Daniel 1:1–21

Daniel  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  45:47
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Thank you Ms. Moe! Church, good morning. If you have your Bible’s please grab them and let’s head back to Daniel 1. If you don’t have your Bibles then there are some blue ones on the back table that are our gift to you or you can grab one of the Daniel scripture journals out in the lobby. If you’re like me and you struggle to mark up your Bible then those are a great tool to take notes with and something you can mark up.
I meant to do this last week, but forgot. I’d like to challenge you to include as part of your Bible reading the book of Daniel. We’re going to cover a chapter/week as we move forward, so if you want to just read chapter 2 of Daniel everyday next week I think you’ll come in with an entirely different perspective than you do when you haven’t read ahead. So, there’s some of your homework.
About 6 months ago one of the prayers I began to pray consistently is that God would grant me faith. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. As I prayed that what rolled around in the back of my mind was that I would grow in wisdom and knowledge; that I’d have biblical discernment. And that out of that would flow success in business. That we would have good crops because they were managed correctly and that we’d have financial success to pay our bills. I envisioned faith impacting the way I served my spouse and my kids and that because I grew deeper in faith that they all too would in turn grow deeper in faith. I hoped that as part of my faith growing deeper that I would preach more powerfully and effectively and that God would grow you in your adoration and affection for him and that we as a church would be better disciples of Jesus who make more disciples of Jesus. Part of that prayer of faith is that we’d see people come to the saving knowledge of Jesus. In fact, I’ve shared this with some of you, but part of that prayer is that we’d have the privilege of baptizing 25 people in 2025. All of this is what I was thinking when I asked God to give me faith.
Do you know what I wasn’t thinking? I wasn’t thinking that God pressing me and my family into faith would look like us having another kid. We are overjoyed and grateful, but this isn’t what I thought when I prayed for faith.
Now I don’t know what you think about when you think about having faith, but if you’ve made a few laps around the sun then you’ve probably started to realize that it doesn’t always look like what you thought it would. I’m sure for Daniel and his buddies they weren’t expecting their faith to land them enslaved and in the court of the oppressing king. In the midst of where they were it would’ve been really easy for them, and as we’ll see here in a minute, the temptation for them to either abandon their faith completely or to conform it into some distorted version of what God intended would’ve been extremely easy. But what Daniel 1 shows us, and what I think God is calling us to today, is to Trust God and live out your faith. Now, if you were here with us last week you might be going, that’s what last weeks main point was. Since we’re still in chapter 1 that hasn’t changed, but the application of it will look differently today than last week. So let’s read all of Daniel 1 this week and then pray and jump into it. Daniel 1
Daniel 1 ESV
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And 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. Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths 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. The 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. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And 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. 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.
This is God’s Word. Let’s pray.
There’s three callings I think from this text for us today.
Trust God where He calls you.
Trust God to equip you.
Trust God to enable you.
Let’s start at the top.

Trust God where he calls you.

Now last week we spent time covering the first two verses and seeing how we ended up where we were, so I’m not going to cover that today. If you’d like more of the historical information then last weeks sermon helps cover some of that; you can go back and listen to the podcast on our church web site.
What we know though just from the plain reading of the text is that Nebuchadnezzar has moved in and conquered Jerusalem. Now he’s completing his conquest by enslaving the next generation of leadership for Israel. He calls for his chief to bring back the best looking, smartest leaders who had strong interpersonal skills to Babylon so that they could be indoctrinated and assimilated into the Babylonian way of life.
Notice the seeming genius of Nebuchadnezzar. Two things: first, he sees that if there’s no leadership then there will be no rebellion, and second, if the leadership of Israel will learn to live, believe, behave and function as the Babylonians then their influence will eventually affect the generations to come.
So what does he do? He kidnaps those of royal lineage and nobility and then he educates them in literature, language, religion and worldview. And during that process he feeds them with food from his own table. In other words, they had the best meals prepared by the best chefs available.
But he doesn’t stop there. He also gives them a new name. The new name might sound like the cherry on top, but it’s really no small thing. In ancient cultures a name was more than just what sounded cool, it carried significant meaning. It was intended to be the core identity of a person.
Each of the characters that are introduced had names that in some form or fashion would communicate something about the God they served or point people towards Him. Now their Babylonian names point people towards the gods that appeared to have just conquered a new kingdom. It was the completion of their assimilation into this new land for the service of a new king.
Now top tier education with the finest meals one could have, and receiving a new name don’t sound like too rough of a captivity. But our friend David Ritchie was right in his comments on this text: “King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon didn’t kidnap them to humiliate them. His strategy was to give them pleasure and power in order to bend their loyalty towards himself and his empire.” Education, language, great food, and finally a new name was his method of assimilation and with all of those would come comfort, a sense of control, and approval from the king. What more could a guy ask for?
But doesn’t the world do the same thing to us today? It promises us a better life through what or how we eat or the way we think or the people we surround ourselves with. I was talking with JR Favela at CityLight this week and he was saying that we live in a neo-paganistic society. It tells us that truth is relative to us and our experience and who am I to challenge your experience? You can have and live your truth, and I can have an live my truth and as long as you don’t try to push yours on me. This version of society isn’t opposed to Christianity, it just doesn’t want you to push it on them.
Again, I think David Ritchie was right, he said, “we should not be afraid that the government will forcefully take away Christians’ right to worship God. The far greater fear is that no force would be necessary. The world would not need to suppress Christianity when many believers willing embrace a lifestyle indistinguishable from the world. Christianity would never need to become illegal if it simply became irrelevant.”
“Nebuchadnezzar didn’t want forced detainees. He wanted comfortable captives.” Feed em, educate em, show them a better way of life and give them an entirely new identity. There is nothing new under the sun. This same lie is still being perpetuated 2600 years later.
So this begs the question for us what are we allowing to be the primary influence of our identity and that of our children and friends? Are you listening to the world first and foremost? Or are you allowing the Word to shape you?
Now our temptation from this could be to entirely withdraw from the culture, and there are parts that we should, as we’ll see here in a second. We can look at culture and see how dark it looks.
In the moment, for these four teenagers and those who were kidnapped with them everything must have seemed pretty bleak. Where Scripture isn’t explicit I don’t like to assume, but it would make sense that during the siege of Jerusalem that these guys were praying for God’s deliverance. God’s deliverance just didn’t look like they thought it would. Remember what we saw last week back in verse 2? “And the Lord gave.” How did Nebuchadnezzar conquer Jerusalem? The Lord gave. How did God deliver these teenagers? Through the conquest of their homeland & the captivity of themselves right into the kings court.
Their captivity wasn’t unfortunate, nor was God not answering any of their previous prayers. It was God sovereignly working both for their good and the good of His peoples.
Sometimes our prayers of faith aren’t answered as we envisioned them. So what do we do in those moments when culture is calling for compromise and things seem dark? We trust where God has placed us & then we seek to use what influence He’s given us for the glory of His name. How then do we use that influence in a culture that rejects our God? Well that’s our second point:

Trust God to equip you for His mission.

Picking up in verse 8 Daniel resolved, he determined, that he would not defile himself. In other words, he resolved to remain pure. Now I think there’s a whole bunch of questions that come from this. Why did Daniel resolve to not defile himself, and specifically, why did he resolve to not eat the food or drink the wine offered by the King? I mean he was being indoctrinated with their education and their religious beliefs. He was taking on their name. Technically speaking, just his being there made him ceremonially unclean. One might even wonder, shouldn’t he have even resisted captivity in the first place? So what difference does a steak make?
There’s a number of different views on as to why Daniel chose the food to abstain from versus any of the other things, and just to be honest with you, almost all of them say we can’t be positive. However, I agree with Dr Davis. He said, “Babylon was simply smothering Daniel and his friends. Daniel may well have thought, “There is real danger here: I could get sucked up into this and neutered by it all!” He recognized that if Babylon [the world and its values] gets into you, the show is over. (Message of Daniel, 32) Daniel and his friends were forced to be in Babylon, but they would not let Babylon get into them.”
They had to draw the line somewhere. While they might be willing to accept some things of their surrounding culture, they realized that they couldn’t allow their culture to have all of them. So Daniel wisely chose that food was where he had to draw the line.
But to me, what’s amazing about Daniel’s resolve isn’t that he had resolve, but rather how his resolve was displayed. I don’t know what you think about when you think about resolve, but I think about grit. True Grit to be exact. While John Wayne is the star of the show he isn’t the one with true grit. No it was Maddie Ross—this fierce teenager who was bent on seeing her father’s murder brought to justice. She wasn’t going to rest till she saw him hanged and she wasn’t about to just turn ole Rooster Cogburn loose on the trail by himself. No, she was going along. But is that what resolve is supposed to look like? Fierce determination? Willingness to stand and fight no matter the cost? Is that what Daniel’s resolve looked like?
Well, let’s look at how Daniel’s resolve displayed itself and what it led to. Daniel’s resolve led him to approach the chief eunuch and to ask him no small question. You see if Daniel and his buddies didn’t pan out as they were supposed to then do you know who was in danger? It was his head that was on a platter. So Daniel humbly approaches this man and ASKS him. Ashepenaz doesn’t seem opposed to the idea, but just recognizes that the risk is too great. He doesn’t say no directly, but he also doesn’t say yes. As one commentator says, “Daniel doesn’t throw a religious hissy fit, blowing off about Babylon’s heavy-handedness and ‘insensitivity’. He simply looked around for the next possible step to take to see where that might land him. Daniel was not one of those people who believe that ‘firmness of principle always involves acting stubborn and pig-headed’. He realized he was fully under the Lord’s grace.”
So Daniel’s resolve led to him humbly asking and then in the way he responded he respected and even in a way submitted to authority by looking for a different option. His proposal of a 10 day test isn’t really just a test of a healthier better diet. The 10 day test is really a test of God. Daniel recognizes that they are where they are because God gave them there. So if that’s true then if their resolve honors God and lines up with His will, then God will honor them. What Daniel was doing with a ten day fast was displaying his faith and trusting in God to work.
What does God do? We roll back up to verse 9 and God sees Daniel’s resolve and God honors it. HE gave Daniel favor. Daniel had favor with both God & man. Ashepenaz was willing to hear Daniel and his proposal and then engage in the test. God gave Daniel success in the test. He proved to be in a better condition than those who were with him. But that success doesn’t just point to freedom in diet, what it really points towards is life. No one dies because of this risk.
Daniel’s resolve gave a platform for God’ power to be proven. This sets the stage for so much of what we see in the rest of the book. As God works miraculously through these four men what do those around them do? They see that Adonai is the true God and that all other gods fall short. But God’s power isn’t just displayed that after 10 days of being a vegetarian they look better. God gave them favor in verse 9 and in verse 17 God gave them the ability to learn & and discern truth. Their natural abilities became God empowered abilities. They were now 10 times better than the rest of those in Nebuchadnezzar’s court. Their God empowered abilities then opened the door for them to become Nebuchadnezzar’s right hand men. They received a status and position because of what God did in and through them. As another commentator says, “God is the giver in connection with their destiny, even when it does not appear so (v. 2), the giver in connection with their relationships, even when these are most threatening (v. 9), and the giver in connection with their character and abilities, even when these are under most pressure (v. 17). His involvement thus relativizes military power, political power, and the power of human insight.”
Now we can take this and go, so the moral of the story is that if we resolve not to defile ourselves then God will give us a hearing, grant life abundantly, display his power by empowering our gifts, and grant us status and position. I mean if so, how encouraging is that? But is that Daniel’s point here and is that always true? And if so, what is it that we aren’t supposed to defile ourselves with? What exactly in our context and our culture do we resolve to do or not to do?
We like to function in the world of absolutes, but unfortunately that’s not clear here. Daniel’s choice of food & drink as the thing to abstain from was based off wisdom. God gave Daniel wisdom so that he knew what lines he could and couldn’t draw so that he could still accomplish His mission. So how do we know where our resolve should fall? Well, if it’s not explicit in the Scriptures then what we need is wisdom. There are some indicatives, commands, instructions, that we find throughout the Bible that are explicitly clear. But sometimes we step into situations in which the application of those indicatives become relatively unclear.
I was trying to think of a good illustration to use as an example here, but really the buffet to choose from is so large and I don’t want to create any confusion it’s hard to land on any one thing. We could look in the political arena and go who should you vote for? This candidate stands for certain values that align closely with what I believe, but their actions and attitude don’t align with what I believe then what? Or step further into the political arena and think about war for a minute. We know murder is wrong, so should we ship weapons to our allies and trust that they’ll only be used for just war purposes and not murder so that our allies can accomplish their political ambitions? Or think about in the home for a minute…when and how do I discipline my children? What is the right discipline for the right moment? Or maybe education…should we put our kids in public school? Private school? Home school? Should my wife work or be a stay at home mom? What about personal? Should I become a vegetarian like Daniel? Should we abstain from alcohol? What about work? Should I claim this on my taxes or not? Does this go on this year or last years balance sheet? Do you see how in literally every arena of life we’re faced with some sort of challenge as to what we should or should not resolve to do?
And do you know what we’re at risk of? We’re at risk of either throwing a religious hissy fit so that when someone else doesn’t stand where we do that we’re repulsed and/or offended, or we’re at risk of neo-paganism: “live and let live”, right? You live your truth and I’ll live mine, just don’t force yours on me. So what is the middle way? Is there a middle way?
Well I think there’s two things that Daniel shows us that help provide some guidance. The first we’ve already covered—how was Daniel’s resolve displayed? Humbly. Submissively. Wisely. And in faith—dependently. When it comes to having resolve on an issue in your life the first thing we’ve got to do is be humble. Recognize our limitations and capacities. As we saw in 1 Peter, we need to submit to those in authority over us. Doesn’t mean we have to walk in disobedience; Daniel found a creative way forward. He walked with wisdom. And he stepped forward in faith. He knew that in order for Him to succeed God would have to show up. He depended on him. My old pastor, JD Greear once said, “If dependence is the goal, then weakness is the advantage.” So when it comes to your resolve does this describe you? Are you humble, and submissive, walking wisely and dependent on the Lord? There are some in the room who might need to repent from their stubbornness; and there are some in the room who might need to repent from their apathy.
If those are some guidelines for our resolve, I also think there are a few things from these verses that we can resolve. What is the underlying theme in this chapter? What did we look at last week and do we see 3 times in this chapter? God gave. Daniel is where he is and Daniel’s able to do what he does all because God gave. Do you know what you can resolve? You can resolve that even in the darkest of circumstances God is at work. You can resolve that even when things get really hard God will provide. You can resolve that even when He calls you to hard thing God will equip & empower. You can resolve that even when you feel like you are at your wits end that God will sustain & redeem because that’s what God does.
In fact that’s our 3rd and final point:

Trust God to sustain you

This chapter ends with Daniel 1:21
Daniel 1:21 ESV
And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.
The verse almost seems out of place on initial reading, but it’s there intentionally. You see Daniel 1:21 shows us that God sustains Daniel not just through the reign of Nebuchadnezzar or his son Belshazzar, but also into the reign of the Persian King Cyrus. Now who is King Cyrus?
Cyrus appears in Daniel 10 and he is the King that overthrows the Babylonian Empire. His way of ruling and reigning over the kingdom was vastly different than Nebuchadnezzar’s. Instead of bringing the captives to a new capitol and reeducating them he sent them back home to the land they came from. This is exactly what Jeremiah the prophet had foretold. With Cyrus’s reign the captivity of Israel was coming to an end. As John Goldingay points out this isn’t just historical narrative, it’s also prophetic. He says, ““Nebuchadnezzar” brings the day of Yahweh’s abandoning his people to darkness and wrath, a historical experience and at the same time a pointer to ultimate darkness and wrath. “Cyrus” suggests deliverance and freedom, restoration and rebuilding, the joy of going home. It, too, is a historical experience yet at the same time a pointer to the deliverance freedom, restoration, and joy of the End (cf. Isa 44:24–45:7).”
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