Daniel 1 (CEV)
1 In the third year that Jehoiakim was king of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia attacked Jerusalem. 2 The Lord let Nebuchadnezzar capture Jehoiakim and take away some of the things used in God’s temple. And when the king returned to Babylonia, he put these things in the temple of his own god.
3 One day the king ordered Ashpenaz, his highest palace official, to choose some young men from the royal family of Judah and from other leading Jewish families.
4 The king said, “They must be healthy, handsome, smart, wise, educated, and fit to serve in the royal palace. Teach them how to speak and write our language 5 and give them the same food and wine that I am served. Train them for three years, and then they can become court officials.”
6 Four of the young Jews chosen were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, all from the tribe of Judah. 7 But the king’s chief official gave them Babylonian names: Daniel became Belteshazzar, Hananiah became Shadrach, Mishael became Meshach, and Azariah became Abednego.
8 Daniel made up his mind to eat and drink only what God had approved for his people to eat. And he asked the king’s chief official for permission not to eat the food and wine served in the royal palace. 9 God had made the official friendly and kind to Daniel. 10 But the man still told him, “The king has decided what you must eat and drink. And I am afraid he will kill me, if you eat something else and end up looking worse than the other young men.”
11 The king’s official had put a guard in charge of Daniel and his three friends. So Daniel said to the guard, 12 “For the next ten days, let us have only vegetables and water at mealtime.
13 When the ten days are up, compare how we look with the other young men, and decide what to do with us.” 14 The guard agreed to do what Daniel had asked.
15 Ten days later, Daniel and his friends looked healthier and better than the young men who had been served food from the royal palace. 16 After this, the guard let them eat vegetables instead of the rich food and wine.
17 God made the four young men smart and wise. They read a lot of books and became well educated. Daniel could also tell the meaning of dreams and visions.
18 At the end of the three-year period set by King Nebuchadnezzar, his chief palace official brought all the young men to him. 19 The king interviewed them and discovered that none of the others were as outstanding as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they were given positions in the royal court. 20 From then on, whenever the king asked for advice, he found their wisdom was ten times better than that of any of his other advisors and magicians. 21 Daniel served there until the first year of King Cyrus.
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Our lives are affected by the
culture around us.
Want proof?
I grew up in Cincinnati, cheering
on my beloved Cincinnati Reds. One of
the principle qualifications for loving the Reds was hating the Braves, at
least as I understood it. I heartily
booed them whenever I had the chance, and I was certain that I would continue
despising the Atlanta Braves for my entire life.
Then I moved to Atlanta.
Funny how things change.
I’m not a huge Braves fan, but I
enjoy watching the Braves, and I don’t mind rooting for them, as long as they’re
not playing the Reds.
The same thing is true of my
opinion of the Tennessee Volunteers. Now,
I still find that particular shade of orange a bit garish, but I’ll cheer for
UT as long as they’re not playing Kentucky.
On those occasions I still hope the Vols lose by 60, but other than
that, I’ll cheer them on. I wouldn’t
even mind going to a game in Neyland Stadium sometime, which I wouldn’t have
been able to say ten years ago.
Culture changes us, and our lives
usually reflect the lives of those around us.
And I’d say this is good, to a certain extent. We need to fit in with our neighbors and
friends, or else we’ll be social outcasts.
For example, when we read the Bible and it talks about the ideal life in
the Garden of Eden, we don’t immediately throw all of our clothes away and
start running around stark naked in an attempt to live as Adam and Eve
did. If you do that, people will have
problems with that. I’m one of those
people. If you give up your house and start
sleeping in other people’s front yards because you don’t want to reflect the
culture around you, you’re going to have some problems. So it’s important that we fit in with our
culture on many fronts.
The problem comes when culture
starts overwhelming all of life, trying to muscle out any other source of
influence. Our culture can easily become
a false god if we’re not careful.
For instance, when we look at
American culture today, we don’t exactly have an image painted of the
importance of a modest, humble life that is best lived when serving
others. Humility and servant leadership
are not exalted. I’d say the best word
that can describe American culture is ‘more’.
More money. More house. More car.
More everything—we are targeted and encouraged to consume more and more,
because we deserve it, culture would say.
The lessons of Christ run against this grain, and so culture tries to
raise the volume to such an extent that to hear anything else is
impossible. Advertising shouts from
billboards and commercials, encouraging you to always seek more.
We all fall prey to this
somewhat. I was digging around my closet
yesterday and started realizing just how many pairs of shoes I have. I quickly came to my own defense, justifying
each pair by stating how badly I needed a brown pair of dress shoes as well as
a black pair, and exercise shoes and hiking boots and sandals, etc. Yet, in my heart I know that I’d have a hard
time standing before the Lord of Lords and King of Kings and explaining to him
how I can’t imagine the humiliation of being caught with my shoes and pants and
belt not matching. Something rings
hollow, there.
So we all fall prey to our culture
at times. We all let culture turn our
attention away from the teachings of Christ.
We consume more and more, we buy bigger and better, and culture subtly
worms its way into our hearts, elbowing out Christ if we’re not careful.
Today’s lesson from Daniel is an
illustration of one culture trying to change the hearts and minds of four men,
and how they stayed faithful and true, and how God used their faithfulness to
influence the culture around them, rather than letting the culture influence
them.
Four men had been taken from their
homes. Scripture tells us they were
young men without physical defect, handsome and wise, endowed with knowledge
and insight. For three years, they were
to be schooled in the Babylonian culture and then presented before the
king. They were to eat of the King’s
rations, which meant that they’d be eating the best food in the kingdom—think along
the lines of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, not Krystal. This food would have been offered to the
gods, so eating it would be tantamount to worshipping the Babylonian gods, but
it would have been great food. Their
names were changed—in short, they were being assimilated into the Babylonian
culture, and we can assume that their own identities would have been lost in
the change, including their worship of God.
This was how cultures worked back
then. One empire conquered another, and
they assimilated everything into their own way of life. It’s why Greek writing was prevalent everywhere
in the 1st century. It’s why
English is so common today. The culture
that wins usually ends up being dominant, and other cultures often get lost in
the shuffle.
But Daniel and his friends were
determined not to lose their identity.
They resolved to remain faithful to the one true God no matter what
price they had to pay. They would cling
to their own identities at risk of their own lives. They refused to eat the food offered to the
gods, no matter how good it was, because they didn’t want to give the hint that
they would worship any other god.
And God rewards their faithfulness.
Daniel 1 is a story about 4 young
men who are determined to be faithful.
In response, they are blessed beyond imagination by God. God uses them to influence the entire
Babylonian empire, and God is able to do this because of their
faithfulness.
What Daniel proposes is a
test. He trusts God fully—notice he
doesn’t develop a plan B. He proposes
that they would eat nothing but vegetables and drink nothing but water for ten
days, and if they looked scrawny at the end of those days, they would give up
their experiment. He was willing to risk
his own life in order to remain faithful to God.
And God comes through in
abundance. God blesses these four men
with health that is clearly evident to all.
God gives them wisdom and knowledge to such an extent that they are consulted
on every possible matter. God showers
them with gifts, using their faithfulness to influence others. God works through them when they turn to him
and him alone.
Friends, I think we have a similar
choice as these men. We can choose to
let culture completely change us if we want.
We can listen to how culture tells us to live, how culture tells us to
shop and treat one another. We can
choose to tack Christianity on as a nice asset, a fallback plan. Plenty of people subscribe to cultural
Christianity, nodding assent but not really pledging their lives to
Christ. They refuse to let Christ truly
change them.
Or, we can remain faithful in the
midst of a culture that tells us that more is better. We can choose to love God above all. We can choose to serve others as Christ
served. We can choose to give rather
than accumulate. We can persevere.
When we opt for this path, I
believe that God will use us in powerful ways.
Perhaps we won’t have the wisdom of these four men, but our lives will
look different. Notice that Daniel isn’t
overtly preachy. He doesn’t sit around
and tell everyone about why he chooses what he does. He simply does, and the difference in his
life is apparent. The same can be true
of us—if we opt for faithful living, it will be apparent to others, and I think
they’ll come to us with questions, with problems, with struggles. When the world has big questions, notice how
often they turn to the church, expecting us to have wisdom for the moment. When we live faithfully, it is apparent, and
God uses that to influence the world. We
have an influence on culture when we live faithfully. When we choose to serve others rather than
ourselves, we influence others. When we
choose not to accumulate but rather to distribute, we influence others. We set an example. God works through us. When we’re opting for a smaller house rather
than a larger one, when we choose not to purchase more and instead give away,
when we make ethical business decisions that may cost us a deal but be the
right thing—in all these ways, our faithfulness is apparent to others, and God
works through that.
God can use us in the midst of our
sin, but God can do truly amazing things when we turn to him. We can get blessings that cannot be bought by
all the world’s gold, and we can change the world in ways that were never
available to us otherwise.
So may we, like Daniel, like these
other 3, remain faithful, and may we influence culture through our faith rather
than letting culture chip away at our faith and lead us away from God.
Let us pray
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