Daniel in the Lion's Den
Daniel 6:1-28
We're looking at Daniel chapter 6 tonight. What a wonderful and exciting adventure it is to go through this chapter. I'm often torn as I approach these narrative chapters, about the possibility of splitting them down and covering them over a period of time, and yet the story is so wonderful as a whole that I find myself pressed to deal with all of it and so we sort of run our way through these great narrative sections of the book of Daniel. This is the last of those...this sixth chapter ends the historical narrative portion and from seven on, we get into some deep and exciting prophetic truth. We'll be touching on that beginning next Lord's day.
We're looking at Daniel chapter 6, the famous chapter in which we find Daniel in and out of the lion's den. Just as an introduction, let me make a couple of comments relative to what we'll learn in the text. Nations are born, they live and they die. They rise and they fall with great regularity. In fact, as you study history, you are more and more impressed with the fact that nations rapidly pass from off the scene. We look back to the Empires of the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians and finally the Babylonians where we find Daniel first taking the role of prime minister.
They were followed by the Persians and the Medes and the Greeks and the Romans. All of them came and all of them went.
On our own continents, in the Western Hemisphere, we find tales told of the great Mayan, the great Inca, the great Aztec civilizations, but little or no trace remains except for some archaeological artifacts. They have come and they have gone.
In more modern times, some of you have lived through the greatness of the days of England. You remember the greatness of France. You remember when Italy was a major power in the world and threatened even to dominate Europe under the leadership of Mussolini. We remember Germany. Hitler, who with his Aryan philosophy, thought he could conquer the world. We have seen the rise of Japan as a military power. China seems to have had its day. Russia seems to be having its day now. And America may be on the wane.
Nations rise, nations fall...they come and go. But the Bible tells us in Acts 17 that the times of the nations are bounded by the sovereignty of God. And what happens to the nations is all in the predetermined plan of God for history. Now what is especially thrilling is that the coming and the going of nations has very little to do with the ongoing of the people of God. There couldn't be imagined a more cataclysmic than just happened in chapter 5 of Daniel...Babylon has fallen. At the height of its glory, supposedly, the head of gold, the greatest Empire that humanity had ever known, the Medes and the Persians entered the city and without firing a shot, as it were, the whole Empire fell. But what is amazing about it is that it had little or no impact on what God did with His people for Daniel rides through the ebb and the flow of nations. And as we come to chapter 6, we enter the second in the great four empire scene in the image of Daniel chapter 2, the Medo-Persian Empire, the breast and the arms of silver. And as we look at that Empire, we don't see Daniel in absentia, but we see Daniel right at the heart of the matter. He was a prime minister of Babylon and he will equally be the prime minister of Medo-Persia.
And it excites me to think about that. Because I see today, across America--and even around the world, a preoccupation among many Christian peoples with the preservation of certain nations, even our own. And in a strange way, they are tempting to equalize America with the church, or America with the plan of God and that just isn't the way it is. Nations come and go and God's work goes on. And no nation is really significant when set against the backdrop of eternity and God's plan.
For example, in Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 15, it says: "Behold the nations are like a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance." A very interesting statement. Nations are like one drop that spills out of a bucket. The only word I can think of is inconsequential. They are like the dust on the balance...which is not a factor in the weighing at all. When God sets about to weigh out the history of humanity, the nations are not the issue. And when God pours out the floods of the flow of His redemptive plan, one drop is inconsequential. The nations are drops, they are dust.
Backing up in Isaiah 40 to verses 7 and 8, he compares the nations to grass that withers and dies and fades away. We think back to Nimrod and Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus and Artaxerxes and Alexander and the Caesars, the Pharaohs, Napoleon, Churchill, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Khrushchev and into our modern time...and the leaders and the nations come and go and God's work goes on.
In chapter 4 of Daniel and verse 17, you'll remember that great word: "This matter is by the decree of the watchers and the demand by the word of the holy ones; to the intent that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomsoever He will." God rules in history. And nations may come and nations may go...even our own. But God's redemptive plan as unfolded through His people will go on according to schedule. The people of God go through the rise and the fall of nations... they transcend. That's a great hope for us. And we see that in Daniel. Babylon is fallen. The head of gold is crushed. The times of the Gentiles is moved into phase two, but Daniel is right where God wants him and God is unencumbered by the decisions of men.
When you think about the fact that Babylon has fallen, it's really amazing. Nebuchadnezzar, of course, had a habit of putting his name on every brick that he put into the buildings of Babylon. In fact, one writer says that we have literally found uncounted thousands of bricks with Nebuchadnezzar's name on them...trying to build a lasting empire. One brick, which is now in the British Museum, has the image and the name of Nebuchadnezzar and a dog's footprint over both of them.
So it is with the world, but God's people and God's plan transcends all that. So we see Daniel surviving...and in chapter 6 we find him in the midst of the Medo-Persian Empire.
Now, I want some key words to take us through this text. We're going to begin at the beginning of chapter 6, it's a narrative text, we don't need to spend a lot of time on each section, we want to get to the climax and then draw some practical implications. But we're going to use some key words just to help us keep our place as we go.
The first one is promotion...promotion. And that deals with verses 1 to 3. "It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom," this is the Medo-Persian kingdom, "an hundred and twenty princes who should be, over the whole kingdom. And over these, three presidents," and by the way, that's the only place in the Bible that word president is ever used in the Hebrew, or the Aramaic rather, and it appears to be a word that means chief. He set over these hundred and twenty satraps, or territorial leaders, three chiefs to whom they reported. "Of whom Daniel was first in order that the princes might give accounts unto them and the king should have no damage. Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes because an excellent spirit was in him and the king thought to set him over the whole realm."
Now, there we find the promotion. Notice, first of all, that we meet Darius. Now, Darius is a very elusive person because we have no extra-biblical data in existence to tell us anything about Darius. We just really don't know who he is. We find nobody at that particular point in history who is named Darius. There doesn't seem to be a place in the genealogical record of the kings of that time for a man named Darius.
Now, some scholars feel that Darius is another name for a...a king by the name of Gubaru...Gubaru...who was not really a king but was really someone appointed under Cyrus as kind of a ruler of the...of the territory of Babylon. Cyrus being the great monarch of the whole Empire of Medo-Persia appointed this Gubaru as the one to rule in Babylon. And some say that this word Darius is just another name for Gubaru.
But an explanation that I prefer is that Darius is just another name for Cyrus...just another name for Cyrus. I feel that that's perhaps the best explanation of all. Why? Because the word Darius is a title...it is a title. It's kind of like Pharaoh, or king, or Caesar. It's a title. We find the word Darius, for example, used on inscriptions in archaeology for at least five different Persian rulers. They're all called Darius. So it seems best to see this as a title, as a title of honor, a title of significance. And so, we could assume then that it is just a title given to Cyrus. And if you look at verse 28 at the end of chapter 6, you might get some little help on that. It says: "So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius," and, of course, in the Aramaic it could read - "even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian." And there are some commentators who favor that rendering, rather than...and the reign of Cyrus," making them parallel, using 11...even in the reign of Cyrus."
Now, if you back up into chapter 6, you find that Darius sets over the kingdom 120 princes and it seems to me that if he were doing that he would have to be bigger than some localized ruler in Babylon. And if he was going to establish three chiefs over the whole kingdom, held have to be somebody pretty important. I believe he is seen then as the...the Medo-Persian monarch Cyrus just by another official title. The very fact that he had to set up 120 princes would indicate that he had to have a broader dimension of rule than just Babylon itself, just the city-state of Babylon.
So, we meet, then, this man Cyrus, perhaps best seen behind the name Darius. He is a capable man. He is an intelligent man. He is an effective man in terms of organization and structure. He's a powerful man. He's a man without commitment to God, that is the God of Israel but to his own gods, and yet he is man who does indicate some great interest in the God of Daniel and that increases as we get through this sixth chapter.
Now, notice that it says that when he appointed the 120 and the three presidents, verse 2 says: "Daniel was first." It is possible to see the word first as just the word one, just as a cardinal letter, Daniel was one. Or, we could see it as the word first and meaning that he was the first one chosen or he was the first in rank. It really doesn't matter, what does matter is in verse 3 that "Daniel was preferred above everybody else." And the word "preferred" in the Aramaic, is a participle which means he was distinguishing himself constantly over the others. He was, without question, the finest statesman in the entire Medo-Persian Empire as he had been the finest statesman in the Babylonian Empire as he perhaps is the finest statesman who ever walked on the face of the earth.
You'll notice that in verse 3 it says that, "...in him was an excellent spirit." That's really talking about his attitude. And, of course, attitude pervades everything we do. This is a commendable thing, a right attitude. But Daniel had more than that going for him. He had experience. I mean, he had lived through the last regime as the prime minister. He had wisdom, wisdom like nobody else had. He had a sense of history. He had apparently dramatic leadership ability, if what he was able to do in the lives of the three young Men earlier in the book is any indication of the model that he set. He had administrative ability and was given responsibility on a wide and far-reaching basis. And beyond all of that, he had the ability to interpret dreams and visions and give everybody an idea of what was coming in the future and that's invaluable to a monarch. What a man.
God put him right where He wanted him. God allowed Darius to recognize the capability of Daniel and to put him in a very strategic place, a place of influence.
You know, what's interesting is in the first year of Cyrus, or the first year of Darius, he gave a decree that the Jews could go back to Judah. The decree of Cyrus, the seventy years of Babylonian captivity was up and Cyrus gave that decree that he go back...rather that the Jews go back. And I really believe that Daniel was the one who was the great influence on him to that extent. I think it was because of the power of the life of Daniel, because of the wisdom of the man, because of the influence of the man, that even in the first year of Cyrus' rule, around 538 or 537 B.C.; he made the decree to let the people go. And that occurred before the lion's den incident, in the very first year of Cyrus.
So, we see again Daniel. But this time, rather than looking at him as a young man, as we have been in the past, we see him as a very old man. In fact, mark this, in chapter 6, Daniel is pushing hard at 90 years of age...90 years of age, and he's still God's man. He's still God's choice. And he was still the choice of the king to be the prime minister. You know, the...the power of a virtuous life extends into old age.
Dr. Criswell at Dallas First Baptist tells of Robert G. Lee who was a great preacher in the south and Robert G. Lee on his 84th birthday, which was in 1970, November 11, was asked this question, "Are you going to keep on preaching, Dr. Lee?" This is what he replied: "When there are so many unsaved people around, when there are sorrowing hearts to be comforted, when so many young people are throwing away their life in folly's court and carnal pleasure's mart, when there are so many evils against which protest must be made, when so many old people are lonely on the sunset trail, when in 1910, at my ordination, I was married to preaching until death do us part, why should I not in the 85th year of my life keep on preaching?" Dr. Lee added some fortifying statistics, by the way, that ought to bless and encourage any of you who are pushing 90 or 80. This is what he said: "Newman Darlan, a scholar of accepted standing, made an analysis of the lives and achievements of 400 foremost characters of history. The analysis showed that nearly 80% of the world's greatest figures closed active lives between 58 and 80. Twenty-five percent continued beyond 70, twenty-two and a half percent beyond 80, and six percent beyond 90. Consider what has been done by men beyond 80. When 83, Gladstone, for the fourth time, became Prime Minister of Great Britain. Michelangelo, at 89, executed his Last Judgment, perhaps the most famous single picture in the world. John Wesley preached with almost undiminished eloquence at 88...closing at that remarkable age, the most remarkable career of his time, having traveled a quarter of a million miles in an age that knew neither electricity nor steam, and he had delivered, someone estimated, 4,000 sermons and written volumes and volumes of books. Edison was inventing at 90. Wright, at 90, was considered a creative architect. Shaw was writing plays at 90. Grandma Moses was painting at 80. J.C. Penny, the great Christian, was working strenuously at his desk at 95."
And we say - Oh, I'm 55, I've got to get out. And we forfeit the richness of age...the richness of age.
Daniel was pushing 90 and he was God's man. And God put him right where He wanted him and the politics of Medo-Persia had little to do to withstand it.
Second word, the first is promotion; the second is plot, verses 4 to 9. Whenever a man is lifted up by the Lord to a place of prominence, he falls into certain difficulty. There's always a price to pay. There's no exaltation and there's no success and there's no prominence that's not paid for by a certain amount of slavery. The man who succeeds is a man who works...the man who slaves, who labors. He is chained. If he is a musician, he is fastened to his piano. If he is an artist, he is fastened to his canvas. If he is a preacher, he is fastened to his books and his prayers. If he is an author, it is his manuscript. If he is a poet, it is his lyric. If he is a physician, it is his patients and his books. If he is a theologian, it is his study. Anybody and everybody who excels is a prisoner. And so, there's a price to pay. He slaves at his assignment; he pours his life into it.
But, there's another price to pay for being in a position of blessing by God. And that is the fact that whenever you get into that position, you will find yourself dogged and hounded and followed by envy. It's just the way it is. We find it in Philippians chapter 1, don't we, where Paul was a prisoner and some were adding affliction to his bonds by saying evil things about his ministry. They wanted to make him feel worse than he did being a prisoner. They were preaching Christ contentiously as a negative ministry against Paul. It's amazing how when God lifts up somebody, other people's hearts burn in rage and jealousy and bitterness, even when that individual has done them no injury and absolutely no harm. How could anybody hate Daniel? How could anybody despise such a man?
I'll ask you a tougher question. How could anybody crucify Jesus Christ? But they did.
In London, a contemporary with young Charles Spurgeon was an older preacher who had been in the city for a generation. He'd spent years laboring faithfully in his ministry. And along came Charles Haddon Spurgeon, this fiery, winsome, young, dynamic individual who arrived at London when he was about 20 years of age. And rather immediately, I mean, not even in a year or two or three, but immediately when he hit the scene, he had such an impact that people just flooded to hear Spurgeon preach. He was like a star that appeared in the sky, just flashing. And the older minister said that when the throngs began to crowd around the young man, envy and jealousy began to enter my heart and it ate me up...it ate me up. There he was, a famous preacher in London, but the throngs were listening to Spurgeon. And the older pastor said he got on his knees and cried out before God and he told the Lord all about it. And then he said the Lord began to put in his heart praise and intercession and pleading for the young man, Spurgeon. He said, quote: "The day came, after I prayed and took it to God, when upon every victory Spurgeon won, I felt as though I had done it myself." God gave him victory.
But, it doesn't always happen. Let's see the opposite of that as we look at verse 4: "Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom, but they couldn't find...they could find no occasion nor fault, for as much as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him." Daniel had no Watergates. He had no skeletons in his closet. There was no way to indict this man.
Now, when a man is 90 years old and he gets all of the people in political office around him, digging around to try to find something and they come up zero, that's an honorable man...great integrity, great honesty, great purity, great nobility. They found no fault...shchath...which means to corrupt, there's no corruption, no error...shaluw...which means to neglect. In other words, the corruption is the sin of commission and the error is the sin of omission. They couldn't find anything he did that he shouldn't have done and anything that he didn't do that he should have done. What a virtuous man. They couldn't find anything.
Verse 5: "Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God." Now, people, I wish we had time to just preach on that verse. When they can't find anything against you but the fact that you are absolutely sold out to your God, then you are fulfilling the fact of the New Testament principle of suffering for righteousness sake. The only thing they said we'll ever get him on is that he is totally committed to his God. What a commendation. They couldn't find anything else. If there was anything, they would have found it and they couldn't.
Verse 6: "Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king and thus they said unto him, King Darius, live forever." Typical amenities...every time you'd come in there you got to say that. Daniel even says that in the lion's den, that's pushing the point a little bit, but anyway...verse 7: "All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, the princes, the counselors and the captains have consulted together." Now, that's just pure intimidation because it's a lot of hogwash. There was a group of them that made a plot...not all of them agreed, but just stacking up all of those individuals, just intimidated, and they all consulted, they said, "...to establish a royal statute and make a firm decree that whosoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, except of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions." You've heard of queen for a day? This is king for thirty days. We want you to be God for thirty days. Now, when you can be elected to be God, you've got bad theology. And when you're only God for thirty days, it's even worse theology.
Here they come in, we have consulted all the governors and the princes and the presidents and the counselors and the captains and everybody has agreed we ought to make a law. You're so wonderful, you are worthy of thirty days of being God. And we're just going...we're going to give you that privilege. And we just want to make a rule here, that whoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, unless it's you, shall be cast into the den of lions.
It's interesting here that if you look back at verse 6, there's a verb there - assembled together. It's a very interesting verb in the Aramaic, it means they...they came hastily and tumultuously, it's kind of, like a rabble, I mean, they were kind of a...a tumultuous group, they were stirring and...and milling as they came in, a very strong verb and it does indicate a large group of them who had pulled off this plot. But not everybody agreed because Daniel was the leader and he didn't agree. I'm sure he wasn't even consulted.
So, they all come in and pull off their lie when they said all the presidents--that's not true. There was one of them who didn't agree, who didn't even know, perhaps. We want to make a statute and a firm...a firm decree. And by the way, the double use of that, a royal statute and a firm decree shows you how binding and strong they wanted it to be, that nobody but nobody can worship or make a petition of anybody but you for thirty days. By the way, in those days, of course, there religion had established deities that were like men. Their deities were as fallible as men were. In other words, they made their image of God from their own image. And so, their gods were fallible. And so, to...to say that a man could be a God to us is absolutely ludicrous, because God is holy and righteous and perfect and has none of the imperfections of humanity. But for them it wasn't a problem. In fact, if we study history carefully, we'll find that the Egyptians believed that the Pharaohs were gods. That the Romans believed that the Caesars were gods. The Ptolemies were believed to be gods. There are indications that the Seleucids claimed the role of deity. Even the Herods...you'll remember in Acts 12, took the place of gods. So that, it was not uncommon for monarchs to do this.
Well, Darius was flattered. I mean, when you get the whole body politic coming in and wanting to do that for you, boy, that's pretty tough to resist. And so, he wasn't thinking, he was swept away in the emotion of the whole deal. Verse 8: "Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing that it be not changed according to the law of the Medes and Persians which altereth it not."
Now, we don't know a whole lot about the law of the Medes and Persians except we do know that once you made the law, you couldn't violate it. That was built into their system. And most studies indicate that the reason they did that was to prevent whimsical laws...that once a law was made, it was binding. And so, they were rather careful about those laws. But when these guys came along and hit this king at the point of his vulnerability, his ego, he responded. Verse 9: "He signed the writing and the decree." Now there was a law. You make a petition of any god but this god, and you go to the lion's den.
So, we see the promotion and the plot. There's a third word...perseverance, verse 10, perseverance. Now the word got back to Daniel and I want you to know what he did. "Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house. And his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did previously."