Culture Shock

Tom Shrader examines Daniel 1, where young Daniel and his friends are taken captive to Babylon and pressured to assimilate into pagan culture. Daniel resolves in his heart not to defile himself with the king's food, demonstrating how believers can maintain integrity in hostile environments through pre-decided convictions and creative approaches to conflict. Shrader emphasizes that faithfulness in small matters leads to God's blessing and that our relationship with Christ is an advantage, not a hindrance, in the marketplace.

“Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself - it's to purpose in one's heart, the result of Daniel's thoughtful, prayerful, sober thought process, where he internally decides that the word of God is what's gonna determine the choices and decisions in his life.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Faithful

Recorded: 2012

Duration: 50 min

Themes: integrity, faithfulness, conviction, compromise, worldliness, godliness, perseverance, courage, working in secular environment, facing cultural pressure, young professional, new believer, dealing with compromise, workplace challenges, standing for truth, college student

Scripture: Daniel 1, Daniel 1:8, Genesis 37-50, Romans 12:2, Luke 16:10, Matthew 6:33, 1 Peter 1:14, Ephesians 5:25, Romans 8:14, John 17, Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14, Exodus 34:15

Theological Themes: sanctification, holiness, biblical worldview, cultural engagement, separation, divine sovereignty, stewardship, witness

Full Transcript

Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to the book of Daniel. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand. Guys will be working their way around the room. If you get a Bible from us, it is page 478. We are in the second part of a series titled Faithful. The first part was a study in the life of Joseph, looking at Genesis from chapter 37 through chapter 50. Part two is an examination of the book of Daniel, specifically the first half of it.

The book of Daniel is 12 chapters, and there are two main sections. The first section, chapters 1 through 6, is a narrative—the story of Daniel primarily and his friends. As always, as we study these, they are our main characters, but God is the main character. My fear in using a word like story is that you somehow think this is allegory or fictitious, but it's not. It's an account of historical events. The first six chapters will be the focus of our study over the next six weeks. Chapters 7 through 12 are Daniel's prophetic dreams.

Starting Fresh

I've taught these first six chapters of the book of Daniel probably four or five times, but I tried the best I could to start afresh. I didn't go to old notes. I didn't go to anything. I wanted to make it as fresh as you can. Obviously, you remember things that you taught, but I tried to come to it fresh. I wanted to stay within the context of the idea of faithful—both what we saw in Joseph's life and we see here in Daniel's life. That is: how do you survive in the midst of really hostile environments?

One author writes this: "A study of the book of Daniel gives the meaning of history more clearly than any other portion of the Bible. And what more? It tells us how to live for God in ungodly times like ours." You're going to be reminded over and over again of God's control over history, God's control over kings and rulers and presidents, the perseverance of faith, living for God in the midst of real hostility. It fits very well and timely into the world we live in.

Daniel as Foreigner

Daniel is a foreigner in this land of Babylon. He is one who subscribes to cultural values that are radically different from the world in which he lives—not unlike us. The key verse in chapter 1 is verse 8: "Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself." Some of your translations will say he determined. Another word is resolved. It's to purpose in one's heart.

In the midst of this hostile environment that you and I live in, we need to resolve. We understand the conflict. We understand that God's agenda and man's agenda, God's values and man's values, are typically different. When Augustine wrote "City of God," that was the idea—there's a city here that's driven by godly principles and a city here driven by human principles.

At one point in his observation and study of this book, Daniel Campbell writes this: "Daniel could discern the fact that the Babylonian culture was in conflict with the word of God. And he had the maturity and moral courage to say a firm no to cultural pressures. Involved in this is the clear implication that Daniel was a keen student of the scripture and that he had the ability to apply what he knew to the problem of daily life."

Timeless Relevance

We're going to look at some incidents that took place 2,600 years ago, and yet they are as relevant today as the morning newspaper. How do you survive in this world? It feels like—I don't know if that's right or not—it feels like it's getting worse. It could be the result of getting old. It could just be the result, frankly, of summer. But it feels like it's more and more hostile. It feels like you can no longer critically examine or maybe even poke fun at anyone except born-again Christians. It feels like the decision-makers and the intelligentsia of our day are really hostile to what we believe. They certainly were in Daniel's day, and I think they are in ours.

Daniel would be dealing with his version of secular humanism. I want to divide by way of introduction a little bit today and a little bit next week. Next week, July 1st, I want to talk a little bit about this idea of church and state and how does all of this play out. That's really what all six of these chapters are about: How do we live in this hostile environment? How do we maintain integrity when it's under fire?

A Stirring Example

One of the authors writes this: "I don't know of any message that is so timely and valuable for Christians living in our own secular and materialistic times as that message of Daniel. Indeed, in Daniel, we have a stirring and helpful example of one who not only lived through such times and survived in them, but actually triumphed in them. Excelled in public life to the glory of God. Didn't compromise. Didn't bow to the world's idols. He was hated, plotted against, but he triumphed because he knew God, trusted Him, and decided to do whatever God told him to do and God would do what was best for him."

Daniel is a godly guy living in a very ungodly place. A man of prayer, a man of God, and yet that brings him in opposition to the people around him. One of the things that I hope we see is this: I feel like when that pressure comes, sometimes our flinch is to make a battle out of everything.

Verse one tells us that in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. The Lord took the king and put him in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, along with some of the vessels of the house of God.

Nebuchadnezzar comes on three different occasions and invades Jerusalem: 605 B.C., 597 B.C., and 586 B.C. In the instance we're looking at here, he not only invades Jerusalem and takes it captive, but he actually deports the king, some of the royal family, some of the commanders of the army, some of the craftsmen, some of the priests, and as we're going to see today, some of the best and the brightest.

The nation of Israel is now divided into northern and southern kingdoms. The northern kingdom had been overrun by the Syrians about 100 years before this. The southern kingdom, under the king they have at this moment, the Bible tells us did evil in the sight of the Lord, and so did his two predecessors. The future of the city of Jerusalem is that it will be destroyed, and so will the temple. That's the backdrop of this.

The Arrogance of Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar comes, and as a conqueror, he begins to take what he wants. He takes not just the human beings, but look at the latter part of verse two: he took vessels of the house of God, brought them to the land of Shinar, or Babylon, to the house of his gods. He brought the vessels into the treasury of his gods.

It would be easy to pass over that, but that really gives us insight into the arrogance of this man. When we get to chapter 4 of this book, verse 29, there's this moment where Nebuchadnezzar is walking around the roof of his royal palace and he says, "Is this not Babylon the great which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power for the glory of my majesty?" That's the arrogance of this guy.

Not only did He think He was superior to humans, He thought He was superior to His gods. The symbolism here is rich. He took vessels from the house of God, from Jehovah, and He demonstrates in this one act His superiority, not just to His gods, but in this case to the God that they worshiped in Jerusalem. He is an arrogant man, and one of the great things that we're going to see in this study is that God puts up with this arrogance for a period of time, even makes it appear that King Nebuchadnezzar is winning, but God always triumphs.

The Sovereignty of God

Gleason Archer writes this in his commentary on the book of Daniel: "The principal theological emphasis in Daniel is the absolute sovereignty of the God of Israel. At a time when it seemed to all the world that His cause was lost and that the gods of the heathens had triumphed, causing His temple to be burnt to the ground, it pleased the Lord strikingly and unmistakably to display His power. The theme running through the whole book is that the fortune of kings and the affairs of men are subject to God's decrees, and that He's able to accomplish His will despite the most determined opposition from the mightiest powers on earth."

He is God, He is a great God, He's the sovereign God, and that theme appears over and over again, not just in the book of Daniel, but that's the theme of the scripture. There's not a maverick molecule loose in the universe that could somehow usurp the plan of God. God has absolute power and authority over all things, even when it appears He doesn't.

If you want to go from macro to micro, let's go to your life. Even when it feels like He doesn't, even when He feels like perhaps He's far away, or that somehow He's abandoned you, or that somehow He doesn't care or doesn't know—if He does care and does know, apparently He's impotent to do anything about it—nothing could be further from the truth. What we see throughout the scripture, no exception here in the study of the book of Daniel, is that though we're going to deal with main characters like Daniel and his three friends and Nebuchadnezzar, the main character of the book of Daniel is the main character of this book, the Bible. It's God Himself.

The Selection of Young Men

Now here's the meat of the story, beginning in verse 3. "Then the king appointed Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel"—so these are some of the young men that have been taken captive—"including some of the royal family and of the nobles."

Now here's the criteria. "The youth in whom"—here's what we want—"there's no defect, they're good-looking, they're showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, who had the ability for serving in the king's court. And He ordered him to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans."

So here's what Nebuchadnezzar says: find these young men. We're going to see today that we think Daniel and the boys are somewhere—we can argue back and forth, it doesn't make much difference—somewhere between 14, 15, 16 years old, could be 13. They were young men. Now a young man, let's stipulate that, a young man in Jerusalem at that time was indeed a man as compared to the 14-year-olds that we see today, which are unfortunately almost barely boys anymore. They were sharp, they were intelligent, they were well-educated, and they had potential. But they have a problem. Their history,

Their faith and training were in conflict with the values of the Babylonians. So Nebuchadnezzar says here's what I want you to do. First of all identify them, and then assimilate them into our culture. Indoctrinate them, teach them the language, teach them the literature, teach them the customs. There's that conflict right there.

He's not even going to go in and combat what they believe. He's just going to say, just overwhelm them with this. And just by teaching this over a period of three years, you're just going to erode those memories. Those memories will go away, and all of a sudden he will walk like, talk like, and look like a Babylonian. That's what he's hoping, and that's how they do it.

The Gradual Erosion Strategy

It's the whole idea of the frog in the kettle. If the water's boiling, you drop him in, he jumps out. But you put that frog in there, in just tepid water, you turn the water up, and the frog is boiled in the midst of that kettle. You just immerse them, and that's kind of what you've seen that's gone on historically in the last 50, 60, 70 years here in the United States of America.

There's been a slow boil that's taken place, where now you can get up and you can basically say things that are clearly anti-God and anti-biblical, and you're ridiculed if you object to them. And that's just kind of the world you live in. Daniel and the boys are there, and under the king's command, and they're going to indoctrinate them. They're going to try to strip them away from that heritage in a couple of ways.

Hooked on the Culture

Verse 5, we're going to get you hooked on the culture. You're going to eat the daily ration from the king's choice food. You're going to love this, man. I don't know what you've been eating back there in Jerusalem, but we got really good stuff here. Deep-fried hot dogs. That's what I was watching last night on Diners and Diet. Deep-fried hot dogs. And the wine.

And he appointed that they should be educated three years, and at the end of that time, they'll be ready for the king's service. Among them were the boys, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and the commander of the officials assigned new names to them. Daniel is called Belteshazzar, Hananiah is called Shadrach, Mishael is called Meshach, Azariah is called Abednego.

The Significance of Name Changes

Now, names meant something in that day and age. We name kids names now primarily because of the way they sound. Maybe a little bit unusual, maybe a little bit different, but names meant something. And the change of the names was to describe, now if not immediately, over a period of time, to describe a change of allegiance of these boys.

Daniel means God is judge. Belteshazzar, Bel, is one of the false gods, chief among them. It means Bel protects life. So God was my judge, but not anymore. So the name's supposed to signify. Hananiah meant Jehovah, or God is gracious. Shadrach means the command of Aku. Aku is, again, one of those foreign gods.

Mishael means who is like God. Meshach means who is that, and who is Aku. Azariah means the Lord helps. Abednego means servant of Abednego. So they've taken these names, and it's designed, again, to just gradually separate them from their past.

The Power of Remembrance

That's probably one of the most powerful words that you'll see in the scripture, and in your own mind, is to remember. Do this in remembrance of me. That's what's so important about history. You live at a time where, and I look at our own nation, where people, we're fighting a war, we're commemorating the war of 1812, and nobody can tell you what it's about. They're trying to do a reenactment up in northern New York. They didn't have enough Americans to do it, so they're using Canadians.

No one knows history, and I'm not saying dates and places and time, but why? Why is it this way? What really matters? I read today that they're developing whole lines of clothing for pets for the campaign, so cats for Obama, dogs for Romney. I mean, you've reached a point, and it's a big industry. This is stupid. I'm getting all this mail to remind you to vote. If you can't remember to vote, this comes around once every four years, if you can't remember to vote, stay home. I don't need a letter.

It's gotten a little goofy. And it's been a gradual erosion of this stuff, and now it's a big deal, and now the stakes are huge.

The Spiritual Battle These Boys Faced

So, get the situation here. These boys, 14, 15, 16 years old, severed in all likelihood from any sort of family support structure. They're in a foreign land, in a hostile, secular environment. Their identity's now been taken away. They're going to take your name away. You've got the force of Babylon, specifically the king, who's invested in your life. You're kind of in a spiritual battle here.

Daniel's Internal Resolve

Verse eight, we said it was the key verse. Daniel made up his mind. Again, one of your translations will say determined. I think the ESV says resolve. Resolve means this, to purpose in one's heart. It's an internal process. So much of the external battle, we want to fight, do this, don't do this, when in reality, that's taken care of in the mind. Again, resolve, to purpose in one's heart.

These are my words. It's the result of Daniel's thoughtful, prayeful, sober thought process, where he internally decides that the word of God is what's going to determine the choices and decisions in his life. He knew the word of God well enough to know what needed to be done, and then to apply them in life.

That's the same world you're in. You carry a dual passport, citizen of the United States, citizen of heaven. Bible tells us at times, we're aliens, we're foreigners here. You have a different set of values and culture. Your core beliefs are different.

than the world around you. Don't be conformed, Romans chapter 12, verse two. Don't be conformed to this world. J.B. Phillips says, don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind.

We want to look at behavior, which I get, but if we don't change the heart and the mind, the behavior doesn't matter. The power of the mind, the determination of the mind - that's where the real battle is fought.

The Battle of the Mind

I haven't exercised much at all. I haven't been feeling particularly well. I'm a little short of breath. But I hate it. My mind struggles with it. I get in the car, I start to drive, first light is red, and I'm saying, "See, that is God telling me that I shouldn't go." The phone rings, and I have a thousand excuses.

Now, something interesting happened to me in the last month, because Sandy works out a lot. She used to do triathlons, and she runs marathons, and now half marathons. She's hurt - she's got a hamstring problem, so she gets up every morning at 4:50 and goes swimming. She swims intensively.

Here's what's been interesting for me - I just thought she was somebody who likes it, and here's what I realized. She hates it as much as I do. It's not that she's physically stronger than I am, though, unfortunately, she is. She's mentally stronger than I am. That alarm goes off at 4:50, and it's the strangest alarm. It's this kind of ding, ding, ding, dong, ding, ding. It's a floating thing, and then after five minutes, it gets intense.

Her deal is this. She'll lay there for five minutes, and then she goes. She doesn't think about it, she doesn't analyze it, she doesn't try to process whether her back hurts, or her knee hurts, or her hand hurts. She goes, and she knows once she's up, first thing, she gets out of bed and puts that swimsuit on. The minute she does it, she's committed, which shows how weak she really is, because I could still get out of it if I was standing there in a swimsuit. But she just does it, and so I'll say to her, "I'll lay back down," and she says, "No, got this suit on, I'm going."

But it all starts here. That's where that battle begins. It begins in the negative sense, where we say, "You're thinking about some temptation out there, don't let your mind go there," because if your mind goes there, in all likelihood, pretty soon your heart's going to follow, and then your actions are going to follow. You know it, right?

The Battle is Won Before the Temptation Arrives

This is my favorite story. I probably tell these same stories all the time, so I apologize, but this is my favorite one of these disciplines. I have a lady one day - she came up and she said to me, "Can you pray for me?" And I said, "Yeah, sure, what am I praying for?" She said, "I have at home a box of turtles." Remember turtles? Those are caramel with kind of the pecans on them and chocolate over them. She said, "I have a box of turtles at home in the refrigerator. Would you pray that I wouldn't eat them?"

I said, "You know, yes, but let me give you some advice. Just go home and eat them all at once and get it over with, because you're going to eat these things." Those turtles were eaten at the point of purchase. You're not going to buy turtles and go home and throw them away. At the very least, you'll say, "Well, I'll finish this box and then never eat anymore."

He resolved in His mind, He purposed in His heart, He made a declaration. He pre-decided His decisions. He knew what He believed, He knew that there'd be conflict that was coming, and He decided that what God said would trump what man said, that God's agenda would trump man's agenda, that God's values were the ones that were going to drive His life.

Now, that immediately puts him in conflict with the world around him. What I want to say is, conflict doesn't have to equate to a battle. Sometimes you can be creative in this, so let me encourage you in that as well.

Daniel's Stand

Here's what happens, verse eight: "Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice of food and with the wine which he drank, so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself."

So Daniel says, "Listen, for me, this is a problem. I don't want to defile myself." Probably one or two ways, maybe both. Most likely the food that he was going to be given was not kosher. It was not going to be in line with the dietary laws that are laid out in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. It talks about things you can eat, things you can't eat - can't eat rabbit, can't eat pork, can't eat camel, can't eat meat that hasn't been drained of its blood. So probably not kosher.

Also, it probably would include meat that was sacrificed in some way to idols. That'd be a conflict with Exodus chapter 34, verse 15. So in Daniel's mind, there is a ceremonial and a moral compromise.

The Significance of Small Things

Now, let me just interject here humanly - I think you could probably build a case that would say, "Listen, Daniel, you're 14, 15, 16 years old, you're 900 miles from home, nobody's ever going to know. If they do know, they're not going to care. Those aren't the issues, this isn't the biggest issue in your life." But for Daniel, it was.

James Montgomery Boice - and I love to read James Boice - was thinking through this whole process and talking about big things and little things. He said, "This is a small thing." And this is Boice: "Yeah, that's the point, for it's the small matters that great victories are won. This is where decisions to live a holy life are made, not in the big things, though they come if the little things..."

Mastering the Mundane

The phrase that I use, and this resonates with me, is mastering the mundane. We all want these big moments. College football now is really getting close, you can feel it now. It's a little ways away, but you can start to feel it coming.

Here's what comes now, and they're in the weight rooms right now. They have informal meetings. They're meeting, weight lifting, lots of work, and then they go into two-a-days and the discipline and all that. Most of us want to play the game. We love game day.

We love to come out in nice clean uniforms and there's the stadium and the bands playing the fight song and 70,000 people are cheering and it's this cool song and you can smell the brats cooking in the air. It's a great day. We want game day but nobody wants to practice. Everybody wants to play in a tournament. Nobody wants to hit balls. Let's play a game. I don't want to practice. It's mastering the mundane.

We live in the mundane. Most of us trip up not in the big things of life, but in the mundane things, the ordinary things. There is a sense, although I hate slippery slope arguments, there is kind of a slippery slope to it. You trip up in the little things. It's no big deal.

Here's what - I'm just going to steal paperclips. Well, you understand that you're Bernie Madoff without imagination at this point? You're just stealing paperclips but you're still stealing. It's those little things, but it's a paperclip, it doesn't matter. See, all of a sudden compromise comes in. That's what happens. That's how that sneaks in.

I was reading something on the 40th or 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, and I was reading some of the guys who were involved in the Nixon administration. They were saying it's really interesting, because we never set out for this big cover-up. They were just little things, and the little things, and pretty soon they were just all away from us.

If Daniel had said, "I want to live for God in big ways, but I'm not going to make a fool of myself in the trivial matters of eating and drinking the king's food," he would have never amounted to anything. Because he started out for God in the small things, God used him greatly. As Jesus says in Luke 16:10, "Whoever can be trusted with the very little can be trusted with much, who's ever dishonest with very little will be dishonest with much." It's the little things.

God's Favor in Obedience

Daniel says, "I'm not going to do this." Well, that puts him in conflict with the world around him, but aligns him with God. Daniel said no.

Verse 9: "God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander and of the officials." Look at verse 17: "Now the boys are with him, and God gave them knowledge and intelligence." They're obedient, and God gives. They do as God commands, and God acknowledges their obedience. He gives them favor.

This should really resonate with those of you who were with us when we studied Genesis 39. The Lord was with Joseph. Potiphar saw the Lord with Joseph. Joseph found favor in Potiphar's sight. Joseph ends up in the prison. The chief jailer - the Lord is with Joseph. The chief jailer sees it. The Lord blesses him, and the chief jailer gives Joseph favor in his sight.

That doesn't mean - and I'll be really honest here - that's one of the things I don't like about the book of Daniel. Every time he's in a jam, he gets out. Goes into the fire, gets out. Going to the lions' den, gets out. What I don't like about it is kind of the implication can be that if you do what God calls you to do, it's always going to have a happy ending. I don't like that, because it doesn't always necessarily work out well circumstantially, but it's always the best thing to do. That's what God is concerned about. God's concerned about our obedience. God's concerned about the process. He's not as concerned about end results, because that's His responsibility.

Standing on Conviction

Daniel has here what we would call a conviction. We have things like theories and beliefs, and we have things that maybe we believe a little bit, but if you push us, we could change our minds. Or maybe some things that are kind of pretty well made up, but you've had those moments where you've had an opportunity to rethink something. A conviction is something that you firmly believe you're not going to change your mind, and you're going to stand on it.

I had a guy give me a book this week, and he said, "I'm going to give you this book, and it's on can you lose your salvation?" And he said, "If I give you the book, will you read it?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well, is your mind closed on this?" I said, "It's slammed shut on this. I'm not going to read this. It's a waste of my time." That's a conviction. Now, you could give me something, for example, maybe on end times and I might change. I don't know, but here's a conviction.

Daniel has this conviction. His convictions are in direct opposition with the authority over him, so Daniel could just kind of dig in his heels, or he could just cave in, but that would violate what he believes. Daniel gets pretty creative here.

Creative Solutions

Look what he says. Verse 10: "The commander of the officials said to Daniel, 'I'm afraid of my lord the king who's appointed your food and your drink, for why should he see your faces looking so haggard, more haggard than the other youths who are your age? Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king.'" He said, "Here's the problem I got, Daniel. If you're not eating this stuff, and all of a sudden visibly you don't keep up with these other guys, strength-wise and everything else, the king's going to take my head for this."

Daniel seems to say, "Okay, I get it. I understand your concern. You get mine." Daniel said to the overseer, who is the commander of the officials appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah,

Please test your servants for 10 days. I don't understand the significance of 10 days. I don't understand any of that. Maybe there isn't any. But he said, we're going to do a test, 10 days.

At the end of these 10 days, just give us vegetables to eat and water to drink, then let our appearance be observed in your presence, and the appearances of the youth who are eating the king's choice food, and deal with your servants according to what you see. Let's do this. Let's do an example. Just give me vegetables and water, us, for 10 days. Feed them whatever you want. At the end of 10 days, look at us. If there's this noticeable difference, he doesn't say what he would do, by the way. But he said, let's try it for 10 days, then let our appearance be observed. You judge.

Verse 14, so he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days, and at the end of 10 days, their appearance seemed better, they were fatter, I don't understand that, than all the youths who'd been eating the king's choice food. So the overseer continued to withhold the choice food and the wine that they were to drink and kept giving them vegetables.

God Blesses Their Faithfulness

As for the four youths, Daniel and the boys, God gave them. What did He give them? He gave them exactly what they needed at that moment. Knowledge and intelligence and every branch of literature and wisdom. Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams.

At the end of the days, which the king had specified for presenting them, the commander of the officials presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. Here's the test. And the king talked to them, and out of all of them, no one was found like Daniel and Hananiah and Mishael and Azariah, so that they entered into the king's personal service.

As for every matter of wisdom of understanding about which the king consulted them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and conjurers who were in his realm. And Daniel continued until the first year of Cyrus the king. Daniel maintains this position now for 70 years.

Opposition in Your Workplace

Let me see if I can bring this into the world you're in. You have opposition too. Now I'm not at all suggesting compromise here, but just to give you a sense, I came across a survey the other day of 270 architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors talking about ethics within the construction industry. They were asked if they'd experienced or encountered or observed construction related acts or transgressions that would be considered unethical in the past year. 84 percent said yes, 34 percent that they'd experienced unethical activities many times.

Your workplace, about 700 billion dollars in employee theft every year. Employee theft is twice that of consumer fraud. About 20 cents of every employer's dollars on employee theft. Think of how you could affect the world if people were just honest at work. I could cut health care costs by almost 40 percent if the doctors, the hospitals, and the patients didn't cheat.

It's not just in business. Politics, and there's all this now with the attorney general and all my friends, they have their shorts in a knot about all this stuff, so I love a little history lesson. After six years of the Reagan administration, I love Reagan, 110 of his senior officials were under investigation or indictment. This is not a democrat problem.

Science, education, there was a joint research project between Emory University and Harvard. 47 researchers, teachers, scientists, collaborated to produce false information so they could get the grant from the government. It's estimated that one out of every three of you were hired on a falsified resume. That's just normal anymore, isn't it?

I found this the other day. When's the last time you even saw a transparency? This is like, I mean, my kids would go, what is this? It's a picture of a boardroom and said, so we're agreed. Honesty is the best policy. Let's label that option A. I love that.

The Assumption About Business and Honesty

A friend of mine was invited into the UCLA to speak to business majors at the end of their freshman year, and so he made his presentation, and here was the question. First question, do you know any successful business person who's honest. There's like that whole assumption in the world you live in.

You know this. You don't need me to tell you this. You see it at work. You see it in the office. You see the, hey, just pay me in cash. You see it over and over and over again.

Yet in the middle of this there may be situations where you're put in a position that conflicts with what you think or what you feel and I get how sometimes we have to die on that hill. I think Daniel's saying, boy, I would look first at maybe some creative ways to approach those things around you.

Pre-Deciding Your Decisions

Having said all of that, you need to pre-decide decisions. You need to figure out your objectives in life, in the workplace. You need to understand, and this is where it's big, just as you see in Daniel's life it's in yours, that your relationship with Christ is an advantage in the marketplace.

I really am afraid that so many Christians see their relationship with Christ as something that's holding them back. If I could lie and steal and cheat and screw people like everybody else, boy, I'd really be at the top of my game. And that's not the case.

I mean, what honestly is an employer looking for? Well, I hope it's somebody who's oriented towards service, who's honest, who works hard. See, what we see in this book, and that's what Daniel does, and it's the comment we made at the very beginning.

Your Faith Is an Advantage, Not an Anchor

Let me read you that quote again. Daniel could discern the fact that the Babylonian culture was in conflict with the Word of God and he had the maturity and moral courage to say a firm no to cultural pressures. Involved in this is the clear implication that Daniel was a keen student of the Scriptures and he had the ability to apply what he knew to the problems of everyday life.

What God tells you to do and how to live in God's value system are not an anchor that's holding you back.

you back. It's a foundation for you to live. Resolve. What do you and I resolve? Well, we resolve to seek first the kingdom of God. It's Matthew 6:33. I resolve in my heart. I don't care necessarily what the culture says.

Those of you that are parents, think about the stuff you tell your kids. If everybody jumped off the bridge, would you? All those things that you say to your kids all the time. Be different. Just because everybody's doing it. And now you come along and you're in that same setting and so vulnerable to that. I seek first the kingdom of God.

Resolving to Be Holy

To live a life, here you go, 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 14, to be holy, God says, as I am holy. J.C. Ryle in his book simply titled Holiness talks about the fact that holiness isn't an option for us. That in a sense, part of why Christ came into the world is to see us holy.

Ephesians chapter 5 verse 25: Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy by cleansing her and washing her through the word to present her to Himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle but holy and blameless. Ryle goes on to point out that the only sound evidence you have that in fact you're a Christian at all is your holiness. That's what James says. There's a living faith and a dead faith. There's a faith that says, you know, God is holy but my deeds don't match what I say I believe. If I have faith in no works, James says, that's a dead faith. Paul says in Romans chapter 8 verse 14, those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God, those that are holy.

This is an interesting point Ryle makes. He said we must be holy because our present comfort depends much on it. He's not saying all of adversity in our life but some of it is due to sin. Well, we resolve that the kingdom of God will be number one. We set that at the forefront. We resolve not to be assimilated into the world.

In the World But Not of the World

I became a Christian in 1980 and immediately you start to hear phrases. This is the one I heard in 1980 and I've heard every year since and probably said it myself way too many times, but we're to be in the world but not of the world. See, there's that tension. That's why I really do believe we love the idea of just drawing circles really tight and not engaging the world, but God didn't call us to not engage the world.

He didn't take Daniel and say, boy, don't engage that world. Daniel's engaged in that world. Jesus, the night before He dies in John 17, prays, Father, as You sent Me into the world incarnationally, I send them into the world. God called us to live in this world. Our life is to be visible in this world. People are to see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven.

And there is that tension. How much into the world? How much can I do? How much should I do? How much is compromised? And for many of you, those are decisions that are individual decisions. You can't all land at the same spot on some of these. You have it every way and every day. Work, school, home. It's to be in the world, not of the world. To not be conformed to the world. To not be conformed to the world's thinking. To be not driven by the same thing.

The World's Value System

Listen, it's pretty clear that what the world values is stuff. New stuff, latest stuff, best stuff. There's nothing wrong with stuff. But how much stuff? I've played two rounds of golf in three years. I was swinging a club the other day, took four swings and I was done. I just can't. It didn't happen.

I went in, I was watching the golf channel and there was an ad for a new driver and the first thing I thought of, I need that driver. I'll bet if I do come back, I'll hit it further with that driver. I hit the driver 20 yards further and that golf ball 15 yards further. It's just one more thing, one latest thing, and the world values that. The world thinks you're a better person if you have a newer car. It's just the world system, but God doesn't think that way.

It's a whole story we looked at in 1 and 2 Samuel. Man looks at the outside, God looks at the heart. Man's value system is different than God's value system. Man says, look at this, there's the prestige. God says, I don't really care that much about the prestige.

Pre-Deciding Your Decisions

Here's what else you need to resolve. You need to resolve to be devoted to God no matter what, to do what's right because it's right, because it is right. You need to pre-decide that. You can't wait till the heat of the moment. Isn't that what we tell kids? How far can I go sexually? Well, if you decide all of those things in the cool of the family room, not in the back seat of a car, pre-decide my decisions. This is what I resolve.

I know it's a silly illustration, perhaps, or simple, but there is no way when that alarm goes off at 4:50, there's no way Sandy's not going to get up at 4:55. It's a done deal in her mind. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's Daniel chapter 1.

Living in a Hostile Environment

How to live in the midst of a hostile environment, a hostile culture around you, and we're going to see this time, man, where you can't find a win-win. You're just going to have to say, this is what God says. I'm going to have to do it. Daniel looks for and finds, which is pretty cool, a creative way to deal with all of this.

Well, here in the chapel, Jake's going to come and lead you all in communion. Matt's going to close your time over in the conference center, and next week, we're going to look at Daniel chapter 2. Remind you, the study guides are done. You can get those over in the bookstore as well, or you can just download them online for free, whatever you prefer.

Let me pray, and then the guys will come. Father, thank You for this awesome and amazing truth. You are a holy God. You are the God that loves us and cares for us. God, thank You that You are good to us, the great God, the faithful God, and pray now that in the midst of this hostile world in which we live, You will strengthen us, guide us, lead us. Father, thank You for this awesome and amazing truth. Strengthen Your people.

Lead us with Your word. We pray this to You in Christ's name. God's name, amen.