Good evening and welcome again to Church Online.
Can I just say, personally, thanks so much to people who have been in touch to encourage,
to say that they're praying, to say that they're appreciating the content.
It's really helpful when you're speaking into the ether to remember that we are a community, we are family.
Let me take the chance as well.
I've said it a little bit, but just to say thank you so much to Kellan,
whose music ministry and also his work on YouTube has been such a gift to us.
As a church, we're so fortunate to have both his gift and his willingness to serve in the middle of his own busy schedule.
So thanks to Kellan and thanks as well to Sarah, our administrator.
The gift of administration is so useful and valuable to a church.
And maybe never more so than in times like this and keeping us connected.
So thank you to Sarah.
Thanks to everybody who tunes in, who connects.
It's really encouraging that we can be together around God's word.
And to that end, let's begin our call to worship.
It comes from Lamentations.
Lamentations, a lament of the prophet Jeremiah.
Things were incredibly hard in his experience.
And yet there are words of hope.
Wonderful words.
Lamentations 3 at verse 22.
Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.
For his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, the Lord is my portion.
Therefore, I will wait for him.
Let's wait on God with expectation now as we gather together that he would speak truth to our hearts and lives.
That he would do us good as we sing, as we pray, as we hear God's word, as we reflect on it.
Let's hear God's word.
Let's read in Daniel chapter 1.
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 delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God.
These he carried off to the temple of his God in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his God.
Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king's service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility.
Young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand and qualified to serve in the king's palace.
He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.
The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table.
They were to be trained for three years and after that they were to enter the king's service.
Among those who were chosen were some from Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.
The chief official gave them new names.
To Daniel, the name Belteshazzar.
To Hananiah, Shadrach.
To Mishael, Mishael.
And to Azariah, Abednego.
But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself in this way.
Now God had caused the official to show favour and compassion to Daniel.
But the official told Daniel,
I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink.
Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age?
Then the king would have my head because of you.
Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah,
Please test your servants for ten days.
Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.
Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.
So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.
At the end of the ten days, they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the other young men who ate the royal food.
So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.
To these four young men, God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning.
And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
At the end of the time set by the king to bring them into his service,
the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar.
The king talked with them and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.
So they entered the king's service.
In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them,
he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.
And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.
Amen.
Thank you both.
Now, if you've got your Bibles, keep them open.
Daniel, chapter 1.
Last week we did an overview.
This week getting into the main text of chapter 1.
And our big idea is resolving to trust the God who rules.
Daniel is a book that begins when everything turns upside down.
Daniel and his three friends as teenagers are flung into unimaginable change.
Taken away from their family to a foreign country.
Exposed to a new language.
A radically different culture.
Now working for an emperor as part of an empire that has just attacked and defeated their whole nation.
Surrounded by a different religion full of other idols.
Experiencing a different diet.
And all the while, they're part of a nation facing exile.
Facing the judgment of God.
That's some significant change, isn't it?
What we see in the Daniel story, and it comes to mind because we recently studied the Joseph story, is the parallels.
Remember Joseph as a teenager?
He was taken a prisoner to Egypt and he spent the rest of his life there.
Well here, Daniel will spend the next around about 70 years serving four different emperors in Babylon.
So the story of Daniel is a story of national grief and national shock as exile has come.
And the question for the people in Daniel's day then was, how can we be restored?
And Daniel and his friends serve for them as a model to imitate.
Restoration would come when the people would return to serve the Lord.
When they would resist and reject idolatry.
And when they wouldn't compromise their faith.
Now Daniel's situation is not our situation.
But of course we recognise that our upheaval is still real and significant and life-altering.
And he is at the same time a model for us.
Daniel chapter 1 says to us,
Resolve to trust.
Resolve to follow the one true God who rules.
So let's see that together.
The story begins starkly.
Because it reminds us that God rules in judgment.
You can read again verse 1.
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
So this sets the scene for us.
Incidentally, knowing that some of you like museums and artefacts,
you can go online to the British Museum and you can search their database.
And if you look for the Babylonian Chronicle,
you'll find stone tablets that have been really helpful for dating the rule of Nebuchadnezzar,
which have helped people to set what happens here at the time of 605 BC.
So this is stage one of the fall of Jerusalem.
But the significant question that the Bible would have us answer is,
why did this happen?
And when we read the Bible and we read the history of the Bible,
we discover that biblical history is at the same time the theology of history.
It looks to show where God stands in relation to world events.
So verse 2 begins,
And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hands.
This is not an accident.
This is not down to the aggressive expansion plans of the Babylonian Empire.
No, the judgment of God has come on Judah through Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon.
And the reason for that is because of the people's covenant disobedience.
This is something they had been warned about from the beginning as the people of God.
But there were some particular warnings in the build-up to this.
So in 2 Kings chapter 20, we meet Hezekiah.
Hezekiah, a good king, but he made an unwise choice in showing the treasury to the Babylonians,
hoping to forge an alliance or relying on an alliance with Babylon,
which was folly rather than depending on God.
And then the message of Jeremiah,
which gave warning after warning to the people against following false gods,
against turning from God's truth,
against their spiritual adultery,
where they were breaking off from being faithful to God
and were being unfaithful,
where they were guilty of great injustice.
So if you can imagine the picture,
the storm clouds have been gathering.
And what happens when storm clouds begin to gather?
Our instinct is to find shelter.
But the people of Judah,
they did not take shelter from the storm of God's judgment that was threatening.
There was no repentance.
You read a chapter like Leviticus 26,
and you see that God in His patience would give warning after warning after warning to the people.
And those warnings would be ignored,
progressively ramping up the pain and the suffering they would feel,
but still there would be no turning back to God.
Our story,
the story of Daniel,
begins with that warning becoming reality.
To reject covenant with God
is to receive God's judgment
and not God's blessing.
For the exiles,
the message is clear.
Your response to this crisis must be
to repent of your sin,
of your idolatry,
of your compromise,
and to return to the one true God.
And when we read stories like this,
there is no room for us to have complacency.
The Bible speaks of the day of the Lord,
which is coming,
the day of the Lord's judgment.
When Jesus returns,
He will judge the living and the dead.
And for us,
knowing that as reality,
we are to find shelter
in Jesus Christ,
in His cross,
in His finished work,
of Him taking the storm of God's judgment against sin
on Himself
so that we might be spared,
so that we might know blessing.
So here in verse 2,
we see God delivers.
God delivers His people.
God delivers the articles used for worship in the temple,
and they are taken off by their enemies
and put in pagan temples.
But still,
in this chapter,
we see glimpses of hope.
Just like in Eli's day,
Eli who came before Samuel,
when the ark was captured in his day
and was taken to the temple of the god Dagon,
what happened there
was a wonderful,
both comedy and the power of God.
Here's the ark of God,
and Dagon was,
believed to have defeated
and shown himself superior to the god of Israel.
But morning after morning,
when the people would arrive in the temple,
there was Dagon's statue
smashed on the ground in front of the ark.
Here,
God gains glory in foreign lands,
and God will gain glory in exile.
Here,
God will gain glory
through Daniel and his three friends.
Through their story,
the rule of God will become evident.
The glory of God will be apparent.
God's deliverance will take centre stage,
even as they are exiles living in a foreign land.
So there is judgment,
but even then,
there is hope.
For you and I today,
there is encouragement for us
to trust in Jesus,
the one who is God with us.
To trust to that new covenant
established in the body and blood of Jesus.
To trust that he is with us
when everything is upside down.
To trust that God is able to gain glory
in the middle of suffering and trouble.
It's an encouragement to us
to trust that God rules for the good of his people.
We may not know why God is doing what he is doing,
but we can trust that he is working out his good purposes,
saving purposes for his people and for his glory.
So God rules in judgment.
And we'll turn to the rule of God at the end of the chapter.
But in between,
we meet Daniel and his friends.
And what we see from Daniel in particular
is that he resolves to trust in God.
And he does that despite huge cultural pressure.
You begin to read verse three to seven
and you see some of that.
So those that were taken to serve in the king's palace,
they were to be taught in the language
and literature of the Babylonians.
The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine.
They were to be trained for three years.
And the chief official gave them new names.
There's a lot going on.
Nebuchadnezzar as a king had what we might call
a shock and awe approach to warfare.
The shock of a devastating conquest.
Nations submitting to his rule and power.
But then the awe as he sought to dazzle the brightest
and the best with Babylonian wealth and culture
to make them effectively Babylonians.
So for our four teenagers,
there are significant cultural pressures
that they are facing.
First of all, there's the mention of the language
and literature of Babylon.
Now, this is not the equivalent of,
you know, here's your book of Shakespeare in Babylonian.
Now, Babylonian stories and culture
was full of stories of the gods.
Many gods.
Not all gods were equal.
Lots of warfare among the gods.
Gods that were connected with nature.
So Daniel and his three friends,
they needed to have a strong faith,
a strong understanding of the truths about God
so that they would be able to discern
what was true and false
as they engaged with the culture of Babylon.
They needed wisdom and they needed truth.
In verse five,
they enjoyed the king's luxuries for three years.
Here was their taste of success.
As it were, if we stick in with this king,
the idea was, well,
wealth and prestige and honour will be ours.
Where will the loyalty go?
And we'll come back to that.
And they were given new names.
They wouldn't be spoken to
and identified as people of Israel's God.
Rather, they were given names
connected to Babylon's gods and culture.
Nebuchadnezzar's aim,
establish new identities,
establish new loyalties.
Let the influence of the glory of Babylon
pull people away from their ordinary
and previous allegiance.
Some of our American friends,
I guess, will be familiar with the idea
of pledging allegiance to the flag.
We'll hear for Daniel and his friends,
the pressure is on to pledge allegiance
allegiance to the flag of Babylon.
With no family support,
with no temple to go to,
with no Bible to read,
with no limits from a religious community around them,
how will they work hard and work well
and honour the emperor
but maintain their loyalty and devotion to God?
That's a real challenge.
That'd be a real challenge for any of us,
never mind for a teenager.
I guess it makes us ask some questions of ourselves.
Do I have a biblical worldview that is strong?
That as I look and read and watch
what's happening in culture,
read the novels, watch the movies,
can I see what is true and what is false?
Can I see what would agree with God's view of the world
and identity and values
and what is opposed to them?
Daniel had his particular pressure points in his day.
What are my pressure points and what are yours?
What behaviours or beliefs
do my friends and my colleagues hold to
that don't match up to
what the Bible teaches
but where we're being pulled in that direction?
Fundamentally,
does knowing Jesus define me?
Is that vital to who I am,
how I think of myself,
how I live
or is it an optional extra?
I can leave aside
if it doesn't seem convenient for the moment.
Like Daniel,
if we're Christians,
if we're trusting in Jesus,
we're citizens of heaven
but we're living in Babylon
and so we need much wisdom
and much resolve
to trust in God in that context
with all those pressures around us.
what we're going to see very clearly
is that Daniel resolves to put loyalty to God first.
And it all centres around verse 8, doesn't it?
In verse 8 we read,
So what's this about?
And again,
you can read
lots of different opinions
about this.
So some people will say,
well perhaps the food was sacrificed to idols,
perhaps it didn't have the blood drained,
perhaps it wasn't kosher.
I'm not persuaded
by that
because
later on in Daniel,
Daniel chapter 2,
we read,
at that time,
this is many years later,
60 or so years later,
I, Daniel,
mourned for three weeks.
I ate no choice food,
no meat or wine
touched my lips.
So three weeks of fasting
from choice food,
meats or wine.
Still in Babylon.
So what I think
is happening here
is that Daniel
is taking a stand
to say
my first allegiance
is to God.
In the ancient Near East,
to share a meal
with someone
was a commitment
to friendship.
And in a sense,
all this luxury
was Nebuchadnezzar
looking to
secure friendship
and loyalty
from those
who were now
in his service.
Daniel and his three friends
say no
because they want freedom
to be loyal
and to trust
in God.
So what they choose
instead,
verse 12,
very simple test,
very simple diet.
Please test your servants
for 10 days.
Give us nothing
but vegetables
to eat
and water
to drink.
They want to eat
what God provides.
They want to express
dependence
on God,
the creator.
And of course,
what's the outcome
of that 10-day diet?
Verse 15,
they looked healthier
and better nourished
than any of the young men
who ate the royal food.
This is not
an advert for vegetarianism.
This is
an advertisement
for God's glory
and God delivering
and God honouring
his faithful followers.
If covenant disobedience
has brought the people
under God's curse
and judgment,
then obedience
is bringing blessing
and favour.
Now when we think
about this for a moment,
this was a costly
resolve,
wasn't it?
We might imagine
some people
around Daniel
saying,
but Daniel,
you're risking
missing
important opportunities.
you need to stick
in with the king.
Don't stand out
as being different
or awkward.
Just eat the food.
You can still honour
God in your heart.
Look around Daniel,
it's no big deal.
Other exiles
are doing it.
But Daniel
and his friends,
they resolve
to trust in God,
to express their
dependence
and loyalty
to God.
And again,
it's important
for us to ask
ourselves,
do I have
the resolve
to put loyalty
to God first?
Now we will see
in the story
of Daniel
and his friends
that it's tested
in much more
significant ways.
Can I put God
first in the
little moments
and
in the big decisions?
when it comes
to family,
perhaps our
house feels
absolutely
chaotic
right now.
Can you and I
put loyalty
to God
first
so that we
want to
obey God's
commands
and to be wise
as parents
and wise
as children
and to respond
and live
for the glory
of God?
When it comes
to our work
and to our
studies,
are we resolving
to put loyalty
to God
first so that
we work with
integrity
and honour,
that we show
compassion and
care to those
around us,
that we make
time for them,
that we speak
truth and we
speak only
what is kind?
With our
finances,
do we
consider
that we
are stewards
of God's
money and
we are to
use it in
ways that
will love
and serve
others?
Crucial
for us
in resolving
to trust
in God
is that
we see
the glory
of God,
that we
see that
glory as
our great
treasure,
that above
all else,
we would
value his
welcome
and friendship,
that we
would live
for his
well done,
good and
faithful
servant.
Back to
the rule
of God
at the end
of the
chapter,
God rules
in mercy
and salvation.
Again,
there are
Joseph parallels
in this
chapter.
In verse
9,
did you
notice that
God had
caused the
official to
show favour
and compassion
to Daniel?
Same thing
happens in
Potiphar's house
and even when
he's in
prison with
Joseph.
And then
in verse
17,
to these
four young
men,
God gave
knowledge and
understanding
of all kinds
of literature
and learning
and Daniel
could understand
visions and
dreams of
all kinds.
God gave
knowledge,
he gave
gifts,
including
visions,
just like
with Joseph.
And Daniel,
just like
Joseph,
would come
to find
a high
place in
a foreign
court.
God raises
Daniel and
his friends
because they
are vehicles
for bringing
glory to
God.
God will
have glory
in Babylon.
God will
deliver his
faithful people.
God will
cause enemy
kings to
recognise the
supremacy of
the God
of the
Bible.
I really
appreciate in
verse 19
the simple
fact that
it says
there,
the king
talked with
them and
he found
none equal
to Daniel,
Hananiah,
Mishael and
Azariah.
So they
entered the
king's service.
They're not
Belteshazzar,
they're not
Shandrach,
Mishach and
Abednego.
Shakespeare,
asked what's
in a name.
For
Daniel's
friends,
there's a
lot.
They answer
to their
Babylonian
names,
absolutely.
But in
their hearts,
they belong
to God.
They keep
their identity
as the
people of
God.
Here, in
a sense,
is the key
to surviving
and thriving
in lockdown.
Here is the
key to
enduring with
joy,
enduring
suffering.
Here is how
to live
well when
the world,
our world
turns upside
down.
It's to
know who
you are in
Christ and
to live out
our identity
as a child
of God,
trusting in
our good,
good father.
But above
all else,
when we
recognise that
our resolve
fails,
we see
Daniel as
a man of
resolute faith,
but what about
when our
faith fails?
And sometimes
we know this,
we fail
miserably,
we let
ourselves down,
we let
others down,
and above
all,
we let
God down.
And we
don't want
the message
to simply
be,
work really
hard to
try and
be like
Daniel,
use your
own courage,
use your
own strength,
and be
steadfast.
that's not
what we
say first
and foremost,
we say
we must
look to
Jesus,
who is
our
greater
than
Daniel.
Jesus
left
home,
Jesus
perfectly
resisted
every
temptation
that came
his way,
Jesus
was
absolutely
loyal
and
obedient
to his
father and
pursuing
his
father's
glory,
trusting
in his
father's
plan,
even as
it took
him to
the cross
where he
would die
in our
place for
our sins
to secure
our forgiveness
and bring
us peace
with God.
He died
to establish
the new
covenant
and now
he's in
glory and
he prays
for us.
Jesus
is our
way
home.
In the
letter of
Peter,
he describes
Christians
as
exiles.
This is
not our
home.
Glory
is our
home.
Heaven
is our
home.
Being
with God
is where
we belong.
Jesus
is the
way to
God and
where Jesus
is now
in glory
we will
follow.
But while
we are
in exile,
Jesus
as he
prays for
us,
as he
sends his
spirit to
us,
as he
speaks in
his word,
he provides
guidance and
strength for
us in
exile as
exiles so
that our
faith and
dependence will
endure even,
even when the
world turns
upside down.
peace.
안에
n
하다
Hydra
n