The Uncompromising Life
Daniel 1
Let's turn in our Bible's to Daniel, Chapter 1. I thought tonight as I mentioned this morning that we would look at a portion of the scripture that deals with the issue of an uncompromising life in a compromising world. Nobody illustrates that better than Daniel. And we're just gonna have a good time kind of going through a few verses here in the 1 Chapter that will set I think indelible ink a reality of an uncompromising life.
I suppose you've heard it said it has been said enough times every man has his price. And your price is whatever point you sell out. Your so-called convictions, moral standards for some personal gain, some personal fulfillment, some personal desire. Every man has his price I suppose it's true of the world that it ought not to be true of believers. But ought to be true of us that there is no price which will make us compromise what we know to be true and what we believe to be the divine standard.
Martin Luther before the diet of worms, they demanded him to recant or lose his life and so he lost his life. He would not recant what he believed that was Ladimar and Ridley standing before the stakes where they were to be burned to death. Their executioners demanding that they deny the Lord Jesus Christ, they refused and were consumed in the those flames.
I remember reading the story of a Dr. Hung who watched the Japanese cut his father's thumbs off in North Korea not long ago because his father would not deny Jesus Christ. I have enjoyed the exhilarating experience of reading about the covenanters at a time in the history of England when the government demanded that the King be recognized as the head of the church. And there were a group of people Scottish people for the most part who refused to recognize the King as the head of the church because they said "Jesus Christ is the head of the church."
One of the most notable was a preacher by the name of Richard Cameron. And one day a knock on the door of Richard Cameron's father. He went to the door to find a messenger there who opened a box and in the box he had the head and the hands of his son. And his father responded by saying "The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." There are those who have paid immense prices to stand their ground and not compromise no matter what the cost. We hear all the time on the other hand about people who boast of their moral standards who talk a good game. We like to have stole the righteousness of their character, their great set of convictions and yet for some expedient purpose they sell out.
I always remember the story of the of the woman and the man sitting next to each other at the banquet. The man leaned over to this lovely woman and said to her after an appropriate introduction, "Would you go to bed with me for $10,000.00?" To which she responded with a moment of silence and said, "Yes I think I might." He replied, "Would you go to bed with me for $10.00?" To which she replied, "What do you think I am?" He said, "We've already established what you are, we're just negotiating the price."
Compromise. People say they believe the Bible but stay in churches where it's not taught. People claim convictions about sin and convictions about punishment until that sin is committed by their children. People say they must speak out about dishonesty and they must speak out about corruption until it refers to their boss. And they might lose their job. People have high moral standards until they're ___ are released and from the bondage of a holy conscious they enter into a unholy relationship and then begin to rationalize their compromise.
People are honest until just a little dishonesty might save them a lot of money or gain for them some great advantage. People notice something to be definitely wrong, but for the sake of peace they will cover it. People will do an act against their claim to convictions when asked by someone they admire or fear or from whom they seek a favor. People won't say what should truly be said if they feel they might lose face. And so goes the compromise.
Adam compromised God's law, followed his wife's sin and lost paradise. Abraham compromised the truth, lied about Sarah and nearly lost his wife. Sarah compromised God's word, sent Abraham to Hagar who bore Ishmael and lost peace in the Middle East ever since. Hesau compromised for a meal with Jacob and lost his birthright, Saul compromised the divine word, kept the animals and lost the royal seed. Aaron compromised his convictions about idolatry and he and the people lost the privilege of the Promised Land. Samson compromised righteous devotion as a Nazarite with Delilah, lost his strength, lost his eyes and lost his life.
Israel compromised the commands of the Lord, lived in sin and went fighting with the Philistines, lost God. David compromised the divine moral standard of delerated bath shebah, murdered Uriah and lost his child. Solomon compromised his convictions, married foreign wives and lost the whole kingdom. Ahab compromised married Jezebel and lost his throne. Israel compromised the law of God, entered the sin and idolatry and lost their homeland. Peter compromised his convictions about Christ, denied him and lost his joy. Peter compromised the truth of the one church for acceptance with the Judaisers and lost his liberty. Annani ____ compromised their word about giving life to the Holy Spirit and lost their lives. Judas compromised his opportunity and supposed love for Christ for 30 pieces of silver and forever lost his soul.
There are some we remember them well who didn't compromise, Moses before Pharaoh, David many times, Paul before Felix, Thestus and Degripa, but no-one is a better illustration of an uncompromising light then Daniel. He provides for us the clearest illustration of what it is to live without compromise. Let's look at Daniel, Chapter 1 in our Bibles. And just glimpse the uncompromising life of this amazing young man.
While you're turning to Daniel, Chapter 1, I read one time about an imminent naturalist who had written a textbook about a textbook about marine plants. And he was particularly interested in marine plants which grow from a depth of 150 to 200 feet in the ocean and float on the breakers when they get washed up to shore. He writes that the stem of this plant is less than an inch thick, yet it grows and thrives and holds its own against the fierce smitings and pressures of the breakers. It grows somewhere between 150 and 200 feet which means near the shore it feels the pounding of the breakers.
He says what is the secret of this marvelous resistance an endurance? How can this slender plant face the fury of the elements so successfully and in spite of storm and tempest, keep its hold and perpetuate itself from century to century. Obviously there are some would die and are washed up, others taking their place and standing for quite a long period of time. He says the answer is simple, it reaches down into the still depth of the ocean where it fixes its grasp after the fashion of its instinct to the naked rocks beneath the sand, no commotion of the waters can shake it from its fastening.
That naturalist really gives to us an illustration of what it means to live an uncompromising life. It is to reach beneath the shifting sands of a culture and fix yourself to the rock that is below it. Daniel was in Babylon and Babylon was a Pagan society in every sense. No regard for the true God as evidence by the fact that they had attacked the land of Israel. Desecrated the true God and taken all the people captive who weren't killed. And while Daniel was living in the breakers as it were, the crashing waves and the shifting sand of the surf, his soul was anchored on the rock. And so he was unshakable and indestructible.
He was absolutely unwilling to compromise the absolutes that he believed were the law of God. And that is what anchored him to the rock of confidence even in the storms of captivity and Caldian efforts to brainwash him. When the Caldians or Babylonians, same thing, Babylonians speaks of the nation and Caldian the culture, when they had taken the Jews captive and when they had hauled them away 586BC and even prior to that, three deportations actually began about five or six years before 586. But when they took these Jews captive, they were determined that they were going to have to be able to control this captive people. It was a very difficult thing to take a whole nation captive in your own land and then try to control these ex-patriots. And they knew that in order to do that, they needed to get some of their own leaders. Some of their own Jewish people, train them and let them be their leaders.
It was very important then for them in the captivity to manage to take with them some of the noble young Jews who could rise to leadership. They wanted to select the most physically beautiful young men who could sway people as we all know by the sheer force of their looks and persona, they wanted to take young men who had unusual intellectual ability and social grace. They wanted to put them through the system of the Caldian culture, educate them, train them, develop them into the Caldian mindset and yet with their Jewish linkage, use them to rule over this people that they now had in their hands.
So when they came in the first period, the first deportation around 605 and they began to take the people captive from Judah, they started by taking some young men. Among those young men was Daniel. And not just Daniel, but he had three friends. They are mentioned in verse six of Chapter 1 as Hananiah, Mischael and Azaria. Now those names may be unfamiliar to you, but those are their Jewish names. And importantly they link them with their Jewish heritage. You will notice of course that the first thing that the Babylonians did was change their names to Shadrak, Nischak and Abednego. They wanted to give them names that identified them with Caldian culture and would be a part of the dispositioning of their Jewish heritage. They had the two other areas of attack or assault to brainwash these young men.
The first thing was to change their identity by giving them Caldian names. And by the way those names that they gave them, those Caldian names that are familiar to us, Shadrak, Nischak and Abednego all three of those names have incorporated in those names the name of Babylonian deities. Whereas their prior names had at least in some instances in the case of Daniel and in the case of Mischael, the last two letters of Daniel's name and Mischael's name is the word for God, they had been associated with the God of the Hebrews, they now gave them names that are associated with the God of the Caldians or the Gods of the Caldians.
They wanted to change their identity. And so they started on that process by changing their names. Secondly they wanted to change their beliefs. They wanted to change their convictions, their values. And they did that by putting them through or they attempted to do that by putting them through Caldian education. They wanted these as it says in Verse 4 good-looking, intelligent in every branch of wisdom endow the understanding and discerning knowledge and who had ability to lead in the King's court they wanted these very, very gifted young men to be trained in all the wisdom and all the teaching and all the Caldian knowledge in order that they might acculturate them. In order that they might adapt them and adjust them to the new culture.
And so they changed their names, and they put them through an educational process. The third thing that they did to them was change their lifestyle. They changed their lifestyle by Verse 5 says the King appointed for them a daily ration from the King's choice food and from the wine which he drank. And the point that they should be educated three years at the end of which they would have entered the King's personal service. So there's the education, the name change and the lifestyle. And the lifestyle would change by exposing them to Caldian food and drink. Not only was it food and drink but all that went on in the social occasion of eating and drinking.
Interestingly enough, these four young men accepted the first that is they accepted the new names, they accepted the second, there's no indication that they fought against the education. But when it came to the third thing, changing their lifestyle, they refused it. Because that was the potentially devastating issue. The name change is merely an external modification. The educational process can be filtered through the law of God which they knew very well. A young man today can be raised in a family where he is given a name that identifies him in some way or another with the culture. He could be exposed to secular education as many of you have and myself as well. And we're not so much affected by that because if we have a solid foundation in the word of God, all that secular education passes through the grid of divine truth.
The first two were not so threatening to them because they knew what they believed and they were firmly fixed on God's word and they would evaluate the teaching in the light of it. They could change their names, but they couldn't change their hearts. But what they would not do was let their lifestyle be changed. That they had given in to the lifestyle of the Caldians; they would have flatly denied the word of God. And they would have denied in effect the identity that they bore as the covenant people. Why?
Well first of all because the king's food was offered to idols before it was offered to be eaten. In otherwords as we read about with the apostle Paul and the time in which he lived Pagans would take meals, food and wine, whatever and offer it to their Gods. Obviously the God was an idol and couldn't eat it. And so it would go into the hands of the priest in part and part of it would go to the one who brought sacrifice to the first place. Then there would be some kind of a meal in which they would eat this food offered to idols.
So there was the whole aura of idolatry, sort of connected to this eating and drinking. Furthermore eating and drinking was the major social event in ancient times, and the lavishness, the drunkenness, the rest of the wildness that went with such events would be against the simple purity that the word of God demanded. And beyond that, the law of God had very strict dietary laws didn't, standards. And to keep the Jews separated from the influences of Pagan society, God had given those laws in the first place. And I hope you understand that the Jewish dietary laws were not primarily for health reasons.
They were for separation reasons. Because most of the exchange of lifestyle occurred around the eating table, around feasts and festivals where food was consumed. And the fact that Jews couldn't engage in such social events because they couldn't ever eat the food was one way in which God intended to keep them from the influence of pagan idolatry society. The Old Testament didn't say anything about your name, they Old Testament didn't say anything about education as such, but it said a lot about what you eat and drink. So that's where they drew the line.
And you see that then in Verse 8. But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the King's choice food or with the wine which he drank. That's the key. He could handle the name change, he could handle the educational process and filter that through the word of God, but what he would not do was alter his lifestyle.
Another reason he didn't want to engage in that was that the lifestyle of the king and the king's food and the king's wine would be the grandest and the most lavish in all the land if not all the world at that ancient time since that was the supreme kingdom of the world. They would have taken him to a level of materialism and self-indulgence way beyond what would have honored God. So the Caldians attempted to melt down these four young men and reform them into Caldians. And then use them to lead the Jews and to keep peace among the Jews and to try to control these expatriated people who are now in their country.
But Daniel it says in Verse 8 made up his mind; he wouldn't defile himself with the King's choice food or with the wine which he drank. I suppose what is initially amazing about his stand is that he was 14 or 15 years old. You think of Daniel, you probably think of a bearded man because that's what you saw pictured in the lion's den. In the little Christian books you read. But when Daniel arrived and took his stand, he was a 14 or 15-year-old young man under tremendous pressure and followed this separated from his home and separated from his family and separated frankly from all personal accountability.
I mean frankly there wasn't anybody there to watch him; anybody at least from his past, could have lived any kind of life he wanted. Certainly wouldn't have been any social recourse. So if you want to understand the character of Daniel, you have to see him in a totally foreign environment under tremendous pressure as a very young man taking an uncompromising firm stand on the absolutes of the word of God. And all of the inducements and all of the education, all the encouragement, all the bribes, all the pressures, all the ambitions and glories of the King's court could not make him compromise what he knew to be true and right.
They would learn the King's language they would study Caldian education, they would filter it all through the word of God and thereby they would learn the errors of that people. And learning their errors would be better able to communicate the truth of God to them. Never however would they adopt their lifestyle. ___ it was that failure to adopt their lifestyle that got Daniel in the lion's den, wasn't it? And God's Shadrak, Nischrak and Ebednego thrown into a fiery furnace.
And I would just add at this particular point that the most corrupting influence in a society is not its philosophy it's its lifestyle. A lifestyle of any society is the most corrupting thing. It isn't that we fall to the level of the philosophizing it is that we fall to the level of the living, isn't it? Many of us have suffered through secular education of one degree or another. It is informed us about the thinking of our society, it is perhaps helped us to see truth more clearly against the backdrop of error by contrast we maybe have learned how to confront it. We have learned its weaknesses and how to answer it.
But what really will tear up your life is to begin to adjust to the culture's lifestyle. That's when the brainwashing has succeeded. That's why Proverbs 423 says keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. Daniel as a young man would not compromise on the lifestyle side. And I want to show you the results of that. Let's look at the first one in Verse 8. "The Daniel made up his mind that he wouldn't defile himself of the King's choice food or with the wine in which he drank." He rejected the lifestyle influence. And then this, "So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself." The first thing I see about Daniel is an unashamed boldness. If you're taking notes, you can write that down.
An unashamed boldness. Now there was a man assigned to take care of these young men because this was the very, very important project. They were going to have three years of very important education, the King back in Verse 3 orders Asponas, the chief of his officials, so it's a very, very high ranking guy to bring in some of the sons of Israel including some of the royal family and the nobles. The youths in whom was no defect. And they're going to be according to the indiverse five, entering into the King's personal service.
Then Verse 7, the commander of the officials assigned new names to them. But they're under this man named Asponas who's a very high ranking man. And what is wonderful about Daniel is when he goes to Asponas to say, "Look, we can't eat this food." He displays a tremendous amount of boldness. He doesn't say you know I have a real problem, you guys have different seasoning and my stomach just doesn't handle it well. He didn't say that. He didn't say you know I haven't been feeling well, I have a chronic ulcer, I've had it since I was 11 you know. Or you know this is very difficult adjusting to your food, I just can't seem to adjust to it or do you know that because of my own health and because of some chronic dehabilation I have a special diet, he didn't say that.
What he said was, "I can't eat this stuff because it'll defile me." Now the man that he told that too knew he was not talking about something physical, he knew he was talking about something spiritual. Something significantly spiritual. He is saying, "I can't eat the King's food and I can't drink the King's wine because it'll defile me." In otherwords I have a conviction against this. In fact I'm pretty confident that it would necessitate some kind of an explanation when he told Asponas this was the reason. He must have had to explain something to him and so he must have gone into the word of God and laid out God's standard and God's principles. All this indicates to me that Daniel was not ashamed of his God, he was not ashamed of his faith in God, he was not ashamed of his obedience. Even in Pagan Babylon, he said I won't do it and here's why I won't do it because it will defile me.
And the fact that the message might go directly to the King, a King who's prisoner Daniel was and who had the right to kill him for disobedience and rebellion never, ever hindered his commitment. For normal people the fear of man brings a sneer, but not Daniel. But those people who have an uncompromising character have an unabashed boldness. It just goes with it. They don't equivocate, they don't waffle, they don't try to give some secondary reasons they're willing to take a stand on exactly what the issue is. In Psalm 119 Verse 46 it says I will speak of your testimonies also before Kings and I will not be ashamed.
Daniel had that kind of character that stands fearlessly and boldly before Kings, before rulers, before Pagan's and speaks the truth that undaunted spirit of complete and utter commitment to God. Jeremiah called it being valiant for the truth. Ezekiel said it was like setting your face like flint. 1 Chronicles 12:8 says it's "setting your face like a lion." Now that's the first thing I see about the uncompromising character of Daniel. He has a holy fearless courage that knows no shame, he is glad to bear the name of God, he is glad to stand for the word of God and he is glad to obey God's word no matter who he's talking too.
There's a second thing that I want you to see. Not only an unashamed boldness but a second thing that's true of an uncompromising person is an uncommon standard. An uncommon standard. In the same verse that I just read it is interesting to me that it says that he would not defile himself with the King's choice food or with the wine which he drank. Now this issue of wine and I don't want to get into a whole discussion of that tonight, but I do want to point out a couple of things. What would be wrong with drinking the King's wine? Wine is kosher, so it's not an issue of Old Testament dietary law with regard to wine, but there's something about uncompromising people who go to an uncommon standard. And that's why I made that the second point.
They are the pace setters, they set the pattern for others. They live on the highest plain. It may well be that Daniel had taken a Nazarite vow or some vow like that which is a vow of complete abstinence. Uncompromising people like Daniel go past the crowd; they go past the minimum. They set standards for themselves that exceed the norm. They live at the highest level. They stand above the crowd. They don't choose the good; they choose the best. Their ministries are a cut above the rest because they choose to live at a level of commitment that is beyond the rest. To have a more faithful prayer life than the rest and a deeper study of the Word then the rest. And you can illustrate that by just this issue about wine. In fact Daniel not only rejected the King's wine, he didn't even carry along any skins full of Jewish wine, whatever that is.
Look at Verse 12. "___ servants for 10 days let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink." He didn't want any wine at all. Mixed wine galian as it's called diluted with water was common in Israel. Strong drink which referred to unmixed wine was associated with Paganism and drunkenness, but they drank wine in ancient times for a number of reasons. One of them was because it was the most available thing obviously they had the fruit and it would produce the juice and they would drink the juice. But wine would ferment; they didn't have ways in which to freeze it or to keep it cold so that it didn't ferment. And so they would mix it with water. So that they didn't become drunk. But it also acted as a purging to the water, water in those days would contain bacteria and without the sanitation systems of modern times we would understand that wine because of its fermentation and alcohol content could act as a purging and a purification of the water itself.
And thus reduce the disease potential. And so when mixed wine was used it was appropriate. Drink offerings for example were used in the worship of God; a supply of wine is kept in the Temple. Wine drinking sometimes was associated with singing as in Isaiah 24:9. Wine in Isaiah 55, 1 and 2 is a symbol of spiritual blessing. So there was a place and appropriate time to drink a properly mixed wine. But it was always a potential for evil. When misused or unmixed. So there was some who voluntarily or in connection with God's word chose not to partake at all. And there are a number of passages that indicate that.
"Wine is not for Kings." Remember that in Proverb 31, it's not for rulers, why? Because you have too much responsibility to h