![Daniel [3]: Not Defiled](https://episodes.castos.com/66b3763c055959-54700241/images/2370742/c1a-2x15g-ww754wzxf9g7-zt2j6g.jpg)
Show Notes
Clay
Chapters
- (00:00:01) - The Long Term Fate of the Israelites
- (00:06:23) - The Life of Defiled People
- (00:12:29) - Daniel and the Image of God
- (00:21:21) - Daniel the Book of Life
- (00:28:28) - Daniel and His Confidence
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Okay. The last couple weeks, we've been looking at how Israel, how the Jews got themselves in the position that they were going to be taken into exile in the Old Testament. It is the kind of the major forming moment for the Jews in the Old Testament.
[00:00:20] They had come out of Egypt. They had entered into their promised land.
[00:00:24] They were the people of God, living in the place of God, serving in the kingdom, in the.
[00:00:30] In the temple of God, like it was. They had reached their apex, and then all of it was stripped away from them because they had chased after other gods. And we described what that looked like. It was.
[00:00:41] It was vile what they were engaged in.
[00:00:45] But it's important to remember that humans are vile. Human. Human sin. So when we look back on them, we don't want to.
[00:00:56] It's always easy to pick out in stories like, oh, they're the villain and they're the good guys. And we always identify ourselves with the. I always identify myself with the good guy. I don't know, maybe you're like, oh, yeah, I always identify with the villain. I don't.
[00:01:09] So I have to remember, remind myself that, nope, that's stuff that's going on there that's normal for humans. And that's where I would be apart from Christ.
[00:01:20] So this is the position they were in.
[00:01:23] They were told, you're going to lose everything as a result. Today we're looking at what it looks like to lose everything.
[00:01:29] Daniel 1.
[00:01:31] In the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon advanced against Jerusalem and laid it under siege.
[00:01:40] Now the Lord delivered King Joachim of Judah into his power along with some of the vessels of the temple of God.
[00:01:48] He brought them to the land of Babylonia, to the temple of his God, and put the vessels in the treasury of his God. That's a kind of like, what's the big deal about the whole vessels thing?
[00:01:59] It is to take the things, the instruments, the tools of worship of your God and to bring them into the service of another God. For them to go into your treasury or into your temple was just a sign of domination. Like they were.
[00:02:18] They weren't just.
[00:02:21] They weren't just taken captive. They were being subsumed their identity. The whole goal here that you're going to see later is their identity is going to be crushed. You are nothing. You are now under my God. You are now under my reign, my rule.
[00:02:37] Your identity doesn't matter anymore.
[00:02:42] And this is what it looks like. So that's the.
[00:02:45] That's the when the. When the instruments of God get brought into the.
[00:02:51] Into the temple or into the treasury of Babylonia, you know, there's some method the reader here is going to. There's some. There's some way that the king is going to work to make this not just symbolic but real. Here's the way he's going to make this real.
[00:03:09] The king commanded Ashpenaz, who was. I'm really proud of that Ashpenaz, who was in charge of his court officials, to choose some of the Israelites who were of royal and noble descent, young men in whom there was no physical defect, and who were handsome, well versed in all kinds of wisdom, well educated, having keen insight, and who are capable of entering the king's royal service. I'm going to pause here and just say, I hope Daniel wrote this about himself.
[00:03:40] I like thinking. I like thinking that Daniel wrote that about himself. Kind of like when. In John. When John, like, talks smack about Peter a few times, like, oh, yeah, I outran Peter and I was his favorite. I was Jesus favorite. That kind of stuff. I'm like, those are little details I like about the biblical writers.
[00:03:58] Anyway, Daniel was awesome. He just told you so.
[00:04:04] So we were. We who were awesome were brought into the king's royal service and to teach them the literature and the language of the Babylonians.
[00:04:12] So the king assigned them a daily ration from his royal delicacies and from the wine he drank himself. They were to be trained for the next three years.
[00:04:21] At the end of that time, they were to enter the king's service.
[00:04:26] As it turned out, among these young men were some from Judah. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. But the overseer of the court officials renamed them. He gave Daniel the name Belshazzar, Hananiah the name Shadrach, Mishael the name Meshach, and Azariah the name Abednego.
[00:04:49] So he names them, he changes the. Their names.
[00:04:55] So he picks out. He picks out the people who are like the smartest, the most. Attract the influencers. He picked out the influencers in the. In the country, and he brought them to the most impressive royal court in the world. This is Bab. Babylonia is the most impressive empire that has ever existed up until that time. Historically, Babylon is the most impressive city and the royal court here is the most impressive location. Like this is in earthly terms. They're at the apex of the world. They're brought into the royal court and they're given all the food and all the. They're literally drinking the Same wine the king drinks. You know, it's like.
[00:05:44] It's like.
[00:05:45] It's like, I don't know, you living where all of the.
[00:05:50] All the NFL players live or something like that. You were, like, literally, like, rubbing shoulders with whatever you think is like, the most impressive chunk of people you could imagine living around. That's who they were living around.
[00:06:04] That's the world they're now in.
[00:06:06] So they were captured, and instead of being subsumed in, kind of laid low and embarrassed, they're actually raised up. They're made more impressive. Nothing in Jerusalem would have. No life in Jerusalem could have compared to this life in Babylon. This is the most decadent lifestyle possible.
[00:06:29] They had everything they could possibly. Anything that a person might want, they could say, like, man, that's the life. If I had a million dollars, what would I do? You would do this.
[00:06:40] Like, this is all you could think to do. That's all anyone could think to do. Okay. That's the life that they had here.
[00:06:47] And it says that while they were there, they were going to be trained for three years. They're going to be living in this environment, this, like, living the life of luxury. And they're just going to be taught how to be Babylonian. You're just going to learn how to fit in, you know, how to. How to be one of us for three years so that at the end of that three years, you can be of service to me somehow.
[00:07:17] If you're going to be overthrown by an enemy power and you're going to be like, your entire identity, your entire life is going to be taken away. And you think about, like, all of the horrible things that might happen to you because your little country decided to stand up to this other country and say, we're gonna. We're gonna defy you. They. They over. They. They beat you. They overthrow you, and this is what they do to you. You're like, yeah, that's.
[00:07:46] That's okay. You know, compared to other options, like, you know, a lot of people got beheaded and stuff. I got to, like, live the best life possible instead.
[00:07:55] Okay, so that's.
[00:07:57] That's. That's what's going on here.
[00:08:01] But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself.
[00:08:08] I think that word is such a. Such an interesting word. He.
[00:08:13] When he. When he went into this environment, he got in a situation, he said, I'm not going to defile myself. I'm not going to make myself gross.
[00:08:26] That's. That's literally so the. The opposite of defile. The way that the way that they have thought of the word defile, the opposite of that would have been like pure, but pure in the sense of, like, you're like, drawn to it. Like pure water. Like, like the best water, like the water that comes from that stream is going to be the best tasting water you can get. Like, ah, that's like the best you get.
[00:08:51] Defiled water would be one you would never drink because, like, you saw what the camels did in that water or something, you know, I mean, like, it's like gross. You don't. You wouldn't.
[00:09:00] It's not just like, I'm. I am. I'm drawn to this and I like it, but I shouldn't do it.
[00:09:09] It's. This is gross. I can't imagine. This is. This is something that I can't want to be a part of.
[00:09:17] So the Nebuchadnezzar is setting something up that has been, by the way, been highly effective. The reason Nebuchadnezzar does this is because several times now he's taken over countries. He's taken their influencers out of that country. He's like, helped them learn how to become Babylonian. He set them back loose. And now these people aren't a problem anymore. The influencers are. They fit into that culture, but they also fit into the Babylonian culture. They're like the. They're like the go between. And now as his empire is growing, he's not having all these. All these people groups that are like causing him problems anymore. This has been a really great strategy for Babylon.
[00:09:59] So most people didn't consider this a defilement. They didn't feel like it was gross to be a part of.
[00:10:08] But Daniel did.
[00:10:11] What made it gross?
[00:10:13] What is it that makes it gross? There's a lot of things, like I heard, like, well, you know, it's the food customs. Like, he was being asked to eat foods that he shouldn't eat. Like, maybe the food was sacrificed to idols or something like that.
[00:10:26] You know, maybe there's some of that, but I don't think that's what it is. I look at Mark 7 and I see what Jesus has to say about defilement. He says, there's nothing outside a person that by going into him that can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. And Jesus said to them, do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside of him cannot defile him, since it enters not by his heart but by his stomach and then it's expelled? Thus he declared all food clean. And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him.
[00:11:00] For from within, out of the heart of man comes comes evil thoughts. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person.
[00:11:18] There was something that Daniel saw that was coming out of him or coming out of the people around him, or that he saw wood come out of him that would defile him, make him gross.
[00:11:38] For so long, the Israelites had played around with.
[00:11:43] Participated in things that were defiling, like, gross things. We talked about the last couple weeks.
[00:11:53] Daniel was not one of those that was okay with that.
[00:11:57] He understood that his role in life was to bear the image of God.
[00:12:08] I think about, like, if. If a stream gets polluted, like, that's bad, you know, but if something was built to actually remind the whole world about God, the character of God. So say there's something. Say there's like a maybe say it's a church building. See the beautiful church building, right?
[00:12:29] And then somebody takes that church building and they start using it to, like, just have crazy drunken orgies inside of it or something. You know, I think you didn't just, like, do that. You chose that building to do that in. You're making a point, but doing it in that building, it's not just that you're prepared to do anything you want to make a point.
[00:12:57] That the thing this church represents is what you're trying to, like, really defile.
[00:13:08] That's what Daniel thought about himself.
[00:13:10] That's what he thought about Israel. That's what he thought about the people of God.
[00:13:15] For him, it wasn't just that he would be doing something that he knew was against God, that he would be isolating himself from God. He would be defiling the image of God because he was of the people of God.
[00:13:33] He would be literally taking the Lord's name in vain.
[00:13:37] That a person would look at him and say, aren't you supposed to be the people of God?
[00:13:42] And then I see you doing this.
[00:13:46] Well, who is God?
[00:13:49] What does that say about at this point? It's not even a testimony about you. It's a testimony about God.
[00:13:56] Yeah, I mean, obviously this hits home.
[00:14:03] I'm not just at this point talking about Daniel.
[00:14:09] It reminds me so much of the early church Tertullian, Several of the early church fathers talked about how important it was for them to not be defiled by the world, by the Roman Empire at that time. But at the Same time, they didn't see themselves. They saw themselves living in exile, just like Daniel was living in exile.
[00:14:38] But Tertullian did not think, and the early church did not think that that made them bad citizens of that world.
[00:14:44] So at the same, on the one hand, they refused to participate in this exiled world in a way that would defile them.
[00:14:58] But at the same time, they. They didn't think that their participation in that world in a way that would not defile them. They thought that if they did participate in that world in a world that did not defile them, it would make them the best citizens possible of that world.
[00:15:13] This goes back to Jeremiah. So Jeremiah was a contemporary of Daniel. He was like a little. He overlapped with Daniel a big chunk. He was like 25 years before Daniel. So he's writing. He's writing this. This was probably written about the same time as Daniel by the time you get to Jeremiah 29.
[00:15:31] But he's a contemporary to Daniel and he's writing to the Israelites to think about how they need to live as exiles in this world. How. How to live in a way not. Not to defile themselves, but to participate in life in this exile. He says, these are the words of the letter of Jeremiah, the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exile, to the priests, prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem, Babylon. So it's likely that Daniel would have actually read this letter from Jeremiah. It said, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and.
[00:16:25] And pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
[00:16:33] So Daniel as he's living in exile, he's thinking, I refuse to participate in having my identity stolen by Nebuchadnezzar. But this process of having the image of God defiled inside of me, at the same time he agrees with Jeremiah and says, I am going to find a way to live here in ways that I am prospering and that will prosper the land as well.
[00:17:04] So let's look at Daniel's response to how does he go about, on the one hand, not defiling himself, and on the other hand being an excellent citizen in the land he's living in.
[00:17:18] Daniel speaks to the ward and he says, please test your servants for 10 days by providing us with some vegetables to eat and some water to drink.
[00:17:27] Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who are eating the royal delicacies.
[00:17:33] Deal with us in light of what you see.
[00:17:35] So the warden agreed to their proposal and tested them for 10 days.
[00:17:41] So for Daniel and for.
[00:17:44] For his friends, they decided they did not want to live that decadent lifestyle that they were going to owe to King Nebuchadnezzar. They didn't want to live in a way that was going to be like.
[00:18:00] They didn't want to become soft, you know.
[00:18:04] But they said they had confidence that what they were going to do with this was going to. Was they had confidence that by not placing their faith in King Nebuchadnezzar, they would be impressive.
[00:18:22] Now, we don't talk a lot about this. I think. I think there's something maybe a little bit arrogant about this. We talk about being a Christian. We talk about being saved from sin, talk about being saved from, like, the dangers of this world. You know, things like that. We don't necessarily often talk about being saved from being mediocre, useless, unhelpful in the world.
[00:18:47] But if you're gonna follow Christ, I don't know how you can look at Jesus and follow him and say, I intend to follow him and not think, well, I'm going to be impressive.
[00:18:57] Like, to follow a person like Jesus means that you intend for your life to make a difference in the world.
[00:19:05] I don't know how you can look at Jesus and think, I intend to follow him. And. Except that the result is going to be. You're going to be an impressive person.
[00:19:13] Now, impressive by what standards? You know, that you're a person who, steady as a rock, cares for somebody, that's somebody that's hurting for you. Give 20 years of your life for that one individual. Is that more impressive than a person that writes 20 theological books? In my mind, I think it might be like, you know, I don't want you to have just one view of what it means to be impressive.
[00:19:40] But if you thought that if you think, one day I will stand before God and he will say, well done, my good and faithful servant, he will have in his mind something that he considers to be impressive about you. There's something about the way you conducted yourself in this world that he will say, dang, I'm so proud. Like, you're my kid. I'm so. You're my son. You are my daughter. And, dang, you crushed it. You know what I mean?
[00:20:16] I mean, that's just what he did with Jesus. This is my son in who I'm well pleased, you know, you following Christ, his sons and daughters, that's exactly what he's going to see in you. Daniel has that same kind of confidence. If I follow God, I will be impressive.
[00:20:33] I don't need to desecrate myself to the world in order to have some lifestyle that is impressive. Whatever influencer, sort of model of the world we think is like this false impressiveness, that isn't really what's going to be impressive.
[00:20:49] Daniel said, I don't believe that there is any path possible for me to be impressive more impressive than following God.
[00:20:59] He had that kind of conviction.
[00:21:02] Let's see how it plays out.
[00:21:07] At the end of the 10 days, their appearance was better and their bodies were healthier than all the young men who had been eating the royal delicacies. So the warden removed the delicacies and the wine from their diet and gave them a diet of vegetables instead. Now, sometimes I wonder, like, man, they did so good. We're going to do this for all the others. And all the other guys were like, dang it, man, that steak was awesome. And now I'm eating vegetables.
[00:21:33] Maybe not. Maybe it was just Daniel and his friends. It was not clear here who he removed this from in my mind.
[00:21:39] Now, as for these four young men, God endowed them with knowledge and skill in all sorts of literature and wisdom, and Daniel had insight into all kinds of visions and dreams.
[00:21:53] They showed themselves to be more impressive than their peers because they followed God. That, to me, is when I take, when I look at this first, at this first chapter of Daniel's story, he's a young man at this point, 16 years old, probably the story. It progresses all throughout.
[00:22:14] He's quite an old man by the end of Daniel, but at this point, he's like 16 years old. And he.
[00:22:19] He had the confidence to know I intend to be.
[00:22:25] I intend to be someone that you need to take account of, King Nebuchadnezzar.
[00:22:31] And I know that I'm not going to get there by eating your food, drinking your wine, being soft in your sheltered bed.
[00:22:40] I'm going to be impressive by maintaining my identity fully in God instead.
[00:22:46] And that means not participating in things that you have made available to make me soft.
[00:22:59] I don't know for you what those things you need to give up are. I know, like, if you have a problem with alcohol, it's a good bet you don't want to go hang out in a bar, right?
[00:23:09] Like, that's.
[00:23:12] That's the kind of thing that's likely to, like, I don't drink, but I think it's okay to drink. Jesus. Drink, right?
[00:23:19] Said, don't get drunk, but he drank.
[00:23:22] So it's like, if you are able to drink and it not defile you, that's great. If you're the kind of person that can't drink without it defiling you, don't drink. You know what I mean?
[00:23:34] If you're the kind of person that, like, watches certain movies and it makes you, like, have. You're like, you find yourself in that and you want to experience a life like in that movie, and it's not godlike, man. Don't watch those movies.
[00:23:49] Whatever it is that you're participating in the world, it's not so much what's coming into you, what comes out of you, what comes out of your heart as a result of participating in those things. You have to be smart about what things are making you soft, making you unimpressive, making you the kind of person that, like God's God is looking at you. He says, dang, that hurt. It hurts that you.
[00:24:10] That that's where you were in life.
[00:24:13] Like, I don't. I don't want that. I don't want that.
[00:24:16] I want to be able to stand before God and say, well done, my good and faithful servant. That was very impressive.
[00:24:22] Yeah. I had to avoid certain things that made me soft in order to get there, some things that.
[00:24:29] That weren't good.
[00:24:31] There were some things in this world that defiled me. I avoided those things.
[00:24:38] I kept my identity in you instead.
[00:24:40] Anyway, so after, you know, after all this says when the time. When the appointed time, when the time appointed by the king arrived, the overseer of the court officials brought them into Nebuchadnezzar's presence. And when the king spoke to them, he didn't find among the entire group anyone like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. So they entered the king's service in every matter of wisdom and insight the king asked them about. He found them to be ten times better than any of the magicians and astrologers that were his entire empire. Now, what really strikes me here was that they entered the king's service.
[00:25:23] They did participate in the world around them. They were in that world. They weren't of that world.
[00:25:31] They didn't say, I am prepared to go along with whatever you have to say, king.
[00:25:37] They maintained their identity, but they were good citizens in the world they lived in.
[00:25:43] They participated in the culture. They were actually beneficial to the king. They made themselves available in ways that were courteous, even kind, but very straightforward. As this plays out, one thing to really pay attention to in Daniel's character, he never gets, like, all, like, belligerent with the king, but he's also not false with the king either. Like, they're very, like, just straightforward and honest. Like, this is how things are.
[00:26:19] They continue to be people who are impressive because they never forgot who they were, even while they lived in exile in a land that wasn't for them.
[00:26:31] Sometimes I think we can get confused here.
[00:26:36] We can get confused about where we are in the world. Sometimes Christians want to pull so far back that. That they kind of live in a bubble because the whole world is so dangerous that they can't participate in any of it.
[00:26:52] Sometimes Christians think that we need to be so much a part of the world that there's really no distinction between the church and culture generally.
[00:27:02] I think Daniel gives us an example to live by.
[00:27:06] Our identity is fully in Christ and anything that defiles us, and I would say anything for myself.
[00:27:16] Can I imagine living this life standing before God and him saying, I'm really proud of that.
[00:27:22] I'm really proud of how that went down for you. The way that you handled yourself at work, the way you handled yourself with that coworker, the way you handled yourself with your family, the way you handled yourself with your stuff, with your resources, the way you dealt with that. I'm really proud of you.
[00:27:39] If I can't imagine him saying that to me, I need to adjust my life because my identity is being corrupted. I'm being defiled by this world. I need to check that.
[00:27:49] But if he can say that, if I can imagine him saying, clay, I'm really proud of the way that you were a husband, the way that you were a dad, the way that you were a friend, whatever those things are, then that's good.
[00:28:02] I. I'm living in this world in a spot where I'm making a difference. I'm good.
[00:28:10] I am impressive.
[00:28:12] If God is willing to say, well, then, my good and faithful servant, I am impressive, and I am not being defiled. I have found that spot to live as a person in exile in a world that I don't belong in.
[00:28:28] Let's pray.
[00:28:31] Father God, as we. As we tear through this book and look through the example of Daniel and his friends who just live these just really beautiful lives in the midst of so much turmoil.
[00:28:46] God, I pray that it gives us confidence. Lord, we can look back in these moments, these people that stood up and rose to the occasion, Lord.
[00:28:57] And we can know that they are your sons and daughters, just like we are. And your intent is for us to be just as impressive.
[00:29:04] God, give us the single minded confidence in your identity, knowing that whatever in this world seems or appeals appealing.
[00:29:20] If it's pulling us from you, it's trash.
[00:29:25] It's defiling. It's like dirty water. We don't want it.
[00:29:29] Give us that kind of wisdom, Lord.
[00:29:32] We love you. Amen.
