The Hand That Closes Mouths
The Hand That Closes Mouths Trinity
Daniel Chapter 6 28.10.18
Christ is the living God,
enduring forever;
his kingdom shall never be destroyed,
and his dominion shall be to the end.
27 He delivers and rescues”
Do you find it hard to hold on to that?
Jesus’ Kingdom will never be destroyed? You can hardly see it in Australian any more.
Like other western nations, Australia is working hard to re-create itself as a secular society, we are trying to build our nation on the belief that what you see is all there is.
· So we remove all references to God in the Anthem, the Constitution and the Oath of Allegiance.
· We demand a total separation of church and state, religion and life.
· It is cool to mark yourself “no religion” at census time, the fastest growing group over the past 20 years.
· In media debates people who want to appeal to the Bible, or to God, don’t get a look in, or are quickly shut down and mocked.
· When we have to decide on abortion or euthanasia, or homosexual marriage, or genetic research, we do so on the basis of what the majority thinks, or what makes us feel good, or what works best.
· Human power seems so much more impressive than anything that Jesus might be doing.
Does it feel that way? Is Jesus Supreme?
It is well worth a look at Daniel Chapter 6
Some 70 years have now elapsed since the beginning of the book of Daniel. You can imagine for Daniel and those who were brought with him from Jerusalem that they must have given up all hope that they would ever return. In 70 years, many will have died.
Jerusalem had been destroyed and everything than went with it, including the temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices, the laws … all gone
Daniel is resolved to be faithful to God rather than believe the promises of Babylon.
How can you not be impressed …?
In part, Daniel has seen the power of Babylon in perspective, he saw Babylon come and he saw it go. It is not so impressive now.
He understood Isaiah 40:15
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
It is hard to be too impressed by the power of nations when you see them through the lens of the Bible.
Nations are like one drop that spills out of a bucket. They are like the dust on the scales, which is not a factor in the weighing at all.
When Jesus sets about to weigh out the history of humanity, the nations can hardly be measured.
When Jesus pours out the floods of the flow of his redemptive plan, one drop is inconsequential. The nations are drops. They are dust.
I don’t think there could have been a more cataclysmic event in Daniel’s day than what just happened in chapter 5. Babylon has fallen. At the height of its glory, it was the greatest Empire that humanity had ever known, and the Medes and the Persians entered the city and without firing a shot.
Does that put Australian in perspective?
We look back to the Empires of the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and Babylon. They were followed by the Persians, and the Medes, and the Greeks, and the Romans. All of them came and all of them went. We know of the great Mayans, the great Inca, the great Aztec civilizations, but little or no trace remains except for some archaeological artifacts. They have come and they have gone.
Some have lived through the greatness of the days of England. You may remember the greatness of France. Or when Italy was a major power in the world and threatened even to dominate Europe under the leadership of Mussolini. We remember Germany. Hitler, who with his Aryan philosophy, thought he could conquer the world. We have seen the rise of Japan as a military power. China, Russian, America.
Who is next? India? New Zealand?
Nations rise, nations fall. They come and go, but the Bible tells us that the times of the nations are bounded by the sovereignty of God.
Jesus rules history and nations may come and nations may go, even our own, but God’s redemptive plan as unfolded through His people will go on according to schedule.
That puts a certain perspective on history doesn’t it?
Nebuchadnezzar had a habit of putting his name on every brick that he put into the buildings of Babylon. In fact, one writer says that we have found uncounted thousands of bricks with Nebuchadnezzar’s name on them - trying to build a lasting empire. One brick, which is now in the British Museum, has the image and the name of Nebuchadnezzar and a dog’s footprint over both of them. It puts it in perspective.
Nebuchadnezzar has come and gone … but God’s man is still there.
In chapter 6, we find Daniel in the midst of the
Medo-Persian Empire and the new King Darius.
Vs 1-2
It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; 2 and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. 3 Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.
Darius. He is a capable man. He is an intelligent man. He is an effective man in terms of organization and structure. He’s a powerful man.
His intent is to run his kingdom efficiently and well.
Babylon became bloated and self-serving … this kingdom is going to run like clockwork.
He recognised the capacity of Daniel and decides to put him in a very strategic place, a place of influence. The Prime Minister. He was, without question, the finest statesman in the entire Medo-Persian Empire, as he had been the finest statesman in the Babylonian Empire, as he perhaps is the finest statesman who ever walked on the face of the earth.
He was:
A man of stability in a world that was shaky,
A man of purity in a world that was dirty,
A man of integrity in a world that was shady.
What he was in public is what he was in private.
He didn’t cheat at work and he didn’t cheat at home.
It was in that context that we discover that he was not liked by his peers. With friends like this who needs enemies?
I guess there is nothing worse than a really punctual member of the team when everyone else comes in late. There is nothing worse than a man of integrity when everyone else want to scrape the cream off the top.
When those who opposed him determined that they wanted to get rid of him they discovered very quickly that they were not going to be able to do so on the bases of the life he lived.
Daniel 6 begins with a miracle … a squeaky-clean politician.
How could anybody hate Daniel? How could anybody despise such a man? I’ll ask you a tougher question. How could anybody crucify Jesus Christ? ….but they did.
And it seems to me, than in a world that has rejected its maker, the closer you get to Christ … or someone who lives for him … the more you will find who hate him.
That is exactly what Jesus says in John’s gospel.
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
If your plan is to stay friends with the world and follow Jesus at the same time … you can forget it.
Follow Christ and live for him … sooner or later you will be hated.
Speak out against the murder of babies … expect hatred. Speak the truth, kindly, graciously regarding sex and marriage … expect to be called a bigot.
Stand for Christ with integrity at work … don’t be surprised when your despised … not by every one but it will come.
Well they do have a problem.
Daniel had no Watergate. He had no skeletons in his closet. There was no way to accuse this man. Now, when a man is 90 years old, and he gets all of the people in political office around him digging around to try to find something and they come up zero, that’s an honorable man.
And so:
Vs 5
5 Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”
And so they come to the king with their cleverly disguised plan.
Vs 7b-8
“O King Darius, live forever! 7 All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counsellors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.
So for thirty days there was one mediator between God and man, Darius the Mede.
No doubt there is something intoxicating when the entire civil service tells you that they think you should be the sole channel to the gods, even if the term expires after thirty days.
They are pretty much saying … we want you to be God for thirty days.
Now, when you can be elected to be God, you’ve got bad theology and when you’re only God for thirty days, it’s even worse theology.
Everybody has agreed we ought to make this law. You’re so wonderful, you are worthy of thirty days of being god. Mind you … they were lying … not everyone agreed. Daniel hadn’t been asked.
What is truth when you have a law to push through?
Well, Darius was flattered.
I mean, when you get the whole public service wanting to do that for you, that’s pretty tough to resist, and so, he signed it in as law.
10 When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.
They made a law, and Daniel went back to his room and did what he did every day, which was now illegal.
Now that is interesting isn’t it, was he crazy?
One writer says this.
The great miracle of grace in Daniel 6 is that Daniel, was able to go on praying. This shows us that the dangers we don’t see are generally much greater than the dangers we do see.
When we watch Daniel lowered into the lion’s den, we hold our breath in fear and anticipation. Yet by that point the danger has already been overcome and the great fight has been fought. It is indeed a wonderous miracle that God preserves one of his church in the lion’s den, but it is not less a miracle that God’s gracious hand saved Daniel when all the pressure of Persia was set on stopping him. Daniel was able to see the actual issue. He knew he was not facing a minor religious inconvenience, it was actually a matter of whether he would keep the first commandment.
Now, you say, “Well, couldn’t Daniel have been a little discreet? Couldn’t he just close the window and pray the same way?” Yes. “Couldn’t he have just cooled it for thirty days and talked to the Lord standing up and walking around, and it wouldn’t have been as visible?” Yes. However, any compromise at all would have been read as self-serving.
Ultimately Daniel had to answer the question, what matters most, the Lord God honour or my own safety.
It was his usual practice, and sometimes that is what paves the way for a crisis
How did he do it?…
It was because he belonged to another. Babylon, Persia, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius … None of them owned him.
You know when it says: ‘Hehad windows in his upper chamber open towards Jerusalem”. What does that mean? Towards the west about 500 miles.
Daniel knew that all of God’s plans and purposes were tied to a king that would be born from the tribe of Judah in the Nation of Israel.
And Israel didn’t even exist anymore. God had said
1 Kings 8-46-50
“If they sin against you—and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near, 47 yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ 48 if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, 49 then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea, and maintain their cause 50 and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them.
That is why Daniel is praying with his head towards Jerusalem, he had that in mind. He is pleading for the restoration of the people so that the purposes of God might be fulfilled … that a king being born in the nation of Israel.
He belongs to another kingdom.
Christ is the living God,
enduring forever;
his kingdom shall never be destroyed,
and his dominion shall be to the end.
27 He delivers and rescues;
Well you know the rest of the story?
The conspirators have evidence against Daniel and now go to the king.
They play him perfectly into the trap … wasn’t there something about a thirty day ban on prayer?
This is the man who was to be the mediator between god and man for thirty days!! Darius never saw it coming.
Wonderful God he turned out to be!
Mind you, if Jesus is not your God who is going to be God … will it be you?
Will you be better than Darius?
Well Darius exhausted every legal means possible.
He set his mind to deliver Daniel. And he laboured till the sun went down to rescue him.
Don’t you find vs 16 funny
16 Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!”
Here is god for thirty days suggesting to Daniel that his God is the one he should turn to.
When your ‘made- up gods’ and idols whisper to you and say … I can’t rescue you … have you got someone else? You know you need a better god.
Well Darius doesn’t sleep that night.
And he spends the night fasting … as do the lions.
9 Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. 20 As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” 21 Then Daniel said to the king, “O king, live forever! 22 My God sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.” 23 Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den
Friends, you belong to the Lord Jesus … the king that Daniel was waiting for. His kingdom lasts forever, and he is more than able to deliver and rescue you.
Jesus does not always rescue his servant in this fashion. He calls some to win by living. Others are called to win by dying. In life or death Jesus rules and we are called to serve him.
You cannot lose.
Jesus sits very lightly on most churches today:
We present him as just a cuddly teddy bear – there to bathe your wounds and make you feel better.
We present him as a tolerant doddery old grandfather, who will let you hold him in one hand while you hold on to your drunkenness and lust and laziness and cheating with the other.
No wonder so many can’t stand in Babylon or Persia
Jesus sits lightly on our churches. And it must come as no surprise that people out there refuse to take him seriously. He is no better than Darius the thirty day god.
Brothers and sisters, this is the Jesus of the Bible.
His kingdom shall never be destroyed,
and his dominion shall be to the end.
27 He delivers and rescues;
he works signs and wonders
in heaven and on earth,
he who has saved Daniel
from the power of the lions.”
He sits on a throne from where he will rule not just for -four years, or even forty four years, but for all of this age, and all of the age to come.
How do you stand for the long haul?
Well you start by knowing the Jesus who is Supreme over all.