Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Daniel Chapter 1
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

divided. First page is the text that I’ll be reading. The text from Daniel chapter 1 as we begin our series of sermons going through the book of Daniel. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

In the third year of the reign of Jehoakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoakim, king of Judah, into his hand with some of the articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his God.

And he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God. Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king’s descendants and some of the nobles, young men, in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand who had ability to serve in the king’s palace and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans.

And the king appointed to them for them a daily provision of the king’s delicacies and of the wine which he drank and three years of training for them so that at the end of that time they might serve before the king. Now from among those of the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. To them the chief of the eunuchs gave names. He gave Daniel the name Belteshazar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach, and to Azariah Abednego.

But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore, he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now, God had brought Daniel into the favor and goodwill of the chief of the eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king who has appointed your food and drink. For why should he see your faces looking worse than the young men who are your age? That you would endanger your head—you would endanger my head before the king.”

So Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Please test your servants for 10 days and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance be examined before you, and the appearance of the young men who eat the portion of the king’s delicacies, and as you see fit, so deal with your servants.”

So he consented with them in this matter, and tested them 10 days. And at the end of 10 days, their features appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s delicacies. Thus, the steward took away their portion of delicacies and the wine that they were to drink and gave them vegetables.

As for these four young men, God gave them knowledge and skill in all literature and wisdom. And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the end of the days when the king had said that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. Then the king interviewed them, and among them all, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore, they served before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding about which the king examined them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm.

Thus, Daniel continued until the first year of King Cyrus.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this book. We thank you for the wonderful gospel we read in it. We thank you for the relevancy of this text, Lord God, in this Bible and this book of the Bible to our particular times of empire and events going on in what was once Babylon. We pray Lord God that as we embark in this study of your scriptures and this particular book, the book of Daniel, that you would bless us.

We pray that your Holy Spirit would teach us from your scriptures that you might transform our lives that you may make us, Lord God, like Daniel serving in the context of empire, to the end that the empire may be converted and come into submission to King Jesus as Nebuchadnezzar did. We thank you Lord God for the text. Help us to understand it. Transform us by your word. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well begun is half done. Old proverb or adage from early in our nation’s history. Well begun is half done. In other words, half the job is just getting started correctly. We have a text today that’s the beginning, the start of what some see as a very complicated book. A book of great importance in terms of the prophecies contained in it and of the relevance to our times of empire as I said in my prayer as well.

And this text in chapter one begins the whole process of unveiling what is going on and it’s telling us a story that’s important to us and it stresses in this first chapter beginning well. This chapter Daniel begins to serve in the context of the Babylonian Empire and this chapter is all about beginning well. And as we begin this series of sermons—10 or so, at least 10—going through the book of Daniel over the next three or four months we want to begin well today and we want to take this day, the Lord’s day, and understand that every week we’re called to begin it well.

Well begun is half done. The text before us is one that happens in a particular context. Now, one way we’re going to help you begin well in this series of sermons, to understand what’s going on in this book, is that the outlines and other associated handouts for these sermons will be prepared on three-hole punch paper. And we’ve inserted some binders into the pew holders on the back of the pews.

And we want to encourage families or individuals to use those binders that are provided to put these notes in them. You can all, at this point, if you want to take just a minute and take those binders out if you want to use it—unsnap them, put the papers in if you’d like, snap them back closed. We’ll all do that at one time. And you know, if you want to take these home, great. If you want to put them in some place here, great.

It would be nice if we had a place where we could put all these binders so you wouldn’t have to call them back and forth. But if you want to and you’re going to sit in the same pew next week, mark yours in some distinctive way, and you can just leave it sitting there too. My point is that you should try to build—we’ll try to have the handouts from the previous week available in the literature rack as well, so in case you missed the Sunday you can pick them up there.

And today what I provided you is first the text in one of these typical structures—a chiastic sevenfold structure. Daniel’s about new beginnings. You know, why are they being taken to Babylon? Why are the Jews under judgment? God has prepared us pretty well for today’s sermon by the last couple of weeks. Elder Wilson spoke on Daniel chapter 3 and kind of gave us an overview of the book, very helpful. And Doug preached from the book of Habakkuk.

If you look on the third page on the chronology, you’ll see that Habakkuk is prophesying about the same period of time. This chronology, by the way, is not complete. It was pointed out to me earlier that the events of chapter 6 are not recorded in the chronology. I understand that this is kind of a tentative thing that I put together fairly quickly, but you’ll see that we’re really not that far from the time of King Josiah in 639 BC.

Jeremiah is prophesying by the time of 627. In 623, both Daniel and Ezekiel are born. They’re both the same age. So they’re growing up and they’re young people when Jeremiah is an older guy teaching them and prophesying about what’s going to happen. And Jeremiah has told Jerusalem and Judah, the southern tribes, that they’re going to go into captivity. And one of the very specific things that Jeremiah tells them is that they’re going to go into captivity for enslaving their brothers and sisters, other Hebrews, in Jeremiah chapter 34.

Why don’t you go ahead and turn to Jeremiah 34 and we’ll look at one of the prophecies of Jeremiah. And this actually happens a little later after Daniel has been taken into captivity to Babylon. The exile of Judah into Babylon happens in several stages, as I think Doug mentioned last week, but this gives an indication of what was happening. Verse 8, the word came to Jeremiah. This is Jeremiah 34.

And in my Bible, in one of my Bibles, a little section header says “Freedom for Slaves.” So the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah and he says that a covenant had been made with the people in Jerusalem to proclaim freedom for the slaves. Everyone was to free his Hebrew slaves, both male and female. No one was to hold a fellow Jew in bondage. So all the officials and people who entered into his covenant agreed that they would free their male and female slaves and no longer hold them in bondage.

They agreed and set them free. But afterward, they changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I made a covenant with your forefathers and I brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I said, Every seventh year each of you must free any fellow Hebrew who has sold himself to you.’”

So, and then the chapter goes on and says, I’m going to take you guys into Babylon. I’m going to judge you, and this is why I’m judging you because you’ve enslaved your brothers and sisters, the other Hebrews. You’ve enslaved them, and probably primarily through debt bondage. Very relevant text for us today as the income disparities in this country become more and more pronounced between rich and poor and as more and more people trying to survive on a single income become more and more indebted.

And as more and more people become indebted through debt bondage, these texts become quite important to us. If you were a Hebrew slave, every seventh year you went free. Debts were released. And people now are selling themselves and their posterity into eternal, or not eternal, but continual bondage or debt servitude. Well, the point here is this: one of the primary reasons that God is judging Judah is because of enslaving each other.

And he tells them, “You’re doing the very thing that I judged Egypt for and that I delivered you from Egypt to accomplish redemption out of being enslaved.”

Now, what this tells us is that by the time of the Babylonian captivity, Jerusalem has become like Egypt. Jerusalem is enslaving Hebrew slaves. Last week in the question and answer time, John S. asked Doug about a citation from the book of Habakkuk in one of the epistles and this is a citation of prophecy about the Babylonians and yet Paul in the epistle applies it to the Jews of his day.

You see, when we don’t act like the people of God we become pagan in our thoughts and we become like those who oppress others. We become Egyptians. And so what’s going on is not so much—I mean, from one perspective it is a Babylonian captivity. There’s judgment—but in a sense what’s happening is God is delivering those who were enslaved by wickedness and evilness in Judah.

He’s delivering them out of an oppressive place. You understand? They had gone to Egypt and had a good time and then they turned against God and forgot each other and they were enslaved by a Pharaoh and God delivered them. Now they’re in the promised land and they’re prospered. But now they’re doing the same thing that Pharaoh did to them. They’re doing to each other, and God delivers them out of Egypt into this Babylonian captivity.

So it is, from one perspective, a deliverance out of Egypt that is happening, and it is a preparation. The book of Daniel shows that all of this is ultimately preparation for the coming of the Messiah. So what’s going on here in the book of Daniel is a deliverance from a promised land that has become more like Egypt than it is Israel or Judah. Judah has become Egypt. And like the Jews in Egypt, Daniel and his friends and others in Judah are being delivered by being taken to Babylon.

Now Babylon is no promised land. Nebuchadnezzar is not a believer in Yahweh at this point, is he? Of course not. He gives them different names. We’ll see this. But so what we have to see the Babylonian captivity as primarily is synonymous to the wilderness wanderings of God’s people when they came out of Egypt. They come out of Egypt, they go to the wilderness, they receive the law of God. Then they’re supposed to go into the promised land.

They rebel. They’re kept out for a while and eventually they get put in. So here they become like Egypt. They’re delivered out of Egypt. They go into a wilderness. And we can say that one structuring device of the book of Daniel is the Ten Commandments. It seems like we’re having a repetition of the basic flow of the Ten Commandments here in preparation for their re-entry back into the land in faithfulness to God.

And so the book of Daniel is essentially telling us a couple of things. It’s telling us about what happens prior to their restoration in Ezra and Nehemiah, but ultimately the prophecies will also tell us of what will happen when Jesus comes. So it’s covering the 70 years prior to going back into the promised land, but then it’s covering the broader span of time—500 years or so—until Jesus comes as the great fulfillment of all these other deliverances and being brought into a blessing that the Old Testament has for us.

So chronologically, it’s important for us to understand that Daniel and Ezekiel would have grown up learning from Jeremiah. They would have known that Judah’s sins were profound, that they were ones of enslavement. They would have understood that God was really delivering them in a sense by taking them into this protective place and then bringing them back into the promised land. And it’s important to know too that it’s also in this context on the chronology that Habakkuk prophesies maybe 15 years after Daniel is born.

So when Daniel’s 15, 16 years old and well-versed in the scriptures and being taught all these prophecies as God delivers them through Jeremiah and Habakkuk, he would know what Habakkuk said. So everything that Doug talked about last week—the coming judgment on Judah through Babylon and God and then eventually the judgment on Babylon—all these things would have been known by Daniel and then later by Ezekiel coming back into Babylon as well.

And so this is kind of the historical context. And this is why I think it’s proper to look at Daniel from one perspective being structured along the lines of the Ten Commandments. Chris W. talked about that last week. I’ll talk about it more as these series of sermons go on. Every week we’ll sort of talk about what commandment are we linking up to.

And today in the very first chapter there is this emphasis upon “Who is the God?” And when in your text it’s when we read, for instance, in verse two of the text that Nebuchadnezzar takes these articles of the house of God—it says in the translation, well, really a better translation would be “the house of the god”—it’s an unusual construction here and Daniel uses the term “the god” in chapter 1 and the reason for that is we’re talking about whose god really is God here, right? The god that Nebuchadnezzar serves or the God of Israel?

And as Daniel begins his service in captivity, he is going to do a test here to demonstrate his fidelity to the God. “Thou shalt have no other gods before thee.” I’m going to take you into different circumstances, he tells Daniel. I’m going to place you in a pagan empire. You’re supposed to serve there and do well, but you’re also supposed to remember to have no other gods besides me.

So the book starts off well begun is half done. The wellbeing is Daniel’s attempt to honor God in the midst of a pagan empire. You see the relevance to us today in the providence of God.

I was in Poland and they asked me to teach on the book of Daniel this year and I had never taught through it before so I had to study up. And while I was in Poland they entered the European Union, the European Empire, we could say, this collection of nations that are losing their nationhood and becoming one empire. And my Polish friends were not happy because the empire, the European Union, is decidedly not Christian. It’s very pagan and it’s very controlling.

In the providence of God, they didn’t know what I was going to teach about Daniel. But what I taught them was how to work in the context of the European Union. Yeah, it’s not good. But you know, God is behind all these things. He’s creating these empires. He’s brought Poland into the European Union. They’re serving Nebuchadnezzar, or whoever the head of France is or whoever it is, right?

In Poland now the French and the Germans are kind of the leaders of the European Union. They’re serving guys they don’t like. But Daniel says—the book of Daniel says—when you were brought into these situations, serve, do well. Don’t resist. Don’t rebel. Jeremiah was telling the Jews over and over again in Judah, “Don’t rebel. God’s going to take you into Babylon. That’s what’s going to happen now. And if you rebel against that, I’m going to destroy you.”

We see an American empire forming. And we know it’s not explicitly Christian. Maybe the guy at the head is right now. If other people are elected, it won’t be, and our guy may not be. I don’t know. You can’t know too much about these public figures. But we know that the American Empire as such is pluralistic. And God tells us this is a very relevant text for us—Daniels who are now in the context of an American empire the way Paul saw himself in a Roman Empire.

How do we work in the context of this? This book tells us and the book tells us to follow the Ten Commandments and to begin by recognizing that even while we want to do well in empire, we want to serve the emperor and we want to have good attitudes and respectful attitudes as we’ll see Daniel add, but all of this must be set in the context of our explicit submission to the God—no other gods before me.

Now, Daniel is a new beginning and it’s pointing to the ultimate new beginning, the coming of Christ. And another structure of this text we’ll be looking at over the next 10 or 12 weeks are the seven days of creation. This will be a little more obvious next week. But in a sense, what we see in Daniel are these repeated sevenfold structures. And very frequently, it’s quite easy to see the relationship of them to the seven days of creation and the seven feasts in Leviticus.

The first feast in Leviticus is Sabbath. Right? The children in our Sunday school classes know this. Some of the adults are starting to learn you know, the seven days of creation match up with the seventh feast. In Leviticus 23 helps us to meditate on how God recreates things. And the first feast in Leviticus is Passover. Wait, no, the first feast is Passover. But thinking of the sabbath cycle, Daniel and his friends are being brought into Sabbath rest. They’re being delivered from bondage, right?

They’re coming into rest and they’re beginning to move toward enthronement. And next week, we’ll see some very explicit ties between chapter 2 and the second commandment, but also chapter 2 and the second day of creation and the second feast in Leviticus, Passover. So, as you read chapter 2 of Daniel for next week’s sermon, start to think about it. Think about what is this? How is this related to Passover? How is it related to the second day of creation and the second feast? These are some of the ways that we can think about this book. And it kind of helps us to hang it all together, to remember how it flows.

And as we meditate upon the Ten Commandments and the seven days of creation, we’re really preparing ourselves to go into the rest of our week, to walk into the new creation that Jesus has provided us. To take the first day of the week and move into the rest of the week honoring God by honoring his law and rejoicing in his pattern of recreation affected by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a wonderful book. I hope I don’t mess it up. It’s just delightful these texts and I want to talk kind of explicitly about the text itself.

But one other point before we get going. We’re going to be using the Ten Commandments with various responses as the responsive reading for the next 3 months. And you will notice, maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but if you were thinking or looking, you’ll notice that this is the first time, I think, that we’ve used the version of the Ten Commandments found in Deuteronomy as opposed to Exodus.

That’s okay to use the ones from Exodus, but we’re going to use Deuteronomy. And one of the reasons we’re going to use the Deuteronomy version, it is a little different. It’s different in at least two respects. Did you notice it? In Exodus, it says, “Keep the Sabbath day. Why? Because in six days, the Lord created the heavens and the earth, and the seventh day he rested.” But that’s not what you just read or what John read to you and you responded to, “Was it?” No. You’re supposed to keep the Sabbath because “I’ve delivered you out of the house of bondage.”

God is our creator and our redeemer. And creation and redemption are linked terms or concepts in the Bible. And now, we’re talking about Daniel as a way of seeing the recreation and of seeing redemption again out of a new Egypt. So, we’re going to use the Deuteronomy version to stress that we’re coming out of the house of bondage. If God is bringing us into an American empire, if God has taken Poland into the European empire, we have to understand it’s for the purposes of deliverance and maturation of his kingdom.

There’s some judgments going on of Poland and of America as a nation. That’s the parallelism you see. So, the reading the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy remind us that God is delivering us. Even though it looks like a captivity, we’re being taken to a pagan land. A pagan empire is developing. The European Union is awful. It looks bad. But we’re reminding ourselves that God is at work to affect a redemption for his people.

Hang with the program. Point your children to the future. Think about the Ten Commandments as you enter into these empires. Understand God is recreating things and you’ll do okay.

The other reason, by the way, the other change from Exodus to Deuteronomy is that in Exodus, coveting someone else’s wife is in the same list of coveting his possessions. But in Deuteronomy, you will notice perhaps that it said, “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife, nor desire his property, his servants, his donkey, yada yada.” It separates out wife from property.

And it’s very important for us to remind ourselves of that. All too easy in Calvinistic cultures to have men treat wives like property. Nobody would ever say it, but that’s kind of the way you do it. And so it’s good, men—I hope every Lord’s day for the next 3 months when you see that being read by the elder leading you—that coveting thing breaks wife away from possessions, note it. Your wife is not some kind of possession.

I mean, in a sense, you’re both possessions of each other, but she’s an equal with you. And God says if you don’t treat her as an equal, he’s going to close the heavens. They’re going to become bronze over your head, your prayers won’t be heard.

So, those are some differences and that’s why we’re using the Ten Commandments because Daniel is structured that way I think explicitly and we’ll see as we go on it becomes very easy. I can tell you what the first six chapters of the book of Daniel are just like that now. And it’s not because I spent a lot of time studying it. I do have a good memory. But after six weeks here, you’re going to know the same thing because you’re going to remember those Ten Commandments and you’re going to remember those Bible stories and they link right up.

The only thing that gets in our way, of course, is that we don’t know our Ten Commandments that well. So, you’re going to have to probably work on memorizing both. But if we knew the Ten Commandments, we’d know them pretty well.

Okay. Now, you can turn to the children’s handout. Little children can continue on their children’s handout, but the adults can turn to the outline for this particular chapter, chapter one. And we’ll go through this chapter quickly and then draw out some pertinent lessons. Okay. And I read it the way the outline is structured and I want to make some observations on the text as we go through it. And this is the reason why there is bolding and italics in some portions of the text.

So we read in the first section that it’s the third year of the reign of Jehoakim. And then Nebuchadnezzar is brought in and he’s the one that takes things from Jerusalem and besieges it. Notice in verse two, “The Lord gave Jehoakim, king of Judah, into his hand.”

So well begun is half done. Who delivers people? Who delivered Poland into the European Union? The Lord did. And the Lord delivers the people of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. Now, the word “Lord” is used one other place, the same basic Hebrew word, the same root word in these two places, and we’ll see it in another place. But what we’re having here is an explicit declaration of the sovereignty of God right at the get-go of this being taken in.

And then look at verse two of this first section. He takes some of the articles of the house of God, and as I pointed out earlier, throughout this chapter where it says “God,” it’s almost always “the God” from “the house of the God.” So God is delivering them into Nebuchadnezzar’s empire, but we’re supposed to understand that the God is Yahweh. And while we’re supposed to serve an empire, we are supposed to acknowledge the God—well begun is half done. We want to please and not anger the God.

Well, Nebuchadnezzar brings some of the articles of the temple, the house of God, of the God into the land of Shinar to the house of his god. Now you’re sitting in Jerusalem still, right? Because only a few people—Nebuchadnezzar when he first goes to Jerusalem only takes a few people. In there. So you’re sitting in Jerusalem and Daniel sends back this first chapter of his book and he writes out what happened. People want to know what happened.

You know, Daniel is not just one of the guys. He is a noble man. He’s like a special guy. The best and the brightest, you know, the sons of Israel are who Nebuchadnezzar takes first. He’s looking for helpers to rule his kingdom. So, he wants bright, good-looking guys. The text tells us that. Well, the not so bright and not so good-looking guys and gals, they’re still left in Jerusalem. Most of us would be left, right? And we want to know what happened to Daniel.

And he sends back this thing. Here’s what happened. And as we begin to hear this story read in the synagogue or in our neighborhood, wherever, if we go to the temple or for the, whatever it is, we hear this read to us and you’ve been raised up boys and girls to know all the Old Testament Bible stories, right? You know what happens in most of the Old Testament which has already been written long before now. And when you hear this—that Nebuchadnezzar takes the articles of the house of the god and puts them in the house of his god and this is in the land of Shinar—what Bible stories will you think of?

What Bible stories? He’s taking stuff from the temple and he’s putting them into the house of his God. Well, that’s easy if you know your Old Testament, right? It’s the story of Samuel, right? Book of Samuel. And God, the Philistines take the ark of the covenant and they put it in the house of their god. I talked about this at Jesse’s wedding. Confused everybody. But the ark of the covenant, the presence of God makes war against Dagon, the god and the gods of the Philistines. Wherever they take the ark of the covenant in Philistia, God wars against them.

So if you’re sitting hearing this, you’re going to say, “Wow, the first thing Daniel is telling us is that God did this.” And secondly, “God’s going to make war on Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. That’s what you’re going to think. You’re going to think, “Man, I want to hear the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey would say, because I know now that it’s a story of victory.

He’s going to wage war and you know that’s just what happens in this book. Now it isn’t ultimate then, we know that by the time of Belshazzar he brings out those articles and then the war is completed, right, but most of the book isn’t really about the articles. The articles, the stuff in the temple, is really a representation of the people and how God is going to war against Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians is through Daniel and these three friends.

That’s how the war is going to happen. So it’s a maturation that’s a little different than in the story of the Philistines and the ark of the covenant, but it’s the same theme and you’re going to be ready for that.

And then when you hear him say that he’s taken it to the land of Shinar, I thought, “It’s Babylonia. Thought it was the Chaldean Shinar. What is that?” But if you’ve been raised to know your Old Testament, you know what Shinar is. You know, it’s where the Tower of Babel was built. It’s in the land of Shinar. It’s an explicit reference that they would have understood. And if we knew our Bibles as you start to read Daniel, we’d know. And again, another Bible story. Yeah. Boy, Babel, you know, Babylonians, Babel, Shinar, they thought they were big stuff back then. And God said, “No way,” and confused their language and brought destruction.

That’s going to happen here. If you’re a young boy or girl and you’re hearing that about, well, Daniel’s going to tell us how God’s going to confuse the language there. And language is a big part of this. First, starting in chapter 2, this text which is normally in Hebrew in all the Old Testament, it’s going to become a different language. It’s going to become Aramaic. We’ll talk about that next week. Most of this book is written in a foreign language. The tongue is confused, so to speak.

Even more pointedly is when Belshazzar comes along again and takes those articles of the temple out and the final war of God against Babylonia is going to happen and they’re going to be destroyed and the Persians are going to be established as the protectors of God’s people. When Belshazzar does that, what happens? God comes and visits them and he gives them something they can’t understand. Words they can’t understand and they got to call in Daniel to interpret the handwriting on the wall.

All of that is pointed to here. And I just pray to God, you know, that as we learn our Bibles better in this church, that the next generation when our grandkids are sitting around our houses and we start to read them the book of Daniel and we read them about “the house of the God and now the house of the other gods”—we they’re going to say, “Wow, this is going to be great. It’s going to be like the Philistines. Wow, this is going to be like when God destroyed the Babylonians the first time around.”

That’s what the purpose of the text is.

The other purpose going on here is that it establishes that there are two houses, right? No other gods. And the problem with serving Nebuchadnezzar is you’re going to be tempted to serve his God. You don’t want to become part of his house in the ultimate sense. You’re going to have to serve there. But there’s a battle of two houses that are going on here. What house are Daniel and his friends really going to be living in?

I mean, in a way, they’re going to be in the Babylonian house and protected by Nebuchadnezzar, but they don’t want to become fully associated with the pagan house. They want to make that house become the house of God. And that’s going to happen by chapter 4 of the text. Well, Nebuchadnezzar comes to his senses, converts, and becomes a Yahwist. And the house has been converted. How do we get there? Four chapters.

If we honor God the Father—no other gods. If we honor Jesus, the only image of God. If we keep a Spirit-filled witness, we get to the fourth commandment, which is Sabbath enthronement. That’s the cycle of the first four commandments. And that’s the cycle of the first four chapters. The commonality in the first four chapters is Daniel and his friends serving in the context of Nebuchadnezzar. And it begins with a contrast between two houses: the Lord God and the Lord, the Master who is Nebuchadnezzar.

We’re going to see that Daniel sets up this food test. Whose food is he going to eat? In whose house is he going to dwell? Who ultimately is his God? That’s what’s happening. Your God provides you food and shelter. And Daniel’s going to make explicit attempts to say, “Well, I’m serving in this house, this empire. I ultimately am serving in the house of God, and my desire is for this house to become the house of God.”

And then Daniel is going to set all that up. And that’s what’s going to happen. How does it happen? By Daniel taking up a sword, by him telling Nebuchadnezzar off? No, we’ll see that the way it happens—the way the empire is converted—is through respectful, submissive service, but drawing a line to let the ones we’re serving know that ultimately it is the God in heaven who we must follow in all matters.

That’s how the conversion of Babylonia comes to pass. And that’s all set up here in the first couple of verses. Isn’t that a delightful first couple of verses? Doesn’t God—isn’t he the great well beginner? He begins the book of Daniel delightfully for us by drawing these associations, setting up the contrast, letting us know that it’s going to be victorious. He’s doing it, he says. Plus, he reminds us of two other stories in which he defeated the enemies of his people.

So, in the worst of times, you see, it’s the darkest of times. From one perspective, they’re being taken out of their land. Look, Daniel’s 18 years old or so. I’ve got a son who’s 18. Others, you know, kids in church, 17, 18 years old. Imagine if the Muslims take us over. They win the war on terrorism. We lose. And they take some of our best and brightest. They take my son Benjamin into captivity. That’s the age Daniel was.

And from our perspective we would be, you know, wailing in repentance before God and this is horrible. This is the darkest hour. God tells us when we have dark hours, you know, directly associated or linked to this or dark hours in our own lives, God reminds us with this dark hour account, “Hey, it is true the old adage ‘well begun is half done.’ It’s also true the darkest hour is always just before the dawn.”

Yeah. God says right at the beginning, this is a dawn happening. It’s going to be a glorious account. It’s going to be lots of fun, this book, and it’s going to be a gospel to you. It’s good news, the book of Daniel. So, right away, we see that Judah is given to Nebuchadnezzar in the first year of his reign. It’s the third year of Jehoakim’s reign. It doesn’t say it’s the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, but we know if we work out the details, this is really the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

So, in the beginning of time, in the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s time here, he’s doing something. He’s taking something.

Okay. Second section. Daniel and his three friends are given priestly training for three years. Verse 3, “Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs to bring some of the children of Israel.” So you see, he brings the temple, parts of it, brings the children of Israel. It’s related. You’re the temple of God. We’ll talk more about that next week.

So he brings these young men. Who are they? Young men that have no blemish. You’re that kid sitting in the synagogue. You’re getting this chapter. And oh, Daniel and his friends, the king says he doesn’t have a blemish. What does that mean? What part of the Bible would that remind us of? Who didn’t—who could not have blemishes? Priests in Leviticus. Leviticus says an offering can’t be blemished, but neither can the priest. If you’ve got some blemishes, you can’t serve as a priest.

What’s going to happen? Daniel’s not of the priestly caste in Israel, but he’s going to serve in the house of Nebuchadnezzar. Him and his friends are being called to be priests of the nations, priests of the empire, okay? Mediators of God’s service, bringing them God’s knowledge and bringing them into submission to Yahweh. And that’s what they’re going to do.

Nebuchadnezzar says, “These guys are good-looking. They’re pleasing to the eye.” The text says, literally, “they’re gifted in wisdom. They possess knowledge.” Knowledge is the way the literal translation of possessing knowledge—and “quick to understand.” What does that make us think? These kids are good to the eye. That Benjamin guy is good to the eye, isn’t he? Liz Prenis is good to the eye. And they’re knowledgeable in knowing knowledge. Do we make a link with anything from the Old Testament through that? Pleasing to the eye, able to give Nebuchadnezzar knowledge.

See, it’s the garden imagery, isn’t it? Eve takes the forbidden fruit because it’s pleasing to her eye and she wants to know things and that’s how she’s going to get life. Nebuchadnezzar in the beginning of time picks these fruits. He’s tempted to take these people that really belong to Yahweh and he’s going to eat them, right? Eve ate that fruit and he’s going to take Benjamin and Liz and these kids and he’s going to incorporate them into his body politic into his house.

You see, they’re going to give him a belly ache for a while and then he’s going to turn from a beast into a man because he eats what to him is forbidden fruit but God intends it for his well-being. He’s going to give him a stomach ache and then he’s going to use it to convert Nebuchadnezzar. I eat fish and it’s big trouble for me. Nebuchadnezzar eats these guys and it seems like it’s big trouble at first but it turns out for his well-being.

And we know these things if we know our Bibles again and if we have translations that are a little bit better. “They had ability to serve in the king’s palace. And there’s an end of time that’s talked about.”

Okay. He’s going to give them three years of instruction at Babylon how to read the stars. It’s what it says here. He’s going to take them. He appoints them a daily provision of the king’s delicacies. Well, the text doesn’t actually say delicacies. The text says the king’s daily food. Doesn’t mean fine, neat food. I mean, can sort of say that about it—probably was—because it’s linked with wine. But the idea is just that it’s the king’s food and he’s going to feed him this important food and after 3 years they’re going to be able to help him rule in his kingdom. Okay?

He wants to do well. And then in the same section his ruler, his aid, the guy under him gives new names. He set new names in verse 7 to them. He gives Daniel the name of Belteshazar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach, to Azariah Abednego. And I got the translation on your outlines there. We won’t talk about those today. We’ll talk about them more the next couple of weeks. The point is in this second section, in the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, he takes a fruit that’s pleasing to his eye and able to give him knowledge and he wants to have life for his kingdom. And he’s going to give him a certain kind of food to accomplish this and training at Babylon here for three years.

But Daniel, of course, doesn’t want to go along with the program quite right. Food fight, seed versus fruit. So Nebuchadnezzar is tempted to ingest Daniel. Verse 8 though, “Daniel purposed.” Now the ruler of Nebuchadnezzar set names to these guys. And now in opposition to that, Daniel sets a purpose and it’s the same Hebrew word used. So again throughout this chapter, it’s this two-fold thing happening. Nebuchadnezzar’s house, God’s house. The servant of Nebuchadnezzar refers to him as “my lord.” And the first couple of verses refer to Yahweh as “my Lord.” House, house, Lord, Lord. Two kinds of food, two settings, setting different names for them. Daniel purposing to do this food test.

“He purposes in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies.” This word “defile” does not mean become ceremonially unclean. Doesn’t mean that. Could have said that if he wanted to, but that is not the typical word used in Leviticus for being unclean. This word is the same root as the kinsman redeemer who would take vengeance on somebody. And what it means is Daniel wanted to be careful that God’s vengeance wouldn’t strike at him. He did not want to alienate himself from the God.

Why? Because he knew what Doug taught us last week. He knew that if he became too Babylonian, he knew the Babylonians were going to be destroyed by God. Habakkuk had said so. And he knew that if he was too tightly linked to Babylon, to that empire, that he’d be part of that thing that was destroyed. He didn’t want to be alienated from God and make himself subject to God’s wrath in vengeance.

And as much as we want to serve the EU or our country or whatever it is or our employer, we want to be careful that we do not become such a servant and so mingled with the empire that when God brings judgment against them, we’ll die. That’s what it means here.

And Daniel decides the way to do it is to say, “I’m not going to eat kingly food. I’m going to eat peasant food. I’m going to eat vegetables. The word means the things that are sewn—to sew and to cast about to scatter. It means the seeds that become vegetables. It’s the beginning of food. And water is the beginning of drink. You take water and do a lot of stuff to it, process it through a cow and eventually becomes milk. And you do process it through a grape vine and then through fermentation it becomes wine. But the beginning is water and seed.

And Daniel says, “I’m 18. I’m not a king. I want to differentiate myself from the Babylonian Empire. I’ll have to live in his house, but ultimately I’m living in God’s house, and I’m going to demonstrate that by eating a particular kind of food. It’s not bad to eat kingly food and to drink wine. I’m not there yet,” Daniel says.

Daniel will do that. By the time later, when Daniel starts fasting, it says he fasted from drinking wine. So, we know later after his three years, he does this. But for now, well begun is half done. Daniel begins with a peasant diet, an immature diet, a diet of beginnings, seed, and water. And he’s beginning his stay by trying not to alienate God by becoming too tightly linked, too part of this body politic that is Nebuchadnezzar.

So he sets a food test up. Now look at the way he does it. He says, “I don’t want to do this.” And then the master says, “Well, you know, I’m afraid my master Nebuchadnezzar is going to cut my head off,” he says. And so Daniel says, “Too bad. I’m a Christian and I’m not going to eat his food. I’m a Christian and I’m not going to do what you want me to do today ‘cuz I’m a Christian. Darn it. And you, you know, you guys just shouldn’t do that kind of stuff.” No, he doesn’t say that.

Listen what he says in verse 12. “Please, please test your servants for 10 days. Let them give us seeds to eat, water to drink. Then let our appearance be examined before you, and the appearance of the young men who eat the portion of the king’s delicacies, and as you see fit so deal with your servants.”

Daniel’s respectful throughout these three first four chapters. The way you get conversion of the empire is service with respect. It’s not topping an attitude over your religious sensibilities. Even later on as Elder Wilson pointed out in his sermon on Daniel 3, you know, those guys are kind of respectful. They’re drawing a line, but they know God has placed this king, this empire, these rulers over them, and that’s how they’re going to engage.

So, it’s really not a food fight. It’s a food controversy that’s entered into. And of course, the center of the text is he says, “Okay.” And what happens? Daniel and his three friends—my favorite verse in the Bible—they get fat. They’re well-nourished in their flesh. Sleek Hebrew boys. Well, they’re just, it doesn’t mean fat, of course, but it does mean that their appearance is good. They’ve done well, and God has blessed them is the point of this thing for 10 days. How big a difference could it make?

Hey, but the Lord God blesses them. “At the end of the 10 days, their features appeared better, fatter in flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s food, the daily provision of the king.” So, you know, Daniel establishes devotion to Yahweh. So, in the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, he’s tempted to ingest Daniel and the end result is the transformation of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom begins.

Daniel serves Yahweh first and foremost, lets that be known in the context of respectful submission and then God blesses that and now things start to change. It’s a little different than the war of the ark of the covenant on the Philistines. The war happens now through people who are respectful and yet honoring Yahweh in all that they do and say.

And as a result of this in the C prime section, special alpha beginning food is continued and God grants ruling excellence. So God gave them, verse 17, “As for these four young men, God gave them knowledge and skill and the literature and wisdom. And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.” So you know, they’re going to have a test successful and then God lets them continue for three years to eat this kind of food and he grants them wisdom and excellence because of their submission and their desire to honor him.

And then we have the exaltation of Daniel and his three friends to rule the end of the 10. Rather, this is the three years. The king had said that they should be brought in. They’ve gone to Babylon for three years. He brings them in. He gives them their oral exams. And he finds out that these young men—Daniel and his three mighty men—that these four men are 10 times better than anybody else. 10 days the test went on, 10 times better—certainly linked to the commitment of Daniel and his friends in submission to eating God’s food and drawing a line even in the context of respectful service.

And so there’s the exaltation of Daniel and his three friends to rule at the end of the days. These are evaluations. All these stories are about evaluation points leading to the final evaluation point when Jesus comes, which will be talked about in the visions of Daniel. And then finally, “Thus Daniel continued unto the first year rather of King Cyrus.”

King Cyrus. So in a sense, well begun is half done. This first chapter takes us all the way through the Babylonian Empire and Daniel will serve. That’s just Nebuchadnezzar. Now he’ll serve the next empire, Cyrus, as well. And that transition happens halfway through the book or so in chapter 5, but it’s sort of summarized here. So we go from a set period of time.

Okay. So that’s the flow of Daniel chapter 1. It’s about new beginnings. Very quickly now, some major lessons of the text.

First, attaining to excellence. Now, I have to put a caveat on this. Daniel and his three friends are not like me or you. Most of you—these are the noble ones, they’re the upper classes. Weren’t bad, they were well-trained guys, they were the best and the brightest. So I don’t want to say we all are like Daniel in that sense. We’re not. God has various provisions, various giftings and abilities and places in society. He places us however I think we can draw a general lesson—a general lesson that as Christians and as we serve in the context of empire we should attain to excellence.

Some of you are going back to school the next couple weeks. Some of our kids went back to school last week. You’re going to go to Babylon U., University of Idaho, Washington State. You know, Abigail’s at some of us, some of the kids are going—not to Babylon U. NSA. Of course, it’s not. So, but you’re going to go to pagan university. Some of you Sean went to what UFO or something last year. Well, even there, you want to attain to excellence. You want to do as best you can in your studies.

The first three years, Daniel worked hard to honor God by showing Nebuchadnezzar that this diet and his approach and the God he served would be better and better able at ruling and have wisdom than anybody else. He attained to excellence. He strove after the best. And you go to your work tomorrow, you should attain to excellence. Whether you’re pulling parts out of an automobile, selling insurance, selling paper, selling educational materials, doing programming, every Christian should try to make our mark in our particular part of the empire by attaining to excellence.

Don’t settle for mediocrity in your life. Now, you can’t do better than you are. I mean, you know, I’m not telling you to be something you’re not, but you can all do the jobs that God has called you to do excellently. And little children, little boys and girls, this isn’t going to start when you’re 18 like Daniel was. He was raised this way.

When mom said do the dishes, he got them spotless. Well, you know, reasonable spotless. And you know, when he swept the floor, there wasn’t stuff left afterwards. When he made his bed, he didn’t just throw the blanket over, you know, messy sheets underneath. When he cleaned his room, his underwear wasn’t sitting in the corner. I mean, that’s the idea. He was a guy that we know was committed to excellence.

And you moms, you know, well, I don’t have a place to be excellent at. Oh, how more important of a task can there be than raising these kids that you’re primarily in charge of during the day? Homeschooling, private schools, getting your kids to private school. Attain academic excellence for your kids. Attain to do the best job in your home you can.

Next week we’ll talk about making our worlds. It’s an old country western song by Loretta Lynn, I think: “Welcome to my world.” Well, think about your world. This week, next week I’m going to talk about how you make your world. But you all have a world and your part in this world and in this empire, this setting. Attain to excellence in every bit of it. Don’t settle for second best. Do the best job you can at being a friend, being a Christian, being a worker, being a son, being a daughter, being a dad, being a mom.

Guilt isn’t part of that. You don’t want to wallow in guilt. If you’re feeling guilty about something, fix it and move on. That’s what attaining to excellence is. So, number one, Daniel is a reminder at the beginning here to attain to excellence. You’re all here excellently today, aren’t you? This is the beginning of our week, beginning of the rest of our lives. Here’s our food to get us started.

God looks at us and boy, today when he looks at us, looks pretty good. Kids aren’t fighting with each other. Mom and dad aren’t yelling at the kids. You’re not getting ticked off at your boss. You dressed pretty good. You got good attitudes. You made sure you confessed your sin before you came in to get ready to eat a meal with God. God looks at us, we’re getting along together, right? If you really hate somebody here, you should have taken care of it before now or not come to the table. Got it all together today.

This is the beginning, well begun is half done. Keep the sun on, live this way in the rest of the week. Attain to excellence.

Secondly, a proper engagement in pagan cultures. Daniel didn’t say, “Oh no, none of that astrology stuff for me. No, no, none of that Babylonian stars stuff for me.” No, he went to Babylon for three years. And not only did he go at the end of the time, he was 10 times better than the rest of the kids in the course material.

It was tricky. Schooling. You know, there are some who go to send their kids to NSA—not so tricky. Send them to U of I for business degree, little trickier. Send Jonathan S. out to artificial intelligence at Rochester, New York, much trickier. Send a kid down to science education at UFO. Now, it’s tricky.

You see, in other words, the pagan influences will start to filter into these programs more and more in some of these academic spheres. But it doesn’t mean we want to pull back from them. Some of them see this is horrible what we’ve done. There are elements of the homeschooling community. Don’t send kids off to university. It’s a pagan school. Well, Daniel is the example that pagan schools can be used by God to train our kids quite well. Thank you very much.

Daniel in a sense has to be ingested to a certain degree. He’s got to serve in the context of the empire and our kids do too. Not wrong to have a proper engagement in the pagan culture. It’s also not right, however, to be so engaged in the pagan culture, you don’t make a distinction. You know, you drive along and you listen to songs and you’re engaging in the pagan culture. And some people say, “Don’t do that. Don’t, you know, listen to their music. Don’t listen to their philosophy. Don’t listen to that evolution stuff.”

Well, greater is the one in us than he that’s in them. It’s tricky. You got to be careful at what age children take up these studies, at what maturity level they are. All that stuff’s true. But the whole idea is to engage into these pagan cultures in a distinctively Christian way because our job is not to just hold back and sit inside our homeschooling doors until God comes and takes us away. Our job is to invade that culture in a respectful, submissive way to be able to interact with it and to come to positions of excellence and rule in the context of it.

Not wrong to work for a pagan boss. That’s what Daniel’s doing, you know, until Nebuchadnezzar is converted. He didn’t have a whole lot of choice, but it clearly Daniel goes along with the program for the most part. So, a proper engagement with the pagan culture.

Three, a proper fear and submission to the God in visible, respectful actions. I’m not sure how to fill in the specifics of this for anybody. With Daniel, he chose food. And I think that’s because of the ingestion thing, which I’ll talk more about in just a minute. We’re not told exactly why Daniel chose this way to make his mark. But the point is if you’re at Babylon U., Daniel, all three years of Babylon, knew you. Everybody knew he’s a follower of Yahweh. That guy wouldn’t eat. He’s not eating the king’s food. The whole three years he didn’t eat it. Wasn’t just the first 10 days. After that they continued the special food for Daniel and his friends. They were marked off. They were separated in eating, which is a pretty big cultural separation. They didn’t eat what everybody else ate in the school.

This doesn’t mean if you go to U of I you shouldn’t go to the cafeteria. That’s not the idea. But what it is is that somebody at most of the people that you know at U of I ought to know you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ. And everybody at your workplace ought to know you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ. Not in a way that says, “Well, I’m a Christian. I’m better than you guys and I’m not going to do what you want me to do.” Not in that way. A proper submissive way to the authorities of the work, school, whatever it is, our culture.

You see those two aspects: proper engagement in the pagan empire, but a proper place of cutting off, so to speak, a proper distinction that is visible and yet respectable. And that’s what Daniel does and God blesses it.

Four, Daniel’s working for peace. Now, I should have said here that why is Daniel better than all the rest of the kids? He works hard, but ultimately the scriptures are quite clear that God gives him and these other three guys knowledge and wisdom and favor. So, what we want to do is attain to excellence, not trying to do it on the basis of just our own work. If we do it and aren’t respectful to God, he’s not going to bless. And we need the particular blessings of God on our schooling, on our being good children, on our housework, on our vocations so that we can excel.

God is sovereign. We want to please God and not anger him against us. If God is angry against us, we’re not going to be able to do as well. If we’re being blessed by God, of course we can.

Four is working for peace. I think Doug alluded to this. Jeremiah 29:7—Jeremiah specifically tells those who are taken into empire to “seek the peace of the city wherever I have caused you to be carried away. Pray unto the Lord for it.” Calvin in his commentary said these are not the same thing repeated twice. To seek the peace is to work for the peace. And while you’re working for the peace, you’re to be praying for the city as well.

There are some who believe that all we should do is pray. Or at least they seem to be saying that sometimes. But Jeremiah 29 says in a situation like ours where we’re in the midst of a new Babylonian empire—you know, the prayer service, everybody’s upset about after 9/11. Well, hey, you know, calm down everybody. Yeah, it’s a quasi pagan empire. It’s not explicitly Christian anymore. But look, we can engage in this just like Daniel and his friends did.

And we should have every confidence that the end result of this empire will be like chapter 4 of Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar comes to faith and the empire is converted. That’s what God is doing in history. But how does it happen? We’re to work. We’re to seek the peace of that place that God has placed us by attaining to excellence, honoring God, affecting the culture where God has placed us. And of course, praying at the same time.

Praying. Worship starts it all. But worship just starts it. Okay? There’s six other days where you’re supposed to take this gospel of the kingdom into the empire, working and praying for it and affecting its change.

The last point is ingestion and victory. If we don’t allow ourselves to be ingested by Nebuchadnezzar, we’re not going to transform him. We’re the magic pill that’s a belly ache at first and then it changes him. Pop. He’s no longer a beast. Now he’s a follower of God. He’s a true man by chapter 4. That’s what we’re supposed to do. And we can’t do it if we will not be ingested properly—respectfully to Yahweh—but ingested into this pagan culture.

You know the big discussion is well, gee, should we vote for Bush? Should we work with the Republican party? Why not? Daniel worked with the Nebuchadnezzar party. He worked in the context of that political sphere. Well, they may, you know, compromise you, be like, you know, the blacks have been used by the Democratic party. The Christians use Republican. That’s right. It’s just like that except that as Christians, we’re supposed to act in a distinctively Christian way in what we do in that political action. Not, you know, avoiding it, but entering into it with the gospel of the kingdom.

This was real for me this last week. I was pressured into writing a voter ballot measure pamphlet state pamphlet measure argument for measure 36 and I put one in for measure 37. And the people that were pressuring me to do it wanted to edit out a reference I had to Jesus Christ and I wouldn’t allow it. Thanks to Elder Wilson being used by God to remind us and remind me—not enough to say God in this stuff. God says this, God says that. Jesus Christ is who we have to honor with our political action.

There’s drawing that line, but I’m writing it and I’m submitting it into the system and I’m trying to help people politically as these other men are doing by honoring God in what we do. So, ingestion. Food is central to this first chapter. Food changes things. And if God has put us in the intestinal tract of the beast, the empire today, it’s for the purpose of serving in a distinctively Christian way, but submissively and respectfully with excellence.

And the good news, the gospel of Daniel 1, is we win at the end of the day. God will transform the culture in which he allows places us to be ingested vocationally. You go to work tomorrow and you got a pagan boss who swears or cheats or whatever it is and you’re eating in his—you’re working now in his stomach, his business. And what you’re supposed to do is remember that God has caused you to be ingested by that corporation, by that wrecking yard or whatever it is for the purpose of transforming it somehow, attaining to excellence, letting people know you’re a Christian in visible ways, and being a best servant to your boss as he has ever seen.

That’s Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar. Serve with honor. Serve the king. Serve with excellence. Serve respectful to Jesus Christ. And God transforms the culture round about us.

This is a wonderful book. Well begun is half done. Will you commit yourselves today when you come forward for the offering to be the best child you can be, to be the best parent, the best worker? Will you commit yourself to engaging the pagan culture? Not in a way that you become so part of it, you become part of the judgment to it, but in a way that is distinctively Christian.

And when you believe the gospel that if you do these things, then God indeed is going to do with our empire just like he did with Nebuchadnezzar’s. History belongs to God. He is moving us ahead through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to victory.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wonderful gospel message in Daniel. And we do pray for our young people going off to their respective universities and schools. Give them excellence, Lord God. Give them passing. Give them lives of Christian character, submissive to you. May they be honorable to you and thus blessed by you, Lord God, the way Daniel and his friends were.

Give us, Father, as we go to our vocations tomorrow a sense of being in the context of a non-Christian environment usually and yet in such a way as that it’ll eventually transform these things. Help us, Lord God, to work for the peace of the place that you have put us and to pray for it. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.