Thriving Spiritually in the Middle, of the Center, of the Capitol, of the World

Thriving Spiritually in the Middle, of the Center, of the Capitol, of the World

Been doing a survey through the Book of Daniel. So if I remember correctly, all of our texts are found in the Book of Daniel. So we'll be flipping back and forth a little bit.

Want to acknowledge my wife's family is here. We had a wedding yesterday in the family, and so everyone decided to come over. And then they decided, hey, Nate's, preaching. Let's go see him. Yay. So they're here.

Too excited for that. All right, we're in Daniel. Before we dig into this, let's go ahead and pray. Father God, we are thankful for this time. We get to be together. We get to be in God's word. We get to be in Your word, and we get to look at a wonderful example of some young men who have gone through hard times, some young men who were literally in the middle of the center of the world, and yet, by Your grace, we're spiritually successful. Not even just successful, but we're thriving in their faith.

I pray that as we take this time to do this survey, that we would be encouraged, but not just encouraged, but also give some strategies to see what did they do? What did they do to serve you, what did they do to strengthen their faith and that we could take these strategies, apply them to our lives in order to be thriving in our walk with you too. Pray for grace and mercy for me as I speak. Give me the words to say the illustrations that would apply and that our thoughts would just be geared towards you. Today. It's in your name, I pray. Amen.

So today's, a little bit of a challenge. This is a series that I preach. It was about a 9-10 week series I did with the youth group in New Hampshire. All combined to one message, so I'm sure it'll be very short today.

We'll see how that works out. But the goal of this was, you look at these guys, and there's so much that happens here. And what I wanted to do was I'll show you at the end that there was a book that kind of guided my thoughts towards this.

But how could these young men who were literally in the center of the capital of the world and yet be so spiritually successful? You talk about not having a support system. You talk about not having all the right curriculum and all these things, but yet these guys were thriving in their faith. And so this is a survey of looking at what strategies do these guys have.

Now, the Book of Daniel is clearly about God's sovereignty, God's control, and how God worked in these guys to proclaim his name. But I think it's appropriate to look like, okay, how did these guys follow that God? What were some of their strategies here? So we'll take a look at this. Let's get a little bit of background information.

Okay, that's fancy. Can anyone read that. Thank you.

It's Daniel. So we're in the book of Daniel. I was supposed to do that earlier, I forgot.

And so we're going to go back into history, go back to the year 605 BC. This will be the first time that Nebuchadnezzar comes into his well, not the first time into Israel, but this is when he comes to Jerusalem and he captures it. He doesn't really demolish it at this point, but he comes and he captures them and he takes some captives with him back in 605 BC.

And what he did is he took these all right, I got to update some of this information. Old slide, we'll work on this. So what he did is he took some of the young men.

We'll talk about those in a little bit. And from Jerusalem all the way out to Babylon. And he said, we're going to look for the best of them, the ones that can really serve me best.

And actually, I did a little more research. There's a range of how far people think it is. The most updated range is 750 to 1200 miles.

So if you wanted to estimate how far would that be, imagine if you started right here at this church and decided to walk all the way to the western edge of Nebraska. I mean, that's probably tougher than walking to Babylon. I don't know, it's Nebraska, but it's about 750-1,000 miles of them walking.

It would take them about four to five months to get there. And what happened to these young men? A foreign nation came in, captured their city, and we'll see that these young men, their family, were most likely killed or put into slavery also. Then they had to walk four or five months with this foreign nation back to a foreign land with a foreign tongue and a foreign culture.

And how old are these guys? We'll get to that in a second. So we have these young men who are taking Daniel, Hanania, Azariah and Mishael. And one of the interesting things is the first things that was done to them when they got to Babylon is their name was changed.

Why do you think they would do that? Well, look at the meanings of their name. Daniel, his name means God will judge. God will be my judge.

You look at Hananiah, God has shown favor or God is graceful. You look at Mishael, it says who is comparable to God in Azariah, who is also comparable to God. See, that's why I updated the slides, because that was the typo.

But the concept that you're seeing here is that their names directed their thoughts towards God. Every time that Daniel heard his name, he knew there is a reference to God there. So if you look at the changes over here to their Babylon name, Belshazzar.

Bel, the god of bell, would protect him. Shadrach, the command of the moon god, which is the god Aku. Meshach, the servant of Malbet, or even you could say the servant of Aku Abednego, the servant of Negal.

So what are they doing? They're changing their identity. And it's not just a cute little mid thing, it's actually changing. They're trying to change their purpose.

And we would actually kind of call this a form of brainwashing, but what they're trying to do is change their complete purpose. Their whole role is, all right, you used to serve the God of Israel, you used to serve him, but now you're going to serve our God, and we're going to change that so much in life. We're going to change your names.

You're no longer serving this God, you're serving our gods. Does that ring similar at all about what the world does to us? It's like, yeah, you can have your God, but you know what? This is what actually matters. You need to serve these things instead of the God of the Bible.

So let's talk about these guys who were chosen to go to Babylon. Well, these young guys were of royal, noble families. They were unblemished youth.

They didn't have any deformities or anything. They were good looking. You looked at Daniel Hanai Mishael, that's a good looking young man.

They were wise, knowledgeable, teachable. They took learning seriously. They were also competent to stand before the king.

And so these were kind of like top notch, the cream of the crop kind of guys when they were taken in 605 BC. Most likely they're between the age of twelve to 16. Is anyone here between twelve and 16? All right, two.

Excellent. Unless someone else is lying. But that's the idea.

Like these twelve year olds, 16 year olds. So let's imagine today in our age, we take 4512 year olds, six year old, six year, 16 year olds. We take them, we put it in the binder.

They have no accountability. They're not going to church. They don't have their holy scriptures.

They're on their own, they're independent. Their parents are there to tell them what to do. How confident are we in these twelve to 16 year olds parents? Think about your twelve to 16 year olds.

You confident or not confident? What do we think? We're not willing to say. Excellent. Well, I'll give my opinion, most likely me as a 12-16 year old, I wouldn't be confident myself, but they were taken away from their home.

They were away from any spiritual guides. They were in a foreign land, and it was expected on them to act like the Babylonians, a little bit like our current situation today, where we are expected to act like our world. Now, thankfully, we have more.

We have spiritual guidance. Hey there. We have a spiritual guidance.

We have the church, you have the Word of God with you. If you have your phone, you have the Bible, you have your phone, you could go and find messages, but these guys had none of that. And yet I would dare say that they were more spiritually successful than we are.

These guys were in the middle of the center of the capital of the world. They were literally taken to the capital, to Babylon, and not just on the outskirts of Babylon, but they were like in the king's palace in order to serve the king. So if you want to talk about being completely surrounded by influence of the world, that was these guys.

So what in the world do they do to be spiritually successful? I want to give you guys a challenge. This challenge is kind of geared more towards teens, but I think you guys can do the same thing too. I want you to find two or three friends.

If you don't have two or three friends, go make two or three friends. Okay? You have a church here. You can do this.

And I want to challenge you that maybe once a week you meet and you read one chapter a week, day one through six, and you're going to talk about the steps that we're going to look at. I have eight steps here. I know on your page you have seven, but there's a bonus one.

And I want you to read through each chapter and try to identify where and when were these steps practiced. I'm going to show you different examples of that. And then you pray together.

You say, Lord, we live in the world. We're not of the world. We want to serve you.

We want to be a witness. Help us to practice out our faith, like Daniel, Ananiah, Azariah and Mishael. And hopefully that would encourage you and work you guys together.

And, hey, you just got a free Bible study for the next six weeks. So there's my challenge to you. All right, let's look at these different steps here.

We're going to start in Daniel, chapter one, verse eight. This is really the starting point. If you don't go here, if you don't have this step in your life, the rest really will just kind of fail.

I'm going to hit this over and over and over again. I apologize. Can I crank this down? Is that okay? All right, we're good? Cool.

Daniel, chapter one. And we read about if you start at verse one, you can see how Nebuchadnezzar came in. He took are you still squeaking? Oh, I'm not even on is that better? Hey, I can hear me now.

Thank you. Appreciate that. All right, Daniel, chapter one and verse eight.

Before that, you read the context, you see all these things going on that they looked for these kind of guys. They were taken from their home. And when you read into the history, you could tell that Nebuchadnezzar wasn't a nice guy and his army wasn't like the most compassionate.

They would most likely kill all the family and just take the good looking, young, strong guys and take them. Look, actually go back in verse four. Near the end, you see the last phrase that they took all these guys to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.

Verse five. The king assigned them a daily portion of food that the king ate and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of the time, they were to stand before the king.

So the plan was, let's take these young guys, let's indoctrinate them, let's train them so that they could serve our purpose and that they can help our kingdom out and make them think like us. Verse eight. But Daniel purposed that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank.

Point number one is very simple. You need to purpose purity. You're going to see this over and over and over again as you read through the book of Daniel that they purpose purity.

When you get into the Hebrew word in here is that he intentionally placed on his heart. Your heart is like the command center. Now, for every techie person here, I'm going to butcher this illustration, but it's kind of like a computer system, all right? And I think the controlling system of a computer is called the motherboard.

Right. Okay. This is where I'm going to start butchering it.

Okay? But your control system is like that motherboard, your heart's, the motherboard, your program, all the stuff that runs everything there and what you put into it. The memory. Does memory go into the motherboard? Yeah.

Oh, sweet, I'm doing well. All right. Your memory and the stuff that you put into that so that the motherboard can run it, that's the outcome.

Right. If you want Linux, Windows 98, and all these other technical terms, I don't know what I'm saying. If you put that into your system, that's what's going to come out.

Right? And so what you place on the heart, what you place on the motherboard is what's going to be produced. And so with Daniel, what did he purpose in his heart? What did he place in his heart? He said, I want to be pure. I want to be pure before God.

And honestly, if we don't have this one down, you will not be spiritually successful. If you have no desire to be pure before God, if you have no desire to please Him and honor Him, what do you think the outcome is going to be? You're not going to please God. And so from the very get go, this guy who's twelve to 16, he said, you know what? I know what they're doing.

They're trying to brainwash me. They're trying to change me to serve their gods, to serve their system. But I was not made for that system.

I was made to serve God. And so I'm going to place on my heart to purpose purity. So that the outcome of my life is that purity.

If you know anything about the life of Daniel, he was consistent in that it didn't matter what type of malware or viruses tried to came in to infect him, right. He still purpose purity because that's what he was putting in. That's what he was placing on his heart.

What is the driving motive in your life? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you go to work? Why do you provide for your family? Why do you do what you do? That is your purpose. That is kind of like your ethnos of why you exist, right? And what I'm saying here is that when we look at Daniel, why did he get up? Why did he get up in the morning? Why did he live? He lived to be pure before God, to serve God in every aspect. We see that he purposed purity in his life.

Point number one. Point number two, Daniel, chapter three, verse 16. Here we see Hannah, Azariah and Mishael in the Book of Daniel.

They actually do refer to Shadrach, Mishak and Abendigo. You know, here, this is where King Nebuchadnezzar, he has a dream of a golden image. He builds the golden image and he says, hey, I want everyone to come and worship this golden image that I built.

And we asked the question, hey, why don't we see Daniel in here? Well, it seems like that when Nebuchadnezzar does this, it says where he built it. If you look at verse one, he says, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold. It was very tall, it was very wide.

He set it up in the Plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. So it wasn't like in the capital. It was outside probably where HANANI, Ezra and Mishael were serving as governors.

So Daniel wasn't even in that area there, it seems like. But then, you know, that's a hard name if I just say Nebi, do you know who I'm talking about? All right. That's why Nebi, when he gave a decree, he said, all right, I want everyone to come and worship the God that I made.

When you hear all the music, you hear all the sound, you bow down, you worship them. And there's thousands of people there. There's all these different governors, leaders and such.

And he says, and by the way, if you don't, we're going to throw you to the fiery furnace. Now, what's this fiery furnace? It's probably a big brick building that's I would guess between like eight to 12ft tall. And that's where they would cook their brick.

And it was made to be extremely hot to make mud and their brick process hard, right? And so it was definitely big enough to throw someone into. So he said, if you don't bow down, we're going to throw you in there. And you know the story where someone comes up to Nebby and he says, hey, Nebby, King Neb, what's up, man? By the way, these Hebrew guys that you put in the position of authority, they didn't bow down.

How do you think they figured that out? Well, when everyone else bowed down, you have three Hebrew boys standing up, right? He says, These guys that you put in authority, they're not worshiping the God that you made. Now, it seems like Nebuchadnezzar had a pretty good, friendly relationship, so he brings them to him and he says, maybe you didn't get it. I know you're Jewish guys.

Maybe there's an accent that you're not understanding, maybe you missed it. When you hear the music, you're supposed to bow down. And then look at verse 15.

He says, now, if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, liar, tigron, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music to fall down and worship the image that I have made well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast to the burning fiery furnace. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands.

You'll see all over again. This is like another free point here. One of the themes in Daniel one through six is god is on trial.

They ask a lot. The question is, who can deliver you? Who is like our gods? And gods, they're like, I'll show you, it's me. Verse 16 and on, you don't hear about music being played again.

You don't hear about a second chance. Why is that? Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego answer and said to the king, o Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter if this be so. Our God who we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.

But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. Point number three, I call this practice the plan. Why? What plan are they practicing? Purity.

Now, when you read in here, it doesn't seem like that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, when they get all together, they're there with their picket sign, no, we won't bow no more. Gold, I don't know, can't rhyme. They're not picketing, they're not causing a ruckus.

They just said when it's time to worship, we're just going to stand a silent rebellion if you want. And then when they were brought before the king, they say, hey, maybe they didn't get it, but by the way, here's a second chance. And what did they say? We don't need a second chance, we don't need to answer you.

We know exactly what we're going to do, we will not bow down. Why? Goes back to point number one. We've purpose purity.

We've placed that on our heart that's we're going to do. And hey, if God delivers us, great. If not, great.

Either way, we will stay pure to God and so you can purpose purity. But if you don't practice the plan, how are you going to grow? If you're not in the Word, how are you going to grow if we're not praying? How are we going to grow if you're not coming together to worship with one another, how are you going to grow? You can have the desires, you can have the good intentions, but there's no execution. You guys know it's not going to work out, right? And so we need to practice the plan.

Point number three, turn to chapter four. Actually, this was another one where I yeah, we'll go here. Daniel, chapter four, verse 16.

Actually, no, I did update this one. Go to chapter six. That's right.

Turn to Daniel. Chapter six. We're going to look at verse 19, and this is where Daniel is older.

So in Daniel chapter one and two, he's probably about 16, maybe 18. In chapter two here, he's like 80. Okay, for you young guys, he's really old.

But what you're going to see is that he is consistent here. And this is where they look at Daniel's life and they say, hey, we want to get rid of him because he's not corruptible like we are. And so they come up with a plan to get Daniel in trouble.

And then he was thrown to a lion stand. And what happened to him? He was delivered. And he wasn't delivered because Daniel is a great guy.

Again, the theme of Daniel is God's greatness. What Daniel did wasn't really anything special. It was completely of God.

Look at what happened. Daniel, chapter six, verse 19. Daniel's in the lion's den.

Then at break of day, the king arose and went haste to the den of lions. As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out a tone of anguish. The king said to Daniel, oh, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the lions? Then Daniel said to the king, yeah, man, I beat up these lions all by myself.

They had nothing on me. Maybe I'm reading different. No, that's not what he said.

Who is Daniel quick to talk about? O king live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth, and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him over and over again. The reason there's an asterisk is this is one of the most prominent themes I saw throughout the book of Daniel, is that Daniel proclaimed God.

When we talk about when you look at when Daniel interprets the dreams, he is very quick to say, it's not my wisdom, it's not my greatness. It's actually the God is God who reveals these dreams. And when people talk about how great Daniel is, it's like it's not anything about me.

It's all about the God that I serve. And it was common in his language to proclaim god and notice who he's talking to. He's not giving a testimony in church.

He's not talking to his family members here. He's talking to the pagans. He's talking to the people who have no belief, no understanding of his God, really.

But he is quick to talk about God all the time. How much do you talk about God? Is it natural to talk about God at your workplace? Is it even natural to talk about God in your family? That is one thing that I really appreciate about my family. Growing up with my mom and my dad, we talked about God all the time.

And it wasn't weird, it wasn't awkward. It was just anticipated. And actually what is weird is awkward is that there's family members that I have that we can't talk about God.

We don't talk about God because for them it's so awkward. And we was like, why would we? It was abnormal in our family. What about your family? Can you guys easily just converse about what God's doing your life? Can you proclaim the goodness of God in your life? Can you encourage one another with what God is doing your life? You will see over and over and over again that Daniel proclaimed God in many aspects of his life.

Number four, this one might be rather self evident. Turn to Daniel, chapter two again. This is where Daniel at this time, he's probably about 18 to 20 ish.

This is where the king had a dream and he went to his wise people, says, all right, tell me the dream. Tell me the interpretation. They're like, well, all right, well, if you just tell what the dream was, we can explain to you.

He's like, no, I'm not even going to tell you the dream because if I tell you the dream, you're going to try to trick me. So you need to tell me what the dream was and then tell me the interpretation. Easy job or hard job? Thank you.

Hard job. Very hard job. And so then he's like, all right, no one could do it.

We're going to kill all my wise people because why am I paying you here? Why am I feeding you, you're useless nebuchadnezzar wasn't the most rational individual. Daniel, chapter two. Look at verse 17.

Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hannah and Misha and Nazariah his companions and told them to seek mercy from God of heaven, also known as, guys, we got to pray. It's time to pray so that Daniel's companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men in Babylon. Over and over again, you're going to see Daniel prayed in Daniel, chapter six.

We'll get back there. But it's rather evident Daniel practiced prayer a lot. Are we praying persistently? This is why when I gave you that little challenge, when you meet with your two, three friends, you discuss the Book of Daniel.

I would encourage you to finish. Well, maybe to start and finish with prayer. Say, God, we need your help.

We need your grace to work in our lives, to help us so that we can live this out. Because on our own, what do we desire? Sin. Right? On our own, we desire our own will.

But, God, please do a work in our life. Show your glory through us and imagine what great witness that is to the world. Point number five Daniel.

Chapter six. We just referenced this here. So this is where Daniel he was one of the leaders under the new king.

Darius and the other governors with him. Or the high officials did not like Daniel because they couldn't find anything wrong with him. See, these guys, they could go they could go get bribes.

They could go convince people to do things for them, seek things that they want. But then when it came to Daniel, Daniel wouldn't do had, you know, a good reputation. He did what was right, and they didn't like that because they were missing out.

Because if they couldn't stay up to Daniel's standard, what do you think's gonna happen to them, right? They're gonna lose their job. So they come up with this plan, and they say, all right, we're gonna look at Daniel's life, and we're gonna find a way that we can accuse him before the king and notice what they say. Here.

Go to verse five. Go back one more verse. Verse four.

Then the high officials and the Satraps sought to find a ground of complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom. But they could find no ground for complaint or any fault because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him. These men said, we will not find any ground for complaint against Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.

Question if people want to accuse you if people want to find a fault against you and make you look guilty before the world, how far would they have to look into your lives? What would they look at? Would they just dig into your family, digging to your Facebook post, digging to your bank account? Or would they have to go to how faithful you are to God to find a fault? They said, we can't find no fault with Daniel. The only thing that we can accuse him about is that he's faithful to his God. And so if we can make faithfulness to his God, something wrong, then we got him.

What would happen if they looked at our lives? How far would they have to dig? How far would they have to look at to find guilt in our lives? So what did they do? They made prayer wrong. They came up. They made a law with Darius.

Hey, Darius, we want everyone just to pray to you. If anyone pray against to any other god, they should die. They're like, hey, that sounds pretty good.

I'll do that. Sure. But why do they pick prayer? Because we go back to one of our points.

Daniel prayed persistently, but look at what Daniel did. Verse ten. When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to a house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem.

He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before God to have open rebellion against the kingdom. Is that what it says? Is he trying to stand up and make a point against the king? No, it says, as he has done previously. See, Daniel was prepared for persecution.

He said, you know what? Yeah. You can accuse me that I'm faithfully praying to God. You can accuse me that I'm in the word.

You can accuse me that I will serve God, but your accusations will not stop me, no matter the cost. And Daniel didn't change what happened to him. The law around him changed, but he stayed consistent.

He says, I prayed before. Why would I change now? I need to pray. I need to pray persistently because I'm in the middle of the center of the capital of the world.

I need God's grace in my life. Law changed. He didn't change.

He stayed faithful. He stayed faithful to what God had for him. He was prepared for persecution.

Point number six. This is a big point. Daniel, chapter two.

We already looked at this. This was our prayer point. But notice Daniel, chapter two, verse 19.

God answered the prayer. Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in the vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belongs wisdom and might. He changes time and season. He removes the king and sets up kings.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals the deep and hidden things. He knows what is and what is in darkness, and the light dwells in him.

To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you. For you have made known to us the King's matter. What was Daniel very quick to do? It was to point out the power of God.

Now, this is kind of similar to proclaiming God, but what you acknowledge here, we saw in chapter six, you say, Daniel said, it's not me who delivered me from the lions. God delivered me from the lions. Here he says, It was God who gave me the understanding of the dreams over and over and over again.

Even Shadrach, those three guys, those names, even those guys, when they were delivered from the fire, even before the fire, they said, God can deliver us if he does. If he doesn't, great. Then afterwards they would say, it was God who delivered us.

They were quick to point out the power of God in their lives. Are you quick to acknowledge that and tell others, here's what God did in my life this week. God gave me an opportunity to share the Gospel.

God led me through reading his Word today, and I was encouraged in that that the speaker spoken. I was encouraged through that. That was a work of God that I don't know.

You just keep on going with how God works in your life today. You point it out and you give him glory for that. These guys were very quick to do that, to let the people know again.

Are they giving a testimony in church? Are they writing a little Facebook blog? Hey. Praise God. It's like, no, they're declaring this to the pagans.

They're telling them, here's what God did in my life. This is a practice that I tried to do when I was coaching in a public school in New Hampshire. I would try to point out the things God was doing when my players would ask me, hey, Coach, what'd you do this weekend? Well, here's what God did at church this week.

Here's what God showed me in his word this week. And why is that? I want the world to know God is still alive, he's still active, he's still working. And it is a great witnessing tool that here's what God has done, not just in the past, but here's what God is currently doing in my life today, pointing out the power of God in our lives, which also encourages us, I hope.

Point number seven. We're going to look at all these passages very quickly. We're just going to breeze through these because I hope you see, let's just read through these.

Daniel, chapter one, verse 21. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus. That's about 70 years plus.

Daniel, chapter two, verse 48 and 49 says that the King gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts and made him ruler over the whole provinces of Babylon, chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. Daniel made a request to the King, and he appointed Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego over the affairs of the kingdom of the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained the king's court.

Daniel, chapter three, verse 30 says, then the king promoted Shadrach Mishak, Abendigo in the province of Babylon. Chapter five, verse 29 says, then Belshazzar gave the command, and Daniel was clothed with purple and chain of gold that was put about his neck, and a proclamation was made about him that he should be the third rule in the kingdom. Chapter six, verse two.

Actually, verse one. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 sat traps to be throughout the whole kingdom and over them three high officials of whom Daniel was one of them. Chapter six, verse 28 says so this.

Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Now, this is not a prosperity gospel message here, okay? I'm not saying if you're faithful to God, you're going to get gold, you're going to get riches, you're going to be the ruler of the kingdom. But what you see here is that what does God do? He prospers us.

He grows us. If I put it into a New Testament mindset, we will bear fruit, we will grow. It will show that God is working in us.

But why is that? It's because we're purposing purity. And over and over and over again, you see in the life of Daniel and his three friends that as they served God and they lived for him, God blessed. And again, I'm not saying it's the riches, it's the wealth that he's blessing you with, but I'm just saying God blesses faithfulness.

Was Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego seeking these things? No, god gave them. It's God who decides what we get to have, what we don't have. And what does he ask of us? Is faithfulness? Are we faithful to him? So here are seven points to look for.

But as I said before, there's a bonus. One point number eight, a passion for people. There's different ones we can look at.

Let's go to Daniel chapter, chapter four. Look at verse 19 again. Daniel was kidnapped.

Most likely his family was murdered. He was taken to cross something like not Nebuchadnezzar. What is that called? Nebraska.

Same thing. He had to walk across Nebraska to get to this new place here, and he was brainwashed, tried to be brainwashed. He was persecuted.

There's just so much against him that you think will build up this bitterness against the Babylonians, right? But in Daniel chapter four, when Nebuchadnezzar has this dream and he has a dream about a tree that's cut down, it's a dream about himself. In Daniel, chapter four, verse 18, then Daniel was brought in to interpret it, whose name was Belshazzar, was dismayed for a while, and his thoughts alarmed him. The king answered and said, Belshazzar, let not the dream or the interpretation alarm you.

Belshazzar answered and said, my Lord, may the dream be for those who hate you, and his interpretation for your enemies. What? Daniel cared for nebuchadnezzar. Why? What did Nebuchadnezzar do for him? I mean, he did get promoted to the kingdom, but Nebuchadnezzar most likely killed his family, kidnapped him, brought him, was trying to brainwash him.

His life was threatened several times because of Nebuchadnezzar. But yet Daniel had a passion for people. You see that with Darius.

You see that with his friends earlier. But if you don't have a passion for people, how are you supposed to make an impact? The previous point, I think it was .2 or .3.

That says Proclaim God. Go back one chapter. Actually, two chapters.

Daniel. Chapter Two I lied. Daniel, chapter three.

There's just so many we could go to, you know Daniel, chapter three, verse 28. So Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego, they said, we will not bow. They proclaimed God.

And look at what happened in verse 28. Nebuchadnezzar answered, said, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego, who sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yield up their bodies rather than serve the worship any god except their own God. Therefore I make a decree, any people, nation or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego shall be torn limb to limb.

Ouch. And their houses shall be later ruined. For there is no other God who is able to rescue in this way.

You know what happens when you start taking a stand, proclaiming and pointing out the works of God. Even the pagans will proclaim God. So think about those around you, the people who are unsaved around you.

Do they speak highly of your God? Do they proclaim the glories of your God through your testimony? I think we can see here that there is a passion for people around them. And what happens? That as these people purpose purity in their lives, whoops let me go back one more. That as these guys purpose purity, they practice the plan, they proclaim God, that they pray persistently, they prepared for persecution, they point out the power of God.

God prospers them. But what happens? Even the pagans proclaim the glory of God, which is, I believe is the goal of the church. Go out and make disciples of all nations so that they can declare the glory of God, so that they too can worship our great God.

And we see through the testimony of these four young men, what did they do? Personally impacted those around them so that those around them could also serve the God that they served. Just a little material. The book that kind of inspired the study was The Daniel Dilemma.

It's written by a friend of mine, name is Rand Hummel. He's the director of a camp in New England. He wrote this for teens talking about how to stand strong in the midst of hard times.

Another book that I read. So the first book I fully endorsed. The second book I like 95% endorsed.

There's a couple of parts like, yeah, I would say a little different, but it was still a good book that follows the same concept, stomping out the darkness, how to share these truths. So just some little extra reading if you want to read more on this topic. But here's the plan.

Here's Daniel's plan, and I hope that as you meet with your friends, you'll read one chapter and you'll try to find one, two, maybe four of these seven points in the story and it will encourage you to say, hey, this is what they did. Let's practice it this way. Let's pray together.

And grow together too. All right, let's pray. Father, we're thankful for this example that you have given us.

Here are real guys, real young men who faithfully served you. And we get to look through their stories and see what did they do to be faithful towards you. Because, Lord, I believe that's what we want.

We want to be faithful. We want to serve you. So, Lord, help us to learn Daniel's plan, to practice it.

It's in your name I pray. Amen.

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