In the Lion's Den

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Welcome. The Wednesday in the Word podcast, equipping our leaders of this great weekly Bible study held at Dario, our wonderful, gracious host. all across North Carolina. This is to equip, encourage, and guide you as you prepare to teach the word and guide the discussion.

At each location each week. And we continue our journey now through the book of Daniel. Here we are with today's special guest Dr. Sam Warren. It's one of the most famous stories.

Not just in the Bible, but in history. Daniel and the lion's den, Daniel chapter 6, we've covered a lot of territory. In this first part of our Daniel podcast, our Wednesday in the Word podcast, Dr. Horn. The Lion's Den, though it makes a great flannel graph story and a great bedtime story, like the three Hebrews and the fiery furnace, it was very real.

These were large cats. These were hungry cats. And the man of God was thrown in there. and could have been devoured, but God intervened. Set us up now, Doctor Horn, for what's going on.

We'll do the re we'll do the review first. How did we get to chapter six? And then we'll do a quick preview of what's ahead in this wonderful chapter.

Well It's always a joy to do these with you. And I think this is a very timely broadcast given what we're facing and what we've been through yesterday and today with the loss of Charles Kirk. We are just in a really key time and I think a key place in the book of Daniel. Daniel chapter six comes at the end of the first half of the book. Remember, that's the part of the book that God wrote in Aramaic, and it was a message to the nations, wisdom to the nations from the God of heaven.

Delivered through the mouth of his servants. And Daniel is. The chief servant in the book that delivers that message. And the message is, and we saw it really clearly in the life of Nebuchadnezzar. God rules.

In the kingdom of heaven, but he also rules the kingdoms of men, and he gives those kingdoms to whoever he wills. And so we've been watching this theme unfold, and we've been watching it through the entire lifetime of one man. We met Daniel in chapter one when he might have been 18 to 20 years of age. And when we get to the end of chapter six, he's at the very end of his life. And so you get the entire lifespan of a man.

And what would mark this man for his entire life is faithfulness to God. He's been faithful to God's word. He's been faithful to God's people. He's been faithful to God's places like Jerusalem and the temple, even though they've been destroyed. He's been faithful to God's purposes.

He has been a faithful man. He's been faithful in the face of opposition. He has been faithful in spite of all of the consequences that could come his way. He was faithful, as we'll see here in this chapter, to the uttermost, even. At the cost of his own life.

In other words, when you look at Daniel's life, There was something that mattered more to him than his own personal life. And it was the kingdom of God. And when we get to the second half. of the book that's the whole theme that my kingdom matters more And so in essence, This is a really important section. Just to kind of set us up for what's coming in the last half of the book.

When we get to 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. Those visions are actually all collected together at the back end of the book. but chronologically we're going to dump them back into the first half of the book.

So they actually happened during the course of the years that we've been reading about in the first six chapters. but they've been sort of pulled out and all collected together and put at the back half of the book.

So that their message is really clear. God's kingdom matters more. And so we have this man. who has been faithful in public over many, many years. And now he is in the second kingdom.

Remember the dream he got in chapter two, where you had this big statue, and the first part of the statue was the head of gold. And God said, That kingdom isn't gonna last forever. There's gonna be a second kingdom, the kingdom of silver. And this is the kingdom that is in play now. We looked at God's destruction of Babylon in the time of Belshazzar and the rise of Cyrus the Great, the first great king of Persia.

And Daniel finds favor in this man's eyes. And so now we are in the second kingdom, and the same thing happens to Daniel at the beginning of the second kingdom that happened to him at the beginning of the first.

So the rise of Nebuchadnezzar. Early on, Daniel is tested. Whose law is he gonna obey? Which king is he going to follow? Who is he gonna look to to deliver him?

And here in the second kingdom, those same tests are repeated. And I would say it's this way. It doesn't matter who you are or where you are. There are going to be repeated moments. where your loyalty to God is going to be displayed anew.

This isn't a once and done life. Faithfulness is never a once and done moment. And so here we are at the end of Daniel's life. And his faithfulness is again tested.

So we're going to see a lot of themes in here, Dr. Horne. That's a great. Summary of where we've come from, and of course, where we're going. We hear a lot about prayer.

We actually see a powerful prayer in chapter two. When God answers the prayer, we see His actual prayer later on in chapter 9 is one of the richest prayers in the entire scripture. but we see prayer modelled. In chapter six, we're going to do that now as we get into the You know the the preview Of what's coming up in Daniel chapter 6, we got 28 verses. We have a brand new regime, God's shown favor, the favor of God upon Daniel's life.

That we see highlighted in chapter 1, verse 9 is shining all through these eight or nine decades of his life. And one regime fell under evil Belshazzar, and then another one came in. And all of this in fulfillment of multiple prophecies, including the one which you talked about last time, the writing on the wall. Darius comes in. He's the leader and he's organized.

He sets up all these 120 governors or satraps. To be over the kingdom. The three primary governors over those 120, one of which was Daniel. Daniel had distinguished himself above the governors. Verse 3 of chapter 6 tells us there was an excellent spirit in him.

The king gave thought to setting him over the whole kingdom.

So there's a lot of jealousy and envy. Early on, From these men trying to set him up. I mean, how many people are trying to take down the people of God like we've seen recently in the news? How believers are being persecuted all over the world? Talk about that and just the structure of all these verses.

Yeah, all right.

So the structure Organized that in my head is in verses one through five: you see a constant and consistent faithfulness over a lifetime. And it is evident. He's been distinguished in service. He is dependable in character. He's devoted in worship to the Lord.

And when the enemies of God come to try to tear him down, they can't find anything to grab onto. They have to go at Daniel because of his message, because of his life message. And without being too political in this. I mean, we just saw something like this in our own country yesterday. I mean, here's a young man.

cut down in the prime of his life. Not because of his person, but because of what he was articulating, what he was actually standing for. His faith in Jesus, his bold proclamation of the gospel, his biblical values, no matter how they come, when you stand for biblical values, you put yourself where Daniel did. And this is exactly what we see in Daniel 1 through 5, or 6, 1 through 5. And then in verses 6 through 9, All of this meets ruthless adversity.

And you can see this: the high officials of the kingdom show up and they are relentless. They are ruthless. They're not just trying to discredit Daniel. or to demote Daniel. They're trying to destroy him.

And if you think about what we just, you know, I hate to keep coming back to what happened yesterday, but actually, that is exactly what. there there are forces in our country that are determined not just to devalue or or to demote The opposite side, but they are ruthless in their persecution and they want to destroy it. There are people who actually are celebrating what happened yesterday, even if they have to do it with restraint, even if they have to kind of put their hand over their mouth so they don't look like a bunch of idiots. Internally, they're celebrating what happened yesterday. And that's what Daniel faced.

There was this diabolical. Deception that takes place. And literally, what these people did is they came to the king and they set up the king. They were trying to track Daniel. But in order to trap Daniel, they first had to trap the king.

And so they set a trap for the king. They knew exactly. What? what they were doing. They said, look, all of us have agreed That's what you need to do to establish yourself as the head of this kingdom is make a demand, make a law of the Medes and the Persians that nobody can pray to you.

Nobody can pray to any other God except you. And so here's Darius. And he is deceived because actually his most powerful person. The one person who he was going to put above everybody would never have agreed to this. and in fact was the target.

That everybody else was going after, and so they deceived, they deceived the king. And so on a practical level, Daniel stood in the way of very powerful people. On a personal level, he represented a despised group of people, the people of God. But on a theological level, the kingdom of darkness was hard at work. And again, I'm not comparing Charles Kirk to Daniel, but there are parallels.

I mean, on a practical level, his message stood in the way of very powerful people in this country. On a personal level, he represented biblical values of a very despised group of people, God's people. And on a theological level, the kingdom of darkness has been hard at work. And so that's really where we're at in verses 10 to 14. Daniel aligns himself with kingdom values.

He decides I'm going to be loyal to God's law. I'm not going to pray. I'm going to be committed to God purposes. He goes up and he prays toward Jerusalem and he prays toward the temple that had been destroyed. I mean, he's praying toward a temple that doesn't exist anymore.

And a kingdom that has been completely demolished.

Well, that's how you and I are supposed to pray. We're supposed to pray for the kingdom of God to come. That's what Jesus told us to pray. And all of this was opposed by God's enemies. And then in verses 16 through 18, we get to the heart of it, right?

This is where the king is trapped. he uh he he has been made the sole mediator between god and man nobody can pray to gods Except to him, and he wants to deliver Daniel. And he can't. I mean the person you're supposed to pray to is supposed to be able to deliver you. and here is this person and he wants to deliver daniel and he can't And he's crapped.

And so he is absolutely powerless. And I think that's really important, Stu, for everybody to catch that all through the book. We have been seeing the powerlessness. The true powerlessness. Of the gods of Babylon, and now we're seeing that in the gods of Persia, and the true powerlessness of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, and now Darius.

They can only do what God permits them to do. And so here is this king who wants to deliver Daniel. But he can't. He spends all day trying to find a way around the law that he made, that he was. Beijing.

And he can't do it. And so he casts Daniel into the lion's den. Um And as he casts Daniel into the lion's den, the king breaks his own law. He prays. And here's what he prays.

May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you. Because I can't deliver you. My gods cannot deliver you.

So Daniel. I'm praying that your God will deliver you. And you know what's amazing to me? God heard that prayer and answered it. And in verses 19 through 24, God delivers Daniel and he vindicates Daniel and he validates his message.

to all of the readership. Uh, because the king shows up the next morning in a panic, he runs a very undignified thing for the king of the world to do, he runs. And he went in haste to the den of lions, and he cried out with a loud voice: Daniel, servant of the living God. That's an incredible address. He acknowledges that Daniel's God is the living God, and his gods are not.

Has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions? All throughout the book, we have had this question: is God able? Can God deliver? And all through the book, God is delivered. In chapter one, he delivered Daniel and his friends.

from the task of eating the king's meat. In Daniel chapter 3 or 2, he delivers Daniel from the sentence of death by giving him the answer to the king's dream. In Daniel 3, he delivers Daniel or Daniel's friends from the fiery furnace. In Daniel 4, he delivers Daniel again by giving him the answer to the second dream. And he delivers.

King Nebuchadnezzar. In chapter five, he delivers Daniel. From the wrath that he brought on Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom through the Persians by destroying Belshazzar. And now, in chapter six, he's gonna deliver Daniel. From the lion's den.

And Daniel says. God sent his angel to shut the lion's mouth. And they have not harmed me. Because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king, I have done no harm. And no harm was found on Daniel because he had trusted in his God.

And here's the point. That chapter six is missing. For six chapters, we've watched this man trust God in every conceivable circumstance over the course of his whole life. And in the rest of the book, This man is going to stand up and he's going to call God's people to do the same thing. No matter who's in power, no matter what kingdom comes, it doesn't matter if the Persians come and you have.

Ahashuarius and Esther, and a decree is made to kill all the Jews. You trust in God, and He will deliver you. It doesn't matter if you're in the kingdom of Alexander the Great. You trust in God and he will deliver you. It doesn't matter if you are in that kingdom that is, you know, after Alexander's four generals, and you have Antiochus Epiphanes just ravaging Israel.

You trust God. And it doesn't matter if you're in the kingdom of Rome. It doesn't matter what kingdom you're in. You trust God and He is able to deliver you. And so the the Daniel is delivered.

God is vindicated and his enemies are judged. And by the time you get to the end of these six chapters, you know that Daniel serves a living God. He serves a sovereign God. He serves a powerful God. He serves a merciful God.

And he serves a God whose kingdom matters more. And we're going to see that as we jump into the rest of the book. And it hits on a high note with this king writing this decree, which is almost a doxology about God's kingdom being forever, about God being the living God. about God delivering and rescuing And, you know, the high point of the chapter, it opens up with this man of God. About to be ripped apart to shreds by ravenous lions, but it closes with this man of God.

Being described this way, Dr. Horn. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius. And in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. And of course, there's more coming.

On Daniel and his prayer life, and some pretty powerful prophetic apocalyptic language coming up in the next few chapters to round out the book. But Dr. Horne. A couple quick things as we get out of here. A lot of folks used to talk a lot about God, a lot about his deliverance.

A lot of folks go to these these People in the Bible, these characters, and they try to preach behavior modification. behavior emulation messages. And there's a great song, Dare to Be a Daniel. I'm not against that. I sang that at camp.

You probably did too. You probably let it. You've spoken at camps all over. But really, our goal isn't to be like Daniel. In fact, Daniel wouldn't want that, would he?

He would say, be like Jesus. He's the one who delivers, he's the one who saves. And he's the one that we pursue, and he's the one we trust. Because ultimately, men will let us down. Speak to that real quick, how important that is with the gospel, too, and how.

The answer is Jesus. And there's two lions, and I heard this from another pastor, and we just finished 1 Peter 5. There's two lines in the Bible. There's the lion who is prowling about seeking whom he may devour in 1 Peter 5:8. Which is also the lions we see in Daniel's account, Daniel chapter 6.

But then there's the. The lion of the tribe of Judah who was there with Daniel. Who was there in the fiery furnace? Who was the one who Daniel will talk about, the Son of Man who's coming? To redeem us, and how Daniel's eyes were on him, and how we need our eyes.

To be on him. And that's who Dan Life wants to point us to. Speak to that and the importance of that, Dr. Horn, as we kind of wrap up. Yeah, so I I Bringing this to a point in two ways because I think you made a really good point.

The thing that we're supposed to emulate. In the book of Daniel, is their faithfulness and their faith in God. And in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, we have. People who are mentioned as having stopped the mouths of lions.

So that's a clear reference to Daniel. And so the writer of Hebrews is saying, listen, let me give you some examples of faithful people who trusted God. There were people who conquered kingdoms. They enforced justice. They stopped the mouth of lions.

They quenched the power of fire. There's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They escaped the edge of the sword. They were made strong out of weakness. They became mighty in war.

Women received back their dead through resurrection. But Others suffered mocking and fogging and chains and imprisonment and were stoned and were sawn in two and were killed with the sword. And went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy. And so Just so we don't get the impression that if we just do and are faithful the way Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach were faithful, that we're going to be delivered from physical affliction and we're going to be promoted to these great places of honor and power. Because there's a whole nother group that the writer of Hebrews says they were faithful just like Daniel.

And they were honored by God just by Daniel, but they didn't get the same experience Daniel got, they weren't delivered. from death. They weren't delivered from the mouth of the lion. They weren't delivered from the furnace. They actually were sawn in two.

They actually suffered great affliction and even death. But at the end of the day, they were just as faithful. And they are in Hebrews 11 to make sure we know that what. God is after is not a behavior that we do so that we get something from God. It is a faithfulness to God that we demonstrate no matter what comes to us.

And that brings me to the final thing I want to say. That faith. needs to start now. It needs to start in our lives right now. You know, I think sometimes we think, you know, I'm really not strong enough to have that kind of faith.

I'm kind of new at the Christian life kind of thing. Let me get my feet under me a little bit, and then I'll think about this. A faith that finishes strong has to start now. and it must be cultivated by holy habits. And the holy habits that we see in the book of Daniel are two big ones.

One is Daniel knew the word of God. In chapter 9, we're going to find out he was reading. God's word that he gave to Jeremiah. You are never going to develop a strong faith if you don't have a deep commitment, a personal commitment to the word of God. You need to be reading it personally.

You need to be involved in the kind of Bible studies that you and I are doing, Stu. This is a big part of it. And most of all, you need to be in church every week. Sitting under the good, sound preaching of God's word. Don't settle for a church that's going to give you five.

To help you be a better business person, or three R's are going to make you a better father, or six S's that are going to make you a better husband. You need to get in a church that is going to give you the word of God like Daniel got it. And then the second holy habit is prayer. Daniel prayed three times a day. Most of us, outside of praying for our food, we might pray one time a week.

And then we wonder, where are the modern day Daniels? We saw one of them slaughtered yesterday. Where are the rest of the modern-day Daniels? Where are they going to come from? They're going to come from.

People who are committed to God's word and who are constantly praying to God. It must be anchored in unswerving loyalty to God and to his word. And it must work to advance the kingdom of God.

So, here's what I want to say, and we'll be done. Most of us Our commitment to God is based on. What we want God to do for us. I hear people as a pastor, they'll come and say, Pastor, I need to get more God in my life. I need to get more church in my life.

And I'll ask them why.

Well, because my marriage is a mess, and I need God to fix my marriage. And it's all about what I need God to do for me. And because it's not happening, I need to give God more space in my life so that he will fix the thing I really want. And the book of Daniel sort of explodes that. Basically, the book of Daniel says to believers: there is a kingdom that matters more than any kingdom on the planet.

There is a kingdom that matters more than your own personal kingdom, and it is the kingdom of God. And I'm going to see something really controversial here. There are people who are more excited about prayer. because they think it's going to rescue America. than they are about prayer because it's going to advance the kingdom of God.

And we're going to have to really come to grips with the fact that as wonderful as our nation is. And as thankful as we ought to be and as involved as we ought to be in making good laws and advancing biblical purposes, I want to make sure everybody hears that. There is a kingdom that matters more. And it is God's kingdom. And we need to live for that kingdom.

And sometimes living for that kingdom means we've got to give up our own earthly kingdom. And that's what Daniel did. And so a faith that finishes strong. I want it. You want it, and I'm sure our hearers want it as well.

Amen. That's such a good word. And I want you to pray us out, Dr. Horne. I want to just.

Echo what you said, and I heard a pastor say something like this. I'll probably booger it up in how I say it, but he said your your time in the prayer closet. It has a direct correlation. To how things go in the lion's den. Because the lion's den, the fire's coming, the lion's den's coming.

James says, Don't he says, Count it all joy, not if, but when you fall into various trials, you know, and James. Chapter 1. And so, are we leaning into God? Are we trusting Him? Are we trusting the power of the gospel?

Are we looking to him? Because we could be one assassin's bullets away from going to heaven. We could be God could miraculously deliver us. I was with some Egyptian believers earlier today. Who fresh on their heart is when they lined up all those.

Uh uh Egyptian believers, and they killed them cold blood on the beach, and it was advertised all over the world. And so, but the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. God could have easily allowed Daniel to be. Ravaged and savaged, but God had a plan for Daniel. But the most important thing are those three words we see in chapter 13.

three from from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But if not. But if not, they said, Hey, our God can deliver us. He's mighty, he's great. But if not, we're not going to bow to your idols, King Nebuchadnezzar.

You're the greatest king ever. We're not going to bow. We're not going to submit. And I was just with the folks at Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City. And they recounted when the federal government sued them because of their stand on pro-life.

And they were threatened. Listen to this. Think about this. If you own a company and they threatened to fine them $1.2 million a day. If they don't allow for abortion rights in their company.

And they went to the Supreme Court, United States. And They bought a billboard and Right outside, somewhere up there, and it said. We will not. Uh we will surrender to only God. And David Green said he really wanted to put the words on there, but if not.

And he understood Daniel three. And he understood that: hey, if God doesn't deliver us, then he'll deliver us straight to heaven, and we'll find something else to do, another job. to honor him and glorify him and God allowed them by the way to win that case. And Hobby Lobby, they give away half of all their earnings to ministries. And people who listen to my voice may have heard the gospel because of Hobby Lobby.

It's a great example. Of a Daniel 3 and a Daniel 6. of God delivering, but You know, trusting him, he's in control. When things are hard, it's time we, we, we, before we go to email, it's time we go to Nemail. Before we go to AI, it's time we go to Prai.

And prayer needs to be our first response. Uh, you know, not our last resort, and there's a little statement in there, as was his custom. You know, Daniel bowed his knee to God, you know, three times a day. It says, as was his custom. This was his habit.

This was, you know, we need those holy habits, like you said, Dr. Horne. Take us out of here, brother. You've been such a blessing, man.

Well, one final thing, you know, interesting to me, Daniel was not a pastor and he was not a priest. He was just a common, ordinary, everyday man doing what God called him to do. And I think there are hundreds of thousands of Daniels all around the world that God has in key places. And I'm praying that what we've been talking about for these many weeks now will encourage those men and women to stand up and be counted, to be a Daniel. By trusting Daniel's God.

So, Lord, help us as we close our time today. Thank you for this wonderful chapter.

Sobering reminder that faithfulness is not a once and done thing. that faith will be tested. It will demand everything. It's not just something that we can add into everything else in our life. It is something that will demand everything from us.

and we are unable to do that at our own strength and so use your word as we have been talking. and drive it deep into our hearts, into our lives. Help us to see the immensity of your kingdom and why it matters most.

so that all of our little kingdoms will be set aside All of our little agendas for our country, for our lives, for our businesses will be subsumed under your big kingdom and the purposes you have for it. And use us we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Dr. Horn, and thank you for joining us for this Wednesday in the Word podcast.

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Proverbs 30, verse 5.