"Persian Lambs Vs. Judah's Lion" Daniel 6 Sunday Evening Worship Service

What we see here tonight in Daniel chapter 6 is the transition from gold to silver.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

If you remember earlier in the book of Daniel, Daniel received a vision of the different stages of world empires, going from the Babylonian Empire, which was the head of gold, to the Persian Empire, which was the chest of silver, and it's going to go down into the legs and the waste of iron, which was the Greek Empire, all the way down to the feet of clay, which would be the Roman Empire as it transitioned into democracy.

And so you saw the transition from the despotic leadership of the emperor of the Babylonians, which was the head of gold, down to the frailty of people, choosing at their own whims what their laws would be down with the feet of clay.

And of course, all of that was bludgeoned to death by the rock of Christ when he returned.

And remember, Nebuchadnezzar's takeaway from that story was that he was the head of gold, and he thought, you know, long live the king.

He built the giant statue of gold and commanded everybody to worship it.

Nebuchadnezzar certainly thought that he was a god.

That was his takeaway from that story.

Well, Nebuchadnezzar did not live forever.

In fact, he ended up repenting of his sin before he died.

He was replaced by a couple more kings.

We talked about this last week in Daniel chapter 5, until finally Belshazzar was the final king.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

He was really the vice regent.

His probably father was the king, and he abdicated a few days earlier, taking his army out.

He saw the writing on the wall and surrendered essentially to the Persians.

And Belshazzar did not read the writing on the wall, and he ended up losing his kingdom.

And so the head of gold is gone.

The Babylonian Empire, which was the strongest empire in the world, folded without even a shot being fired.

I mean, the history tells us that the actual transition from the Babylonians to the Persians was essentially bloodless.

That they had come into the city of Babylon, the Persians did, and conquered it without any bloodshed.

They had come in undetected through the rivers that they had stopped up and through the aqueducts, and they were able to seize control, and the Babylonian army was gone and had already surrendered at this point.

So the golden statue is fallen, Nebuchadnezzar's dream of an immortal Babylon is over.

And tonight we are introduced to a new empire.

This is the first time in the Bible we come across this empire.

We'll see them in other places.

Isaiah writes about them prophetically, Jeremiah writes about them prophetically.

Obviously, the books of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah all take place during this empire, but here is where we are introduced to them in Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

Now, I'm sure many of you are familiar with the story, but I want you to appreciate before we get into our outline tonight how much Daniel chapter, sorry, six, how much Daniel chapter six parallels what you saw in Daniel chapter 1.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

Daniel chapter 1, Nebuchadnezzar brings Daniel into the court.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

In chapter 6, the king, the King Darius or Cyrus brings Daniel into the court.

In Daniel chapter 1, Daniel and his friends refuse the king's orders, refuse to do what the king wants them to do.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

The same thing happens in Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

There are different orders.

In Daniel chapter 1, it was about food.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

In Daniel chapter 6, it's about praying.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

But in both cases, Daniel refuses to obey.

In chapter 1, Daniel was led out of this with an image of the different beasts, well, the two different images of the statue, first of all, that would be toppled.

And the same kind of image happens in Daniel chapter 8, and that's how Daniel is led out of this predicament.

Daniel 8 · chapter mention

And there's going to be other similarities as we go through it tonight.

But understand the point of this is that empires come and go.

This is hard for Americans to appreciate because, you know, you know, our country is unique in our minds, and the world has never been graced with anything like us.

But it is important, out of Christian humility, for you to recognize for a second that countries come and go.

Empires come and go.

And it's a sobering reality.

God causes nations to grow and he causes nations to decline.

I'm thankful for the United States because God has used it to advance mission work around the world and to advance religious freedom around the world and to stand for the protection of human life and for the protection of the innocent in many cases.

Not obviously all cases, but in many cases.

So God has used our country in very unique ways in world history.

That's true.

But countries come and go.

Empires come and go.

And what is staggering about Daniel 6 is that between Daniel 5 and 6, the world has been upended.

Again, we're at such distance here, it's hard to appreciate what's happened.

But between the end of Daniel 5 and the start of Daniel 6, the whole world order has changed.

The strongest empire in the world has fallen, and there is a new kid on the block that has the Persians had a very different worldview, a very different system of government, a very different way of looking at the world than the Babylonians did.

But what's impressive, why I bring out the similarities between Daniel 1 and Daniel 6, is that the world gets turned upside down, but it should not affect the believer a bit.

I mean, Daniel is trucking along in chapter 6 like he was in chapter 5.

Everything, as far as he concerned, is concerned, is going according to God's schedule.

Not how Daniel would have planned it, but how God planned it.

And so it stands out that in this showdown that we're about to see tonight in Daniel chapter 6, that God's will is being done with God's people on the scene, empires come and go.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

You know, presidential elections go this way and that way.

There's ebbs and flows, and you know, it should not affect your faith that much.

That's the point I take away from Daniel chapter six.

But to get into it here, I want to give you an outline tonight.

It is Super Bowl Sunday.

I see a lion sweatshirt in the front row, uh, way to represent Tim.

And so my outline for you tonight is Lions versus the Saints.

The Lions versus Saints.

Five key Super Bowl matchups to watch for.

Uh to watch for in this chapter tonight.

Five key Super Bowl matchups to watch for.

There's five different worldviews, five different collisions here, five different matchups to keep your eye on as we go through the Lions versus the Saints.

I think they're in the same conference.

They can't even play each other in the Super Bowl.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Maybe.

But if they could, this is what it would look like.

Um our first contrast, our first battle here is faithful leaders versus lying plotters.

You have faithful leaders taking on lying plotters.

Plotters was the best word I could come up with for this.

It pleased Darius, chapter 6, verse 1.

Now, Darius, by the way, is a name that there's two ways to understand Darius.

One could be it's just a generic title for all of the kings of Persia, because you're going to see other Darius, Dari, whatever it is, later on.

And they're not this Darius.

There's Darius, Dari that have been discovered in uh archaeology that don't line up with this particular leader.

And so there's two different ways to understand that.

One is that this would be Cyrus.

Cyrus is the one who's prophesied.

Uh, and it appears that it, I think that's maybe the best way to understand this.

Um, it's rough on the in the grammar in the Aramaic as um it seems, but it's a clear way to, I think, to make sense of this.

But the other common understanding of this is that Darius was just given over Babylon.

He wasn't the emperor of all the Persian Empire, just over to Babylon.

That doesn't make sense to me.

And there's a final way people understand Darius that it's just a title for every emperor um in Persia, but there's no real archaeological evidence for that.

This might be one of those things, you know, for the longest time, until just a hundred years ago or so, people thought that Daniel was in error because of Belshazzar, that he didn't line up with the the uh archaeological discoveries.

And then about a hundred years ago, they discovered uh some new uh uh finds that described in detail what you see in Daniel 5, this transition to power.

And the same thing could be here in Daniel 6, who Darius is, if it's a title or if it's another name for Cyrus, or if it's just a Babylonian governor or whatever.

Uh that we don't know the answer to that, and we're just waiting for one more archaeological find.

And so, if any of you want to go be an archaeologist, go solve this riddle, and you'll get two minutes of your life back.

So, it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, which is, by the way, that's the word for uh for president, really, is the way it's translated sometimes.

So it's 120 different presidents.

That's why I think he's probably over the whole empire, uh, to be throughout the whole kingdom, and over them were three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give accounts so that the king might suffer no loss.

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

So, Daniel here, notice the empire's changed, the emperor is gone, but the Persians were very different than the Babylonians.

The Babylonians taught in relocating people and reculturing people to their own culture, make them learn their language, rename them, make them eat their food, everything.

The Persians had a different approach to global domination.

Their approach was assimilation.

They were okay with you keeping your own language and your own uh religion and all that.

Uh, and you they didn't rename you or anything.

They allowed you to function.

They had a diversity that was going on in the Persian Empire different than how the Babylonians worked.

And so they were very eager to take uh the best of the Babylonians.

They conquered their their empire and they looked around, they took the best leaders.

And maybe Daniel stood out because he wasn't Chaldean, and the Chaldeans were the major ethnicity in Babylon, and Daniel was Jewish, and the Persians perhaps liked him for that reason, that he wasn't of the same ethnic group that was just conquered.

But I think it was his excellent spirit, is what the text says, that he was known as a man of excellence.

The Babylonians saw this in him, and he ascended, and now the Persians come on the scene and they recognize him, and he gets to keep his.

This would be like one of those rare people in American politics when the presidential party changes, but they might keep like one cabinet member from the other party as a holdover.

Like he does such a good job, let's just keep him around for the next term, too.

That's what Daniel is here.

He's he's so valuable, they don't want to get rid of him just because the government changed.

So he's on the scene and he does very well.

In fact, so well that he's set over uh there's only two other guys at his level of authority.

There's the emperor, and then everybody else is divided into threes, and Daniel is one of those threes.

And then in verse 4, or at the end of verse 3, the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

The king was gonna take him and make him like the equivalent of the prime minister, that he would be in charge of the other guys.

And so Daniel is flying up the flow chart here.

In verse 4, this of course is not gonna please the other satraps that they've been around.

You know, they've they've got time on the job.

They've been doing this for decades for the Persians, and now here's this new kid on the block.

Granted, he's like 80 years old at the time, but here's this new guy around, and he's gonna be in charge.

We just met him yesterday, is their attitude.

And so, the verse 4, the high officials and satraps sought to find a ground to complain 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.

What a great testimony, huh?

They looked at his life, well, they looked at his performance.

Is he good at his job?

You know, this is, I think this is very applicable to us today, where there's some uh often Christians are saying, you know, I'm so hesitant about when to pray at work or who to evangelize at work because I don't want to get in trouble.

Well, there's something to be said for the Daniel model here, like do your job very well so that they can't get you in trouble.

I mean, they're not gonna fire their best employee for praying at lunchtime, they're not gonna fire their best employee for witnessing to somebody after work.

That's not gonna happen.

Probably.

Maybe not.

But that's Daniel's idea here.

Let him do this best of a job as possible so that when they go to fire him, they can't find any grounds.

Which is incredible considering the portfolio he's overseeing.

And so, as is always the case, when you want to assassinate someone, you want to get rid of them, you want to discredit them, you go after their performance first.

That's the easiest way to discredit somebody is look at their performance.

But if that doesn't work, the next thing is to go after their character or their convictions.

And that's what they do here.

In verse 5, these men said, We're not going to find any ground for complaining against Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.

In other words, let's go after his convictions.

Let's find a place where his religion conflicts with the law of our land.

And remember, the Persians, for you appreciate this passage, you have to understand the Persian laws were very accommodating to other religions.

Unlike the Babylonian laws.

The Persians were generally accommodating.

And so they're gonna have to search here.

What's a way that Jewish law clashes with Persian law and let's go after him there?

It's gonna be hard to do, though.

But they are, by the way, lying in their plan here because look at what happens.

Verse 6, these high kings and officials and satraps came by agreement.

In agreement, it's not 100% agreement, it's just, you know, the two of the three, because Daniel is the third, 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.

The king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction that whoever makes a petition to any God or any man for thirty days except you, O king, shall be cast into a den of lions.

Now I want you to, we're gonna stop here for this first point.

That's the end of the first point.

I want you to appreciate that they are lying here.

Because they say, We're all agreed, all of your leaders are agreed.

So pause.

Are all of their leaders agreed?

No, because one of their leaders is Daniel.

And Daniel did not sign up on this.

See, this is the, you know, you can say it was a unanimous vote.

Yeah, well, how did so-and-so vote?

He was out of town.

Sorry, he missed the vote.

Okay.

Well, that's what they're doing here.

Everybody agrees.

Did you ask Daniel?

No, we didn't ask him.

So easy to get a easy to get a unanimous verdict there when you keep the naysayers out of the room.

So they're lying.

What a contrast between the faithfulness of Daniel.

And Daniel's not concerned about his own reputation versus the conniving ways of these liars.

And that leads to the second contrast: the righteous laws versus sinful whims.

Now, before we read this, you really do need, I hope this is helpful to you, a bit of a background about how the scriptures see laws functioning in a society.

For a law to be effective in society, it has to have the force of the state behind it, has to have a court system behind that, it has to have some law enforcement mechanism behind that.

So think about the steps involved in enacting and enforcing a law.

There's all kinds of laws that are enacted that are not enforced.

But there's more significant steps to guard the righteousness of a law and the integrity of a law if it is enforced.

You need, first of all, the legislative body to sign off on the law.

You need a group of a deliberative body to wrestle through the law and come up with it and say, we think this is right, and they pass it.

Then beyond that, you have to have some kind of law enforcement arm to enforce that law.

And they have to have discretion.

They can look at the offense and they can, you know, speeding is the obvious example.

They're not going to take you to jail for going 36 and a 35, you know.

They might, depending on, you know, what kind of mood they're in, they might not even pull you over for it.

They have some discretion in that.

And then the third check in that is the actual judge who hears the case, or a jury in our case.

There's another layer of discretion.

And so you have three different points to guard the integrity of a law.

Now that doesn't mean that unjust laws don't get passed and that unjust laws don't get enforced.

But notice that for an unjust law to be passed and enforced and enforced unjustly, it really is a statement about a society more than it is about a particular law.

It's a think of all of the compromises in a society that have to go into getting an unjust law passed and then enforced.

And to say it this way, a racist society will have racist laws, not because the laws are racist, but because the society is that produces those laws, and then the law enforcement officers who enforce it possess that same racism, and the judges who enforce it likewise.

Or to make it more present day.

A pro-abortion society will have pro-abortion laws that are enforced in a pro-abortion way.

Because the laws are pro-abortion.

It's every step mark.

The deliberative body is pro-abortion, the law enforcement agents that enforce it are pro-abortion, and the judges that hear it are pro-abortion, and so it's a representation representation of the society.

That's the that's how an unjust law gets passed.

So it's important to know, and I think this is a main theme of Daniel 6, the difference between a just law and an unjust law.

A just law is a law that is equitable for everyone in society and as much as possible corresponds to God's holy character.

That's a just law.

An unjust law is a law that is not equitable in society and does not correspond to God's character.

And to help you appreciate this, notice what they're asking the Persian emperor to do: to declare a law that you have to pray to him.

Now that's going to be an unjust law because it conflicts with God's character.

It's also an interesting law, an interesting statement about society.

The Babylonians were not a pluralistic society.

The Babylonians wanted conformity, they wanted you to speak their language, for you to eat their food, they wanted you to worship their God, which may at any given time be the emperor himself.

Remember the Nebuchadnezzar statue.

But at no point in that dogmatic, exclusive society did they ban Daniel from praying to his God.

At no point did they ban him from reading his scripture.

They never infringed on Daniel's right to worship, you could say it that way.

They tried to compel him to worship the statue, of course, but they didn't shut down his worship.

What happens in a pluralistic society, an open and more tolerant society like the Persian society, is because of their openness and their tolerance, they're going to be more inclined to shut down the godly people from praying, to shut down the godly people from reading the word.

And that's what you see here.

And it is, it is interesting that it's an open and tolerant society, the Persians that are a more hindrance on Daniel's worship than the Babylonians would be.

Now you see in this chapter three times the most common phrase in this chapter, the law of the Medes and Persians.

We're going to see it a couple times in a second here.

That's the theme, I think the theme of this chapter, how they were so meticulous about their laws when their laws were unjust.

When their laws were unjust.

This is the palace intrigue in this pluralistic and inclusive society.

They viewed their lawmakers as the final authority.

And I think that's very similar to the American culture right now.

In the United States, we often have the tendency, our culture does, to view the lawmakers as the final authority.

What the lawmakers say, that is right and supreme.

Again, to use the example of abortion.

Abortion in our country, it must be right because the Supreme Court decided it to be so.

Our same-sex marriage, it was against the law a few years ago, and then the Supreme Court ruled, and so now it's the law of the land, therefore case closed.

That kind of thinking comes from this very Persian mindset that the law is the authority.

What the law says goes.

That's what Daniel's running into.

And that's why there's palace intrigue, by the way.

That's why these people are trying to get rid of Daniel.

Because if you get rid of Daniel, you control the lawmakers.

You have this whole deliberative body that Daniel is slowing down.

Get rid of him, and then they themselves become the authority.

Understand that one of the main functions of law is to protect the weak.

And when there's no law in a land, the weak are left unprotected.

Go back to the Old Testament.

In David's life, when Saul was king, Saul had no effective government.

Saul had no effective law enforcement, no court system.

Israel was plagued by thieves and robbers.

And so David, remember, bound together with his band of mighty men, and they protected people's property.

Which was better than the days of the judges when there was no law and there was no David.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and it was a brutal, brutal place.

But when David becomes king, he has law, he has law enforcement, he has integrity.

And so peace and harmony comes to Israel.

Aristotle, who would write just a little bit after the book of Daniel was written, Aristotle has a very helpful category for us.

And I think it's helpful even though Aristotle, of course, wasn't a believer, but it's a helpful category that represents biblical principles.

Aristotle said that all law falls in one or two categories: natural law or positive law was his phrases.

Natural law is how we view ourselves as creatures in our relationship with the Creator, and positive law is from the lawmakers.

And a law is good and just when positive law overlaps with natural law.

In other words, for example, uh laws regulating marriage and divorce in our society would be just when they correspond to the Bible's laws.

The Bible is not precise in all the things, like the Bible doesn't tell you the marginal effective tax rate, okay?

Like the Bible doesn't get into the details because cultures are different and all of that.

But when a culture's laws conflict with the Bible's laws, they stop being just laws.

The culture's laws do.

Again, in theory, these two categories should overlap.

When they stop overlapping is when the positive laws become wicked laws.

And at that point, even Aristotle understood this when your culture's positive laws conflict with the Bible.

Laws, believers are under no obligation to those positive laws.

In other words, to use the language of the book of Acts, it's better to obey God than man.

I mean, that's simpler than two categories.

But I want you to understand there's a very philosophical outlook on the nature of law that's behind these restrictions.

When they contradict, you follow natural law, you follow God's law.

But there is a type of person that's deceived by the power of positive law, by deceived by the power of a society's own law-making ability.

And that kind of person thinks that the law of the land is final.

And they put all their effort into advocating and changing the law of the land into becoming the law of the land.

As I mentioned earlier, that kind of person is naive enough to think because the Supreme Court rules something one way or the other, that makes it true.

When it's not true.

Righteous laws come from the character of God.

Sinful whims, they come and go.

And they come and go.

And so let's read about how this plays out here.

Verse 8.

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

Therefore, King Darius signed the document and the injunction.

The Persians had the system whereof a law was signed.

You could not repeal it.

There was no mechanism to repeal it.

And that was designed to keep them from passing whimsical laws.

Now, like I said, the Persians were supposed to be inclusive.

They weren't supposed to ban praying to other gods.

So why do you think Darius fell for this?

This is not normal in the Persian culture.

It would be normal in Babylon, but not in the Persian culture.

Why did Darius fall for it?

I think maybe his inclusivity got the best of him.

Because in Babylon, they made their emperors gods.

And so, hey, we conquered the Babylonians.

It's fitting for me now to be made a god as far as the Babylonians go.

And it's hard to say no.

I mean, you can see this, you know, it's hard to say no.

Everybody gathers around you and says, we want you to be God for 30 days.

I get, I grant there's logical problems with it, right?

If you're God for 30 days, if there's a time cap on your deity, then that raises some interesting questions.

What happens on the 31st day?

Who's God then?

I don't know.

But Darius goes for it.

I think it plays to his pride and all of that.

And his whole point here, it cannot be changed.

It cannot be changed.

Same problem.

Think of the Roe v.

Wade case in our own country.

Norma McCorvey, who was the lady behind that case, she ended up changing her position on abortion.

Twenty years later, she became pro-life.

But that doesn't undo the Supreme Court case.

Just because she changes her mind, doesn't kick it back to the Supreme Court.

It cannot be undone.

And that's what happens here.

It's a sinful whim, it's an unjust law.

And by the way, our country has our own history of this.

And you think of this, of course, with unjust laws about slavery, unjust laws about segregation, unjust laws about racial dynamics in our country, even unjust laws about praying.

I came across today a uh case in 1995 where a U.S.

federal court judge, Samuel Kent, was his name, banned prayer in uh high school graduations.

And it's not just that he banned prayer in high school graduations because separation in church and state, you can't get secular kids in a gym and assign somebody to pray for them.

I mean, I understand the logic behind that, but that's not what he did.

He went beyond that.

He sent U.S.

marshals to attend every high school graduation in Galveston County in Texas that year in 1985 with a mandate to arrest any student seen praying at their graduation.

In fact, he wrote this quote anyone who violates these orders is going to wish that he or she had died as a child when this court gets through with it.

Gets through with it?

At least he had the he or she there.

He was gender inclusive.

I mean, that's a federal judge saying, I'm sending marshals to graduations.

If I catch you praying, you're gonna wish you were never born.

What an insane event.

Um anyway, that's sinful whims.

It keeps when it comes from a judge, even when it's passed and ratified by a judge, it's a sinful whim.

So let's keep going here.

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.

That's going to lead to our third showdown here.

Covenant confidence versus cowardly worry.

Covenant confidence versus cowardly worry.

Look what Daniel does.

He goes up to his room, he opens his window towards Jerusalem.

Why towards Jerusalem?

Well, because I think this is a fulfillment of 1 Kings 8, verses 47 through 50.

1 Kings 8:47–50

Solomon, when he dedicated the temple, said, when Solomon prayed for the temple, there would be the time coming when Israel is exiled, because Solomon knew they weren't going to be obedient.

The time is coming when we're getting kicked out, but God, when we're kicked out of the land and we pray facing towards your temple, would you hear our prayers?

And then this is how Solomends this.

So by Daniel facing the temple and praying here, he's praying that Darius would show him mercy and not feed him to lions.

That's the point of the prayer.

That's why he's facing Jerusalem.

Also, beyond that, there's so much there.

I wish we had more time.

Daniel knows that the future of the world goes through Jerusalem, not through Babylon.

He's not facing the king of Babylon as he's praying this, or he's not facing the king of Persia.

He doesn't care about that.

That city is not significant.

There was a whole rage in Christianity four or five years ago about how you need to live in the city and be for the city, and Christians should be all, you know, pro the city they're in.

And there's limits to that.

I think it's fine for you to be in a city, but you shouldn't be for the city.

Unless it's Jerusalem, I think is the idea here.

He faces Jerusalem, not Babylon.

He knew that the Messiah that would be coming from Jerusalem was more to be feared than Darius.

And the truth about Daniel's prayer life is because he was a man of integrity, he always had an open window to God.

He didn't need his window to be open.

And some people say, oh, he's doing this to, you know, to boast to the Babylonians or to the Persians he's violating their laws.

Maybe that's true.

But I think a lot of it is fulfilling 1 Kings chapter 8.

1 Kings 8 · chapter mention

But notice his boldness.

He's not afraid.

He knows that God is going to send the Messiah through Jerusalem.

He's got confidence in that.

He'll face it when he prays.

Consequences come as they may.

You can't intimidate Daniel at this point.

I mean, he's old, but he's been through a lot.

You know, he's not going to roll over on this.

He's seen worse.

They arrest him.

He's going to say, it's not the first time I've been arrested for this stuff, you know.

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

In other words, this is his custom.

He's not showboating here to like provoke the Persians.

That's his point.

So it's wrong to read this and be like, oh, he's, you know, he's going out of the way, you know, when Christians are oppressed, we got to go flaunt it to the nonbelievers that we're going to do what we're going to do and take that.

That's not what Daniel's doing here.

He's doing what he does every day of his life.

And that should be convicting to us.

Do you have that kind of prayer life where it's your normal attitude?

If somebody said, don't pray, would you say, okay, I'm going to pray just to show you, or would you just go about your normal life?

Daniel goes about his normal life, which includes praying three times a day.

So, Daniel gets down on his knees three times a day, prays, gives thanks for a God as he'd done previously.

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

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

And the king answered and said, This thing stands fast according to the laws of the Medes and the Persians.

Because, you know, woe, which cannot be revoked.

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

And the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed.

He set his mind to deliver Daniel.

He labored until the sun went down to rescue him.

And these men came by agreement of the king and said to the king, Now, king, it's the law of the Medes and the Persians, no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.

I mean, this king is worried sick for Daniel.

Not worried enough to actually do anything, mind you, but it is, it is seriously vexing him.

You're gonna see in a little bit, it interrupts his sleep.

I mean, that's a big deal.

That is a big deal.

He is worried sick.

He'll stay up at night worrying about Daniel.

But he lacks what I'm gonna call covenant confidence to do anything about it.

He doesn't have any courage behind his convictions.

He knows Daniel shouldn't be thrown in prison.

He knows he was played, but he's not a good enough politician to figure out a way out of it.

He lacks any kind of real convictions at all.

Which leads to the next stage of our show down here: Persian lions versus Judah's Lamb.

The king commanded, verse 16, Daniel is brought in and cast into the den of lions.

These kind of dens have been discovered.

They're a cave in the mountain.

The lions are brought into the cave.

If you build it towards the top of the mountain, you bit a hole in the top of it, you can throw a person down in the middle of it.

Some of these have been excavated.

You roll a stone across the entrance to the cave, so lions can't get out, people can't get in, and there the lions stay, they're fed with criminals, I guess.

And although we had some missionaries in Cuba that told me that in Cuba every now and then they'll go and round up all the stray dogs and feed them to the lions in the zoo.

So that's how Cuba handles this today.

But back then, maybe when there were no criminals, they fed the dogs the stray, the lions the stray dogs.

I don't know.

But here they're getting fed Daniel is the point of this.

And so he's heaved down into the um the cave.

But notice what Darius says as he throws Daniel down in there.

Middle of verse 16.

May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you.

Thanks.

I mean, what is that?

Okay.

Thanks, King.

I mean, this lets you know that the king had heard enough about Daniel to know that Yahweh was a powerful God.

He didn't want to cross him.

Like Nebuchadnezzar before, before Nebuchadnezzar was converted, he didn't have enough faith to believe savingly, but he had enough faith to know the power of God.

I think Darius is in the same situation here.

I hope your God is strong enough to help, because I'm not.

Verse 17, a stone was brought in, laid across the mouth of the den.

The king sealed it with his own signet, with the signet of the Lord's that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel, so there was no escape here.

I mean, just notice all the similarities between Jesus' grave in this.

The stone is rolled away, the signet is put on it, it's sealed so nobody can tamper with it.

And, you know, the thing with Jesus' stone is obviously to keep people from stealing his body, was the point, but it didn't work to keep him in.

He could open it from the inside.

And I mean the same thing here.

We're going to seal this up so nobody can toy with this because, you know, if God wants to rescue him, he's going to have to overcome the seal of the king of Persia.

Look out, God.

Verse 18, the king went to his palace, spent the night fasting.

No diversions are brought to him, sleep fed to him.

This is a hard-knock life for the emperor here.

He was he didn't receive his normal dancers.

His normal stand-up comics were canceled.

I mean, it's hard to be an emperor.

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

He came near the den where Daniel was, and he cried out in a tone of anguish.

The king, I mean, his conscience is destroying him.

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

This whole thing is too little, too late, isn't it?

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

What level of irony do you think he used in his voice there?

I say like a 90.

Oh king, I hope you live forever.

That's the greeting that they give to their emperors.

The other satraps did earlier in the chapter.

Daniel, I mean, Daniel's showing that he has no ill will towards the king.

He's the innocent of these charges.

Now, what's fascinating to me about this is that Daniel did not defend himself before he was thrown in the lion's den.

I think a little bit of it, he's past that.

He's past the point of defending himself.

You know what?

Do what you're gonna do, King.

And my God will what he's gonna do.

A little bit of the attitude of his friends in the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they said, hey, if God's gonna save us from the fire, great.

If not, go into glory.

It's all right.

Daniel, I think, has the same attitude.

He didn't argue his case before the king.

Okay, throw me in the lions.

Then if I'm alive in the morning, you might repent.

If I'm not, I'm in a better place.

That's totally Daniel's attitude.

King, live forever.

Verse 22, my God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king.

By the way, just to throw this out here, I've done no harm.

I didn't break any real law.

I went against your whim.

It's an ungodly whim.

Now the king here was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den.

So Daniel was taken up out of the den.

No harm was found on him.

The same language of the men out of the fire.

You know how a hair on their body was singe.

Daniel didn't have a scratch.

It's not like Daniel fought off the lions here.

Daniel was.

I loved the painting in the National Art Museum.

If you haven't seen it, you should go to the National Art Museum and see the painting of Daniel the Lions.

And it's incredible.

It's huge.

It takes up the whole wall here.

I mean, it's it's an impressive painting.

And it's Daniel hanging out with the lions.

I love that.

Because sometimes you picture like Daniel hiding in a corner and like, you know, taking a femur and trying to fend off the lions or something.

And I like the picture of him hanging out with the lions.

You know, they're probably purring.

Daniel got to hear a lion purr.

I think that's cool.

Um so no harm had found in him because he trusted his God.

Next contrast here.

Unrighteous laws versus biblical blessing.

Unrighteous laws versus biblical blessing.

There's lots he's said about these lions, by the way.

That God is going to rescue Daniel because God's own integrity is at stake here.

Again, the animals could have eaten Daniel.

God doesn't always close the mouths of lions.

Sometimes there are martyrs, of course.

There are prophets who are martyred.

There is Isaiah who sought into.

That stuff does happen.

And God is glorified through that as well.

Nevertheless, God's glorified through closing the mouths of the lions.

Next contrast is unrighteous laws versus biblical blessing.

And you see the unrighteous nature of these laws here in verse 24.

The king commanded, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought in and cast into the den of lions.

Now that right there is a just punishment.

That holds up under Old Testament scrutiny.

That's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

It's written in the Torah.

If you give a false accusation against somebody to get them put to death, and it's a capital offense, you should be put to death.

And that's a, I think that's a just punishment there by Old Testament law.

And certainly it fits the crime here.

They lied to get Daniel put to death, they conspired to get him put to death, and so rightly they should be put to death.

I understand that.

But look at the rest of this.

They, their children, and their wives.

That's unjust.

To feed their kids to the lions, to feed their wives to the lions, that's an unjust law.

But that is the law of the Medes and the Persians.

They had a law that if somebody was found guilty of treason, their whole family is put to death.

Again, that's an unjust law.

It goes against God's commands that children shouldn't suffer for the shit, children shouldn't bear the punishment for the sins of their parents.

Now, sometimes they will through the natural course of things.

If your parents are abusive and sin against you, then you grow up with a distorted view of reality and all that.

That's natural.

But it's against God's justice, his sense of justice, to punish children for a parent's crime.

But the Persians do just that.

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

There goes the whole story of oh, Daniel was spared because the lions weren't hungry.

They ate entire families in a second before their bodies hit the floor.

These were hungry lions.

Picture the lions negotiating with the angels.

Closing their mouth.

Oh, come on, please.

So hungry, growl.

Daniel thought they were purrs.

No, they were growls.

And King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, languages that dwell in the earth.

Very similar to Nebuchadnezzar's psalm that he wrote.

He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.

He was saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

This is similar to Nebuchadnezzar's first psalm.

This is not Darius being converted.

When Nebuchadnezzar wrote his first little psalm, it was not a sign of conversion.

He wrote a later one that was his conversion, but this is just the king saying, Wow, your God is powerful.

You know what?

I would be friends with your God.

We're both very powerful people.

That's that kind of attitude.

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

That could be an opposition to the reign of Darius, who was Cyrus the Persian, or it could be that Daniel lasted into the next king's reign.

Notice more contrasts or comparisons between chapter 1 and chapter 6.

Chapter 1, Nebuchadnezzar puts the vessels from the temple into his own house.

In Daniel 6, Darius bans prayer to God.

In Daniel 1, Daniel refused to follow the king.

In Daniel 6, Daniel refuses to follow the king.

In Daniel 1, court officials conspire against Daniel and chapter conspire to actually help Daniel.

In chapter 6, court officials conspire to harm Daniel.

In chapter 1, Daniel is vindicated through a miracle.

In chapter 6, vindicated through a miracle.

In chapter 1, he's promoted.

In chapter 6, he's promoted.

And all of this comes.

The bottom line between all this is because the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Jews reject the law of Moses.

And that's what we're going to find out in two weeks or three weeks in chapter 8.

Where Daniel straight up says, This is coming to you.

The lions are here, the furnace are here, the statue is here because you reject God's law.

If you know a Pastor Wang Yi recently imprisoned in China for a book that he wrote, it translated in English.

You could translate the revolutionary nature of Christian faith.

And if you read through his book, which I've done, it's it's not about throwing overthrowing the government, it's about what you would consider conversion.

Anyway, the Chinese recently arrested him, threw him in jail for no charge other than being a Christian.

And he wrote a letter just published last couple weeks ago from Changdu Jail.

Let me read you the closing part of this letter.

On the basis of the teachings of the Bible and the mission of the gospel, I respect the authorities God has established in China.

Just think of this pastor put in jail for being a Christian, and he's in his letter saying, I want you to know, because I'm a Christian, I respect these authorities.

God disposes kings and he raises up kings.

This is why I submit to the institutional arrangements of God in China.

But isn't that a godly attitude?

Is it a godly government?

No.

But does he submit to them?

Yes.

And so should we to any government that God permits our country to have.

But he goes on, as a pastor of a Christian church, I have my own understanding and views based on the Bible about what righteous order and good government should be.

At the same time, I'm filled with anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by the communist regime and the wickedness of their depriving people of freedoms of religion and conscience.

But changing social and political institutions is not the mission God has given me.

It is not the goal for which God has called his church or the people of the gospel.

For all hideous realities and unrighteous politics and arbitrary laws manifest the cross of Jesus Christ, the only means by which every Chinese person can be saved.

They also manifest the fact that true hope and a perfect society will never be seen in any earthly institution or any culture.

Our only hope is that our sins will be freely forgiven by Christ and eternal life.

For this reason, I accept and I respect the fact that communist regimes have been allowed by God to rule temporarily.

And then this part.

As the Lord's servant John Calvin said, he quotes Calvin Wicked rulers are the judgment of God on wicked people.

The goal being to urge God's people to repent and turn towards him.

For this reason, I'm joyfully willing to submit myself to their enforcement of the law as though submitting to the discipline and the training of the Lord.

Wow.

Do you catch that?

For this reason, because there is unjust governments, I will submit to an unjust government and their punishments because it's designed to purify the people.

And so by me submitting to an unjust punishment, I'm submitting to the purification of God's people.

That's incredible.

I also want to urge God's people to repent and turn towards Him.

This does not mean that my personal disobedience and the disobedience of the church is in any sense fighting for our rights.

And he puts that in sarcastic quotes.

I'm not fighting for my rights, he says.

This is not political activism.

This is not civil disobedience, because I don't have the intention of changing any institution or any law in China.

As a pastor, the only thing I want to change is man's sinful nature by his faithful disobedience and the testimony that it bears for the cross of Christ.

Lord, we're thankful that you have placed us in a similar circumstance.

Our goal is not to change laws, our goal is to see hearts change through preaching and the obedience of your word.

We see Daniel here as our example.

He was not a revolutionary, he didn't turn the Persian Empire upside down.

He just prayed three times a day and gladly accepted his punishment.

He didn't argue, he didn't talk his way out, he didn't even plead his case, he did not fight for his rights or any such thing.

He surrendered his rights when he surrendered his life to you.

What better place to put our rights than at your feet, Lord?

Because you care for us.

We're grateful for Daniel.

We'll give you thanks for him and his example in Jesus' name.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCBA.com.

Here are the parting words of Pastor Jesse.