The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E73 - Daniel and the Lions’ Den

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Hey, church family, if you got your Bible, if you've got your Bible, if we're back in the book of Daniel, chapter six. The two biggest, most well-known events that happened in the book of Daniel, Shaddaat Mishka and Abindigo, we did that yesterday, and then Daniel in the Lion's Den. So we're just going to jump right into that. We'll see a lot of parallels between the fiery furnace, but then I want to take it to another spot and give it a little context.

It says this, hey, please, Darius. So what has happened here is that Daniel resolved not to eat the king's food. God blesses him with incredible wisdom. Nebuchadnezzar is a little bit crazy. He has these weird dreams. Daniel interprets the dream. And at one point, Nebuchadnezzar's narcissism takes over and he turns into like a crazy person and he eats grass like an animal. I mean, it's kind of weird. And then at one point, he's, this event happens where if you've ever heard the phrase, the writing is on the wall that actually comes from the fifth chapter of Daniel. where God's hand shows up, and it basically says,

Nebuchadnezzar, you keep traveling down this path. Here's where it ends, and it ain't good. And so he doesn't read the writing on the wall. He keeps going down the pathway that he was on, and then he's dead, and a new king takes over. So, I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but like everything's going okay with this boss, and then that boss is gone, and now you've got a new boss.

And so the rules have changed. Well, that's kind of what happens to Daniel here. It says, and so it pleases, he's Darius, that's the new boss, to set over the kingdom, 120 setraps to be throughout the whole kingdom, and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom the satraps should give a count, so that the king might suffer no loss.

So you get this, this is their org chart. They got Darius the king, he's got three senior VPs, but here's what we can, here's what we can intuitively figure out, is that two of the guys are locals. They grew up in Babylon, and then, you know, Daniel's an outsider. That's kind of what's going on here. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps because an excellent spirit was on him.

And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. And then the high officials and the setraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom. He's just minded his business, doing a great job, because that's what believers ought to do. He's being elevated, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault because he was faithful. And no error or fault was found in him. And then these men said, we shall not found any grounds for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of His God.

So maybe there's some people at work, and they are trying to undermine you. That is not a new thing. It has been happening for four or five thousand years. And then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king, and they said to him, O King Darius, live forever. All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects, and the setraps, the counselors, the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction that whoever makes petition to any God or man for 30 days

except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. They are playing to the ego of this king. By the way, if you are in leadership, pay attention to people that work for you that always want to stroke your ego. What they want is something back. That's what these men want. Now, now, O king,

establish the injunction and sign the document so that it cannot be changed according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked, therefore the king signed the document and injunction. And when Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber opened towards Jerusalem.

Remember, that's where he used to live before Nebuchadnezzar took over and shipped him off to Babylon. He got down on his knees three times a day, and he prayed before his God giving thanks, as he had done previously. You see, he's basically, protesting the edict. And then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. And then they came near and said before the king concerning the injunction,

O king, did you not sign an injunction that anyone who makes petition to any God or man within 30 days except you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? And the king answered and said, the thing stands fast according to the law of the Medes and the Persians which cannot be revoked and then they answered and said before the king Daniel who is one of the exiles from Judah pays no attention to you O King or the injunction you have signed but makes his petition three times a day pay attention in America church we have been protected by the Bill of Rights as a church for a really really long time honestly I don't know how long I'm not going to speculate on to how long those protections will be there and won't be there and, you know, all of that.

Ultimately, our allegiance is not to a Bill of Rights. Our allegiance is to the giver of all life. His name is Jesus Christ. Regardless of what laws are passed, regardless of what edicts are passed, we bow to Jesus. That it is his law that we first and foremost are submitted to. And he has established government. he has established authorities, and we should be subject to those authorities as long as those

authorities don't, either one, require us to do something that God's law says don't do, or does not allow us to do something that God's law says we should do. So, this is what Daniel does. It says, here's the law. For 30 days, you can't pray to your God. Daniel, listen, he's bold and his faith. Because what he could have done is he could have gone into his prayer closet and locked all the doors and prayed some very intimate prayers. In fact, Jesus talks about that on the sermon on the mount.

But he doesn't. He opens the windows because he's saying, I'm not ashamed of my faith. And if it costs me in my life, so be it. There is more to this life than living and breathing. There's more to this life than living and dying. That Jesus himself is life. And so he disobeys and he gets in trouble. Verse 14, and then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed.

So it was not the king's idea to punish Daniel for this. It was the other two like senior VPs of Babylon that have trapped Daniel. And in essence, they've also trapped the king. So when the king heard these words, he was much distressed. And he set his mind to deliver Daniel. and he labored till the sun went down to rescue him, and then these men came by agreement to the king, and they said to the king,

know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and the Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed, and then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. And the king declared Daniel, may your God whom you serve continually deliver you. Now, is King Darius a God follower? He's not. Because he signed an edict that said, if anybody praised anybody other than me, then they will be killed. That is not a Christian. That's not a God follower. That's not a follower of Yahweh. He believed in the Ten Commandments,

the Word of God, any of that stuff. Here's what matters. Daniel, because of his faith, in his job for an unrighteous king, worked in such a... a way that he found favor in the eyes of the king. Christians, this is how we should work. If you're a teacher and you love Jesus and your principal is not, do you realize that you ought to work in such a way that you gain the respect and admiration of your principal? If you're a principal and you run a school and you love Jesus and none of your teachers do and the administration above you doesn't, you should work with certain. character and such integrity and such love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and faithfulness

and all the fruit of the spirit because against those things there's no law there's no law gets kindness there's no law gets joy there's no law against patient that because Jesus is in us we should conduct ourselves in such a way that people that don't believe us that that don't believe like us at all that they they're kind of for us because of the way we conduct ourselves this is what happens here you see because our battle is not against flesh and blood your battle is not against your boss. Your battle is not against the board that you report to. Your battle is not against your family.

But there is an enemy that is coming against us. It says, so the king says, may your God whom you serve continually deliver you. And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den. I'm familiar. And the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel

and when the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting no diversions were brought to him and sleep fled from him then at daybreak the king arose and he went in haste to the den of lions and as he came near to the den where Daniel was

he cried out in a tone of anguish the king is crying out in a tone of anguish towards Daniel because he does not want his own pagan idolatry to negatively impact Daniel. That's crazy. The king declared to Daniel, O Daniels, servant of the living God, has your God whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the lions,

that this pagan king is putting his hope in a God that he has yet to believe in. And then Daniel said to the king, O king, live forever. My God sent his angels and shut the lion's mouth, and they have not harmed me, because I was faithful. found blameless before him and also before you. Okay, I have done no harm. Then the king was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up from the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in his God. And then what happens next, I'm not going to read it, but what happens next is the king, this is how you know he's not fully

submitted to God. He takes the guys that accused Daniel and he throws them in and the lions eat them before they hit the ground. Now, sometimes the way this text is taught is really not good. And it's, if you have faith, and if you're a person of integrity, no matter what this world throws at you, then you will overcome and the mouths of lions will be shut. And so maybe the lions in your world are co-workers or unruly children or whatever it is. Well, the problem is that's not the gospel. You see, nowhere in the scriptures does the Bible promise that if we'll just follow Jesus that everything gets better. You've heard me say this a million times. We don't follow Jesus because he makes life better. We follow him because he's better than life. That he is the prize. Not the, even if Daniel gets

gobbled up by the lions, the prize is that in that gobbling, he gets God. That God is the one that we treasure above all the treasures of this world. That, that the Prince of Peace is the one that we hold in esteem over any position that we could be given here on this planet. If you go over to Hebrews chapter 11, there's a very famous chapter in Hebrews 11, and it's called, it's called like the chapter of faith. It's like the annals of faith. And over and over and over, Hebrews 11 gives examples in the Bible of men and women of faith. Hebrews 111 says, now faith is the assurance of things hope for and the conviction of things not seen. For by it, people of old received their commendation. By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God so that what

is seen was not made out of things that are visible. And then it starts with Abel. And it goes to Abraham and Moses. And it's just by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. The danger is, is when you read that, you begin to say, I don't know if I have got the faith of Daniel. I mean, Daniel put his life on the line for his prayer time. Man, I miss my prayer time because I can't get up on time. I miss my prayer time because I would rather turn on the news. I miss my prayer time because I'm more interested what's going on on Twitter

than I am what's going on with my Heavenly Father. So I don't know if I have this kind of faith. And sometimes we think if we get our faith meter up high enough, then God's going to give us all these cashier. and prizes, and it's going to make all the bad things go away. And honestly, the first bunch of examples in Hebrews chapter 11 sort of look that way, and then look what happens in verse 32 of Hebrews 11. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak, Samson, and Jephth, those, these are all judges from the book of judges, of David and Samuel

and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stop the mouths of lions. He's talking about Daniel. He says, I don't even have time in this chapter on faith to even talk about the fates of Daniel. And oftentimes, when we think about faith, we associate

it with everything going well. He says, I don't have time to talk about who, through faith, conquered kingdoms and forced justice, obtained promises, stop the mouths of lions, quench the power of fire. Shatter at me, she could have been to go.

escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight, women received back their dead by resurrection, and then it keeps going. It's not even a period. It's just a comma.

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were salt in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated,

of whom the world was not worthy, wondering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all of these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. the thing that God had provided was Jesus. He goes on to say, therefore, like some of these men by faith pushed back armies,

and some of these men by faith were overtaken by armies. For some of these men by faith, they shut the mouths of lions, and by fate some of them got eaten by the lions. Since therefore we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, like these for generations, these men and women who have gone before us, let us also lay aside every weight and sin, which cling so closely, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and the perfector of our faith.

You see, here's what this means, that the great prize of faith is not that God shows up miraculously in your circumstances and gives you the promotion, that you were the faithful, persecuted Christian in your office, and now you're the CEO of the whole thing. God may do that, and I hope he does. But real success is when you realize that by faith, Jesus is your greatest treasure, and that you treasure him above all the other treasures

that this world has to offer. That's the kind of faith that the Bible talks about. And when you have that kind of faith, you're untouchable. There's nothing this world can do to shut you down. There's no furnace they can throw you in. There's no den of lions they can tempt you with because you know that Jesus is more than a man. Father in heaven, a few thousand years later,

we thank you for the faith of Daniel. But more importantly, we thank you for your faithfulness. That you would never leave us, you will never forsake us. And though the temporary lions and fires of this world may get us, God, I praise you that that eternal prowling lion, his mouth has been shut at the cross. And that everlasting fire does not, does not, does not have the ability to touch any of your saints through the blood of Jesus. And we thank you for the gift of faith. We pray it in Jesus' name.