Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Morning everybody. I'm Ben Fleming, one of the senior pastors here and we are in part two of a sermon series we're calling Sunday School. So we're revisiting a lot of the stories that maybe you learned about growing up, but this, the idea is that we're revisiting a lot of these stories that seem familiar to us, but maybe we never understood them quite with the, with the depth or the Christ centeredness that they have, that their intention is for us today. We don't worship the Bible, we don't worship these stories in the Old Testament, and we don't treat them as prescriptive, that if you do exactly what Noah did or Jonah did or Daniel did, that this will be an outcome. We learn so much of the wisdom from them. But the key to these stories is understanding that Christ is truly at the center of each and every single one of them. And that's the appropriate way, the proper way to view scripture. So today we are jumping into the story of Daniel and the Lion's den. Daniel 6, verse 1. So the context of this is that the nation of Judah has been sent into exile by the kingdom of Babylon. Okay, so they've been taken captive by the kingdom of Babylon, which is the worst case scenario for the nation of Judah. But as they take them over, the Babylonian leaders say, we would love to have it literally says the beginning of Daniel, a few young, smart, good looking men from Judah to help us lead this new empire.
[00:01:28] And so Daniel is one of those young, educated and good looking men that they claim to be a leader. And so Daniel experiences life with several different kings. And this is the fourth one. The early ones are Babylonian. And then this one, Darius the Mede, is actually part of the Persian empire. The Persians come and they throw out the Babylonians. And then Daniel continues to help and be very influential inside of each and every single one of these kings kingdoms. And really he only insists on a couple things. He insists on the fact that he wants to eat the food that he wants to eat and he insists on praying three times a day. And that is where we pick up the story in Daniel chapter six. As Darius the Mead decided to divide the kingdom into 120 provinces and he appointed a high official to rule over each prom.
[00:02:11] The king also chose Daniel and two others as administrators to supervise the high officers and protect the king's interests. Daniel soon proved himself more capable than all of the other administrators and high officers. And because of Daniel's great ability, the king made plans to place him over the entire empire.
[00:02:28] And then the other administrators and high officers began searching for some fault in the way that Daniel was handling government affairs. But they couldn't find anything to criticize or condemn.
[00:02:39] He was faithful, always responsible, and completely trustworthy.
[00:02:44] And so they concluded, our only chance of finding grounds for accusing Daniel will be in connection with the rules of his religion.
[00:02:53] So this is the point for those of you who grew up with Veggietales, where there's a little ditty that is sung by these administrators and others around. They say, oh, no, what we gonna do? The king likes Daniel more than me and you.
[00:03:08] Uh, oh, what we gonna do? We gotta get him out of here.
[00:03:21] But when Daniel Learned in verse 10 that the law had been signed, he went home and he knelt down as usual in his upstairs room. And so he hears this decree that happens that they will no longer be allowed to pray to anyone but the king. And what does Daniel do? He goes in his upstairs room and he prays.
[00:03:39] And with its windows open toward Jerusalem, he prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God. And the officials went together to Daniel's house, and they found him praying and asking for God's help. And then we'll skip down to verse 16.
[00:03:53] So at last the king gave orders for Daniel to be arrested and thrown into the den of lions. And the king said to him, may your God whom you serve faithfully rescue you. This is when the higher vocals came in. In Veggietales, we say, we could throw him in the dungeon.
[00:04:12] I've done it every service, and it's a bad idea every time. But a stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den. The king sealed the stone with his own royal seal and seals of his nobles so that no one could rescue Daniel. And then the king returned to his palace and spent the night fasting. And he refused his usual entertainment and couldn't sleep at all at night. The poor king who just threw Daniel in the lion's den can't have his entertainment.
[00:04:39] Very early the next morning, the king got up and hurried out to the lion's den. And when he got there, he called out an anguish. Daniel, servant of the living God, was your God whom you served so faithfully able to rescue from the lions? Daniel answered, long live the king.
[00:04:54] My God sent his angel to shut the lion's mouth so they would not hurt me, for I have been found innocent in his sight, and I have not wronged you, your majesty. And the king was overjoyed and ordered that Daniel be lifted from the den. And not a scratch was found found on him, for he had trusted in his God.
[00:05:12] Then down to verse 25, as the story closes, then King Darius said the message to the people of every race and nation and language throughout the world, Peace and prosperity to you. I decree that everyone throughout my kingdom should tremble with fear before God, the God of Daniel, for he is the living God and he will endure forever. His kingdom will never be destroyed and. And his rule will never end. He rescues and saves his people. He performs miraculous signs and wonders in heavens and on earth. And he has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions. And so Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
[00:05:47] See if you are hoping today that Daniel will give you more fuel for, I don't know, maybe some. Some anger in your life. If Daniel will empower you to fight your enemies. Daniel doesn't do a very good job of that either.
[00:06:05] Some of my favorite friends as a kid, especially as an athlete, were the friends that you always felt like were kind of looking to get into fight at some point. We had a guy that played first base for my college team and one of my summer Legion baseball teams. His name was Sean Teeters, and he was a big dude. And he always wanted to fight somebody.
[00:06:27] And there was something kind of scary and wonderful about having him around. Cause he could take anything personally, right? There was somebody that would show up an hour before the game from the other team, and they would put their bag in a suspicious place to him. And he would go, you see that?
[00:06:39] That guy wants to fight.
[00:06:41] You see what he just did?
[00:06:43] Look at that. And I was like, whoa, Sean. Like, not everybody wants to fight all the time. And we got in some fights because of Sean's ridiculousness. But it's kind of, you know, I personally can love those people. I always feel some kind of connection with them. And Daniel's not Shawn Titers.
[00:06:58] Daniel is captured.
[00:07:01] And by these heathens is what the nation of Judah would have called the Babylonians.
[00:07:08] And he assimilates to their practices. With the exception of a couple, he gains favor.
[00:07:13] And when many of us would have found in this unjust moment to fight back, Daniel is not that guy.
[00:07:22] In fact, he goes and he prays and he exemplifies what is really the center of the story, and that is faithfulness. That we live in a world that often rewards compromise and it punishes integrity.
[00:07:34] Daniel's story is not just about shutting the mouth of lions. That's a great, and it's a cool miracle, but it's about cultivating a life of faithfulness and ultimately understanding that we serve a God that is faithful to us.
[00:07:45] The Christian life is about living from the center, the middle point of God's love and grace and hope and that environment. When we know that we are faithful to God and that God is faithful to us, it creates a non anxious presence in us. It's rooted in prayer and integrity and that is what is modeled in this story.
[00:08:07] Now, the reason that it's powerful is because it happens in the middle of what is a very pressurized environment.
[00:08:16] Now, I deal with pressure in a couple different ways and I gotta say, I'm not proud of either one of them. Okay, but this happened just yesterday. We were in my wife's car, me and my 10 year old son, my 8 year old daughter, and we were doing the thing that you do with kids that age in Bend on a Saturday is you try to not be late for all the soccer that's happening across town. That was what we were doing. And so we had an earlier game, then we had a little break, and then we had a later game. And in the middle of it, we're trying to plan out what we're going to do for the evening. Now, the Seattle Mariners have a big series against the Houston Astros right now. And so yesterday I said, I declared as a father and the driver of the vehicle, I am watching the Seattle Mariners at 4:00 this evening. We should watch the game together.
[00:09:01] And then what transpired is so predictable and yet so frustrating is that my son then began trying to add or subtract from my plan based on his social calendar.
[00:09:12] Well, okay, yeah, that's fine. But can crew come? And if not, crew could Tate? And what about Wyatt? I told Wyatt that I would play and Smith and Davis. And the volume is starting to increase in this car that, by the way, the trip already started with his selection of some new hip hop music that he really likes, which is great. I'm into hip hop. I'm totally up for it. But I am slowly realizing that as a child, I was subjected to AM's political talk radio.
[00:09:39] And now that I am the adult, I have no control over the audio in the car. Still, I missed my era where I don't get to pick anything.
[00:09:50] Oh my gosh, it's a whole nother sermon. But so we're listening to this music and then my son is chiming in. He's complaining, of course. My daughter hears my son trying to make plans in order to get some of his friends around for the rest of the day. And she goes, we never have my friends around.
[00:10:04] None of my friends, they never come. They never come over. Why can't we ask my friends? And my response is, you're friends are not always my favorite. Okay, There's a few of them that I really like and their parents are great, but there's so many of them that it's complicated. So I'm sitting in the front and then my wife is trying to wonderfully play referee in the middle of all this. And I enter into one of my two options. The first option, when I feel the pressure and I feel the literal volume rising in the car, is one to walk away. Now I'm driving. This is not a great option, although I've considered it.
[00:10:38] Number two is I get louder than whatever my environment is. And so the volume is rising and I begin to go. I am watching the game at 4:00 tonight, inning one to inning nine.
[00:10:51] Okay, dad, but crew can't come until then if we pick them up. I am watching the game tonight, inning one to inning.
[00:11:00] Somebody hear me and do I normally talk like this? My wife would say sometimes, but I would say, no, I don't normally talk like this. I don't normally get her into a room and just try to be the loudest guy in the room. Although it happens pretty naturally sometimes.
[00:11:16] The pressure creates behavior that I'm not always proud of and the pressure of the empire that we experience today. While it was a certain kind of context for Daniel, the pressure that we experience today is usually a world of hurry and ambition and anxiety.
[00:11:32] There's a pressure to succeed, to fit in, to compromise. The pressure is constant.
[00:11:38] And discipleship is actually resistance inside of this pressure. It's resisting the formation of the world by rooting ourselves in God's kingdom.
[00:11:51] And it's funny, I always imagine that pressure in faith would look like something else. There's like when you're a kid and you grow up in the church, especially when you're a pastor's kid, there's always like this fantasy that you're going to be on the playground and, and there's gonna be a big bully that's gonna threaten you to renounce Jesus or he'll beat you up.
[00:12:07] And I was just like, yeah, I'm ready for that. I'm not gonna renounce my faith in the face of a bully. You know, that never happened to me. And it still doesn't happen to me. It never happened a single time.
[00:12:20] What I have felt the pressure of, and maybe you have too, is this pressure to compromise in a way that makes me treat someone like they aren't a child of God, just like me.
[00:12:34] There's not some bully insisting that we forsake Christ in the face of being beaten up. Instead, we have the temptation to vilify anyone that's not like you. The other political side, the other team, the other nation, the other neighborhood, the other state, the other class, the other faith. That is the pressure to quickly, as quickly as possible in our lives, draw lines, create a good side and a bad side. Of course, I'm always on the good side and. And then begin to fight it out.
[00:12:57] We fight it out over social media. We fight it out in passive aggression. We fight it out with our opinions. We fire these things out to each other in order to create these two sides so that I can justify treating you like someone that is less than a child of God. That's the pressure that we have today.
[00:13:13] Have a take, have a response, push back, be angry.
[00:13:20] And doggone it, Daniel doesn't do any of these things.
[00:13:25] He's not a lot of great fuel for that kind of anger. Instead, his response to changing regimes and kingdoms and kings is to go to prayer.
[00:13:36] And so when this decree is passed, Daniel doesn't panic and he doesn't fight. He simply continues this practice that he has always had.
[00:13:43] He kneels three times a day and he faces Jerusalem, giving thanks to God.
[00:13:50] Now, the significance of facing Jerusalem in this tells us it gives us a bit of insight into why Daniel was praying in the first place or what he was praying about.
[00:13:59] And so what happened when this temple in Jerusalem was built all these years before? King Solomon declared that anytime if it happens that my people are in exile, that if they stop what they're doing and they pray in the direction of Jerusalem, those prayers will be heard.
[00:14:16] And so what Daniel is doing is he's tapping into this practice that declares from a very soul position of, I know who I belong to, I know where I belong, and I know who my God is.
[00:14:28] Which means he's surrendering all of these current identities, A person of great influence in this different empire who could go in all different directions with that influence. And he revisits three times a day, I know where I belong, and I know who I belong to.
[00:14:42] I know where my identity lies.
[00:14:45] In a book called A Deeply Formed Life, Pastor Rich Velodas emphasizes these contemplative rhythms that Daniel has tapped into this slowing down of being present with God, resisting the tyranny of hurry, that would say with everything, you need to hurry up and make a decision, have a take, take a side. Daniel's strength in crisis, in a crisis moment, flows from his years and years and years of ordinary prayer, not a reactionary decision to pray.
[00:15:17] And so then Daniel is thrown into the lion's den, but God sends his angel to shut the lion's mouth. And the miracle is not that Daniel avoided the pain of the den, but instead that God met him inside of that place.
[00:15:30] This reminds us that God doesn't promise to remove us from hardship, but to be with us inside of it.
[00:15:38] I want you to be reminded today that God's presence with you in these dark and deep places is not a reward for perfection, but it's the grounding of our faith. It's the very foundation of it that God sees and loves and exists with us right here in this moment. Not when we simply pray the right prayers and push the right buttons. But God lives with us because we are made in his image and he loves us.
[00:16:02] And so the lion's den is where we get that perspective and we see God's nearness.
[00:16:10] This perspective is important.
[00:16:12] It happened to our family recently and I'll tell a story really quick because I will weep on this stage, but I discovered that my 12 year old dog Roca, has cancer on her face. She probably didn't have that long. And we broke the news to the kids and my 8 year old daughter said something really profound to me and she said no, because Roca is so important.
[00:16:32] She's so important.
[00:16:34] Now I'm like, oh, she's just so sweet and lovey and just. She's my little. Oh, we've just been together through so much, you know, And Jovi so specifically put, she's important.
[00:16:47] And I was like, wow, a crisis. This moment creates this perspective of what actually matters, right? Anytime we find ourselves in crisis, we discover what actually matters. And for Jovi and for our family in that moment, it's that we, this unit, have been together for so much and we care and we love deeply for each other. This crisis that's created in Daniel's life helps him understand and see God's true nearness.
[00:17:12] And so while it's tempting to say in the middle of a crisis, woe is me, look how awful things are. Why would this ever happen? And those are good questions that you have permission to ask. But ultimately, Daniel is leading us in this example of we can experience God's nearness maybe even at a greater level of understanding. In those times of difficulty, we see what is truly important.
[00:17:37] After Daniel's deliverance, King Darius proclaims the greatness of God and Daniel's faithfulness becomes a witness to the empire.
[00:17:45] And even King Darius proclaims the greatness of a different kingdom, that that is not run by him.
[00:17:52] And that is the job of the Christian in today's day and age, that we would live deeply rooted lives that are prayerful and non anxious and compassionate to bear witness not by loud arguments, but by embodied faithfulness.
[00:18:07] The world takes notice when Christians live differently and Daniel more than anybody understands that kings and governments and kingdoms will come and go, but but ultimately God will have his say and his kingdom will never end.
[00:18:26] So the story is not just about Daniel, but instead about a God who is faithful and rich Villos, that same pastor writes this. The call of the Christian is not first to be impressive, but to be faithful.
[00:18:38] Not first to be impressive, but to be faithful. And so Daniel invites us into two things as we close. He invites us into discipline.
[00:18:48] Daniel was taken from Jerusalem as a teenager and lived the rest of his life in a foreign empire. Opening his window toward Jerusalem was his way of remembering who he truly belonged to.
[00:18:58] Prayer rooted him in God's story when everything around him tried to shape him differently.
[00:19:04] He didn't suddenly start praying when a crisis came, but he kept doing what he had always done. For Daniel, prayer was a holy habit woven into the fabric of his days. It gave him stability in an unstable world. It's a discipline.
[00:19:20] It requires the rearranging of our lives in order to get the fruit or orient ourselves around the things that truly matter.
[00:19:28] I'm assuming that some of you have some interior design skill and ability in here.
[00:19:33] That is a skill that I do not possess.
[00:19:36] I know how to hang TVs about as far as I got.
[00:19:42] And if I went to somebody, one of you in here that had some interior design skill and you came to my living room that was a bunch of seating that was basically oriented around 100 inch TV on the wall. And I said, this is a place where I'm trying to experience quiet and thoughtfulness and contemplative practices, you would say, no, this is a place you are trying to watch football.
[00:20:09] Everything is built around that big thing on the wall.
[00:20:12] And that's fine, you can have rooms where you're trying to watch football. But let's not trick each other into believing that this is a place for contemplative practices. It's not Built that way, it's not set up that way.
[00:20:23] And in a similar way, we can fool ourselves in our lives to saying, we want peace, we want thoughtfulness, we want contemplative practices, we want to experience God, we want that. Three times a day, I'm reminded of who I am and where I come from, and I allow the spirit of God to enter. Our lives are so often not built around that thing. Even though we say that that's what we want, and that requires changing of schedules, maybe actual physical rearranging of furniture.
[00:20:50] It requires us jumping into a discipline with regularity and on a schedule so that we might be shaped and formed by the thing that we say we are shaped and formed by. And that is Jesus.
[00:21:01] Because otherwise it's you versus your phone and you will lose every time.
[00:21:10] The second thing that Daniel encourages us into with this story is courage.
[00:21:16] Now, this is a hard one for me. And by the way, I'm only doing two points. Pastors love three points. And I tried my best, but I betrayed my people today with two points, just two.
[00:21:28] He invites us into this life of courage. So again, I don't see Daniel, naturally, as a very courageous guy. If he was my friend today, we would probably have serious issues together.
[00:21:38] I want Daniel to be a revolutionary. I want him to overthrow the things that are so wrong, that have taken him captive. I want him to push against all these things, because that's kind of my resting demeanor. I don't mind a fight. I don't mind a debate. I don't mind jumping into all these things. And every time something goes wrong or gets difficult, or every day in general, that guy disappears to his room.
[00:22:00] Where are you going?
[00:22:02] The fight is here.
[00:22:04] The bad people are with us, and you're retreating to your bedroom to pray.
[00:22:10] Quit being such a sissy.
[00:22:13] And we have this even in our cultural context today, right? Something goes wrong and there's a side. And by the way, I understand this side, and I'll explain myself in a second, but there's a side that says, we're going to pray about this. And then there's another response from the other side that says, knock it off.
[00:22:29] Your thoughts and prayers are garbage. We need real change to happen in order to do so. It's not going to take a group of people sitting around and praying together. And on one hand, I am with them. I am with the. I am against the pithy Christian prayer that says, oh, I'm sorry that's happened. I'll pray for you.
[00:22:49] That, like, yucky Christian garbage thing that we do, where we say we don't really want to engage with the difficult thing or get involved in the nitty gritty of life and pain and suffering, but we'll kind of pray for it at some point in the future. That's terrible. And I don't want anything to do with it.
[00:23:05] But if prayer is something that is much more in the form of Daniel, where we have the courage to bring everything that we are before God and offer him the opportunity to share, shape and change and move our messaging, then that is a move that takes incredible courage.
[00:23:22] Because I have to tell you, I don't think it takes any courage at all to simply take my feelings inside of a moment that have been formed by a life of difficulty and positivity and trauma and simply spew them all over the Internet or over the congregation here at Westside.
[00:23:39] I had somebody asked me recently, do you watch the news? Do you pay attention? Do you have an opinion? And I was like, oh, so many opinions.
[00:23:46] I have all the opinions.
[00:23:48] I'm really opinionated.
[00:23:50] I love terrible debate questions. I will go around the offices here on a day where I have a little bit of spare time and I'll say, is a hot dog a taco or a sandwich?
[00:23:59] And then I will fight with whoever is in that office.
[00:24:02] Team taco. By the way, hot dogs are tacos.
[00:24:05] Don't you dare.
[00:24:09] Of course I've got opinions. I'm a kid that grew up in a really small mill town called Glendale, Oregon, in Southern Oregon that now hardly exists because of changes in policy about lumber and timber and mills. It was built on two mills. And then I went to. I played sports, and then I went to school in Klamath Falls at oit and I got a degree in communication. I played more sports. And then I got married. Then I had kids and my experience with the church. I became a pastor at 19, and I'm a pastor's kid. And I've fallen in love with the church. And I've completely fallen out of love at many times in my life at the church, with. With how it's behaved inside the culture and what I believe to be inside politics and governments and shame I have felt over how it's behaved.
[00:24:51] I've been proud of the church in many moments as well. I am a father of two kids. I am a husband. I live in Bend. I live in Oregon. I have this leaning and that leaning, and I voted in this way and in that way. I've got thoughts and I've got opinions because I've been made informed by the experience that I have in my life. But what I got to tell you is I don't think it takes any courage I for me to stand up here and just throw out all my opinions at you that happen at this one moment. But the courageous man will take this massive tray of life experience and will enter into his bedroom and bow down on his knees and present them before God and say, God, I have all this stuff.
[00:25:32] What do you want to do with it?
[00:25:35] I'll do what you would have me do.
[00:25:40] That is slow and difficult and painful.
[00:25:45] But I really, truly believe that, especially for us in this day and age, it is what God is calling you into.
[00:25:52] Be wary of the person that is simply the loudest or first in an environment as having the wisdom. But instead, let's be a people of prayer that would offer up everything that we are and we think to God and allow him to map out our steps from there.
[00:26:10] That is courageous.
[00:26:13] And that can even happen in the face of lions.
[00:26:18] Daniel knew these kings and kingdoms rise and fall, but God's kingdom endures forever.
[00:26:23] Prayer was his declaration of dependence dependent on God.
[00:26:30] And even though Daniel served pagan rulers, his ultimate loyalty was to the Lord.
[00:26:38] So I want to ask you today, as we close our time together, are you willing to be courageous?
[00:26:46] Courageous doesn't require you to be the biggest, the strongest and the loudest in the room. Instead, in our context, being courageous is the one that in every environment would go to God and say, what would you have me do?
[00:27:02] What would you do with this life that I have created?
[00:27:06] What would you do with my pain and my sufferings and my victories? Because I am forming these thoughts and opinions, but I want you to form me instead.
[00:27:16] That's true courage.
