Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We live in a constant pressure cooker of a world.

People, the media pressure us as believers to conform to their ways of thinking about issues such as same sex marriage, transgenderism, homosexuality, sexual immorality of all sorts, even things like politics, socialism, social justice and many other things.

What issues have you faced or have been brought to your attention and you said to yourself, “what does the Bible have to say about that?”

With all the pressures put on Christians today in the workplace to conform to their idea of what is norm, what is a Christian to do?

How can you resist the pressure to be squeezed into the mold of the world?

I think of

I love what Warren Wiersbe says, “conformers are people whose lives are controlled by pressure from without, but ‘transformers’ are people whose lives are controlled by power from within.”

When I became a believer I was in the Marine Corps.

You’ll not meet a greater group of foul mouthed, ungodly people like the marines I served with.

It is not that the marines are bad, I don’t mean that at all.

In fact, after my transfer to Camp Lejeune I met alot Christian marines.

They made up the church we attended.

Nevertheless, it was challenging to be a Christian amid a military branch like that.

How did Sharon and I do it?

Well, we stayed connected to our church.

I didn’t hang around the men in my unit after hours.

We fellowshipped with other believers in the church.

We kept in the Word, in prayer.

I personally was totally committed to the Lord.

In my mind there was no way that the marines were going to get inside me and move me away from the Lord.

God was in me, transforming me.

He had me.

Thankfully, we have a book like Daniel in which we see this problem played out for us.

Here are four teenagers who are going to transform the world of a powerful ruler such as King Nebuchadnezzar and show a captive people how to live valiantly as God’s people amid a world steeped in cruel, ungodly, immorality, pagan ritual , ripe in greed and power and pride.

This fits right into our problem.

We can learn from these teens how to best honor God while at the same time not dishonoring those in the world around us.

Thankfully, we have a book like Daniel in which we see this problem played out for us.

Here are four teenagers who are going to transform the world of a powerful ruler such as King Nebuchadnezzar and show a captive people how to live valiantly as God’s people amid a world steeped in cruel, ungodly, immorality, pagan ritual , ripe in greed and power and pride.

This fits right into our problem.

We can learn from these teens how to best honor God while at the same time not dishonoring those in the world around us.

I am utterly amazed that these four teens could turn this world upside down as they did.

I mean this book is written for us to read and study.

That should say something.

I. Their heart belonged to God, v.8a

II.

They were humble before the authorities, v.8b-16

III.

God gave them special abilities, v.17

IV.

God exalted them before the king, v.18-21

I. Their heart belonged to God, v.8a

Daniel put into his heart to not defile himself.

Daniel had committed himself to live for the Lord.

He realized that he belonged to God and wanted to honor and glorify him.

It is clear that he loved the Lord and trusted him.

This doesn’t change as he grows older either, In we get a glimpse of Daniel’s heart once again as the angel testifies that he/Daniel had set his “heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God.” Daniel’s heart was bent toward the Lord determined to love the Lord with all his heart mind body and soul.

He was a living model of what it means to live out the Shema of Israel, in

Because he knew he belonged to God he knew that he had to live a certain way in order to please the one who held his heart.

And so he determined not to defile himself.

As did his three companions.

The word defile - gael means to abhor or loathe in Aramaic, from the idea of being polluted The pollution specified by the verb is due to the blood of murder (; ), the blood of vengeance (), or by sin in general (; ).

The word is used of the ceremonial pollution of imperfect sacrifices (, ), of the pagan king’s diet (), and of the uncertain lineage of the priests after the exile (; ).

Thus the pollution specified is from any breach of moral or ceremonial law. 1

1 Harris, R. L. (1999).

301 גָּאַל.

R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.),

Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 145).

Chicago: Moody Press.

He sees eating the kings food as some sort defiling of him.

It seems most likely due to the possibility that the meat would have been offered to idols whereas the vegetables would not have been.

Thinking on Leviticus, for a Jew to eat meat it would have had to been offered to the Lord in a peace offering format.

This would not have been possible here.

As well as the idea of the fat and/or blood being part of the pagan diet.

But that is just conjecture on my part.

Also forbade them from eating flesh offered to pagan idols.

The word delicacies/portion -patbag is a persian loan word that means to food delicacies, things that would have only made their way to the kings table.

The book itself provides the needed clue in 11:26, where the rare word pat bag recurs: ‘Even those who eat his rich food shall be his undoing.’

By eastern standards to share a meal was to commit oneself to friendship; it was of covenant significance (; ; ; cf. ).

Those who had thus committed themselves to allegiance accepted an obligation of loyalty to the king.

It would seem that Daniel rejected this symbol of dependence on the king because he wished to be free to fulfil his primary obligations to the God he served.

The defilement he feared was not so much a ritual as a moral defilement, arising from the subtle flattery of gifts and favours which entailed hidden implications of loyal support, however dubious the king’s future policies might prove to be.1

1 Baldwin, J. G. (1978).

Daniel: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol.

23, p. 92).

Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

The wine for drink was part of that and whether the inebriating kind either way anything that was connected to the king’s menu apart from the vegetables was viewed by Daniel as defiling/loathsome/abhorrent to him.

Jew were not to drink “strong drink” ; speaks of woe to those who rise early to go after strong drink.

Jews diluted their wine, Babylonians did not.

I find this very fascinating that these four teens were so committed to the Lord they were not going to allow themselves to even be tempted to turn away from the Lord.

They didn’t want the alcohol, nor the food they just didn’t want to go that route.

I think the ultimate determiner here is that Daniel recognized the truth of “man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.”

He determined to be faithful to the Lord, by obedience to the Law.

So determining in his heart that he did not want to be defiled he has to speak to the prince of the chamberlains/ashpenaz that he would not defile himself, (with the kings portion or wine).

IN other words, here is this teenage young man who is a captive in another country, under the authority of a probably much older man who had power over him to do good or bad, to make it easy or hard.

He could probably have made it hard enough that he could have been killed or imprisoned.

This was a courageous act: 1. danger of insulting the king; 2. pressure from peers as different than the rest; 3. could jeopardize their advancement; 4. the quality of the food would have been the best; 5. they were 900 miles from home the temptation to be unfaithful would have been strong; 6. the idea that God had abandoned them would have given reason to become bitter and turn away from God.

However, none of those possibilities registered with Daniel enough to compel him to cave in to the pagan lifestyle and defile himself.

He was willing to risk his comfort, his very life in order to maintain his walk with the Lord.

This as we know from reading the rest of Daniel was his way. it was also the way of his 3 friends.

They prove it later on.

Their trust was in the Lord no matter what happened to them.

They belonged to Him and were not going to let go of that.

This leads us to item.

The fact that they knew God had them, they were willing to humble themselves before the Lord and His authorities.

II.

They were humble before their authorities, v.8b-16

Notice what it says in v.9 This is key: God gave them favor and tender love.

Those words are chesed loyal love, grace, lovingkindness and raham- which refers to compassion.

Truly God worked this out, but it wasn’t that God just supernaturally did this against any conduct of the four.

No, See how they approached and humbled themselves before those in authority?