Daniel and God's Love

This week we are going to venture into the Old Testament book of Daniel starting with the first chapter. Remember that last week we discussed how the Babylonian army invaded and destroyed Jerusalem, but that was the last of a long line of frightening events that found the people of Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, fighting for their existence after they refused to obey God and forsake their false gods. The events I want to tell you about now happened before Jeremiah was thrown into the cistern or met the destroying armies of the Babylonian Empire.

Jehoahaz the king refused to obey God and God gave his kingdom over to the Egyptian empire that put Jehoiakim, his son, in control of the Kingdom of Judah. Jehoiakim was forced to send quite a bit of gold to Egypt to keep them from destroying his kingdom, but then Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, fought with the Egyptians and began taking over the lands that they had conquered. This put the people of Judah right in the middle of a huge mess. Babylon took over control of Judah and Jehoiakim agreed to pay taxes to Babylon, but he only did it for three years until he decided he had enough and tried to build an army against the Babylonians, so the Babylonians invaded with their armies and Jehoiakim died and his son King Jehoiachin was taken prisoner by the Babylonians along with a large number of people from his kingdom.

Into the middle of this mess were born four boys that have made quite a name for themselves in Biblical history. I believe that these four boys, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were old enough to remember what it was like to try to learn Egyptian ways while wondering if they would be soon forced to use Babylonian money and laws. I am sure that some of the adults the boys knew were teaching their children to worship Egyptian gods while others were learning how to address the gods of the Babylonians in prayer, while other parents were teaching their children to worship the One True God. Daniel and his friends must have been frightened many times by news that huge armies were coming to crush their kings’ resistance to their demands. No one knew if the Babylonians were going to kill everyone, or just make a new king take over the kingdom.

And then one day the armies did come, and they did beat the Jewish army, and they did take over the city. Suddenly the boys were trying to figure out how to speak in a new language to the Chaldean soldiers who were using spears to push them away from their parents and homes into groups of boys very much like them. I am sure that no one knew exactly what was to happen. Would the boys be carried away by the army to learn to become soldiers and fight in other wars? Would the boys become servants to do the hardest work in the empire? Where were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah going to go? What should they do? Many of their friends were already trying to look more like their Babylonian captors in order to keep from being picked on. Many of their friends had learned the names of the Babylonian gods and were learning how to worship them so that they would get on better in their new place, wherever it would be.

Daniel, it is clear, decided early on that no matter what happened he would follow the One True God. His three friends decided that his plan was right and committed to follow the One True God too, no matter how their friends and enemies felt about it. I am sure there was quite a bit of discussion about this decision because Daniel wrote that he and his three friends were the only ones who chose to eat only the foods that would honor God. I am sure that many of the boys that were carried away by the Babylonians argued that if God loved them still He would have kept them from being defeated by the Babylonians. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishae, and Azariah probably had to argue that they knew God loved them, no matter what happened to make it seem like He didn’t.

There are people today who insist the same thing, that if you are truly loved by God you will never have to be in scary situations or do things that you really don’t want to do. These people insist that when something bad happens to God’s people, like being defeated by a bad army, that it proves that God doesn’t care about His people anymore. Daniel would have said, “No! God still has a plan that we don’t understand, but that makes it more important that we obey Him!”

What should Daniel and his friends have done? Should they allow themselves to act more like their enemies so that they would be able to survive, or stand for God no matter if it meant they would die? God had let their enemies take them away from their homes and families; it would seem that He wouldn’t care what happened to them in the foreign land. But Daniel and his friends didn’t care. They still decided to obey. When they got to Babylon their enemies changed their names to sound more like the false gods that Daniel and his friends didn’t like. This is why we remember Daniel’s three friends by other names- Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Daniel was renamed Belteshazzar, but no matter how often they heard themselves called by names of false gods, they insisted on obeying the One True God.

And then the King of Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar, did something that made perfect sense- He offered these new members of his kingdom the very best food he could offer. He told his people to serve the Judean captives the very food and wine that he would eat. The king did this to make his new workers as smart as possible. Remember that good food is brain food. The king planned on teaching these boys everything there was to know about science, and language, and history so that they could help him run his government. For these boys this was the opportunity of a lifetime. They could do things that may have not been possible back home. King Nebuchadnezzar, it seemed, was treating them better than their own God. There was no need to say no thanks to their new king and act like they were better than him, but Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael did say “No thank you!” They knew that whatever meat they were served was prepared in honor of a false god, and that the wine would be made in honor of a false god so they decided to eat the only safe food they could think of- vegetables.

The king’s chamberlain was very upset. In Babylon the king’s food was considered brain food. If these boys were allowed to eat whatever they wanted, when they stood before the king to be tested they would look really bad and the king would look at the chamberlain as if he did something very wrong. It is possible that the chamberlain would lose his life if he let Daniel get away with this. Daniel would not change his mind. “Try it for ten days and see how we look. If we look worse than the other boys, we will eat whatever you give us.” There was no promise by God that this plan would work. You can read throughout the whole law in the book of Leviticus and you will see that God never said that if you eat my way in an enemy’s land you will look better than anyone else, but Daniel and his friends trusted that God would do whatever was necessary to make it possible for them to obey Him.

So they tested the four boys, and ten days later, Daniel, Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah were better looking than any of the other boys that came from Judah with them. There are a lot of possible ways that God could have done this. Some people believe that if we eat only vegetables now, we will be as smart as Daniel and his friends; others think that what happened was a miracle. However God worked it out, He proved to these boys that He was going to back them up. This was God’s way of telling His boys that even though they were far away from His temple and His people, they were not far from Him if they kept their hearts following Him.

The final test came when a while later they had their final test before King Nebuchadnezzar and he found that they learned better, and could think quicker than any of the other boys. God used the obedience of these four young men to put men who loved Him into some very important places in the enemy’s kingdom.

Our verse this week is John 10:11 “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” In this historical account that I just told you God acted like a shepherd and led his young men into a way of acting that proved His power even in a strange land. God proved that He loves His people no matter how badly it seems that He is treating them. It looked to everyone that God didn’t care anymore, how else could we explain the fact that He let bad men carry His people away? But in reality God loved His people, and He still does. God put Daniel, Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah in the perfect place to get things ready for His people to one day return to their homeland. God proved that He loves His people in all of History.