And so after the death of Solomon, the kingdom is divided. Israel in the north, Judah in the south. And both kingdoms had a pattern of rebellion against God. The northern kingdom had many different dynasties of kings, but none of them were faithful to the Lord. Judah from time to time would have some godly kings, but for the most part they were not much holier than the northern kingdom. And so Israel the northern king went into captivity in 722 BC by the Assyrians. And so when we arrive at our text here in Daniel, what we're seeing is the Babylonian captivity of the southern Kingdom of Judah beginning in 605 BC. There were three waves of invasions against Jerusalem from the Babylonians. This one in 605, then again in 597, and then the final one was in 586 when Jerusalem finally fell. So now life in Babylon was very interesting. Whenever the Babylonians would come in and conquer another nation, they would find the brightest and best minds of those that they conquered, and they would put them to use in their kingdom. And so the King Nebuchadnezzar must have seen something special in Daniel, something special in his three friends. We know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but their Hebrew names are Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And so the king must have seen something in these gentlemen, these young men, so he puts them to work in the kingdom. They're going to receive a portion of food from the king's table. And so this is where we come to our story, where Daniel and his friends are going to receive this food and wine from the king, and we see Daniel's reaction to that. So before we read the text, let us pray once again. Heavenly Father, we come now to the preaching of your word. We ask that you would silence in us any voice by your own and by your Holy Spirit that you would teach us this evening. These are your words. Yes, they are human words in one sense, but they are spiritual words and we need your spirit to help us discern them. So we ask that You would do that for us this evening. In Jesus' name, Amen. Hear now the Word of the Lord from Daniel 1, beginning in verse 16. This is God's Holy Word. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace, to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time, they were to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names. Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hanani he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego. But Daniel resolved he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who has signed your food and your drink. For why should he see that you are in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king. Then Daniel said to the steward, whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, test your servants for 10 days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you and deal with your servants according to what you see. So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So I want you to inform me, the theme for this sermon is this, be a follower of Christ and not a follower of the world. And so as we are trying not to be followers of the world, the first thing that we should consider is that we should not be defiled by worldly temptations. Don't be defiled by worldly temptations. In verses eight through 10, we see that Daniel is receiving honor from the king. He and his friends, again, as I mentioned before, the king must see something special in these men, and so he wants to employ them in the kingdom of Babylon. And so to do so, he is offering them the finest meat and the finest wine from the king's table. But we see that Daniel refuses such accommodations. Listen again to verse 8. But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And so right away, we see an issue with possibly unclean foods. There are a couple of issues here. Again, the foods could be unclean. In the Mosaic era, there were dietary restrictions. A godly Jew in the Old Testament would have to abide by certain regulations when it came to his diet. Of course, in the New Covenant era, we're free to eat whatever we want, but we have to remember at what point Daniel is in concerning the overall covenant of grace. Daniel is in the Mosaic era, as I said, and they had a food restriction. So Daniel may be trying to avoid eating food that is according to the ban of the Mosaic law. This controversy comes into play in the New Testament in Acts chapter 10 when Peter has a vision of unclean animals and the Lord commands him to kill and eat. This is confusing for Peter because as a godly Jew he knew not to eat these foods. It required a command from the Lord Himself that it was okay for Peter to eat such foods. Daniel doesn't have such a command, and so as far as he's concerned, the Mosaic law, regardless of how far he is away from Jerusalem, is still in effect. The dire circumstances that he is in do not exempt him from following the law. Another concern that Daniel may have had, and there's a footnote in the NIV study Bible that indicates that these meats and this wine may have been used in pagan worship rituals. And so not knowing where this food and wine is coming from, Daniel has to be extra careful that these items were not used in pagan worship. There may also be a third concern for Daniel. And now, as I mentioned before about the invasion of Jerusalem, this was not the final blow against Jerusalem. At this point, Judah becomes a vassal state of the Babylonians. but they are in turmoil back in Jerusalem. Perhaps Daniel has a problem eating luxurious food from the king's table while his brethren are back in Judah in misery. So we see Daniel going to the chief eunuch and politely asking him if he could not defile himself. It seems that in verse 9, the Lord has given the eunuchs compassion and fondness for Daniel. And so He informs Daniel, look, the king has a command that you guys have to eat this food. If something happens to you and you get sick and malnourished from not eating what the king has commanded, our heads here are going to be on the chopping block. And so, but we notice that Daniel doesn't bark orders at the Babylonians. He, of course, recognizes that the Babylonians are in charge. The Jews are really in no position to bargain with the Babylonians, but he does politely ask, may I not defile myself with your food and wine? And so for us, beloved, if we are encountering those in the non-Christian world, it's not a bad idea if we engage the world with a certain amount of charity and patience. They may still think that our ideas are ridiculous. You guys worship this rabbi who lived 2,000 years ago, and you claim that he rose from the dead. And so our ideas, our beliefs may be ridiculed, but if we do show a little patience and kindness to the unbelievers, they may respect us a little bit. I can remember years ago I worked for McDonald's, I was a cook at McDonald's, and of course McDonald's is a company that's open seven days a week. That can present a problem for a Christian employee. How does he work for a company that he may have to work on Sundays? Well, I can tell you that when I went into the interview, I just politely asked them. I said, you know, Sunday is a day of worship. My father was a minister, and I asked if I could be excused from the Sunday schedule. In all the years at McDonald's, I worked at McDonald's both when I was living in Philadelphia and then when I came back here to live in Pittsburgh, and no one ever really hassled me about that. I never really had an issue with whether I would be scheduled on the Lord's Day. Now, there was a time when I wasn't as convinced how serious not working on the Lord's day should be, and so I would go in to fill in once in a while, but as my position grew stronger and seeing how that should be a day we set aside for the Lord, they still never hassled me. I didn't bark orders, I didn't make demands, but I'd simply ask, this is a day of worship, and they respected that. You know, in Daniel's case, with Daniel and these eunuchs, what Daniel's proposing is really quite dangerous here. Things could have gone in a negative direction by not eating this food, and we'll see what he proposes later on, but by not eating what the king is ordering, for them to eat. They could get sick, they could be malnourished, and everybody's life would be in danger because of this violation of the king's command. And so we must see a parallel here between the temptations that Daniel is facing in Babylon and the temptations that our Lord saw when he was in the wilderness. You know, Satan was always coming against the Lord, trying to get Him to do things the easy way. If all Jesus did was bow down to Him and worship Him then, He could avoid all the suffering of the cross and receive His kingdom without all that misery. Of course, that was a bold-faced lie. Satan doesn't own anything. Psalm 24.1 says that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein. So the devil cannot offer to Jesus something that he does not own. But this was the level of temptation that he would throw at the Lord, trying to get him to see that there may be another way other than that cross. But of course, Jesus was not capable of sinning. We know that. But the temptations He faced were real temptations. And so when Jesus felt real temptation, He can sympathize with Daniel. And He can even sympathize with us when we have people come against us, challenging us to abandon our standards of holiness. And so, again, while we are trying to not be followers of the world, sometimes we must be ready to stand our ground against worldly temptations. Be ready to stand your ground against worldly temptations. In verses 11 through 14, we see that Daniel presents a challenge to the eunuchs. Verses 12 and 13 say this. Test your servant for 10 days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see. So here's the challenge to the eunuchs. Daniel and his friends say, for the next 10 days, we will only drink and eat water and vegetables. So they are willing to give up whatever luxuries the king is giving them, and we will eat just vegetables and drink nothing but water. Now, again, this was a difficult test that Daniel was proposing. It could have gone the other way for him. He could have become malnourished by not eating the king's food. And so, regardless of the risks involved, though, Daniel was willing to stand his ground. Whatever the king would have commanded, He was going to remain faithful and not eat the foods that were being proposed to him. We see a similar situation later on in the book in Daniel chapter three. In Daniel chapter three, we have the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And in chapter three, Nebuchadnezzar is commanding everybody in the empire to worship this idol. And anyone who refuses to worship this idol will be cast into the fiery furnace. And so, of course, as godly Jewish men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship this idol, knowing what will come, knowing that there will be punishment in the form of this fiery furnace. And so what they say to the king is, we're not going to obey you in this matter. And if you throw us in the fire, our God can rescue us. But even if He doesn't, we are still not worshiping that idol. And so we see a similar thing from Daniel here. Whatever the king is commanding as far as this food goes, and this wine, again, Daniel does not have a command where he can just set these regulations aside for a moment. He's going to remain faithful to what the commandments say. He's not going to obey Nebuchadnezzar's word because he already has a sure word from God that those meats were off limits to him. And so again, when we consider Christ's temptation in the wilderness, the temptation to worship the devil, obviously Christ was not going to give in to such temptations. How in the world could a creature come to the Creator and demand worship? That was one of the most outlandish statements that the devil could ever throw at the Lord. And so it would have been easy for Daniel and his friends to just go along with what was being proposed. You know, again, they're thousands of miles from Jerusalem at this point, and they are in dire straits as far as, you know, the Babylonians are the ones in charge, and if we don't obey them, we could lose our lives over this. And so it is sometimes easier to do the thing that is sinful. You know, in our own society, consider the possibility of, for example, let's say there's a problem in your marriages. And the temptation would be to easily just go and file for divorce. People are always suggesting, you know, why don't you just get a divorce? It's common now anymore for people to be married two or three times, and perhaps they don't even really know how to be married until they've done it for three or four, the third or fourth time. But you are not like the world. You call yourselves followers of Jesus Christ, and if you are His followers, then you have to deal with issues in your marriage according to ways in which God would be honored. And so, unless there is an affair going on, or unless there is willful desertion going on, the job of the husband and wife is to repair that relationship in whatever means that are necessary. Again, it's easy to go along with the world. It's easy to go along with the easy thing, but that may not always be the godly thing. And so, while we don't want to be followers of the world, sometimes that means that worldly powers will come against us. And so, what we need to do in those situations is this. We must await the Lord's deliverance from worldly temptations. Await the Lord's deliverance from worldly temptations. So, in verses 15 and 16, we see that the test results are in. Verse 15. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all youths who ate the king's food." So this is very interesting here. Not only did Daniel and his friends not get malnourished by not eating the king's food, but they ended up being healthier than the young men who had eaten the king's food. Now, I don't know that Daniel was expecting this. We don't see anything in the earlier verses that indicates that Daniel was expecting some kind of big deliverance. Not that God couldn't have delivered him. I don't know that he would have doubted that, but he wasn't expecting it. The only thing he was trying to do was be loyal to God and to God's commandments, even if there was no reward involved with that. You know, we see Daniel's faith again later on in the book in chapter 6. In chapter 6, by this point, the Babylonians themselves had been conquered by another empire, the Medo-Persian Empire. And so when the Medo-Persians came in, King Darius signed an edict that there should be no one in the empire worshipped for the next 30 days except for King Darius. And of course Daniel knows about this regulation, but it does not stop him from honoring the Lord. Not only does he still pray to the God of Israel, but he does it in front of an open window so that everybody can see what he's doing. And so Daniel was not afraid to express his faith in the Lord, no matter what the cost. And in his case, the penalty was being thrown into a lion's den. He would be devoured by lions, and he knew this, if he openly worshipped the God of Israel in front of everybody. The sad situation of this was the king really liked Daniel. And when he found out that Daniel is the one who's broken this edict, he really doesn't want to send Daniel to the lion's den. But according to Medo-Persian law, once the king signed an edict, it could not be rescinded, not even by the king himself. So at this point, there is nothing that the king can do. He must send Daniel to this lion's den. And so, just like in that situation, we see Dano being vindicated. We see him being rescued. Now, we consider Christ's temptations. His temptation didn't end in the wilderness. When we go farther into the Gospel story, we see more temptation from Him, probably none stronger than in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He actually does ask the Father, is there another way for us to handle this? You know, He was not going to go against God's will. Whatever the Father willed, He was going to do. But He did ask just for a moment if there could be some other way. Now ultimately, the Lord Jesus knew that He would be delivered. He knew that if He went to the cross, resurrection was going to come only a couple days later. And in one sense, we know that about ourselves as well. We know that if we are following Christ and we encounter pressures against us and persecutions, and what if it does lead to our own demise? Well, we know that we'll be vindicated on Judgment Day. We know that there will be a day when Christ himself judges the living and the dead, and God's enemies will finally be destroyed. So we know there is a day coming. But every now and then, and we see this in the story of Daniel, that God will intervene and rescue even in the temporal moments. And so, while we can't expect that, we can't assume that every time trouble comes against us, that God is going to deliver us. It may be that we have to go to death. It may mean that we have to give up our lives. But ultimately, we know that we will be vindicated. Now, when we consider Daniel's situation in Babylon, again, when you think about the dietary laws, I want to go back to them for a minute, there wasn't really anything special about them, and I'll qualify it in a second. There was nothing special about them in that we can't connect them with God's moral law. If it was a matter of God's moral law, then we too, in this era, would still have to abide by those laws. And so, when the New Testament era came in, we do see the elimination of the dietary laws. But again, for Daniel, that is not the case. He must follow those laws, right? And one thing that they did, more than anything, was they showed a distinction between the Israelites and everybody else. God wanted to place a sharp distinction between His people and those who were not His people. And these dietary laws really helped do that. And so even though you and I are not expected to follow these solitary laws anymore, like we are permitted to eat bacon and other pork products, and if you enjoy shellfish, well, that's available to you as well. But there are ways in which even now we as Christians can set ourselves apart from the world. Let's say, for example, you have a child, and your child is a very good soccer player, and your child is actually invited to play on one of those traveling soccer teams, you know, one of those real elite soccer teams. But the problem is, in this particular instance, these games are only played on Sunday morning. Now, you want to say no because you don't want your child to miss out on worshipping on the Lord's Day. And if he enters this league, that's what is going to happen. He will have to give up worshipping on the Lord's Day. But you feel the pressure from other parents. The other parents say that you're crazy for not letting your kid play on this team. How do you know that your son or daughter doesn't have a budding feature as a soccer player? And getting on this team may lead to something bigger, but perhaps he will one day be of the caliber he can play in the Olympics. Would you really deprive your child of that opportunity? That's some of the pressure that may come your way, but beloved, Sunday is always the Lord's Day. That fact hasn't changed in 2,000 years, and it's not going to change any time soon. And so you may bargain with yourself and say, well, this league only plays through the fall months, and in the winter, my son and I, they can go back to church. It wouldn't hurt if we missed one day or one week here and there. You know, God's not going to strike us with a lightning bolt if we miss a couple weeks here. But beloved, that's not the point. The point is that the Lord has given us the first day of the week to be our day of worship. And we have to analyze in our minds what is more important. The things of this world, becoming a world-class soccer player, or honoring the obligation we have to our God. And so just like Daniel, we are often called to make everyday decisions. Are we going to compromise God's Word, or are we going to remain faithful? And the consequences for remaining faithful, you know, we may give up our comfort, we may lose our security, and in many cases, it may even be our very lives. But if we are following Christ and doing what he commands us, we will be better off. Jesus said this in Mark chapter eight. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what will profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. So once again, beloved, we may be taking a risk falling in Christ, and it may mean our very lives. But which would be better? To give ourselves over to Christ, to be loyal to Him, the One who has taken all of our shame and misery upon Himself? And again, it may mean losing our very lives, or we can keep on living and forfeit our soul. Therefore, I say again to you this evening, be a follower of Christ and not a follower of the world. Let us pray. Again, our father, we consider the situation that Daniel faced in Babylon. And we recognize that there was a serious situation where if he disobeyed the king's orders, he may have been executed. But rather than bow down to the earthly powers, He remained faithful to you, Lord. And we see from the example of Daniel, and of course our own Lord Jesus, how He dealt with temptations. Oh Lord, we pray that You would give each of us here the ability and the strength to withstand whatever temptations we may be facing, even if it means giving up our very lives even if it means people rebel against us, even our own children, perhaps. We just ask that you would be with us when we make hard decisions. Help us to follow you in all that you have commanded. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.