Winning in Exile

Intro

Go ahead and turn to your neighbor and say WELCOME BACK, I’M SO GLAD I’M SITTING NEXT TO YOU TONIGHT! Now, go ahead and turn to your other neighbor that you so RUDELY ignored and tell them that your new years resolution is “I’M GONNA SIT BY YOU MORE OFTEN!”

Now, I’m just curious friends, raise your hand if you’re a new years resolution kind of person…….

Now, I’ve admitted up here that I have a sugar addiction, like I’m a huge sweet tooth…and to start my year, one of my “resolutions”…is a paleo diet. Which means no sugar, no processed stuff…like it’s a whole new world for me…as of tonight I’m about a week and a half in and it…sucks! I kid you not, on day 3 I had a nightmare that I accidentally ate a cookie…Seriously, I woke up all stressed out about it…pray for me.

But I’ll tell you, it’s not the food I’m eating or the lack of sugar that’s the worst part…it’s how different it makes me feel, choosing this kind of lifestyle. When my staff team or my friends wanna go out for lunch…I’m the weird picky guy now, like I have to be cautious of everything I consume…Everone else is like, Chic-fil-a? And I’m like peoples organic??

That’s how it is! And as annoying as it is, I feel different, because I’m living differently.

And the reason I start there tonight is because it reminded me of this: It’s like the Christian thing to live differently. To stand out. To walk in the opposite direction of the world. To forsake certain things and embrace certain things that no one else will. To stand firm in the Truth and in the faith even when it seems like you’re the only one. And that’s because for the Christian, this world is not their home. The world, as it is today, is a foreign land.

“Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ.” (PHILIPPIANS 1:27)

The Christian is an exile, one who is separated from their native homeland. And the citzen of heaven, the believer in Christ…is called to live differently…because they belong in the Kingdom of heaven.

Over the next 4 weeks, we will be in a series called “How to Win at High School.” And throughout this series we’re going to look at a few headlines in the story of a man named Daniel, and his 3 friends…Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego…as they live as exiles in an enemy nation…

Content

Let’s open up God’s Word and make our way to Daniel…

Daniel 1:1–7 (CSB): In the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar, of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. 2 The Lord handed King Jehoiakim of Judah over to him, along with some of the vessels from the house of God. Nebuchadnezzar carried them to the land of Babylon,, to the house of his god, and put the vessels in the treasury of his god.

3 The king ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility—4 young men without any physical defect, good-looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive, and capable of serving in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the Chaldean language and literature. 5 The king assigned them daily provisions from the royal food and from the wine that he drank. They were to be trained for three years, and at the end of that time they were to attend the king., 6 Among them, from the Judahites, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. 7 The chief eunuch gave them names; he gave the name Belteshazzar to Daniel, Shadrach to Hananiah, Meshach to Mishael, and Abednego to Azariah.

Alright…so we have God’s chosen people, Israelites from the Kingdom of Judah…and then we have a guy with one of my favorite names in the Bible…King Nebuchadnezzar, the leader of one of the strongest and most powerful empires in history…he is the king of Babylon, who destroyed Jerusalem and took the Israelites into exile, where they began to assimilate the Jewish people into their own way of life… What that assimilation looks like is things like training them in their own language and culture, it looks like feeding them certain kinds of luxurious foods, and even looked like changing their names, which threatened to strip away their identity as God’s people. This is a place where anyone involved would be tempted to say…”God is far off…he’s not here.” Friends, this is exile.

And we can relate way more than we might think tonight…David Kinnaman, an author and researcher says that our generation is living in a place that he calls “Digital Babylon.” He writes this… “Ancient Babylon was the pagan-but-spiritual, hyperstimulated, multicultural, imperial crossroads that became the un-willing home of Judean exiles, including the prophet Daniel, in the sixth century BCE. But digital Babylon is not a physical place. It is the pagan-but-spiritual, hypersti ulated, multicultural, imperial crossroads that is the virtual home of every person with Wi-Fi, a data plan, or—for most of us—both.” Friends, in digital Babylon, it’s easy to see that we aren’t too far off from the realities we just read about in Daniel. In Digital Babylon…“where information (and any thing we could ever want or need) is instantly available at the godlike swipe of a finger, Almighty God has been squeezed to the margins. Those of us who long to keep him at the center of our lives constantly fight the centrifugal force of a world spinning us away from him.” I know I feel that. And for those of you who feel that too…

Let’s make a resolution, let’s start taking steps toward living lives that look different…

You see, I don’t want you to just survive high school, I want to see you thrive. Daniel didn’t just survive exile…he thrived!! And tonight’s message is titled “winning in exile” because if you want to win at high school…first, you need to learn to win in exile.

Trying to get comfortable in this place and just looking like everybody else in this world ultimately rids us of life to the fullest! Truthfully, we need to resolve to live differently…and tonight we’re going to see in the life of Daniel that if we want to live radically different…we need to consume cautiously. That’s tonight’s big idea. Consume cautiously…

Here’s how Daniel’s story continues…

Daniel 1:8–16 (CSB): Daniel determined that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or with the wine he drank. So he asked permission from the chief eunuch not to defile himself. 9 God had granted Daniel kindness and compassion from the chief eunuch, 10 yet he said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and drink. What if he sees your faces looking thinner than the other young men your age? You would endanger my life with the king.”

11 So Daniel said to the guard whom the chief eunuch had assigned to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 12 “Please test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then examine our appearance and the appearance of the young men who are eating the king’s food, and deal with your servants based on what you see.” 14 He agreed with them about this and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of ten days they looked better and healthier than all the young men who were eating the king’s food. 16 So the guard continued to remove their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables.

Now whenever I think the paleo diet sucks…I just gotta remind myself that it can’t be as bad as the Daniel fast. Veggies and water that’s it. I’ll pass. But…hey, Daniel…he resolves to live different. And he does this here by consuming cautiously.

And this goes so much deeper than food. First off, we know that God instructed His people, Israel, to abstain from eating certain kinds of food under the Mosaic law. It was just one of many ways that God called his people to live differently than the world, and to be set apart to demonstrate that they are God’s people. And in this circumstance, the food that Babylon was serving them was probably great food, but it certainly did not fit within God’s boundaries. For us today, we are free from these restrictions, and we don’t have to worry about eating certain foods, but we can understand from this moment…that we need to consume cautiously. Daniel draws the line in the sand and refuses the King’s food. He will not consume anything that leads him into denying God. For you and I, there are tons of things that we consume constantly…not with our mouths or our stomachs…but with our eyes, our minds, our hearts, our ears…and even those can be things that ultimately dishonor God and leads us into sin..and we need to draw the line in the sand too. We gotta be in Babylon without becoming bablyon. It seems that’s what Daniel and his friends realized…

And it’s my first point tonight…assimilation begins with consumption.

Daniel knows what they consume demonstrates what they believe about God, and whether they will live differently in this place of exile.

So it says Daniel determined…that he would not eat of the king’s food. In other translations…it says that he “resolved,” he made a resolution that he would not eat the king’s food. And in making this decision to live differently and to consume cautiously, he and his friends are actually protecting themselves from being caught up in the temptations of the culture. In many ways, the distinct in what they ate allowed them to remain distinct in their identity as God’s people…rather than being completely assimilated into Babylon.

And I love this part in Daniel’s story, because it leads us to evaluate our own lives, and the things that we are consuming in our own version of exile…is what we consume a key contributor to our separation from God…or our connection to God? Is your consumption leading to assimilation (becoming more like the world) or sanctification (becoming more like Jesus)? In a world where we have everything we could ever think of at the tap of a finger…can you live differently? Can you live like a citizen of heaven?

Digital Babylon…where we are today, feeds us a lot of things that look really good and satisfying on the outside in an attempt to assimilate us into a kind of living that is not consistent with Kingdom of God. Social media, pornography, you name it. We’re being fed. And what happens…is at some point, we just want to get a little taste of what the world is consuming. It starts small, and it starts early…these cravings, these desires…they begin to grow over time…at some point these things that we consume become our favorite meal…they become habits, they become something we depend on. It’s a slow process. But it’s happening…and we are the exiles. We’re the minority in a culture that doesn’t believe what we believe. I’ll prove it to you…I saw a study today that said people in our age range rank not recycling as more immoral than pornography usage. Assimilation begins with consumption. We gotta consume cautiously.

And friends, I need you to hear this: what you feed, it grows. If you feed a child, it grows. If you feed a plant, it grows…And that’s my second point…what you feed…grows. For all you note taker’s out there, you could also write down next to this point; What you starve, dies. What you starve, dies.

It’s no wonder why God has been pushed to the smallest margins of our lives while loneliness, discouragement, isolation, addictions and all kinds of ungodly things dominate our generation. Those things are the byproduct of consuming too much of whatever it is this world is offering. Too much time “connecting” on social media has resulted in people reportedly being twice as lonely and isolated as we were a decade ago. And struggles like these become worse and worse over time, because what you feed…it grows. There’s no such thing as “one last time.” Because that one last time is feeding into that struggle, and it grows.

The reality is, many Christians…we’ve given up a thriving relationship with God to get a lttle bit of that “King’s food.” And I don’t mean to say that lightly. If you’re coming in here carrying an addiction or a struggle with those or any other things…I want you to hear that God is not done with you. He loves you. He defeated sin and death to prove it…and in his love, we can see that when we indulge ourselves in the things of this world and in our own sinful desires, it’s going to hurt. Sripture says that we are actually opening up our souls to spiritual war. In 1 Peter 2 it says,

1 Peter 2:11–12 CSB

Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.

If what we feed grows…we also know that what we starve, dies. Peter says…abstain from sinful desires that wage ware against your soul. Kill them off. Stop feeding them… and we see in verse 12 it says that when we do that, people will notice. And they will see God’s goodness in your life and give him glory…because for once, in a world of broken and sinful kingdoms…they can get a glimpse of a different Kingdom…a Kingdom where Jesus reigns, and His people flourish. For myself, this has looked like giving some things up in order to live radically different. A friend and I made our smart phones into dumb phones. We’ve removed all social media, all internet access, and even each others app stores so that we can’t get those things back onto our phones on our own. Simply to say, we know what’s out there, we know what we’re vulnerable to, and we want to be determined in how we honor God with what we consume. To acknowledge that this world, and everything it has to offer, is nothing compared to a thriving relationship with God - in whose Kingdom I will spend eternity.

And it doesn’t completely remove the temptations, after all, we’re still in Babylon…but it’s a step in resolving to live differently, just like Daniel did.

And friends as we wrap up tonight, I just want to say that if this all challenges you tonight…if it makes you a little uncomfortable, then I did my job. Sometimes, this life often gets harder after we come to Jesus. Sometimes, you have to decide to live differently and stand firm when nobody else will. And like Daniel, we don’t know when we get to go home and escape this exile…

But the good news, and the hope in all of this: is that we won’t be in exile forever.

At the end of Daniel chapter 2, in verse 44, 600 years before Jesus showed up, Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar:

Daniel 2:44 (CSB): 44 “In the days of those kings, the God of the heavens will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and this kingdom will not be left to another people. It will crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever.

That’s good news.

Closer

In summary,

If you are going to thrive in high school, you must also thrive as an exile…and we can begin today by resolving to consume cautiously…

Remembering that…

assimilation begins with consumption

what you feed, grows…

I started tonight talking about new years resolutions. But I heard recently, that rather than having resolutions…which we all give up anyways…we should have new years solutions.

And I would encourage you, in small groups…talk through what your new years “solutions” might be.

What might you need to “starve?” in this season - maybe there’s something you know you need to give up like my friend and I with our phones…

What are some ways that you can feed your walk with the Lord? - make a plan to spend time with him…

I love you students. I’m praying this year is incredible.

LET’S PRAY.