Themes of the Bible: Defiant (Daniel 6)

 

Themes of the Bible: Defiant (Daniel 6)

For anyone doing the homework and prereading before each week, next week, we’ll be in the 5^th chapter of the book of Amos. And if you read last week’s reading then you already know that this week, we will be in chapter 6 of Daniel. This is the account of Daniel and the lion’s den. Whenever I read this account, I liken it to what we talked about last week, when Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were thrown into the furnace. In fact, when I first started picking out which passages I was going to do, I had decided I'm going to do one or the other, because they're so similar. There's a lot of similarities between the two if you think about it; you either obey man, or you get thrown into a fiery furnace, or in this account you obey man, or you get thrown to a pack of lions, so really I could preach the same message as last week. That would have saved me on preparation time. . . But I was originally only going to do one of those two and not both. But there is something awesome about shutting the mouths of these hungry lions ready to devour. It's just a really cool account, just like it's really cool that a fourth man, maybe the pre-incarnate Jesus shows up in the furnace and protects Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah so that their clothes don’t even smell like smoke afterwards. Still, there's something distinct about Daniel chapter six, that isn't on par with the account from last week that I want to focus on. This is why I chose to do them both, because there's a part of this story that sometimes we don't give enough attention to, and I want too today.

If you were here last week, you probably remember that I said that these four young men, their names both all referenced God, but I didn't mention what their names actually meant. So, Hananiah means ‘gift from God,’ and Mishael means ‘no one is like God’ and Azariah means ‘God is my help,’ which I thought was interesting. It also reinforces my decision that I've made personally to not refer to them as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. I refer to them by these names because those names, bring honor to God, but they got me to thinking, I wonder what Daniel’s name means. Well, there's three parts to it. The ‘Dan’ means ‘judge,’ the ‘e’ sound means my, and, obviously, the ‘el’ part means ‘God.’ In other words, the name Daniel means ‘God is my judge.’ That’s fascinating. Just think of the account that you just read. Is this not a perfect depiction of someone who lives up to his name? God is my judge not Babylon’s king. God is my judge. The Persian king can make his decrees, but he's not the one that judges me, God is and that's who I'm going to obey.

The one thing that you pick up on about the life of Daniel, it is totally and utterly centered on God. You saw this in what he ate. We talked about it last week from chapter 1, I'm not going to defile myself with that good looking food of the king, no I'm going to obey God. God has said this, so even though that looks good. This is what I'm going to stick with. Whenever he refers to other gods in his writing, he refers to them, and makes it clear that they are not God, and He gives devotion and honor to God in everything that he says. And along those lines. This part right here, how he interpreted visions. You know what Daniel did if you ever read the entire book of Daniel, whenever he interprets a vision, he is very clear, ‘this isn't my gift, this is not my skill, God is interpreting this dream and telling me what it is, if you're going to give anybody any honor for this, it belongs to God, he's just telling me what it is to tell you.’ And then this. This is why we're doing Daniel chapter 6. That's what I want you to focus on, how Daniel prayed.

I don't know if you noticed that in this chapter, but that's the key. John Piper is a modern pastor and Christian theologian, and he wrote that, “the life of Daniel, is a life of varying defiant, disciplined prayer.” Typically, whenever we read this account we’re focused on the lions, and that whole scene and what that must have been like to get thrown in there and then the lions just kind of come up and are around his feet and don’t eat him. But don't miss this. If what God thinks is most important, and most of us believe that what God thinks is more important than what man thinks, then, I should be consulting with God and what he thinks about these various things that are happening in my life. So, for us, God doesn't speak to us the way he spoke to Daniel, but he's given us His Word. Do we consult the Word of God to find out what God thinks more than we care what man thinks? Should we not be asking Him to act first before we worry about what man does? Because what God does is most important, I'm going to ask Him to act in this situation before I worry about anything else.

Also, I want you to note that Daniel is a pretty busy guy. Some of us justify our weak and somewhat pathetic prayer life, because we're just so busy. If I was a monk, right, I would have time to pray, but I'm not one of those professional prayers, I've got a lot of stuff on my plate. But, what if I told you that prayer is for busy people too, and Daniel is a prime demonstration of that. He’s an example that the busier you are, the more involved you are in the world's affairs, the more you need to be dedicated to prayer, and the more you need to have that connection with God. Daniel was busier than most of us, and Daniel was involved in the secular world more than many of us, but this is exactly what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘that I want my disciples to be in the world, I've sent them into the world, but I don't want them to be of the world. I want them to have a direct connection to the Father.’ That's exactly who and what Daniel is. Daniel is in the world but is living from his communion with God, His prayer life with God. So, Daniel's life revolved around talking to God and asking God to act.

As Christ-followers, should it not be reflected that you are spending the majority of your time talking to God and asking for God to move, rather than worrying about the affairs of the world. If what God thinks and does matters most, that should be reflected in your attitude and your conduct.

Now, we also know that because of his obedience Daniel is incredibly blessed. Daniel is incredibly prosperous, and whenever you have someone who is blessed and prosperous, that will lead to envy, among others, who are not, and you saw that with these other administrators. Daniel was the favorite, and it leads to envy amongst all of these other people. So, what do they do? Well, if you read the chapter they look for flaws in his character and his conduct. And so, they did what they knew they had to do. Look at Daniel chapter six if you got your Bible, start in verse six. [Read Daniel 6:4-9].

Okay, so you know what happens here, they lie. And I stressed it when I was reading it, they went to the king, and they lie, they said, all of the administrators, and all of the prefects, all of them, we've all decided you should issue this degree. Well, you know that isn't true. Daniel is an administrator, and they knew he would have never agreed to a law like this, obviously, and so they are lying, they're tripping him up because they knew that the only way to get Daniel is to go after him in his allegiance to God. Isn’t that awesome? If there are people that want to destroy me, what I want them to think is the one way we know we can get him, is that that guy is always honoring God, his allegiance to God, that's where we're going to get him.

So, they sit and they plot, the one place we know Daniel is going to be consistent is in his love and his admiration for God, that's where we're going to go after him. Verse 10 gives us Daniel’s response. [Read Daniel 6:10]. This faithfulness is daring, defiant, and disciplined.

While doing the research on this chapter and getting it ready, there's all of these great theological minds out there and they come up with 16 observations from this one verse, and just for the sake of time, I came up with four. Four of them that I really want us to focus on. Number one: Daniel knew the consequences. This is not a case of ignorance, where Daniel doesn't know what is going to happen to him if he does this. He is fully aware, he's an administrator in the government. He knows the way these decrees work, he is fully aware of what is going to happen to him if he prays. This is a guy who is on the cusp of becoming the prince, the most powerful individual in Persia, he is on the brink of that. He's sitting right there, almost to be appointed to that kind of a position. Can you pause for a second and think about the justifications that had to enter his head? He is on the verge of all earthly power and then this decree comes down, you're telling me that it's not a temptation to think to himself, ‘Man, I'll have great influence, if I just obey this one statute of man, I will have great influence and think about that I can do so much more from the kingdom, if I'm alive than if I'm in the pit of the lion’s den. God's brought me to the palace just like Esther, and so I've got to dance and dodge around this one little situation and then I will have all of this power to do all of this good.’ Notice how my man's mind works, the way to impact the world is to have all sorts of manmade earthly power, it's exactly how our mind works. We're going to have more power sitting in the throne room than in the belly of a lion. That's how we think. But God's mind is totally different, and His purposes are totally different. It's the same thing we said about Jesus, that Jesus turns on its head everything that we think of earthly power. Jesus made a mockery of it, and Daniel's doing the same thing right here. He knew the law. He knew the penalty, and he prayed. Daring, defiant, disciplined prayer.

Second thing, notice that Daniel did not hide. He could have hidden his prayers. Daniel could have gone in the closet and shut the door. There is nothing saying biblically that he had to pray out in the open, but he willfully chose to expose himself to being caught. Which brings me to point number three: Daniel wanted to be seen. He wants to be seen praying. You do not go to the second story of your home, you do not go to the room with the windows, you do not go out onto the balcony, you do not go to the most visible place facing Jerusalem, and you don't go out there three times a day if you don't want to be seen. Daniel wanted to be seen being faithful to God. That’s an act of defiance. This isn't required biblically for Daniel to pray like this, but what this is, is a public statement. When Daniel walks out into the balcony three times a day, facing Jerusalem in praise, that is a public statement, a demonstration of his faith lived out. It's civil disobedience. It's an unjust law, that he is breaking in a civil way.

Now here's the question that I came up with as I was reading this, does this not seem to violate something that Jesus told us about making a public statement with your prayer? Real quickly, hold your finger there flip over to Matthew chapter six, to the Sermon on the Mount, and he starts talking about prayer. Verses 5 and 6, “but when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received a reward in full. When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen, then your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Isn't that what Daniels doing here. He's not going into his closet and shutting the door only to speak to God. He's making a public spectacle of his prayer. So does he just get a pass because Jesus hasn't lived yet. The answer is no, we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Jesus is teaching against. What Jesus is saying is, ‘don't use prayer as a method of attaining praise.’ Why did those men walk into the synagogues and pray like that with all of their robes? So that all the other men would see how holy they were, oh look at how wonderful and holy, those people are, listen to their verbose prayers and all the things that they're saying, oh man, I wish I could be as holy as them. These men are hypocrites, they are not really communing with God, they're trying to gain the attention and the praise of men. That's what Jesus is speaking against.

Now here's the question: Is Daniel attaining praise by praying like this? I mean if praise is getting ripped limb from limb by a lion. Jesus is not suggesting here that it's wrong to be seen praying. How do I know that? Because Jesus was seen praying himself. You remember at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus actually says in his prayer, ‘Father, I thank you that you hear me, I know you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of those standing here, that they may believe.’ Jesus is using his prayer to teach. And in Daniel’s prayers, Daniel isn't receiving praise for his piety or his religiousness, in fact, he’s getting ready to suffering for it. That's what he's doing and Jesus spoke to that as well, just a few verses later, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And then just a few verses after that, “in the same way let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Is that not the end result of this account when Darius goes in and Daniel has been saved from the lions? Is God not credited and glorified because of it? Daniel is letting his light shine before men. Daniel is taking an ungodly decree from man and saying ‘I'm not going to obey it, I will obey God and I don't care who knows.’ That's the defiant nature of Daniel's prayer life. Daniel's testimony is clear to the watching culture that God is more glorious than King Darius, and I want everybody to know it. As much as I respect King Darius there's no comparison here, God is more glorious. Is the testimony of our lives the same? Is that the message that we're sending to a watching culture, that God is more glorious than whatever earthly decree, earthly association we may have?

One thing that strikes me when I read this account is that we don't pray like Daniel prays. We don't go out onto a balcony and face Jerusalem three times a day and pray. Now, Muslims pray like that, but we don't pray like that. Muslims pray five times a day, face Mecca, only pray memorized Allah-honoring prayers. They’re very disciplined in their prayer life. We don't pray like that and obviously you can respond and say, ‘well we're not legalist, we know that we're not required to pray a certain way. Eyes open, eyes shut, sitting, standing, driving in the car, whatever, we pray without ceasing. We're in constant communication with God. And, all that may be true, I'm fine with that, but I keep referring to John Piper in this message, and his statement of defiant and discipline prayer, and I want to show you what Piper had to say about Daniel's prayer life. He said, “Could it be that Daniel's discipline in prayer was the secret of his unexpected unplanned spontaneous encounters with God? Could it be that discipline is not the boring substitute for spontaneity and power, but the garden where it grows. Till the garden with patient discipline, and suddenly God makes the plant grow with supernatural power.”

So, here's my challenge. It's my challenge to you and my challenge to myself, if we're going to believe this, and we're going to test what Piper is saying that may be what led to these great supernatural moments for Daniel was his discipline prayer life there's only one way for us to know that. And that's if we adopt the same discipline Daniel had to our own prayer life. By making it a priority. If what God thinks is the most important, then we should be communing with him, and that should be our top priority. If what God does is the most important thing, then we should be asking God to move and God to act in all of our situations before we worry about setting things up in the earthly realm.

The last thing I want you to consider is what Daniel says by this act of defiance. What Daniel is saying is, I would rather pray, than be alive. Because not being in communion with God, not having that connection with God, that is worse than having my arms ripped off by hungry lions. Can I say the same thing about myself? Can the same be said about you? Daniel was saying, ‘you will have to kill me to stop me from praying, because I'm going to pray.’ He’s daring, defiant, and disciplined. Sadly, I look at the state and state status of my own prayer life, and I get distracted. I get dead. Think that's much more a definition of my prayer life than daring and defiant and disciplined. I know I need to do better with that, and dare I say that I'm probably not alone in that regard. Maybe the reason we think so often that we lack the supernatural presence of God in our lives is because we lacked Daniel's vigilant discipline in seeking it. So, maybe we need to change that. God's done one better for us than he did for Daniel. God's Holy Spirit is living inside us. God is in us, he's here with us. Maybe it's time we start communing with him. Maybe it's time we start calling on him on a more regular basis.

Let’s do that now.