Daniel chapter 1 and in verse 8 we read, But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. As we take a look at the book of the Prophet Daniel this morning, I have to confess that it's a book that I've very much neglected over the years. In fact, in 35 years of pastoral ministry, I can only ever recall preaching on the book a handful of times. And in nearly 50 years now of being a Christian, I can't remember too many sermons preached on the book by others. And I've been trying to think about the reason for this. And I think that there may be two good reasons why I and others may have psychologically shied away from the book of Daniel. The first reason is simply because the book of Daniel is extremely well known. Particularly chapters 1 to 6. which contains some of the most amazing and wonderful storytelling to be found in the whole realm of human literature. Most of us would have learned it on our mother's knee or in Sunday school because it's so graphic, isn't it? So colorful, so utterly gripping. I mean, who has not heard of the heroic tales of Daniel in the lion's den? or of his three friends in that burning fiery furnace, or of the handwriting that supernaturally appeared on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. These are stories known all the world over by Christian and non-Christian alike. And therefore the great danger and temptation when we come to a book like this is to relegate it to the realm of children's literature, Sunday school material. And to think to ourselves, well, I know all that. You know, I've moved on from all that. I'm now a mature Christian adult. And the great temptation as we come to read it is simply to gloss over it. Friends, let me say straight away that such an approach is entirely wrong. Because the book of Daniel is not a children's book. And there is nothing childish about it. In fact, as we shall see this morning, it contains a very serious and important message for the Christian church today. But then I think there's a second reason why we may have shied away from this book. And that is because if the first half of Daniel is simple, The second half is anything but simple. Chapters 1 to 6 are largely historical narrative, whereas chapters 7 through 12 belong to a genre of literature known as apocalyptic. And suddenly we find ourselves launched into a kind of fantasy world with symbolic numbers and bizarre imagery and animals with different sized horns. I mean, it all seems so weird, doesn't it? And wonderful, like something taken right out of Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings. It all seems to be so puzzling, so very confusing. And so the temptation, having got as far as chapter six, is simply to switch off, believing the rest of the book to be a closed book, a sealed book, and one that contains no practical relevance for everyday Christian living. Of course, on the other hand, there have been those Christians throughout history and even today who have a bit of a bee in the bonnet about end-time Bible prophecy. They see themselves as experts on the subject. They know it all. They've got books of charts and all sorts of things. The timelines and everything. And these latter chapters of Daniel are just like manna from heaven to them. They love these chapters. They revel in them. Because they believe that they set before us a clear outline of future events. and a calendar and a timeline and that one can almost set your watch by these things and see them coming to pass as you read the Bible alongside your daily newspaper. Again, let me say that such an approach to the book is entirely wrong because the book of Daniel is not two books in one. It is one integrated whole. And these latter chapters of the book are closely linked with the former. In fact, they contain the same basic history, but they view it from an entirely different perspective. And so the book of Daniel is really the Old Testament counterpart to the New Testament book of the Revelation. Now that, by way of introduction, let's Now turn to the actual book itself and ask ourselves the question this morning, what is the book of Daniel really all about? What is the message of this book? And you'll notice that the historical background to it is recorded in those opening two verses of chapter one. We read that 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 articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his gods. And he brought the articles into the treasure house of his God. You see, the book of Daniel is very much rooted in history. It's a book about events that took place in this time-space world. In fact, it's the year 605 BC, when the superpower of the day sacked Jerusalem and carried away its inhabitants into exile. And we discover that this took place in three separate stages. There were three deportations of the people of Judah to Babylon, 605 BC, 597 BC, and 586. Surely the darkest period in Judah's history. And the book of Daniel contains and follows that complete 70-year period of Judah's captivity in Babylon. Now you may be thinking to yourselves this morning, well what possible relevance does all that have for us today? You say our situation here could hardly be more different. But friends, if that is what you're thinking, you would be entirely wrong. because the book of Daniel is incredibly relevant to us in that it is a further unfolding of the age-long conflict between two great cities. Jerusalem on the one hand, Babylon on the other. And if you think about it, this in essence is really the great theme that runs right the way through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. What is the Bible all about this morning? Well in essence, it boils down to a tale of two cities. Not Paris and London, but Jerusalem and Babylon. You see, these two cities are symbolic. They are representative in scripture. Jerusalem depicts the people of God in every age and in every generation. Those who have been sovereignly called out of this world and brought into covenant fellowship with God. Do you remember how the writer to the Hebrews tells us that as new covenant Christians, We've not come to Mount Sinai. We've come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. That's our company. And it's marvelously brought out in our hymnology, isn't it? We've sung this morning those great lines from the pen of John Newton. Saviour if of Zion's city, I through grace a member am. Let the world deride or pity, I will glory in thy name. Fading is the worldling's pleasure, all its boasted pomp and show. Solid joys, lasting treasure, none but Zion's children know. You see, as Christians this morning, we belong to Zion, the beautiful city of God. But Babylon, on the other hand, is a symbol, a picture of this present, fallen, evil world system that is organised in rebellion against God. Do you remember how the Apostle John sums up its very nature in his first letter, chapter two, when he says, Christian, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. For if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, it is of the world. And the world is passing away. You see, that's Babylon, Babylon the fallen, Babylon the harlot, the deceiver, the seducer, and the persecutor of the people of God. And so here we have two great cities in this world. We belong either to Zion or we belong to Babylon. And you see, what the book of Daniel is all about is the inhabitants of Jerusalem living in exile in Babylon. And isn't that precisely the situation that we find ourselves in today? You remember the Lord Jesus told us that we are in the world. We're in Babylon. But we are not of the world. Babylon is not in us. We're children, citizens of Zion, the beautiful city of God. You see, we too are people who are in exile. This world is not our home. Paul reminds us that our citizenship is where? In heaven. We are literally a colony of heaven, living out our lives at the present, temporarily, on this earth. We are Christians in exile. And what the book of Daniel is all about is godly living in a pagan environment. How to live as the people of God in an alien land. Integration without compromise. And this is certainly the theme that runs right the way through this opening chapter of the book. You'll notice how the focus falls now upon Daniel and his three Hebrew friends and the terrible pressures that they faced. Do you remember when the Lord Jesus was about to leave this earth? He warned his disciples, didn't he? He warned his church. He said, in the world, you will have tribulation. And that word tribulation could also be translated as pressure. Jesus said, in the world, in Babylon, you will have pressure. And there are two in particular that are brought out in the passage before us. Notice in the first place that they face the pressure of indoctrination. there was the pressure of brainwashing. And we find this in verses 3 to 7. Now you remember that the king, Nebuchadnezzar, had offered university scholarships to the best of the Hebrew young people. It was to be a three-year degree course in Babylonian literature and learning. the very finest campus, the best lecturers and professors in their fields, and the finest cuisine, all freshly prepared from the emperor's own kitchens. How wonderful. And you know, at the end of the program, at the end of it all, there was a guaranteed career in the Babylonian civil service. What could be more amazing than that? What an offer. Now this of course was not what the Jews were expecting, was it? Because they recalled the treatment that their forefathers had received in Egypt when they were slaves. And no doubt they were expecting the same harsh treatment in Babylon. But instead of a concentration camp and prison chains, There were opportunities. There were places available in the University of Babylon. Absolutely amazing. You can almost see these Hebrew mothers brimming with pride, thinking to themselves, wow, what an opportunity for our lads. But the question is, why did the king make such an offer? Well, it certainly wasn't because he was kind and nice. It was because he was very shrewd, very clever. You see, there was a sinister plan behind all this. You see, Nebuchadnezzar was in the first year of his reign. And he was reigning over this vast, rapidly expanding empire of Babylon. And he must have thought to himself, how can I keep this great empire together, which consists of people from all different nationalities and languages and customs and cultures? How can I prevent disintegration? I know. I'll start with the youth. I will choose the cream of the crop, the finest of the young people of Babylon from different nationalities and backgrounds, the princes, the rulers, the royal sons. I will take them and I will turn them into Babylonians. I will retrain them. I will re-educate their minds. And I will so marinate them in Babylonian culture and learning that at the end of the three-year program, they will be mine, body, soul, and spirits. You see, it was nothing less than conditioning. It was indoctrination. It was brainwashing. And it was all very, very subtle. Notice how it began with the changing of their names. Very subtle, isn't it? You see, Daniel and his three friends all had names that were a daily witness to the God of Israel. Glorious names. Two of them had names that ended with the letters E-L, the name of God. And the other two had names that ended with the letters J-A-H, Yahweh. the Covenant Lord. But you see Nebuchadnezzar orders that their names should be changed. And so Daniel, meaning God is my judge, becomes Belteshazzar, the keeper of the hidden treasures of Bel. And then Hananiah, meaning Yahweh has been gracious, becomes Shadrach, the name of the heathen god Marduk. And then Mishael, meaning who is like God, becomes Mishak, the Babylonian goddess of fertility. And finally Azariah, Yahweh has helped, becomes Abed Nebo, the servant of Nebo. You see these names full of beauty, and purity and holiness and godliness, full of the glory of God and the gospel, are now snatched away from them and replaced with the ugly, corrupt names of heathen deities. And this was no accident. It was a deliberate policy. You see, God was taken out of their names because God was about to be taken out of their lives. It was a massive, sinister propaganda campaign. And it went on day after day, night after night, for three long years. The pressure of indoctrination. Now I'm sure we're all aware this morning of the kind of conditioning that went on during the Nazi regime in the Second World War. And it's still currently going on today in countries like Russia and China and North Korea. But friends, this morning, are you not aware that the same thing is taking place in our own country, in our day and in our generation? For we too are being daily subjected to the drip, drip, drip of an anti-God propaganda. that seeks to turn us into Babylonians and to remove the name of the one true living God from our human consciousness. We see this going on not only in our schools, our universities today, in very subtle ways. We also see it in the government, don't we? Virtually every year now, new and new laws are being implemented that seek to undermine and overthrow the righteous laws of our God, seeking to remove and erode our Christian heritage even further. And it's also being driven powerfully by the media, isn't it? We see this all around us. One young lad once said to his dad, Dad, why is it that God is never mentioned on the news? It's a good question, isn't it? Wonderful question. Why is God never mentioned on the news? For the simple reason that he's not considered to be news worthy. You see, in an alien land like Babylon, people are hostile to God. They're not interested in what God has to say. No, no, they're only interested in what the so-called, quotes, important people have to say. Like Putin, and Biden, and Sunak, and many others. And when we turn on our television and radio, and the internet, and we watch and listen to a nature or science-based program, We're immediately fed with the drip, drip, drip of the lie of evolution. God is being removed from his creation. No place for God. And what about people who watch the soaps? What is that but a sinister campaign to retrain human minds on moral issues? Breaking up the very foundations of a good and righteous society. They present issues such as abortion and homosexuality and transgender and all these things, extramarital affairs in such a positive glowing light that you would imagine that this must be the most liberating experience that you could ever enjoy. And what is that but a subtle satanic lie? You see they fail to mention the grief, the heartache, the lies, the deception, the treachery that it causes and they view it all through these rose-tinted spectacles. Friends, this is Babylon and we need to be aware what is going on in society today and we need to resist its pressures like the plague. That's why Paul warns us that we are wrestling not just against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly realms. We need to put on the whole armour of God and we need to be aware. We need to avoid the pressure like the plague. That's when when Paul wrote to the Romans, chapter 12, verse 2, He gives that serious warning, doesn't he? He says, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. J.B. Phillips gives us that helpful paraphrase, do not let the world squeeze you into its mould, but let God remould your minds from within. Very helpful, isn't it? You see, we too are living in a day where there is a great battle for the mind. We need to guard our minds because the mind is so important. Because the way we think affects the way we live. The way we think affects every aspect of our daily lives. We are, to a certain extent, largely what we think. And therefore, we need to beware, friends, today. of the pressure of brainwashing. But then there is a second area of pressure that they faced. It was the pressure of moral compromise. The pressure of moral compromise. And we find this in verse 8. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies. Now the interesting thing is that when Daniel was faced with a change of name, he made no protest. He was silent. And when Daniel was subjected to all the wisdom and learning of the Babylonians, he was fully compliant. Made no protest. But when it came to the issue of diet, the issue of food, he put his foot down. And the question is why? Why this particular issue? Seems on the surface to us to be rather trivial, doesn't it? Rather superficial. Maybe you're thinking this morning, Daniel, aren't you being a bit legalistic here? You know, aren't you being a bit pernickety, a bit pharisaical? But for Daniel, the issue was non-negotiable. He would not move. Now why? Well, there are some today who think that the reason lies in the fact that the Jews were used to a very simple diet and therefore they were afraid of being corrupted by the king's luxuries, the king's delicacies. And that's a view taken by many people today, increasingly. People like Sinclair Ferguson even take that particular viewpoint. And so what we have here is a call to asceticism, a call to a rigorous bodily self-denial and discipline, a call to teetotalism, and some would even say a call to vegetarianism. But friends, I believe we should reject that view completely. because Daniel's change of diet was only a temporary one. It's interesting when we come to chapter 10 of the book of Daniel, we find Daniel engaging in a fast. He's fasting and praying and he says in verse 3, I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth till three whole weeks were fulfilled. You see, the implication here is that it was Daniel's usual custom to eat meat and to drink wine. So why did Daniel refuse the food from the king's table? Well, I think he did so for a combination of reasons. Let's have more than one. And I think the answer really lies in that little word, defile. You see, Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies. And he requested of Ashpenaz that he might not defile himself with the king's food. Twice it's mentioned. Very important word because it's the same Hebrew word that is used in the rest of the Old Testament for ritual impurity and ceremonial uncleanness and defilement. You see, it's a word that takes us directly back to the book of Leviticus where the Jews were given very strict dietary laws that they were to follow in order to retain their distinctiveness as the people of God. You see, they were called to be different, weren't they? Different in every conceivable way. Different in the way they ate. Different in their diet. There were certain foods that were non-kosher. They could not eat. and even the foods that they could eat had to be prepared in the very special way. They were not allowed to eat meat with blood still in it, for example. And you see Daniel was fully aware of the fact that these exotic meats on Babylonian menus were certainly not kosher, but he was also very much aware of the fact that every king's banquet was preceded by an act of worship in which part of the king's meat and part of the king's wine was sacrificed and poured out as an oblation to the gods of Babylon. And so this banquet took on a very religious significance. Daniel certainly knew that it was idolatry that had brought the nation into captivity in exile in Babylon. And the last thing that Daniel wanted any truck with was idols. He didn't want a fellowship with demons. And so he refused the food. He refused to eat. He purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's food. That phrase there, he purposed in his heart, is a very strong phrase in the Hebrew here. I mean, it literally means that he resolved. He promised. He vowed a vow. In other words, this was no spur-of-the-moment decision for Daniel under pressure. And neither was he giving just an emotional response to the situation. at the spur of the moment. Although the word heart is used here, he purposed in his heart. But yet the Hebrew word for heart doesn't just mean the seat of the emotions, the feelings, the passions. In fact, the Hebrew word for heart stands for the whole person. It includes the mind. It includes the will as well as the heart. And so you see this was something that Daniel had decided and chosen upon as a young boy growing up with his parents in the city of Jerusalem. He had made a covenant from an early age that he would not allow anything unclean to pass his lips. And so when he was carried away into captivity in Babylon, when he was faced with this decision, he knew exactly what he must do. He purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's food. Daniel was a man of principle. Daniel was a man of great iron integrity. He would not budge. He would not move. And friends, isn't the same thing true of us? Are we not called upon in our day and generation to make a stand against the falling moral standards of our world? You see, we too as Christians are called to be different, aren't we? We are called to be a Christian counterculture. We are called to a different worldview. A worldview that affects the way we dress, the way we speak, the places where we go, our outlook on life, our motivation. We are to be different. We are called to separation with the crucified. Jesus said, if anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. You see, we too must never allow anything, anything, to erode our distinctiveness as the children of God. For Daniel and his friends, the issue was food. For us, it will be something else. And therefore, we need to pray daily for wisdom in the light of God's word, so that we will know when and where to draw that line, and having drawn it, to take our stands. Geoff Thomas tells the story of a group of men in the territorial army who were sent on manoeuvres to a certain barracks every weekend for six months. And apparently every Saturday night, one of the men would go down to the village pub till late. He would come back half drunk, rather noisy, and wake everybody up in the barracks, throwing his weight about. a bit bolshie and he would bend down and take a chalk and he would draw a line across the floor just in front of him and then he would issue a challenge for any man to come and cross the line. Well of course they just ignored him, they were so fed up with this. After a while they just groaned and turned over and went back to sleep again. But there was one new recruit who decided that he had had enough of this and that something needed to be done about it. And so when the challenge was issued the following Saturday evening, after midnight, he gets out of his bed, he walks right up to the chalk line and then he deliberately crosses over it. He looks the drunkard right between the eyes. and the drunk realizing that this man is a good bit taller and stronger than himself, caves in under pressure. He steps back immediately a few paces, bends down and redraws the line. Now we laugh at that, don't we? But that's human nature, isn't it? To cave in under pressure, the slightest pressure, to give up our principles and what we've resolved in our heart to do, And isn't that true of so many evangelical Christians in the present time? Maybe I'm speaking to an older Christian here this morning and you've been a Christian for most of your life and you look back and you were converted in your youth. and you made a stand for God in your day and generation. You made it clear that you were the Lords and there were certain things you would not say and you would not do, certain places where you would not go and you drew the line firmly in the sands and you would not budge. But maybe as the years and the decades have passed by, your Christian experience has become a little staler. Your love for Christ has waned and maybe due to the pressure of the world around you, you've capitulated again and again and you keep moving back, withdrawing your position and redrawing the line. But Daniel refused to do that. Daniel knew what the issues were and Daniel refused to compromise. He would not go over the line. And it's interesting to notice that at the end of the book of Daniel, when Daniel was an old man, they'd been in captivity for 70 years, Daniel was just as strongly, firmly resolved in his heart on these issues as he was at the beginning as a young man. And Daniel is one of those characters in the Bible against which no sin is attributed. No sin is charged. Doesn't mean that Daniel was imperfect, of course. No one is. But Daniel was a man of principle. Daniel refused to budge. He refused to compromise. He was a man of prayer. He was a man of the words. I'm sure some of you here can remember the words of the old hymn of Philip Bliss. Dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purposeful. dare to make it known. Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself. What about you? What about me this morning? But maybe I'm speaking finally to some other people here, young people, teenagers, the same age as Daniel and his friends. when this episode took place, when they took their stand. You've come back from camp, you're full of it. You've had a wonderful time meeting with other young people, your own ages, doing exciting activities out in the open air. And you've been challenged by what you've seen and heard from the scriptures this past week. But maybe you're still not yet converted. Maybe you haven't taken that stand with Daniel and others. Maybe you're not fully persuaded this morning. You're not fully convinced in your mind. You say, well, I'm almost a Christian, but not quite. Maybe you're trying to sit on the fence this morning. Maybe you want to have a foot in both caps. Well, let me say to you in closing that such a position is completely untenable. It is impossible. because there is no fence on which you can sit regarding Jesus Christ and the gospel of his grace. There is no fence you can sit on. You can't have a foot in both camps. You're either a citizen of Babylon this morning or else you're a citizen of God's kingdom, heavenly Jerusalem. You cannot be both. It's either one or the other. You're either saved this morning or you're still lost. And maybe God has been speaking to you during this past week and maybe here this morning and maybe the time has come when you need to take that stand, when you need to leave the world side, when you need to throw in your lot with the people of God and to publicly declare to the world that you are a Christian. Now is the time when you need to turn around. Now is the time when you need to draw the line in the sand and say, we are on the Lord's side, Saviour, we are Thine. Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Let's pray. Oh gracious God how we thank you for Daniel and his three friends and the stand that they made and we thank you that having made that stand Lord you bless them and prospered them even in exile in Babylon and use them for your glory. We thank you that there was integration without compromise. We thank you that it's possible, even in our fallen world today, to stand and to live out the Christian life, to be salt and light in society, to be the children of God shining in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Lord, grant that it may be so in the lives of each of us here today. Help us, Lord, to draw that line in the sand once and for all. Help us to take that stand. Help us, O Lord, indeed, Lord, to leave the world side and to face the foe. And we pray that if there are any here this morning who have not, Lord, been fully convinced, Lord, of the Christian position or where they stand, we pray that you will indeed give them no rest till they find that rest and joy in you. We pray that you will speak to them this morning and set them apart for yourself. Do that work in their hearts, that they will long to be part of Holy Zion, the beautiful City of God. So hear us for these things.