Daniel 1
God’s Sovereignty Over His World: The Message of Daniel
(Daniel 1)
In case you haven’t noticed (or in case you’re watching this at a later date), I’m recording this sermon during the coronavirus confinement. A lot of people here and around the world—and, I know, many of you—are afraid or sick; many of you are feeling lonely, being isolated from your family and friends.
Of course none of this is new. Global pandemics have happened before, and far worse than this. But it’s new for most of us. So it’s scary. It’s scary to have all of our habits disrupted; familiar things inaccessible, and everything (in the present and the future) largely unknown.
That’s one of the main reasons (but far from the only one) why we’re going to begin a new series in the book of Daniel today.
If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that we function under the conviction that the most faithful way to preach the Bible is to preach through an entire book, week after week, chapter after chapter, from beginning to end.
So for the next twelve weeks we’re going to be walking through the Old Testament book of Daniel. We’ll be going much faster than we did through Luke (12 chapters in 12 weeks, instead of 24 chapters in three years), and this is not an easy book. So for the next twelve weeks, we’re going to need to come prepared to think hard.
Before we begin to read chapter 1, I’ll go ahead and tell you where we’re going over the next twelve weeks.
Daniel is a weird book. It’s written in two different languages (Hebrew and Aramaic); it’s split into two specific sections, with two specific literary genres. And the actual things we see in the book—whether narrative or prophecy—are in themselves pretty weird.
But over all of that weirdness, there is one common theme, and this is what we need to keep in the front of our minds during this entire series.
The theme of the book of Daniel is God’s sovereignty, not just over spiritual matters, but over human history, over kingdoms and empires, to bring about God’s will, for the glory of God’s eternal kingdom. Everything we’re going to see in these twelve chapters exists to point us to that central fact.
So first off: where is this book in the Bible, and what’s going on at the time?
You’ll find the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, between the book of Ezekiel and the book of Hosea. (If you have one of the white Bibles we use at church, Daniel begins at page 569.) So Daniel is the last of what we call the “Major Prophets”. (And in case it wasn’t clear, even though there’s been some debate over this question, we have every good reason to believe that Daniel himself is the author of this book.)
The slightly harder question is, what’s going on at the time of the events we see in this book? What’s the situation?
Well, if you know the story that comes before Daniel, you’ll know that God made a covenant with a specific people—the people of Israel—and said that if they would stay faithful to him, he would be their God and they would be his people. And he was with them—all throughout the time of the judges, through the reigns of King Saul, King David and King Solomon. But Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was a bad king whose reign resulted in the kingdom splitting in two—into the kingdom of Israel in the north, and the kingdom of Judah in the south (so just to situate us a little, Jerusalem is in the kingdom of Judah, and the temple of God is in Jerusalem).
And following this, with only a few exceptions, the kingdoms have had one unfaithful king after another, one defeat after another.
The kingdom of Israel in the north was defeated by the Assyrian empire in 722 B.C., and the kingdom of Judah was attacked by Babylon three times, in 605, 597 and 586 B.C.
The book of Daniel begins shortly after this second invasion of Jerusalem.
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, invaded the city, exiled the king, pillaged the temple, and brought a great number of nobles and other Jewish leaders back to Babylon to live in captivity. And all of this happened as a result of God’s judgment against the people of Judah for being unfaithful to his covenant with them, just as God had said would happen in Leviticus 26 and through the prophet Isaiah a century before (we find Isaiah’s prophecy in 2 Kings 20 and Isaiah 39).
So that’s the situation in which the narrative finds itself at the beginning of chapter 1. In this chapter we see God’s sovereignty actively at work in three different areas. We see his sovereignty over kingdoms, his sovereignty over health, and his sovereignty over success and defeat.
God’s Sovereignty Over Kingdoms (1.1-8)
Let’s get started.
Daniel chapter 1, beginning in v. 1:
1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.
Now Daniel wants to make his goal here abundantly clear from the very beginning. He’s writing (at first at least) primarily to a Jewish audience, who’s probably still reeling from the events he’s describing. Even though the events of the book span a good forty years—so Daniel’s writing at least forty years after what we see here—there is no way anyone reading this wouldn’t have the memory of the attack of Jerusalem still fresh in their minds. (Think of how our public consciousness still maintains the memory of the German occupation of France—that was twice as long ago.)
So any reminder of these events would grab the readers immediately. The very name of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, would have filled them with dread. This was the king who had invaded their holy city of Jerusalem, and even worse—had defiled the temple, taking out elements set apart for the service of God, and brought them back to Babylon and put them in his own pagan temple, as signs of victory his false god.
Everyone knew Nebuchadnezzar had done this. Which is why verse 2 would have been so striking:
And the LORD gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God.
So essentially, Daniel is telling his readers, “You remember all these terrible events—the attack of Jerusalem, the defiling and robbing of the temple…? Yeah, God did that. The king of Babylon didn’t win a victory over the king of Judah; God gave Jehoiakim over into his hand.”
Now the immediate question here would be, Why? Why would God do that?
And the people would very likely know why—like we said before, God had promised judgment against the people for their unfaithfulness to his covenant; he had even promised that this would happen in their own book of the Kings.
Daniel wants to be as unambiguous as possible: God is sovereign over these events.
The reason it’s important for us to understand this is because it flies directly in the face of the way many people today think about God.
Even many Christians hold so tightly to the idea of their own free will that they imagine God created the world, created human beings, and then took his hand away, leaving us to our own devices. If things go well, he congratulates us; if they don’t go well…we have only ourselves to blame.
But the Bible says on multiple occasions—and rarely more forcefully than in the book of Daniel—that God has always been, and remains, active in the events which play out in the world he created. In chapter 4 of this book, God teaches the king of Babylon himself a hard-learned lesson: that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will (Daniel 4.32).
So the attack on Jerusalem, and the defiling of the temple, happened because God gave the city of Jerusalem over to the hands of the Babylonians. And not only is he sovereign over the attack itself; he was sovereign over the exile which followed.
V. 3-7:
3 Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, 4 youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. 5 The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. 6 Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. 7 And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego. 8 But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.
Okay, so Nebuchadnezzar attacks Jerusalem, sacks the temple, and then brings into exile with him a massive number of people from Judah into Babylon. Daniel doesn’t give us a lot of information about the exile itself, because a) his readers would remember; and b) that’s not his goal. He doesn’t want to talk about the exile, but about a very specific, and very small, number of those exiled—namely, himself and his three friends.
He doesn’t tell us a lot about who they were before the exile, other than saying they were all (along with all the others whom Nebuchadnezzar’s chief eunuch had brought to the king’s palace) were intelligent and good-looking. (I know—he’s not boasting though, just stating the facts.) And we also know that Daniel lived through the reign of four emperors—so he and his friends were young when this happened: in all likelihood, around fifteen or sixteen years old.
And even so, these young men, from the very beginning, represent a vastly different mentality from the one which brought them to Babylon in the first place.
In his second-most-famous book The City of God, Saint Augustine describes two allegorical cities. One is God’s city, and the other belongs to the world. Augustine describes the cities, saying,
“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.”
Augustine’s description of the earthly city describes Babylon perfectly.
In Daniel 4, we’ll see the king of Babylon go up on the roof and look out at the splendor of his kingdom, and say,
“Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4.30).
Does this not remind us of nearly every “successful” society in the Western world? James Boice says of Nebuchadnezzar, “Like all secular humanists, he was saying that all that exists is of man, by man, and for man’s glory.”
Set in contrast to the brazen ego of the Babylonian empire are these four young, Jewish men brought into exile in the king’s palace.
Although there seems to be nothing remarkable about them other than their good genes, they realize that they have a responsibility here—not to themselves, to minimize their own suffering as much as possible, but to God, to maximize his glory as much as possible.
It was a weighty task, because the intentions of the king were anything but innocent. First the king’s chief eunuch brings them in to train them to fit in to their new environment. They had to learn the literature and the language of their new home. They were ordered to eat what the king himself ate.
And most significantly, they were given new names. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (each of whose name contains a reference to the goodness, the power or the grace of God) became Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (which each contain a reference to the false gods of the Babylonians.
The goal here was to make them forget who they were, and forget who their God was.
But obviously, all these changes did nothing.
These young men were determined to remain faithful.
Now I know most of you (who are members of our church, at any rate) are yourselves only a little older than these guys were, so you should pay attention here. Daniel’s first stand—the first area in which he states his determination to remain faithful to God—doesn’t take place in a “big” way. He’s not taking his stand about bowing down to other gods (not yet), or refusing some kind of grievous sin.
He takes the first stand he is able to take, no matter how small it is: he takes a stand on what he will eat.
Now this is probably not a matter of ritual purity, as some have suggested (the law of Moses didn’t prohibit wine, for example). More than likely, this was the only way he could think to resist the temptations surrounding him at this point. His new surroundings would have been exciting, and incredibly comfortable compared to what they were used to. He and his friends were given new names, and were learning new things, and even offered the best food in the kingdom—food from the king’s own table.
Every expat living abroad knows that one of the main ways to assimilate into a new culture is to get used to eating the food. And this would have been good food. But since Daniel had no control over what others said to him (what others taught them or what others called them), maintaining a distinctive diet was the main way he had of preserving his identity—of reminding himself constantly that despite appearances, he was still a member of God’s chosen people, and the one true God was still his God.
It was an incredibly courageous thing to do; but as we’ll see next, he wasn’t just speaking from youthful arrogance. Daniel was absolutely sure that God was in control of this situation, so God would protect and preserve him and his friends from the consequences of their refusal to eat from the king’s table.
God’s Sovereignty Over Health (v. 9-16)
So what we see when Daniel refuses to eat from the king’s table is surprising, and we’ll see it again later: God sovereignly acts to not let Daniel and his friends be punished, but to receive compassion from the man in charge of them. V. 9:
9 And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, 10 and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.” 11 Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 12 “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” 14 So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. 16 So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.
Now, just to be clear: I don’t think anyone’s denying the health benefits of eating less meat and eating more vegetables.
But the health benefits of a vegetarian diet are not the point of this passage.
Daniel says that when he and his friends refused to eat from the king’s table and only ate vegetables and drank water, not only did the chief eunuch not punish them for their impertinence but actually gave them permission to test this out; and after ten days, they were “better in appearance and fatter in flesh” than everyone else who ate from the king’s table.
If you’ve been following since the beginning, you know the point he’s trying to make. God was sovereign over the attack on Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon. He was sovereign over the way the chief eunuch responded to Daniel’s request to only eat meat. And he was sovereign over the result. He was sovereign over the health of these four young men.
Now, why would God do this? Why would he get involved in such a mundane situation as dietary restrictions and “fatness of flesh”?
For two reasons—the first, we’ve already seen. God honors the faithfulness of Daniel and his friends. God had always told his people that if they remain faithful to him, he will do good for them. And Daniel and his friends have made it very clear that they’re refusing to eat from the king’s table in order to remain “undefiled”—set apart as God’s people, in the midst of this society which was trying to make them forget who they were.
The second reason God gets involved in their health will become clearer as we move forward. He’s not doing it only for their sake, to do them good. He’s doing it so that they might be placed in positions of influence and responsibility. He’s going to use them to bring about his plan, so he needs them to be in the right place to do it.
The first step in that process is to get them so physically healthy that they receive the approval of the chief eunuch, and catch the king’s eye.
The second step comes next, in which God shows himself to be sovereign over the success of Daniel and his friends with the king, and the failure of the other people under the king’s employ.
God’s Sovereignty Over Success and Failure (v. 17-21)
So not only does God give these four young men remarkable health in a short time, we read in v. 17:
17 As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.
OK, God gives these young men (who were already intelligent to begin with) learning and skill in ALL LITERATURE AND WISDOM. That’s a wide category of expertise. Basically, anything the Babylonians could throw at them in their studies, these kids knocked it out of the park every time.
And in addition, God gives Daniel understanding in all visions and dreams. In other words, if you had a dream that was troubling you, you could go to Daniel, and tell him your dream, and God would give Daniel the ability to decipher what the dream meant. (This will happen more than once in the coming chapters.) Basically, God takes Daniel, and makes him a prophet.
We need to see that these are supernatural gifts—this goes beyond mere talent. And there’s a reason that God blesses these guys in a supernatural way, which we see starting in v. 18.
18 At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. 19 And the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king. 20 And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. 21 And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.
So God gives these young men supernatural gifts of wisdom, learning and discernment—not for their own sake, but in order to bring them where they need to be. As we read in v. 19, And the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. THEREFORE they stood before the king.
God sovereignly placed them in a very unique position, serving the king in the king’s court, and what they do with that unique position is simply astounding. (I’m getting into spoilery territory here, but I’m sorry, I have to.) God places them in a unique position, in order to bless their captors. They are able to bless the king (as we’ll see), and help contribute to the society around them…all the while remaining faithful to their God.
Three Questions
So in case it’s not clear, the big idea of both this book and of this first chapter is that God fulfills his plans by supernaturally guiding events, which seem to be entirely human and entirely ordinary.
When we think of how God accomplishes his will, we often think of him using “spiritual” means—church services or evangelistic events or big revivals. And he does use these things. But the idea that God is more present in these areas than in more “ordinary,” “unspiritual” situations is patently false.
To accomplish his will, God uses social unrest.
To accomplish his will, God uses political maneuvering.
To accomplish his will, God uses the preservation (or deterioration) of our physical and mental health. (We see his sovereignty over physical health here in chapter 1, and we’ll see his sovereignty over mental health in chapter 4, when Nebuchadnezzar—the wicked king of Babylon—actually comes to faith in Yahweh through a spontaneous mental breakdown.)
When we see these things at play in this book, we quickly realize that God is FAR more involved in the ordinary and banal workings of this world than we ever imagined.
So given that reality, we always need to have three questions in the back of our minds:
Firstly: In what situation do I currently find myself?
Secondly: Is it possible that God is working in this situation for his glory?
Thirdly: What does God call me to do in light of his work?
Let’s take our current situation, under confinement due to Covid-19. It’s been a month now, and the president announced Monday that we have at least another month to go. We’re starting to feel the wear and tear of this situation, wondering if things are going to change, and what they’re going to look like when they do.
But what have we seen today? God is sovereign over kingdoms—including different governments’ responses to the current health crisis. So we have nothing to fear.
And God is sovereign over health and sickness. The coronavirus wasn’t a surprise to God. He’s not up in heaven wondering, Oh no, what am I going to do now? How am I going to accomplish my will if everyone’s confined to their homes?
No—he’s doing his will, and he is sovereign over all of the struggles that have come out of this situation.
And particularly in this time, when stress is heightened and people are worried, we need to remember what things were like before. This health crisis is a different challenge, but it’s not the first. Even in ordinary times, when we could all be outside and work, the situation for Christians was far from what we’d call ideal. We’re called to be faithful to God in a society which sees no need of him, and to trust him that he’ll actually bring good about through the potential difficulty which could arise because of our faith. Loss of friends, loss of family, professional and personal ridicule… All of those things are the norm for us.
So whatever our situation: Is it possible that God is working in this situation for his glory? The answer is always YES. It’s not just possible; that’s what he’s doing.
And in light of that reality, what does he call us to do? How does he call us to respond?
We see it here. He calls us to stay faithful. In joy and in suffering. In good health and in bad. In success and in defeat.
When Daniel and his friends are brought into exile in Babylon—a clear defeat—they didn’t take that as a sign that God had rejected them, or that they personally had failed, but rather that God was bringing them to a place where they would have the opportunity to do particular things for God in particular ways.
And when they met such great success in Babylon, they didn’t take that as a sign that they were at the origin of that success (like Nebuchadnezzar thought). They humbly resisted the urge to integrate (which perhaps would have made their success easier to achieve), and persevered in faithfulness to God.
This is going to be difficult. Success will tend to go to our head, and defeat will tend to discourage us. It will require courage; it will require risk; and it will require faith. (To quote Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China: “Unless there is the element of extreme risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.”)
And the only way that we’ll be able to stay faithful in success and defeat is to remember that God is sovereign over success and defeat.
Knowing that God is sovereign over our success and our defeat changes the way we see both. When we realize his sovereignty over success and defeat, we start to see that if we belong to God, our successes are not for us, and our defeats are not against us.
If you want the ultimate example of these truths at work, we have a better Daniel than Daniel—we have Jesus Christ.
Christ is the greater Daniel, the embodiment of God’s wisdom and understanding, the embodiment of faithfulness, exiled from his home in a foreign land, to bear witness of the one true God, living in a sinful world without ever defiling himself.
And yet, the result of Christ’s faithfulness is different from Daniel’s—Daniel is rewarded for his faithfulness, whereas Christ was crucified for it.
But no one who knows the whole story would ever describe Christ’s ministry as a failure or a defeat. In the hands of our God, victory often comes through what seems like defeat. Through his life, death and resurrection he took our place and purchased the forgiveness of our sins for all of God’s people. And now Christ, our crucified King, sits on the throne and he still reigns over the world he created.
Because God is sovereign, and Jesus Christ is on the throne, we know that our success is not for us, and our defeat is not against us—both our success and our defeats contributes to the good of God’s children and the glory of his name.
Conclusion
One of the best commentaries on the book of Daniel was written by John Calvin. At the time he wrote it, Calvin was living in exile in Geneva, and he was aware that his Protestant brothers and sisters in France were being actively persecuted (many to the death) by the Catholic church.
Calvin dedicated his commentary of Daniel to the “pious Protestants of France” and encouraged them to see in Daniel a source of profound encouragement for their lives, in their terrible situation.
What he writes to them, I pray for you all:
I have the very best occasion of showing you, beloved brethren, in this mirror, how God proves the faith of his people in these days by various trials; and how with wonderful wisdom he has taken care to strengthen their minds by ancient examples, that they should never be weakened by the concussion of the severest storms and tempests; or at least, if they should totter at all, that they should never finally fall away.
This is the benefit of knowing and believing the truths we find in this book, and I can’t wait to keep seeing them with you over the next eleven weeks.
