Daniel

Trusting the True Hero

Sean Michael Lucas

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781845509286

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Dare to be a Daniel?:
Learning to trust a faithful God

One summer when our children were younger, our family was on a trip from St Louis, Missouri, to Atlanta, Georgia, for our denomination’s General Assembly. We rarely go on such trips without allowing some time for historical explorations, and this trip was no exception. We stopped in Nashville, Tennessee, in order to visit Hermitage, the home of the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson. The house and the grounds were beautiful; on the property was the Hermitage Presbyterian Church where Jackson worshiped each Lord’s Day.

I was so interested in what we saw that I purchased and read the three-volume biography of Jackson written by the respected historian Robert Remini. I was particularly struck by the way Remini opened his book, attempting to justify his decision to write on Jackson. “At one time in the history of the United States, General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee was honored above all other living men. And most dead ones, too. The American people reserved to him their total love and devotion,” he observed. “No American ever had so powerful an impact on the minds and spirit of his contemporaries as did Andrew Jackson. No other man ever dominated an age spanning so many decades. No one, not Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin, ever held the American people in such near-total submission.” Andrew Jackson was, in Remini’s memorable phrase, “the impossible Hero.”

Jackson was larger than life, bigger than George Washington, an impossible hero. Americans named their children after him (as did one of my wife’s ancestors and as did my wife and I at the birth of our third child). He was admired, and his life served as a grand example to a nation growing up in the wilderness. He fought against America’s enemies, whether British or Indian or centralized banks. And when he died, he was memorialized in countless ways – with cities and towns and counties named after him and with his portrait on the twenty-dollar bill. All this because he was the impossible hero.

I think that is how most Christians think of the biblical character Daniel. Many of us have read something of Daniel’s book. We’ve heard about Daniel in our vacation Bible schools and in Sunday school. We’ve read about Daniel to our children. We’ve urged people, and especially our young people, to be like Daniel. We’ve taught people to sing, “Dare to be a Daniel! Dare to stand alone!” In all of this, we have learned to view Daniel as an exemplary figure, someone after whom we can pattern our lives, someone who is an “impossible hero.”

All of this misses the point of the book and the point of how this book functions within Holy Scripture. What we are going to discover as we consider Daniel and his book is this: the hero of Daniel’s book is not Daniel, but God himself. And the big message of Daniel’s stories and prophecies was not that God’s people should “Dare to be a Daniel,” but that they should dare to trust in Daniel’s God. This God is the true impossible hero, the one who delivers his people from all their troubles, the one who draws near in faithfulness in the worst of times.

At the point in time when Daniel’s book opens, Israel probably wondered whether their God was in fact such a hero. In 605 B.C, the Lord had given Jehoiakim into the hand of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar (1:2). This was the first of three raids or sieges against Jerusalem; Nebuchadnezzar comes against Jerusalem, lays siege, takes Jehoiakim, steals some of the religious vessels, seizes some of the princes, and returns to Babylon.

Now, Israel might have been tempted to see this as the work of an evil, godless king from a far-off land. But Daniel’s book stresses that this was God’s work and that God was in control: “And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand” (1:2). After centuries, four hundred years after Solomon’s reign and spiritual adultery (see 1 Kings 11:1-8), after warning Israel and Judah about their idolatry and sensuality, God finally delivered his people into the hands of their enemy. And this was the beginning of the end for Jerusalem – Nebuchadnezzar would set up Zedekiah as a puppet governor, but when the latter rebelled, the Babylonian king would finally destroy Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

Imagine Israel’s reaction to exile. The holy city destroyed. The walls that were meant to protect Zion utterly obliterated. Princes taken away from Jerusalem. The sign of God’s presence, the temple, leveled. As a godly Israelite living through the dark years of 605-586 B.C, one would have wondered: “Is God really there? Does God really care about us? Is he going to be faithful to us? How is God going to keep his promise to David? How is God going to bring a prophet like Moses? How will we make sacrifices that will point to a perfect priest like Aaron if the entire city is leveled and the temple is utterly destroyed?”

God’s people were in exile, and they felt utterly abandoned. In our own day, we know a little of how that feels. Many of us feel as though we are strangers in a strange land; we feel as though we are “resident aliens,” to use theologian Stan Hauerwas’s phrase. We feel as those who are in exile from our true land, the new heavens and the new earth. As a result, we feel slightly out of joint here. We sing Zion’s songs in a world that does not know Zion’s God. We use time differently from the world around us; we especially delight in the Lord’s Day as a day of rest and worship, not a day of personal satisfaction and recreational activities. We raise our families differently from those who do not know the true and living God. We work in our callings differently than others; we know that our work is a gift given to us by God to bring him praise, not an idol meant to satisfy our hearts. We live out of joint with our times; we live as though we’re in exile, as though we are resident aliens.

And yet, living as exiles in a strange land is difficult. It is hard to always feel out of step with the people around us; it is difficult never to feel at home. In those times where the grind of being exiles wears us down, we are tempted to ask, “Is God really there? Is God faithful? Is he going to keep his promises?” And that’s where Daniel’s message meets us: the God we worship is the true hero. He is a God who is truly faithful, not only for people two thousand years ago or four thousand years ago, but for us today. He is a God who comes near to us in our desperate need and says again and again, “I am the True King; I will be faithful to you. I will keep my promises because I love you. And I showed you my love pre-eminently by pursuing you all the way to the cross and to the empty tomb in Jesus Christ.” As we trust in this God, we find hope as resident aliens, as exiles living in a strange land.

A faithful God put to the test

We learn to trust our God as we pay attention to this man, Daniel. It is hard for us to approach this book because it is so familiar to us. And this is especially the case with this story in Daniel 1. How many times have we heard about Daniel and his friends and their challenge? And yet, we must slow down and pay attention to the text once again, asking God to let us hear it with the freshness that Israel would have known when they first read Daniel’s book.

The first thing we discover is that Daniel and his three friends were youths, but they were more than that: they were royal princes (1:3-4). In an effort to secure the loyalty of far-flung peoples and the unity of a vast empire, Nebuchadnezzar brought royal princes from the various conquered peoples in order to re-educate them. And so, that’s who Daniel was. He was a prince, one of the royal sons. Perhaps he was part of the family that would ultimately produce the Messiah. And he came to Babylon for re-education: he learned the literature and language of the Chaldeans (1:4). He received a new name (1:7). He gained “learning and skill in all literature and wisdom;” in fact, it appears that the four young men learned Babylonian divination as well (1:17). Even more, not only did Daniel learn, he excelled in all that the Babylonians taught (1:20). It doesn’t appear that Daniel was begrudgingly submitting to this re-education process; rather, he embraced it fully and was excelling.

And yet, he objected at the point of the food. Why? Why did Daniel resolve that he would not “defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank” (1:8)? We have to say first what this was not: this was not a brief for vegetarianism. Daniel was not a vegan; he was not saying that he only wanted to eat kosher. Rather, Daniel and his friends were determined to demonstrate and maintain their utter reliance upon their God. If they succeeded, they did not want the credit to go to Nebuchadnezzar, and especially not to Nebuchadnezzar’s god. If they succeeded, all credit would go to Yahweh, Israel’s covenant-making, covenant-keeping God, the God who would remain faithful even to exiles in a foreign land.

And so, in order to demonstrate this, they proposed the test: “Test your servants for ten 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” (1:12-13). Ashpenaz, the king’s steward, listened to them and agreed. At the end of the ten days, “they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food” (1:15). The test succeeded; Daniel and his friends no longer have to eat the king’s food and so “defile themselves.”

But we have to say that the test didn’t succeed because of the vegetables and the water. In fact, the test wasn’t about the food at all. The test was about the faithfulness of Daniel’s God. It was Daniel’s God who intervened in such a way to show that in fact he was the faithful God, the one who keeps covenant and who will remain faithful to Israel even in exile. He was the one who would sustain their bodies, who would give them learning, who would prosper them in the foreign land. And the big point here, flashing so brightly that Israel could not miss it, was this: while the Babylonians may want to believe they are in charge, that they are the true kings of the world, that they are the ones ruling over a vast empire, the fact is that Israel’s God is actually in charge. He was the one who sent Israel into exile. He was the one who continues to be present with Israel in exile. He was the one who will make them a blessing in exile. And he was the one who will sustain Israel (pictured in Daniel) all the way to the reign of King Cyrus of Persia – the foreign ruler whom Israel knew would deliver them and bring them back home (1:21; see Isa. 45-47).

What Israel and we need to hear

Indeed, Israel needed to hear that God would be faithful all the way to their deliverance. Israel did not need to hear that vegetables and water would preserve them; rather, they needed to hear that God would be faithful. Just as God was faithful to Daniel, so by extension God would be faithful to Israel. Even though they were in exile, even though the temple was destroyed, even though the wall was knocked down, even though it was not clear how the Davidic line would continue – despite all of this, Yahweh was still in charge, still faithful, still remembering his covenant.

That’s what we need to hear. As dark providences come to us and as we experience struggle, we need to know that God is still faithful. As we get the call from a loved one who gives us horrible news; as the doctor comes into the room and tells us that it’s cancer; as we stand by the graveside of a child, wondering where God is – whatever it may be, in the dark providences of our lives, when we feel as though all of life is swirling around, when we feel that we are in exile from God and from our true home, we need to hear and know that God is faithful. Even far from the land of promise, God is there. And the words of William Cowper’s hymn come to teach us that

God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill,

He treasures up his bright designs, and works his sovereign will.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.

We don’t understand sometimes – as we wander through this wilderness land, in exile from our true home, living as strangers and aliens, we confess that we don’t know why things happen or why evil seems so strong. But we do believe that in those times, our God is actually as near to us as our breath; he is at our right hand, holding it, leading us through the storm. And we must learn what Israel needed to learn from Daniel – God the King is faithful. He has not abandoned us.

A blessing even in exile

Not only did Israel need to hear that God would be faithful, but they also needed to know that God wanted them to continue to be a blessing even in Babylon. The striking thing about Daniel’s test is how successful it was and how successful God was in the midst of it. We see this particularly in Daniel 1:19-20. Daniel and his three friends finally came to the end of their three-year training period. Along with hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, they stood before Nebuchadnezzar for their oral examinations. Can you imagine how intimidating that would be? What would be the unthinkable consequences of failing such an examination? And yet, Daniel and his friends didn’t fail; in fact, “among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah… . 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” (1:19-20).

Now, why was that important? It was important not simply for Daniel and his friends to be in a high position; rather, Israel needed to hear that Daniel and his friends were present in Babylon to be a blessing. In part, this was a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham a thousand years prior to Daniel. In Genesis 12, God appeared to Abraham and promised, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). That promise was still in play even though it looked like the Promised Land was gone and even though it looked like the promised seed would not come. Israel was still called to be a blessing. The prophet Jeremiah had tried to tell them this as they went into exile. He had said, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29:7). Israel needed to hear that as they went into exile into Babylon, they were there to be a blessing.

That’s what God calls us to do. Here in our place of exile, in this place where we sometimes feel out of joint and out of step with our culture, God calls us to be a blessing. We’re not here to transform our culture (we can’t), but we’re here to be a blessing to others in real and tangible ways. Whether it is assisting poor and disadvantaged children in reading programs, whether it is writing notes to those struggling with cancer, whether it is participating in civic leadership – whatever it may be, God has called us as a people in exile to be a blessing to our host culture. There are countless ways that God may be calling us to be a blessing to someone whom we run across, but the fact remains that God still desires to bless his world and to bless people who do not know him. And he wants to bless them through us.

Real defilement

But Israel needed to hear a third message, perhaps the most important message of the chapter. God was telling Israel here: “Though you may gain the learning of Babylon, though you may eat the food of Babylon, though you may bear the names of Babylon (1:7, 11, 19), don’t defile yourself.”

But there is a problem in the way we have heard this in the numerous times we’ve come to this text. Some of us think that the defilement could come through the food; others of us think that the defilement could come through the learning. But God doesn’t put the defilement in either of those places. Where does the defilement come from? Where did it come from for Israel for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years prior to this scene? Defilement comes from a heart that does not honor Yahweh alone as the true God of the world.

Why was Israel in exile after all? Because they worshiped idols and called them Yahweh – the sin of the golden calf and ultimately of Jeroboam (Exod. 32; 1 Kings 12:25-33). And then, far worse, they worshiped other gods and abandoned the worship of Yahweh completely (2 Kings 21:1‑18). And from where did this idolatry come? It came from their hearts; it was their hearts that presented the problem. As Jesus said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (Matt. 15:19-20). All defiling sin and idolatry comes from the heart.

And that’s the problem; it is my sinful heart and your sinful heart. Our sin is real and deep and deceptive and pervasive. Day after day, we defile ourselves by not trusting God to be faithful in a variety of situations. We don’t seek the Lord’s face when we’re confronted by a variety of decisions. Instead, we trust the idols of our own hearts: we trust ourselves, our own wisdom, our strength, our smarts. And in doing so, we defile ourselves, we compromise, and we fail to be a blessing as exiles in a hostile world.

Though that seems like bad news, it actually is good news. Because as those who falter and fail, who struggle and sin, who love our idols and our host culture more than our God and our true home, we need someone who is truly exemplary, who is a true hero, who can deliver us from our defilement and our sin. And that is ultimately why God tells us about Daniel. Because in showing us a man like Daniel, who was willing to trust his faithful God in the face of a hostile culture, God actually points us to one beyond Daniel, who not only is faithful to the end in the face of a hostile world, but also came to deliver us from our ultimate alienation and exile.

Trusting Jesus, the Faithful Savior

In other words, Daniel teaches us to look to Jesus. Though we were wandering far from God, in exile and alienation from him, Jesus came to bring us near to God. In doing so, he showed us that God was ultimately faithful all the way to the cross. In addition, in Jesus Christ, we are enabled and empowered to be a blessing to others. We are granted the Holy Spirit so that we might live in ways that are not native to us, that are not natural to us. We can put off the old man and put on the new man. We can move truths from our heads to our hearts. Why? Because in Jesus Christ we have been granted the Holy Spirit to empower us. And by the Spirit of Jesus, we are empowered and enabled to be a blessing without compromise. As our hearts delight in our union and communion with Jesus, we experience the total devotion to God for which we are made and of which the First Commandment speaks. And yet, in those moments when we falter and fail, when we are defiled, we can come again and again to Jesus and find fresh forgiveness and renewed mercy.

Thus, as we come to Daniel and this wonderful first chapter, we discover that God is not calling us to “Dare to be a Daniel.” Instead, we hear “Dare to Trust Jesus” and live for his glory, not because we have the native strength to do it, but rather because Jesus makes it possible by granting us the power that comes from God alone. In this way, we discover that even when we are unfaithful, God remains faithful, and we learn to trust this faithful God as an exiled people on our way home.

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION

1. Think about someone you know who seems “heroic.” What makes them a hero? How do these qualities reflect God’s character?
2. Why is it so difficult for us to trust that God will be faithful? When dark providences enter our lives, why do we struggle to see “God’s smiling face”?
3. What does it feel like to be an exile or a resident alien? In what ways is that a helpful image for living as a Christian today? How might we think about Christian calling in fresh ways as a result?

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God only Wise:
Learning to trust a wise God

Have you ever had a strange dream that you couldn’t forget? Or maybe it was a nightmare that came over and over again? One such dream that I remember from when I was a kid was a recurring nightmare in which I was in an abandoned house, being chased by the members of the 1970s rock band KISS. It was very, very strange; band member Gene Simmons, in particular, has always creeped me out. I would wake up in cold sweats from those nightmares.

A couple of years ago, I had another recurring nightmare. When I served at Covenant Presbyterian Church in St Louis, I felt the stress of preaching and leading the church as interim minister while also working at Covenant Theological Seminary as dean of faculty. At the time, I was preaching through Psalms; in my dream, I stood in the pulpit, and everyone was looking at me. I said, “Turn in your Bibles to the book of Psalms,” but when I turned to where the Psalms were supposed to be, they weren’t there. I kept looking and looking, but I never found Psalms. That was terrible.

As adults, we are used to having these dreams and often wonder what our dreams tell us. In fact, even if we aren’t Freudian, we probably believe that our dreams are the working out of repressed emotions or the result of profound stress. Even more, we look to our dreams to tell us things because, as human beings, we are on a constant search for wisdom and insight into our worlds and ourselves. We want to know how we work, how things work, and how to make our way through life successfully.

We want to know these things because life often seem...

Table of contents

• Reviews
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Dare to be a Daniel?
• 2. God only Wise
• 3. The Fiery Furnace
• 4. The King of the World
• 5. Handwriting on the Wall
• 6. In the Lion's Den
• 7. Kings and Kingdoms
• 8. Prophecy and History
• 9. Confession, Mercy, Hope
• 10. The Real Battle
• 11. A Final Word
• Notes on Sources
• More Books from Christian Focus
• Christian Focus