that worked in concurrence with the king.

Well, Daniel, it says here in our text, became distinguished above all the other high officials.

That is, Daniel is a member of this cabinet that's overseeing the satraps, which are overseeing the provinces, which include basically the nations of the known world at the time.

This was a remarkably high position for a foreign-born person to be serving in the empire of Persia.

So it's showing us something about it.

It's showing us here that he was distinguished above.

And it says something really unique.

It says he was distinguished above because he had an excellent spirit with him.

Now, the what this word typically comes to indicate to us is that when this phrase, excellent spirit, it's revering, it's revealing something that he was understood to be a man that had a unique and special relationship with the gods.

Now, they wouldn't have understood him as being the elect, they wouldn't have understood him as being God's chosen, one of God's chosen people or anything like that.

They would have just understood as him having access to the divine, of him being a particularly white, uh wise man who was able to access the thrones of the God.

So this pagan culture, they couldn't have fully understood the cause of Daniel's distinction.

But though they couldn't understand the cause of Daniel's distinction, what they were able to observe were the effects of Daniel's distinction.

That they were seeing the effects of his relationship with God, even though they didn't understand his relationship with God.

They were seeing his the effects of years, decades lived faithfully according to the laws of the Lord and the ways of the Lord and the design of the Lord, even though they didn't know the laws of the Lord or the ways of the Lord or the designs of the Lord.

I think that probably that's too often missing among us today in the church.

That we typically invert it, don't we?

We we typically live, I think, the opposite the way that Daniel is showing us.

That very often on our Instagram or uh maybe uh on uh you know our notebooks at school or we're wearing on our our car tag, maybe it's the cross around our neck, we're clear to identify ourselves as being identified with the cause, that we we identify ourselves as Christians, or we we say that we're Christians, or on our Facebook bio, we say that we're followers of the one true king, or however it is uh that we winsomely frame it up.

And so people seem to know the cause, but it's much less likely that they seem to see the effect.

That the effect seems to be what's missing.

And I think this is actually what's caused a great deal of lack of credibility for the church in the 21st century.

That we have tons of people that say they are followers of Jesus.

Most people, the still the highest percentage of people in America identify as Christian.

It's a larger percentage than any other percentage, still would be considered the majority view.

But though it's the majority view, it's still not the mainstream way of life, is it?

It's still not the mainstream value system that's actually implemented in schedule, in priorities, in reason in decision making, in responses.

And so too often they they're seeing that we identify with the cause, but they're not able to observe in us the effects.

And so if we want to faithfully and transformatively live our lives, what we have to begin to demonstrate is not just that we have identified ourselves with the cause of Christ, but that we have been demonstrating now because of the spirit that dwells within us the effects of dwelling with Christ, of following after Christ.

Now, of course, you can imagine that here you have this foreign-born Daniel who is an elderly man at this point in his life, and he's serving on the great cabinet of the king, overruling the great kingdom of Persia.

You can imagine there's some opportunities here for jealousy among the colleagues, right?

You you can imagine that some of the other Persians, not super jacked about this man of Judah trained in the ways of Babylon, now helping rule over the people of Persia.

And so they conspire to eliminate him.

And they conspire together to eliminate him by way of political scandal.

And so they go and they start beginning to look for his Watergate tapes, but they can't be found.

Daniel has no watergate tapes.

Daniel is a man who lives his life without secrets.

He's a man who lives his life above reproach.

They want to assassinate his character, but they find his character to be impeccable.

It tells us exactly why.

It says, because, remember I told you we always look for the words like because he was faithful.

Because he didn't live with secrets.

Because he didn't live with skeletons, because he didn't live as a man who presented one way but behind closed doors was another way.

And so what they identify is that Daniel's only political weakness actually turns out to be the very source of his spiritual strength.

That they recognize that the only possible way that they're gonna be able to pit Daniel against Darius is to pit King Darius against Daniel's God.

Because what they recognize is they recognize that there will be that he said they say, we shall not find any ground for a complaint against Daniel unless we find it in connection with what?

The law of his God.

The law of his God.

That they recognize that the only way they're gonna be able to bring his devotion into Darius into question is to show that his devotion to Yahweh is far greater than his devotion to King.

And that though he is loyal to Darius, if his loyalties have to be determined between Darius and Yahweh every time he's gonna default to Yahweh.

And so what they see is that he is too devoted to God, too devoted to the ways of the Lord, too devoted to living uprightly.

And the irony was that it was this very perceived weakness on behalf of the other satraps and the other members of the cabinet that was actually his source of strength.

You know, I think too often Christians seem to believe that the best way to influence the culture is to become like the culture.

Very often we tend to believe that if we want to impact the people that we go to school with, or the people that we work with, or the people that we uh we live close to in our neighborhoods, that we actually have to become like them.

But I think here is Daniel showing us that there's a better way.

That there is a way that actually sets us apart and identifies us even more as salt and light in the midst of our mainstream culture.

That to influence our culture, we should live in our culture, but we should live in our culture without living like our culture.

That we ought to be able to live within our culture, identifying with the cause of Christ and then living out with the effects of Christ.

I think tremendous damage, I mentioned this earlier, has been done to the reputation of Christianity who lived in the world and lived like the world at the same time.

Because Christians' lives couldn't hold up to the scrutiny.

They had the water tape uh letters uh or the water gate tapes hidden.

Somebody asked me a couple of years ago, they said, Cody, what is the goal of your life?

What is the goal of your life?

And and I gave it a little bit of thought before I answered.

And when I answered them, I told them that the goal of my life was to die without secrets.

Pretty simple.

I'm you know, I'm a pretty simple guy.

I I've had to simplify my aspirations over the years.

But as I thought about it, I thought, you know, like if I could just come to the end of my life and I can know that when I pass out of this world and into the next one, that my kids aren't gonna discover secrets about me, and my wife isn't gonna discover secrets about me, and my church isn't gonna discover secrets about me, that maybe I wasn't the most impressive man, and maybe I wasn't the most accomplished man.

But if I could have just lived as an honorable man, I think that would be I think that would be sufficient.

I heard a pastor say this week, who'd pastored for 50 or 60 years, he said that in his time in ministry, he's come to realize that some 50% of every person that walks in the church every single Sunday walks in carrying a secret that they believed, if it was revealed, would ruin their life.

I can't imagine a life that would more disable joy than that.

I can't imagine a life that's lonelier than that one.

And I can't imagine a life that is more different than the one that Christ has called you.

You can't live with joy dragging skeletons with you everywhere that you go, hoping that nobody will discover them.

Church family that won't work.

No, no, no.

Drag them into the light, bring them to the cross, allow your shame to be crucified, to walk in victory with him.

No, no, no, no.

Let's not law, let's not live in secret, let's not live behind closed doors, let's not live lonely, let's not live scared.

Let's live honorably.

Bring this morning.

Don't take your skeletons home with you.

Have your honor restored by the righteousness of Christ through the power of the Spirit by bringing in those things to repentance today.

If you want to live faithfully in a hostile age, we have to live honorably.

But not only honorably, we have to live deliberately.

We have to live deliberately.

Daniel's jealous colleagues, they they conspire not only to assassinate Daniel's character, but to assassinate Daniel.

Like they they actually begin to elevate and they discover that they have an opportunity just to wipe him out in the dog eat dog world.

And to do this, they begin to appeal to Darius's pride.

And they appeal to Darius's pride, he would have understood himself, you have to understand, as being part deity at least, like part man, part deity.

He would have seen himself as being one worthy of worship.

And so they appeal to him and they convince him to issue out an edict where there can be no other worship to any other God other than Darius.

This would have been a polytheistic culture.

There would have been many gods, many gods would have been acceptable in this country.

But he wants them to fast from all of the other gods to be able to identify him as being the God before whom they are most accountable, before whom they are most responsible, to whom they must express their devotion.

And they do this knowing that Daniel's love for his God is so devout and so resolved that he'll never do it.

He'll never capitulate.

And so they know that if they can issue out this edict, that they can do it in such a way that's gonna pit his loyalty to Darius against his loyalty to Yahweh, and that he's gonna default to Yahweh.

And so they say that if you don't bow down, That you'll be thrown, you'll be cast into a den of lions.

I think there's a place for us just to stop for just a second and say, How would we respond if we were Daniel here?

How would we respond?

I think we might be tempted that, you know, like I'll just pray in the quiet places of my heart, you know, like he'll never know.

I'll still pray, I'll still love God, I'll just love God on the inside for 30 days before I go and love God on the outside for the next 30 days, right?

Like, I'll just throw myself on, Grace.

But but Daniel's showing us something here.

He's showing us something that I think we need to be aware of as we live in an increasingly hostile culture.

That for those of us who are children of the living God, those of us who are followers of a crucified Savior, there is a time to comply, but there's also a time to resist.

There's a time to comply and there's a time to resist.

There's a time in which we have to count the cost, take up our cross, and follow after our crucified Savior, potentially at great social cost, potentially at great physical cost, potentially at great financial cost.

So Daniel, Daniel does just that.

Daniel goes up and he throws open the windows on the second story and he bows his heart publicly before Jerusalem three times a day.

He continues to resolutely go before the Lord and to pray to the Lord.

And what we see is, I think, encouraging.

You cannot legislate devotion to God out of the hearts of his people.

Do you see that?

You can't do it.

You can't do it.

You can pass laws that make it illegal.

You can pass laws that bring about consequences, you can pass laws that get rid of privileges and opportunities, but you can't legislate devotion and you can't legislate passion and you can't legislate love out of the hearts of the people of God for the person of God.

You just can't do it.

In fact, in fact, what actually happens is when legislation like this passes down, again, this is the story of church history.

What actually happens is it becomes the context in which your devotion to God is put on clearest display.

It becomes the opportunity for your worship to become even more significant, even more costly, even more in the image of your crucified Savior.

And so here's Daniel showing us, man, when this happens, we shouldn't resist it.

We shouldn't resent it.

We should embrace it.

We should embrace it.

I think we ought to identify here for a second, though, that Daniel's response isn't a political one.

Daniel's response is just his typical one, right?

My favorite phrase that you'll find here in our text is probably where it says, as he had done previously.

As he had done previously.

In other words, Daniel is not here praying because he has a political ax to grind.

Daniel is not here praying because he wants to be some heroic figure of the faith that puts on display how bold and courageous he is at all costs.

You know why Daniel prays?

Because Daniel's a praying man.

Because this is what Daniel does.

This is where he finds his lifeline.

This is where he finds his hope.

This is the source of his strength.

This is the source of his confidence.

This is the source of his security.

Daniel prays because Daniel, Daniel's a praying man.

The significance of him saying that he prayed with his heart open toward Jerusalem is it was showing him outwardly, externally, the Hebrew people much better at this than we are.

They would use their body language, they would use their postures to be able to demonstrate what they were feeling internally, what they were believing internally.

And so to open up the windows and to pray, bowed toward Jerusalem, was to show my heart belongs to no man apart from the Lord.

My heart belongs to no country apart from the Lord.

Jerusalem is where the Holy of Holies was.

Jerusalem was where the temple was.

Jerusalem is where uh Solomon, at the dedication of the temple, had called a people to bow their heads and to pray, to pray toward Jerusalem.

And so here is Daniel saying, I'm not just gonna pray in the quiet places of my heart.

I'm not gonna pray behind closed doors.

I'm gonna make it clear and evident and obvious that my heart belongs to the Lord my God, and I will live for him all the days of my life, because he is the source of my strength, he is the source of my wisdom, he is the reason that I have the influence here that I have.

And so every day, every day he would go and he would bow and he would humble himself before God, and every day he would go and he would petition God for help, and every day he would go and he would praise God and he would thank God and he would submit himself time in and time out, day in and day out, morning, noon, and night, before the Lord, that all of my hope is completely dependent upon him.

Now, what we should see is that Daniel's deliberate living before the crisis created in him the right defaults during the crisis.

You see this?

That as he had done previously, before there was a crisis, before there was a lion's den, before there was a fiery furnace, before all of these things take place, what we see is that Daniel's deliberate living before the crisis created in him the right instincts, the right reflexes, the right defaults that would enable him now to be able to flourish during the crisis.

His instincts had been well trained for difficult circumstances that might lie ahead.

Recently I watched a uh a series that uh reimagined a Marine platoon during the World War II in the Pacific Theater.

And you go and you show, and the cinema is remarkable, but you you see just the stimuli there that's present and how overstimulating it really is.

I mean, there are bombs that are exploding and bullets that are flying and carnage that is happening and everything around you.

It just literally looks like everywhere you're gonna step, you're gonna step into death.

And it becomes just pandemonium and chaos, and in the midst of all of this pandemonium, and in the midst of all of this chaos, they show there the platoon leader and all these shouting is the same thing over and over and over.

Remember your training, remember your training, remember your training.

See the moment of crisis, when the bullets are flying, and the bombs are exploding, and the screams are yelling.

The moment of crisis isn't the time to learn.

It's the time to default toward your training, default toward what you've already learned, default toward what kept you safe, default toward the muscle memory and the instincts and the reflexes that have been developed in you.

And I think, I think that what we're seeing here is that this is the role of the spiritual disciplines in the Christian life.

That the role of the spiritual disciplines is being proactive rather than reactive.

It's working before there is war time, before there is Christ time, during peace time, like the hard times are ahead.

It's working and operating with wisdom according to the ways of God, recognizing that you're going to need the wisdom of God.

And when you need the wisdom of God, that's not the time to learn.

When you need the wisdom of God, that's the time to learn, fall back on your training.

Reminds me of a conversation that I had years ago with a group of men that I was discipling.

It was a discipleship group.

We'd gotten up early, man.

It was a really laborious group.

We had really tried to go really hard.

We'd done a lot of reading and a lot of scripture memorization and a lot of really early mornings.

I think this group we met at like five o'clock in the morning.

And as these groups are apt to do, you kind of get to a lull where everybody's a little bit done.

You know, like you're tired, you're kind of sick of getting up so early.

There's been so much reading.

That's not anti-Christian, it's human, right?

And that's just part, like I know that that's difficult to kind of square sometimes with our amazement with God, but again, it's it's part of the human experience.

And we were kind of at that place in the group where we had read several books, and we were at that group, we were memorizing Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

That's a lot of verses to memorize.

It was just a lot happening, right?

And I remember on one particular morning, uh, we gathered at IHOP, five o'clock in the morning.

Everybody's a little bit tired, but there had been this really big ethical issue that had presented in the nation.

And so we had a brother who asked about that, and then we went on and we had a long, really detailed discussion on how as men of God do we think about these things in the framework of God's word?

How as men of God do we think about these things in the way that we lead our families, in the way that we lead our wives, the way that we lead our children, and the way we think about our church, and the way we engage in in public.

And it was really, really fruitful.

And I remember at the end that one of the brothers is like, Cody, I wish we would just stop reading the books and just do this every week.

Like, I wish we could just stop with all that stuff because I feel like I personally get a lot more out of this than I do out of that.

And remember, this is what I told him.

The reason that we read the books when it feels like it's for no good reason, because we're not gonna take a test on it, we're not writing a research paper on it, we're just reading the books.

The reason that we're reading the books is so that when these issues present themselves, then we've developed the strength and the ways of thinking and the frameworks that enable us to be able to process them wisely, to be able to process them winsomely.

The only way a man of God is gonna know how to address those kinds of questions, or a woman of God is gonna know how to address the issues that are arise, is if they've done the prep work in the peacetime when the war times arrive.

Church family, this was not a newfound source of strength for Daniel.

This was a default for Daniel.

This was a deliberate way of life for Daniel.

Don't wait until your marriage is in crisis to try to figure out how to figure out your marriage.

Don't wait until your children rebel to figure out how to raise children that love the Lord.

Don't wait until all of a sudden everything happens at work to figure out how do you see God as your primary provider.

Do all of that work in the peacetime, do all of that work on the front end when the bullets aren't flying, so that when those things come, you have a deliberate pathway that you're able to fall back on your training and know that your feet are on solid ground and that you're going to be okay.

That if you want to be able to live wisely and live effectively and live faithfully in a hostile world, yeah, yeah, you gotta live honorably, but you better live deliberately.

You better live proactively, not reactively.

And you should live freely.

Live freely.

Most people believe that King Darius and King Cyrus are the same person.

King Cyrus was the long-prophesied king that's gonna be the foreign king, that's gonna be the deliverer of Judah, who's prophesied throughout Isaiah.

Most people would have believed this was the Persian Median Empire, that uh Darius would have been his median name, Cyrus would have been his Persian name.

And what's fascinating about this particular story is to recognize that the tragic figure isn't the one that you expect it to be.

You expect that the tragic figure is gonna be the old man being fed to lions.

I mean, that seems like a pretty fair assumption, but the tragic figure in this particular story is not the old man being fed to lions, it's the great conqueror that's ruling over the entire world.

It's the long-prophesied King Cyrus that has now come.

That is, inner courts, they decide that to eliminate their political rival and political threat, that what they have to do is they have to manipulate King Cyrus.

But it turns out not to be very difficult to do because Cyrus is a very, a very egotistical man.

He's a man with a lot of pride.

And so all they have to do is they have to come and they say, Darius, don't you deserve to be honored above all the other men?

Aren't you actually the greatest and most to be esteemed and most to be acclaimed?

Shouldn't everyone ascribe to you your worth?

You know, I find it true that the prouder you are, the easier you are to manipulate.

Because you'll go wherever the flattery arrives.

You'll land wherever it is that people stroke your ego and make you feel best about yourself.

And so this is exactly what happens to King Darius.

But when Darius discovers what's actually happened, that it's caused him to be pitted against his most trusted advisor, one of his close friends, a faithful servant, it says that he was much distressed in verse 14.

In fact, he was so distressed that he's completely unable to sleep at night.

See, there was a law in Persia that when the king issued an edict, it could not be rescinded.

Not even the king himself could rescind it.

It was meant to be a protection for the king, so that the king wouldn't have to spend all of his waking hours listening to appeals to his edicts, and so that the king would never have his wisdom questioned, so that he would be shown to be a wise king and not ever to be proven, uh, to be proven foolish.

I mean, the dead people aren't gonna come back from the lion's den and say, hey, you were wrong about this.

It was gonna be a pretty final decision.

It was gonna be over.

And he realizes that even though he wants to be able, but it says, you'll notice he says that he set his mind to deliver Daniel.

He labored until the sun went down hoping to rescue him.

But what he realizes is that even though he wants to rescue him, because he has already made this foolish decision and issued this foolish edict, he's completely disabled from being able to deliver him.

He's not able to do it.

That he had to kill his friend and weaken his kingdom because of his own hubris and his own foolishness.

It's a clear picture, church, of the entanglement of sin, isn't it?

It's a clear picture of the entanglement of sin.

That Darius's egotistical, self-serving decisions had built a gel cell in which he now had to live.

Here's the most powerful and autonomous man on earth, and yet he had constructed his life through a series of decisions that he could not deliver himself from, from which he could not self-rescue.

He had dug a hole so deep that he was unable to climb out of the hole that he had dug.

And so now he's living all of his life in solitary confinement, recognizing, recognizing that he is completely impotent and powerless to be able to affect the kinds of changes that he wants to be able to do.

And we should recognize that this is what sin does.

This is the pattern of sin that we find tracing all the way back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3, that where sin goes in, it promises you freedom and it offers you a good time, but it always entangles and enslaves.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It always brings you down to the end of yourself, covering yourself with fig leaves that you can't seem to be able to cover the shame with.

Think about how many addicts.

How many addicts they just wanted to loosen up a little bit, right?

They just wanted a little bit of freedom, a little bit of fun, only to find themselves so deep that they can't figure out a way out.

They can't figure out a path back home.

Now all of their life is lived enslaved to the addiction.

Think of how many divorces.

How many divorces are the result of relationships that were built on lust?

And the assumption was that eventually the lust would be matched by character and would be matched by depth and would be matched by commitment, but the carnality went out.

And so the relationship was always built on a faulty foundation of lust, and yet now for the rest of your life you live with consequences and with trauma and with pain.

It's the entanglement of sin, isn't it?

Think about how many financial crises.

They began with just a little indulgence here, just a little I deserve it here, just a little jealousy over there until you find yourself so deep, so deep, that it doesn't matter how long you work or how much you work or what you get rid of.

You just can't find a way out of that hole.

You thought you were the exception to the rule, but you're not.

Sin has entangled you.

Sin has enslaved you.

So you live in solitary confinement.

You live miserable by your own decisions, and you can't figure out a way out.

Well, I probably don't have to convince you how exhausting a self-rescue attempt is, do I?

I don't have to show you that.

Darius shows us what this looks like.

It feels like it's impossible, like a law, an edict that can't be overturned for your life, doesn't it?

It feels like it's an impossibility to be able to live in any way.

It feels like you're living in a dungeon of your own doing.

There is no greater despair I know of than living your life in a hole that you dug, realizing that you can't climb out.

But think of Daniel.

Think of the contrast that we see in Daniel.

He lives for his God no matter the penalty.

He was gonna do what was right, no matter what personal cost, what social cost, or even what physical costs.

He recognizes that even though he's in exile, and even though the legislation is against him, and even though all of his colleagues are against him, and even though the edict of the king is against him, he's actually still a free man because he is living wholly and totally surrendered unto his God.

You see, freedom doesn't come from making yourself powerful.

That's the ways of the world.

Freedom comes from knowing the source of power.

Freedom doesn't come from trying to dig yourself out.

That's self-rescue.

It only makes you tired.

Freedom comes from lowering yourself down, and this is the invitation of Jesus to bring your secrets and to bring your skeletons and to bring all of your baggage and all of your decisions and all of the prisons and to bring them into the arena of the cross to watch them be crucified as you lower yourself beneath them.

That Jesus has come to overthrow the prisons in our lives and to deliver us from the decisions that we've made, from the entanglements and the ensnarements that we have found ourselves.

That the life that Jesus invites us to is freedom from entanglement and freedom from self-rescue attempts and freedom from self-sufficiency and freedom from letting circumstances determine our joy.

If we want to live faithfully, we want to live wisely in a hostile age, we've got to live honorably, we've got to live deliberately, we've got to live freely, but we can do all of those things in Christ because in him we live victoriously.

We live victoriously.

Nobody grows up with a dream of being fed to lions, right?

None of y'all are hoping that happens in your life.

None of our kids are hoping when I grow up, I hope I'm in the lion's den.

It's not what we're looking for.

We're not looking for opportunities that our faith are gonna cost us those opportunities or cost us friendships or cost us relationships.

We're not hoping for those.

And we shouldn't hope for those things.

That's not the ways of the Lord.

That's not that's not some super spiritual asceticism, it's not it's nothing like that.

That's unnatural.

I think that's the opposite.

But I think what we should recognize is that painful providences come.

Painful providences come.

And it may not be because we deserve them, it may not be because we want them, it may not be because we went looking for them, it may not be because of decisions we made, maybe because of decisions somebody else made.

It may be because of a decision that the living God has made, but painful providences come.

You might lose a spouse at a young age.

MS might disrupt the retirement dreams that you have.

The shape of your family might be different than the one that you've always prayed for and longed for and looked for.

But let me ask you a question this morning.

Would you even know Daniel's name if it hadn't been for the lion's den?

Would you even know his story if his story had not taken him into a pit of lions?

God often delivers us differently than we expect him to deliver us.

And God often works in our lives differently than we expect him to work in our lives.

Because God's goal for our lives is not maximum comfort and maximum convenience.

God's goal for our lives is that we would put on display how good he is, how glorious he is, and that we would make it known.

That God's goal for our lives, not that we would know the most comfortable life in the here and now, but that we would have the deepest joy and satisfaction in him.

And very often, very often, that doesn't happen in beach resorts, it happens in lion's dens.

Darius is up, he has insomnia, he can't sleep all night.

That's what happens to people when they entangle themselves in sin and realize that they have no power in and of themselves to be able to change their situation.

And so first light comes and Darius runs out.

He hasn't slept one wink all night because there's this old buddy down in the lions, and he runs out first thing.

The picture that I have is Mary and Martha running out after the resurrection, right?

Like they're running out and they're looking, he's looking, like, what's happening?

I love Daniel's response.

I love Daniel's response.

Daniel, I just have this picture.

He's just chilling.

He's just chilling.

The king's running out.

Are you okay?

Are you okay?

Are you okay?

Oh, king, live forever.

Oh, king.

How long do you think he thought about that response?

Like, this is what I'm gonna say when that cat walks out in the morning.

Oh king, live forever, right?

It's a perfect response.

It's respectful, it's joyful, it's ironic.

It's victorious.

It's victorious, isn't it?

Daniel had experienced the greatest injustice, and yet, having experienced the greatest injustice, the greatest injustice became the context for the greatest deliverance.

And this is how God works.

And because it became the greatest injustice became the context for the greatest deliverance, it came at the same time the context for the greatest and deepest joy with it.

Daniel says that he saw God's angel.

I made the case in Daniel chapter three that this is that the angel of the Lord is a pre incarnate vision of the person of Christ, a pre incarnate visitation of Christ himself.

And so here what we see is that there he saw Jesus.

That Daniel was no more.

Alone in the lion's den than Daniel had been alone in the prayer closet.

In fact, it was Jesus' presence affirming in the lion's den that all of the prayers and all of the visitations and all of the submissions that he had made in private through all of his devotions that God had been there too.

And even though, even though he had let him go into the lion's den, he had not let him go alone into the lion's den.

I wonder how often it feels like you're talking to the ceiling when you pray.

I wonder how often it feels like you're just talking to the air and to the ethereal world that's out there somewhere, somehow.

Maybe they hear, maybe they don't.

My goodness, y'all.

When you witness the living God answer your prayers, that, no matter what is happening in your life, is what enlivens your joy and secures your footing so that you know, no matter how hostile the culture, no matter how oppressive your situation, no matter how unnerving the painful providence is, you know, you know that God is with you.

The answered prayers prove you are God's child and they prove that you are never alone as God's child.

And I'm convinced this is why we have to blend the generations here at the orchard.

We can't have just all the kids over there and all the teenagers over here and all the young families over here and all the senior saints over here.

We've got to blend the generations because the young generation need the stories of the seasoned saints to tell them that they are gonna make it today because of the providence and the deliverance of yesterday, that today your faith and your prayers may seem unanswered, but tomorrow it's coming.

And so you can press on.

We need the testimonies of the church and the testimonies of the 80 and 90-year-old men that have watched the mouths of lions be closed so that we can borrow their praise and worship our God and know, and know that even though it feels like I'm talking to the ceiling, I know my God is listening to me.

The book of Daniel was written to prepare the people of God for the Messianic kingdom.

That's the whole purpose of the entire prophecy.

The truth of the matter is that as we await the inauguration or the consummation of that kingdom, that even after the inauguration, it's gonna feel like we're living in Babylon and Persia.

It's gonna feel as though we're living in a hostile world.

But what we can know, what we can know because the mouths of lions have been closed, is that we wait in the midst of a hostile world victoriously.

It's a reminder.

When those lions' mouths are shut, that the serpent's head from Eden really will be crushed by the seed of the woman.

Even, even if it doesn't look like.

While in exile, it may look like your conspirators win.

But I want you to notice a phrase.

There's the play on words, I'm almost finished here.

It says in verse 24, uh, it says, maliciously accused.

Who had maliciously accused Daniel?

This translates literally, chewed into pieces.

That Daniel's colleagues had chewed him into pieces with their words, with their schemes, with their ways.

And you know what ultimately happens?

Ultimately they are fed to the lines, and what?

All of their bones are broken into pieces.

God's people will triumph, and the serpent will be crushed, because as we see here, there is and there was a greater Daniel that came, and the politicians conspire against him too.

But his character proves to be inscrutable.

The ruler, the ruler tries to intervene and save him too, but he washes his hands because there's nothing that he can do.

And he will be nailed to the cross as though devoured by lions, but at first light on Sunday morning, he will call out to his disciples in joy and overcome death and have been resurrected.

Not only will he save them from the lion's den, but he will go and go into the lion's den himself, shut the mouths of lions, and he will prove himself the victorious conqueror.

God sent the lion of Judah to crush the snake of Eden.

And that's the hope that we have, brothers and sisters, is that he's on our side.

He's on our side.

But brothers and sisters, you can live victoriously through Christ.

Christianity may not be cool right now, but because of the resurrection, Christians, Christians will always be victorious.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we come this morning and we submit ourselves before you, O Lord, and we ask, oh God, that you would let us walk uprightly with honor and deliberation, proactively, boldly, victoriously, freely.

I pray, O Father, that we would be people that live confident in your deliverance, confident in the hope that we have, that we might show others that joy is not circumstantial but found in Christ.

We ask these things now in Jesus' name.

Amen.