7/21/24 Daniel 6:1-28 “The Will of God”

14 Jul 7/21/24 Daniel 6:1-28 “The Will of God”

7/21/24   Daniel 6:1-28        “The Will of God”

I would like to take us back in time as we begin today.  Do you remember some of the fairy tales and stories that you were told when you were a kid?  There were the Aesop tales and Anderson fairy tales.  These were some of the best classic stories of all time.  In our modern times we have had some so-called experts tell us that these tales actually do more harm than good.  They just aren’t politically correct.  Give me a break!  What is wrong with a story about 3 pigs and a wolf or a mother who lived in a shoe?  I think that there are two levels that these stories are good.  First they all have a good moral message.  Secondly they help the child to differentiate fact from fiction.  After all, pigs and wolves can’t talk.  Children learn this right away.  People don’t live in shoes.  Good grief, children are bright enough to figure these things out.  Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that lately, over the past couple of months, we have been talking about things that are left out of the lectionary.  If you remember, the lectionary is a source pastors use to choose Scriptures for each week.  There are 4 different readings for every Sunday of the year.  We have seen in the past few weeks where they have left out several warnings in our weekly readings; maybe because they aren’t politically correct.  I was surprised that the story of Daniel and the lions has also been left out.  I would guess that it is one of the top 10 stories told from the Bible.  Let’s take a look to see if we can find the good of this story.  What made Daniel so special in the shaky world where he lived and can we be like this also?

Whether we like it or not, we also live in a shaky world. You can try this little experiment sometime when you are home.  The other evening I watched the news and I gave note to each news item as it was positive or negative.  We had seven negative stories.  They were childcare workers arrested, the disease Dengue warning, West Nile cases rising, death of a 3-year-old, an area restaurant closing, and North Dakota population losses.  There were 2 positive stories.  One was about a child saved from drowning and McDonald’s is bringing back an old favorite sandwich.

There are many inferences that we can draw from this if this is indeed a fair representative of our news shows.  I’ve done this before and it is almost always the same ratio or bad stories to good.  I would like to point out that there are a lot of bad things happening in our world and this is distressing.  But for the most part, I can live without ever knowing about many them.  I also think that there are far more good things happening than ever get reported in the news.  We now have news networks with 24 hour news where they repeat and repeat and repeat.  You can usually tell someone who watches these networks all the time.  About the only thing they can talk about is all the bad news.  I think that this can be hard on someone’s health.  We have to learn to filter what we hear and only react to those things that are near and dear to us.  The world is full of evil but there is also much good.  The world has always been like this and it was so in the time of Daniel.

When we pick up our story today, we find that Daniel is getting to be quite old.  They say he was anywhere from 70-90 years old.  If you remember he had been taken captive by King Nebuchadnezzar when the southern kingdom of Judah was overrun.  As a young man he had proven himself to be worthy of trust.  Some modern people still honor Daniel as they try to take part in the Daniel fast after Christmas.  This is the fast where you only eat fruits and vegetables for 10 to 21 days.  Anyway, there was now a new king named Darius.  Daniel continued to be flawless in this king’s eyes and he is elevated to one of the 3 most powerful men in the kingdom after the king, of course.  I would like to point out that this rather sounds like Joseph, centuries earlier.  So here we have this foreign born Jew in charge of the people who captured him.  This has got conflict written all over it.

So what are the problems that come from all this.  Well, first of all, we have everyone watching Daniel because all the sub rulers beneath him hate him because they all figure they should have gotten the job.  So he is under the microscope.  I think there is a parallel here to our modern news channels who put everything under the microscope so they can stir things up and create even more stories.  Our modern news is trying to be self-generating!

Anyway, these underlings cannot find a single fault with Daniel so they have to invent a fault much like the news networks invent news.  So these underlings talk a very vain king into commanding that everyone can only bow down and pray to the king for 30 days.  They know that Daniel is a very devout and religious man who prays every day to God.  They will force Daniel to choose.

I really don’t think times have changed a whole lot.  Today, everyone is out to get the top person.  I’m going to be a bit facetious here so hang onto your hats.  Everyone knows that we cannot have a black president.  We know that we can never have a Catholic president or a Jewish president.  We know that we can never have a woman as president.  The list just goes on and on.  We have more prejudices than we can count.  And if a Democrat dares to be president, then all the news shows will try to knock him off.  If a Republican becomes president, we had better try to knock him out of there as quickly as possible.  You see, Daniel wasn’t having any more trouble than anyone today who dares to try to reach beyond mediocrity.  That was the problem over 2000 years ago and that is the problem today.  It is no wonder that the brains of all religions have left this passage out of the lectionary.  There are very few people who aren’t guilty of coveting people above themselves.

So I hope we have a handle on the problem.  Everyone under Daniel is looking at him with a microscope to find something wrong with him so that they can tear him apart.  Now let’s take a look at what Daniel does about this.  Daniel knows that if he keeps on praying to God the way he has always prayed to God, he will be thrown into the den of hungry lions.  Most people might think that he could just skip his prayers for the month and the crisis will be over.  In our modern day world there are so many people who never pray that they wouldn’t even consider that there might be a crisis involved here in the first place.

Anyway, Daniel is a man of great honor before God.  He wouldn’t even think of not praying.  So he goes back home three times a day and prays out the windows that face Jerusalem.  You see, the Jewish people were praying to Jerusalem long before the Muslims were facing Mecca in their prayers.  Regardless of the danger, Daniel keeps on praying.

So, the question that pops into my mind is ‘how good are you at praying?’  One of the things I notice most when I am out and about is how so few people stop and thank the Lord for the food they are about to eat.  Each year I would tell the confirmation class that they can do this in school and they won’t get into trouble, at least not yet.  We need to be setting the example of this for our children and all children by praying for our meals no matter where we are.  It is just a good building block for faith.  Here is another one to pass on to those who aren’t here today.  Do you pray at home?  Do you pray with your family?  Is your prayer life normal and regular?  All these things are important.  If we are raising a generation that doesn’t pray, it is because we don’t pray.  Daniel sets the example as he prays no matter what.

The result of Daniel following his faith might not have been so good if he hadn’t been so faithful for his whole life.  The spineless King Darius feels he is forced to put Daniel in with the lions.  In other words the king sentences Daniel to death.  Then the king is feeling terrible about this and is up all night.  He can’t sleep.  He paces and he doesn’t know what to do.  At daybreak he runs to the lion’s den and calls out to Daniel.  And wouldn’t you know Daniel answers.  He is unscathed.

Of course, Daniel credits God, as he should, for doing this miracle.  He tells how God had closed up the mouths of the lions so that they couldn’t eat him.  He tells that God has done this because Daniel is an innocent man.  So on one hand Daniel is modeling the behavior we should all have and on the other he is giving credit where credit is due.  It all goes to God.

This is a hard truth to learn.  Nothing comes from us.  Nothing comes from you!  Oh, you help out and you do things for God but it is always God who is responsible for good.  God creates all miracles and I create none.  He creates big miracles, small miracles and in-between miracles.  A few years back, I did a funeral and after it was over, a prominent man from the area came up to me and told me what a fine job I had done.  I told him that I can only praise God for that.  He couldn’t believe me.  He was almost to the point of insisting that I take credit for something that God had done.  If this guy had seen me 20 years before, he would have realized that this was an event in a long chain of miracles that God had done in my life.

Now unlike this prominent gentleman, King Darius realized that God had indeed done this miracle for Daniel.  He gets so excited about this that he decrees that the people who did this to Daniel would be put in the lion’s den.  Of course, they were eaten up rather quickly.  Then the king decrees that all the people of the land must fear and revere the God of Daniel.

How many times have we seen the miracles that God does in our day to day living?  Satan has been inventing explanations since the beginning of time to counteract these wonderful acts of God.  The trouble with these explanations is that we have built upon them and now we have systems that are built on the lies of the evil one.  They have become so institutionalized that they are all but impossible to tear down.  You can look around and name them.  Look at all the common practices that we engage in today’s world that are against the will of God.  This should be a little mind boggling and scary.

But fear not!  God has given us a way to cope with these things if you are brave enough to do it.  You are to pray.  That is what Daniel did.  He had a strict and structured prayer life.  This is one of the things to learn from this passage.  Jesus will save us from ourselves if you just acknowledge that He is God, if you just come to Him in prayer.  We are part of a plan that is far bigger than we could ever realize.  We find that even in the Old Testament we have God calling us to prayer.  It is what we are to do.

Just as a sidebar here, you may ask yourself why did God do this to Daniel?  I want you to think back to the exile.  The Jews are now all living in exile in Babylon of Persia.  A few had been allowed back to rebuild the Temple but all building had then been stopped.  They were not allowed to continue as the leaders of Persia suffered from hardened hearts.  Then God did this to Daniel.  This was all orchestrated by God so that the King of Persia, King Darius, would see the wonder of God and allow the Jewish people to resume the building of the Temple and Jerusalem.  The end result of Daniel being in the lion’s den was that the people would be allowed back to their homeland.  In order to do this God had raised up a good and faithful servant decades before and had Daniel in position to soften the heart of King Darius.

So, how do you know the will of God?  The simple answer is that you don’t.  There is no way that you ever will in this lifetime.  All you can do is have faith.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  Read your Bibles.  Come to church and really worship.  Develop a prayer life to the point where it is the most important thing you do.  The time will come when you will need all these things.  We don’t know who the next person we help to come to know Jesus might be.  Who knows, in 50 years he or she could be the first actual Christian president that this country will have had in the last 100 years.  God thinks big and you are included in all His plans.  Daniel is a great example of how to live life.

There are many times in the past 18 years that I have wondered why Jesus wanted me for a pastor.  I’m not that big a deal.  After all, I’m a retired postal worker and now a retired pastor.  I had absolutely no training for this before I started in ministry.  I could go on and on about the qualifications that I probably don’t have.  But then I have to stop myself.  By thinking this way, I’m making what I ‘m doing be all about me.  I should be looking at a big picture that I can’t see.  There is someone here or some people here that I have to reach with the saving message of Jesus Christ.  I don’t know who it is but Jesus knows.  Maybe I’m in the middle of a chain reaction where someone who isn’t even born yet will be the end result of our ministry.  All I can do is keep preaching as hard as I can for as long as I can.  I have to keep all my faith in Jesus Christ that He knows the exact reason he planted us in ministry.  Somewhere, sometime there will be results.

As you leave this today, take a quick inventory of your life.  Are you in a crisis?  Might one be lurking ahead?  Then think of Daniel.  Think of the wonderful, full-fledged faith that he carried at all times, through thick and thin.  Then try to pattern your spiritual life to be like his.  Daniel in the lion’s den is a great Bible story that should be preached over and over as it tells the love that our God, Jesus, has for us, for you.  Jesus is the very definition of faithful and He only wants us to follow Him so we can have great and meaningful lives.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.