Well, it's good to see some of y'all. Excuse me. Some of y'all braved the elements, came out tonight. Not too concerned about traffic on the way home, I guess, or rain on the way home. So we always get a little nervous around here because one year came really a storm, not like we're going to expect tonight. All the streets around here flooded. Nobody could go home until midnight. So we've always been a little skittish. Just a few announcements. The Chafer Seminary Spring Semester registration is now open through the 17th of January, which I think is about the end of next week. And the $30 registration fee is waived if you register. by midnight tomorrow. So you can go to chaffer.edu and take a look at the courses. If you've never taken a Bible study methods course, I would encourage you to do that. Also, there's men's prayer breakfast coming up a week from this Saturday on the January the 18th, 7.30 a.m. We get together, we have a good breakfast, and we spend time praying together and talking about some issues in the word. And then We continue in January. Now I'm trying to make this simple. In the month of January, February 1st is no longer the month of January. Just try to keep that in mind. In the month of January, we will have Thursday night Bible class and prayer meeting on Thursday night. And on Sunday, we'll have our regular schedule. And then in February, starting February 1st, We will go back to the Tuesday and Thursday night schedule. Now I will be leaving for Romania on the 22nd of January. And on the 23rd and the 30th, as well as the Sunday in between, Wayne House will be teaching. And Wayne will be covering some material he hasn't ever covered here on biblical archaeology and several passages of scripture. And then when we cross that border from January into February, and I forget what the February 1st falls on, but it's like a Saturday. So that week that I come back, I get back at midnight on the 5th, 1159. So I decided it would be good for Wayne to cover that Thursday night. because I will be jet lagged and tired from that. But anyway, so starting February 1st, so that week that I come back on Tuesday and Thursday night, Wayne will also teach and then we'll be back to, I think we'll be back to a Tuesday, Thursday schedule. I'm still sort of debating this, this virus that I have now and getting over, kind of set back the recovery, but I'm hoping that I can recover the recovery. pretty quickly. So one other thing is a note came in. Oh yeah. The Greece-Italy tour deposit is due February 14th. Now there's a number of people who have declared their serious interest in the trip, but we only have deposits, I think, from two people. So what matters is not how sincere your commitment is, But what matters is that you have expressed faith by sending in a deposit. Sincerity doesn't matter. It's sending in that deposit. So we'll count up the deposits, and if we have 20 people, then we will be good to go. So that is on the Greek tour. Now, one of our listeners, I believe she is from Oregon, wrote a note for the congregation, said, Dear fellow believers, Thank you for sharing with us via internet so as to access clear Bible teaching and precious fellowship centered on God and his precious word of truth. May your hearts be encouraged to continue in holding the ground and passing this legacy of clear biblical teaching to the next generation. So we get notes like that every now and then and I thought it was just a good idea to share that with the congregation. So as we come together this evening to study God's Word and continue our study in what is called the Interlock Series, we need to make sure we're in right relationship with the Lord. And so we'll take a few moments of silent prayer so that you can confess any sins to God the Father. And we know that we have to continue to keep short accounts because we need to be cleansed of sin and forgiven of those that we haven't even mentioned. so that we can continue to grow and mature in the spiritual life. So we always begin with a few moments of silent prayer to give us that opportunity to be spiritually prepared, and then I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful we can come together this evening to focus upon You, to focus upon Your Word, to give us a better understanding of the totality of Your revelation to us, that we can come to understand Scripture better when we read it, and that by reading it with understanding, God the Holy Spirit can help us to see how it fits together and how it applies to our own thinking and to our lives. And Father, we continue to pray for these folks out in Southern California who are losing everything they had to these horrible fires. And Father, we know that there are a lot of churches that are also being burnt to the ground and this is going to be a very difficult time spiritually for those congregations and for those pastors and ministers because of just all the logistics that are involved in dealing with something like this. Many cases when there are hurricanes or tornadoes or these wildfires, people just can't go back. And I know of congregations that have just disappeared because of the natural disasters that have taken place. So Father, we pray for those churches. We pray for those who are faithfully teaching the Word that they will be encouraging others and also using this as an opportunity to give them the gospel as well. And so we pray for us tonight as we study your Word and continue to talk about the last years of the coverage of the Old Testament in the exile, understanding why that was necessary and how we are to live because we are in a similar condition to those Jews who were exiled into a pagan society and pagan environment and had to live to glorify you in the midst of a hostile environment. So Father give us insight in this as we study tonight We pray in Christ's name, amen. All right, let's review where we are. We have come through a study of most of the history of Israel in the Old Testament. You had the United Kingdom and then the Divided Kingdom. The Divided Kingdom was divided between North and South. The Northern Kingdom was called Israel. The Southern Kingdom was called Judah. The northern kingdom never had a godly king. They never had any strong, positive volition, although during the time of the prophet Elijah, Elijah thought he was the only one, and there were 5,000 who had never bowed the knee to the idolaters. And so as a result of that, there was always a small remnant But God eventually brought divine discipline on the northern kingdom, the fifth cycle of discipline. And he brought in the Assyrian army that devastated the northern kingdom and took captive many of the people and then distributed them around their empire. But many people, those who were believers, knew what was happening, believed what the prophets were warning about, and they fled to the south. So there's no such thing as the, quote, 10 lost tribes of Israel. Those 10 tribes were the tribes that made up the northern kingdom of Israel. Because many of those people in all of those 10 tribes just went south where there was a positive volition and a godly king. So in 722 BC, the northern kingdom went out. The prophets warned about this, the role of the prophet was to function like a prosecuting attorney, prosecuting from God's side and bringing charges against the people for their violation of the covenant. And so we saw at the end of Deuteronomy that Moses outlined the blessings and the curses that God promised to bring on Israel. Blessings if they were obedient, curses, which means judgments, if they were disobedient. But he said he would never break his promise that he had made to Abraham of the possession of the land and an eternal seed that would culminate in the Messiah and worldwide blessing. And so the prophets continued to speak about the future and the ultimate arrival of the Messiah. And we saw that prophets were not active today in the church, because they were active in the beginning of the church age, but like apostles, they were a revelatory gift, and once the revelation through the prophets and apostles was concluded by the end of the first century, There was no method. You can read through all 27 books of the New Testament and you will not find any of the stipulations that you find in the Old Testament for how to judge or evaluate a prophet. Prophets would evaluate prophets in the New Testament period, but that is no longer in effect. And then we went into the second part of that lesson where The people were sent into exile. This is the rise of what is called in the Bible, the times of the Gentiles, where Israel is no longer a significant empire and the people had been deported to other parts of the empire. And so political power shifted to the Gentile powers. And we're still in the times of the Gentiles. And that does not end until Jesus Christ returns at the second coming to establish his kingdom. So we looked at this in terms of the departure of the Shekinah glory from the temple described in Ezekiel and that departs in 591 BC and from that point until the Lord returns we are not in a time of the Jews but a time of the Gentiles. Then we saw that they were sent into exile and the beginning of the role of prophetic literature. How should we understand this prophetic literature? As it's basically the indictment of the nation for their violation of the Mosaic Law. And during this time we see the rise of the kingdom of man in the times of the Gentiles. We see various religions. We went through these. Various religions had their origin during this time period. You look at Buddhism and Hinduism and many Eastern religions and some other religions that came up out of Persia. And these had their roots. And also Greek philosophy has its roots during this same time period. And we ask the question at the end, does God still speak to people in dreams? And the answer is no, because now God has a completed canon of scripture. And we went through and at the end of the lesson I showed that he rarely spoke to people in dreams. He spoke most but prior to the writing of any scripture so that God now has revealed his complete and sufficient word to us so that we don't need anything additional because the word of God is sufficient and complete. And so tonight we're looking at the beginning of lesson 27 and the subject of this lesson is living as believers in a pagan culture and this looks at primarily at Daniel because Daniel was a Jewish believer he brought up in a godly family and his friends Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah we know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego by their Babylonian names but they were godly young men who grew up in godly families where their parents had trained them in the Torah, trained them in the law, trained them in the scriptures, and they were faithful to the Lord no matter what was going on around them. And they did not compromise with the pagan culture. So that gives us an example of how we are to live in a pagan culture. And we do live in an extremely pagan culture. We have our timeline. I'm not going to have us stand up and go through it tonight. We start off with the creation, fall, flood, and the Tower of Babel. That's in the first part of Genesis. And then because of the failure of the human race to scatter and fill the earth, at the Tower of Babel, God judged the people and scattered their languages, which forced them to scatter and to fill the earth. And then God called out someone new through whom he would reveal his word through Abraham and his descendants through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He gave Abraham a covenant, a contract that he would provide a piece of real estate for his people, his descendants, a land for the nation, that he would provide descendants that would be more numerous than the stars in the sky and the sand of the sea. and that he would provide one descendant who would have victory over the enemies of Israel and the enemies of God, and that would be the one who has become known as the Anointed One, or in Hebrew it's the Mashiach, the Messiah. So those first five books of the Bible written by Moses cover that period of history. Following that we have the entry of the Israelites into the land that God promised them and the conquest of the pagan nations, the Canaanites and all of the other nations in the land of Canaan. And then the eventual compromise that the Israelites made which led to the ongoing failures that they had spiritually as well as socially and politically. Following that period, God provided, they wanted a king, they rejected God as their king, so we have the period of the United Kingdom. Now Joshua, Judges, and Ruth describe that period of the conquest, and then the subsequent books, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, cover the period of the United Kingdom through Solomon and then when Solomon died God authorized the ten nations in the north to rebel against Solomon's heir Rehoboam and Rehoboam triggered that revolt by increasing the tax burden until it was too onerous for the people in the north and so they split and from that point on there were two nations the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, went out in divine discipline in 722 BC, and then the Southern Kingdom, Judah, went out in 586 BC. And so there were still Jews who were left in the land and continued their presence, but there was no longer a Jewish entity in terms of a government or a nation. But they were in exile. The people were out of the land for 70 years. And this is where we are now as we look at this study. And we're covering the exile. So what happens during their exile is that the times of the Gentiles begins, as I mentioned a minute ago. And this is the rise of the pagan kingdom of man. And man always thinks he can work his way to heaven. So no matter what religion people come up with, It's always based upon man doing something to please God. Man's going to do something and God's going to bless it, instead of God doing the work and man receiving it. And so the kingdom of man was exemplified through the episode at the Tower of Babel, and then through the power of the Egyptian pharaoh, and then through the Canaanites in Canaan, and God was restraining the evil of the pagan kingdoms. And then he began to raise up a counterculture through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So he chose Abraham not for salvation, Abraham was already saved, but he chose Abraham because it was going to be through Abraham's descendants that God would bless the entire world. So he Initially, because of their proclivity to assimilate to the pagan nations, God isolated them down in Egypt through the episode with taking Joseph down there so that Joseph could help the Egyptians through the time of the famine. And as a result of that, all of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there were about 70, and they went down to Egypt, and they lived in the north in a land called Goshen. And then over time, God blessed them and they multiplied, had numerous children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, until a new Pharaoh came into power that did not honor Joseph's memory and he enslaved the Jews. And so because he enslaved Israel, God redeems them through the 10 plagues culminating in the death of the firstborn and the deliverance through the sacrifice of a lamb that was without spot or blemish, a picture of Jesus Christ who is without sin and Jesus Christ was said to be the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So we go through the ritual of the Passover is a picture, a foreshadowing of the death of Christ. And then God built Israel, gave them a law. A nation needs to have land, it needs to have a law code, it needs to have a ruler. And so God was the ruler initially. He gave them the Mosaic law and he gave them the land. And he provided a temple where God would dwell in their midst, in the tabernacle or temple. And then they would worship him and God would give them guidance until they rejected God said they wanted to have a king. So through this time period then after this conquest and settlement when the Israelites went into the land they compromised with the pagans that were there with the Canaanites and as a result they became more pagan than the Canaanites were. And so God brought discipline upon them time and again and that's recorded in the book of Judges. And then he is going to He blesses them finally with the king, but as they continue to follow the course of paganism in different cycles, as we've studied before in other book studies, God raised up these prophets. They had three functions, as we've studied in previous lessons. They were God's historians. They were recording all of these acts as God inspired them to write the scripture. They were God's prosecuting attorneys. and they were God's scripture writers. And so this is the function of the prophets. And throughout this time, there is the emphasis on correct understanding of Yahweh as the infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal creator. And he is not a creature. He is not part of this universe. He is not part of the created order. And so this was very important to understand that. Now the nation of Israel ended up being no different than the rebellious pagans who were worshiping all of these other gods. They just got sucked into all the other religious systems of all these different people and kept doing the same thing. They were rebels against Yahweh from the time God first made them into a nation. Through the wilderness they were constantly groups that would rebel against God's instructions. They rebelled against the Mosaic Law. They rebelled when God told them to conquer the Promised Land. They began to compromise and intermarry with the Canaanites. Then eventually they rebelled by asking for a human king instead of honoring Yahweh as their king. And they rebelled by ignoring the prophets. So you read through Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel and some parts of that are very discouraging because it's describing all of these horrific things that God's indicting them for as they violated God's commands and God continued to warn them of coming judgment. And so then even when God sent judgment, they just blamed God and continued to rebel. so god takes them out of the land and the book of daniel is the story tells the story of these four young men uh... daniel and his three friends uh... hand and i as a riot michelle and that they are going to uh... be in a complete pagan environment that they're going to go to they're going to go to university the university of babylon where they are going to be indoctrinated in all of the horrible views of the Babylonians. They're going to be indoctrinated with the whole religious system of the state and they're going to be taught all of the views that come out of that mythological system of idol worship that controlled Babylon. And so they have to stand firm. Every day they're facing the choice, am I going to do what the Babylonians tell me to do, or am I going to stand firm for the Torah?" And they had decisions to make, and it's difficult, and we're in the same boat. So Daniel is a book, part of the reason that it was written was to give us an example of how these godly young men would stand firm for the truth of God's Word in the midst of all of the pressure that was brought against them in this pagan pagan culture. So you have two groups. You have the earlier exiles who came out in 721 and then those who came out in 586 and here's the book of Daniel during this period between 586 to 515. If you look at a Jewish Bible it's usually referred to as the Tanakh. The Tanakh is a word that is made up from three three letters. Each letter is the beginning letter of the three divisions of the Torah, of the Old Testament. So you have the Torah, and Torah means instruction, but it also means law. It depends on the context. And so it is God's instruction to Israel as to how a godly people are to live, how God's people who are under a covenant with him are to live. That's the first five books. Then you have the prophets. This is the Nevi'im. You have the early prophets, Samuel, Kings. Those were referred to as the early prophets. What we refer to as Samuel, Kings. Chronicles was considered part of the writings. So you have all of those books, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, all the way up to, at that point, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther had not occurred yet or been written. But those are the Nevi'im, the prophets. And then you have the greater prophets, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. And then most of the minor prophets, three were after the exile. Those would have been the Nevi'im. And then the Ketuvim are the writings. And writings would be wisdom literature, dealing a lot with practical application things. Books like Job and the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. lamentations. These were all part of the Ketuvim. But when the rabbis organized the Old Testament, they put Daniel into the writings. They did not view Daniel as a prophet. He had the gift of prophecy, but he does not have the role of prophet in the nation because he's outside the nation. He's in Babylon. He's in exile. So his writings are put into the into that third division, the Ketuvim, the writings. Now, in English, the way English Bibles are organized, you have the law, which is the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses. Then you have the history books. Then you have the wisdom literature. And then after that, after Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, you have the prophets. You have Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then the 12. But we put Daniel, usually people want to classify him as the prophets, but he should be part of wisdom literature. Wisdom in the Bible has to do with skill at doing something. So that when Moses was going to build the tabernacle, there were two craftsmen, Holiab and Bezalel. And God's Holy Spirit came upon them and gave them chokmah, which is the Hebrew word for wisdom, gave them skill, skill to design, to build. They were the artisans, the goldsmiths and silversmiths and the jewelers and the weavers. And they had this, were given a special skill in what they were producing so that the tabernacle was one of the most beautiful edifices in the Old Testament period. And later on he did the same thing with the building of Solomon's temple. So wisdom is skill at applying God's Word. And so as wisdom literature, Daniel teaches us how to live in the pagan kingdom of man. When we're surrounded by, you know, they had, where they were basically going to a state-sponsored school where the curriculum was to inculcate the pagan beliefs of the state of Babylon. And so they had to eat their diet, they had to regurgitate all of the lessons, and that's not much different than what happens in a lot of university campuses today and in a lot of public schools today, where students are taught all kinds of things about environmentalism and socialism and Marxism and evolution, Darwinism, and a lot of stuff in sociology. And you can say, well, there's some good stuff there. Yeah, yeah. Just remember that you can have a glass of water that's 99% water and 1% cyanide. Are you going to drink it? It doesn't matter how much truth is there unless it's 100% truth. There's always evil in the midst of that, which is good. So They had to learn how they would live when they would come into conflicts. And then the other aspect is that God always gives hope in prophecy. Prophecy is about the future and to help believers survive into tough times. So we come to this. This is on about page 3 now going through this. At the top of page 3 I think it is. life for the young, exiles in the pagan kingdom of man. And so as they are exiled to Babylon and under this foreign land with a idolatrous polytheistic religion, they are cut off from everything that they were familiar with. And as part of what they were doing, being trained to be bureaucrats within the government of Babylon, they also were under a diet, dietary rules that were being prepared for them. And the issue there wasn't that these foods had been offered to idols so much as it was that they didn't follow the laws, the dietary laws of Moses, the dietary laws of the Torah. And these dietary laws are referred to by the word in Hebrew, kashrut, which is where we get our word kosher. And so if you are following that diet that is prescribed in the Mosaic Law, that's a kosher diet. Now, every now and then, I always have to put this caveat in here, every five or ten years, Some dietician comes out with some new diet to capture, make a lot of money because a lot of untaught Christians buy into this and says, we just need to go back to eat the diet that God devised for the Israelites and we'll be healthy and we'll live longer and all of this other nonsense. And it is nonsense because the cash root laws had absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with health. How do we know that? You know, I've had people argue with me, say, well, you know, pork has these problems, it's not healthy to eat pork, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Did Peter learn all of that in Acts 10, all those problems with pork? No, he didn't. because in Acts chapter 10 God gave him a vision and he sees a huge tablecloth coming down and on that tablecloth he's got bacon and shrimp and lobster and all kinds of food that was not according to the law. And God said it's all clean now you can eat whatever you want to eat. He didn't give Peter a cookbook so that he could correctly cook pork at the right temperature so they wouldn't have any kind of diseases. It had nothing to do with health. It had everything to do with the fact that as far as I've been able to investigate, the kinds of foods that were prohibited were kinds of foods that were associated in some way with death. So any animal or sea creature that was a scavenger that was eating corpses, that would be unclean. Why? Because death was the penalty for sin. And so it's all about teaching spiritual principles and that they were not supposed to be separated from sin and the consequences of sin. They were supposed to be cleansed. And so they were just teaching tools. So Daniel and his friends are gathered together with these other Israelites. And Daniel and his friends, what we know from secular sources is these men were all members of the royal family of Israel. So they were already educated, they were trained, and they've been taken as captives around 605 B.C. And Nebuchadnezzar attacked Judah three times. Third time was 586 when he destroyed the temple. The first time he just took a bunch of captives away. Among them were these boys. Then he took them back and they're going to be trained. Some of them are sons of the nobles and they're the king's descendants. So they're in the royal family of Israel. And they're going to be retrained to function in the bureaucracy of Babylon. And in verse four we read, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge, quick to understand, possessing, who had ability to serve in the king's palace and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans. Verse five says, and the king appointed for them a daily provision of the king's delicacies and of the wine which he drank. and three years of training for them. So this is almost like going to college. College is four years, they have a three-year curriculum. Three years of training for them so that at the end of that time they might serve before the king. Now from among those of the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And so one of the first things they did was they gave them new names. Now there is, I'm going to skip ahead here so we have it, They give them these new names. And so every time they would sign anything, they would have to sign with their new name. And the new names were names that had religious connotations. So Daniel is a Hebrew name, which means God is my judge. El is the last syllable. That's from Elohim. God is my judge. And his new name is Belteshazzar. May Bel, Bel is a god in the Babylonian pantheon, may Bel protect his life. Hananiah, the Yah at the end of the name Hananiah is the first syllable in Yahweh. And Hanan, Hanan is the name, is a word for grace. So Yahweh is gracious was his name, but his new name is Shadrach. which probably referred to the idol Marduk. Mishael, who is like God, is changed to Meshach, who is Akko, who is the moon god. Azariah, Yahweh is my helper. Abednego means servant of Nebo. So every time they had to sign their names, they are basically being reminded that they are now under the authority of the Babylonian pantheon. So the chief of the eunuchs gave them these new names. So the plan was to give them a pagan education, completely change the way they thought about life, about the origin of life, and about the purpose of life and what makes a person successful. And second, they immersed them in pagan culture. And third, they erased their identity by giving them new names and a new public face. So all of this was part of the re-education program. So because they didn't have parents to continue giving them input, they didn't have the voice of the prophets, they didn't have written scripture with them, they didn't have the temple, they're now in a foreign land under pagan rule with pagan education with the name change, the idea is to completely give them a makeover from the inside out. And that is always the plan and program of the kingdom of man. It doesn't matter where you are in history, whether you're in the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere, Eastern Hemisphere, whether you're in the Middle Ages, wherever you are, there's the kingdom of man is ruling and is always that conflict between the state and God. And it goes back before the flood. And so how do we live in this kind of a situation? Now we had a wonderful situation in America because many of the founders who came here had a solid biblical grounding and gave us a tremendous legacy. But over the last 200 plus years that has been attacked and it has eroded in the universities. And just recently I read a wonderful quote from back in the 1960s by Ayn Rand where she said the most destructive arena in America is in the universities because there they are going to shape the thinking of young minds. And so that's where Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and Daniel were there in the university system there. And we know from things that have happened on many of our university campuses in this last year We've seen a rise in anti-Semitism. We've seen the rise, and it's really come out of the closet, because this kind of thing was being taught when I was in university, which was a couple of years ago. And they were teaching these things, Marxism, Socialism, and it was very anti-constitutional and anti-American. And according to the Constitution, which we have apparently thrown out, that it is wrong, completely wrong, for anybody to try to tax or spend the federal dollars other than with the authorization of Congress. And the day our President started off the morning, he had a bill that was being questioned because he was going to provide federal dollars to fund 75 percent of the cost of repairing everything after these fires in Southern California. By noon, he was announcing that he had changed it to 100%. Well, that's a dictator, and they're accusing President Trump of being a dictator. This is taxing people by fiat, without approval of Congress, the elected representatives. And this is not constitutional, but apparently we don't believe in the Constitution anymore because we let presidents continue to do this kind of thing for at least the last 30 or 40 years. Commit federal dollars that they don't have to these projects. So the trends of history are always the same and they trend towards tyranny and they trend toward slavery of the citizens. And how do we as believers live in the midst of a culture that no longer honors God? Now, there are subcultures that do. But overall, the broad culture in Western civilization, including Europe, Canada, the Americas, the culture is anti-biblical. So what do we do? Well, first of all, we have to choose the battle. you have your kids and for whatever reason you have to have them in public school. I grew up in public school and I had been well taught already on a lot of the issues in the creation evolution debate because one of the men who was the director of the adventure camps, I grew up going to a Christian camp called Camp Peniel, and one of the men, Mike Turnage, was a high school biology teacher. And on the canoe trips, he taught Bible classes dealing with creation, evolution every day. And a lot of that was new to me. And so I would ask him questions about that. And he told me to read a book called The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. And that book has been updated by others and come out with different titles. That was the groundbreaking book that began the creation science movement from the early 60s and so I understood that and my mother and father were firm believers in a in in Genesis 1 being a literal actual account of creation and so they basically told me you don't just learn What the teacher is telling you? Regurgitate it back on a test so you can get a good grade, but you don't have to buy into any of it And that's one of the things that you do. We can't fight on every hill. We can't die on every hill. We have to pick and choose our battles. And that's what we learned from Daniel. Second, the protest should be as peaceful as possible, not violating authority. And that's what we see with Daniel. And also to use very practical arguments. The first part of this is to see how Daniel, Hanani, Mishael, and Azariah lived and how they followed the biblical principles. So first of all, they chose the battle. They could have fought getting their names changed. They could have fought some of the stuff and argued with their professors in the various classes that they went to all day long. But they knew that they had to pick something that was a clear violation of what God told them to do and not to do in the Mosaic Law. And so in Daniel 1.8, we read, but Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies. So he's not going to eat treife, that is the Hebrew for the opposite of kashrut. So kosher is what's authorized, treife is what's not authorized. So he's not going to eat treife, they made a commitment to follow the law And so they're not going to do that or drink the wine either. And so what he did was he made a request. He got an appointment with the chief of the eunuchs. And instead of standing up and making an issue out of it in public, he goes in to have a private conversation with him. And I'm sure he followed this. I'm sure he followed this with a lot of prayer. Now in the one of the things they point out in the notes, is that some of this food could have been that which was sacrificed to idols. And so that was an issue. And this was the whole issue in 1 Corinthians 8 is that the Christians were trying to decide, well, what should we do if we go to somebody's house for dinner or we are at some meeting at work and the meat that is provided is a meat that was sacrificed to idols. Because the basic meat market, and the old word for that was the shambles, and the basic meat market was down at the temple. And so all of these animals would be sacrificed and then the meat is then sacrificed, dedicated to the God, and then the meat is is butchered and chopped up and sold to the people for their meat. And so is it valid or not to eat the meat? That may have been part of the issue, but the broader issue was they were sticking to the Levitical diet. In 1 Corinthians 8.4, Paul says some interesting things here. He says, concerning the eating of things offered to idols. We know that an idol is nothing in the world. Okay, so the first thing he's saying is the idol is just a piece of wood or stone, but there's a spiritual dimension to every idol that we'll see. But it's just a, there's only one God, the idols are not gods. And then he says, for even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, Yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. But food does not commend us to God, for neither if we eat are we the better, or if we do not eat are we the worse." In other words, this is a non-issue. However, there are some issues to be aware of in this. He says that we are to flee from idolatry. So it could be a weakness that somebody has, and they get sucked into idolatry because they are going along with eating the food that has been dedicated to the idols. So he says, I speak as to wise men. Judge for yourselves. It's each person's individual decision. So he says, the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ that deals with the cup in the Lord's Supper? The bread which we break, the matzah, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of that one bread." He said, observe Israel after the flesh. Are not those who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? That was what they did under the Mosaic law. calves and cows and sheep and goats were sacrificed to God and then the meat would be shared with the people. He said, so what am I saying? That an idol is anything or what is offered to idols is that something? He said, now this is the spiritual dimension. The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. Now if you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 27 and 28. There are, on the legislation there, it's very clear, and also I think it's in Deuteronomy 32, Moses mentions it in his parting words, that when you sacrifice to idols you're sacrificing to demons. That idols are really just a front for demons. And so Paul is saying the same thing here, that they may be sacrificing to Zeus or to Aphrodite or to Mercury But they're really sacrificing to a demon that is behind that. Now, some of you remember when we were first started, we went into this, that there are sections in a wonderful work by John Milton, who was a 17th century Puritan called Paradise Lost, which is quite long, but should be read by high school kids. And he has a very good theology. And when he is describing all of the fallen angels in heaven, The names that he gives them are Zeus and Aphrodite and Hermes and all of the names of the Greek and Roman and the Phoenician gods and goddesses. Because he understood this biblical principle that those false gods and goddesses that we think, oh, that's just mythology, they are the personas that have been adopted by various different demons. So Paul says the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I don't want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the cup of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? He says, eat whatever is sold in the meat market, asking no questions for conscience sake. You know, don't ask him, well, was this sacrifice or not? Just go get the meat, it's neutral. He says, for the earth is the Lord's and all of its fullness. He goes on to say, if any of those who do not believe invite you to dinner, so your neighbors invite you over for dinner, don't sit there and say, where'd you get the meat? Was this sacrifice to idols? Don't ask questions. Eat whatever is set before you, asking no questions for conscience sake. But if someone there says to you, you know, this was a sacrifice to idols, then don't eat it for the sake, not for the sake of your conscience, for the sake of that person's conscience, because they don't understand the issues. And if you eat it, you're going to create an issue. And so this is one of those areas. that is not moral or immoral. It has no value one way or the other, but people will make issues out of all kinds of things and just be sensitive to the weaker brother for whom your understanding of grace may lead to causing problems for them spiritually. And that's what Paul says in verse 29. Conscience, I say, not your own, but that of the other. For why is my liberty judged by another man's conscience?" And so this is important because to understand that what we can or should or should not do, and that's part of wisdom. It's just saying, you know, at other times I can partake, but I can't right now because this person is a young believer, a weak believer, he hasn't been taught well, and it's just going to create a problem. So it's better to just say, just pass on it and wait till you get home or go somewhere else. So, a couple of things to think about here that they have. This is on page 7, Under Thoughts to Ponder. They write, Some believers think we have to fight the pagan system at every point. However, this is not how Daniel approached it. Even though he disagreed with many things within the pagan system, he went along with much of it. He had no choice. If he didn't go along, it was probably the death penalty. So he looked at each of the issues. He looked at the curriculum. He looked at the name change. And he decided that the course of wisdom would be to offer a solution to the head of the eunuchs. So that's the second principle, to protest as peaceably as possible by submitting to authority. So Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with these delicacies and he prayed about it. God brought him into favor in the goodwill of the chief of the eunuchs. And so what happens is he goes in and he makes this deal and he says, let us go on this diet for 10 days. And you put everybody else on your diet, and we're going to see who's stronger and healthier at the end of 10 days. And if they're stronger and healthier, then we'll eat your diet. And if we're stronger and healthier, then you can allow us to eat our diet. And so God blessed that, and they ate. Ten days later, Daniel and the other three were healthy, strong, and the other team wasn't doing so well. And so they didn't have the FDA back then to make sure that all the food was good and sanitary and everything else. So the Jews were following their stipulations in the Mosaic Law. So the next principle is to use practical arguments, which is what he did. And so he asked for permission not to eat the food that they'd been given. So all they had to get was an answer. You could say yes, no, or maybe. And he went along with it and said, OK, we'll give it a try. So the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear, my lord, the king who's appointed your food and drink, for why should he see your faces looking worse than the young men who are your age? Then you would endanger my head before the king. So Daniel said to the steward, whom the chief of the eunuchs had said over them and said, please test your servants for 10 days and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance be examined before you and the appearance of the young men who eat the portion of the king's delicacies and as you see fit, so deal with your servants. So he consented in that manner. And at the end of 10 days, their features appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the other young men who ate the portion of the king's delicacies. So then the steward took away their portion of delicacies and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables. So this is the pattern. And God blessed them. God gave them knowledge and skill and all literature and wisdom. Daniel had understanding and all visions and dreams. And at the end of days when the king had said that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar and the king interviewed them. And among them all, none was found like Daniel. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. They were at the top of their class. So then we ask the question, what if the Gentile government demands something that is outright anti-biblical or anti-God? Something that is either the government tells you to do something that the Bible prohibits specifically, and I emphasize that. We're not talking about, well, there's a principle in the Bible. No, no, no, no, no. We're not arguing some little abstract principle. We're arguing text. When God says, you shall not, and the government says, you shall, then you've got a case. But if you're looking at some verse, you say, well, you know, underlining this, there's this principle. No, no, no, no, no. It's got to be clear cut. And then you make an issue out of it and you do it following these principles of showing deference. You're polite. You're not argumentative. You make a case for your position. And as we have studied many times as we've gone through the teaching of the scriptures, we have these divine institutions that God has established. And in every divine institution, there are authorities. The first three divine institutions, we looked at these briefly on Sunday. You have responsible choice. The authority is we're responsible to God, every one of us. Marriage. The husband, the father, is the head of the home. The family. Family, the parents, are the head of the home. In following the flood, there was the establishment of civil government. And then at the Tower of Babel, tribal diversity. Each one of these, there are authorized governing leaders. And then Israel is to bless the world. The ultimate authority there is God. So you always have these issues. In 1 Peter 2, in the New Testament, Peter writes, therefore submit yourselves to whatever ordinances you think God will approve of. Is that what it says? It says, submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. whether to the king and supreme or to governors as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. For this is the will of God, for you to submit to every ordinance of man, even if you think it's wrong. I had some friends early on and one of them believed that income tax was totally wrong and never paid income tax. I never heard from him again. I don't know what ever happened to him. You know, just because you think that, well, the Bible is really against income tax and the Bible's against property tax, because there's no property tax in the Mosaic Law. Well, you may have a point, but there's no point, there's no place where God says it's immoral to pay property tax. Don't do it. You've got to have clear-cut statements that the government is coming along and directly violating. So it's the will of God that by doing good, We may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king." So you have several situations like this that came up in... that comes up in Daniel. And the first one is when Nebuchadnezzar is full of himself and he builds this big idol that's made of gold and demands that everybody come and worship Him as a sign of loyalty, every citizen in the nation. And so they're going to gather everybody together, and the orchestra's going to play, and everybody has to bow down and worship the idol. And there's a penalty if you don't, and you will be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. So when the orchestra played, all the people, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the gold image which Nebuchadnezzar had set up. But what do Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do? They are brought before the king and they told the king that they have to obey God and not him in this instance. And they said, God is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace, but even if he doesn't, we're going to trust him. And so they stood their ground And you know the rest of the story, that the king had his servants go throw them into the fiery furnace. First they had him stoke it up a lot hotter than it had been. And some of those guards that were taking them in just were incinerated. But nothing happened. Not a hair on their head was touched by the heat. And when Nebuchadnezzar looked in there, he saw a fourth person that looked like the Son of God. And so it was the Lord Jesus Christ who appeared with them and protected them from the flames. So that's one example. Stand your ground. And there are many examples where God does not necessarily protect us. And what happens? Well, we lose our life and we're face to face with the Lord. And then everything's great. Second example was Daniel in the lion's den. And the Counselors to the king tricked the king into signing a decree that anyone who petitioned any God or man for 30 days other than the king would be cast into a den of lions. And so Daniel went home and just like he did every day, he threw his windows open and he knelt down facing Jerusalem and prayed. And these guys, of course, were sitting in ambush ready for him to do that. And so they arrested him and took him before the king and the king, against his desires, was forced by the law to put Daniel into a lion's den. And Daniel just had a good night's sleep and the lions had a good night's sleep and nobody got eaten. And the next morning Cyrus was coming down to check things out or Darius rather was coming down to check things out and there was Daniel alive and well because the angel had come and closed the mouth of the lions. So we have to trust in God and do what God says to do and let God deal with the consequences. So there are various principles that we should consider regarding disobeying government. And they have a nice chart describing this. This is on, I think it's on page 12 or 12 or 13. First of all, disobedience is legitimate I would say disillegitimate only when we are prevented from doing what God says to do. Not just worshiping Yahweh, but doing what God says to do. Second principle is lean on God and His word to guide our words and actions. Third, when disobeying, the most powerful witness to God is an act of trust followed by a clear, calm, well-reasoned explanation of why we are taking the course of action we're taking. Fourth, in disobeying the government, show respect and submit to the required punishment. Fifth, know the sovereignty of God and know the believer's role within the pagan kingdom of man. Sixth, maintain integrity and continue to pray. And seventh, continue to pray for the pagan rulers and the pagan country and the pagan city. So, each one of these is very important. One thing we should remember, Philippians 3.20, is that our citizenship is in heaven. Now, I've heard some Christians say, well, I'm really a citizen of heaven, not of the United States. That's not what this is saying. This is saying you have dual citizenship. You have citizenship responsibilities in the United States, and you have citizenship responsibilities to a higher citizenship, which is your citizenship in heaven and occasionally they may conflict and when it's a head-on collision then you have to obey God rather than man and that's what Peter and John told the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 4. So you have the pagan kingdom of man that's based on works, man's got to save himself and provide his own utopia which is the foundation of all liberalism versus the kingdom of God which is based on grace that God saves man and delivers man and that believers are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We have a new identity in Christ. We are in the church and we are members of the body of Christ and we have to stand firm there. In Jeremiah chapter 27, Jeremiah gives instructions about not rebelling against authorities. He says, and command them to say to their masters, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, thus you shall say to your masters. Who are your masters? They're the Babylonians that are coming in. This is what God reminded the believers. I have made the earth, the man, and the beast that are on the ground by my great power and by my outstretched arm and have given it to whom it seemed proper to me. And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and the beast of the field I have also given him to serve him. So God raises up the rulers even if we think the rulers are wrong and evil. God was the one who raised up Nebuchadnezzar and put him there. And so when Nebuchadnezzar directly challenged Yahweh and his character Then it was up to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to make the correct decision. You have to remember the creator-creature distinction. Well, we're running out of time. The rest of this lesson deals with developing each of those principles a little bit. And we're only going to do, let me see, I have, oh, I only have one more I'm going to cover tonight. We'll cover the rest next week. So principle two is this. Lean on God and His word to guide your words and actions. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 says trust in the Lord and acknowledge Him in all ways and He will direct your paths. And so this is what we do. We trust the Lord and He will guide our words and actions. But we have to truly trust the Lord and humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. And so this was what they said to Nebuchadnezzar. said, if that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up. So that is the second principle. We'll come back next time to go through the remainder of those principles. Let's bow in prayer. Father, thank you for this opportunity to look at these Great examples in Daniel of how we are to live, how we are to conduct ourselves in the midst of a culture and a society that turns more and more hostile to you all of the time, how we are to rely upon you every step of the way, and that we are to honor you as well as honor those in authority even though their commands or mandates might be what we disagree with. So Father, we pray that you'd help us to internalize these principles and see how we can glorify you even in the midst of this wicked and perverse generation. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.