Today on Summit Life with JD Greer. Do you want to know that you're going to maintain your confession of faith in a hostile environment? I can predict all of that. I can predict it based on what you're doing now. Because what you do then is determined by what you're doing now.
Courage is not conjured up in the heat of the moment, courage comes from a consistency in the prayer clause. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and apologist JD Greer. I'm Molly Vitovich.
Okay, so let's start with the obvious question based on our teaching yesterday here on the program. What exactly was it that gave Daniel so much courage in the lion's den? And is there a way to have that same courage in our own lives right now? Today, Pastor JD finishes up his message titled, Courage is a Habit, by sharing with us the source of Daniel's confidence, or rather in whom Daniel's confidence was placed.
So grab your Bible and turn to Daniel chapter 6. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Daniel Prays and of course The other wise men see this.
So they run to the king, scarcely able to contain their excitement. Verse 12. Verse 12, like, you know, king, we hate. I mean, I mean, king, we just hate to tell you this. But after you signed that irrevocable edict, We all saw Daniel pray, and we all just happened to be on the balcony right across from his house.
Sadly, King, you know, you know the law of the Medes and the Persians cannot be changed.
So we've prepared the lines right this way, sir. Darius, of course, sees right through their ruse immediately. And he's pretty upset about it because he liked Daniel so much, but he's also bound by this ridiculous custom.
So he feels like he has no choice but to throw Daniel in the lion's den. Verse 16, so the king gave the order. The king said to Daniel, May your God, whom you continually serve, rescue you. A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den. The king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the signet rings of his nobles so that nothing in regard to Daniel could be changed.
Then the king went back to his palace and spent the night fasting. No diversions were brought to him. He turned off his Netflix account, put away his Xbox, and... He couldn't sleep. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lion's den.
When he reached the den, he cried out in anguish to Daniel, Daniel! Daniel, servant of the living God. Has your God, whom you continually serve, been able to rescue you from the lions? Then Daniel spoke with the king, Oh, may the king live forever. My God has sent his angel and shut the lion's mouths so they have not harmed me.
For I was found innocent before him. Daniel's down there peacefully taking a catnap with all those lions like he's snuggled up in a cadre of kittens. You know, it strikes me when I read this story that literally everybody else in this story was up the whole night except for Daniel. The jealous wise men are up all night partying, celebrating. The king was up all night worrying.
Daniel's friends were up all night praying. The angel was up all night protecting. Daniel's the only one who got a good night's sleep. When the king ordered the stone rolled away from the den the next morning, there's Daniel snuggled up peacefully with a book, reading between the lions. Oh.
Hmm? Verse 23, the king was overjoyed. and gave orders to take Daniel out of the den. When Daniel was brought up from the den, He was found to be unharmed because Make sure you get this. Make sure you underline this far.
Because he trusted in his God. Hey, why does the text say that God saved Daniel like this? Because he was special or because he was elected or foreordained or predestined.
Now the text says it happened for one reason. And that one reason was because Daniel trusted in his God. And the reason I point that out is because that means you can look for this same kind of providential protection in your life if you trust in God and pray to him like Daniel did. That didn't mean that bad things will never happen to you. It just means that God will ultimately deliver you through them all.
just like he did for Daniel. Verse 24, then the king gave the command. Those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and thrown into the lion's den. They. their children and their wives.
They had not reached the bottom of the den before the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones. Why does the text mention that the lions ate them before their bodies even reached the bottom?
Well, that was just in case you thought that maybe the lions had not eaten Daniel because they were full. Clearly, he's trying to show you they were starving. Let's just acknowledge, if we will, that last part, especially with the wives and the children being included in this punishment, that's really, really hard to read. It feels unfair and cruel. And it was.
The Bible is certainly not condoning this. In fact, in the book of Ezekiel, again, who's another contemporary of Daniel's, in the book of Ezekiel, God explicitly condemns this kind of cruelty where the children are punished for the sins of their parents. But this was common in ancient times. Kings would not just kill their enemies, but they would kill everybody in their enemy's family, lest the kids grow up to try to avenge their parents. These were vicious times.
And women and children were often the victims of this viciousness and brutality, but the Bible is certainly not condoning it. Read this as descriptive, not prescriptive. Verse 25, then King Darius wrote to those of every people, nation, and language, another key phrase you should underline: on the whole earth, may your prosperity abound. I issue a decree that in all my royal dominion, people must tremble in fear before the God of Daniel. For he is the living God and he endures forever.
His kingdom will never be destroyed. His dominion has no end. He rescues and delivers. He performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth, for he has saved Daniel from the power of the lions. This chapter started with a prohibition on prayer, and it ends with a pagan king preaching a sermon about God's providential protection.
And it's actually a pretty good little mini-sermon. Darius declares, let me walk you back through it real quick. Darius declares that God is global. He's not just the God of Israel or the God of Babylon. He's the God of all peoples, nations, and languages and all the earth.
contrary to what Babylonians believe. And contrary to what people believe today, he's not a tribal deity where you got your God and I got mine. This is not a God about whom you can say, well, I got my God, you got yours, you can have your truth, I'll have my truth. There is one God and one truth for all people in all times and all places. By the way, One of the dumbest phrases in our culture is, this is my truth.
There's no such thing as your truth. Truth is not private, there's the truth. And we conform our lives to it, not conform it to us. Secondly, Darius says this: God is personal. He is the living God.
He's not like those Babylonian gods that neither speak nor relate to humans, gods that you got to carry about from place to place and leave food in front of because they can't feed themselves. The true God, he said, is a living, active, speaking God. Verse 26: He is eternal. He endures forever, he says. It's God, not the king, who lives forever.
He's sovereign. His kingdom will never be destroyed. He's faithful, he delivers and rescues his people. He's imminent. King Darius says he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.
Imminent is a word that means that he is close by and engaged. Not far away and uninterested. This is not a God who is sitting above the heavens, uninvolved. This is a God actively at work in the world today, actively pursuing you, actively working in your life right now if you're looking for it. Finally, Darius says he's the Savior.
He rescued, he saved Daniel. This is a God who didn't leave his people in a dark pit to perish. This is a God ready to help all those who call on him, who is with you in the pit and will bring you out of the pit. Daniel is the book in the Bible where we see amazing sermons preached by formerly pagan kings. And how do they learn these things, y'all?
Not by reading books. They learn them as Daniel and his friends live with consistency and courage in front of them. And y'all, that's the whole point of the book of Daniel. This is what God promises will happen around us if we live like they did. Listen, Babylon is not a place for spiritual weaklings.
It will chew you up and spit you out. In Daniel's case, literally. But for those who live with wisdom, for those who live with consistency and courage, they will, remember our key verse, Daniel 12:3, they will shine like the brightness of the heavens above, they will shine like the stars forever and ever.
So Daniel verse 28, so Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius. And then the reign of Cyrus the Persian, who reigned after him. There are two things from this story that I want to leave you with, okay? First, the first thing I want to leave you with is the courage in the lion's den. comes from consistency in the prayer closet.
It's like I said. Daniel did not summon up courage the moment he was thrown in the lion's den. Daniel's courage was the result of years and years of small, faithful, mostly unknown acts of obedience. It was the fruit of patterns he had laid down for a lifetime. I am not a prophet.
But if you will let me make a prophecy that I would say you could take to the bank If you wait until the hour of trial to decide what you're going to do in the moment of trial, you will fail. Do you want to know? Do you want to know that you're going to have the courage to stand when everybody around you is doing the wrong thing? Or that you're going to have the courage to maintain your integrity when the temptation to cheat is overwhelming. Or that you're going to have the courage to live out your convictions when everybody around you tells you that you're crazy.
Do you want to know that you're going to maintain your confession of faith in a hostile environment? I can predict all of that. I can predict it based on what you're doing now. Because what you do then is determined by what you're doing now. Courage is not conjured up in the heat of the moment.
Courage comes from a consistency in the prayer closet. High school and college students, let me talk to you specifically for a moment. Do you want to know that you're going to have the ability to maintain your confession of faith when everybody else in your class and your professor mocks you? Do you want to know that you're going to have the courage to remain sexually pure in a culture that treats that not just as odd, but as? Strange beyond comprehension.
That's going to be determined not by what you think you'll decide in the moment. That's going to be determined by the first thing you choose to do when you get out of bed tomorrow morning. Your courage in those moments of trial are determined by whether you are now developing small, consistent habits of obedience. Like a daily time of prayer. Daniel had predecided to follow Jesus.
And that was demonstrated by the fact that he regularly met with God to pour out his problems to him. My dad used to say to me, he said, son, if you wait until the moment of temptation, To decide whether or not you're going to remain sexually pure, you will always make the wrong decision. Decide now and begin to walk with God now. And when the hour of temptation comes.
Well, then you'll find what God will give you the resources to overcome. Courage is not conjured up in the heat of the moment. Courage comes from consistency in the prayer clause. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll return to our teaching series in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly tell you about our featured resource this month.
In a time when cultural pressure is high and conviction is rare, we need more Daniels in this world. That's why we're excited to share with you the book of Daniel Shining in Babylon, a powerful new resource that will help you grow strong in your faith and stand out for all the right reasons. This nine-part inductive study is built around the Hear a Bible Study method. It helps you highlight, examine, apply, and respond in prayer to what you're seeing in God's Word, and it applies to every passage of scripture, not just the book of Daniel.
So, whether you feel like you're living in exile or just trying to stay faithful in a noisy world, this guide will specifically equip you with spiritual clarity and courage. We'll send you this digital resource as our thanks for your gift to the ministry right now.
So, give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgreer.com.
Now let's finish up this week's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Here's the second thing I want to leave you with, okay? Seeing Jesus as the greater Daniel. is the strength of courage.
Seeing Jesus as the greater Daniel's the strength of courage, let me explain. One of the mistakes, most common mistakes that people make with this story is they turn it into a hero tale. Where we leave the story aspiring to be Daniel. Dare to be a Daniel, was how I often heard it preached. Like I've shown you.
There is certainly much about Daniel's life that you can and should emulate. But that is not the main point of this story, or any Old Testament story for that matter. As I have told you before, the Old Testament was not primarily written to give us heroes to emulate. The Old Testament was written to point you to a Savior to adore. If you try to copy the example of a Daniel.
You will likely end up discouraged by your failure. That's how it is for me, at least. Because no matter how much I coach myself or how many pep talks I give to myself in the mirror, I cannot sustain lasting courage. I might succeed for a moment, but it's usually only to fall back on my face again, more discouraged and hopeless feeling than ever. But when you see that Daniel's story, like all stories in the Old Testament, It's actually there to point you to Jesus.
We'll see then this story takes on a new meaning. You see, there are a lot of parallels between what Daniel went through. and what Jesus will go through. Consider this. Both Daniel and Jesus are pictures of innocence.
Daniel is one of three men in the Old Testament about whom there is not a mention of even a single flaw. The prophet Ezekiel says that Daniel was one of the three most righteous people ever to walk the face of the earth. Jesus, of course, lived totally without sin. No impure thought or motive ever even entered into his head. Both Daniel and Jesus had jealous political leaders drum up false charges against them to get them killed.
Both Daniel and Jesus had the primary judge in their case declare them innocent and try to spare them. Both Daniel and Jesus were thrown into a pit whose entrance was covered by a large stone and then sealed with a government seal and left for dead. Both Daniel and Jesus had loving friends run to their tomb early in the morning. Both Daniel and Jesus walked out of that tomb alive the next morning. Both Daniel and Jesus, after their ordeal, were raised up as second in command over the kingdom.
Daniel under Darius and Jesus under God the Father in heaven. There's one big difference between Daniel and Jesus, however, and that is that Daniel eventually died, but Jesus defeated death. We do a disservice to this story when we reduce it to just a little kid story, fun little kid story about being brave. But make no mistake, y'all. This was no kids adventure tale.
Lions are vicious creatures. And those who live in their proximity know that you cannot take them for granted for even a single second. I was reading the account of a park ranger. In the Kruger National Park in South Africa, who was one of the few people in the world alive today to have been attacked by a lion and survive. He didn't know it, he said.
He didn't know it, but one afternoon as he was riding his horse to the park, he was being stalked by a pair of lions. Suddenly, he said, one lunged at me from the tall grass, barely missing me and knocking the horse out from underneath me. That first lion went to work on my horse when I heard a deafening, horrifying roar, he said, from right behind me as the second lion pounced on me. He said, I remembered some of my training and I went totally limp. Trying to make the lion think that I was dead to try and buy me some time to figure out what to do.
Luckily, he said, the lion did not grab me by the neck, which is common, which would have killed me instantly. He said, but he grabbed me by his shoulder, my shoulder, which the lion then crushed between his jaws, causing the most excruciating pain, making this whole go limp and play dead strategy really difficult to execute. He said, the lion dragged him for about 60 yards toward his lair. He said, let me just quote it. He said, my face was shoved into his mane.
The smell was awful. And the lion purred the whole way there. He assumed he said it was in pleasant anticipation of his meal. The man said, the whole time he was trying to figure out what to do next when he remembered, when he remembered that he had strapped his hunting knife onto his right hip that morning, but he was said, I was just positive that it had gotten knocked off when I'd been knocked off my horse. Again, let me just read you his words.
It took me some time to work my left hand around my back. as the lion dragged me over the ground. But eventually I reached the sheath and to my indescribable joy the knife was still there. I secured it in my left hand wondering where best to stab the lion. I remembered hearing many years before that if you hit a cat on the nose, he will sneeze.
This particular theory is, of course, incorrect, but at the time, I thought it might be true. Though I dismissed the notion, deciding that even if it worked, the lion would just sneeze and pick me up again.
So I decided to aim my knife right for his heart. I moved smoothly and silently as a serpent, because any fumbling in this maneuver would arouse the lion with instantly fatal results. To myself, knowing where his heart was located, I struck him twice in quick succession. The lion instantly dropped me and let out a furious roar and I struck him again, this time upwards into his throat, which severed his jugular and killed him.
Now why do I share all of that disturbing detail? I wanting you to feel just a smidgen. of the horror of a lion attack. Daniel in the Lion's Dead is no gentle kid story. And I want you to feel that horror because this whole story is supposed to be a picture for you of the cross.
And if you don't get it out of the realm of kids' story and get it into the realm of horror story where it belongs, you'll never see that. You see, Psalm 22. Says that on the cross, the Messiah, Jesus, was thrown to the lions of judgment. Which circled him and taunted him and then tore him apart. Jesus was far more innocent than Daniel ever was.
Yet, before Jesus' body ever even reached the bottom of the pit, he only made it six hours on the cross. Those lions had torn him to pieces. Unlike with Daniel, no angel came to stand by him. No angel came to shut the lion's mouths. To quote Sally Lloyd-Jones from her book, Jesus was left in the blackness utterly alone.
And abandoned by God, suffering the fate that we, the guilty ones, deserved. God did not shut the mouths of Jesus' lions like he did Daniel's. He let them tear him apart. His body was left entombed in the icy grip of death for three days before the angel finally came to roll away his stone. But he was burying our sin.
He went into that pit for me. And that's where Jesus and Daniel are different. You see, when Daniel came forth from the lion's den, he came out all alone. And nobody else was saved by God's deliverance of him. But when Jesus came forth from the tomb, he came out as the head of a mighty company of people who have been redeemed from the pit through his death.
Because of the work of Christ on behalf of his people, the divine judge says, not guilty. You may all go free. And see, here's the thing. If I know that. If I know that, and I know, I know that Jesus has taken into himself any judgment for my sin, that there is no condemnation anymore for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
Well, that means that whatever I'm going through now, I can know that God is with me. I can know he's standing beside me because anything that would have turned God against me, Jesus has removed at the cross. And see, then if God is for me, well, then who could be against me? If the Lord is my strength and my shield, if he is my light and my salvation, of whom do I have to be afraid? I don't got to be afraid of those who kill the body because I have a God who can preserve the soul.
That God is with me in cancer. He's with me when death takes a family member. He's with me in the pain of betrayal or the sting of injustice. He is with me in every struggle, frustration, and failure that I go through, promising never to leave me or forsake me, promising to overcome through me, constantly whispering in my ear, greater is he that is in you than anybody or anything in the world.
So yay, so I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I don't have to be afraid of evil. because you're with me and your rod and your staff they comfort me Knowing. Knowing. Knowing that the Jesus to whom Daniel's life points is with me.
gives me the courage to face danger like Daniel did. and to be consistent like Daniel was. And The ability to get up and keep going when I have not been consistent.
So yeah, thank God for examples like Daniel. but worship Jesus. Who took your punishment in the lion's den and now promises. to preserve you in the den of any lions you face today. with him.
With him, you have the courage. You can have the courage to face anything. I want you to bow your heads, if you would. Bow your heads. And let me just ask.
Two simple questions. Right now, where's the auto response, auto fill of your heart? Responding. to some difficult situation, some threat, some struggle. With the wrong response.
Pride. I'm preemptive strike, panic. Right now, where do you need to run to Jesus? Maybe just right there where you're sitting, you just want to open your hands. Just say, Lord, here it is.
Here it is. Here it is. I want to run to you in prayer. While you're doing that, could I just challenge you?
Some of you. Start a daily prayer time. Could you decide that right now? Say, Lord. I'm going to do that then.
I'm gonna start every day. The first thing I do when I get up. You don't have to start big, start with five minutes. I don't have to be inspired. I'm going to pray four hours every morning.
Don't do that. It's five minutes. Start with five minutes. Do it like Daniel did. Maybe do it three times a day.
Just do it right in the morning, right after lunch, right before you go to bed. Do it for 21 days. In 21 days, it'll be harder to stop than it was to start. Courage is not conjured up in a moment. Courage is developed through a lifetime of small, consistent decisions.
You are listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer and the message titled, Courage is a Habit. The book of Daniel can be summed up in one sentence. If you want to make a difference, then you have to be different. You have to be distinct from Babylon in some very crucial ways.
For Daniel and his friends, that manifested in the food they ate or didn't eat, the way they prayed, and where they placed their highest allegiance. They resolved to be guided by the God of heaven, not the king of Babylon. And we can not only see the results in their story, we can also be encouraged to do the same. When our lives are shaped by the Bible, We're going to be stranger and more offensive to those around us. But we can't make a difference in Babylon unless we're different from Babylon.
So walk through this book of the Bible with us both on the program and with our new resource available this month. It's a nine-part Bible study with several devotionals from Pastor JD included for additional perspective. We'll send you a digital copy of this study by email immediately when you make a donation to Summit Life. Give us a call at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220, or it might be more convenient to give online at jdigreer.com.
While you're on the website, you can also sign up for our weekly email to get ministry updates, information about new resources, and Pastor JD's latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox. It's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life, and it's completely free to subscribe. Sign up when you go to jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich.
Have a great weekend worshiping with your local church family and we'll see you again next week right here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
