Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 5, 2022 | RETOLD - Daniel and the Lion's Den

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June 5, 2022 | RETOLD - Daniel and the Lion's Den · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to see everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Missed you last week.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We uh Jim got started last week on our new summer series called Retold.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Retold is us looking at these stories.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you grew up in the church or in a Christian home, then probably the stories that were in your picture Bibles, right?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um looking at these things.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you didn't grow up, we're basically looking at the most famous Christian stories in the Bible and saying that it's not that we were taught them wrong.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's not it at all.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because we know that, you know, Jason Brennan or children's pastor over in the cab is doing a bang-up job teaching these kinds of stories.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that we communicate them to children, or when we learn them at a young age, sometimes cuts out a few of the details that can really bring a very rich uh narrative to the story, greater context.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when we look at them with sort of our grown-up glasses, we can see almost a new story that God is telling us when we retell these stories.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, last week Jim took us through Daniel 3 in the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and he gave them some great nicknames.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as we went through that story, we learned about how these individuals were in the nation of Babylon, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they were standing up against, well, stand, frankly, that would be a pun.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were told to bow down, and instead they were standing up, said that they would not bow down to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, and instead they had that amazing line, you know, whether or not our Lord is going to save us from this punishment of the furnace, we will not bow down.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: An amazing lesson for all of us.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this morning we are just like moving three chapters forward in the book of Daniel.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're continuing in this book of Daniel, and uh as we do it, we're going to be talking about Daniel and the Lion's Den, right?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when we talk about Daniel and the Lion's Den, let's for a moment talk about what we have probably recollect about the story.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And most of it is that there are lions, right?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically there are lions in the story, and Daniel was in a pit with them, and then he wasn't anymore.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's and it's kind of like bada bang, like, let's head out.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the narrative.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh typically, if there's a lesson attached to that, is that God rescued faithful Daniel from this situation that he was in.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but when we look at Daniel and the Lion's Den, there again, as all of these stories, all our teaching team basically went back, and we have probably 20 of these that we went through and then narrowed it down to 12 that we're gonna go over this summer.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And each one of them, we wanted to make sure that there was a greater context that we could present.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in Daniel and the Lion's Den, that is the case as well.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, last week Jim uh talked about and gave an amazing, I could listen to Jim talk about history for hours and hours.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: He gave an amazing uh history and context of being in Babylon, because that's where our story takes place as well today.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I am first of all, I'm not as good as he is at talking about history, and for uh furthermore, um he was able to spend a lot more time on it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're kind of crunched for time this morning because we've got a lot of content.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd encourage you, if you weren't here last week, to go back and see all the ways in which Jim was describing what life was like in Mesopotamia.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: My little contribution is that this is a screen grab from the Marvels movie Eternals, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where they were in Babylonia and um they probably did a really good job of depicting it.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um another one it would be this is a a uh this is called the Ishtar gate, and uh Jim talked about this.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it in the movie, uh the Eternals movie.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: But there were there were two gigantic gates at the front of the city of Babylon, and this was the smaller one.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can see a sense of the scale here.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: This was the tiny one.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the uh this uh this gate here was um reconstructed out of tiles that they uncovered in Babylonia.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of these tiles here are originals as they reconstructed this gate.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um when we talk about being in Babylon, this is a great image of what it would have looked like.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we discuss Daniel, though, and we just moved three chapters in our Bible to get to Daniel 6, but a lot has changed in terms of the historical context that we're in.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're still in Babylon, all right, but when we were with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, um, it was actually uh Babylon was ruled by Babylon, and uh it was a king called Nebuchadnezzar.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, since that time, Nebuchadnezzar has died.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: His son Belshazzar, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: What a name.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Belshazzar has died, and then the kingdom of Babylon was taken over by the Medo-Persian Empire, the Medians and the Persians.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so now we have Babylon, same location, but it is ruled by another country with another king.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so King Cyrus has come along, and King Cyrus has set up this guy named Darius to rule over basically this vassal state of Babylon.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Darius is kind of an interesting figure in history because, sort of like the word Caesar, a lot of the kings would receive these sorts of names that weren't always their, if you will, birth names.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't exactly know who Darius was, but we do know the dates very well, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So in 605 BC, this is at the beginning of the chapter of Daniel, we see that Judah lost the Battle of Carchimesh, okay?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so Babylon wins, and they take a whole bunch of good stuff from Judah, including Daniel and his three friends.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were youths at the time, and so they were really smart, apparently they got great SAT scores, and so they're going over to Babylon.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So in the intervening period, though, all of the things that I've described happened.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then Cyrus, the king of the Medo-Persian Empire, walks through the Ishtar Gate on October 29th, 539 BC.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're playing along at home, that's 66 years from basically that this exile has existed, and furthermore, that Daniel has been in service to this kingdom.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So whereas in a lot of the, and I was kind of looking this up, a lot of the picture books that we read or famous illustrations, this is a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, depict Daniel as this very young man, certainly with, you know, a full head of brown hair.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the reality is that Daniel, it kind of depends how you would judge him as a youth when he's originally taken out of Judah, but he was at least in his eighties when this story happens.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which sort of presents a different sort of message here.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: That Daniel, as we will see in this story, was an amazing man of faith, had an amazing testimony and witness within this pagan and secular government.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so Daniel is at least in his 80s.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: He has been out of Judah for 66 years, so just tack on.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: However old do you think he was when he was a youth, probably in his teens, and that's where we find our man today.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get to Daniel 6, that is where our narrative begins.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll have the text up here, but I'd encourage you to follow along, because there's gonna be a lot of really interesting things that we can find in the text as we read back through it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want you to kind of be thinking about as I go through the text is, first of all, again, this greater context that we're being presented with.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's you're gonna see that actually him being in the lion's den is a very small portion of this story.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, I want you to pick up on the reputation that Daniel must have had living in Babylon at this time.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, in Daniel 6, verses 1 through 3, Darius, right, remember this is the guy that's over Babylon, or Babylonia, decided to appoint 120 satraps over the kingdom stationed throughout the realm, and over them three administrators, including Daniel.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: These satraps would be accountable to them so that the king would not be defrauded.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel distinguished himself above the administrators and satraps because he had an extraordinary spirit, so the king planned to set him over the whole realm.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we get this sort of system of government that is taking place where we've got the nation of Babylon, which is being run.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It'll say King Darius, but that's more of a formal term.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't actually the king, but he was referred to as the king.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: We know from the tombs of some of the Persian kings, uh, like Cyrus was, his boss, that they referred to themselves as a king of kings.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some biblical language there.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, King Darius is not truly the king, but he's referred to as such in the story.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So then you had these three administrators, and then they were over 120 government officials, which would be there to, you know, collect levies and taxes and things of the sort.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And Daniel is one of these administrators, though, as we see as verse 3 concludes, he is being lifted up.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: He is basically, King Darius is saying, Hey, you're kind of going to be the vice president here over all of Babylon, which is a huge office, a huge responsibility, and again, a testimony to Daniel's ability to serve within this location.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: See, Daniel acquits himself as a fantastic government official, which it kind of depends how you feel about that sort of thing, but we forget what an honorable role it can be to serve within the government.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Daniel shows himself over now his, he's an octogenarian, that he is easily one of the most capable and wonderful people in the land.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: In Daniel 4, verses 8 through 9, right, this is earlier, but Daniel named, right, they all got a Babylonian name.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: His was Belteshazzar, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So after the name of my God, and uh Belshazzar, the king, is speaking here, but it says that he has a spirit of the holy gods in him that came before me.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I told him the dream, Beltashazzar, head of the magicians, because I know that you have the spirit of the holy gods, and that no mystery puzzles you.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Explain to me the visions of my dream that I saw and its interpretation.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we see that one basically the office that Daniel had up to this point was he was, they called him a magician, but we know, and they were using their bet their own vocabulary to describe it, the power of God rested on him so that he would be able to perform and do amazing things within this government.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can think of Joseph.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's really a similar story where the Lord gave him the ability to interpret these dreams and to discern, you know, matters of government, and then the Lord set him up over the nation of Egypt.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Daniel is honestly filling a very similar role here.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's highly equit, he's acquitted himself as an amazing and trustworthy individual, so much so that the one who does not know the Lord is trying to put him over all of Babylon.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we continue in Daniel 6, verses 4 through 5, though, we see that the plot kind of begins.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because these administrators and satraps, um, so either the tiny yellow dots or and then the the two other administrators that were sort of peers with Daniel, they kept trying to find a charge against him regarding the kingdom, but they could find no charge for corruption, for he was trustworthy, and no negligence or corruption was found in him.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then these men said, We will never find any charge against this Daniel unless we find something against him concerning the law of his God.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: What a testimony that Daniel had, so that being over a nation and having been in government working for at least sixty years here, perhaps a little bit more, that these individuals who had probably risen to their position by scheming and lying and by being duplicitous, that they were not able to draw up a single charge against Daniel.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: He had acquitted himself so well and he was so honorable to the Lord, his reputation preceded himself so that those who were trying to seek his downfall said there's literally nothing that we can accuse him of other than his devotion to the Lord.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: See, one of the amazing things about Daniel's testimony is that he was such a righteous man that this world that was trying to attack him and to take him down, the only thing they could do was find his one point of vulnerability, which is that he trusted God more than he trusted men.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Blakelock has an amazing quote.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, if a hostile, jealous, watching world can discover nothing against a man save his devotion to his God, that man is truly Christ-like.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see in Daniel that this is coming true.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the Bible sort of gives this idea that we can walk through this life and we can sort of do one of two things.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Following Christ, we can either live our lives for him and be a light to other individuals, have a reputation that precedes us of righteousness, or we can say that we know the Lord and we love the Lord, yet live in such a fashion that people look upon our lives and say, What kind of God does that person worship?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't seem like the God that I've heard about.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: See, Daniel is witnessing to a world that rejects his God, and yet he is able to give this amazing testimony.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it's important for us to consider that not only is Daniel the example for us of what it should be like to live in a secular world or to be in a job that does not care for God and yet stand for the Lord, he's our example.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: But even for every single person, it's also the example that people are looking for reasons to reject the Lord.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And far too often as Christians, we all give them great reasons to do it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can think in the last two weeks here, news has come out about the way that the Southern Baptist Convention has hid a history of sexual abuse.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a Southern Baptist seminary.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that this is coming out.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not that, I mean, it's a good thing that it's coming out and that truth is being revealed, but I hate that people are using it to now discount the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm ashamed, frankly, to come from some of that legacy because of what it means and the association with it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know that people are looking at who don't know the Lord and they say, Man, these people who say they love Jesus Christ and yet have treated the vulnerable in this way, how could they be the God of the least of these?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a great lesson for us to just see briefly from Daniel that really the righteousness that we are supposed to have, the reputation is something that ultimately reflects Jesus Christ and can point people to him.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But lest we think, though, that perfection substitutes the gospel, even Daniel in his, I mean, he was not sinless, but in his righteousness, they still found a way to get after him.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: But Daniel's righteousness did precede him.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: See, Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel, was a contemporary of Daniel.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we see twice in his prophecy that he mentions Daniel as a righteous man.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Here he's talking about a city that the Lord is going to destroy.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, the declaration of the Lord God, they could not rescue their son or daughter.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: They would rescue only themselves by their righteousness.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: In context, it means something very important.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: But here, my the reason I bring it up is just to show that Daniel was seen as a righteous man alongside Noah and Job.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then here they're talking, the Lord is talking to the king of Tyre and sort of chastising him, but then he goes to compliment him.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the traits of the king of Tyre is that he is wiser than Daniel.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Daniel, as a contemporary, even outside of Babylon, is known because of his witness.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: But as let's keep moving on here.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel 6, verses 6 through 9.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these people, the schemers, went to the king and they said, May King Darius live forever.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: All of the administrators of the kingdom, and then they list to the roles, have agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an edict that for thirty days anyone who petitions any god or man except you, the king, will be thrown into the lion's den.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, your majesty, establish the edict and sign the document, so that, as a law of the Medes and Persians, it is irrevocable and cannot be changed.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So King Darius signed the written edict.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple things happen here, right?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: These individuals, the spokesmen, go to the king and they say, Hey king, listen, everybody's behind this, okay?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants, or everybody thinks that this is a great idea, which is a lie in and of itself because Daniel wasn't present.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, they go and they present this false case.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then they go to the king and they play to his vanity.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: See, what they're asking for here is that the king would say that nobody else can ask a God for anything without asking Darius.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying that Darius can be the only one that they are petitioning through worship.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the history of Babylon and these kingdoms, a lot of them would sort of elevate themselves to almost like this godlike status.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're playing into Darius's vanity, and he's like, man, that sounds like a really good deal to me.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can worship anything but me.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody's behind it?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so then they bring up, though, this idea that the law of the Medes and Persians was irrevocable.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we that's contested, or that is supported elsewhere in Scripture.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Esther, which happens a little bit after Daniel, under the kingdom of the Persians, says, if it meets the king's approval, he should personally issue a royal decree.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let it be recorded in the laws of the Persians and the Medes, so that it cannot be revoked.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: The idea behind it was that you couldn't have somebody who was under you subordinate and come under and disagree with your rule, that the king's statement was always final.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: But uh we actually see there are examples throughout history, which is sort of ironic, that there were kings, as we will see in our story here today, that they would make a decision and they'd be like, oh wait, no, I actually don't want to do that.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, sorry, no gives these backsies, you already made the rule.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing that happens to Darius.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: In verses uh 10 through 12, we now see Daniel's response to this.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it directly affects him.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: When Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: The windows in its upstairs room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then these men went as a group and found Daniel petitioning and imploring his God, specifically the language that he's not supposed to be doing.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they approached the king and asked about his edict.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, King, didn't you say that this couldn't happen?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that if it did, they would be thrown into the lion's den?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is Daniel's response.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind, Daniel has not spoken yet.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: He is speaking through his actions.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a couple really important details that come up here that we need to see.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I don't want anybody to do is take away from this that Daniel is just like this civil, you know, civilly disobedient individual, and that he's just like raging against the machine.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's not Daniel at all.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how you would characterize him.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: He has been within the government for 60 years, he has been in service to this king, he has honored the king.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: What has happened here specifically is that unlike in Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, where they told them to do something they could not do, the king here has told Daniel that he cannot do something that he needs to do.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a distinguishing sort of factor there.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Daniel is just praying the way that he always prayed.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: It says that he got down on his knees, he faced Jerusalem, apparently his window faced Jerusalem, and he did that three times a day.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was continuing to do what he had always done.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel probably understood the scheme that was happening here, but instead of fighting against it, he just continued honoring the Lord and the way that he was acting.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: See, there's a very narrow band of activities where the government that the Lord has established and commanded everybody to follow begins to try and usurp the things that the Lord has commanded himself for his followers.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that narrow band of activity here is something that Daniel comes face to face with, where he has been instructed to do something he simply cannot live without, which is praying to and showing the Lord his devotion.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's also some interesting narrative about why Daniel might have been doing this specifically, right?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh for two reasons in particular.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that another contemporary of Daniel, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard in our Bible because the the letter or the books of the Bible sort of obviously go in order, but there are a number of them where they are contemporaries.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: They are all speaking at the same time.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah was an individual who had stayed back in Judah before everybody got sent to Babylon and was saying, like, hey, we should well, he had other prophecies about that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: But Jeremiah is speaking during this lifetime of Daniel, and Daniel would have a copy of Jeremiah's scroll.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, for this is what the Lord says, when seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm my promise concerning you to restore you to this place.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: For I know the plans I have for you.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration plans for your well being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I will restore you to the place from which I deported you.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Daniel knows this, and the context of Jeremiah is about Babylon.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jeremiah is saying that in seventy years of captivity, the Lord will restore them back to The land of Judah, something that is outside of our story, but is attested in history.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is what happened.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: About five years after Daniel and the lion's den, this happens.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Daniel's like, hey, we're like at 65 right now.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is praying to the Lord.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: He is petitioning him so that God would restore them back to Judah, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: They are away from their holy land.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: We are not in the New Testament yet.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: They are supposed to be back in the promised land, and they are currently away from it, yearning to be back with the Lord in his land.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, we see from Solomon when he dedicated the temple, that he recognized that this time would be coming when, which is amazing, and how the Lord revealed this to him, that in one of the most amazing moments of Israel's history, when they're like, We're in Jerusalem, we're in the promised land, we've got a true temple.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon in his inaugural prayer is like, Yeah, but eventually you're not going to be.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he's speaking about a time when they will pray towards this place, so the Lord will hear their prayer and forgive them.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what Daniel is doing, and this is what he says he cannot give up.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I've been instructed by the Lord to pray for my people, that we might be returned to our land, that the Lord would forgive our sins, which is the reason they were kicked out of Babylon, and that at the time that he is appointed in seventy years, we would be able to go back.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which the Lord does answer those prayers.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: But this is what Daniel's doing, and this is what he can't give up.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: So in verse 13, we keep going.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then they replied to the king, Daniel, one of the Judean exiles, and now we're getting all, they're being very prejudiced.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel has lived in Babylon for sixty years, and they're like, Yeah, but remember, he is from Judah, he's not one of us.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: He has ignored you, the king, and the edict you signed, for he prays three times a day.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were just trying to trap him.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as the king heard this, he was very displeased.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: He set his mind on rescuing Daniel and made every effort until sundown to deliver him.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then these men went together to the king and said to him, Hey, remember, it's a law you can't revoke.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lion's den.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're in the lion's den, all right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: But before that we see once more the testimony, the witness, the value of Daniel to this secular and pagan government that the king himself was like, Oh no, not Daniel.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: The guy that I have said out of everybody should be my right hand man and should be overall the government.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can imagine sort of how the king might have felt here, being duped and tricked as he was by his leaders, into what he would say is killing essentially the second highest person in the government, somebody who he relies on because he is righteous, unlike these schemers.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So now we go to the lion's den, right?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: As verse 16 continues, the king said to Daniel, May your God, whom you continually serve, rescue you.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: An amazing statement.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: The king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the signet rings of his nobles, so that nothing in regard to Daniel could be changed.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: No diversions were brought to him, and he could not sleep.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I've mentioned this a number of times, and so I'm not trying to just labor the point.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that the narrative keeps bringing it up.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: How Daniel's witness to the people around him have influenced their perception of God, even though they do not worship him.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that the King Sire, or excuse me, King Darius can say, um, and this translation could be, um, may the Lord whom you continually serve rescue you, right?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the verb that he's using here in may, it could be like, it could be a wide range of things.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's ambiguous.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: It could be um the Lord whom you continually serve can, will, may rescue you.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't know exactly the strength of the statement that the king was giving here, but nevertheless, he's saying, hey, that God who has, I mean, we've got 60 years of testimony here, that one that you have attested to, I know you worship him, and there's something about Daniel's worship of this Lord in such a righteous way in his life that has convinced the king that his God can do something even though he doesn't believe in it.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately they have to cast him into the lion sin, which was probably this uh cistern or some sort of bottle-shaped thing, and they put a um a stone over the top, and then probably rope and clay, and then use their rings to put sort of a royal seal on it so that nobody can get in.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Frankly, it sounds a lot like the tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyhow, no diversions were brought to him.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the king is fretting about all of this.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: He does not want to lose Daniel.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see the next morning at dawn, first light, as soon as he possibly could, the king got up and hurried to the lion's den.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: When he reached the den, he cried out in anguish to Daniel.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, servant of the living God, the king said, has your God, whom you continually serve, been able to rescue you from the lions?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then Daniel's first time Daniel has spoken this entire narrative.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then Daniel spoke with the king.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: May the king live forever.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouths, and they haven't harmed me, for I was found innocent before him, and also before you, your majesty, I have not done harm.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the king goes, couldn't eat all night, couldn't sleep, goes to get Daniel, and he yells out to Daniel, apparently before he can even see, so before they're, while they're trying to take off the you know, the stone and all of these things, he's yelling out to Daniel, Daniel, are you there?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel! May the servant of the living God has he rescued you from the lions.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this phrase, once more, from the mouths of an unbeliever, is amazing, that he calls him the living God.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is a God that is not a statue.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a God that they just talk about.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is a uh recognizing the fact that the Lord, the God that Daniel worships is living and active and moving, that he is over all things and he is present with Daniel.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is an anticipation of King Darius that Daniel's God has rescued him from this situation.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Daniel confirms that.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: May the king live forever.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's not mad at the king, it's not his fault per se.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouths, and they haven't harmed me.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this word angel, okay, very interesting because it's the same word that is used back in Daniel 3.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Jim talked about this last week, uh, with the angel, or as it's literally translated, what looks like a son of the gods that was present in the furnace.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's reason to believe that that could be a Christophany, a uh present, an appearance of a pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it could be an angel.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that important because it's from the words of the king who does not know the Lord, and so the language that he's using to describe it is not particularly descriptive.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless, whomever that was has now appeared in the lion's den with Daniel to comfort him, to show him God's presence, and ultimately to shut the lion's mouths.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: These are no lions at the zoo, okay?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: The ancient Near East, they were this was a favorite form of torture and murder for them, is throwing people into a lion's den where they had these ravenous lions that were very hungry.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You see that in Rome later on in the persecution of Christians as well.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's every reason to believe that being thrown into that lion's den would have been certain death.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Darius is so eager to go and get to him, because he's like, even after one night, it's unlikely.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: But Daniel also says that he was found innocent before the Lord.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel's name actually means that God judged me.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Daniel says that I was found innocent before the Lord.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had done nothing against the Lord, and furthermore, as he says to the king, I have done nothing against you, dear king.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what's important here is this is a similar lesson to what Jim gave last week, so I won't labor on the point.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the narrative here is not that because we are faithful, we are delivered from harm.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: The narrative is that in the midst of harm and difficulty and strife and turmoil, we are faithful throughout that trial.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: The lesson is not if we are faithful, God delivers us.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: The lesson is whether or not God delivers us, we are supposed to be faithful.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel in this situation was delivered by the Lord, because the Lord had a very grand plan, as we're about to see.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: The king was overjoyed and gave orders to take Daniel out of the den.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: When Daniel was brought up from the den, he was found to be unharmed, for he trusted in his God.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Literally the translation would be, he stood in his confidence of God.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: The king then gave the command, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and thrown into the lion's den, they, their children, and their wives.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: They had not reached the bottom of the den before the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when you recall the children's story of Daniel's in the lion's den, normally this part is not included.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's kind of like, you know, the Disney fairy tales, and then like what the real fairy tale was.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, the little mermaid in the real story, like the k the prince rejects her and she throws herself overboard and turns into sea foam and dies.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, that's not the aerial we know.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a greater story here.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, nevertheless, this is actually what happens.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it gives uh really, frankly, there's one more section that we're gonna look at after this, but it gives a really fantastic concluding remark to the narrative of Daniel.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's two important things I I do want to draw out, though.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be callous about this because it's tragic.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um the first one is that we do see this a lot, where the Lord, when people, especially in the Old Testament, are persecuting his righteous nation of Israel and the Israelites, that he will protect them and ultimately deliver judgment upon those who are trying to harm them.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these schemers who ultimately were fed to the lions were trying to feed Daniel to the lions and thought that they had succeeded.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: They almost did, if it weren't for the Lord's intervention.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we do see on the one hand that the Lord is protecting Daniel and also bringing judgment upon the enemies, those who would seek to end his kingdom.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the second is that this is probably a judgment of King Darius, who is angry at the ones who tried to dupe him.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so this is, it shouldn't be read specifically that like Daniel then was like, hey, those guys, you should probably like that that wasn't really the context.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was King Darius who was speaking to them and was angry, and so this was his judgment.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes in the ancient world you would see families included in the judgment.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: The idea was that their sin continued throughout them.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, but it does bring a concluding point to the narrative that King was practicing tex um uh lex talionis, the law of retaliation, and was giving to them what they had tried to give to Daniel.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as we finish here, this is the last passage we're gonna look at this morning, and the it is the end of Daniel chapter six.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: We see that throughout the book of Daniel, or at least up until chapter six, um, because then the rest of the book of Daniel sort of goes into prophecy and things like that.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: But up through this point, it has really been a story about how these faithful Israelites had served the kingdom of Babylon so well and had been so righteous in their behavior and honorable that multiple kings who did not trust in the Lord made statements after the fact about how amazing their God was.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: We saw King Nebuchadnezzar do this, we saw Belshazzar do this, and now, meaning in Daniel 3 and 4, and then in Daniel 6, we see the most striking and confident statement yet coming once more from a king who did not trust in the Lord, or at least certainly not as in a monotheistic sense.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was not the only Lord.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So King Darius wrote to those of every people, nation, and language who live in the whole earth.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably a dramatic statement to say, everybody under his government in Babylon.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: May your prosperity abound.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I issue a decree that in all my royal dominion, people must tremble in fear before the God of Daniel.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: For he is the living God.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: That language again of a God who is active and present is not just made of stone and wood, and he endures forever.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: His kingdom will never be destroyed, and his dominion has no end.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: He rescues and delivers, he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth, for he has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Something that speaks, everybody would understand what that meant, that Daniel had been rescued from certain death.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these things come about, right?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also see at the tail end of Daniel 6 that he continues in service.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel does not retire after this, but he continues for a couple more years until Cyrus, well, there's a whole history about that, but until Cyrus becomes king again.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: But there are three lessons I want to, in the time that we have remaining, there are three quick questions that I want to ask you.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've gone through the story of Daniel and the Lion's den.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're retelling it in a way that hopefully we can see a broader context.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there are three wonderful questions that I want to pose to you that I have been asking myself all week long and that have been, frankly, very convicting for me as we reflect on Daniel 6.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is do I have the reputation of Daniel?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, I have mentioned it many times.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, who only spoke once in this entire narrative, was known as a man of God.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, his faith in the Lord, and we would say our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but his faith in the God of his fathers was so strong that that was the only point of vulnerability for him because people said, There's no way we can can dupe him, there's no way we can slander him, there's no way we can even gossip against him and convince people of his poor character the only way that we can take him down is by attacking his God.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: What a reputation to have.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord that there are many, many people who live their lives in such a way that those who don't know Jesus Christ are influenced because of the way that they speak and they act.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to a brother this morning who's telling me about his sweet wife who works at a store and was basically ministering to people because she was righteous and living a righteous life.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of thing that we should have.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that so many of us, myself included, we don't always present the greatest testimony to the world around us.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we make it easy for a world that is watching and waiting for us to slip up, because they don't like the idea of a righteous God, to say, well, that God is nothing, if that's what it means to worship him.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: That God is nothing for me.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound like a God of forgiveness, that doesn't sound like a God of love, that doesn't sound like a God of justice, because I've seen the way this person has acted.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the first question, do I have the reputation of Daniel?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: We must build up a reputation like Daniel.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel is 80 years old or over when this is happening.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: He had built it over a lifetime, it doesn't come overnight, but he had built a reputation that spoke about his Lord.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: The second question, do I practice the habits of Daniel?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's obvious from the story what Daniel's habit was that they were targeting.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was his prayer life.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I want us to extend for a moment what this looks like.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is not Daniel 3, where they say, you must worship something, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say, no.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is for Daniel.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are trying to strip something from him.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: They are trying to take this away from him.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he also says, no.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: He has a habit to the Lord, and for him it is prayer.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: For us, we might say it is prayer.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: We might say it is reading the Bible.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: We might say it is going to church, all of these things which are edifying for us and build us up into the church that God has called us to be.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: What if somebody said that you needed to stop doing those things?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Would you have the adamancy that Daniel has to be willing to go to the lion's den because it is important for you to keep that a part of your life?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's the question that was eating at me.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, is my reading of the Bible, is my prayer life with God, is my ability to worship the Lord publicly, is it something that if somebody tried to take it away from me, my life would change dramatically.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I would be willing to go to the lion's den to defend it.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: I worry that there are many of us where if these things were stripped, it would not actually change our lives that much.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't ultimately practice the habits of Daniel and devote ourselves to the Lord and the way that He would call us to continuously.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: We don't value the things of the Lord as we should, but we must.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So do I practice the habits of Daniel, that we develop these habits?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you have these practices now that you don't think are that important, I encourage you to dig deeper into them, see what it was like for Daniel.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's just that you don't have something that you're praying about that you care as much about as Daniel did about the return of his people to Jerusalem.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: But we should be going to the Lord, practicing the habits of Daniel, so much so that we would go to the lion's den to defend them.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Third and finally is do I know the God of Daniel?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Which I know that's kind of a weird way to phrase that question.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what I mean by this is that Daniel knew his God personally.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: He is not a God in stained glass windows.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a God that he is only found in the Bible, he is the living God.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's the God that is moving and active in the world today.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's a God that can be encountered personally.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: And for Daniel, a righteous man in the lion's den in the midst of his most difficult moment, God was there.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Either God's angel or God himself, but nevertheless, the presence of God was there with Daniel.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there are many of us who know God but don't know the God of Daniel.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know the living God.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: We know facts about the Lord, but our prayer, for whatever reason it is, we don't have the connection to the Lord that we should.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we are missing out because of it.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to know the God of Daniel.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Most of all, I want you to know Jesus Christ as your Savior.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because only through him, only through trusting in the Lord for salvation, that he would forgive you of your sins, can you avoid the eternal lion's den?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to be the only way out of that lion's den.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are many trials and circumstances that come about in this life where we are able to witness and experience the living God, but ultimately it is knowing the God of Daniel, Yahweh, the living God, and Jesus Christ, that we are able to be free for eternity from the judgment that is coming.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to know this.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning, as we take all of these things together, we also have the opportunity to practice and celebrate as a church the Lord's table.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And here in a moment, I'm gonna step off the stage and I want you to reflect on these questions.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have the reputation of Daniel?
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have the habits of Daniel?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do I know the God of Daniel?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do know the God of Daniel, take the Lord's table with us.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Take the cup and the bread when I come back up on stage.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: But for a moment here, while Jeremiah plays and underscores our time of prayer, let's just reflect on these kinds of questions from Daniel and the Lion Sten.