Singing the Songs of The Lord in a Strange Land. October 17, 2004
Daniel 1
Faithfulness in a Strange Land
A few years ago, a good friend invited me to join his corporation’s team for a charity 24-hour relay run. As I hung out with him and his colleagues for the day, I realized what a different world I lived in than the world of business. I also realized what a challenge it must be to live as a Christian out there in the working world.
This is part of the reason that I want to start a series in the book of Daniel – to use Daniel as a model for how to live in the marketplace.
Read Daniel 1
Background & the Story.
On the outside, Judah and its kings seem to be little boats in a big sea of political turmoil. Egypt had expended it’s rule in the region, and had set its own king on the throne in Judah – Neco of Egypt had even changed the Judean king’s name to suit his own purposes. Maybe he had trouble pronouncing Eliakim’s name, so he changed it to Jehoiakim. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon say the need to push Egypt’s power back, so he went to war against Neco. On his way, he crossed through this little vassal state of Judah and put his own mark on it by defeating Jehoiakim, and demonstrating his defeat of Judah’s God by taking some of the temple treasures back to Babylon for his own god’s temple. (2 Chronicles 36)
Along with the temple treasures, he also took some of the young men as captives. This would be the first and smallest of three exiles from Judah to Babylon.
In the end, the majority of people from Judah would be deported. These were the people who Isaiah and Jeremiah wrote to, these would be the people that Ezra and Nehemiah brought back to restore Jerusalem and Judea.
This is where the Israelites wrote Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
- this is the question I hope we can answer together
If you were studying the politics of the day – you would be hard pressed to see the hand of God in what was going on. God’s chosen people were being walked all over, first by Egypt and then by Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar did his best to declare that he and his gods had defeated the God of Judah and Israel. God’s chosen people were in danger of disappearing as a race and culture because of deportation and assimilation.
Where is God in that?
But… there is this little statement at the beginning of verse 2, “And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into (Nebuchadnezzar’s) hand. God was following up on a promise that he made back in Deuteronomy 28:
1 If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:
3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock-the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out…
…15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out….
…64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods-gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. 66 You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, "If only it were evening!" and in the evening, "If only it were morning!"-because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. 68 The LORD will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.
The kings and people of Judah had lived serving other gods in horrendous behavior for too long. God had warned them through his prophets over and over again. They had generations of patience from God, but now God’s promises had come true.
Verse 2 presents a theme that is present throughout all of Daniel:
In spite of present appearances, God is in control
Daniel & his three friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego know throughout the story, that although Nebuchadnezzar had carried them away to Babylon, it was God who had sent them there.
It is a theme that runs through scripture - In spite of present appearances, God is in control – Joseph proclaims it when he meets up with the brothers that had sold him into slavery. He says to them “"I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. …"So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. – Genesis 45:4,5&8
What it teaches us is that, no matter how we can trace the natural path that has brought us to the place that we are in, God’s hand has been leading us here. God has placed you where you are – in your job, in your family, in your school. And he has a purpose for your presence in that place.
Some of you might know this without a doubt – you are doing what you know God has called you too, for others you are simply filling the role that you fell into – doing a job, raising a family, going to school… Some of you may relate well to Daniel, and his three friends. You feel like you are in exile, working for a pagan king whose ways are not godly and sometimes opposed to God’s ways.
What I want to do in this series in Daniel is to discover together how we are to live as faithful people in a world with no faith or different faith from us.
I think that we may discover some new and radical ideas that God has on how we are to live.
I want your help – many of you are traveling in spheres that I have never experienced -
I’d like you to read Daniel and meditate on it & ask God how it applies to your life at work, or in the family or in the neighbourhood – give me illustrations to help me teach what God is teaching us. Call me, email me, write me a note on the back of an envelope…
Back to Daniel 1
You may find that you are centered out for special treatment like Daniel & the three were. Nebuchadnezzar wanted to assibilate the Israelites into Babylonian culture – so he chose the cream of the crop to train in the ways, customs, knowledge and wisdom of the Babylonians.
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael & Azariah are chosen. They submit to their names being changed to Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego. They submitted to the special training which would have included training in the religion & the divination practices of the Babylonians, but they would not submit to eating the kings food.
Eating the food from the king’s table was an amazing perk of this training! The other Israelites were getting by on refugee fare, probably barely getting by, and here is a feast of the finest foods set before them at every meal! These guys are likely late teenagers and they are giving up food! Good food!
Why?
Keeping Kosher – but they go further than Kosher to include all meat & wine
To avoid food that had been offered first to idols
To not accept the hospitality of the pagan king
Or… All of the above
What ever the reason, they felt that they had to draw the line at the diet. The other things, they could submit to, but they could not submit to this diet.
It was not a big youthful, brash rejection of the food – they didn’t stand up on the table and yell out that they would not eat this disgusting food of a pagan king! This ius not a Hollywood movie. Daniel goes quietly to the official and asks him for permission not to defile himself with this food. The official first says no because it’s his job to fatten these boys up. Daniel proposes a test – ten days on a diet of vegetables and water & if they don’t look good, they’ll eat the king’s food.
God blesses their resolve & in ten days they look better than everyone else, and they are allowed to continue their vegetarian diet. God also honors them by giving them wisdom and understanding far and above their classmates. In fact, the king finds them to be ten times wiser than all his wise men and magicians at the end of their lessons.
Daniel serves this king and subsequent ones for the next 65 years. (Until the first year of Cyrus)
Like these four men, you may have to make decisions about where you draw the line in your work, or among your friends or family. Part of Singing the song of the Lord in a strange land is drawing the line. Like the 4 young men, we have to say we will go this far, but no further.
Some of these lines are obvious, but not necessarily easy
Living with Christian Morals
A friend of mine told me that in her line of work, the male colleagues will often have business lunches at the local strip joint. The decision to not go to these lunches might be obvious, as not eating the king’s food was to Daniel, but the ramifications might be very large – missed business opportunities, ostracism, and possible backlash. On the other hand, you colleagues might appreciate the stand you take.
Living with Christian Ethics – this might not be as obvious as the morals
Are there “perks” to your job or position where you need to draw the line?
Free food in the cafeteria
Cutting trees, working for himself while on company time.
Paying in cash to avoid taxes – “render unto Caesar…”
In his book, Saving the Corporate Soul, David Batstone tells of an investment banker who was bragging to him of how he was able to let preferred customers in on Initial Public Offerings of stock before others had access to the stock. They even sold stock to preffered customers art the IPO rate days after the initial offering. David said that what they were doing wasn’t necessarily illegal, but it was unethical.
Those of you in the financial sector may have opportunities to make money or to make your clients money in ways that are over the line that you need to draw.
In another place, Batstone relates a story of a board decision that he made that he wasn’t proud of and it came back to haunt the board. Upon reflect on the decision, he said “when you start saying to yourself “everybody is doing it,” you know you are in trouble.”
We are called to be a people apart
1 Peter 2
9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
What Daniel & the boys were saying in their refusal of the food was that they were different – they were set apart by God to be different, so they had to act differently. As Christians, we too are set apart to be different, we too have to draw the line a little closer than those people around us who are not serving God. When we hear, or when we say to ourselves, “everybody’s doing it,” we need to remind ourselves that we are not everybody – we are called to be different.
Have you seen God’s hand in drawing you to where you are now in life?
Where are you feeling the pressure to go with the flow, but also feeling the call to draw the line?
Pray for each other
