LIVING IN BABYLON
How to Thrive in America’s Post-Christian Culture
INTRO:
- I love Freedom Celebration! It’s an opportunity for us to celebrate our spiritual heritage as a nation. I also love the camaraderie that comes about when people celebrate their patriotism together
o It crosses every social, ethnic, and religious demographic line when we come together.
- I am proud to be an American and I’m so grateful for the heritage that our country has.
- But today we also need to understand that the America that we once knew is much different from the America that we now know.
o Some would say that we are now living in a Post-Christian culture where Christianity has moved from being the most dominant worldview to being the
- As American evangelicals – we are facing some important decisions as to WHO we are going to be and HOW we are going to address the constantly changing culture around us.
o Some churches try to ERADICATE / EXECUTE the culture – they’ll thump their Bibles, organize their boycotts, and gather in their picketing rallies.
• What happens is these Christians are poised for ministry in the OLD cultural mindset.
• They expect to be heard and respected.
They expect to have the power
They expect culture to fall in line with the leadership of the church.
• The problem is the culture isn’t listening
o Some churches try to EMBRACE the culture – “Well, if we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” And they embrace homosexual marriage and other things.
• And every denomination that has been focused on embracing the culture is either dead or declining. They have no spiritual power.
• When you try to ERADICATE the culture, you lose your relevancy.
When you try to EMBRACE the culture, you lose your influence and power. Neither one is correct. So what’s the solution?
o We must learn as a church to ENGAGE our culture.
• We must re-learn how to engage our culture from the edges instead of the center.
• Why? Because the Christianity is no longer the epicenter of political and social circles.
- Christianity grows faster in places where the Christian faith is more marginalized and persecuted, rather than in the center.
- I’ve seen a couple articles out there that say that Christianity in America is dying.
o I don’t believe it is dying – I believe it is being redefined.
- Under the umbrella of American Christianity, you can really categorize us into 1 of two categories: Nominal Christianity and Convictional Christianity
o Convictional Christians are those who call themselves Christian and they take it seriously – it governs how they live, they’re actively pursuing a relationship with Jesus Christ.
• Since 2007 – those numbers have grown from 59 million to 62 million.
o Nominal Christianity is on the decline. Nominal Christian means “in name only.”
• These are those who would identify as Christians but they don’t really live or practice their faith. They may attend church sporadically or on holidays but they really don’t have a personal relationship with God.
• Just based on the size of this crowd, there are a lot of nominal Christians in this room.
- What’s happening in American Christianity today is this…
o Those that are NOMINAL Christians (in name only) are becoming the NONES. Before these people would say, “I ascribe to the Christian faith,” but now they say, “I ascribe to no faith…or all roads lead to heaven.”
o This group here has remained stable (increased just a smidgen)
o So just to review – the Nominals are becoming the Nones (sharp decline) and the Convictional Christians remain a stable minority.
o So Christianity in America is becoming less nominal, more defined, and more outside the mainstream of American culture.
• Just in the last 20 years, Christians have gone from having a lot of respect, to a patronizing pat on the head, to a marginalizing indifference, to an outright hostility.
ILLUS: CARTOON
- The reality is this: Genuine Christianity is not declining in America – but no one can deny that Christianity has lost its home field advantage.
- Jesus calls these two groups of people – the WHEAT and the TARES.
- It’s no easy thing to live a godly life in the midst of an increasingly godless society. But it can be done… and DANIEL shows us how.
o While Daniel was living in Babylon – he didn’t just survive…he THRIVED and he changed an entire empire while he was at it.
o When it comes to the Book of Daniel, his incredible example of how to live and thrive in the most godless environment is the main lesson we don’t want to miss.
TURN to DANIEL 1
- While you’re turning, let me tell you about the background of the Book of Daniel.
- God’s people in Israel were living in wicked sin… and for generations, the prophets of God said, “If you continue to live this way, God will remove his hand of protection over us and allow the Babylonians to capture us and take us into captivity… we must repent!”
o Did the Israelites listen? No.
o So around 586 BC, the Babylonians sieged Jerusalem and took the Israelites to Babylon.
o Daniel and his friends were a part of that group. (Sometimes the innocent suffer with the guilty. They can get caught in the backwash)
o Now they are living in an evil and hostile environment.
What made Babylon so bad?
1. A Godless King
a. Babylon had a godless king named Nebuchadnezzar.
b. He was an egomaniac (known to be hotheaded, murderous, vain, unreasonable, and incredibly cruel)
c. After conquering Jerusalem and destroying the Temple, he took a number of the holy items from the Temple and brought them back to Babylon to put them on display.
d. He placed them in the temple of his demonic god, Marduk – it was his way of mocking the God of Israel.
e. Later, he built a 90 ft. golden statue as a tribute to his personal power and fortune. He demanded that everyone bow down and worship it – those who refused were put to death.
f. Another time, Nebuchadnezzar had a disturbing dream and he asked all of his wise men and enchanters to interpret it for him. But because he was unreasonable and cruel, he wouldn’t tell them what he had dreamed. He told them to figure it out on their own, and when they couldn’t he ordered his executioners to kill them.
g. Fortunately, before they could be killed, God revealed to Daniel both the dream and the interpretation and he saved all of their lives.
2. A Godless Religious and Educational System
a. The state-sponsored religion of Babylon was satanic, and the core curriculum in the schools of higher learning included a large dose of astrology and the occult.
b. In order to prepare for service to the King, Daniel and his three friends were forced to complete a three year study program.
c. It consisted in having to learn the language and literature of the Chaldeans which means that it was designed to certify them as enchanters and magicians, experts in the dark practices of the occult.
d. We talk about our education system today – but I can guarantee you that on the worst day, in the worst class, with the worst teacher – our kids are never exposed to anything as godless and flat-out demonic as the standard curriculum in Daniel’s classroom.
e. None of our kids have to get degrees in the occult in order to land a good job.
3. Spiritually hostile environment
a. To make matters worse, Babylon hated the spiritual values that Daniel and his friends held dear.
b. One of the first things they had to endure was a name change.
i. The name Daniel means “God is my Judge.” His Babylonian captors immediately changed his name to Belteshazzar which means “Bel’s Prince.” Bel was the title for their demonic god, Marduk. Bel was to them what LORD would be to us.
ii. It would be like having your name changed from Christian to Satan’s Prince.
iii. The same thing happened to Daniel’s three friends: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah – their names were changed to what?
iv. Their names were changed in a blatant attempt to blot out any connection to their homeland and their God.
v. It was Babylon’s way of forcing their captors to adopt a new identity and a new god.
4. Daniel would suffer indignity
a. He and his friends would have likely suffered the indignity of castration and were turned into eunuchs. Scripture doesn’t mention this, but Jewish history and ancient history does.
b. In Bible times, it was incredibly important for a man to have a family (especially sons – they provided him with status, help to work the fields, and his sons also would be his financial safety net. They didn’t have 401ks back then, so they would have to depend on their children to provide for them when they got old).
c. Without sons, a family’s portion of the Promised Land would have been handed over to someone else – his name would fade from the annals of history… it would be as if he never existed.
d. That’s why you find a lot of begats in the Bible… there was an emphasis on ancestry and the family line.
e. Yet when it comes to Daniel and his friends – there’s no mention of a spouse or a family (in the Jewish culture, that silence is deafening).
f. Daniel describes the type of young men that were imported from Jerusalem to serve in Nebuchadnezzar’s court: “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the King’s palace.”
g. Now, obviously, these were not the kind of men the King would want hanging around his harem.
h. So to eliminate any problems (and the remove any chance of a testosterone-driven rebellion), kings would routinely have these men emasculated and turned into eunuchs.
i. In fact, the man in charge of Daniel’s training was himself a eunuch, the “chief of eunuchs.”
I don’t know about you, but when I consider all that Daniel had to deal with, I don’t have much to complain about.
- All of our excuses about how hard it is to live for God in today’s generation seem pretty lame.
We Must Be People of CONVICTION
1. In that same survey I just quoted, when teenagers were asked, "Are your values the same as your parents?" an amazing 76% said their values were basically the same as their parents. You have no choice mom and dad. Your teenager is basically going to adopt, for the most part, the values that you give to them. Evidently Daniel had been given some core convictions by his parents that he could hold on to in a time of difficulty and temptation. From the very beginning of his time in Babylon, Daniel was tempted to compromise everything he had learned and everything he had lived from the time he was born.
2. Daniel was now in a pagan land. A land that had no room for God and no time for God. For the first time in his life, Daniel went to a school that did not begin each day with prayer. No longer were the Ten Commandments posted in the classroom. The very idea of God itself was totally rejected.
3. Every effort was being made to indoctrinate Daniel and his friends into a pagan way of thinking and a pagan way of living.
"Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king's court; and he ordered him to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. Now among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them; and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach and to Azariah Abed-nego."
(Daniel 1: 3-4, 6-7, NASB)
They changed their names from names that had godly meanings to names that had pagan meanings and then put them into their educational system to do everything they could to change their minds. Yet, that really was no problem to Daniel because he knew who he was and he knew what he believed. The problem began in verse 5.
"The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king's personal service. Now among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah."
(Daniel 1:5, NASB)
Now the king's meat and the king's wine represents the sinful pleasures of this world. They were trying to get these young men to adopt a playboy kind of lifestyle.
4. Daniel didn't mind going to their schools because he knew what he really believed. He didn't mind being called by their name, because he knew who he really was. But he drew the line at the king's meat and the king's wine.
"But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank." (Daniel 1:8, NASB)
5. The reason why Daniel refused to eat the meat and drink the wine was this. First of all, much of the food would have been forbidden by the dietary laws that God had given to His people in the Old Testament.
6. Even more importantly, the meat and the wine had been dedicated to some heathen god and in Daniel's mind, to eat this food and drink this wine, would mean that he would be honoring a pagan god and pledging allegiance to that pagan god and Daniel refused to do it.
7. Every day your teenager is going to be hit with the hammer of compromise. The only thing that will stand against it is the wall of convictions that you have placed in their heart. One of the decisions you have to make is - What convictions are you going to pass down to your children? How are you going to guide them in making decisions when they are placed in tempting situations?
8. When these teenagers in the aforementioned survey were asked the question, "If you were unsure of what was right or wrong, which would be most important in deciding what you would do?" The number one answer they gave was, "Doing what would be best for everyone involved." In other words, the number one answer didn't give any credence at all to what God would want them to do.
4 Most Popular gods in America
1. God of Self – God of me, myself, and I
2. God of Sex
3. God of Sports
4. God of Success
- LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING I LEARNED ABOUT THE DEVIL.
The devil is not interested in trying to stop you from worshipping…the Devil wants you to worship the wrong thing. (He knows he cannot stop it, so he wants to redirect it!)
2. We Must Be People of CHARACTER
1. You are going to see that each of these characteristics flows from the other one. Once your teen decides what convictions they believe, that will determine how they behave. I love that phrase in verse 8 that says,
"Daniel purposed in his heart."
(Daniel 1:8, NJKV)
That is referring to his character. Character is all about heart. The heart of your character is the character of your heart. You are the person you are today, because of the character you became yesterday. The person you will be tomorrow is determined by the character that you have today.
2. Daniel had a choice and that choice revealed his character, because choices don't make character, choices reveal character.
3. Someone once said, "There is a choice you have to make in everything you do and you must always keep in mind the choice you make, makes you."
4. Let me tell you what I mean by character. Character is the will to do what is right as God defines what is right, regardless of the consequences or the costs. Listen to that definition and see two things in it.
5. First character demands a commitment to do what is right no matter what it might cost you. No matter what the consequences might be. One of the greatest lessons you can teach teenagers is this. The best way to handle temptation is not to make a decision when you are tempted, but to make a decision of what you will do before you face that temptation. Character is simply doing what is right because it is the right thing to do.
6. Second, character depends upon believing in an absolute standard of right and wrong. It is a matter of believing that certain things are right, regardless of how we may feel, what we may think or what we may want and certain things are wrong regardless and those can only be defined by God Himself.
We Must Be People of COURAGE
1. Daniel used one of the greatest words you can ever teach your teenager to say, "no." Do you know why Daniel could say, "No?" Evidently his parents had taught him first to say, "Yes." He could say "no" to the world, because he had first said, "Yes" to God.
2. Even though this was a good decision, and the right decision the best decision, it was not an easy decision. It took tremendous courage for Daniel to say, "No."
3. Verse 8 tells us,
"So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself." (Daniel 1:8, NASB)
That seems simple enough, but it really wasn't.
"And the commander of the officials said to Daniel, "I am afraid of my lord the king, who has appointed your food and your drink; for why should he see your faces looking more haggard than the youths who are your own age? Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king."
(Daniel 1:10, NASB)
If what Daniel was asking for was granted, not only could the eunuch die, but Daniel could also die.
4. To refuse to eat at the king's table was an insult to the king. Furthermore, to refuse a direct order was an act of disobedience and either rebellion or refusal carried with it the penalty of instant death. In other words, when Daniel said, "No" he was putting his life on the line.
5. There was an even greater pressure that Daniel faced. It is the greatest pressure any teenagers face and that was peer pressure. Because of the hundreds of Jewish teenagers that were there at that time, Daniel was the first and at that point, the only one to say, "No." Can you just imagine the conversation that went on?
6. His friends were saying, "Come on Daniel, everybody is doing it." Daniel said, "No, not everybody is doing it, because I'm not doing it." Somebody else said, "But Daniel, nobody will know." Daniel said, "God will know." Somebody else said, "Daniel, you've got to obey the king." Daniel said, "No, I've got to obey the God that my parents taught me to love."
7. It takes conviction and character to say, "Yes" to God. It takes unbelievable courage to say, "No" to this world. Parents, you have to teach your kids to say, "No", but your teenagers have to learn to say, "No." You can't make them say, "No." I don't want you to sit there and feel guilty if you've got teenagers who haven't had the courage at the right time to say no. You just make sure that you have modeled by your lifestyle that you have the courage to say, "no."
when telling the story of Daniel and the lions’ den, most people usually focus on Daniel’s courage in the lions’ den itself. But what’s curiously missing from the whole story is any description of Daniel’s experience in it. Not one word.
One hundred and fifty-three verses on his life before the lions’ den. Aside from when he tells the king that God had shut the mouths of the lions, zero describing his time in it.
And the reason is because Daniel’s courage and faith in the lions’ den isn’t the point. After all, shutting the mouths of the lions was God’s thing. Once Daniel gets thrown in the lions’ den, what is he really going to do?
Daniel’s courage and faithfulness was shown in the way he lived that got him thrown into the lions’ den. The real miracle was when his enemies were looking for a way to accuse him but they couldn’t find anything in his life. So they had to make up a law forbidding prayer to anyone but the king to get him thrown in. And yet he still prayed. That’s real courage. That’s real faith. And it was that courage and faith that became the setup for God’s display of faithfulness.
I think most people want a lions’ den experience. Maybe not the danger, but they do want to see God do huge things in their life. Come through for them in big ways. Decisively display His deliverance. Show people that our God is still a God who can accomplish the impossible.
But most people will never have the opportunity to prove God’s faithfulness in the lions’ den because they have not proved their faith in everyday life.
They’re not going to see God come through for them in a huge way financially because they haven’t learned to trust Him with 10% of what they have. They’re not going to see increased favor at work because they segregate God from their work. They’re not going to see God use them in powerful ways at their school because they live in such a way that no one knows they even believe in God.
Don’t try to be like Daniel in the lions’ den. Be like Daniel who prayed every day and had integrity. Be like Daniel and serve God continually in every aspect of your life. Have the courage and faith to live in such a way that God actually has a platform to show His faithfulness from.
And then God will do His thing in the lions’ den.
We Must Be People of COURTESY
1. There is a little known trait here in this event that a lot of people miss and that is, Daniel even though he stood his ground, didn't do it arrogantly and he didn't do it rudely. He did it courteously.
"But Daniel said to the overseer whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, "Please test your servants for ten days, and let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance be observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food; and deal with your servants according to what you see.'" (Daniel 1: 11-13, NASB)
Did you notice what Daniel did? He didn't stage a protest. He didn't firebomb the banquet hall. He didn't threaten the king or the eunuch. He just very quietly and graciously proposed an alternative.
2. Daniel had been taught to be respectful to authority and that may the most glaring weakness of teenagers today - the lack of proper respect for those in authority. Listen to these words,
Our youth love luxury. They have bad manners. Contempt for authority. They show disrespect for their elders. Youth are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents. Gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. Do you know who wrote that? Socrates - 400 B.C.
Some things have never changed. I want to urge you parents to teach your teenagers good manners. It may be old-fashioned, but there is nothing wrong with saying, "Yes Sir" and "No Sir". There is nothing wrong with opening the door for a lady and letting ladies enter into a room first. There is nothing wrong with teaching teenagers to say, "Please" and "Thank you" and that is the fourth thing we need to be teaching our teens.
1. Live holy and distinct
1. Realize that you do not have a job, you have a ministry assignment.
- Daniel is a great example of someone who saw his job as a ministry assignment. He and his friends consistently viewed themselves as servants of God. Maintaining a similar perspective is one of the keys to influence.
2. Remember that God is in control of who is in control.
- Daniel 1:1-2
3. If you want to become influential, become invaluable.
- Daniel 1:20; 6:3-5
The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” – George Orwell
Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage.
