Daniel 1

I went to grade school at a small private school that was all about concerts and programs that the kids put on. The one your 6th grade year was the big one. The older kids were the stars of the show.

My final year we were putting on Daniel and the Lions Den. It was my time to shine. I was sure I would get the role of Daniel. It required a lot of singing and that was my downfall. I could not sing and was not the star of the show as I dreamt. I was relegated to a lion. I still feel cheated but i have to move on.

If you grew up in or around church there are stories from this book many of us have heard many times. I thought Daniel was about some lions and if I have faith I can conquer my lions or something like that. The message of Daniel is not what I always thought it was. It is so much more than a day with Daniel with some lions or 3 boys in a fiery furnace whose names we cannot pronounce.

It is a message of hope for God's people in darks times where God seems to be far off or even defeated. It is a message of a resolve to Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength because no matter what King or Kingdom rules the day our God is behind the scenes ruling it all. It is a message of how to love God in a foreign land and find our mission there.

This is a book we need to learn truth from as much today as Gods people needed it 2700 years ago.

We are going to be in Daniel Chapter 1 today and look at 4 things here.

God Gives All Kings and Kingdoms

God Gives Our Everyday

What We Should Give In Return

The Trust That We Can

Verse 1 and 2 tell us our first point :

· God Gives All Kings and Kingdoms 1:1-2

1In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.

If you have a pen or are taking notes, I want you to underline the beginning of verse 2. The Lord Gave…God gave… this is the central theme Daniel wants to encourage his readers to see

We will see that behind all history it is God who gives it all... 3 times we see it in this opening chapter.

It is God who gives all things under the sun, kings and kingdoms, and our everyday every second mundane days.

David Helm says this of this key theme in Daniel, God gave”.

1. And God gave- a sentiment of comfort to bolster readers who find themselves waiting for the arrival of Gods Promises

2. And God gave- a balm in the midst of disquieting surroundings

3. And God gave – when everything seemed lost, when life seemed not worth living, God was yet working his purposes out

We do not have time to talk about what the fall of Jerusalem and the loss of political autonomy meant to the people of God.

There had been decades of warning from God, that we see in 2 Kings 23 and 24 for example.

A refusal to return in obedience to worship and mission, and one day the doors are kicked in and your sons are carried off never to be seen again and you are enslaved or worse

Your churches are destroyed no more worship of God

This is what the Babylonians did.

But it meant more than loss of a country as bad as that was...

What is more for the people of God there seemed to be an end to the promises of God

If you are a Christian and you don’t know the rest of the story this would worry you too. The messiah is coming from these people. If the line ends we are in trouble

This led so many in Jerusalem to look out at what had happened and feel like they had a God who failed to keep His promises.

YET, what Daniel wants us to see in this entire book is that God is the one who gives Kings and Kingdoms.

He did then and still today and when we follow the story to the end of the Bible we see God does and will forever keep his promises to Abraham and David

He sets up all kings and presidents and rulers.

Many needed this the last few months or so.

I realize my own sin in looking to a certain politician in charge to create the flourishing and purpose we long for.

Sometimes it’s good to have this world let us down because we are brought back to our need for God and our citizenship of heaven.

WHY ?

He does so to move history toward His end of New Creation

Of getting Jesus to us and getting us home

It is hard sometimes. Confusing at times. Times it looks like the bad guys are winning and there is no hope.

The book of Daniel is one of the clearest messages to Gods people then and today that God will not fail to keep his promises.

Salvation will come. Salvation has come. But it will come through suffering.

These were real people. With real hopes for their little boys, dreams for their daughters, loves, the promises of God to their fathers

Pslam 137 is written by Gods people during this time

It is a cry of Gods people:

It opens “By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and wept…”

The Psalm asks a few verses later “How can we sing the Lords Song on foreign soil”?

So do we today when we cannot see and cry out asking… What on earth is God doing?

We know 2 things he is doing for sure in this passage when God Gives Kings and Kingdoms

He is working despite the mess we make

God gave Jehoiakim it says in verse 1 because of decades of rebellion against God and His purposes.

Gods people had been and were saved and set apart, chosen and blessed to be missional people showing the nations the glory and love of God to draw them to restoration in God.

Instead they had become self centered non missional nationalistic and lazy and rebellious against God.

All the way back to Deuteronomy God made clear the consequences of rebellion because God loves His people and He knows His way is best.

Specifically we see in Deuteronomy, Moses and God warned they would be defeated in battle and deported out of the promised land

Yet in spite of this we know God was at work. The book of Jeremiah speaks to these exiles and listen to what he says

Jeremiah writes to these believers and encourages them with a vision God gave him listen to this from Jeremiah 24:1-10

After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem….and had brought them to Babylon, the LORD showed me this vision: behold, mtwo baskets of figs placed before the temple of the LORD. 2 One basket had very good figs, nlike first-ripe figs, but the other basket had overy bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. 3 And the LORD said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.”

4 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 5 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, pwhom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. 6 qI will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. rI will build them up, and not tear them down; sI will plant them, and not pluck them up. 7 tI will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people uand I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

Scripture is helping us to interpret scripture here and what we see is the upside down nature of how things appear.

God is working in spite of the nations rebellion to make a people loved by Him

Second we see that God was sending His people to the nations as they were supposed to go.

When verse 2 says that the pieces of value were taken from the temple to Babylon that was their way of saying that Babylon’s god was stronger than Israels God.

But what was truly happening was God's plan from the beginning of creation being accomplished

Danny Akin, my seminary president says that this was actually “a divine invasion of enemy territory”.

He is sending his best to the nations. He is making a people who love Him and know His will for them

Jeremiah is telling those in exile that it is actually them who God is with and working good for.

He is bringing good to His people and good to the city they are in...if they are faithful to God there.

He is bringing good to lost people that God longs to see saved.

So now we are introduced to Daniel and the three Jewish teenagers that God had been shaping for such as time as this.

In their lives we see the second point of this text…

· God rules over our every day 1:3-7

3Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal familya and of the nobility, 4youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. 5The king assigned them a daily portion of the 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 that time they were to stand before the king. 6Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. 7And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.

These were the best and the brightest, and the best looking.

THe idea from Babylons perspective is to siphon off the human resources of the land they conquered and assimilate them into the Babylonian way of life.

Isolated, alone, the world turned upside down, stripped of even their names they are tempted with the good life of the enemy.

But we see that the very description of these teenage boys says alot about the sovereign plan of God...in every detail of the life long before this horrible time.

We do not make ourselves.

It is important to look at when and where God sovereignly made you for His purposes.

He has been in control of every day as shaping you into what he made you for

This is true of the teenage boys we are introduced to here in Daniel 1

Trained most likely in the time of Josiah the last good godly king in Israel , God had been in control of every day in these teenagers' lives.

Under Josiah’s reforms they were prepared as young boys to live on radical mission faithfully in unimaginable hardship.

They were given the best God centered education. All given by God in His plan.

What Daniel received more than anything was a worldview that defined everything for Him.

Here is a good definition of worldview for us, It comes from James Olthuis:

‘Ones worldview is perhaps best reflected by ones answers to the ultimate questions of life: Who am I?, Why am I here?, Where am I going? What is life about?, Is there a god?, How can I be happy?, What are good and evil? What is wrong with the world? How can things be made right?”

Gods truth answered every one of these questions for Daniel. And it should for us if we are to live and flourish for our good and Gods glory in our foreign land.

Daniel had an unshakable God centered worldview.

WE see in verses 1 and 2 that God is the God of Kings, Kingdoms, Presidents, Nations, and all history. He is the mover of history for his purposes.

But we see that our great and mighty God is just as active and concerned with the little details of His people. Even the day to day of some teenage boys.

Daniel had as verse 4 says wisdom, knowledge, and perception among other things and this is Gods hand that Daniel sees behind it all.

He had the eyes to see the spiritual battle at hand in every moment of every day.

Daniel knew that nothing was neutral.

The small in the mundane, such as what to eat, opened the door to crushing consequences.

The small slide in to what the reformer Heinrich Bullinger called “sweet poison”.

Not only did Daniel know what he believed we see how much he believed it. He was willing to die for it.

The great missionary hero Hudson Taylor said “unless there is the element of extreme risk in our exploits for God , there is no need for faith”.

Daniel was wise to the assimilation to the world taking place around him. He was about to take extreme steps in wisdom to protect and not compromise. Because the God who saved us and made us deserves this from us. This is our third point...we see

· What we should give Him - 1:8-16

8But 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. 9And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, 10and 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.” 11Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 12“Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13Then 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.” 14So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. 15At 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. 16So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

We should give Him our love

What we should give God before and above all service or actions is our love.

Daniel and the 3 who are faithful with him are never given outcomes before they are obedient to GOd when it will cost them their lives. They are not in it for anything other than to love God.

Look at Verse 8 because it tells us everything: But Daniel Resolved that he would not defile himself…

Remember how Jeremiah was shown to encourage these exiles. That they were who god was for not those left behind.

That God was working to make them pure lovers of Himself.

God is not looking for fair weather followers. He is looking for those who will love Him as ultimate.

The issue wasn't the food. It was the heart. What would be love as ultimate

What we can learn is that we all view something as ultimate.

Philosopher James Smith summarizes us well when he says:

“To be human is to have a heart. You can’t Not love. SO the question isn’t whether you will love something as Ultimate; the question is what you will love as ultimate. You are what you love”

Daniel was wise to how giving in was going to enslave him.

Somehow he knew it was the one place he had to draw the line or his loves would change and he resolved and never looked back, in incredible ways, and God honored this man more than most in human history.

We aren't sure why he drew his line here but there are several reasons to see.

It could have broke the food laws of leviticus and defiled them by the kind

It could be that sharing a meal with the King of a country was a sign of assimilation and covenant

It could be the use of the food in sacrifice to idols that made it defiling.

I do know this...it was not to give us a new diet as some have made books off of. That misses the entire point of this Book.

His formative time as a young boy learning GOds law and story of reality prepared him.

AND THESE WERE TEENAGE BOYS: Teenagers DO NOT Beleive the lie of this culture that you need to use the teenage years of your life to be true to yourself, just live in hookup culture...Answer the deep questions of the heart with the gospel get lost in a chase of Gods mission in the world and you will live an epic life you can’t imagine.

There were many other exiled people in the University of Babylon Daniel found himself in. All it seems they had given themselves wholly to the process of assimilation the plan of the Babylonians. All it seems except a few.

When the exile began to end most of the people never left Babylon. They were comfortable leaving the God that saved them.

Imagine the ridicule i am sure Daniel got from the other exiles. This is a teenager. He is standing wisely for his convictions and will not defile himself. He will not give in all the way because he will never come back.

The comfort will numb him or his conscience will devour him. Either way he will be useless.

The Babylonians were fine with waiting. IN fact it was their desired way of wearing down those they intended to re-indoctrinate. The enemy is no different today. A slow unnoticed in the moment taste of the goodlife obedience keeps you from in the moment. Just a meal? The enemy of your soul is fine with a slow drift for you as much as he was for Daniel.

Remember we saw in the previous passage who these boys were and they Resolved here to not conform

But here again we see it is God who gave…

2. We see that we are to give Him our work in the place God has us.

Jeremiah again wrote concerning Gods plan for the exiles in listen to Jeremiah 29:7 on how to sing again and see God at work. This is how they are to live in a world not there own…

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Gods people needed some examples of how to “Sing the songs of the Lord again in a foreign land”.

They needed to hear that they had a mission still and were not forgotten.

They had work to do in Babylon. That work was to as Jeremiah said “ be at work for the welfare of the city, pray for it, and in it they would see God move on behalf of His people.

We can so easily believe that we have to do the big things like the lions den moments we all know from Daniel to be faithful to GOd.

This was simply obedience over the law God gave and the food they ate. These 4 teenage boys set their hearts on Gods Kingdom and wouldnt lose who they were.

This is conjecture, just my own thought not in the bible, but i can imagine Daniel watching all the other young guys brought in fom exile.

Shown the good life. Babylon was an ancient wonder of the world because of its gardens and levels of hanging gardens. So many would have given themselves over to the tactic of the enemy to forget who they were and love the good life in Babylon.

Surely Daniel looked around saw the others giving in and drew his line to not lose who he was.

As we saw in verse 7 they were given Babylonian names.

We cannot miss how important this is.

All 4 of their Hebrew names meant in one way or another “you are God’s Child”. They could look at their name on dark days back home and always have a true north to return too. They could always know who they were.

Now the enemy was trying even by name and food to tell them a lie of who they were and whose they were.

Daniel would not forget whose he was.

God gave Him wisdom to see even when it came to food, the work of the enemy behind it to slowly corrupt, change the answers they had to lifes greatest questions, and confuse them as to who they are.

What GOd wants is obedience and our Love n the mundane of everyday life. That is where faith and a relationship With God like Daniels comes from.

IN HIs whole life over 90 years we read in this book there are only 9 events really , 9-12 days or so of 90 years recorded in the bible.

It is his call to faithfulness in Babylon, to work for its good as Jeremiah called them too, it was in his use of his position and profession to wrok for the flourishing of his place that i want us to be like. It's not the lion den, it's the other thousand of everyday uncompromising faithfulness that i want us to copy.

Lastly we see the 4th point this text has for us.. the hope we can have

· The Hope We Can Have 1:17-21

17As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. 18At 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. 19And 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. 20And 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. 21And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.

For the third time in this first chapter we see that it again is God who gave…

See one more time that it is God who gave in verse 17

David Helm says this of verse 17:

“God gave in verse 17 is used there to inspire commitment to remain connected to the world. Even when we are in a world run by ungodly rulers, we are not to run away from it and refuse to engage with it. In fact as we engage, we might even find that we are more useful, both to the world and to God”

Because as we saw in the previous passage..we have work to do for the Lord out of love for Him.

‘8We see that the boys in Babylon remain engaged with the foreign land and in it find a purpose for Gods mission they never could have had in Jerusalem.

You can summarize the entire chapter here in this Do what you are supposed to do and let God Be God

So often and rightly so we hear that there are consequences for disobedience every parent says this and all of know it

But Don’t underestimate the consequences of obedience !!!!

GOd has them strategically positioned.

As we saw this is an invasion of God into enemy territory and it has unimaginable consequences for the Mission of God to save the nations.

Quickly here is 2 of them most noted in the bible.

This very King Nebuchadnezar, at the end of his time in the book leaves history praising God. That is because of the mission Daniel saw himself in- If you get the King you get the Nation… and that is what God did.

In the birth of Jesus it is wise men from this very foreign land long after Daniel is gone and Babylon is destroyed that come to Jesus. Trained in the same astronomy the 4 learned here at Babylon university they saw a star event that signaled a King was born, but they knew the Bible because of faithful exiles they knew the prophecy of Micah 5:2 that this King would come from Bethlehem...and God sent the Nations to worship Jesus in these 3 wise men because of the faithful engagement of culture by faithful uncompromising exiles. Generational impact.

We cannot miss this today . God has a niche for you. You have a destiny and purpose in the mission of God. Right here in this culture.

It may not be the president or congress you want.

If it was you would still have the same marching orders from your King

Right now this is the government God gave. And if we learn from Daniel to engage it and not withdraw from it or bad mouth it but to pray for it that they would be saved and work for its good we will find what we were made to do in this life.

The end of Chapter one says Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus. This means chapter one covers 70 plus years. Daniel is an old man when this overview and introduction ends. He will zoom in on powerful events from the younger years until he is a 90-year-old man toward the end when he is thrown to the lions.

When we are faithful we can Trust that God’s plan for His Glory will not be stopped. WE get to be a part of His Mission.

Remember we saw that this looked like the end of the line for the Promises of A Savior, a land, a King to rule forever… but God was behind it all in control

There is one person, that these boys from Babylon point too. The one who came once and for all to bring the exiles home.

David Helm again says this:

“In time Jesus himself would represent Israel as the one the Lord gave over to earthly powers, as the one to whom God gave favor among men, and as the one most able to be useful in and to the world. Ultimately He will bring a final end to the exile and damage our sin continues to create. “

Jesus takes their very description in Luke 2:52 favor among men and God,

He like these 4 exiles before Him was unmatched in wisdom as a young boy reading from Isaiah.in the synagogue as we see in Luke 4:17

Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise of ultimate restoration God made to us His people. He was faithful out of love to God unto death.

We can make a huge mistake in reading our bible when we draw a line from the character we are reading to ourselves. In this case we can go from Daniel to us.

What we need to do first is to draw from the character to Jesus in Daniel’s case, and then see the implication for us. Because we will see later we are more like King Nebuchadnezzar than we know.

Look to Jesus the faithful exile who for the joy set before him endured His exile in love of God the father

Never compromised

ANd received the ultimate crown and the kingdom that will never end.