In the year 320 AD, the Emperor Licinius sent out an order commanding a particular battalion of soldiers that they should all make an offering to a pagan god. And among all these soldiers, there were 40 Christians. And those 40 Christians sent the message back to the Emperor, you can have our armour, you can have our allegiance as it were, You can have our bodies, but our hearts belong unto Christ. We cannot make an offering to a pagan god. So they were stripped naked and they were marched into a freezing lake. And it said, the officer who was in charge of this said, you can renounce your Christ and you can just walk free of the freezing water. But if not, you stay there until you die. They huddled together. they sang hymns and one by one they slipped into the water and into eternity. When there was but one man standing, he walked out of the water. He renounced Christ. But the officer in charge had heard their testimony, he had seen their testimony, he had heard their hymns. He took his clothes off, walked into the water and took that man's place. That day 40 men died for Christ. all but one showed a consistent faith. In our reading in Daniel 6, it shows us there a man of consistent faith. Daniel, we've seen, is a man of many parts, but he is a man, if anything, of consistency. We follow Daniel's life through some of these other chapters, and we must remember these chapters are not in chronological order. It's not a study, so I'm not going to go into the great detail of their order, but what we see by each chapter is that most of them begin by telling us who the king is, that we can set them in order. And this is probably one of the last chapters. We've seen Daniel as a young man, keeping himself unto God. Although sent to another land where the restraint of the religion of the Jewish nation was no longer upon him, he could have done what he wanted as a young man, but he didn't. He adhered to the things of God. He was a man of integrity despite all the temptations. We've seen Daniel as a man of action, preventing the death of the otherwise men, in coming to the Lord and interpreting the King's dream. We've seen his three friends in the fiery furnace and yet they were not alone. The Lord was there with them. We've seen Daniel as an agent for God, used in the apparent conversion of King Nebuchadnezzar. And then last time we looked at the book of Daniel, we saw Daniel forgotten. There was a new king. He was busy doing the king's business, but the king didn't even know him. And so when this king had a dream, then they called for Daniel, but the king didn't know him. It was the king's mother who knew him. She said, I know a man who can interpret dreams. And Daniel was pulled out from his room down the corridor, and the king said, are you Daniel? So he'd been demoted. But he still did the king's business. And he interpreted the writing on the wall. And God used him to help preserve the children of Israel in exile, to preserve the vessels of the temple which had to go back to the rebuilt temple at the end of 70 years. And as we drop now onto this particular passage in chapter 6, Daniel is probably 80 years old. Some commentaries say he was 90. Maybe, I don't know. He was an elderly man. And he was more or less running the country. There's hope for all of us, isn't there, here? Here was King Darius, and King Darius was a more kindly man. He was more kindly disposed to Daniel. And King Darius, he had a certain wisdom in letting an aged but wise and godly man administer his affairs. As I say, in the providence of God, this king was kindly disposed to Daniel. And Daniel is no longer down a dusty corridor just doing whatever the king's business is as some lonely civil servant. But he is now taking a leading role. And it's his responsibility, it says there, that he was set over the whole realm. He was in charge of these 120 princes that had three presidents over them. Daniel was the first president. And it says the princes, they gave accounts unto them that the king should have no damage. In other words, he was part of the audit office, made sure that all the governors and the captains and the presidents and all around the kingdoms were sending in their dues, their taxes, to the king, that the lands that he owned were still his and everything was in good order, that the king suffered no damage. He didn't face a deficit in his budget that hadn't been worked out, that things were done decently and in order. But that wasn't enough. There were those round about, as there have been throughout Daniel's life, we've seen it as we've been through these chapters, there are those who wanted to plot against him. So in verse 4 it says, then the presidents, that means the other two, there were only three remember, those presidents and the princes, 120 of them, sought to find occasion against Daniel. 120 people is a lot of people isn't it? Well it'd be 122 at least, assuming they all turned up. They actually met together. He says, what can we do about this guy Daniel? What's the matter with him? He's doing a great job. Well, he's a Jew, he's 80 years old, one of us ought to be doing that, and he just annoys us. You know, he's just someone who really kind of rubs us up the wrong way. And they had this meeting and they said, well, what can we find wrong with him? How can we kind of pull this guy down? And they thought, and they thought, maybe they went off into their little groups and had huddles and things, and they all came back together and said, no, we can't find anything wrong with this chap. Isn't that amazing? Couldn't find anything wrong with him. No fault. It must be great to get to 80 years old and no one can find any fault in you. That's an ambition for all of us, isn't it? But most of us are too late. There we go. For as much, it says, as he was faithful. Well, that's lovely that it's been called faithful. And it's recorded that these people, they decreed, no, this man, there's no fault in him and he's faithful. And that's what annoyed them. There was no error found in him. I guess they got some of the books out, the scrolls out, and they said, well, let's see if he's defrauding anywhere. And they added all the columns up. No, there's nothing wrong there. Well, let's see if we can find somewhere where they're not paying their taxes and he's missed it. And they could find no fault there. There was no error in his character. There was no error in the job that he was doing. He was being a great Christian, wasn't he? Doing his work to the honour and glory of God. And so as they couldn't plot against him decently, if you can plot against anyone decently, they decided to plot a trick. And through their devious behaviour, and it was devious, wasn't it? They'd worked out that, we've got to butter the king up a bit because he's got to sign this document, and the only way we can trick Daniel, it says, was over the law concerning his God, it says in verse 5. We'll not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. So it says they assembled together, here we've got another meeting, and they came to the king. And they'd worked out what they were going to say. In fact, they were so careful they'd even had it written down on the document ready. The bill was ready to be signed. And so they said, look, seems a good idea to us, Let's have 30 days where no one can ask anyone else, whether it's a god or man, any petition. But they must ask you. I guess the king thought well. I mean, the king was kindly disposed and he was wise, but he wasn't that wise, otherwise he would have seen through this. And so you can imagine the pride in his heart, his chest puffed out a bit, thinking, well, that seems a good idea. Everyone's got to come to me. We'll centralise things for at least a month, and only I can say whether something can be done or not. And according to the law of their land, it was what they call the law of the Medes and Persians, which means you don't undo what's been signed. Once it's done, that's it. We would say it's set in concrete. And that's what they did. They came to the king and said, oh, by the way, king, here it is, you've only got to sign. And so he did sign. They tricked Daniel. They tricked the king, rather, as well as Daniel. And so, eventually, as we read the story, I'm not going through the whole story again, but you see, Daniel continued, didn't he? He prayed and they knew he was going to pray, they lay in wait, they heard him praying, they ran off to the king, everything was going according to their plan, said to the king, it's Daniel, he's still praying, did you not sign? He signed and he was sad that he'd signed. He realised then what a fool he'd been and he was cast into the den of lions. Well, what can we learn from this account tonight for a few moments? What would the Lord have us learn from Daniel's consistency of faith. The first thing is this, faith will be tested. Faith will be tested if you're a Christian. Robert Hill was here, wasn't he, a couple of weeks ago, and he said we're reading from Daniel. Of course, my kind of mind went over, I thought, well, Opie's not reading beyond where I've got to, but there we are, you have to rest in the Lord. And he went back, didn't he, and he took us back to the story of the three in the fiery furnace. And one of the points that Robert made was that it is by the testing of our faith that we're made stronger. that these things are part of the Christian life. They're allowed for a reason. We don't necessarily want them, we can't understand them. When a problem comes, we say, well, the Lord has allowed that, but we don't always understand that from where we're standing. But one of the examples he gave us was, wasn't it, that there was that strip of country in South America, if I remember correctly, where the sun always shines. It always shines. And he says that that is a very barren piece of land, it produces nothing. And so, if we have a life where there are no problems, then as Christians we will not be strengthened, we will not bear fruit. It is as we go through trials and these various difficulties that we are made stronger. And Peter brings this out, and I don't want to repeat what we've already heard. So then, Daniel's consistency is only seen because it is continually tested. And each testing gave him strength for the next trial. And his consistency was seen for what it was. It was part of his godly life. And this was something alien to the Babylonian culture. The Babylonian culture was paganism. And it had been rather kind of stirred up a bit by the children of Israel going into exile. But we don't read a lot in scripture that the children of Israel were a particularly godly influence in Babylon. There's a lot of silence over that, considering how many were taken there. But here, we know that Daniel was a man who stood up for his God. And it irritated some of these people. Here was an aged Jew, irritatingly close to the king. But worse than that, he was a man of the true and living God. We can find that in our day, certainly people are finding this in countries like Pakistan, China and Vietnam, we were reading recently, where people are just living Christian lives, but it doesn't matter what the Christian does or says or goes, it is enough that they are a Christian and they are persecuted for that. Daniel here, he's done nothing wrong, in fact they said they can't find anything wrong, they were persecuting him purely because he was a man of God. And my friends, no Christian can possess faith that's not going to be tested. The normal Christian life is made up of testing times, of the trying of our faith. If our faith is never tested, it is not true faith, because that's what happens to true faith. By the very nature of the Christian faith, it requires testing, and it will be tested. James is it who says, when you fall into diverse Temptations or trials. It doesn't say if, it's when. And that's what Daniel found, and that's what you and I find and we will find. If you read some of the testimonies of the lives of great Christians and how their faith was tested, it can be quite dramatic, can't it? I mean, being thrown into a den of lions is dramatic on anyone's scale, isn't it? But remember that some of our trials, which are much more mundane, things sometimes we don't talk about because they're a bit personal, but they're a real trouble to us. They really get us down. If we were to tell other people about them, we might think, well, yeah, it's not a big deal, is it? But they are to us, and the Lord knows about that, just as he knew the situation with Daniel. In other words, our trials don't have to be dramatic to be important in the hand of God. Maybe you have days of depression, when darkness falls on our lives like a blanket. Maybe we don't understand always why that is. Maybe we feel guilty as fear grips us and we don't quite know why that happens and disaster may hit the family or things just get on top of us. It can be all sorts of things that happen. They're not really much different to the den of lions. We have to call upon the Lord. We need a consistent faith when we come to those situations. My friends, whether we're spooked by lions or whatever, the point is we need to endeavour to maintain a consistent faith. Secondly, consistent faith requires a consistent life. Look how Daniel is described, for as much as he was faithful, he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. He was consistent in faith because he was consistent in his life. When he was a young man and snatched from Jerusalem, he was consistent immediately. We read in the early verses of Daniel, it says, God purposed in his heart that he was going to serve God. And that purpose of heart served him right through, didn't it? In every spot of his life where we've looked at him, as it were, we've opened a window on his life. There's Daniel, consistency. We've opened another window a few years on. He's still being consistent. Think of some of the giants of the Bible. Think of Moses, Abraham, Joseph, Elijah, Elisha, David, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel, we were speaking about this morning, Paul, Peter. Think of some of the giants of history. Some are unknown, but we think of the Wesleys, Whitfields, Spurgeon, etc. They were all people of prayer, but they were also people of holiness. They were people living something like we were looking at this morning from Ephesians 3. Strengthened in the spirit. Lives where Christ was happy to dwell. But they weren't perfect. They weren't perfect. David committed adultery. Moses lied. Peter denied the Lord. Now that's not for us to take as presumption and to say, well, if I then go and do, if I commit adultery or if I lie or whatever, it's okay because these people did it. No, that would be totally the wrong spirit. What it means is that the giants of the scriptures and some of the Christian giants of our history, they were consistent in their faith, but it doesn't mean they were perfect. They made mistakes. but there was generally that consistency in their witness before men and God. You see, if we're not consistent in our lives day by day, we won't be ready when we meet the lions. Thirdly, consistent faith requires consistent prayer. Look at verse 10. When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, so he knew what was going on, once he heard someone say, well, the king signed it, Whether it was someone who was kind to Daniel and said, you ought to know the King signed this, or whether it was one of these princes or presidents who come along and kind of dug him in the ribs and say, the King signed it, you're in trouble now. But when Daniel knew that it had been signed, what did he do? He says, he went into his house, his windows being open in the chamber towards Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime. In other words, what did he do? He did what he always did. He wasn't going to let these people and the signing of a document threaten his prayer life. So what did Daniel pray for three times a day? Well, I'm not going to take you to it now, but if in your own quiet time you read something of chapter 9, it tells you some of the things that he was praying about. He prayed for Jerusalem, that's why his windows opened. It wasn't no direction from God that you've got to face Jerusalem, or Mecca, or any other direction. It was that his heart was towards Jerusalem. He'd been snatched from Jerusalem, that was the city of his God, and so it was natural that he wanted to look in that direction, and he prayed for Jerusalem. He wanted it to be rebuilt, he wanted to be ready, he wanted to go back with the children of Israel and know that they were returned to Jerusalem. And as he prays in chapter 9 and one of these experiences that he has in prayer, Gabriel comes to him, a messenger from heaven, and says to him, Daniel, you're greatly beloved. He says, your prayer's been answered. And then he is led into visions, and we'll look at some of these in, I hope, a careful way in weeks that lie ahead. He's led out to see things concerning the coming of Jesus Christ and how Christ was going to be cut off at the cross. and die. And then he's led out further to say that there are great times of judgement coming and the Lord is coming, the Ancient of Days will come again and he'll give the kingdom to Christ and he begins to speak about things that haven't even yet happened in our day. Those are some of the things that he prayed about three times a day. And while he is praying, as it were, for his own little world around him in Jerusalem, the Lord lifts his eyes up and shows him things yet to come. And sometimes, my friends, we need to have our eyes lifted up, don't we, from our little problems. And when you think Daniel was about to be fed to the lions, it wasn't really a little problem, but the Lord still wanted to lift his eyes up above all these things that were going on. He said, your prayer's been answered concerning Jerusalem. Now have a look at all this stuff. Notice how he prayed. Just as he always did. Just as he always did. He could have said, well, I'll keep my head down now. Writing's been signed, it's only 30 days, isn't it? It's not too long, is it? I'll pray in secret. We'll shut the windows and we'll just sit quietly in the corner and the Lord will understand all of this. No, he didn't. He took great courage. He could have done that, let's be fair. He could have done that. Maybe some of us would have taken that option. Why stir up problems? Why be lion pooed? when we can still pray, but we just won't let people see this. But he was a bold man. We sing in one of the children's hymns, don't we? Dare to be a Daniel. He prayed just like he always did. He opened his window, he got on his knees, and he must have been praying out loud because they heard him, as he did aforetime. My friends, there's no biblical rule, is there, that we're to pray three times a day. You know, there are those, don't they? They go up on their minuets or whatever and they play the music and they call people in the Muslim faith to prayer at certain times. Scripture doesn't demand that of Christians, to pray three times a day. In many ways, that would be far too few times. The New Testament tells us to be constantly in prayer, to be instant in prayer, to be always in prayer. So three times a day wouldn't be nearly anywhere enough, would it? It doesn't mean we never get off our knees, does it? We'd never get anything done. But it does mean that we live every day in the spirit of prayer. I would not care sometimes, perhaps, to count how many times I would cast a sentence, heaven would, during the day. Sometimes in praise, sometimes in sorrow, sometimes in despair, sometimes for help and wisdom. The list is endless, isn't it? I'm sure you do the same. You say, Lord, just help us with this, or we hit a problem and we just mention it to the Lord. But there is a danger. There is a danger that we think that that's all our prayer life is, is shooting the arrows to heaven. We mustn't neglect that real intimate time with the Lord. We need both, don't we? And I think Daniel's prayer life, yes, it was three times a day when he got down on his knees and he agonised with God for Jerusalem and for Israel in exile and all of those things that concerned him, for the king and for the kingdom. But I think he also spent time other than that, sending up those brief prayers to the Lord. But you see, prayer ought not to be measured particularly, did it, by its length, and certainly not by its brevity, but rather by the closeness that we can come to the Lord. And that's not always easy, is it? You know, I've known some people, they tell you about their great prayer life, but they don't seem to rarely enter a place of worship. And then there are others who don't say too much about it, but you know they struggle in prayer. they're obviously doing all they can for the Master and their struggles and tears in prayer are the things that are honoured by God. It's not always the length of our prayers, it's the state of our heart before God as we agonise before him. All my friends, like Daniel, we need to cultivate our prayer life. You know, when you look a lion in the mouth, we can send up an emergency prayer but it would be as well to be a people who have been consistently in prayer before we get to that situation. Consistent faith requires consistent prayer. Fourthly, I've only got two more and they're fairly brief. Fourthly, others will see our consistent faith. Nebuchadnezzar saw the Son of Man in the heat of the fire, didn't he, with those in the fiery furnace. And he and those with him saw that God honoured those young men's faith. We know that the other governors here, they saw Daniel's consistency and for them it was like an arrow hitting their conscience. And sometimes when we live in the world and we don't have to say much, just for trying to live a straight life is sometimes an arrow into their conscience. King Darius, he saw something in Daniel that was good. He didn't understand it all. He set him over the administration of the land and he was so concerned. Can you imagine this man? He has an affection for Daniel. Daniel is 80 years old or more and all of a sudden these men have been rather devious and he's got to throw him into a den of lions. No one with a tender heart of any kind would want to throw an 80 year old man into a den of lions. Although I did notice that Darius wasn't slow in throwing children and women to the lions but that's another story. You see, he wasn't a man of God, and that was his problem. He got so far, he recognised wisdom, he recognised a measure of godliness, but he did not know this God for himself. But the king was so concerned, it says in verse 14, he set his heart on Daniel to deliver him. All day, it says there, he was trying, he laboured until the sun went down, he was racking his brains, maybe he was looking at the law books and thinking, how can I get out of this mess? Throw this man into the den of lions. I've been tricked. There must be a way out of this." And these men come again, didn't they? And they said, you've got to do it. You've got to do it. The law was irrevocable. But you see, the bigger problem was that Darius, as wise as he was, as great as he was, did not know the true and living God. And my friends, it's one reason why we're told to pray for kings, isn't it? And those who rule over us. They grapple with immense problems, but they do not know, generally speaking, the God of heaven. Darius, yes, had seen Daniel's consistent faith. And he says in verse 16, thy God whom thou service continually, he will deliver thee. It seems that the king had a certain measure of faith in what he'd seen in Daniel's life, that he was convinced that God would deliver him. And then fifthly, we see here, God honours consistent faith. As the Lord was with Daniel's three friends in the fiery furnace, so he was with Daniel in the lion's den. You know, I don't think that the lions would... It looks as if it was some kind of pit, doesn't it? It's yet to be kind of lowered into. I don't think these lions really looked at Daniel and thought, well, there's an old sinewy bit of meat, we'll leave him. No, they were hungry lions. They were ready to eat whatever was thrown to them. Their nature was to just consume it all. But what did Daniel say? He says, my God has sent his angel. We don't know from the wording of scripture, I don't think, whether that was, if I can say it with respect, a mere angel, or whether this was another appearing of the Lord, as we had in the fiery furnace, one who appeared to be as the Son of Man. But either way, God sent his angel, shut the lion's mouth, and he said, they have not hurt me. when in a few verses later we find that those who had accused him were thrown into that den with their wives and their children. It says that the lions broke them in pieces even before they got to the bottom of the den. So they were hungry beasts. God had done this great work. But not only had the angel shut the lion's mouths, and Daniel must have been aware of that, so he must have spoken to the angel and observed what had gone on. But not only that, we're told in verse 23 that it was because Daniel believed in his God. Daniel believed in his God. Then was the king exceeding glad for him, commanded they should take up Daniel out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den and no manner of hurt was found upon him because he believed in his God. God honoured Daniel's faith. Now let's throw in a word of caution here. There have been many men and women of faith who have been thrown to the lions and were not delivered as Daniel was, yet they too believed God. God does not promise in scripture to deliver us from all of our troubles, to lift us out of all those troubles every time, but he will, as we read scripture, he will either deliver us out of those troubles or he will be with us in those troubles. And I believe Daniel had a double blessing. God was there with him in his troubles and God delivered him from his troubles. Because God had further work for Daniel to do. So there we are, we're looking for consistent faith. That's what the Lord is saying to us today. Whatever our problems and our trials might be, here the Lord has promised to be with us. But our faith will be tested. Faith requires a consistent life. Consistent faith requires consistent prayer. Consistent faith will be seen by others, even if we don't really be aware of that. But it will be honoured by God, one way or another. So what can we do with this? Well, first of all, it's good to take time out to meditate on the consistency of our faith. In our quiet time, just stop for a moment and say, what did the Lord say to me on Sunday? Well, in the evening he challenged us as to the consistency of our faith. Is my faith consistent? Is my prayer life too up and down? We need to keep watch on our lives. We don't know what lurks, do we, in tomorrow's den, but our lives should be ready for whatever is there because the Lord will be with us in that situation. Secondly, by way of application here, don't be fooled by cuddly lions. Don't be fooled by cuddly lions. Children often have Stuffed animals, don't they? Our children have certainly had them, got a loft full of them. And a lion can be one of those stuffed animals and they look friendly, don't they? They're a soft toy and lion cubs are cute and playful and all that sort of thing. Daniel knew that these lions were not the cuddly sort. He didn't wish to be thrown to them. He didn't set himself up, as it were, in that sense. He wasn't trying to prove something. He would have avoided them if he could have done so without compromising his position before God. The scripture reminds us that the devil is like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And that lion is one that we have to face as Christians. We're not thrown into a den of lions, but that lion is let loose and he runs around as it were, the evil one, seeking who he can devour. The devil will make sin look very cute and cuddly at times, that we can do this or whatever. Don't be fooled. In that sense, we are in danger from our enemy every day. But let's take comfort that the scripture also tells us that the Lord himself refers to himself as the lion of the tribe of Judah. And he has gained every victory for his people. So, as we close tonight, do you know Daniel's God as your God? Maybe you say, well, we're all Christians here tonight. Well, I can never be 100% sure of that. There may be those listening later. But if we're not a true Christian, we're in bigger trouble than being in a den of lions. If Daniel had gone into that den of lions and those lions had consumed him, he was safe for all eternity. But my friends, we're not safe tonight if we're not the Lord's. Our lion, if you like, our great enemy, is sin. and it consumes us and it takes us off to judgment unless we know the intervention of the saving work of Jesus Christ. But as I've just said, Christ has come and he has slain our old enemy, he took upon himself the sin of his people, he has defeated our enemy, that we might know our sins forgiven, that his victory might be our victory. So may the Lord help us to seek him and may those who know him May we be enabled to live that consistent faith that it might be seen of others and blessed of God. Amen.