As we begin the book of Daniel, we enter the story of a young Jewish man living in exile in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t just take Daniel and the other young men from their homeland—he attempts to reshape their identity by changing their names, their language, their education, and even what they eat. But Daniel refuses to forget who he is. In this reflection, we explore what it means for Christians to live as people who are, in some ways, “in exile”—living in the world while remembering that our truest identity and home are found in Christ. Like Daniel, we’re called to remain rooted in who we are even when the world around us tries to tell us who we should become.
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Good morning! Hope you’re good today on this wonderful Monday morning.
Hope you had a great weekend.
Last week was a busy one. We had a lot going on with school starting at Mississippi State, college lunch yesterday at church, and just all manner of things.
And so it’s nice to kind of get through it.
To have lived through my first opening of school at Mississippi State.
We survived.
So now we’re kind of moving into the regular patterns.
If you don’t know how church works, you tend to have patterns.
And right now we’re going to move into a pattern of the life of the church this semester. I’m looking forward to some Bible studies this week. I’ll have a couple of them. I’ll teach a morning Bible study at 10:00 here at the church, and then a Wednesday night Bible study as part of our Wednesday night programming.
So I’m looking forward to a lot of good Bible studies and a lot of good stuff going on here.
So if you’re looking for a place to plug in, obviously we’d love to have you here at First.
Today we’re going to start Daniel.
We talked about doing Daniel, and so we’re going to start Daniel today.
Daniel 1 gives us a little bit of the background for what’s going on, so let’s talk about that for just a minute.
Daniel is a book of prophecy.
And we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that prophecy simply means future telling.
And some prophecy is future telling.
But not all prophecy is future telling.
Prophecy is really about speaking the word that the Lord has laid upon your heart.
A lot of prophecy is dealing as much with what’s happening in that moment as it is dealing with what the future holds.
But Daniel is one of those books that has a lot of what the future holds. It has a lot of apocalyptic language, language that is referenced in Revelation and in other New Testament books.
In fact, one of the phrases we see in Daniel—and we’ll talk more about this when we get to it—is “Son of Man.”
That’s an actual title that Jesus uses for himself in the Gospels.
So Daniel is a prophetic book written about a young Jewish man who is in exile in Babylon.
And you’ll get that context today about what that means.
The Babylonian exile is a formative time for Israel and for the Jewish people.
A lot of things happen in exile.
Since they could not worship at the Temple, the teaching of the Law becomes a primary thing.
And you have these teachers of the Law who interpret the Law and give interpretations of how the Law should be carried out.
These teachers of the Law eventually become the Pharisees.
You couldn’t sacrifice without the Temple. That was the domain of the priests and the Sadducees.
And so the Pharisees really arise during this time and become a formative voice for much of Judaism.
Judaism itself is deeply shaped during this time of exile.
The nation of Judah is taken into exile, and the word Judah eventually gets shortened into the word Jew.
And while they’re in exile, a lot of the Old Testament Law and books are compiled and eventually canonized.
So in some ways, the exile was one of the harshest times for Israel and the Jewish people.
But it was also one of the most formative times.
And isn’t that the way it goes sometimes?
Some of the most formative times in our lives are the hardest.
That’s where we often grow and develop the most—in difficult times.
So let’s read Daniel 1.
The story begins with King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon coming against Jerusalem and besieging it.
The Lord allows King Jehoiakim of Judah to fall into his power, along with some of the vessels from the Temple.
Nebuchadnezzar takes these things back to Babylon and then orders that some of the young men from Israel’s royal family and nobility be brought to him.
They are young men without physical defect, handsome, intelligent, knowledgeable, and capable of serving in the king’s palace.
They’re going to be educated in the language and literature of the Chaldeans.
They’re going to receive the king’s food and wine.
And after three years, they will be brought into the king’s service.
And among them are Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
You probably know them by the names the Babylonians gave them:
Daniel becomes Belteshazzar.
Hananiah becomes Shadrach.
Mishael becomes Meshach.
Azariah becomes Abednego.
And Daniel makes a decision.
He will not defile himself with the royal food and wine.
So he asks the palace master to allow him and the others to eat vegetables and drink water instead.
And they do this for ten days.
At the end of the ten days, they look healthier than the young men who have been eating the royal food.
So they continue with the vegetables and water.
And Scripture says that God gives these four young men knowledge and skill in literature and wisdom.
Daniel also has insight into visions and dreams.
And when the time comes for them to appear before Nebuchadnezzar, the king finds that there is no one who compares to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
So they are brought into the king’s service.
That’s Daniel 1.
And there’s a lot going on here.
We talked last week about the imprecatory Psalms, and one of my favorite Psalms in that category is Psalm 137.
Psalm 137 is a prayer of anger toward Babylon.
Babylon has destroyed everything.
And when I talk about Psalm 137, there are three things that I often point out that helped define the Jewish people and their identity.
They knew they were God’s people because of three things.
First, they had the Temple.
Second, they had the land.
Third, they had the covenant of circumcision.
And now look at what Babylon has done.
Babylon has destroyed the Temple.
They’ve taken them from their land.
And they’ve taken away their ability to maintain all of the things that had defined them.
And then Nebuchadnezzar does something else.
He takes their names.
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah are given Babylonian names.
He takes their food.
He takes their land.
He takes their Temple.
He takes their names.
In other words, Nebuchadnezzar is trying to take their identity.
He’s saying:
“No, no, no.”
“You’re going to be this now.”
“You’re going to be Babylonian.”
“You’re going to eat our food.”
“You’re going to learn our language.”
“You’re going to serve our king.”
“You’re going to have our names.”
He’s taking this identity that they have in God and trying to replace it with something else.
And so what do Daniel and these other three young men do?
They maintain their identity in a time of exile.
In a time when everything felt completely upended, they held on to who they were.
They held on to their identity.
They held on to their faith.
They held on to their traditions.
They refused to allow Babylon to tell them who they were.
And I think there’s something really important for us in that.
Because we live as Christians in exile.
This world is not our home.
We are always, in some sense, living in exile because our truest home is not here.
Our truest home is with God.
Now, we also know that God is in this world.
As the old hymn says, “This is my Father’s world.”
God is here.
God is at work here.
God loves this world.
But our truest home is still with God.
And so, as Christians, we should always feel a little bit out of place in this world.
We should always feel a little bit like an outsider.
We should always feel a little bit out of sorts.
Because our values, our virtues, and our wisdom should sometimes be a little out of step with the world around us.
It shouldn’t always fit.
And that’s okay.
In fact, I think that’s a good thing.
When we value people over money, we’re out of step with the world.
When we value relationships over ideology, we’re out of step with the world.
When we value love over hate, we’re out of step with the world.
When we value the way of Jesus over the way of self-gratification, we’re out of step with the world.
When we value sacrifice over exaltation, we’re out of step with the world.
We’re out of place.
And that’s okay.
We should be.
There’s an old Rich Mullins song that I love called In the Land of My Sojourn.
The idea is that we’re sojourners.
We’re pilgrims passing through.
We’re here for a time, but this isn’t ultimately where we belong.
And so while we’re sojourning in this land, I think the lessons of Daniel and these other three young men can be an example for us.
Let’s hold on to who we truly are.
Let’s hold on to Jesus Christ.
Let’s find ourselves deeply rooted in him.
Because there will be times when the world tries to tell us who we are.
There will be times when the world says:
“This is what matters.”
“This is what you should value.”
“This is what success looks like.”
“This is what you should pursue.”
And sometimes those things will be completely out of step with the way of Jesus.
So when those times come, let’s hold on.
Let’s hold on extra tight to Jesus.
Because Jesus is our truest identity.
No matter how crazy the world may be.
No matter how out of sorts things may seem.
No matter how much everything around us changes.
Our identity is still found in Christ.
Daniel was in exile.
He was surrounded by a culture that was trying to reshape him.
But Daniel knew who he was.
And that’s the challenge for us.
We’re living in our own kind of exile.
So let’s know who we are.
Let’s remember whose we are.
And let’s hold on to Jesus.
Because when we hold on to our identity in Jesus Christ, even in our time of exile, we’ll find life.
We’ll find life even when things seem a little out of step.
We’ll find life even when we don’t quite fit in.
We’ll find life because our identity isn’t ultimately found in this world.
It’s found in Christ.
And we’ve got a lot of good stuff to learn from Daniel.
So tomorrow we’re going to pick up with Daniel chapter 2.
Hope you have a great rest of your day.
We’ll see you in the morning.
Thanks!