i'd like you to open your bibles please to daniel chapter one daniel is such a such an incredible book very interesting very insightful book written by a young man well i don't know how young he was when he wrote it he was at least a young man when he was taken deported by the babylonians to to their kingdom from his own world in the north or the southern kingdom of judah you'll remember that daniel lived at a time in judah's history remember the northern kingdom of israel had long since been dispersed by the assyrian army
since that time the babylonians came into power and and so the southern kingdom of judah is the only one that exists at this point and they too had fallen into great idolatry and paganism and so god finally judged them in a disciplinary manner by allowing the babylonian military to kind of come and basically conquer them and this is what we're going to start reading about here in daniel um chapter one you'll notice actually that daniel begins this letter or this book rather with a time stamp and we always appreciate when the biblical writers do that
notice in verse one daniel writes in the third year of the reign of jehoiakim king of judah now let me let me tell you what's going on and because this this is an important uh time stamp because this is that this is he's telling you about the period of time when the babylonians came for the very first time and invaded the land and essentially conquered the the southern kingdom of judah without destroying it but daniel tells us in the latter half of verse 1 the nebuchadnezzar king of babylon came to jerusalem and besieged it and
so here you have the babylonian army besieging the city of jerusalem they eventually give in the the babylonians come into the city without destroying it though at this point and they begin to take some people back to babylon now this has been a rough several years for the southern kingdom of judah they you know josiah remember king josiah he was the last good king in the southern kingdom of judah but you'll remember that king josiah died what i consider to be a very untimely death he went up against pharaoh's army of egypt and he the
lord didn't tell him to and he did it anyway kind of did it in the own his own pride and stubbornness and he was killed in battle and so when when josiah was killed the the people of judah put one of his sons on the throne in his place and it was interestingly enough one of josiah's younger sons a man by the name of jehohash and and so they they put him the people put johash on the throne and then pharaoh who had killed josiah decided he wanted to flex his muscle so he came into
judah and he dethroned jehoiah has took him to egypt and put his older brother jehoiakim on the throne as a puppet king well in the meantime babylon takes a more prominent place on the stage of military prowess and they come against judah during the time of jehoiachim notice daniel says it's in the third year of joha kim's reign and they flex their muscle and essentially take the city so david goes on to write in verse 2 and the lord gave jehoiakim king of judah into his hand meaning the hand of the nebuchadnezzar the king of
babylon with some of the vessels of the house of god and he brought them meaning the vessels to the land of shinar which is an ancient name or an ancient term for babylon when you see that name shannar you're you're just you're hearing babylon and it says he took those vessels to the house of his god and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god do you remember this was a fairly common thing to do when a conquering king who was of course a pagan came and conquered another king who was a pagan usually
he would take whatever was valuable and he would take those things into the temple of his god in a way of kind of showing that his god was superior to the god that he had just conquered because they believed that it wasn't just armies that were at war they believed the gods were at war with one another and so if my army conquered your army that means my god is is tougher than your god you see so he would take whoever the conquering army was would take those things and put them in the temple of
their god remember the philistines did this during the time of eli the high priest the the nation of israel fell to the philistines and they actually captured the ark of the covenant you'll remember and they took the ark of the covenant and they put it in the temple of their god dagon and and again it was a clear demonstration of what they believed to be the superiority of one god over another and that's one of the things that happens here but the next thing daniel writes in verse three is very interesting because he says then
the king commanded ashpenaz his chief eunuch to bring some of the people of israel both of the royal family and again that means of the davidic line okay and of the nobility so their larger family youths without blemish of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom endowed with knowledge and understanding learning and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and the language of the chaldeans okay once again this was fairly common when a conquering king would come in and take a city he wanted to benefit from the conquering of
that city and so he would take the best of what that nation had to offer including the best and the brightest of their people particularly the youth people that he could he could speak into and he could educate and he could bring into conformity with his way of kind of thinking and so he brought some of these individuals and daniel is going to go in this very first deportation and by the way daniel is one of those people that talks about here who was of the royal family daniel was actually of the in the lineage
of david so uh and oh by the way this is the time when ezekiel was also taken captive in the first deportation and these these men were probably quite young in fact i'm it talks here about the fact that they were young uh it could have been in their late teens early twenties more likely uh so and uh oh and king jehoiakim who was on the throne at the time was also deported along with those people to babylon i don't know if you remember way back in our study of isaiah but but god told the
the the people of the land through isaiah that this would happen he foretold it let me show you this on the screen from isaiah chapter 39 it says and some of your own sons who will come from you whom you will father shall be taken away and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of babylon so the lord had told them beforehand that these sorts of things would take place and now here in the time of daniel they are in fact so next we're going to see how the king prepared these men
for service look at verse 5 with me and this is an interesting verse 2. it says 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 so not only would the king feed them and take care of them and so this was they they were going to be well taken care of i mean they you know when the bible talks about how he ate
at the king's table you'll hear that reference sometimes about sometimes it'll be a conquered king who will come to the nation of the conqueror and it says he ate at his table for the rest of his life that doesn't necess that doesn't mean he sat at his table and they looked at each other across the table it means he ate the king's food he was given a portion from the king and that's what's going on here these men were given the king's portion and so it was this was the best food of the land i
mean this was this was the cream of the crop the prime cut choice cuts of meat best things that you could buy the wine that was aged and and wonderful and then on and on and on so these men were to be taken care of they were also to be educated as we're we see here for three years there's to learn the culture the literature the art and all and the religion of the people of babylon now i want to stop you i guess right there for just a moment if i could i want you
to think about what it would be like if you living here in the united states of america well if we as a country were conquered by some foreign nation and they decided to take some of our youth late senior high to early college age type youth and cart them off to their country to learn their culture their language their religion and everything about them that would educate them in the ways of that foreign land first of all how would you feel as a parent i can about imagine how would you feel as a youth being
taken away from your family having to take up residence in a completely foreign country learning a completely different language learning new ways now put yourself in that position as a believer in god here you are worshiping the one true god and you're being taken to a nation where they worship many gods they've got gods for every day of the week they've got gods that control the sun the moon the stars the crops the fertility of human beings they've got a god for everything and you're to you're to learn it and you're to be educated in
those ways compelled you know doesn't matter whether you want to learn it or not you're going to learn it you can imagine what that was like for daniel and and these other young individuals who were taken away from the culture that they loved and and seemingly away from the worship of the god that they loved well verse 6 begins to get a little more personal with us by giving the names of these men it says among these and so there were many but we're only highlighting the fact that among these there were daniel hananiah mishael
and azariah of the tribe of judah and that would probably mean that they were of nobility if not as i said before of the lineage of david and the chief of the eunuchs gave them names and these are babylonian names daniel he called beltachazar hananiah he called shadrach michel he called meshach and azariah he called abednego so here it's in again you're taken off into a foreign land you're compelled to learn all of this information from this foreign country and kind of as almost a final show of control you know to you to to communicate
to you in no uncertain terms that your past life is over we're going to give you a new name and you know this is particularly grievous to a young jewish individual because as you know names meant a lot to the jews they would often name their kids based on circumstances or characteristics of the child or something like that in fact daniel's name means god is my judge but he was given a new name and that new name was beltashazar which had some kind of a meaning related to the pagan deity of bell one of the
one of their many deities something about protecting bell there's a little confusion as to exactly what that name means but i'm sure daniel knew and understood that his his god-given name that meant a lot to him was taken away and replaced with a pagan name pointing to a pagan deity whatever it meant it was a daily reminder to these young men that the pagan influence of their new home was to be the norm now as we come to verse 8 we're actually told a lot about the character of the man daniel look what it says
here in verse 8 it says but daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank now i i need to tell you after looking at this one verse that there's a strong word in this verse and that's the word defile it's used many times throughout the old testament uh particularly when god puts up prohibitions telling his people not to defile themselves but it means to be polluted by something okay so daniel is determining he's resolving within himself that he is not going to pollute himself with
the king's food or with the wine that was given to him to eat so now what we need to do is we need to talk a little bit about exactly what daniel is objecting to in this situation because you have to understand that that for daniel to eat the king's food it would essentially cause him and his fellow jews to violate certain prohibitions that had been put into the law into the mosaic law for all jews about foods that they were not to eat now in addition to that there's a pretty good bet that all
of the king's food before it got to his table would have been sacrificed to a pagan deity and that too was considered to be a very grievous thing for a jew to eat such food and in fact to partake of it would be a violation of what they knew god had revealed in his word let me show you one such reference on the screen from exodus chapter 34 it says lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and when they after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited you
eat of his sacrifice and went on talk how bad of a thing that that would actually be so this is something that all the jews were well aware of and daniel knew and understood that this food before it came to the king's table would have been sacrificed to various pagan idols so in the middle of verse 8 if you look with me here it says therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself now that's interesting language he didn't it doesn't just say here so daniel went to the chief
of the eunuchs and said can i please not eat that food he didn't he actually said i don't want to defile myself and what that tells us in this verse is that david or excuse me daniel explained the significance of that food in other words he wanted a religious exemption from eating the king's food all right but he explained that it was on religious grounds it was on the grounds of his own personal devotion to yahweh that he did not want to eat this food now we're told in verse 9 that god gave daniel favor
and compassion in the sight of the chief of eunuchs and the chief of the eunuch said to daniel i fear my lord the king who has signed your food and your drink for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the the than the youths who are of your own age so you would endanger my head with the king do you see what he's telling daniel he's saying listen dude if i withhold that food and and you don't eat it and you end up looking all gaunt and unhealthy in front of the
king he's going to come to me because i was given the job of taking care of you and if if you're not looking right he's going to say you didn't do your job off with your head and so he's telling daniel you're putting me in a kind of a dangerous situation here but it goes on to say in verse 11 and apparently there's some time between the end of verse 10 and the beginning of verse 11 because in in verse 9 and 10 david is having a conversation with the chief eunuch but you'll notice in
verse 11 now he's speaking to the steward of the chief of the eunuchs so there's been some time passing here and apparently daniel i'm assuming he's had time to pray about it and perhaps the lord has even given him a word perhaps even a promise it says then daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over david hananiah mitchell and azariah test your servants for 10 days let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink 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 this is really very brilliant when you think about it because daniel is proposing a test related to this whole food thing and he says listen if you're worried about this then let's just do a test for 10 days he's going to be there for three years before he gets in to see the king there's a long period of time of education and training and so forth so there's pl 10 days is nothing so he says listen let's d you you give
me some different food for 10 days and then you test and and compare how we look compared to the other young people who are here now remember the babylonians by this time had conquered many nations so there's young people of some nobility and and so forth that are all there from other nations being trained and schooled and educated and so forth so um it goes on to say in verse 14 so he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days and at the end of 10 days it was seen that they
were in better appearance and i think this is interesting fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food so the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables okay we need to talk about this because you see when daniel proposed a test to see how they looked after 10 days of consuming only vegetables and water you know that he was expecting a miracle to take place because and apparently he did too because we're told again in verse 15 that daniel and his friends were quote
fatter in flesh it's not a terribly nice thing to say about someone but you know what it means it means they looked healthy and well fed but fatter in flesh versus those who ate all of that calorie-ridden fattening food that showed up on the king's table that's a miracle right that is a miracle because you i got news for you you don't get fatter eating vegetables and water i don't know if you've ever gone on a diet of vegetables in water but that's not the way you get i mean when's the last time you saw
a fat vegan it's just they're they're not around they're just they're all they're all skinny or they turn sideways and they disappear right we we all know that so here you go this is this is a bona fide miracle so what we have going on the lord met daniel here and these three other men at the point of their determination to be devoted to the lord related to these dietary restrictions that were in the mosaic covenant and and you know you have to believe when you read this story that this was kind of the lord's
way of preparing these four young men this is a fairly small deal i mean they get this food and they they see this food coming from the king's table and they're like oh good grief we're not going to eat that that we'd violate you know every you know prohibition that god's given us related to food and drink we can't do this well guys this is nothing compared to what's coming down the pike the temptations the testings the challenges that these men are going to face in the coming months years this is a walk in the
park but don't you know that god allows us to go through situations give that that present us with opportunities to compromise our faith that might be in smaller doses so that we might be prepared later on for dealing with the big challenges to our faith you know because the opportunity to compromise is going to become far more dangerous in the coming years and you have to ask the question what you know what are they going to do what are you going to do when you're living in a foreign country where if you don't comply they'll
kill you they'll just flat out kill you and they won't think twice about it no remorse we're not backing down you do what the king says or we kill you it's as simple as that that whole idea of compromising or not compromising takes on a whole new definition when you're in that sort of a situation and you know like daniel and his friends we face situations too don't we in our lives where we are tempted to compromise what we know to be true or our faith in god our trust in the lord you know god's
word tells us to trust in the lord with all of our hearts that's a fairly all-inclusive phrase all of our hearts not just some and i don't know about you but i i get tempted all the time to back away from the strength of that command to trust him with all of my heart and we're tempted to compromise and we too you know like daniel we need to come to a place like i said i think that there was a period of prayer in here between when daniel was speaking to the the chief eunuch and
then to the steward where he went to the lord and sought the face of god what are we going to do what are we going to do here and we have to learn how to solve those kinds of problems you know by going to the lord seeking god's face asking for boldness and courage in the face of a potential compromising situation so that we might face that thing in both humility and wisdom to not not to purposely upset people but to be diplomatic and kind and and you'll notice how daniel handles this thing he's not
he's not a jerk about it i'm not going to eat that slop he doesn't say anything like that he's he's respectful and he honors the the the order of authority that he's been given of those who are over him and so forth those things aren't easy to do but it another thing that's important to note about this particular story thus far is what is the motive of daniel's appeal to the steward and thus to of course the chief eunuch what is his motive here is it simply to get out of a difficult situation i don't
want to eat that food yuck no that's not it he's not trying to just escape an uncomfortable or inconvenient circumstance david excuse me daniel has a motive of obedience to god daniel wants to obey the lord he wants to honor god's word that's key when you object when you are going against some potentially compromising situation your goal your motive should be i want to honor the lord with my life i want to honor him with my faith you know and that's what we see daniel doing here and and and one other final thing that i
want you to notice about this did you notice that he didn't object to everything did you notice daniel didn't object he yes he objected to the food there was a specific thing there where it violated the food laws that had been handed down through the mosaic law but you notice he didn't object to the education he didn't object to learning their language he didn't object to learning their culture he didn't even object to having his name changed even though i'm sure that was a fairly painful sort of a situation what i'm getting at is daniel
picked his battles and that's important because there are places you can compromise without compromising your faith there are places you cannot compromise without compromising your faith and you need to walk in the kind of discernment from the lord to know which is which if you're going to object to everything that's in front of you even if it's really not a compromising thing for the lord you're going to end up just making enemies daniel wisely picked his battles as to what he was going to say i can't do that that's an important thing to remember and
you know as exciting as it must have been for daniel to actually see the lord respond you know after that ten days to see him to his friends go before the chief guy and and he goes yeah you guys look great vegetables in water wow who would have thunk i mean that would have been cool you know to see that the lord answered this the lord responded but more important to that this is one of those sorts of things that causes your faith to grow i mean it's exciting to see god work but ultimately you
want to see your faith growing because there's like i said before there's going to be much more life-threatening tests coming down the pike and so this is god has him kind of in school to build his faith up so that it's going to be prepared for dealing with those issues down the road notice how god's favor is evidenced in the following verses starting in verse 17. as for these four youths it says god gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom and daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams now that's a beautiful
verse because it talks about the favor of the lord and the blessing of the lord but i have to tell you and i i have to note here that there are some people who actually believe that verse 17 is a direct result of eating vegetables and drinking only water i have to i'm sorry to announce that to you today but it is in fact uh the case um i don't share that conclusion i mean vegetables are okay as long as there's ample ranch dip but um you know i don't i they don't make you smarter
and stuff like that or give you spiritual insight these were the hand of the lord on their lives uh and so forth so goes on to say in verse 18 at the end of the time and that means the three years so we've just jumped three years in this narrative when the king commanded that they should be brought in the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before nebuchadnezzar and the king spoke with them and among all of them none was found like daniel hananiah mitchell and azariah notice that their hebrew names are still being
used here therefore they stood before the king and so they the the king found those men particularly impressive and and i find this particularly fascinating because they've just gone through three years of just being immersed in babylonian culture and education and language and religion and yet these men are still faithful to god and i think about that in terms of the young people we send to college today you know sometimes we raise kids best we can and then we send them to college for for two to four years and they come out with their faith
decimated and i'm thinking huh that's why why is that these men have been inundated with babylonian culture which is really the opposite of what they had should have learned concerning the word of god and yet these men have their faith intact today we kind of like to talk about being in the world but not of the world you know that phrase that we use we are in the world but we are not of the world well i think that the way these men responded to their captivity gives us some new insights on that saying in
the world not of the world they were in babylon and they had to learn the language and learn the culture learn the religion but it never stuck they were not of babylon we're also told in verse 20 and in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were all that were all excuse me in all his kingdom isn't it interesting first of all this is again god's favor he he just he blessed these guys with such insight and
wisdom that the king noticed that they were so much wiser and more insightful but yet he continued to refer to them as the part of the group of his magicians and enchanters do you guys understand those are occultic terms those are pagan terms related to the practice of the occult and that's you now i mean you put yourself in daniel's place you love god with all your heart you've spent three years inundated with all of this learning from babylonian culture and you're called like an occultic priest that's how you're seen and yet you are a
servant of the most high god it's pretty fascinating because you know even though that's what they were called and and it doesn't we don't read anything here about them objecting to the title there's there's nowhere that says but daniel said don't you dare call me a magician or something like that or an enchanter it's like you know what that's okay that's your title not mine you get it there's wisdom and prudence in understanding which hills you're going to die on or which concerns or issues you're going to fall on your sword over you know all
right the final note of the chapter says and daniel was there until the first year of king cyrus now you need to know that cyrus was not a babylonian king he was the king of the medo-persian empire well what are we talking about here we're being reminded of the fact that daniel's ministry in the king's court lasted so long that he was actually there when the medo-persian empire overthrew the babylonian empire and when we get to daniel chapter five we're going to read about the night of the overthrow and it's pretty dramatic it's pretty cool
and by the way it happened in 539 bc just in case you're thinking of you know where all this kind of fits on the chronological calendar but daniel by the time you know we're not really sure but by the time the jews were given the freedom to go back to their homeland and to first build rebuild the temple and then later on rebuild the walls of the city daniel was very likely in his 90s now consider the fact that he was taken to babylon when he was probably around 20. that makes sense because you see
god had told the people of israel through jeremiah that their exile would last 70 years and daniel was there the whole time and he served faithfully did you hear that he served pagan kings but he served faithfully but he was never unfaithful to his god and that makes daniel a pretty impressive character for us to think about and to emulate and so forth but that is where we're going to stop for tonight we are going to pick up daniel chapter 2 next time and believe me it gets interesting as we go through these chapters because
the challenges mount in terms of the testing of their faith so there you go let's go ahead and close in prayer father in heaven we thank you so much for giving us this time tonight in this first of our trips into the book of daniel we thank you father for the things that we've seen because we're kind of living in a country that is becoming increasingly opposed to the things of the lord and simply the the wisdom of the bible and we wonder how to deal with it how to live how are we going to
live in a world that seems so opposed and so contrary to the faith that we hold so dear and yet lord we see this example of daniel and we recognize that there's a way to be faithful to live faithfully for the lord even in the most challenging of circumstances and to hold on to our faith and trust and to know lord god that you will never leave us nor forsake us so lord as we go through this study the rest of the book of daniel we pray that you would continue to speak to us about
how we might live like daniel how that we might live upright lives honoring the lord walking in obedience to the impulse and of the holy spirit in our lives and yielding to your word while at the same time living in a world that is very much like babylon and very contrary to the ways of the lord teach us these things we pray help us to understand them to go grow in the grace and knowledge of your word we thank you for giving us this time together we ask these things in the name of jesus our
savior amen you
