Sermon – Daniel 1 – Faith in a Faithless Land

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon – Daniel 1 – Faith in a Faithless Land

Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Churches

September 11, 2011

Ten years ago today I was driving on the Washington Beltway, Interstate 495, making my way to a sales meeting in Laurel Maryland. It was a typical day and I was doing exactly what I had done for years. I turned on the car radio and listened as Don Imus, a syndicated radio personality, described the burning of the World Trade Center in New York City after an airplane had hit it. Imus was talking with Jim Miklasszewski, the Pentagon correspondent for NBC News, when Miklasszewski said he heard an explosion and would go to see what happened. I arrived in Laurel and watched on a grainy black and white television set as one of the World Trade Towers collapsed. As I drove home I could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon. I got home and locked the doors. The world changed for America on September 11, 2001.

I felt at the time that the America I grew up in was about to change in significant ways. No longer did the great oceans protect us from attack. No longer were we safe under the protection of American military power. But I didn't know how we would all react to being attacked by terrorists. In the months that followed many churches were full. At my church you had to get there a half hour early just to get a seat. But this only lasted for a few months and then attendance began to decline. In many churches this decline has lasted ten years. I don't really know what has happened here in Pocomoke over this time. I do know that now fewer people attend Beaver Dam and Pitts Creek Presbyterian Churches. So something has changed here too.

I believe that what we have been seeing in our churches since 911 is a matter of faith. Before 911 we were all living in a nominally Christian nation, most people believed in God and considered themselves Christian. After 911 most people came to church for a while. Those with the deepest faith, those who believed in Jesus, trusting him with their lives, were comforted by the assurance that God was with them in difficult times. While others with a shallower faith questioned why God would allow terrorist attacks to occur. “Why didn't God prevent the loss of all those lives?” Of course the church couldn't really answer that question and many who asked it left the church. Those who remained in church continued to trust God, but for many who left their trust in God was shaken and they stopped believing. This means that we, those in the church, now are the faithful remnant living in an unfaithful land.

Examples of this being a faithless land are numerous. The Director of the Washington, DC Office of the PCUSA finds it nearly impossible to meet with Members of Congress and has never met with the President of the United States. The Mayor of New York City has invited no clergy to pray in the 911 Anniversary Commemoration. At the National Cathedral in Washington DC an interfaith service will be held featuring “the dean of the Cathedral, the Bishop of Washington, a rabbi, Buddhist nun and incarnate lama, a Hindu priest, the president of the Islamic Society of North America and a Muslim musician”, but Baptists and Evangelicals were left off the program. (Read more: http://radio.foxnews.com/2011/09/06/evangelicals-left-off-national-cathedral-9-11-event/#ixzz1XHWJbHVF)

More and more we seem to be living in a faithless land. And need to know what the Bible says about faith in a faithless land. So I have decided that we need to spend some time in an often neglected and sometimes misused book of the Bible. We will spend the next few weeks looking at the Book of Daniel and what it says about faith in a faithless land. But before we begin this endeavor let's pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

^NIV Daniel 1:1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. ² And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god. ³ Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility-- ⁴ young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.

⁵ The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service. ⁶ Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. ⁷ The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

⁸ But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. ⁹ Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, ¹⁰ but the official told Daniel, "I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you."

¹¹ Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, ¹² "Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. ¹³ Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see."

¹⁴ So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. ¹⁵ At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. ¹⁶ So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

¹⁷ To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds. ¹⁸ At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. ¹⁹ The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king's service. ²⁰ In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

²¹ And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.

Just as the world changed for us on 911 so too did the world changed for the tiny Kingdom of Judah at the end of the 7^th century. Prior to that year they had been an independent nation, with a dynasty going all the way back to David, great prosperity from international trade, and at least a nominal belief in their God. But in 605 BC the Babylonian army under the command of the king's son, Nebuchadnezzar, defeated the Egyptian army at the battle of Carchmish. The Judeans were no match for Babylonian power and thus became a vassal state. A puppet king was placed on the throne. And Nebuchadnezzar carried off to Babylon the best and brightest of Judean nobility. The Judean youth were to be retrained for use in the growing Babylonian bureaucracy.

This crisis had for Judah a similar effect to what 911 did to the American church. People were divided. Some questioned why God allowed this to happen. The prophets tried to answer this question but some left faith in Yahweh believing that the Babylonian god must be stronger. But some Judeans had strong faith that comforted them through the crises. And it is four of these young Judeans, with strong faith in God, that the Book of Daniel chronicles, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

The question of the book is this: Would these four good Jewish boys remain faithful to their God even after living in an unfaithful land? Would Daniel, whose name literally means “God is my judge”, Hananiah, “Yahweh has been gracious”, Mishael, “Who is what God is”, and Azariah, “Yahweh has helped” remain faithful to the God of their ancestors? The Babylonians wanted to know the answer to this question too so they came up with a test. The test was simple, give them Babylonian names and make them eat meat and drink wine that had been sacrificed to Babylonian gods and see if they become Babylonians. No faithful Jew would accept those names or eat and drink food offered to idols. So what were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah to do? Would they accept the new names and eat and drink meat and wine offered to false gods? Or would they somehow hold onto their own names and avoid defiling themselves with the meat and wine? Would they hold on to their faith in God or put their faith in the Babylonian gods?

The first thing that we see is that God was still faithful to his people even after their exile to Babylon. God was still filling his people with faith. And God had already worked on the hearts of their pagan captors to allow his people to practice their faith. This gave Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah the faith and the opportunity they needed to avoid eating the meat and wine offered to idols. And so they ate only vegetables and God blessed them with healthy bodies.

We can take assurance in this that after 911 God is still with us. God is with us giving us the opportunity to remain faithful. And God is still working on the hearts of those with little faith who have left or rejected the church. God allows us to live as faithful people in a faithless land by blessing us with faith, and giving us an environment where our faith can grow.

The names that these four young men were given were Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach; and Abednego, pagan names designed to erase their Jewish identity. But as the author of Daniel makes quite clear these young men never accepted their new identity. The narrator of the story continues to call them Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, good Jewish boys, who remain faithful in a faithless land.

So what does this mean for us, faithful people living in a faithless land. First we can have the confidence that God is still at work in the world around us. Our role as a faithful remnant is to align ourself with what God is already doing. To do this we must hold onto our identities at Christians. We must still pray, study the scripture and go to church regularly. And we must always be looking for what God is doing in our community and get involved with God's work. If we do these things we will remain faithful even in a faithless land.

God Almighty, we thank you for helping Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah remain faithful even after the Babylonian conquest. We ask that you help us to remain faithful even as the world around us loses its faith. We know that you are already at work redeem our land. So we ask that you use us to bring our unfaithful land back to faith in you. Amen.