A Specific Devotion

Daniel and the Lions Den

Read Daniel 6:1-28

Daniel 6:1–28 NIV

It pleased Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was Daniel. The satraps were made accountable to them so that the king might not suffer loss. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally these men said, “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.” So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: “May King Darius live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lions’ den. Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” So King Darius put the decree in writing. Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree: “Did you not publish a decree that during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or human being except to you, Your Majesty, would be thrown into the lions’ den?” The king answered, “The decree stands—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” Then they said to the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, Your Majesty, or to the decree you put in writing. He still prays three times a day.” When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him. Then the men went as a group to King Darius and said to him, “Remember, Your Majesty, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed.” So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!” A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel’s situation might not be changed. Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?” Daniel answered, “May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.” The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God. At the king’s command, the men who had falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the lions’ den, along with their wives and children. And before they reached the floor of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones. Then King Darius wrote to all the nations and peoples of every language in all the earth: “May you prosper greatly! “I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. “For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.” So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

Let’s Pray.

So, this morning, we talked about fishing with the kids and being fishers of men. Y’all, know I love fishing, I haven’t been bashful in sharing that about myself. I love everything about fishing now – except for trolling deep sea fishing, that’s for the birds – but everything else about it is enjoyable. Even getting stuck by a hook. It hurts like heck when it happens, but it makes for a great story. And, at bottom of it all, that’s what I love the most about fishing. The stories. The ones that we hear when we’re out with our friends. The ones we share our selves. And, most of all, the ones we create while we’re out there on the water or on the bank.

I’ll admit that what made me fall in love with fishing are fishing stories. And we all know the stereotype about fishing stories and that stereotype – perhaps not all stereotypes – but that particular one, is true. And the funny thing is I think it comes from modesty. I think we genuinely try to round down, but after telling it enough times and remembering we were rounding down, we accidentally start rounding up because we want to round down and be modest, but we also don’t want to undersell ourselves so much that the entire story becomes null and void because now we’re talking about an average fish. So, we bump it up and that becomes the new modest number. Not intentionally… but it happens. 20 years down the road, that 3.5lb bass you caught out of the pond was a 7.5lb bass with a 3.5lb in its mouth with your lure stuck in it.

And I know this sounds like it has nothing to do with Daniel’s story for today, but I bring it up because – as I was thinking about it over the past two weeks – I realized that I couldn’t think of a single time that I’ve heard Daniel and the Lion’s Den preached in person over the course of my life. Now, I’m not saying it might not have happened, but I couldn’t think of single, memorable instance outside of a bible study or Sunday school setting. And as I was doing the research and looking around, it turns out that it is a story that is neglected by most because it seems too far into fiction for us to believe. It’s interesting, because we’ll preach the miracles of Jesus all day, but for a common man like Daniel, it becomes less of a story and too much of a “fishing story” for us to take it seriously. There are other stories in the Bible that will speak to that all the same, use those and avoid this difficult story to explain in the modern, rational era.

And they might be right. Maybe it is too difficult to preach rationally. I mean, if it was a 100% real story, it does seem that most likely Daniel would have been torn to shreds. I’ve read the history of gladiators, I know what those animals were treated like and trained to be. It’s hard to believe that those beasts would have just chilled all night with a threat and a meal like a man in their midst.

But it still brings up all of the deeper questions the story begs us to ask, doesn’t it? I mean, who amongst us hasn’t felt like we were sent into a lion’s den at some point in our lives? Maybe it was an actual, life and death situation like Daniel faced with those lions, or maybe its something that may seem trivialized by the story but is still just as real and just as terrifying and deadly to you as those lions were to Daniel. The story begs us to understand it through this lens, and to ask ourselves what set Daniel apart and what have we been called and empowered to in our own lives as well.

Because Daniel didn’t get here on his own. It wasn’t his own stubbornness or ignorance or even his own unfaithfulness that landed him in this lion’s den. Far more often it is one of the formers that lands us in our own lions’ dens than the latter, isn’t it?

But Daniel was different. And that difference -and the fantastical nature of the story – can cause us to overlook it from the pulpit and maybe in our own theologies as well. We attribute his difference to a divine destiny. That he was selected by God for a distinct and divine purpose, being instilled with a righteousness and faithful devotion that goes beyond any other human. But in the reality of the story of Daniel, it doesn’t say any of those things. It would be so much easier for us if it did, but it doesn’t say anything of the like. Daniel isn’t chosen. God doesn’t touch his lips or ordain him by prophecy.

No, it says that Daniel was handsome and young, and a Jewish captive and he was selected for his looks and his nationality along with three other boys to be a part of the court of Babylon. They were taken from their homes and from their upbringing. But the first thing we see about Daniel in chapter 1, it says that he chose not to defile himself by eating the food at the table. Hechose to honor the Lord God and to remember his Jewish faith.

When we think of Daniel, far too often we get it backwards and we lose the power of this testimony and faith. It wasn’t that Daniel was specifically chosen by God; it was that he specifically chose to devote himself to God. He devoted himself to God above all other things, just like his buddies who we’re going to talk about a little more next week.

He devoted himself to God, and he experienced the same thing that countless millions – that many of us here – have experienced: that as you draw closer to God, you feel his presence and you experience him more clearly. Daniel experienced God in dreams, he experienced him in the interpretation of others’ dreams. And his devotion took him to the highest of places. So high, in fact, that people wanted to bring him down. They wanted to bring him down and they didn’t see the strength and power his faith gave him; they only saw the weakness in it. They knew that Daniel would never break his devotion to God, so they used it against him.

And I don’t think that any of us are going to experience persecution to this degree in our lives. There are those around the world that this is a much more present text for, and we need to acknowledge that and consider it, but we all feel hurt when somebody ridicules our belief and our faith. Daniel experienced it here and in the face of the evil of the world, he continued to be drawn the one place that gave him peace – the Lord. And he knew that it would give his enemies exactly what they wanted, but Daniel remained devoted to the Lord that had given him everything. And here’s the crazy part – for us, that might seem logical because we believe in an afterlife where we experience our real reward in Christ for the eternity that is to come – but for Daniel, there was probably no such concept of afterlife. Those ideas didn’t start becoming more prevalent until around 200 BC, long after Daniel’s lifetime. He would have believed in a reward for faithfulness in this life, and punishment for sin. And a place in Shaol for eternity with Shaol being a waiting place for all souls to reside in. When you take that into consideration, his devotion gets upped to a level beyond what I think most of us can imagine. But, at 80 years old, Daniel still hadn’t lost his specific devotion to his Lord. Despite what was going to happen to him, he got down in front of his windows facing Jerusalem – like he always did – and prayed. He prayed openly, but only because his prayers were entirely private. They weren’t for show. He wasn’t doing this thing to be seen. He wasn’t one of the ones that Jesus would have called a hypocrite. He was fully devoted to a God that had shown him time and time again, that He was devoted to Daniel too. And he got down and he prayed even though it was going to cost him his life, not thinking of himself, but of who his God was and what he’d called him to do. Not about what the others thought, not about what his boss was going to think, not about what his government, his politics, or his king were going to think. He devoted himself to God because he cared about what his Creator thought of him. Above all else. He placed his loyalty and his trust in him, and he remained devoted to him.

And I don’t know what happened next y’all. I don’t know if Daniel was actually sealed up inside of a tomb with the lions for a night, or if he experienced something akin to what would happen 700 years later in the very city that Daniel was facing. If it was something closer to the lion’s den the Jesus faced of his accusers and those that wanted him dead no matter what it took – lies, deceit, injustice, persuasion, and downright evil. But, either way, isn’t it something we can understand. When we know how it ended for Jesus, don’t we see how the faith of Daniel and the reaction of the King whose hands could not persuade it would still fit?

Would the disciples not have praised God 1000-fold if Jesus had been released that night? And yet it was the devotion that Daneil showed by confidently walking into the lion’s den – and Jesus displaying his devotion as he confidently took the cross – that created to greatest reaction and the greatest reconciling to God that could be achieved.

For Daniel it was the King’s order proclaiming the power of YHWH to the people of Babylon that resounds the most in the story – the product of his steadfast faithfulness in the face of adversity. Redeemed from the den of the lions by the power of God for the glory of His Name.

For Jesus it would take more than just one night though. It would take three days. But on that third day the stone was rolled away and he, too walked from that place of death intact and full of life. It was by this act, his death and his resurrection, that all would know the glory and the grace of God’s love.

Each of these men are people we think of as being specifically ordained for a purpose, singled out in so fantastic a story that we could never amount to be like them. And, to an extent, we’re right. None of us can ever be Jesus because we all need Jesus and that’s kind of the point.

But we can be a Daniel. We can be a people who aren’t specifically chosen or called for anything. Many of us, probably most of us, don’t feel like we’ve been ordained by God for a special or miraculous task. But we all have the ability to choose a specific devotion that is unlike anything else we could ever be devoted to. A devotion to our Creator. And at the heart of that devotion lies a constant form of communication. This isn’t a new revelation for any of us – I don’t think – but it’s one that is important enough that we need to talk about it again and again. At the heart of Daniel’s devotion, at the heart of Daniel’s deliverance, at the climactic moment of terror and consequence, Daniel sought out the Lord in prayer. And those same things can be said about the life and devotion of Jesus. He sought God in moments of solitude and in moments of overwhelming fear and devastation. Prayer lies at the heart of a devoted life. And just like Daniel we will pray when it is easy. We will pray when it is hard. We will pray when it is joyful. And we will pray when we are facing death. And every single time, in the midst of that prayer, we will find the face of God and the peace that He offers.

This week, let us be a people who, in the face of the den of lions, we seek the Lord in prayer and find, in Him, our peace and our deliverance. In all things, let us rejoice, and in all things, let us pray.