The Book of Daniel pt 1

            The story of Daniel doesn’t start in the book of Daniel. There is a long drawn out history of Israel that needs to be fully understood. The thing that is most often misconceived is that Israel never followed God. This isn’t true. Before Israel was Abraham. It was to Abraham that the promise was given.

            God promised Abraham that he would be a nation, and that his offspring would be as countless as the stars. This wasn’t odd. In these times, cities and nations were named after real people. Real people had children, who then had children, who then had children. Five generations later, the family is now about 50 or 60 people. That’s enough to start a small town or city. The town or city continues to grow, and is named after the patriarch. God promises Abraham something that he has heard of, and has seen happen. Indeed, father Abraham had many sons; and many sons had father Abraham; I am one of them, and so are you… So lets just praise the Lord.

            It was all because of a simple belief. Abraham took God at His word. This started the continuation of a people who would take God at His word. When God speaks, the servant listens. Abraham’s son followed in Abrahams trust. And his son, Israel, also lived like Abraham. And then we get to the tribes of Israel. There were twelve sons. Everyone had their flaws, including Abraham. It wasn’t about that, though.

            There is a story in Genesis about how God makes a covenant with Abraham. God visits in the form of three people. They all travel to Abraham, and talk and discuss. Abraham has such hospitality that he doesn’t find it enough to open his door. He runs to the travelers (whom he doesn’t know is God), and begs them to stay with him. This speaks of the heart of Abraham, by the way.

            After this discourse, God makes a covenant with Abraham. The way that you would typically make a covenant is that each party gives offerings, and they lay out the offerings in a line. Each party then walks the line toward the middle to finalize the covenant. It’s like a handshake, but more symbolism.

            This isn’t what happens though. Abraham prepares all of the offerings. After preparing all of the sacrifices, he doesn’t get the opportunity to walk through. God walks through the whole thing to Abraham. The symbolism is that Abraham has nothing that he has to do. There isn’t an “Abraham’s side of the bargain.” It is all upon God and upon His faithfulness. God’s promises and covenants aren’t based on us.

            So when we get to the book of Exodus, and we see Israel the nation and the way they act and treat God, we have to understand that there is something bigger behind the story. The story is in itself a piece of a story. The exodus brings the people out of Egypt, which is out of bondage. The whole of the relationship between Israel and God is that God is the deliverer. It is a statement of that first covenant. God brings them out because of His faithfulness, not because Israel upholds their side of the bargain.

            Then the commandments are given. This isn’t what we think. In our Gentile minds, we see the giving of the Ten Commandments as being something that any god would do. I am God, you are not, so here is a do’s and don’ts list. That is not the heart of God. God longs to be with His people.

            The Ten Commandments were given in a wedding language. Ancient Jewish culture reveals that it is a groom who would give their requirements of their bride before they wed. The bride also gives her requirements, so each know what the other party expects. After the document has been made, they sign it, and they uphold their end of the deal. God is giving Israel His requirements. Interesting fact: there is what’s called a chuppa in traditional Jewish weddings which is a symbol of God being a “cloud” over the two being married (I wonder where they get the idea of God being a cloud over them…) This is why the prophets always refer to Israel in marriage language. This is why Israel “plays the harlot” instead of a prostitute. It isn’t that Israel is selling herself short by embracing other gods; Israel is cheating on her God.

            The story of Israel has its ups and downs. There are the good times and there are the bad times. You find the same thing with study of church history.

            The story takes us to a time in Israel’s history that I don’t believe anyone enjoys learning about. There was a shift between the tribes of Israel that caused for some to believe they were better than others, and others to actually believe that they were less. Because of this shift, the Kingdom split into two kingdoms: northern Israel and southern Judah. Judah was not only the tribe of Judah. They had the tribe of Benjamin, Manasseh, and a handful from all the tribes. The Levitical priesthood also remained in Judah.

            This split in the Kingdom only furthered the prejudice and hatred between tribes. Israel never had a good king. They were only always evil. Judah had some good kings, and wicked kings as well. There was a last good king of Judah. His name was Josiah. Josiah was very young (possibly in his early teens) when he became king. The priests found a copy of the Torah (possibly Talmud), and read it in the hearing of the king.

            Josiah was so broken over how far Judah had fallen away from the original intent of God that he rent his clothes and wept. He took all of the altars that were built to foreign gods and tore them down. As if that wasn’t enough, he then took bones and scattered them over the used-to-be-altars to defile them and ensure no one could ever use them again. There was a major reformation of Judah in the time of Josiah.

            Then he passed away… The next generation was the generation of Jeremiah. There is a story in the book of Jeremiah of how these priests and prophets bound Jeremiah up with intentions to kill him. In all of the commotion, some of the nobles and royalty came down from the palace and intervened. Of these youth who came down, some of them could have been Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. You probably recognize the first name (there is a book of the Bible named after him). The other three you also know. Their Babylonian names are Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.

            Now here is where it gets interesting. It isn’t for certain, but it is very plausible that these four young men were some of them who went down from the palace to save Jeremiah. The reason this is so interesting is that it seems like the same men who would have defended the prophet before exile are the same men whom God promotes and protects while in exile.

            Do you see the question rising? How do we, in the world we live in now, live as a Daniel generation? We are in the generation after Josiah. If you don’t think so, then you’re severely mistaken. You’ll see what I mean.

            This is a decent question. The book of Daniel helps us to understand better as to what this looks like. In the very first chapter, you see the renowned men of Judah being brought before the king’s table to be taught with the Chaldeans. They learn in the school of Babylon, they learn how to divine, they learn how to be magicians, and they learn how to be good counselors for the king. The whole thing reeks of sin.

            But what do we read? “Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and asked the chief official permission not to defile himself in this way,” Daniel 1:8. There was something of a prophetic stature in Daniel to be able to see that this food and drink was not of God. When everyone else seemed to indulge and, I have to assume, count it as God’s provision, Daniel and his three friends stand up and say, “I would rather die than eat that.”

            There is more going on here. This kind of seeing doesn’t come into existence simply because we read our bibles and know that it says in Leviticus that we shouldn’t eat these meats… Every Jew was taught in the local synagogue to have the Torah (first five books of the Bible) memorized through and through by the time they would graduate elementary school. This takes sensitivity to the Spirit of God that is only formed by extreme devotion to the Lord. It is only built by our relationship with God.

            Daniel proves that age doesn’t matter. There are teenagers who understand deeper spiritual truths than 50-year-old pastors who have walked with the Lord for 35 years. It isn’t about how long; it is about how much. Your spirituality is measured by your devotion. Your devotion is measured by willingness.

            It says of Jesus that the Spirit was given to Him without measure (John 3:34). I don’t believe that this can happen to you and I unless we are devoted and willing without measure. Every stop sign that we decide to come up to, slow down, look both ways, then drive through is a negation of truth. It is in the details. There are thousands of examples from both everyday life and from the general path of life.

            Every time we cut someone off because we aren’t sure if we’ll ever have opportunity to pull out of the parking lot is detriment to our spirit. Did you pull out because you don’t trust the Lord to provide instance? What if you were supposed to stay longer for some reason the Lord had ordained? Yet we pull out and cut people off in hopes of getting to the next destination out of selfishness and pride.

            My wife and I don’t drive the highway. It promotes in people a mentality of “I have to get there now.” It diminishes patience. It takes away from our ability to wait on the Lord. It builds in us the kind of character that would cut people off. It builds in us the kind of character that would want instant gratification. It is of the flesh, and ultimately of the devil. The highway, fast food restaurants, processed foods, and anything promoting “instant” are traps and snares that develop mindsets that we don’t even realize they are developing until they have already entered in.

            Every time we bow the knee to Baal and we take a loan is cutting away from that which God has placed in us. Who is your provider? God? The bank? Your job? All of the above? You cannot serve two masters. If you can’t buy it outright, then you don’t need it. God will provide for your every need. If He uses your employment, then praise Him. If he uses your community, then praise Him. Do not go and get a loan when you don’t have money to afford that car, or that house, or that matching furniture. Everything in society is designed to be bought out of debt. Debt is spoken against through the entire Bible. I believe the deeper spiritual aspect is that debt is directly related to Baal.

            It is in these little things that we forfeit the Spirit of God. There are thousands of them a day. When we are willing to ignore the little details, we are willing to ignore the God of those details. We will not have the ability to discern the difference between the clean and the unclean, the precious and the vile. There will be gray area that the king’s meat will fall into where we’re unsure. There will be others who won’t even have the gray area of uncertainty. They will joyfully eat of it without remorse.

            Our spiritual testimony to the world hinges upon this. If we eat the food and drink the wine, we’re just like everyone else and our words have no power. To abstain from it, we will find fierce opposition (like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah). They were thrown into a fiery furnace. Daniel was put into a lion’s den. The gods of this world hate it when we oppose the system that they have placed in effect.

            It is our opposition to them that will cause for persecution. We won’t need to go searching. It isn’t about our prayer being neglected and our churches are full of lazy people. The real issue is that without the proper attention to these details, the kingdom of darkness is able to say to us, “Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are you?”