Thank you Scotch. We appreciate that and it brings a whole new meaning to is it live or is it Memorex and But it's great. I tell you it's Terrific to have such talented group of musicians who lead us in worship every week and to hear them sing and to be able to join with them Well this morning we began a new study the book of Daniel and So you may want to turn in your Bible to Daniel if you don't have a Bible with you will be on the screen behind me shortly Daniels in the Old Testament and it's a book that we we don't venture into too much because parts of it are so confusing And my hope is that we'll eliminate some of that confusion over the next few months as we learned about how practical and how very Relevant this book is now if you listen to conservative cultural critics much these days You'll often hear them lament about how America is a post-Christian nation and they'll talk about how one time We were founded on Christian foundation and how we now have left that well There are some people who debate whether or not America ever was a Christian nation whether or not the good old days really were all that good But that's sort of an academic debate because the points move now because there really could be no question that no matter What America was we know what it is today and it certainly is not a Christian nation today as we look at our culture as Christians We see that then in many ways we hold our minority position. You see this in the schools when origins are being taught We see this in the political debate when issues such as abortion are you for a six or Or homosexuality are brought up we find that oftentimes the biblical view is Is in the minority we see the type of things that are glorified in pop culture We see this in the the heroes and the icons of our culture that we really are Strangers and aliens in our land. We are people who hold a minority view and as Christians Living in a world that that does not share our values This provides for some interesting challenges and some interesting tensions and these problems and tensions are not new These are issues that Christians haven't had to struggle with since the since the beginning and for example Has Christians know how do we how do we relate to our culture? How do we live in a world that does not share our values without being Absorbed by the world where should we be distinct in being Christian and where is it okay to be just like everyone else People who call themselves Christians throughout the ages have dealt with these challenges in many different ways And we give you a few little visual images of some of the different ways that people dealt with the first of all we could say let's be monks Let's become monks and we can all move to a monastery and we can withdraw from the world and that way we don't have to worry about the world Defiling us and we can we can completely withdraw and that way we can maintain our purity in a culture that is so impure Well, obviously that doesn't hold much appeal to many of us here And that has its drawbacks first of all if all Christians were to do that we're to retreat to monasteries And that would pretty much be the end of the Christian movement wouldn't it that would it would cease to exist So it could take a maybe a less radical approach and maybe do something like the Amish and We can all move to a community. Let's call it say Cypress Springs and move into the same neighborhood and and have a go to You know live in own little cloister Separate ourselves from society except from each other. We can do like the Amish do we can adopt our own little Christian dress our Christian language We can adopt our Christian customs and keep the world at bay Well, that doesn't really work too well either because because again, it seems like that's It just doesn't again doesn't have an appeal, but not only that it doesn't seem to really be the biblical image Well, then we have the other extreme the far extreme and and if you don't know who this woman is this girl, then ask your kids This is Britney Spears and according to the paper yesterday Britney Spears calls herself a Christian reads her Bible regularly Has a journal of her by which he reads in the Bible yet even the most permissive appearance probably say I hope my daughter doesn't wear what she wore to the MTV Awards Even the most permissive appearance say I hope my little girl doesn't go and gyrate her hips in front of boys the way that she does We would say and that's probably going a bit too far and so on the one hand We have Britney Spears who appears to be too worldly on the other hand We have the monks in the Amish who don't appear to be worldly enough. Let me can that be right and And we think you know where's Christians do we fit in how and then how do we decide how do we decide that Britney Spears is wrong for Wearing see-through outfits and how do we decide that the Amish are wrong to retreat from society completely and you have made a decision because you haven't joined either one of them And so you have made that judgment and and then what how do we decide what we should do what we shouldn't do now That's attention and we face that in very subtle ways every single day What TV programs are you gonna watch are you gonna watch TV get all are you gonna go to movies are you gonna read novels? What are you gonna do are you gonna only listen to Christian radio who are you gonna hang out with here? You're gonna go to dinner with when you go to dinner. What are you gonna eat and you face these challenges day after day after day What does it mean to be a Christian in a non-Christian world it's a terrific struggle or believe it or not The book of Daniel addresses these questions While the challenges that Daniel faced are very different from our own In many ways they're very very much like the challenges we face today because Daniel had to To live as a man of God in a culture that was very much against his God and by the way Daniel was not a priest He was not a minister. He was a layman. He was out there in the business community He was a political leader and as such he had to face these challenges in the real world And so that's why we're calling the series real faith for the real world now We're gonna look at this this morning, and as we look at the first chapter of Daniel the first chapter of Daniel serves as in many ways an Introduction to the whole book. It's gonna introduce to us many themes that are gonna be covered throughout the book of Daniel And I kind of give us the lens through which we should see all of the rest of the Daniel And so it's very important as we look at this chapter that we understand it now the first thing we're gonna do Number one, I'm following an outline that's on your screen number one. I'm gonna introduce you to the book of Daniel Introduce you to the book of Daniel and because We need to understand something about Daniel if we're gonna understand his stories Let's start though by reading the first two verses in Daniel chapter one Daniel one verses one and two. This is the word of God and The third year of the reign of Jehoiachim King of Judah Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it and the Lord delivered Jehoiachim King of Judah into his hand Along with some of the articles from the temple of God These he carried off to the temple of his God and Babylon and put in the treasure Treasure house of his God Let's stop right there now unless you are very familiar with your Old Testament those first two verses probably meant very little to you Jehoiachim Nebuchadnezzar Articles have gotten the temple being carried off and and so you probably your eyes probably glazed over at that point and saying What does this have to do with me? Well, what I'm gonna do first of all this morning We spent a good bit of time doing this. I'm gonna give you a little bit of background to the book of Daniel This is going to be history 101 now before your eyes glaze over because think history I'm so glad I'm out of school And don't have to read history. Let me tell you that understanding the history of the book of Daniel understanding its background I think it's very key to understanding this I think once you understand what's going on in Daniel It will open up the book to you. It will it will show you how relevant this book is to your life now That's the challenge, but if you stick with me I'll do my best to make it interesting so a few things about the background of Daniel First of all, if you read about Daniel you have to know something about the setting and the year 922 BC The nation of Israel was one nation and have a map here to kind of show you how it was laid out and as it was one nation Solomon had just been King and his son became King his son Was a young man and very foolish and wanting to show his power He began to oppress the people and impose an incredibly heavy tax burden on them now He was from from down in Judah the rest of the tribes said Why are we going to send all of our money to Judah? Why do we have to pay them? We don't need the King anyway, and they revolted and so in 922 BC There's this terrible civil war and the nation of Israel is split in two the northern kingdom was called Israel the southern kingdom What's called the nation of Judah the northern kingdom never had a right to scheme the northern King It kings led the people to worship idols and as a result in the year 722 BC the northern kingdom was carried off into a Syria in the captivity Those would be known as the 10 lost tribes. That's where it comes from They're carried off in the captivity the southern kingdom had a few good kings and endured for a while longer But then in 603 BC Nebuchadnezzar was King of the Babylonian Empire and Nebuchadnezzar came and he seized Jerusalem and he conquered Jerusalem and the southern kingdom fell and 603 he began to deport people and we go ahead and showed this map here If you can see this you can see Jerusalem over here and In 603 he took people like Daniel and something young and brought them back to Babylon Babylon right there That is the home of Saddam Hussein and so that kind of gives you some some geographic appointors They're taken from Jerusalem taking all the way to Saddam Hussein's homeland and and he took them there to live in captivity He continues then to bring people to exile those 605 excuse me not 603 605 and 597 more Jews were deported to Babylon including the prophet Ezekiel and then in 586 BC Babylon completely destroyed Jerusalem Destroyed the temple so that not even one stone was left upon another and so So Daniel was living in Babylon he was living in modern-day Iraq He was a Jew living among the bag of Babylonians now what made this son? Interesting then is Daniel stayed there for his entire life About 70 years later or so many of the Jews returned to build rebuild the temple Daniel stayed and so he's living in a culture There's very much unlike his own Now if you're a Jew living in this day One of the things you'd always had confidence in was that your God was a control of the world and all the idols were nothing And yet here the temple had been destroyed and God's own articles the Ark of the Covenant had been destroyed everything had been destroyed And now they're wondering is God really in control? Is God powerful? Is he Lord over history or is all of this just a joke and so one of the questions the people would have been asking is Is God in control of all things or is he not? The second question that they would have been asking Which is one we'll deal with a bit today was okay now that we're in Babylon What do we do do we keep our culture do we keep our language? Do we keep our religion or do we just blend in and so there face the struggle of whether or not they would blend in and become part of the Babylonian culture or whether or not they would remain distinctive now Babylon Made some interesting challenges for them You remember Israel before had been slaves in Egypt and now their slaves in Babylon But there's a big difference in Egypt. They were slaves and Babylon They were given incredible opportunities to succeed They were Daniel and his friends were brought in to be part of the royal court They were brought in to be royal officials and so they enjoyed and many of them enjoyed incredible prosperity Incredible success and so here the temptation was not to leave the faith because the oppression was so bad But to leave the faith because life was so good and so they're facing the struggles of do we do we compromise or do we to stay distinct and so and that was the challenge that they were facing Now as we look at that then we see this is very much like our world today We live in a culture that does not share our values, but as Christians we're not being persecuted Nobody puts a gun to your head and says you have to ban in your faith What happens is is we live in a world where? It just goes better if you abandon your faith we have prosperity we have wealth We don't into a persecution and the question is Do we forget about the kingdom we belong to and blend them with the kingdom of the world? And that was the challenge so the danger is of being absorbed in the culture of being lulled to sleep Now that leads us to our second point. How do we deal with that? Well the way we do with that is that the new testament model gives us this number one number or point two in the outline is We are to be in the world We are to be in the world Look at verse three. We're going to continue on with the sister. We're going Verse three through verse seven Then the king ordered Aspen as chief of his court counsel Court officials to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and Nobility young men without any physical defect handsome showing aptitude for for every kind of learning Well-informed quick to understand and qualified to serve in the king's palace He was to teach them the language and the literature of the Babylonians the king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's Stable they were to be trained for three years and after that they were entered into the king's service among these were some from Judah Daniel Hanna Naya miss a L as a ryan the chief officials gave them new names to Daniel the name built the Shazar the Hanna Naya Shadrach to miss a L Mishak and As a ryan a bed to go But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way What we see happening here is the Daniel Shadrach Mishak and a bed to go are brought to Babylon and they're enrolled in the king's university They are in training. This was the the Harvard of the day and there was no Yale and there was no Oxford This was the school the only school and like much of college particularly if you go to an Ivy League or an elite school Going to school here was a passport to privilege if you graduate from this program you will be prosperous you will succeed You will have power and so this is a the great opportunity That Daniel Shadrach Mishak and a bed to go have it's an opportunity of a lifetime It's it I mean you were dream for your children to be recruited for this college program You I mean this is you say yes, they can take care of me now when they're older because they're gonna have the wealth and they're gonna have the power And so Daniel his friends begin to take advantage of everything that the Babylonian Empire offers them Now as you look at this what we see is they became come very much like their culture They become very much like their culture They take on Babylonian names Daniel retains his Hebrew name But he's also throughout the book called by the Babylonians by a Babylonian name Belta Shadrach They learned Babylonian language. They learned Babylonian literature and culture They begin to study their culture and we find out later that they are the best students of their culture So rather than saying we are Hebrews and we're gonna stay distinct and we're gonna keep our own distinct of dress our own Distinctive language and our own distinct of culture. They did just the opposite They completely in many ways became Babylonian. Now what's interesting about this is their education and says their education was in literature But this education would have been as Daniel and his friends were being trained to be counselors to the king Now we tend to compartmentalize our education. We have for example philosophy Then we have math. Then we have history They didn't do things that way back then all of your education would have been integrated So if they studied literature, really what they were studying is the theology of the Babylonians There were studying the religion of the Babylonians Daniel and his friends would have been trained in such things as divination, magic, and astrology Now what's shocking about this is the Old Testament says you are not to practice divination, magic, or astrology And to do that would mean to be stoned to death and yet we find Daniel and his friends Studying these things now we know that Daniel is a man of conviction, so he does not practice these things But we find as he is committing himself to studying and learning about his culture And engaging and learning all that his culture has to offer him he He becomes in the world he becomes a Babylonian in many ways But the point three shows a distinction from the world, but point three, but he's not of the world He studies their culture but he doesn't become one of them Look at verse eight as we continue to read the story But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine And he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way Now I got to cause the official to show favor and sympathy towards Daniel But the official told Daniel I'm afraid of my lord the king who has assigned your food and drink Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you Daniel then said to the guard who in the chief official said appointed over Daniel, Hennoniah, Michele, and Ezoriah Please test your servants for ten days Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink Then compare our parents with that of the young men who eat the royal foods And treat your servants in accordance with what you see So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food So the guard took away their choice food and wine and they were they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead To these four young men god gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar The king talked with them and he found none equal to Daniel, Hennoniah, Michele, and Ezoriah So they entered the king's service In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them He found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus Interesting challenge Daniel is Part of the Babylonian culture He takes on the Babylonian name he takes on the Babylonian language But he's not uncritical about his culture as he learns about his culture He is remembering that he's still loyal to god to the god of Jerusalem And so as he looks at this he realizes I can be a Babylonian but I cannot abandon my convictions I cannot leave that which which I know to be true Now you have to understand Daniel's position He's in college To not do what the chief tutor says Michele could possibly flunk out of college Now I know something about flunking out of college And I can tell you you know Daniel learned and faced the same challenges that I faced in my education For Daniel to flunk out of college if you flunked out they didn't just dismiss you They dismissed you You would lose your life for being insubordinate to the king And you see this that this is one challenge he faced But not only is he going to lose his life but here's the chief official He's the head tutor and the king's thought was and that time you wouldn't like this But if the student didn't learn the teacher didn't teach And so and so the thought was the the teacher was thought if If these students aren't learning then the king's not only going to kill them He's going to kill me too Now Daniel has this challenge He believes that god has put him here for a reason He's going to be in a place where he can have considerable influence and do considerable good And you can see how I think well you know eating this food might not be so bad It might not be such a bad idea after all you know I can do more good if I'm alive than I can if I'm dead I mean seems to make perfectly good sense Yet Daniel commits not to eating the food now the question is why He says that they chose to eat vegetables and water rather than royal food and wine What's wrong with royal food and wine Actually nothing there's nothing wrong with good food or wine the Bible through throughout never says that we're to be vegetarians and eat Eat you know and only drink water never teaches that why did Daniel not eat the food The reason was that those coming from the royal table and everything was tied up in the religious life of the day The food and wine the Daniel was eating had been offered as sacrifices to the idols of Nebuchadnezzar and so for Daniel to eat the food and drink the wine of the royal table meant that he would be engaging in idle worship he would be participating in the worship of idols And so Daniel said okay, I'm willing to study Babylonian culture I'm willing to learn out about this and King I'm going to be loyal to you But I cannot worship idols he had to draw the line at disobeying the law of God And so we see the same challenges that we face today Daniel had to draw the line at not eating the food because to do so Would be would be to violate God's law now in a few minutes we have remaining what does this have to do with you and me Very practical very practical. We're going to have to go these rather quickly You know, this is a type of study At the best way to get anything out of this is to talk about how this works in your life because particularly this one This works in your life every single day this afternoon when you're deciding whether or not to watch the photo Game on TV your face with this very challenge. You really are and so and so it's just something that requires dialogue And many ways will work into our lives But what is some applications number one one application is we need to understand our world Understand our world And excuse me be resolute how to word it there changed my wording be resolute We need to be committed to understanding And committed to the law of God if I go into the next point Mad if you can because I want to cover this one first
Here we see in a sense with Daniel our critique against withdrawing from culture My sophomore year I transferred from the University of Alabama to Small Christian College in Tennessee and This one thing I noticed was quite different in Alabama. There were no rules at this other school There's a handbook and Handbook and and it had rules and rules and rules now I don't have a problem with any school setting any rules they want I was there of my own free will I didn't have to go and so my view was if I'm committing to go here then I'm agreeing to live by their rules It's only you know, that's that's right no point in rebelling against them But I'll struck by some of them because um as I got to the rules um I noticed how Many of the rules were there not so much preserve order but to show what is what it means to be distinctly Christian For example at Alabama much of the life revolved around dance parties at this new school We weren't allowed to dance because dancing was worldly at Alabama and we would oftentimes play cards not just gambling But you know spades hearts and things like that and and you know just Good old fun at the new school They wouldn't allow you to play those types of cards because they're associated gambling They're considered worldly and so therefore if you play cards you had to play rook Which is just like spades in heart just different day And but it was just a way of being distinct There was you know people would only listen to Christian music for the most part people would uh Speak to be in many ways very very distinct many kids were there For the very expressed purpose so that they wouldn't be around the kids all with it Alabama And I mean that was the reason they were there and You know different parents may make different choices for the college education of their children But what you would see here was part of it was a sense to try and be distinctly Christian I thought our rules are bad But there's a school down the road that said you know men should not have hair that touched their ears And that and the fact of motto was distinctively Christian and saying that you know having hair that touched your ears was too worldly Women couldn't wear pants because that was worldly And you and they had all sorts of these different things And you look at that and for most of us we kind of snicker at this But what the people were doing is trying to make a sincere term To be distinctly Christian but we see what Daniel is though He doesn't make his distinctions in that way for example when I went off the college I remember the little church and went to People say you know watch out for this philosophy classes. No Christians shouldn't take philosophy But we see what Daniel is of course Christians should take philosophy Daniel and his friends were the best students in philosophy of his day And any area that the king quiz them they did better than anyone else because Daniel was committed to understanding his world in his culture Why because Daniel could not have been the success that he was And could not have glorified God in the way that he did if he did not understand his world Now practically what does that mean? Well give me another example Local Christian school here a number of years ago Parents became very agitated Because the English teacher had assigned them to read Alus Huxley's book Utopia Uh now if you're familiar with the book Utopia hasn't seen so they're quite immoral But Utopia also is probably one of the most influential books of the past century And in many ways is one of the best descriptions of modern culture in literature Very influential book And so the thing is they said we don't think we should read literature that has immoral content Now Daniel read a lot of literature that I have had a lot of immoral content Now the question is how old should you be before you read Utopia? Now that's certainly a question Whether not high school seniors are old enough or not But it certainly is a book that Christians ought to read And we ought to be reading these things and critiquing them Because we need to be students of our culture and students of our world We need to be people who understand our culture and what's going on But to do that we need to go back to what point one up here We also have to be resolute As we as we get into our culture we have to resolve ourselves not to be like our culture It says verse 8 that Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the food of the king's stable And so again he says I'm going to be a Babylonian and I'm going to get into the culture But I'm not going to let the culture get into me And that's the big difference I'm going to understand my culture but I'm not going to and I'm going to influence my culture But I'm not going to let the culture influence me I'm going to be guided by my principles which are the law of God and the law of God alone Now that's hard For a Christian it would be much easier to either withdraw from culture And just read Christian books and listen to Christian music And hang out with just with Christians Or to become just like our culture And just wear the cross You know but you know and gyrate the hips with Brittany and say I praise God for this new great did on teen sex or whatever And that would be easy to do one or the other But God says no You're to be in the world but not out of the world Which is a much greater struggle We're to be in our culture but being critical of our culture Daniel understood this he was a layman having to live in the world but not being out of the world And which means as Christians we ought to be looking And reading literature but not just you can't do it in the same way a non-Christian does If you read utopia and you read it simply for pleasure Then you're missing the point of the book of Daniel If you read utopia and you read it with a Christian worldview and you see what's wrong with the world This is a total difference You can't we as Christians can never turn our mind off We always have to be thinking critically about everything that happens And we see this with Daniel He looks and he thinks I can study the literature But he thinks critically this is why I can't eat the food He draws the line at disobeying God's law And he seeks to influence this culture for the glory of God Here's where the struggle takes place in your life Daniel was a layman And he was he was committed to success He was committed to glorifying God by doing his best He was loyal to a pagan king even But as he was committed to success and committed to being loyal to this pagan king He had to make a decision about whether or not he was going to eat the food off or dial Here's how this works I had a friend a number of years ago who helped me with my youth ministry He was a full-doll computer component I'm not even sure exactly what these components did And he would because of the salesman One thing you have to do is the sales when you have to take people out and entertain them Which he was more than happy to do I'm sure he was a great social person to be around But the problem was there's boss wanted him to take clients out to the strip club Men would be coming in as clients out of town away from their wives And they wanted to go to club one on Rachel's and these sort of places And so he said, you know, I don't mind entertaining my clients So I do mind entertaining my clients, you know He said, I have to draw the line, you know, there There's nothing wrong with going out to dinner There is nothing wrong with going out to Rachel It's clearly a violation of the law of God For that is boss said, you know, you're not willing to do what you need to do to make sales You're not willing to put the effort in Any end is up losing his job And you look and say sometimes obedience has cost Sometimes it means we're going to have to be distinct And people are going to think we're narrow minded That we're bigoted, that we are legalistic But that's not what it is at all It's not legalism to be committed to the law of God And so we see what Daniel is He's committed to living in the world But he's not committed to letting the world be a part of him And he's living in distinct life Now that's where we live as Christians How do we do that? When we do that by understanding God There's something further that Daniel does there And I think we see this from the third point The third point is we need to live in the world But live for the kingdom We need to live in the world But live for the kingdom What this means is Daniel Is a faithful servant to his king For more than that he's living for the kingdom of God Throughout the book of Daniel we see that he has a vision Constantly that God is going to bring about his kingdom The kingdom of Babylon will one day go away The kingdom of this world will fade away And it will all be replaced by the kingdom of God And Daniel's convinced is more important to live for the kingdom of God Than it is for the kingdom of the world And so he lives He lives as light distinctly Based on that value Based on what is real, what is true Here's how this affects your life this week This week you're going to be at work Or you're going to be at home You're going to have entertainment opportunities You're going to have work opportunities And you're going to be faced with a challenge of How worldly should I be And that's not the question That's not the question at all The question is not how worldly can I be Before I cross the line The question is God has called me to be a part of this culture And what does it mean to be Christian In this culture And it means to be faithful to God on every town And so it means when you're interacting with others The question is not What gets me ahead But what are God's values that I should be living by How is that going to make me different You're going to face that challenge No many of you in work are pressured I've heard this from many men Pressured oftentimes the line Particularly in a sales situation Or in an evaluation situation And you have to say you know I want to be loyal I want to be loyal to my boss But more than that I'm committed to be loyal to God I'm gonna live for the kingdom More than anything else We have a great model for this In our Savior Jesus Christ What we see with Jesus Christ As John chapter one points out to us Is that Jesus Christ came into our world He took on our culture He spoke our language Jesus didn't come and flowed above everyone else But it became just like the people around him John chapter one says That Jesus That the word became flesh and dwelt among us He tabernacled among us He became one of us Yet Jesus did all of that without sin If God is going to use us in our culture And which he's calling us to do Just to see he's dangled in his Then we need to be people who understand our culture And are inculturated in it But in a way that is redemptive for our culture Which means that we have our leeches to God Into him alone God's calling us To life in many ways is hard How do we live as Christians in a non-Christian world We live it By engaging the culture But without compromise That's correct Our Father we come before you this morning In many ways we've brought up many more questions Than we've answered I talk about every day we face this Of what does it mean to be a Christian What does it mean to live in the world without being worldly And what we thank you for the model of Daniel We thank you for his faithfulness We thank you that we show us His successes And how he engages his culture successfully Yet his incredible courage Where he remains faithful to you at all times Where we recognize that In many ways we're not like Daniel That we don't have that sort of courage That oftentimes we retreat from the world out of cowardice Or we give in to the world Again out of cowardice But we want to be people of faith And so we pray you constantly remind us Of what is true That your kingdom is coming And that your kingdom will prevail And that we will live for your kingdom We pray you remind us of Christ our Savior But how he took on our culture And our world So that he might win us Yet he did it without sin And we pray that we might follow in his steps Or he put his christian name in there