Staying You at Babylon U (Daniel 1:8-21)

Asch line study test.

Which one of these is the same size?

It’s pretty clearly C, right? What if I told you that 1/3 of people interviewed got this wrong?

How did that happen? This is from a social science experiment that measures conformity. They had a group of “actors” all give a wrong answer and it came down to the final person—would they conform and say what the group said “knowing it was wrong” or would they give the answer they knew was right?

He did several test like this. Solomon Asch was the dudes name...

Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.

Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed.

In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.

The truth is, we like to get along. There is a chemical released in our brain—its known as the happy chemical, the pleasure chemical, one that makes you feel good—whenever we get along with other people. It feels good to be part of a group.

Likewise, we have another chemical released in our brain when we don’t go along with the group. It feels bad, uncomfortable, unpleasant. In other words our brain rewards us for going along with the group.

Now picture with me if you will Daniel and his three friends—they’ve lost their homes, friends, stability, all that good stuff…and they are being exiled to Babylon. A place where they have an entirely different view of the world—a totally different reality. Where everybody is saying the correct answer is “A” when you know it’s “C”.

What will Daniel and his friends do?

But I need to add another layer of difficulty here for them. It’s from a text we read last week…Jeremiah 29:4-7…it’s what God commanded Daniel and his friends through the prophet Jeremiah.

Build houses and live in them.

Plant gardens and eat their produce.

Get married…have babies, have grandkids…multiply there (be fruitful and multiply).

Seek the welfare of the city.

What that means is that Daniel and his friends can’t go into this guns blazing. This isn’t God saying to them—don’t fit in. Be the weirdo. Be entirely separate from the culture around you. Stick out like a sore thumb.

No, it’s saying “fit in”.

But what does that look like when everybody in the room is saying “A” is the corresponding line—but you know in your heart of hearts that it’s actually “C”. What does “fitting in” look like there?

But this isn’t only a conundrum for Daniel.

It’s not entirely similar situation here in the US. I will grant that. We have different rights, different freedoms, and so that makes our interaction with things a little different. When you can influence Nebby it’s a little different than when you are a slave forced into exile.

We too have to ask difficult questions living in our own Babylon. There are some sticky ethical questions facing us today. Some that we probably see more clearly than others. And some where we might be given to compromise and not even know it.

Permit me to mention some of the sticky ethical questions of our day. And some of these we might be able to look upon from an ivory tower and make clear pronouncements. And on some of these good Jesus loving, Bible believing Christians, might draw lines differently.

What do you do here...

When your co-worker is transgender and asks you to use their preferred pronouns? Even if you don’t agree, do you—for the sake of relationship and keeping your job and providing for your family—call them by a preferred pronoun? Or do you take a stand here?

When you are given the choice in a political election between two immoral people, do you hold your nose and vote for one candidate over the other? Or is this participating in evil?

When the world is being crippled by a pandemic and the government asks the church to close her doors for the sake of public safety, do you obey the government or do you say “we must obey God rather than man”?

Is it okay for a Christian bakery, who doesn’t agree with same-sex marriage, to nevertheless bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding? Or should they refuse?

If a stem cell from an aborted child could save a life, should it be used?

If there is a company that is the absolute best in what they do, if they are top-notch in helping organizations investigate claims of abuse, to put together databases, to assist in ending the scourge of abuse within your denomination…but that company is a secular company and has supported in the past LGBTQ causes, should you still use them? Should money from your missions organization still use them? Or do you draw a line here?

There are historic questions too. I’m thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who became involved in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Is it wrong for an individual to bear the sword and kill a man who is responsible for killing thousands of others?

Or John Newton who had the difficulty of trying to explain why he was allowing his friend William Cowper to live in a home with an unmarried widow. To have booted him out when he was in a mental health crisis would have been devastating. But should he have to avoid the appearance of evil?

And we haven’t even addressed some of the questions like—is it okay to use the literature of Babylon? Is all truth God’s truth and so we can use it even if we find it in a secular university? Can we use the insights of psychology? Or is this a denial of the sufficiency of Christ?

So many questions. Are you unsettled yet? Uncomfortable? Even a little fired up, feeling some anger rising…it might be…because we don’t like how uncomfortable these questions are. We don’t like living in Babylon. It’s so much easier to live in safety, it’s so much easy to not have to navigate life where the wild things are...

But we do. This is where we are. And we’re navigating it as fallen, sinful, finite creatures. Who sometimes think we are absolutely correct, but we aren’t. And who sometimes are absolutely correct but we lack the moral resolve to take a stand.

Life in Babylon is tough. Let’s not try to pretend like it’s a cake walk. Obeying God sometimes isn’t as black and white as it first appears.

We might know that the line that matches is clearly “C” but we have to function in a society as if we believe the answer is “A”. At times we might be pressed to say, “which is it...” in those situations we must never embrace a lie....but we aren’t always in that moment. Sometimes we’re in those places where we have to function different than what we’d prefer...

And that is what is facing Daniel and his friends as they enter Babylon…where will they have to compromise…where will they have to drop some things in order to fit in, to survive, to press on in faithfulness, even to obey God’s Word in Jeremiah 29. Where will they draw lines? What will this look like?

Daniel 1:8–21 ESV

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.” Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables. As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.

As we look closer at this text what we will see is that there were some things where it seemed Daniel and his friends were willing to compromise on, but they also drew a line in the sand. Let’s look at that...

Let’s keep in mind what Babylon is attempting to do. They want to make Daniel and his friends part of their culture. They want to take every bit of their Hebrew identity out of them. They wanted to make them full-fledged Babylonians.

And we could say that such is the nature of the world system. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they knowingly have evil intent, or that there is some vast Babylonian conspiracy that you can only read about on the dark web. No, that’s just how things are. This is their worldview and they are going to act consistent with it—Babylonians are the best, and they are going to swallow up everything in their path.

Let’s look a little into what would this three years have required of Daniel and his friends?

They would have to master Aramaic and also learn Akkadian—a difficult language. They wouldn’t have been speaking Hebrew anymore.

Okay, fine.

They would have learned this language by being immersed in all of the literature of the culture. They would have learned the Babylonian account of creation, an entirely different flood narrative, and credit wouldn’t have been given to YHWH but to the false gods of the Babylonians. As one commentator noted,

These myths and epics would have been blasphemous, attributing creation and flood not to their God Yahweh but rather to others.

Okay, fine. We’ll do that. We’ll learn this.

But there is another class they’d have to be taking. They would have to learn divination. Babylonian fortune-telling. They’d have learned how to read the internal organs of sheep. They’d have learned how to study the stars—astrology—how to write their horoscopes. And how to interpret dreams.

Now this is something that is forbidden in the Old Testament. God isn’t cool with fortune-telling. Leviticus 20:6

Leviticus 20:6 (ESV)

“If a person turns to mediums and necromancers...I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.

Or Leviticus 19:26

Leviticus 19:26 (ESV)

You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes.

Pretty clear. But look at what happens, Daniel and his friends rose to the top of their class. They didn’t draw a line here. This is surprising.

They also had their names changed. And your name meant something. It was part of an identity. Usually they had some of the character of God in their name—as an example Daniel’s name meant “God is my judge” or Azariah means “YHWH is my helper”. But now Daniel’s name means “the divine lady protects the king” and Azariah’s name means “the servant of the god Nebo”.

It seems like in private conversations amongst themselves they kept their Hebrew names, after all Daniel is recording this change. But it also seems that they answered to these names from the Babylonians. They took upon a dual identity.

Still no line has been drawn in the sand. And it’s also plausible that they became eunuchs. There might have been some protest here—but we don’t read of it.

But in verse 8 we read of the first protest. Daniel 1:8

Daniel 1:8 ESV

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.

Now, what is it about the king’s food? Why is Daniel drawing a line here?

Is it because of the food laws that were very strict among the Israelites? Is it because there would have been food at the king’s table that was not kosher? Certainly there would have been unclean foods....but I don’t think that entirely explains it. Because there is no stipulation anywhere in the Old Testament about wine. Not to mention that it seems from Daniel 10:3 that he was eating the king’s food and drinking wine....this seems confined to that three year period.

Well maybe it’s a type of protest, a boycott. Letting the king know that they won’t be co-opted…that they won’t fold. But that’s not likely it because the text indicates that it was kept private. Only one other person would know about this. It doesn’t seem to be a protest.

Is it because the food would have been offered to the gods? That certainly would have happened. But the problem with this theory is that Daniel and this friends would have needed to starve. It wasn’t just the meat that was offered to the gods…it was also the vegetables.

So, what is going on here? I think it’s connected to what Daniel and his friends would have learned from Proverbs 23:1-3

Proverbs 23:1–3 ESV

When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.

They are deceptive food. What does that mean? It means that the king wants something from you. In this case what is the king of Babylon doing? He is creating a dependency.

I don’t want to chase a rabbit here, but it’s what we see with an abusive relationship. There are two key things that happen in the grooming process. It’s a two-pronged approach. First, you sever old ties, reshape identity, etc. change the name, all that stuff. Secondly, you create a dependency.

At the end of the three year period they’d have been fully Babylonian and dependent upon the king for everything. And it wouldn’t have happened primarily through punishment but through pleasure.

It’s a combination of threat and promise. It’d take away memory and identity of belonging to God and instill in them an absolute dependency on Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire for everything.

I appreciate how one commentary compares this strategy to that of Satan,

Daniel Resisting Reprograming

If he can further instill in us a sense of dependence upon the material comforts that make up our way of life, or certain pleasures of this world that we have grown to love, then he can far more effectively draw us away from the Lord. His fundamental goal is always to obliterate our memory of the Lord, to reeducate our minds to his way of thinking, and to instill in us a sense that all of the good things in life come from the world around us and from the satisfaction of the desires of our own flesh.

Let’s go back to our opening illustration. Imagine that there is more at stake here than just fitting into the group. Now everybody in the group is picking “A” and if you don’t fit in to the group—you don’t get to eat, you don’t get a house, a family, all of those things that God said to do in Jeremiah 29. You don’t get to settle. How do I obey God here?

So, why did they refuse the food?

It’s because this was the one place where they could draw a line in the sand and say, “no, we will depend upon YHWH”. It’s where they could sever that tie and remind themselves and others and eventually show others…that GOD was the one to depend upon.

And so they ask if they can eat vegetables instead of the luxurious food from the king’s table.

Now I have to show you something else here that is important to notice. I think we’ve read our own Western standards of beauty onto this text and entirely missed what is happening here.

Often this is read something like this, “God’s ways are better than the ways of the world. He knows how to help us to live healthier lives. If we listen to Him…stick to his diet…we will be fit and in much better shape.”

Now all of that may very well be true. But that’s not what is happening in this text. How do I know that, well there is one little clue that is given in our text…look at verse 15. “Fatter in the flesh”.

Now we’ve kind of glossed over that and said, “it means they were stout—muscular dudes—fit and in shape.” But that’s missing a fundamental question. What were the Babylonians looking for amongst their wise men?

One OT scholar looked through Babylonian art and noticed that for the warrior class—this would have been true. But Daniel and his friends weren’t being trained to be warriors. They were being trained to be wise men. And as Longman notes,

....wise men (like Daniel and his colleagues) are pictured as bald, big eyed (a symbol of intelligence), and chubby. That is the look that Nebuchadnezzar was going for.

You shouldn’t end up chubby eating a vegetable diet. You shouldn’t be “fatter in the flesh”. But God, because He is the God who provides, came through for Daniel and his friends. They were fattened up not by eating the fatty foods of Babylon but by eating healthy veggies.

They kept their dependence upon God while they became fully entrenched in Babylonian culture. And because they were dependent upon Him, God helped them to excel within that culture. He gave them the ability to excel in Babylon, but also to shine forth in Babylon.

What is going to happen, we will see in the coming chapters, is that the wisdom of God is going to shine through these young men.

Think of it this way. In one bucket you put all of the knowledge of Babylonian culture. They knew it inside and out. They were skilled in using that Babylonian bucket.

There were some questions where they could answer and do well. It was real knowledge. All truth is God’s truth. But as we are going to see there were times when they got to the bottom of the bucket. They’d exhaust it and have to say, “we don’t have an answer here...”

That’s when Daniel and his friends could say, “we’ve got an even deeper bucket over here…and they’d be able to pull out the wisdom of the Lord. They’d be able to say, “God gave us insight into your dream, O King...”

But you see in order to do this Daniel and his friends had to know the bottom of that Babylonian bucket. They could agree with their culture in some ways…and say, “Yes…but no....but yet...” And then point to the living God.

And that’s the same case with how we interact with things today. It’s how we go about answering some of these questions and thinking about living in Babylon.

If God’s Word is true and God’s Word is better…and I think it is…then it will survive the microscope. God is big enough to plumb the depths of Babylonian culture, Babylonian astrology all of that....

And what he so often does is that he gets it to that point where they have to say, “I don’t have an answer here...” he exposes their emptiness…and then delights to show His fullness.

This is what we do in Babylon. We might take their hand and walk them all the way to the depths of their position…but if it’s not truth, if it’s not reality, it’s going to come to a bottom…and at that moment we then shine a light and show the glorious God.

I’m not concerned with giving specific answers to all those sticky questions that we asked to begin this morning. They are tough, some of them. And as I said earlier Jesus-loving and Bible-believing Christians may differ on how best to engage them, where to draw the line, etc.

How do we know where to draw a line? I think Daniel helps us here. I don’t think he draws lines out of fear. He’s not afraid of slippery slopes.

He fears the Lord, period. And that fear allows Him—rather than running away from Babylonian culture—to dive into it with full confidence in God’s power.

He draws a line when it comes to dependence upon God. And so we do the same. Is this position flowing out of a dependence upon God?

How can the emptiness of idols be exposed and the fullness of God shine through this?

When am I able to tell them, when have I won their ears to tell them, that “C” is the answer and not “A”? And how can I navigate this to get to that moment not a minute too soon or a minute too late?

These are really difficult questions. But the Lord has not left us alone. He’s put us into a community—sadly, a community that can sometimes backbite and devour one another who answer these questions a little differently—instead of loving through the complexity.

That’s part of what we are doing here this morning as we observe the Lord’s Supper.

First, we note that this is a king’s table where you SHOULD feast. Why? Because it is a self-giving table. This king doesn’t give so as to manipulate. He gives to bless you. Period.

He gives His life for our good.

John 10:10 ESV

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Don’t withhold at this King’s table but FEAST. Partake of Christ knowing that being united to Him is THE fundamental answer to these questions. It means you might get something wrong at times, but you do so in the context of a relationship. You do so as part of the family. With a God who loves you. A Savior who died for you. A Spirit who grows and shapes you.

And we do this as a family as well. We are united to one another. Drawn into fellowship with Christ and also with one another.

We must tell the truth. The line is “C”. Christ died for the ungodly. That’s us. The only way to fellowship with God is through Jesus Christ. He is the only answer to our brokenness. And that is what we proclaim here at this table.