Sermon: Daniel 1-2

Daniel 1-2 sermon                  07-21-19

This week we shift from Esther to Daniel.

Both are stories about Jews living outside of Israel,

and what it means to be faithful when Jerusalem and the Temple

are in ruins, thousands of miles away from where you are.

Both stories are about exceptional individuals who trust God

and remain faithful even when their own life is in danger,

and who impress their oppressors

by their dedication to being Jewish.

As captives, Daniel and Esther are both selected for special service

to their kings, and promoted to positions of power and prestige.

The Book of Daniel begins with the destruction of Jerusalem

by King Nebuchadnezzar, and some of the people are captured

and taken to Babylon.

Notice who is targeted for capture: 

the brightest and best, smartest and sharpest, with proper credentials (nobility).

Daniel and his 3 friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, fit the bill

and are taken to Babylon to serve the king.

They undergo three years of education and training,

            then are tested for their competence—

kind of like Esther’s regiment for queen eligibility, but academic. 

These four are chosen to serve in the king’s court,

for they were “10 times better than all the magicians and exorcists throughout the realm”.

Daniel’s first chance to save the day comes

when the king is having disturbing dreams.

While the king wants an explanation, he refuses to tell his advisers

the content of the dreams, making that part of the test.

When they can’t tell him the dream or its interpretation,

he decrees that all the wise men in Babylon shall be put to death—

including the young captives from Judah.

When Daniel hears of it, he and his friends pray to God for help,

and God reveals the mystery in a dream.

Daniel tells the king both the dream and the interpretation,

            and the king is impressed not only with Daniel

but also with Daniel’s God who has unlocked the mystery for him. 

Nebuchadnezzar, the great and powerful Babylonian king,

proclaims that Daniel’s God is “the God of gods and Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries”—

which is not to say he is converted, but he is impressed.

One obvious difference between Daniel and Esther is that

God is the subject of so many verbs.

In Esther God was sort of “assumed”

because of the Jewishness of the characters.

In Daniel God is named and active.

God gives Nebuchadnezzar the victory over Judah.

God makes the officer of the captives kind toward Daniel.

God makes the 4 young men intelligent, proficient, healthy, strong,

and wise, so they find favor with the king and are chosen to serve him. 

God reveals the king’s dream to Daniel,

and gives him the interpretation.

God makes known to the king what will be the future of his reign.

God will establish a kingdom that will never be destroyed.

The events that unfold in Daniel, in the midst of danger, oppression,

and captivity, are the work of God.

God is directing the action in this story, even when the Babylonians

take over the Promised Land and force God’s people into exile. 

God is in charge here.

Daniel believes that, and therefore turns to God to know what to do.

In the midst of certain death by an unreasonable and maybe a bit

unstable king, Daniel can see God at work around him.

He asks for help, to save his own life and the lives of others.

His faith compels him to trust that God will act,

whether or not Daniel lives.

I wonder: Do we think about God that way?

Of which verbs in our lives is God the subject?

Daniel sees what God is doing

because he is tuned in to God through prayer.

Prayer is central to these stories in the first half of the book.

When Daniel is in danger, he prays.

When he doesn’t know what to do, he prays.

When it’s simply time to pray, he prays.

His prayers will get him in trouble later,

but they’re also what save him, because through his prayers,

God intervenes in the danger and gives Daniel and his friends

what they need to remain faithful in the face of adversity.

Somewhere there’s a line we tend to walk between

admiring this kind of faith and being suspicious of it.

We ask God what to do, but often do what we wanted all along,

not waiting for an answer.

Sometimes we TELL God what to do,

trusting that God will see things our way.

Sometimes we make a deal with God—

not a very trusting way to relate to God—

and we usually back out of our part.

Because Daniel trusts God and prays diligently,

he is able to tell the king exact details of his dream

and what it means.

Daniel is quick to give the credit to God—

it is not his own wisdom, but God who has revealed the dream

and given the interpretation to Daniel.

When I was a child,

my brother would often ask me to pray to God for him,

because he believed God would listen to me and not to him.

I don’t know how to pray any “better” than anyone else,

and I certainly did not at 8 years old.

But I do think that prayer, like much of life, gets better with practice. 

Recognizing God’s voice amidst the noise around us;

noticing God at work in a busy world;

going where God sends us—all happen with practice.

In this chapter, Daniel saves all the smartest people in Babylon.

But he only could do that because of what God did first.

God is the subject of the verbs,

giving Daniel what he needs to get the work done. 

It isn’t that God is a wish-granting genie;

but when we pray, we are more in tune

to know what God is doing in and through us.

And so, God invites us to pray, all the time,

because God will do great things in this world,

sometimes through YOU.