Sermon Tone Analysis

*Success Without Compromise*

*Daniel 1                         June 13, 1999*

 

*Scripture: Daniel 1*

* *

*Introduction:*

 

          Each of you graduates this morning has achieved some measure of success to have arrived at the milestone you have reached.

For Sarah, it is preparation for grade school.

For Ben, it is preparation for high school.

For Emily, it is preparation for college or work.

We want to commemorate your success while challenging you to recognize the real means of success.

There is much more that lies before each one of you.

Certainly you will be tempted to compromise the means or meaning of success, as we who are older can attest to you.

Success without compromise is an illusive quality.

In fact, success by compromise is really no success at all.

We don’t need to look far to find examples in this ‘world of compromise’ in which we live.

But we can also find positive examples of success without compromise.

Daniel is one we can look at in the Bible, although there are many others - like Nehemiah.

The central part of the story about Daniel in the first chapter, which we will talk about this morning, is that he and his three friends chose to eat vegetables rather than the king’s rich food.

As long as we are on vegetables -------

 

/Title:  Forgetting the Point of It All/

/ /

/   Max De Pree tells a true story about the wonderful tomato growers in central California.

More successful at tomato growing than the tomato growers of all human history, they grew more tomatoes per acre than anyone ever had.

But they did have one problem.

That was to get their tomatoes into the salad bowls of Chicago and Boston un-bruised, because a magnificent bruised tomato is still only a bruised tomato.

/

/   So they set agro-technology to work and accomplished two marvelous things.

First, they got a machine to pick the tomatoes while they were still yellow but very firm.

Then they put the tomatoes on an assembly belt, passed them under a certain kind of light for seven seconds, and they came out a rosy red--a rosy pink, almost red.

And then they devised a packaging so that you could put a bunch of tomatoes in a Styrofoam crate, and lift it twenty feet high above solid concrete, and also take a bumper from a Chevy pickup, lift it twenty feet high above solid concrete, drop them both, and the bumper would come off worse than any one of those tomatoes.

Agro-technology wins again.

/

/   But they had one problem: The tomato that the chef sliced into his salad in Chicago and the woman bought from the market in Boston didn't taste the way a tomato was supposed to taste.

/

/ /

/   -- Lewis Smedes, "The Journey to Integrity," Preaching Today, Tape No. 61.

/

 

They achieved a form of success with tomatoes that didn’t really accomplish anything because of all the compromise along the way.

They delivered the product but not the goods.

It was an enormous success at appearance that faded with the first bite of reality.

What we are looking for this morning is true success, success without compromise.

We see this in the life of Daniel and his three friends.

From another perspective, the core message of the book of Daniel is that “God is in control” in spite of all appearances.

When we believe that wholeheartedly, we need never look anywhere else for success.

From the deceptively simple stories of faith under pressure in the first six chapters to the visions of the last six chapters in which we see the entire program of Gentile history, God is in control.

He is in control from the details of everyday life in the present to the broad sweep of future events that will also, one day, contain the details of everyday life.

Daniel reveals God to us, and God reveals himself in relationship with his people.

He reveals his sovereignty in the midst of historical process in the realities of life.

What can we learn from history?

History is a report of past events, but not necessarily a blueprint for behavior.

History doesn’t teach us how to behave, but it does point us to God.

Now God is always the same even though he may not relate the same way in every age.

But as we understand God we are compelled to conform our behavior.

In this way, Scripture transcends culture.

The fundamental issue is the relationship between faith and culture.

Daniel teaches us that the struggle is not to make the culture different, or “Christian”, but how a “Christian” can live in a hostile culture in a way that makes a difference.

We will want to ask ourselves where God is calling us to make a stand in the midst of a constantly changing culture.

Daniel does not give us a model of the ‘one biblical way’ for the believer to interact with his culture, but he does give us the motive – to show that God is in control.

We each have to answer that question where we live and work.

How can we carry out our belief that God is in control to the extent that it will ultimately convince others?

To the degree that we do that, we find true success without compromise.

Like Jesus said, “We are to be in the world but not of the world.”

(John 17:16)

 

*I.

A Difficult Trial - King Jehoiakim delivered into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand (1:1-7)*

 

Daniel is truly one of the greatest men in Jewish history.

Certainly he was a sinner in need of redemption like the rest of us because he was a man.

But there are no failures recorded about his life.

God blessed him with such divine vision and understanding that we cannot even begin to understand the Book of Revelation without him.

He was a teenager in the year 605 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem and began his conquest of Judah.

There were several “deportations” of Jews to Babylon, and Daniel was in the first group because he was of the princely line.

It was the practice of Babylon to deport the finest of the citizens and train them for service in their own government.

At this point in history, Nebuchadnezzar was trying to control Judah without actually taking it over.

His purpose with these select captives was to train them in Babylonian ways for political and propaganda purposes.

They would be given a new home, new knowledge, new diet, and new names.

The Babylonians saw themselves through their gods as champions over these lesser and inferior foreign gods of other cultures.

For a man with true religion like Daniel, it would ultimately become a contest of faith.

But we also see that this captivity and its outcome is something that God did.

Three times in this chapter, God is shown to have brought about his purpose.

In verse 2 it is God who delivered the king into Babylonian hands.

In verse 9 it is God who caused the official to show favor to Daniel.

In verse 17 it is God who gave knowledge and understanding to the four young men.

It is likely that the events that happened to Daniel and his friends was the fulfilling of the prophecy that Isaiah told Hezekiah in Is. 39:5-7.

But like Esther and Joseph and ultimately Jesus, what man may have intended for harm, God intended for good.

Appearances can be deceiving.

Trusting in God will never deceive us.

God allows us to be placed on trial in order to display his power, mercy and goodness over our sinfulness that we might be freed from it.

Daniel was being asked to do this for his people.

It is likely that he was in the line of David.

We may see in Daniel a picture of Jesus.

In fact, Dan.

10:11 speaks of Daniel as “highly esteemed” or beloved in a similar sense as Jesus – the only other person in Scripture who is spoken of in this way.

In Mt. 19:12, Jesus said that some are eunuchs by birth, some by the action of man, and some effectively by the personal choice of abstinence like Jesus was himself.

Any way you look at it, God is able to bring about our total devotion to him.

Skipping ahead to the last verse of chapter one, we see the results of Daniel’s devotion.

Daniel was still active 539 B.C. when the kingdom was taken by Cyrus, so he lived and ministered in Babylon for over sixty years.

In fact, he lived through the reigns of four rulers (Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus) and three different kingdoms (Babylon, Media, Persia).

His name means “God is my judge.”

He held several important positions and was promoted greatly because of his character and wisdom, and because the blessing of God was upon him.

Nebuchadnezzar named him chief of the wise men and a ruler of the land (2:48), a position similar to a modern prime minister.

Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar, called Daniel out of retirement and, because he explained the handwriting on the wall, made Daniel third ruler in the land (5:29).

Darius named him leader over the whole realm (6:1-3).

For at least seventy-five years, Daniel was God’s faithful witness in a wicked and idolatrous kingdom.

His faith in later years was built upon that gift of faith in those early years that he fanned into flame as a captive in the king’s court.

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*Training for Service**:*

         

*A.

A New Home (1:1-2)*