Welcome to Truth for Life, where today we begin a study in the Old Testament book of Daniel. Aleister Begg looks at Daniel and his friends and sees how they behaved in a culture that was opposed to their religious views. He also looks at God's sovereignty on display not only during Judah's captivity and exile, but also during times of blessing. Daniel chapter one, verse one. 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 Shiner, to the house of his God. and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. Then the king commanded Ashbanus, 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 skilful in all wisdom. endowed with knowledge, understanding and learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned him 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 Beltashazzar, 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, Mishiel, and Azariah. Test your servants for ten days. then 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. Amen. Thanks be to God. for his word.
Well, let's pray together. Make the book live to me, O Lord. Show me yourself within your word. Show me myself and show me my Saviour. and make a book live to me.
For Jesus' sake. Amen. For the first time. Since I've lived here on these fair shores I sense that the wind has changed. Changed in a number of ways.
The prevailing wind Is certainly not at the back of the sales. of professing Christians. Indeed, the wind appears to be A pretty stiff wind. that blows the forces of secularism directly at those who declare themselves to be followers of Jesus. I wouldn't want to overstate that.
I'm not an analyst of secular culture. I have no peculiar insight any more than anyone else. But as I travel a little bit within the country, I discovered that The old days of The bravado of the moral majority. Of Jerry Falwell and all that was going to be achieved as a result of those endeavors. They're no longer a strong cry.
Uh in fact, they're barely a whimper. And many individuals appear to be completely overwhelmed by the reality of the circumstances of the church. because we're pushed back. The trips across the Atlantic Ocean that used to be marked simply by the enthusiasm of the tourist.
Now are returning to me somehow differently. People coming back and saying, I think we're beginning to understand why it is that those large cathedrals of Western Europe are pretty well empty. Before they used to come back, or you used to come back and say, why are all those churches empty? And I used to say to you, you and you didn't like it. Just hang on.
You're about to find out.
Well now we have begun to find out And the question is, are you going to hang on? Are we going to hang on? Because it is very, very obvious. That the notion of a persecuted church, and there are some hundred million Christians throughout the world today that are persecuted for their faith. As from open doors and the statistics they provide, I think they're pretty accurate.
They may be on the low side. But for most of us that has always been way out there and far away. But now we sense that it could be different. It's finally beginning to dawn on us. That the broken, sinful world in which we live is not actually our home.
They were not supposed to be settling down here forever. We're not supposed to be treating it the way other people treat it, as if this was the be-all and end-all of everything. For our friends will say to us, though, won't they? You better enjoy yourself. Because this is not a dress rehearsal.
Well, in one sense it it is a dress rehearsal. Because there is a day that yet awaits every one of us. when we will stand before the God who created us. And the issues of time set within the framework of eternity. demand careful consideration.
And now We read, for example, Peter's declaration of the scattered believers of the first century with different kinds of eyes and ears. Writing to them as he does as sojourners and exiles. We used to read that and think, I wonder what it would be like to be in exile. Suddenly, as a minority group within an increasingly secularized nation. The church is getting a flavour of it.
Were we asleep when we read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John? Did we assume they must have been written for another time and another place? when Jesus spoke so clearly to those who were his followers. And in John chapter 15, after he has described himself as the vine and the branches, he says to his followers, If the world hates you, Know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, The world would love you as its own.
But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world. Therefore The world hates you.
Now I know that some of us have come out of a background where that kind of notion was played out to a vast extreme and often in a way that was entirely unhelpful. I I have no truck with that at all. But I have found myself going back to these early chapters in Daniel because. They don't provide for us a strategy of how to deal with living in an alien environment as much as they provide comfort and encouragement in realizing that the God who oversaw the events. That transpired here, described for us in the opening chapters of Daniel, is the same God who is the God of his people.
No longer now six centuries B C But in twenty AD. And the overarching emphasis is simply this: that God is powerful. That God is sovereign. And that even in the face of circumstances that appear to be prevailing against us, we may trust him entirely. Sue and I were talking with a friend the other day.
That's a euphemism for I think now two weeks ago. Uh And in the course of conversation, he made a statement which we neither of us could recall, and asked him to remind us of it, which he did in a note. And he sent a scribbled note, as requested. This was his statement: Faith is not believing in spite of evidence. Rather, it is obeying in spite of the consequences.
It's not believing in spite of the evidence. That's what our cynical friends often say.
Well, you just believe that even though there's no evidence for it, that's for another time. But in the context of Daniel chapter 1, for these young men, Faith. was obeying in spite of the consequences. And the question is, how are we going to handle an environment like this.
Well, let's just work our way through in the time that we have, noticing that the scene is said in verses 1 and 2. There is a historical marker at the beginning and at the end of the chapter reminding us that history is really history, that this took place at a moment in time, at a place essentially Iraq. at a point in history. And what we're told here is that the prevailing peace of Jerusalem and of the people of God had been shattered by the arrival of a foreign power. What the prophets had said would happen if the people did not pay attention and follow the law of God actually happened.
And here we are told that Nebuchadnezzar and all of his Babylonian forces came in and besieged the city of Jerusalem. In doing so, they took some of the vessels from the house of God, verse 2, and brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God. and place the vessels in the treasury of his God. That little emphasis there of the personal pronoun is important. And the writer is letting us know that from all apparent perspectives.
It would seem that the gods of the Babylonians were stronger than the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After all, if the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was strong enough to protect his people, uh how come the Babylonians were able to come in and give them such a hiding? And the inevitable question would arise: well, then where is God in this? Where is God in these circumstances Are we to assume the people might have said that all of our obedience to God has been for nothing? despite the fact that he'd been so disobedient too.
And the story unfolds in such a way. that we discover that God actually is more in control than they even understand. Notice what it says. Verse 2: And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand. The Lord gave him.
The symbols of God's presence and God's power in these vessels have been snatched up and taken away. And it is God, if you like, who has done this. God has been responsible for the exile of his people. God has been responsible for the defeat and the ultimate destruction of his own city. It's quite remarkable.
From a human perspective, they said, well, it's fairly straightforward. It's the political and military overpowering of the people of God, the Israelites, by this foreign invading force. Yes, but what do we know? We know that nothing happens except through him and by his will. And so now this book is written, written first of all to the people who are still in exile.
And being reminded right at the beginning that God is actually in control of these things. You see, many of the people would have said to one another, you know, we didn't raise our children to have them carried away like this. And you'll notice where they were carried to. to the land of Shinar.
Some of you who know your Bible well will recognize that it was in the land of Shiner, Genesis 11, that the Tower of Babel was constructed. And there in the land of Shiner, you had this great opposition to the building of the kingdom and power of God. And man said, What we'll do is we'll build a big kingdom for ourselves, and we'll raise it all the way up to the heavens, and we'll show God who's in charge of this operation. And now here you are, six centuries later, and the exact same thing is unfolding. This, incidentally, is a theme which runs throughout the history of the world.
Augustine got it right, didn't he, in his book, The City of God and the City of Man. That God is fashioning and forming his purposes from eternity to eternity. In the midst of that, man in his rebellion and in his defiance says, No, no, no, no, no, we will not have you as a king. We'll show you how to do this. And as the people of God seek to live in obedience here, the Babylonians come in.
And give them A good thrashing. And they need to know. that in that, through that, behind that, was a sovereign God himself. And the answer as to why it even happened Is contained not only in the words of the prophets, but is contained in the prayer of Daniel in chapter 9 later on. And I'll just turn you to it.
I'm not going to read it all. But in Daniel 9, when Daniel prays. and seeks the face of God. He says Verse 7, for example, or verse 6.
Well, you gotta read the whole prayer.
Sorry, but we have not listened to your servants, the prophets, verse 6, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, to all the people of the land. We just flat out didn't listen. Verse 9. You're in charge of mercy and forgiveness. We are rebellious.
Verse 10, we haven't obeyed your voice. The whole of Israel, verse 11, has transgressed your law and turned aside. They refuse to obey your voice. And the curse. that was promised has fallen upon us.
And these family members left behind. Because the exile was in three waves. Must surely have wondered what would become then of their sons. And here we have the record of what happens to these particular individuals. The king, verse 3, commands his chief eunuch to bring some of the people of Israel, of the royal family, the nobility, the youths without blemish, and so on.
Just bring the cream of the crop in here, and what we'll do is we'll make sure that we fashion them and refashion them in such a way that they will be done with that old stuff about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If we can get our hands on them, if we can educate them, if we can rename them, if we can re loc relocate them, just change their whole world view Then we'll have them. It's a brilliant program. of subtle coercion and sometimes not so subtle coercion. What they're seeking to do is to make sure that they change the way these fellows think about the world.
And the way in which it is done is, first of all, by a geographical relocation. That's straightforward, isn't it? What about a change of education? They were going to be made competent. by learning the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.
In other words, we will retrain their minds. or retrain their minds. Every evil empire has always done this and does this. Communism did this. Marxism did this.
Mousy Tongue did this. It matters what you read. It matters how you think.
So that's what they did. will change their names. They had lovely names, lovely Hebrew names that were God-honoring names. He said, We're going to get rid of those names. We'll give you new names that are God-honoring names.
It's just a different God. It says, God of the Babylonians, or various gods of the Babylonians. And of course, what we would like to do is to give you a daily portion, verse 5, of the food that the king ate and the wine that he drank. They said, well, that was very nice. He's not sending them down to the local cafeteria, but he's actually providing from his own chef.
This how how wonderfully nice of him to do that. You hear that?
Now it was just another way. the last threads, tying them. to their roots. We're dietary, if you like. They had been unable to prevent themselves being relocated.
They are unable to resist the fact that they are being re-educated. They have been powerless. to resist A new name entrusted to them. thereby creating an identity crisis. But the one thing they can do and they're going to do Is resist the temptation.
to change the plans of a diet. He says, what a strange choice.
Well, no, not actually if you know the Old Testament. Because the distinguishing features of God's people were marked in part, in measure. By things that were apparently Strange. And the Jewish people were always regarded as sort of weird. Or why do you not do that?
Why do you not go there? Why do you not drink that? Why will you not do this? And those features We're not simply for them external manifestations of nothingness. But they were a practical effulgence of deeply held convictions about what it meant for them to belong to God.
And there was a point for Daniel where he said, I can do this and I can absorb that, but I can't go any further on this. And so it was. that he takes his stand And as a result of doing so, Having resolved, verse 8, He then makes a request to the chief. of the units. And interestingly, the same God who gave His people into the bondage of the Babylonians.
is now the God, same verb here, Who gave Daniel verse 9 favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs?
Now that's no small thing.
So we don't get the impression here that Daniel and his friends were rabble-rousers, that they were freedom fighters, that they were a bunch of jolly nuisances. No, they were bright, they were good looking, they were highly respected, they paid attention, they showed up on time, they shined their shoes, they were good soldiers, they were decent fellows. And yet there was a point, there was a core in them, there was a resolve in them, there was something at the very heart of them that couldn't be shaken. And it was that which caused them to take the stand that they took. Incidentally, that kind of resolution doesn't come just as a whim.
It doesn't come overnight. It doesn't come just because all of a sudden something happened. Crisis reveals what's inside of you, what's inside of me. It doesn't create it as much as reveal it. And as soon as they're up against it here, now they said, no, we are not going to give up.
On this one. And God gave them favor. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg. Tomorrow we'll hear more about God's sovereign reign in Daniel's life and in our life as well. As you listen to our study in the book of Daniel, be sure to request Alistair's book Brave by Faith.
This book looks at Daniel's story as an example of how God's people can trust God, how we can live by faith, even when we're surrounded by those who oppose our values. Like Daniel, we live in a culture to day that is increasingly disregarding God's authority and His design for our lives. Daniel trusted God to uphold Him in His faith. His story is a powerful reminder that we're not left alone in the struggle. Brave by Faith comes with a chapter by chapter study guide that will help you work through all of this content on your own or with your small group.
Ask for the Brave by Faith book and study guide when you donate to Truth for Life to day, using our mobile app, or online at truthforlife. org slash donate, or you can call us at eight eight eight five eight eight seven eight eight four. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to us at Truth for Life, PO Box thirty nine eight thousand, Cleveland, Ohio, four four one three nine. By the way, if you request the Brave by Faith Book and Study Guide with your donation and you'd like extra copies for your study group or to give away as gifts, you'll find them in our online store at truthforlife.org/slash store. The book and study guide are available for just $7, or you can buy the book and download the study guide for free.
Thanks for studying God's Word with us today. Tomorrow, we'll learn how we can still be hopeful even when persecution intensifies. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
