Daniel Into the Lions Den
Tom Shrader examines Daniel chapter 6, where Daniel faces a death sentence for maintaining his practice of prayer despite King Darius's decree. Through Daniel's rescue from the lions' den, Shrader emphasizes God's sovereignty over nations and His faithfulness to those who consistently serve Him. The teaching challenges believers to live with the same unwavering commitment that makes their faith visible in the workplace and community, trusting God whether He delivers through miraculous rescue or through death itself.
“Your God, whom you constantly serve, will himself deliver you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Faithful
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 29 min
Themes: faithfulness, prayer, courage, persecution, obedience, trust, sovereignty, commitment, facing workplace pressure, standing alone, religious persecution, professional believer, government worker, mature believer, public witness, faithful employee
Scripture: Daniel 6, Daniel 1:8, Daniel 5:25-30, Genesis 39, 1 Peter, James
Theological Themes: divine sovereignty, gods control, providence, persecution theology, biblical faithfulness, prayer discipline, martyrdom, covenant loyalty
Full Transcript
If you have Bibles, you can open them to the book of Daniel. We'll be in chapter 6 today. We'll be all through those first six chapters. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and guys will bring you one. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 478.
We're in our final week in our study titled Faithful. The faithful applies to the objects of our study, humanly speaking, which has been Joseph and Daniel, but ultimately to God. I found myself saying over and over again, as we've looked at the last five weeks, that's really what this is. Daniel chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The theme is constant, and it's repetitive. That is the faithfulness of God and the sovereignty of God as He works in individual lives and as He works in the lives of nations. I was struck by that just as I was making my notes for today of the sovereignty of God in all of creation. It is His. He did create it. He can do with it as He wishes. And indeed, He does.
The Rise and Fall of Nations
John MacArthur writes this: Nations are born, they live, they die, they rise, and they fall with great regularity. In fact, as you study history, you're more and more impressed with the fact that nations rapidly pass off the scene. He goes on to talk about the nations that we've looked at to this point, as well as where we are historically in our study in the book of Daniel. He even fast forwards it into the United States of America and talks about the fact that God's plan will be carried out. Nations, in some ways, not always, but often, are somewhat incidental to this.
MacArthur continues: God rules in history where nations go, even our own. But God's redemptive plan, as unfolded through His people, will go according to His schedule. The people of God go through rise and falls of nations. They transcend. That is a great hope for us. We see that in Daniel. Babylon has fallen. The head is crushed. The times of the Gentiles moves into phase two. But Daniel's right where God wants him.
When you think about the fact that Babylon has fallen, it's really amazing. Nebuchadnezzar had a habit of putting his name on every brick that he put into every building in Babylon. That got me thinking. So I wrote down Nebuchadnezzar Tower, Nebuchadnezzar Casino. One writer says that they have found literally 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 his image and the name of Nebuchadnezzar and his dog's footprint over both of them. There's this quest for immortality. We see it as we think of nations.
It's almost incomprehensible to conceive a world without the United States of America as a dominant power. And yet you know that is coming. That same was true when you thought of Rome or you thought of Babylon. And yet it's God who's supreme. That's certainly what we looked at and got the sense of last week.
Where We Left Off
Remember Daniel chapter 5, Belshazzar is a man who's ruling. In chapter 5, he's having a party. It's in a room about like this, about 60 feet by 160 feet. There's an area that's carved out where the screen is. Belshazzar is presiding over this party. In the middle of it, a hand appears and writes on the wall.
This is where we left off last week, chapter 5, verse 25. Mene, mene, tekel parsen. This is the interpretation. Daniel comes and he gives it. He says, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and it will be put to an end. You've been measured. You've found short. Your kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. That's exactly where we left off last week. Chapter 5, verse 30: That night, Belshazzar is slain. Darius is the new king. That's where we pick up the story today.
I will tell you, if you've been with us, Neil and I were talking this morning. He's going, what's the big point today? Where will we go with all of this? I said, you know what? The big point today feels very much like it did in chapter 1, and chapter 2, and chapter 3, and chapter 4, and chapter 5. That is that God is in control and God is faithful. Then we look at Daniel and we see Daniel's resolve and Daniel's faithfulness.
Daniel's Consistency
I mentioned it last week. As I round out these first six chapters, so it's the end of our time studying Daniel, he's now 85, 90 years old. I'm struck by Daniel, chapter 1, verse 8, where Daniel made up his mind that he wouldn't defile himself. Daniel resolved in his mind. There's a consistency all through his life. The application that we see for me in Daniel's life as he interacts with the king is the application we have as we interact with the people around us.
There is a new king. You saw that. His name is Darius. He decides in chapter 6, verse 1, to put in place a new organizational chart with 120 satraps over his kingdom. So he takes his kingdom, divides it into 120 parts, puts a guy over each part, verse 2. Then he divides those, for sake of ease, I'm going to assume equally, 40s. Then puts a guy, a commission over each one. One of those is Daniel.
The reason the king did this, we don't have to guess, is given for us at the end of verse 2 so he wouldn't suffer loss. He wants to protect it, make sure the cash and the revenue is flowing to him. So he's looking for people he can trust. Isn't it interesting that the king comes to town, and here's Daniel. We know just from what we've studied, we're going to see it again today, that the hostility against him is great among many of the leaders, primarily because of jealousy.
Yet, as Darius surveys and says, "I need to find the top three guys in the whole kingdom that I can trust," Daniel is one of them. Daniel, through deed and reputation, I would assume. It's not just that this is repetitious of Daniel 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, but if you go back to our study in the life of Joseph, Genesis chapter 39, we saw that the Lord was with Joseph and made him successful. And Joseph's master saw the Lord was with him, and how the Lord caused all that Joseph did to prosper.
You seem to get the same thing here out of Darius. There was something that when he looked at Daniel, when he took the data that he had about Daniel and Daniel's reputation, when he took those and put them together, he said, "There's something extraordinary here." And the application point is very simple. That should be the same that the people see when they look at us.
Living Out Our Faith in Daily Life
So school starts. I think all of the schools, or most of them, are in by August 8, which seems so early. When you walk on campus that first day, the question should be, as a student, did the student see something different about you? Or as a teacher, when your kids walk into the classroom, do they go, "Well, there's something different about Mr." or "Something different about Miss or Mrs."? I see something different there. There's something that, and what I see, is the Lord just oozing out, living through them.
God has Daniel right where He wants him. He puts Darius in a position where he recognizes Daniel's capabilities and responsibilities, and he responds to that. So we say that to you all the time. In the marketplace, your greatest asset, I think, is your faith. And while our faith is deeply personal, it's not private. It's not something that we can take and hide. And as we begin to live it out, it begins to surface.
Faith in the Marketplace: The Chick-fil-A Example
I was watching television this week, and I saw the mayor of Chicago tell me that Chick-fil-A does not share Chicago values. I don't know what Chicago values are. I know the week before, he was asking the gangbangers to go in the alleys and shoot each other, rather than in the streets, because they were killing kids. But it made me wonder, what are Chick-fil-A values that are offensive to the city of Chicago?
So I went on the Chick-fil-A website, and here's what I found. "Chick-fil-A is a family-owned and family-led company serving the communities in which it operates. From the day that Truett Cathy started the company, he began applying biblical-based principles to managing his business. For example, we believe that closing on Sundays, operating debt-free"—city of Chicago could certainly use that, I would assume—"and devoting a percentage of our profits back to our communities are what make us a stronger company and a stronger family. We believe in a culture of service. Our mission is simple: to serve great food, provide genuine hospitality, and provide a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."
I don't know how you'd object to that. I understand the issue, but it's an example of where the man who's leading this company, based on convictions that he has, not out of some sort of bigotry or not out of impulse, but what he believes the Bible teaches, and he brings those to the culture and says, "This is what I believe." Now, you could get into a real dangerous—and we don't do politics here very often—but you could get really dangerous and go, "Is it the business of the mayor of Chicago or Boston to be boycotting businesses based on this?" And then, again, it's the hypocrisy of those that cry for some sort of tolerance and are so intolerant in the face of saying, "Here's what we really believe."
But what you believe has to affect how you behave. That's not an excuse to be arrogant or obnoxious, but it does say that your faith and what we believe is a very personal matter, but it's not a private matter. And when you share that, whatever those are, you should not for a second assume that everybody's going to rise up and call you blessed.
Expecting Opposition When Living Out Faith
We're going to see in Daniel's life, while he's commended by many, he's condemned by some. Where he's celebrated by many, there's certainly antagonism against other places. And again, that's not to try to instigate that. That simply says what Jesus says. "They persecuted me, they'll persecute you. They hated me, they'll hate you." Not because of something personally offensive in you, but as you begin to live this faith out, especially as the culture becomes more hostile and more polarized, and that's certainly the world you live in.
Daniel, in verse three, begins to distinguish himself among the commissioners. So there's the three of these guys. Daniel now rises to the top because he possesses an extraordinary spirit. It is one of amazing leadership. He is one who's able to galvanize people, energize people. People seem to respond to him, respect him.
The Source of Daniel's Extraordinary Spirit
Daniel has that, and again, the challenge we have is to say, "Is that present in our life?" As we go to the marketplace. My big goal is to make sure we don't go, "Oh, wow, Daniel," and paint him in such a picture and put him, ironically, on a pedestal. Put him on a pedestal and go, "Isn't there something special about him?" Sure there is, but he is just like you in the sense that he's an ordinary guy who has an extraordinary God who indwells him and empowers him.
I've been just reading a lot the last week or two, a lot of different things, and then a lot of Bible, and I'm struck by the terms that Paul uses to describe how we have everything pertaining in life, and the fullness of life, and the completeness, and God has given us all that we need. That's us here now. And like Daniel, at least in my mind, there should be something that's visibly different about us so that even those that are hostile can't deny that they see something in you. They're going to see that in Daniel today.
The commissioners and the satraps began trying to find grounds in verse four of accusation against Daniel in regards to government
affairs, but they could find no ground of accusation or evidence of corruption inasmuch as he was faithful. No negligence or corruption was to be found in him. In other words, no errors of commission or omission.
They're out to get him. They want to set him down. They're prejudiced against him, and they say in a sense, "We want to trap him." They're probably looking along the traditional lines—the three Gs: gold, girls, glory—money, sex, power. Is Daniel vulnerable there? No, it's the fourth G that he's vulnerable to: God.
They say we can trap him, but here's how we trap him. He always does, verse five, he basically does everything God says to do. There's his fatal flaw. If God says do it, he does it. If God says avoid it, he avoids it.
Daniel's Reputation for Faithfulness
To say that we want to be like Daniel in those areas seems evident, I think. I can't imagine the people around you going, "Boy, look at Bob. Here's what we know about Bob. If we're ever going to trip him up, it's not going to be with money, sex, or power. It's going to be he loves his God so much that he'll just serve Him and serve Him and serve Him, and that's how we can count on him."
If we're going to trap Daniel, it's going to have to be in an area that has to do with God. And they come up with a very clever plan.
The Conspiracy Against Daniel
They go to the king, verse six. They say, "King Darius, live forever. All the commissioners of the kingdom and the prefects and the satraps and the high officials and the governors consulted together that the king should establish a statute and enforce an injunction that anyone who makes petition to any god or man besides you, O king, for thirty days will be cast in the lions' den."
They come and they appeal to his pride. They say, "You're an amazing king, and here's what we do. We don't want anybody praying to any other god or you, and if they do—and this will be a thirty-day process—if they do, capital punishment, into the lions' den they go." And they know the whole purpose of this, again, remember, is to trap Daniel, and that's exactly what begins to happen.
The king established the law, verse eight, and it's in conjunction with the law of the Medes and the Persians, which had some nuances to the law. One of them is once a law was written, it couldn't be amended or revoked. The king signed the law.
Daniel's Unwavering Response
When Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house. Now in the roof chamber, he had his windows open toward Jerusalem. He continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying, giving thanks to God. Here to me is the key phrase—it's the end of verse 10: "just as he previously done."
Along comes the law, it's offensive to Daniel. He doesn't call Fox and CNN and release a news release or a press release and say, "Here's what we're going to do, and let's organize a protest." He simply does what he always did. He doesn't take a thirty-day sabbatical from prayer—that might have been my temptation, just to say, "Well, you know, I'm eighty-five, ninety years old, knees are tired, body's aching, thirty days off would be good." He just continues to do what he's always done.
The Consistency of Daniel's Character
It's one of the hallmarks that I see as I read through this book: this steady pace of Daniel's life. As I said earlier, going back to chapter one, verse eight, he resolves in his mind, "This is what I'm going to do," and he just continues to do it. There's no flinch, there's no waver. The testimony of his enemies says that there's a consistency in his life.
Imagine, at least in my mind, the beauty of coming to somebody and never knowing what you're going to get—the difficulty of that. A guy's coming home and not sure what my wife's attitude might be when I get there, or a wife's. A guy comes in from work, and every day, he's different than he was the day before. How difficult it is to respond to that. And Daniel's just steady, faithful, integrity. It almost sounds boring, doesn't it? But he's predictable. He's a man who loves his God, and his God loves Him.
The Trap Springs
These guys came into agreement, and they found Daniel making petition before God, verse 12. They approached the king, and they said, "Didn't you sign this? I thought you did. Didn't you sign this bill that said that anybody that made petition to any god or man except you for the next thirty days would be in the lions' den?" And he said, "I did. It's true, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, it can't be revoked."
Then they answered and said—Daniel, and you see the bigotry here—"Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or to the injunction you signed, but he keeps making petition three times a day."
As soon as the king heard this, he was deeply distressed. Not angry at Daniel. Remember what we saw in Belshazzar last week? The anger that he had. The anger that he had that flared up as he was afraid in different times. It's not an angry fear. It's a concern going, "How am I going to deliver Daniel?" Even until sunset, he kept exerting Himself to rescue him. Where are the loopholes?
The King's Desperate Search for a Way Out
Somebody asked W.C. Fields once, "Do you read the Bible?" And he said, "Only for loopholes." And so the king is looking for the loophole in the law, and he can't find it.
These men come, and they said, "King, it's the law of the Medes and the Persians. No injunction or statute which the king establishes can be changed. There's nothing you can do."
So in verse 16, the king gave orders. Daniel's brought, cast into the lions' den. And the king spoke—and in my Bible, I have this underlined and marked up. What an amazing comment again: "Your God, whom you constantly serve, will Himself deliver you."
God's Constant Deliverance
And that's true for us. Our God—I don't know that we constantly serve Him—but our God will deliver us. Part of what we look at as we talk about salvation is God's deliverance, not just from sin, but God's deliverance from a life of sin and bondage into a life of freedom to love and to serve Him.
Sandy and I have been up in Flagstaff, and on the cable we have, we have eleven religious channels. That's a lot of religious channels. And as you watch
God will rescue us. He'll rescue us from ourselves and then give us the freedom to have life and to expect and enjoy life and to live it to its fullest, to live it abundantly. You can have a marriage that's beyond anything that you can imagine because the living God indwells you. You can begin to experience the world around you in the fullest possible way as it was meant to be—in a sense of peace and harmony and fullness. Your God will deliver you.
A stone is brought and laid over the mouth of the den and the king sealed it. So the lion's den, we think, was somewhat of a cave opening, as you would imagine, but also you were able to get up on top and look down. The cave was divided into two sections. They would put the lions in one section, and then they'd clean or maybe feed them in the other, moving them back and forth. Daniel's put in the one section. The door is sealed with the signet ring, and the king's saying, "anybody messes with this, you mess with me." Then the door is raised, and the assumption is at this point, Daniel will be devoured.
The King's Sleepless Night
Those of you who are remotely familiar with the story know it doesn't end that way at all. The king then goes back, and verse 18 tells us he spent the whole night fasting, and no entertainment, and he couldn't sleep, filled with anguish. He was probably filled with remorse, knowing that an innocent man is in a perilous situation. Though he's called upon God to deliver Daniel, I would suspect that he's suspicious that it won't happen.
When the day came near, he went to the den, and he cried out in a troubled voice. He said, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you constantly serve, been able to deliver you from the lions?" Daniel spoke to the king and said, "Oh, king, live forever. That's my interpretation. Oh, king, live forever. My God sent His angel, and shut the lion's mouth, and they have not harmed me in as much as I'm found innocent before Him, and also towards you, oh king, I have committed no crime."
The king was very pleased, and gave orders for Daniel to be taken out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no injury was found whatever on him. Daniel adds, because he had trusted in God.
The Reality of Faith and Suffering
You know, I tend to probably flinch with an overreaction here, and want to make sure that we don't make a necessary connection that says, if I trust God, I'll get out of every lion's den. As I said, I had 11 cable religious networks, and that's a lot of false teaching all at once. And as that's coming at you, so much of it is along that line. You know, if you believe, you will have. If you have faith, you'll escape every fire, you'll escape every lion's den.
The reality is that sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. James Montgomery Boice writes, "God calls some of us to win by living, and others are called to win by dying. But in either life or death, God rules, and we are called to serve Him."
John MacArthur writes, "You want to know something, it doesn't always happen this way, does it?" Meaning the happy ending. Isaiah believed God too, but he was sawn in half. Paul believed God too, but he laid his head on a block, and an ax flashed in the sun, and it severed his head from his body. Peter believed in God, and he got crucified upside down.
The Truth About Victory in Christ
Believing in God doesn't mean that the lions aren't going to eat you. There've been martyrs throughout history of God's dealing with men that have believed God, and they've died. The issue is that we accept God's will. If we live, it is to live. If we die, it's to die. In either case, we're never defeated.
In fact, if Daniel had been eaten by the lions, he would have been in the presence of God, right? That's an amazing truth. Let's say the worst human possible thing we could think of happens—Daniel's eaten by the lions. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. That's the hope and the truth that we have before us.
That's Daniel and his situation. He trusted God, he was spared. The king gave orders, and they brought those men who had maliciously accused Daniel, and they cast them and their children and their wives into the den. They hadn't reached the bottom of the den before the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones.
The Law of the Medes and Persians
There was another nuance to the law of the Medes and the Persians, and it said this: on account of guilt, all one's kindred must perish. We see it there.
As you read through some of the liberal theology or exposition of these verses, you'll hear explanations for why Daniel survived. One of them is—it sounds silly almost—the lions weren't hungry. The lions had been fed, Darius fed the lions, they were full, so Daniel wasn't appealing to them. Well, they got their hunger back very quickly as they started to pour in the men who had accused Daniel. They were crushed.
Darius's Decree
Then Darius wrote, and this is where we end, because I need to get over to the conference center. "May the peace abound. I make a decree," verse 26, "that in all the dominions of the kingdom of men are to fear and tremble before the God of Daniel." This is God now—your God. Not Daniel's God, our God, the living God. "He is a living God, He endures forever. His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. His dominion will be forever. He delivers, He rescues, He performs signs and wonders in heavens and on earth. And He also delivered Daniel from the power of the lion's den."
So this Daniel enjoyed success in the reign of Darius, in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. That's your God, that's our God, that's what He does to you and me. He rescues us, delivers us.
I wrote down, who gets the glory in this story? It's impossible to give glory here to Daniel. All the glory goes to God. He is the God who creates and sustains. As I said, I've been reading a lot of stuff lately and it feels like all these books are running together and it's been a lot of gospel and it's—
God's Power to Deliver
There's been a lot of talking about God, and it just takes me back to the fact that God created and that God sustains. The reason God can deliver and rescue and perform signs and wonders is He's the one who created all things and therefore controls all things.
I can go down two roads here. One of them—you just got a sense of that—is the power and the might of God. Whatever (and I almost apologize for using the phrase) the lion's dens in your life are, whatever those things are in your life that bring difficulty, God either caused them or allowed them. But in either case, He promised that He would sustain you in the midst of that. He would give you a peace and a power that passes all understanding. Much like the men of Babylon, your reputation would be, "Isn't that amazing? It's not him or her, it's her God, his God, who delivered them."
The Character of Faithful Daniel
The whole bunch of notes I made on Daniel focus on the consistency of his life, the faithfulness of his life. The fact that he was envied and hated but at the same time he was commended and honored. He had virtue. He never seems in this case to do what I might do by reflex—he never seems to defend himself. He trusts God.
And God says, "Vengeance is mine, I'll take care of this." Daniel, I love you more than you love yourself. "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance." It is the equivalent of what we looked at for six weeks: being moved to a foreign land, being placed in a fire, being in a lion's den, the pressure of the peers around you. God uses those to purify and to make Himself, I think, even more real to you.
As you look and you go, "Look at the faithfulness of God"—God is trustworthy, you can trust Him. He will, as He says, deliver, rescue, perform signs and wonders.
A Second Adulthood
I made just a couple of notes. One regarding Daniel's age—I'm still struck by that. Let's say ninety. I think from 1850 to about 1900, so a hundred and let's say twelve to fifteen years ago, average lifespan in the country was 51. Now it's about 75, heading toward 80, 90, 100. God has given many of us a second adulthood, an opportunity to be used by Him in a powerful way. With age, I think, hopefully, comes a certain level of freedom to be the man that God's called you to be, the woman God's called you to be.
Influence Your World
The other note that I made about Daniel is that Daniel set about to be an influence not in the world, but in his world. It seems to me, sometimes we talk so much about the world and the needs of the world that it's so big I don't know if I can get my arms around that. God didn't call you to evangelize the world. He called you to influence your world, right where He's placed you.
For us, that whole idea of rescue and deliverance comes from the cross. I have to get to the conference center, but we are excited to be able to celebrate communion together, so Neil's going to come lead us in our time of communion here this morning. Let's pray together.
Father, thank You for that amazing truth and thank You for rescuing us. God, You allow us to be placed in perilous situations, but You never leave us alone. Thank You for Your faithfulness. We trust You because You're trustworthy. We love You because You first loved us and we worship You, in Christ's name, amen.