Daniel 6

Hello and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that.

We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

I'm just going to situate myself here real quick.

I literally like shaved this morning.

I was going to do it yesterday.

And then my razor was like dead.

The battery was dead.

And I'm like, oh man, now I got to get up three minutes earlier so that I can hit it.

Anyways.

All right.

We can turn over to Daniel six.

I'm just kind of giving like a forewarning here.

I'm going to be pretty much using the ESV today for the Bible that I'm using.

There's a couple words and phrases that I really, really, where's my coffee?

There it is.

There's a couple of phrases that I really, really liked out of the ESV and so I'm going to stick with that.

If you're having trouble following along, I'm going to have the main scriptures that I'm going to be using up on the screen.

And you can also use your phone if you need to.

But I'm going to read Daniel six and I'm going to pretty much read the whole story.

I'm going to skip a couple of verses that are kind of redundant for purposes of what we're doing.

But we're going to jump right in here.

It says, starting Daniel six, verse one, it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps to be throughout the whole kingdom and over them 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 the other high officials and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him and the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

Verse six, then these high officials and satraps came by 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, 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.

Verse ten, then Daniel knew that 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 came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his god.

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.

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

Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, no, O King, that it is a law of the Medes and the Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes 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.

Nineteen, then at break of day the king rose and went in haste to the den of lions.

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 and shut the lion's mouth and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him.

And also before you, O King, I have done no harm.

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.

Twenty-five, then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth.

Peace be multiplied to you.

I make a decree that in all 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.

Daniel chapter six.

I'm going to say a prayer for service real quick.

Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to worship you, Father.

Thank you for your word, which is perfect, God, and how it instructs us in how to live our life, Lord.

Thank you for those who came before us that really showed us how to act faithfully, Lord, that we can pull faith from those brothers and sisters who came before us, God.

Be with the service, be with me as I preach your word, Lord.

Help me to preach your word boldly and with courage, Lord, and accurately.

I pray this in Jesus' holy name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, before we jump in, I want to play a game.

I went online and I looked up, like, the most iconic movie quotes of all time, okay, and I chose five of them.

And I want, if you've ever heard this movie quote before, just raise your hand, okay?

May the force be with you.

Okay, most of us, most, most.

Now keep your hand raised, keep your hand raised.

I want to just do an experiment here.

If you've seen this movie, stand up.

I want to see what the difference between, but if you've heard the quote, keep your, okay, so there's a little bit of a difference here.

There's a little bit of a difference here.

That's interesting.

That's interesting.

Okay, you can sit down.

All right, I have a couple more here.

I looked up five, so next one.

There's no place like home, Wizard of Oz.

If you've seen the movie, stand up, but if you've just heard the quote, raise your hand.

Okay, so there's a little bit of a difference here.

Jaron bought his TV last week for the first time, so, all right, all right, here's one.

This one's going to be tough.

I bet.

Okay, this next one I think is going to be a little bit different.

It's alive.

It's alive, Frankenstein.

If you've seen the movie, stand up, but if you've heard the quote, raise your hand.

Okay, I see that one's a little bit different.

All right, you can have a seat.

Two more, two more.

I'll be back, the Terminator.

There we go.

There we go.

But even see, even Terminator, there's people who have never seen that movie.

But you've heard the quote before, right?

Yeah, but you've heard the quote before.

That's interesting.

All right, last one, last one, last one.

Here's Johnny.

Okay, see?

All right, all right, you guys can have a seat.

You guys can have a seat.

No, no, I've seen all those movies, too, so, like, don't.

I specifically chose movies that I've seen so that I wasn't a hypocrite.

So we're looking at the Book of Daniel, and if you'll indulge me just for a couple seconds here, I kind of feel like the Book of Daniel, specifically this story, Daniel and the Lion's Den, it can sort of fall into a similar category as some of these movie quotes, right?

Like we've heard them, you know, oh, yeah, Daniel and the Lion's Den, oh, yeah, Wizard of Oz.

I've heard of that before, but not as many people have actually gone to the source and, like, read the story from the Bible, you know what I'm saying?

I can say something like, there's no place like home, and everybody knows that that's from Wizard of Oz.

Everybody knows that's from Wizard of Oz.

But if you've never sat down and watched Dorothy run away from home and then, like, get hit by a tornado and then land in, like, a place she didn't know, get chased by a witch, and then, like, watched her last hope of getting home float away, then you're not going to fully understand the emotion of what's going on behind the quote.

You might know the quote.

You might even know the plot of the story, but you're not going to fully understand how she's feeling when she's, like, there's no place like home, there's no place like home.

I think in a similar way, yeah, did you see that?

I was, like, my feet were too far apart.

I think in a similar way, right, the story of Daniel, if we can pull it out of the Bible, which many people have done, right?

Most of us were exposed originally to the story in something like, you know, maybe a painting, Renaissance painting.

Maybe something like this, you know.

Or for me personally, that, VeggieTales.

There we go, there we go.

And these are great stories, don't get me wrong.

I love VeggieTales.

And, you know, you pull the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den out of the Bible, and you get something like, don't be afraid, you know, and, like, trust in God and he'll save you and stuff like that.

And those are great.

That's awesome, right?

Those are great.

That's a great moral to pull.

And I don't want to take away from that.

But if you pull the story of Daniel out of the context of the whole Bible, I think there's some things that you might be missing in this story, right?

And so one of the main goals that we're doing, looking at the book of Daniel, is we're trying to grow in our prayer life.

Jaron asked me a couple weeks ago, he's like, hey, can you preach on Daniel 6?

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's, like, his really awesome prayer, right?

And then I'm like, oh, it's Daniel in the Lion's Den.

Okay.

And I read through the story quite a few times, and I sat and I prayed about it, and I'm like, okay, there's really only two verses in this whole chapter that have anything to do with prayer.

And it's verses 10 and 11.

I'm going to read them one more time.

It says, when Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had his 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 came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God.

And that's pretty much what this story has to say about, specifically about prayer.

And so what I want to do today is I want to take a step back.

I'm not going to do, like, a three-point lesson.

Instead, I want to paint a picture for us.

I want to try to put us in the mindset of Daniel in this story.

What was he thinking?

What was he feeling?

What was Daniel praying about?

And the goal that I really want us to pull from today, like if there's one thing that I want us to pull, it's that, well, okay, this is the question I'm trying to answer, and I want to, the goal I want us to reach is that we can pray honestly to God about real problems.

And, like, the route to get there is praying through the Psalms.

That's, like, the main thing that I want us to pull from today.

And so to get us into the life of Daniel, I want to do a brief tour through the Old Testament, through, like, key passages in the Old Testament to kind of get a history of the people of Israel.

I'm going to try to go through this pretty quickly because there's other stuff I want to talk about.

But we're going to turn over to Genesis chapter 13 for a second.

Genesis 13 · chapter mention

It says in verse 14, the Lord said to Abram, yeah, okay.

I don't know why I have 16 there.

Okay, the Lord said to Abram after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward, eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

I will make your offspring of the dust of the earth so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.

Arise and walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.

What this is right here is the promise of the promised land.

Many people have heard of the promised land, right?

And that's what God is giving to Abraham right now.

The only reason the people of Israel existed is because of this promise that God made to Abraham right here.

Their identity, their security in many ways, their entire way of life is tied into what God says right here.

And a few chapters after this, we get the covenant of circumcision, right, which is a very physical reminder for Daniel and the Jewish people to this promise.

It connects them.

How do I know I'm one of God's people?

Because I'm reminded of it every single day from this very physical thing that attaches me to this.

This is not some abstract history lesson for Daniel.

This is real life.

This is his great-great-grandfather that God made this promise to for Daniel's sake and for the people of Daniel.

Okay, keep going here.

I lost my spot.

Okay, so what happens is Abraham has quite a few descendants, right, and they end up as slaves in Egypt.

And they're there for like 400 years, and God sends this guy named Moses, and Moses comes, pulls them out, the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments, Mount Sinai, and then they end up wandering in the desert for 40 years.

And they spend those 40 years learning how can we be God's people, how can we follow the laws that God has given us, and, like, what separates us from the rest of the world.

And then Moses, they're, like, maybe weeks out, maybe even days out from taking the Promised Land.

They're right on the Jordan River, and he has this long speech.

And he's pleading with them.

He's, like, remember where you came from.

Remember who God is.

Remember what God did for you.

And if you do, you're going to be blessed.

God's going to do great things for you.

But if you don't, if you don't follow God's law, then this is what happens, starting in verse, sorry, verse 28, starting in verse 36.

And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, and you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.

So we're developing this picture, right?

God made this promise to Abraham.

And then it's, like, hey, if you follow, good things are going to happen.

If you don't, bad things are going to happen.

You're going to lose the land.

You're going to lose this Promised Land.

A couple hundred years later, we turn over to 1 Kings 8.

The Israelites, they take the Promised Land.

They're there for a while, and they have a couple kings, right?

And one of the kings is named Solomon, and he builds this large temple.

And he, at the, it looks like the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the big grand opening, and he makes this prayer to God.

And he sort of picks up where Moses leaves off.

And he says, If they repent, in verse 48, If they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea, and maintain their cause, and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you.

So, again, King Solomon, he's like, hey, like, when they're taken away, if that happens, please, like, and they pray, they repent, bring them back home.

Let them regain this land that you promised to them.

Okay, so turn over to 2 Kings, chapter 25.

2 Kings 25 · chapter mention

This is the last one that I want to look at.

Starting in verse 1.

It says, It says, It says, That's the temple.

It says, And that is where the book of Daniel starts.

This group of people that was carried into exile, that's who Daniel was.

This is about a 14-year-old young man.

And I want to challenge you for one second, just try to put yourself in that situation.

You've been hearing your whole life, you've grown up, hearing that you are God's people.

You are reminded of it daily, and you are told, like, God promised this land to our ancestor.

And then one day, you're chained up, forced to march across the desert, and serve a king who just slaughtered a bunch of your people, starved you for about a year, gives you a new name, worshiping a different God.

Put yourself in that situation.

What are you praying for?

What are you praying for?

And now, you're about 70, and you're serving yet another king, 50 years later, decades later, who is, again, threatening to kill people for not worshiping him.

Another group of friends, group of peers, who are just kind of the same group as you, they're trying to get you killed.

Another government that's oppressing your people and murdering them for not worshiping, for worshiping Yahweh.

What are you praying for?

What's going through your head?

I'm convinced that this is not some prayer to go home.

Like, God, please bring us home.

I think Daniel really recognizes that the world is broken.

He's seeing firsthand how cruel and how evil the world can be and how those with authority, those with power, treat those who are under them.

And the one group of people, the one group of people that was supposed to be different, that was supposed to put God on display, his brothers and sisters, his family, failed.

And now, because of their failure, Daniel is sitting in a land that is not his own, serving some king about to die.

He doesn't know that he's going to get delivered from the lions.

He's willing to die for this.

What are you praying for?

Daniel, well, the book of Psalms is pretty well documented to be a prayer book that was probably compiled during this time period.

While the Israelites, they were in exile, they're in Babylon and they're in Persia.

And I always thought, how convenient would it be if there was a Psalm written specifically reflecting this time?

And lo and behold, if you turn to Psalm 137, you'll find a prayer that was written specifically about the march from Jerusalem to Babylon.

And I want us to turn over there.

I'm going to give a little bit of a warning.

It gets a little violent at the end of this prayer, though.

Starting in verse one, I'm going to read the whole thing.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem, how they said, lay it bare, lay it bare down to its foundation.

What I want to point out here, and what I really want to focus on, is how honest this prayer is to God.

Right now, if you're someone who identifies yourself as a Christian, just like Daniel, we are exiles in a world that is not our own.

We're living in a violent world, a world filled with corruption, where people with power oppress, and oppress those who are below them.

Kings exalt themselves, and authority is used to force people into conformity to the patterns of this world.

Just the other day, I went in my car, turned on the radio, and the first story that came on was a story that this woman was saying about how she had gotten raped.

That's the world that we live in today.

I think, deep down, we read this psalm, and we can kind of, it resonates with us a little bit, if we're honest with ourselves.

Maybe it's just me.

I don't know.

But I know, my knee-jerk reaction, I hear terrible news.

I turn on the radio, listen to the news, and I hear about some school shooting.

Another kid just got molested, and I get angry.

I get frustrated.

Before I was a Christian, I would unashamedly say, that person deserves a chair.

That person should get shot.

And I would feel no guilt about that.

But now, maybe you can resonate with this a little bit.

It's like you're a Christian, and it's like, your knee-jerk reaction, you feel guilty about that a little bit.

Am I the only one that's like, oh, that's terrible.

Something should happen.

And it's like, well, our ways aren't his ways.

God works for the good of those who love him.

And it's like, we don't address how we actually feel about a situation.

We try to cover it up with like churchy words, churchy ways of thinking.

And what ends up happening, is we get stuck in this sort of limbo of like, pretending that bad things aren't happening, even though we see it every single day.

Right now, right now, in Europe, there's a war going on, because some dude feels like it's okay to have thousands of people killed, because he wants to make his own name great.

What do we do with that?

As a Christian, if you're someone that identifies yourself as a Christian, what do you do with that?

Apparently, God, the Bible, our infallible word of God, gives us a place to pray that.

To pray God dashed their little ones against the rocks.

Apparently, God's word gives us a place to do that.

So, okay.

How do we, how do we reconcile some of this stuff then, right?

Daniel apparently is risking to, is like willing to die to pray.

And if the world is so bleak, if everything is so terrible, why is he willing to die?

What's going on?

What's going on here?

What I really love about Daniel 6, verse 10, is that it says that he's praying and giving thanks.

Daniel 6:10

And I really don't think it's a coincidence that the very next psalm, Psalm 138, is a psalm of thanksgiving to the Lord.

And I want to turn over there right now.

I'm going to read, I'm going to read the whole thing.

Starting in verse 1.

It says, Above all things, your name and your word.

So, you know what Daniel never did?

You know what the authors of Psalm 137 never did?

Is they actually never dashed the infant children of Babylon against rocks.

They never did that.

They did not resort to violence.

They didn't get angry and frustrated.

They didn't start revolutions, right?

They weren't going around wearing, like, let's go Brandon shirts.

Or writing ACAB all over the town, right?

They prayed.

They called out to God.

There's some deep and dark frustrations to God.

And then they moved to Psalm 138.

They are praising God and thanking God for who he is and the power that he has over this world.

And what I love is it says, All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O Lord, for they have heard the words of your mouth.

So, the very people that in Psalm 137 that they're praying for evil to befall, it seems like they're also praying for those people to worship and praise God.

And we see this time and time again in Daniel's life, right?

Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, they're both people who are ordering the death of the Jews or people who are worshiping other gods.

And by the end of the story, they're praising God and they're honoring God and they're writing these decrees saying everybody ought to worship the God of Daniel.

And so there's a little bit of tension here, right?

How do we reconcile this?

If you're someone, again, someone who identifies yourself as a Christian, somehow we have to recognize that there's evil in the world, right?

We have to recognize that there's truly terrible things and that people do these truly terrible things.

And we have to also somehow desire for the salvation of these people.

And it seems like what the Bible is saying that the way to do that is through prayer.

And that's kind of easy to do sometimes, right?

Like, oh, I have a buddy, he drinks too much.

Maybe he even did something terrible, like had an affair or something.

It's like, ah, he's my friend and I want him to come to Christ.

I want him to get it.

But what about the guy I was talking about before?

What about the school shooter?

What about the child molester, right?

How do we get there?

The truly scandalous, the really, truly scandalous thing about Christianity is that we have to, it's easy to be like, I want that person to get punished.

I want that person to get executed.

I want that person to get what's coming to them.

But we have to look at those people, the school shooters, and be like, I hope God forgives them.

I hope God brings them to salvation.

And how do we genuinely do that?

Well, I think it's through prayer, right?

And so here's the, through honest, through honest prayer.

That's the key, honest prayer.

And so here's what I want us to do.

I'm going to issue a challenge for the week.

Go home, close the door, turn the lights off if you need to, get on your knees, and I want you to really, really think, who am I withholding salvation from?

Who is the person that I feel like God should not forgive?

And really think about that.

And then pray through Psalm 137.

And that's okay.

Think about it and just let yourself feel.

Sit there for a little bit, a minute or two, a couple minutes, and then move on to Psalm 138 and pray for their salvation.

Thank God for his power and pray for the salvation of that person.

I can only speak for myself, but I know for a fact that there have been some prayers that I've called to God that are true.

I would not say them in front of all of you.

But what's incredible is in my own life, I can at least say this, that when I go to God with those dark, dark frustrations and I ask God to do some probably terrible things, God shows me how to love those people that I pray for.

I want to close as we draw near to communion to talking about Jesus.

In Jesus' moment of deep anguish, he's hanging on a cross.

He's been beaten.

He's been abused, spit on, insulted.

He turns to...

Okay, there's the challenge.

He turns to Psalm 22.

And he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?

Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

And then the Psalm moves to in verse 22, I will tell of your name to my brothers.

In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.

You who fear the Lord, praise him.

All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him.

And stand in awe of him.

All you offspring of Israel.

As we move into communion, here I want to meditate on Jesus, whose torture, whose crucifixion was so terrible that he feels forsaken by God.

And through his prayer and petition, he's able to say, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

And now we get to stand before God, justified and forgiven because of him.

I'm going to say a prayer for communion.

Father, thank you so much for your word and for the opportunity.

God, I'm so grateful that you're big enough to hear our emotions, Lord.

You're big enough to hear what we, just our dark frustrations, God, and you love us enough, you love all your people enough, all of your children, to show us how to reconcile and love each other, Lord, how to forgive each other, Father.

Thank you for Jesus, who is the ultimate example of forgiveness, who we can look to and see how powerful your love and forgiveness is daily, Father.

Thank you for his perfect sacrifice, Lord, that we get to come to you forgiven because of that, Lord.

I pray this in Jesus' holy name.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast.

If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected.

Please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on.

In any case, you'll be hearing from us next week.