WE WIN!
Daniel 6:1-23
John 16:25-33
Congratulations! You’re a winner! Those are the words everybody likes to hear. I know that because if we didn’t like to win Advertising Agencies and Marketing Consultants wouldn’t use the idea of winning to entice us to buy almost every product imaginable. This week alone for $100 dinner place I could have won the house I’ve always dreamed of owning, a 25 dollar ticket could have won me a car, a free draw could have won me a Carribean Cruise, buying four C.D.’s could have made me $250,000 richer, a $1.00 ticiet could have won me 2 million dollars and just one more dollar on that very same ticket might have won me $100,000. Buying a caramel flaky pastry this week did win me a ’buy-one-get-one free’ Whopper at Burger King and a Twix Chocolate bar won me a free Supreme Personal Pan Pizza at Pizza Hut. So if I look a few pounds heavier this week it’s from all the healthy food I’ve had! But we all like to win and we all face many chances to win every day. And that’s just it, isn’t it. It’s a matter of chance. We could win. But then again, we might not, too. It is not a sure thing. But this morning what I have to offer you is a sure thing. It’s a winner, and it’s a winner every time. I used that phrase this week that we often hear. I said, "I can’t win if I don’t play." But to be on the winning team this morning, there are no games to play and it’s not a matter of chance. There is some risk, but we will always win.
You see, Jesus said in the last half of the last verse we read this morning, he says: "In this world you will have trouble, But take heart! I have overcome the world." Now there’s something in that statement that really gets me excited. It gets me more excited than even the possibility of winning, because Jesus said, "I have overcome the world." It’s that little word "have" in there that gets my heart going a little faster every time I read it. Because you see, it tells me, it’s already done. And for a little while this morning, I would like us to consider what it means to live as winning Christians. Because Jesus tells us three very specific things in this little phrase that give to us a kind of blueprint for what will happen when we’re on his team.
Just like any great coach would do, Jesus lays it on the line for us. He tells us what to expect, then he gives us instructions for our strategy - what it is we’re to do, and then, then he assures us of victory. And victory is guaranteed!
1. First, Jesus tells us what to expect. He says, "In this world, you will have trouble..." Now as much as we like winning, none of us really like trouble, do we? But how often do we hear someone say, "Oh, it was worth the trouble!" I expect Daniel knew it was worth the trouble. We read about him first this morning. In fact, Daniel got into so much trouble that he ended up in the lions’ den. Now that’s not the lion’s den that the little boy talked about when he and his family came home from church one Sunday. The sermon had been about Daniel, and the preacher had described quite vividly about Daniel’s experience in the lion’s den. On the way home from the church, the little boy complained that the preacher seemed to be making an awful fuss about it. Mother looked at the young lad and said, "About what dear?" To which the little boy replied. "About Daniel in the lions’ den. I guess it must have been his very first circus." Well, I think Daniel knew that it wasn’t a circus he was going to. And we today, as we face the world with a pure and contrite heart of service to God, will most often, feel like we’re not at the circus but that we are indeed in the middle of the lion’s den.
Perhaps Dr. C.I. Scofield says it best when he relates that within a week after his conversion, he passed by the window of an art gallery in St. Louis. He saw hanging there an engraving of a painting of Daniel in the den of lions. The prophet with his hands behind him, and the lions circling about him, is looking up and answering the king’s question. "The one thing," says Dr. Scofield, "that I was in mortal fear of, in those days, was that I might go back to my sins. I was a drunken lawyer in St. Louis when I was converted, with no power over an appetite for strong drink, and I was so afraid of a barroom or a hotel or a club that when I saw I was coming to one I would cross the street. I was in torment day and night. No one had told me anything about the keeping power of Jesus Christ. I stood before that picture, and a great hope and faith came into my heart, and I said, "Why, these lions are all around me - they are, he said, my old habits and sins - but the God that shut the lion’s mouth for Daniel can shut the lion’s mouth for me." I learned, he says, that my God was able. He had forgiven me, and He was able to deliver me from the lions. Oh, what a rest it was!" I don’t know what lions are circling around you today, but this I do know - that when Jesus said that in this world we would have trouble, he meant it. But I also know that for whatever you’re struggling with today, whatever your temptation or testing may look like, the same God that protected Daniel in the lion’s den over 2000 years ago, is still God today, and while the lions may circle around you, while they may be pacing at your side, their mouths will be shut. You know, sometimes in our Bibles, I’ve noticed that the heading for the story about Daniel is called: "Daniel delivered from the lion’s den." I prefer the heading like it is here in my Bible. It says, "Daniel in the lion’s den." You see, God didn’t prevent Daniel from being thrown into the den. He didn’t prevent the lid from being placed on the den and it being securely sealed so that maybe a friend could come along and get him out. God didn’t stop any of that. And I think what Jesus is saying to us in his own words is that, like Daniel, we will go through some pretty rough times, we will have trouble in this world. But I think like Daniel, we will be able to look up and say, "Oh King live forever! My God has sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me."
You see God never promised he would take us out of the den. He never said that we wouldn’t go through tough times. On the contrary, he told us we’d have trouble. I think when he said those words he knew that today in our world, Christian husbands and wives would be leaving their marriages, little girls and boys would be being abused by an unsuspected perpetrator. I think he knew that parents would neglect their children, and that mere children, hardly more than babies themselves, would commit murder. I think he knew that, and yet in the midst of it all that, in the middle of it all, he says to us to take heart!
2. That’s our instruction. That’s the second thing he tells us. Take heart! he say. Have courage! Don’t lose sight of the victory that is just ahead for you. I’ve won already and that victory is yours!
We see it in Daniel. This is one of the most interesting bits, I think, about the story of Daniel. It’s so interesting because as a sociologist, I like to look at how people react in circumstances - and I especially love studying the people in the Bible and how they’ve responded to things. Here, in verse 18, we read, "Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den." Can you feel the panic here in the kings attitude. You see, the king got caught in his own decree by listening to evil men. He’s worried to the point of sleeplessness and hunger. Can’t you just imagine him tossing and turning on his royal bed all night? Kind of ironical isn’t it. And then he gets up at the crack of dawn, rushes to the lions’ den, and before he even gets there starts calling out to Daniel to see if he’s O.K. The verse says when he came near the den, he cried in an anguished voice. Can’t you see him rushing toward the den, maybe he’s still pulling his royal robes around him as he’s running along and he cries out in the most anguished tones, "Daniel, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God been able to rescue you from the lions?" And echoing up from the depths of the pit full of lions, comes the sure, steady voice of one who put his trust in God, "Oh King, live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me."
Do you see the difference here. The king was what we would call in today’s terminology, "A basket case." He was anxious, hungry, tired, had no recreation the night before. Now I expect in the lions’ den Daniel didn’t have much food or entertainment either. But the difference is the source of their trust. The king’s was in human advisors. Daniel’s was in God. And for that reason, Daniel, could ’take heart.’ I don’t know if he was a little anxious when they threw him in the pit or not. Perhaps he kind of wondered what would happen. And I think that’s O.K. But don’t you think that when the lions’ hadn’t bothered Daniel within the first 10 or 15 minutes of pacing around him. Don’t you think, he took heart. We’re told that the lions were kept hungry in those days. The dens were specifically for executions. And I’m quite certain Daniel knew that. So within a few minutes, even if Daniel was initially anxious, I believe he realized that God was indeed going keep him alive, and maybe, just maybe, after a while, he might have laid down on the floor of the den and fell asleep. Oh what a difference between the anxious king and the peaceful servant. And what a difference for us when in the midst of our storms, when the sea is raging out of control all around us, Jesus whispers, "Peace be still." "Take heart! therefore, for I have overcome the world!"
Paul reminds us of Jesus’ words to take heart in his letters to the Corinthians. He says in 2 Corinthians 4, "since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart." He goes on to say, ’We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. ... so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart." Courage - not losing heart - comes with trusting ... and courage comes, not from the absence of fear, but in going forward, like Daniel, in spite of the fear. And Jesus tells us that the victory is already there. He says, "take heart, I have overcome the world." And it is God’s will for you and it’s God’s will for me that we are overcomers, just as he has overcome the world.
But how do we do that? How is it possible that we can overcome given the things that happen to us in our world today. There’s a book written with the title, "When bad things happen to Good People?" and another titled, "God, Why Did Grampa Die?" Those aren’t easy questions to answer. "God, why did you protect Daniel, when I seem to be getting eaten alive out here in this 20th Century world."
About a hundred years ago in Dundee, Scotland, there lived a man who had fallen and broken his back at the age of fifteen. For forty years he lay in his bed and moved only with the most terrible pain. But day after day God’s grace was with him and many people came to him for cheer and courage in Christian living. One day a visitor asked him, "Doesn’t Satan ever tempt you to doubt God?" "Oh, yes," he answered, "he does try to tempt me. I lie here and see my old school friends strong and healthy and Satan whispers, "If God is so good, why does He keep you here all these years?" Sometimes he asks me, "If God loved you, why did He permit your back to be broken?" "What do you do when Satan tempts you like that?" he was asked. "Ah," he said, "I take him to Calvary, show him Christ, and point to those deep wounds, and say, ’Doesn’t he love me?" The fact is that when Jesus died on the cross, Satan met his defeat, the world was overcome and the victory is ours!
Before I leave you today, I want to share with you, as people who have become very dear to my heart, something of my own personal struggle with trying to overcome. I spent many years of my life bitter and angry and putting on a big facade to cover up the aches and pains of abuse and a life of sin. Then, very suddenly, without any warning at all, something happened in my life that yanked me out of my fantasy world and put me face to face with God. My father died. My father was a man of God. And all of a sudden all of the venom and hurt and anger that had been inside of me for so long came spewing out, not only at God but at all the people that it seemed I cared most about. And for a whole year I was more angry and bitter than Jonah ever thought of being. And then finally, when I could stand it no longer and all of the passion inside of me oozed out in an ugly venom. Jesus gently took me in his arms and held me close, just as my father used to do. And Jesus took his pure white garment, and with his nail-scarred hands, spread his righteousness over my ugly venom. He gently lifted my face to look into his eyes of mercy and he said to me: ’You are my daughter. You are clothed in my righteousness. My love for you is deeper than any love you will ever experience on earth. You are my bride, pure and holy. I will never leave you, and if you trust me, I will give you peace. Oh, the joy of being clothed in his righteousness! Folks, I don’t know why bad things happen to good people. This one thing I do know - Jesus has overcome the world. We win! We’ve already won! I like the gospel song that talks about something we all tend to do I think, once in while. Did you ever just start reading a book, and you just have to look at the back to see how it all turns out? The song I mentioned is talking about the Bible, and it says, "I read the back of the book, and we win!"
Let us go forth as conquerors. We are winners already, no matter what comes our way, because of those great words of Christ, "I have overcome the world!"
