(8.16.26) Sermon | The Story of Daniel, Week 1 | Patrick Hardy

Well, hey, good morning.

It's good to be with you today.

I'm Pastor Patrick, lead pastor here on staff.

And I do want to say if this is your first time here, we're so glad that you've chosen to worship with us.

One of the things that we know is we know that going to a new church or finding a church home is really, really hard.

And we just hope that you felt welcomed and at home from the moment that you walked in.

So our prayer today is that you would encounter the living God, that you would experience him in his fullness today.

I got a couple announcements for us before we jump into today's message.

I want to congratulate Logan and Layla Robinson.

They welcomed their very first baby Sadie into the world this past couple weeks.

So congratulations.

They're not here, obviously.

But if they're watching online, we're so happy for you.

We're praying for you.

We're rooting for you and excited about that.

I also want to make mention because we we posted it on Facebook, but we've started a podcast network called the Generations Church Podcast.

So uh it's just an opportunity.

If you miss a message, uh you can go back and you can listen to it there, or uh we're gonna be adding some deeper dive content maybe in the coming weeks.

We make no promises, but at least the sermon will be up there for you.

Um so we'd love for you to go.

Give us a five-star rating.

You know, tell everyone how great we are.

But it's just a great way to be able to share uh kind of what's going on in this room with people who are outside.

And also it's it's back to church Sunday, so I'm glad that you're here.

You're back into the flow of church.

I know your kids are going back to school, but we want to celebrate with you with some snow cones afterwards, so stick around.

We'll hang out in the parking lot.

Uh, and if you won't eat a snow cone, I'll eat two, three, four, or five for you uh without any questions.

So um back in 2011, there was this famous quarterback uh in the NFL.

His name was Tim Tebow.

Have you ever heard of him before?

Uh Tim Tebow, he was the quarterback for the Denver Broncos for a little bit.

And on Sundays, when people would tune in to watch the Denver Broncos on TV, they became, they begun to know who this guy Tim Tebow was, but he became known for more than just what he did on the field when he played.

You see, before every game when Tebow would come out of the locker room, he would take a moment to kneel down, to bow his head, and he would pray.

And eventually this action kind of took on a life of its own, and they started to refer to this as Tebowing.

Um you look back at Tim Tebow's career, you begin to realize that this didn't start when he got drafted in the NFL.

It wasn't when he was a Heisman Trophy winner for the Florida Gators.

It was it actually wasn't any time when the lights were the brightest.

He started doing this his senior year of high school because he wanted to put Jesus first before football in his life.

I think it's important for us to recognize that he made the decision to put Jesus first before ever stepping on the field, before he ever kneeled, before we ever started to refer to it as T Bowing.

Before he was tested, he made the decision about what he stood for.

And when it comes to taking a stand, the decision to stand is not made in the moment, but it's made long before the question is ever asked.

So I want to ask you, what have you decided in your life?

Because I think taking a stand, it sounds simple, it sounds like a good thing, but it is until it's you got something to lose because of it.

I mean, from a young age, we're all taught that we should take a stand.

We should stand up for what's right in this world.

We should stand up for those who are bullied or picked on, who are on the margins?

Uh we should stand up for what we believe in.

Standing up, it's ingrained in our minds, but what does it actually mean for us to take a stand?

Is it simply enough for us just to believe the right things?

Is it enough for us just to talk about the things that we believe in?

Is it enough for us to advocate for the things that we believe in?

Or does it mean that we have to ultimately take an act on what we believe?

I think we all agree that we should stand up for what's right in this world.

We should stand up for our beliefs, but if I talk to each and every one of you individually, you might describe the way that you stand up for what you believe in in a different way, or what that actually should look like.

You see, as believers in Jesus, it's important for us to know what it means to take a stand for what is right and what we believe in, because the world we live in is at odds with the God that we serve.

Jesus says in uh John 17, 14, he says, I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.

What Jesus is saying to us is that those who choose to follow him, we're not of this world that we live.

No, by choosing to follow Jesus, you are choosing to live countercultural to the world that you live in, the community that you interact with.

Your citizenship is not here on this earth.

Your citizenship is actually in heaven, which means that while you are here on this earth, there is a tension that you will live with.

That although you live here, although these are your people, although this is your community, this is ultimately not your home.

And the world has this pull.

And the pull is towards sin, it's towards death, it's towards destruction, it's towards brokenness.

So as believers in Jesus, we are called to not just follow culture, to not just go with the flow of how everyone else is going, but we are called to follow the way, the truth, and the life that is Jesus Christ.

And it's not a question as to if you will have to take a stand.

It's a matter of when.

So, what will you do when what you believe comes into conflict with the culture around you?

For the next five weeks, we're gonna be going through a new series called Daniel Unshaken, where we're gonna be learning what it means to have faith that endures every trial that this life has to throw at us through the lens of Daniel.

And throughout the book of Daniel, there is a question that's running through all of it, and it's can God's people remain faithful to their convictions within a hostile world?

Daniel gives us the answer that not only is it possible for us to survive this hostile world, but we can actually thrive within it.

Daniel's story begins with the tribe of Judah, the Israelites, God's people being conquered by the nation of Babylon.

Jerusalem, their capital, has been taken away from them.

And this conquering is more than just bad guys taking things away from good guys.

But actually, God is the one who delivers Israel into the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar in the nation of Babylon because of divine judgment.

You see, at this time, the tribe of Judah, their king was King Jehoiakim.

And in 2 Kings 23, 2027, it describes King Jehoiakim as a Judean ruler who did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

You see, the reason God delivers the tribe of Judah over into evil Babylonian hands is because they had abandoned God's ways.

And at this time, Babylon's king was King Nebuchadnezzar, and he was an evil king of an evil empire.

And Babylon was this spectacular city.

It was beautiful, it was wealthy.

And the most impressive part that you read about Babylon was this temple.

In this temple, it's set up high, and it was for their God, their pagan God Marduk.

The nation in the pagan god Marduk, it represented a powerful, wealthy, and godless environment.

And now God's people, they had been conquered by this godless nation, and they are being forced to live in a foreign land.

And while living in Babylon, they are fighting the temptation to assimilate.

They're fighting the temptation of leaving their God behind in order to just follow the flow of culture of this Babylon that they now find themselves in.

You see, Judah was actually not the first land that the king Nebuchadnezzar had conquered.

He had a strategy that he wouldn't just take over land, but no, he wanted to weaken the people into submission to his culture.

So the first thing that he did with the Israelites is he took all of the articles of the God that they served out of their temple, and he took it and he placed it in the temple of his God, Marduk.

The next thing that he did is he took some of the brightest, the strongest, and the noblest of all of the Israelites, and he took them and he taught them the language and the literature of the Babylonians.

The goal wasn't to merely physically conquer the land.

No, he wanted to reshape all of the Israelites' culture into the godless Babylonian culture.

So in Daniel 1, it starts with Judah being taken over by Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar.

The Babylonians have taken everything from that that the Israelites had that reminded them of the God they serve and placed it in the temple of the false god Marduk.

And now the thing that, now that everything's been removed from Israel, from the Israelites and what they know for them and their culture, he had the King Nebuchadnezzar has ordered to go and take the Israelites' royal family and to go take the ones who are the strongest, the best looking, and the smartest to be trained to become a part of the king's palace.

They were gonna work for the king.

So these men, they are pulled away from their people, they're taught all things about Babylon, and then they are put into service for the king in order to force assimilation of the Israelites into the godless Babylonian culture.

Among those who is selected is Daniel and his three friends.

And to begin this assimilation process, these four young men, they're taken away from their families, and they are given brand new names.

They're no longer going to be known by the names that they had when they were in Israel, but they were gonna be given Babylonian names.

Daniel's new name is Belteshazzar, and then the other three men are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

But here's what's funny about the book of Daniel, because although Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo, they continue to be called by their Babylonian names, Daniel does not go by Belteshazzar, his Babylonian name.

He refers to himself as Daniel.

When Daniel writes the book, he is taking a stand for who God has called him to be.

And he continues to refer to himself as his old name, not the new name given to him by the Babylonians.

Here's the big picture of what's going on for us.

Babylon is saying, you are no longer who you were.

You belong to us now.

And everything around Daniel in this moment is pushing him to fall in line to this new culture that he finds himself in.

But that's not what Daniel does.

So would you stand with me out of the respect of the reading of God's word?

We're gonna read Daniel 1, verses 8 through 14 this morning together.

Daniel 1:8–14

It says this.

But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.

Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, I'm afraid of my Lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink.

Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age?

The king would then have my head because of you.

Daniel then said to the guard, whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Meshech, and Azariah, Please test your servant.

You see the word defile means to indicate something or someone as unfit for God.

So Daniel is refusing to eat the king's food and drink the wine.

The refusal to eat the food is Daniel's way of saying that although I am here, although you've given me a new name, I still identify with the God that I serve.

I'm not a Babylonian, I am one of God's people.

And then the refusal of Daniel to not drink the wine, it wasn't about the alcohol because the Israelites they would have drinken wine before.

Daniel's refusal is actually symbolic of the description of Babylon that we find in Jeremiah 51:7, which says, Babylon was a gold cup in the Lord's hand.

Jeremiah 51:7

She made the whole earth drunk.

The nation drank her wine, therefore they have now gone mad.

You see, the refusal of Daniel to drink the wine is Daniel's desire to not get drunk on the culture, to not drink too deeply into the Babylonian way of life and to become intoxicated by it, to become mad from it.

The point was not that vegetables and water are superior to meat.

They're not spiritually superior to meat.

We know that steak is superior to all vegetables when it comes to spiritual holiness.

We all know that, that's clear as day.

Alright?

The point is that Daniel has identified that something that conflicted with his convictions and he took a stand to not participate.

But we need to notice the way that Daniel decides to take his stand.

He's very tactful in the way that he does it.

He doesn't just refuse, instead, he he takes a pretty big risk here.

Daniel goes to the chief official and he asks for permission.

The official is afraid to give the okay to Daniel because if Daniel and his friends they go and appear before the king and look way worse than everybody else, it's not just that Daniel and his friends are gonna be in trouble, but the chief official is probably gonna lose his life because of it.

And Daniel understands these consequences of this decision to take a stand.

So what does Daniel do?

He comes up with this idea and he says, Well, what if, just for let's say ten days, ten days we eat our diet of water and vegetables, and then after the ten days, you can compare us to everybody else, and whatever it looks like, whatever needs to be done, we'll just follow whatever it is that you say.

Daniel had determined that holding his convin convictions was worth the consequence that may come from it.

You see, righteous living requires risk.

But this is where our story begins to take a turn for us, because Daniel has taken his stand, he's taken a huge risk, but God acts.

In verse 9, it says, Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel.

Daniel, although stepping out, taking a stand, risking everything, he wasn't doing it alone.

You see, God was working behind the scenes on the hearts of the officials and the guards, who had absolutely no reason to show any favor to Daniel and his friends and to grant them this new meal plan that they were desiring.

But after ten days, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they all looked healthier and better nourished than all the other men who had been eating the king's food.

The superior steak that they were eating wasn't holding up to the vegetables of Daniel.

So, what does this mean?

It means we all need to become vegetarians.

It's the only answer.

So actually, we're not having snow cones.

When you leave here today, we're gonna hand everyone a bushel of carrots, and that will be your meals for the rest of the week.

No, what it means is that God was working behind the scenes.

As Daniel stepped out in faith, taking a huge risk for God, God was making a way for Daniel and his three friends.

Then in verse 17 it says, To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning.

And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

Not only did God bless Daniel and his three friends physically for their faithfulness, but God blessed them with wisdom as well.

And at the end of their training, they were brought before the king, and Nebuchadnezzar found no one equal to Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

They were selected to enter the king's service, and then it says that they were found to be ten times better than anybody else.

Here's the big picture of this story.

Daniel was subject to human forces that were outside of his control.

His nation was taken away from him.

He was forced to live in a godless culture, but those forces didn't determine his outcome.

Although Daniel's life appeared to be in chaos, God was in control.

You see, this chapter begins with Babylon controlling everything, taking everything over.

But in the end, we see that God was still at work in the midst of it all.

Daniel's choice to take a stand was not what led him to the favor in the eyes of the king.

It wasn't because he was so strategic and so tactful and so charismatic that the king found favor in him.

No, it was God's gracious, sovereign activity in Daniel's life.

You want to know the secret to an unshaken life?

It's being willing to stand firm in your faith and allowing God to work out the rest.

So, what do we learn from Daniel here?

The question that we started it with was what does it look like for us to take a stand?

And Daniel gives us that answer.

You see, taking a stand doesn't mean having really strong opinions.

Taking a stand doesn't mean being the loudest voice in the room.

Taking a stand's not about picking culture wars.

No, Daniel shows us that it begins with us knowing who we belong to and what we live for.

Daniel didn't wait for pressure to come before making a decision.

The pressure he faced revealed the convictions he had already been living by in his life.

So this morning I have three lessons that we can learn from Daniel for how we can live an unshaken life in a world that's constantly trying to shake us.

The first thing that we learn is that you have to decide what you stand for before pressure comes.

Daniel didn't wait for the pressure to come to figure out what it is that he believed.

It says that Daniel resolved, which means that his mind was already made up.

Although circumstances of his situation were far out of his control, he knew his convictions and what he stood for.

And these were things that he was not going to negotiate on in his life.

If your convictions are not settled before the pressure comes, they will likely crumble when it does.

You will more than likely just follow the flow of culture and just go where everyone else is going.

Daniel could have been swallowed up by the current cultural current of Babylon.

And he could have abandoned the God that he served, but instead he stood firm.

So let me ask you this What are your non-negotiables?

What are the things that no matter comes your way that you will stand firm on?

One Halloween, Alyssa and I we decided that we were gonna dress up as old people.

Um and we were in a rush to get our Halloween costume together.

Uh so I went over to Coles because we wanted to wear bathrobes for this costume.

So I went to Coles and I found two uh bathrobes and I went to go check out.

Um, and it was the sweetest old lady who was working there um who was checking me out, and she began to make conversation with me about it, and eventually it led to her asking if I wanted a Coles credit card.

Uh initially I said, no, I don't need a Coles credit card.

Literally, this is I don't know the last time that was the last time I was in Kohl's.

Uh it's been a really long time.

But she persisted.

She told me that, you know, this would really help her kids and her grandkids out if I were to do this.

And I began to be frazzled and panicked, and I just thought, okay, she hands me the form.

I'll just fill out the form and you know, it'll send me an email and I won't, I won't do anything with it, so it'll be fine.

She'll feel good.

I didn't actually sign up.

I didn't actually help her, but at least I felt good about it.

Uh so she hands me the form, I start filling it out, and about you know, three-quarters of the way down, I realize I'm actually filling out a credit application, and uh, you know, I'm I'm I ended up with a Coles credit card.

I wanted to say no, I wanted to stop, but I just couldn't do it.

And I went home and Alyssa's like, what's up?

Like, what's wrong?

And I was, she could tell that I was really messed up about this, and I said, I'm so stupid.

She's like, What happened?

And I was like, I'm the proud owner of a Kohl's credit card.

I got frazzled, I fell in line, I got pressured to do something that I didn't want to do.

If you do not decide what it is that you stand up, what you stand for before pressure comes, you may end up like me with a Kohl's credit card.

We have to make up our minds and intentionally choose that when opposition comes in our lives, that we will not compromise.

The time to establish your convictions is before cultural pressures come.

Because if you wait, you will compromise them.

The second thing that we learn is that you have to live your faith within the tension.

You see, Daniel, he was in a foreign land far from his home, and he was surrounded by people who didn't share the same convictions and values as him, and yet he still remained faithful.

Paul writes in Philippians 3 20, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul reminds us that as we live in this broken world, there is a sense that we will feel out of place because this is not our home.

As followers of Jesus, our citizenship is in heaven.

So now as we continue to live here on this earth and we wait for Jesus' return and to make all things new and to restore everything, we have to live within the tension.

We're called to bring God's kingdom down to earth while also knowing that this place ultimately isn't our final resting place.

Daniel was not a citizen of Babylon.

And although he wished that he could return to Israel and back to God's people, he continued to live out his convictions within the tension.

He didn't run, he didn't hide, he didn't complain about how awful Babylon is on Facebook.

He faithfully took a stand where culture didn't align with his convictions in the tension.

You know, when you're in a discussion with somebody and things begin to get a little bit too tense for your liking, it starts to make you a little bit uncomfortable.

So maybe you have a defense mechanism like me and you crack a little joke.

You try to break that tension so that maybe the conversation can move in another direction so we could stop talking about what we're talking about.

You want to release the tension.

It's like the defense mechanism that if we don't want to talk about what we're talking about, we'll use ways to change it.

We want the tension released.

But when we release the tension, the problem never gets solved.

And it actually just perpetuates and gets worse and worse.

The tension is the reminder that there is something that needs to change.

In our faith walk, if there is no tension that you and I live in, then we're doing one of two things.

We're either living exactly like the world, or we're completely hiding away from it.

See, tension is uncomfortable.

But it's the reminder of the good God that we serve and the opportunity that He's given to us to live differently within this world, within the tension, in order to make an impact.

We must expect that our convictions as followers of Jesus are going to conflict with culture.

It's going to happen.

For Daniel, it was eating certain foods.

For us, it may be the media that we consume.

It might be the places that we choose to go.

It might be the things that we decide to invest our time in.

But we are called to live fully engaged within the tension without squeezing into the mold.

Romans 12, 2 says, do not conform to the pattern of this world.

The ways of this world will shape us if we allow it.

But in Christ we are empowered to live out our faith within the tension.

And you see what actually happens when we live out our faith within culture, it is a means in which God can use us to transform the world that we live in.

When we live within the tension, we all want to release it.

We wish that we could just avoid it altogether.

We wish that we could hide from it.

It'd be easier just to follow the flow.

But it's when we live in the tension and take a stand for our faith that God can use us to make a difference in our world.

The third thing that we learned from Daniel is that you have to trust God when taking a stand.

Daniel determined that holding to his convictions was worth the consequences, whatever they may be.

He didn't know what would happen, but he simply knew that he was unwilling to compromise the God that he served.

But I want you to take notice of what God does in this story, because God is all throughout it.

God gives favor, He protects them, He sustains them, He gives them wisdom, and then He brings them into the king's service to have influence in a godless nation.

The point is not that faithfulness means that everything will work out the way that you and I want it to.

The point is that God is at work even when we cannot see what He's doing.

Daniel was living under forces way beyond his control, and yet those forces did not ultimately determine the outcome because God rules.

Sociologists have documented the powerful influence that our environment has on us and who we become as people.

And some theorists out there even suggest that all individuals' beliefs and understanding are derived entirely from the environment that you and I exist in.

The world says that you are just a product of your environment.

You are just who you are around.

You believe just what everyone else around you believes, nothing more and nothing less.

But biblically, we see that there is more at work in your life than just the environment that you exist in.

You see, in Christ, you have been given freedom and the power to choose right from wrong, sin from death, your ways or God's ways.

Not only that, but you have a God who is active in this world and in your life, whether you see it or not, right now.

Romans 8 28 says, And we know that in all things got God in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

You see, Daniel, he had the cards stacked against him, and he could have easily thrown in the towel and laid down to Babylon's godless culture and just fell in line.

Tell you what, it would have been way easier for him to do that.

But instead, Daniel stood up for what God had called him to be, who God had called him to be, and God made a way.

You see, the God of the universe who loves you, who cares about you, he is making a way in all things for the good of those who love him, so that when you take a stand in faith for the God that you serve, you're not standing alone.

God is standing with you.

So as we get ready to close this morning and the band comes on up, I want to go back to where our conversation started this morning with Tim Tebow.

Before the lights were bright, before he was in the NFL, before he was the Heisman Trophy winner, he decided that Jesus was going to come first before football, no matter what was going to come in his life.

And when the moments came and he began playing on the biggest stage in the NFL, he continued to kneel before every single game.

In Daniel's story, we see a similar situation.

Daniel is taken to Babylon, he's unaware of what's going to come, he's unaware of the consequences that he may face, and he chooses to take a stand anyways.

He doesn't know how his story is gonna end.

But when the pressure came, Daniel already decided who he belonged to, and he takes a stand for his convictions that God had placed on his heart.

So I want to ask you again: what have you decided?

Because the pressure is coming whether you like it or not.

There will be moments when following Jesus will cost you something.

There will be moments when your faith conflicts with all of the culture going on around you, and there will be moments where it's easier to just fall in line, to agree with everybody else, to do what everyone else is doing.

But it's in those moments that you don't realize what you believe.

But actually, what happens is it reveals the convictions that you already had in your life.

So maybe this morning the decision is I'm gonna put Jesus first.

Maybe it's I'm gonna stop allowing culture to define what I believe.

Maybe it's I'm gonna define the convictions that I have for my marriage, for my family, for my finances.

Maybe you've been following Jesus privately.

You've been sneaking in and sneaking out.

But Jesus is calling you today to take a stand and to begin living for him publicly.

Whatever it is that you need to decide, you need to make that decision before the pressure comes.

Because here's what I want you to remember from Daniel chapter one.

You can stand firm because you don't stand alone.

Daniel stood, but God was working.

Daniel took the risk, but God gave him favor.

Daniel was living in a culture that was trying to reshape everything about him and what he believed.

But God was still shaping Daniel.

And that's the promise for us today.

God is still at work in your life, in this world, in our culture, whether we see it or not.

Your circumstances might be outside of your control.

Your workplace may be outside of your control.

You may not be able to control everything that happens to you in this life, but you can decide what you're gonna stand for when you're in the middle of it.

And when you choose to stand for Jesus, you are not standing alone.

The God who is with Daniel in Babylon is the same God who is with you here today.

So don't be afraid to take a stand.

Don't run from the world, don't hide from the world, don't become so comfortable in the world that you forget that you belong to another kingdom.

Your citizenship is not this earth, your citizenship is in heaven.

Live in the tension, live faithfully right in the middle of it.

Stand for Jesus, stand for truth, stand for righteousness, stand for the things that God has called you to.

And when the pressure comes, may that moment not be what you decide what you believe.

May it be the moment that what your convictions are are revealed to the world around you, that people begin to see all that it is that you live for in the God that you serve.

Because you must decide what you stand for before you take a stand.

So let me ask you again what have you decided?

Would you pray with me?