The Salvation ArmyMessage from Rio
A Living Testimony
Daniel 6:11-18
I want to start today’s sermon with a question, what does our faith look like, when the pressure is on. Usually I start out with a personal story, but today I want to ask what does our faith look like when it appears everything is falling apart. It’s easy to look faithful, and holy and blessed when things are going well but when the pressure builds, when things go wrong, when you’re in trouble and it looks like God’s not going to rescue you, what does our faith look like? And I don’t want you to give me an answer, I just want you to think about it, to ask yourself that question, not where’s God when times are tough, but where am I, do I cling to Him, or desert Him, do I trust or doubt, do I move forward or run away? What does my faith look like, when my world is crumbling?
Ernest Gordon knew a lot about pressure, about things falling apart, about wanting to give up. And I think I may have shared part of his story before but it is worth repeating some of it so we can hear the whole story. Ernest Gordon was a prisoner of war in Chungkai, Burma. The Japanese who had captured him and his fellow Scotts were not very kind to their prisoners, because the thought of someone surrendering to them meant the person was without honor, and should be treated as such. It started with months of back breaking labor, and daily beatings, it continued with a slow starvation as the men were given little to eat. Mr. Gordon says that the prisoners became barbarians, adopting the rule of the Jungle, only the strong survive. They would steal from each other, they would rob the weak and the dying, they would brawl over the scrapes of food they were given. Gordon became an animal with his fellow soldiers, and he describes the horror of the camp, and the constant despair he felt, hearing grown men cry out. He got sick and becoming the weak, he knew it was his turn to die, his turn to be the prey, he got to the point where he could no longer walk, his skin baked by the jungle heat, flies and insects were his only companions. But before he could die, two men were transferred in from another prison camp. And they didn’t just want to survive. They were Christian’s, and instead of stealing his food, they gave him half of their own. They kept him warm at night, they cleaned his wounds, they gave up their shirt to someone else who was cold. And slowly the camp became human again. They started having Bible studies, they replaced selfishness with sacrifice. In fact Ernest Gordon became a chaplain after the war and he said, “Death was still with us-no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. Selfishness, hatred and pride were all anti-life. Love, self sacrifice and faith, on the other hand were the essence of life, gifts of God to men, Death no longer had the last word at Chungkai.”
That is how I want my faith to be during the difficult times, not that I want to ever endure things like that, but that even in the worse possible place on the planet I might be able to have a faith that helps others, that shines through the Darkness of what’s happening and shows the goodness of the God I serve. We’ve gone through two sermons about Daniel in the Lion’s Den, one focused on Daniel’s enemies, and how they saw Daniel’s greatest strength, his God, as his only weakness, and how the world and even us at times are tempted to believe that God is a weakness and not our greatest strength. The second was on Daniel and his reaction to this attack against him. How he didn’t seem to fight back, or hide, or lie, but he prayed, and we talked about how we need to intimate Daniel and take all of our fears, all of our hurts, all of the enemies attacks, whether big or little, and we need to lay them at the feet of Jesus. And now we are at the part of the story where Daniel gets thrown in to the Lion’s Den. The pressure is on, what’s worse then being threatened with a Lion’s Den, being thrown in one. How does Daniel’s faith look?
Turn with me in your Bibles to Daniel 6:11-19. It’s interesting because we don’t know what Daniel’s thinking, we don’t hear any defense for him breaking the law and praying, in fact we see the story through a different perspective. We know what his enemies think of Daniel, that he’s trouble, that they need to get rid of him, so we imagine that right now they are rejoicing. And we know how Daniel dealt with the situation, he prayed, but how does the king view it? What effect does this situation have on the man who admired Daniel so much that he wanted to make him in charge of the whole kingdom. What does he see in this situation? Read with me Daniel 6:11-19. We pick up right when he’s been caught by the satraps.
v. 11-14: You’ll remember that King Darius had passed a law on the suggestion of these men, a law that forbid prayer for 30 days unless it was to him, Darius it seems dealt with pride and like the suggestion. It was the perfect trap to catch Daniel and the tricky part was that unlike Babylonian law which a ruler could repeal at will, according to Mede and Persian custom once the law had been written down, it was irreversible. King Darius wants to save him, but has condemned him with his own prideful law.
v. 15-19: Lions were feared by this society, they were respected for their power. They had never watched Lion King, so they didn’t think of them as cute and cuddly. These were vicious beasts and these lions were most likely being held for two reasons, neither of which was a friendly zoo. They were held to release a couple every once in a while for the king to hunt, and as a tool to execute people. One swipe from a lion’s claw can be fatal. It seems clear that King Darius is worried, and frightened for his friend but he’s also has some strange hope for him, because at first light he goes to the den.
It’s interesting to me that we know very little of Daniel’s thoughts during this part of the story. In fact we don’t even know if he says anything to the king, or the satraps, or the guards, not one word is recorded, but we see Darius, and we hear a man who at the beginning of the chapter wanted to be prayed to like a god, in fact wanted to be the only god prayed to, we hear that same man say, “May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you.” Which forgive me but that almost sounds like a prayer in its self. And he hopes that its true because he hurries to the den at first light.
Daniel’s faith made that big of an impact on Darius. From wanting to be worshiped to hoping for a true God to save. And for all we know this impact was made by his actions and not his words. There is no evidence that he gave a sermon before hand, but there is a lot of evidence that his life displayed his continued service to his God. The whole city might be reacting the same way?
Daniel’s position and integrity most likely made him well known. All who know of this are probably asking the same questions, “Why is his God so important to him that he would give up his life rather then not pray?” Because it seems that no one else got caught breaking this law, no other priest or temple officials, no worshipers of any other god in this polytheistic culture, seemed to have broken the law, which probably made them ask why is he so devoted to his God, and I’m not to mine. I’m sure that gossip and rumors were just as widespread back then, and that this news spread through the city, maybe even through the empire. Daniel so loves his God, he would rather die then be separated from Him.
What do my actions say to unbelievers? Do they show the God I love, or the fears I’m unwilling to let go. I want to be like Daniel, I want that even when I’m in the pits of life that people still see the God I serve. I want my actions not to be based on my situation but on the God I serve. You see if I react to situations I let the world determine who I am, but if I react by Faith, I show the world the God I serve. For example if someone comes up and hits me what’s my natural reaction going to be, to punch back, unless he’s bigger, then its to run, but what does God tell me to do, turn the other cheek. If someone talks about me, I want to gossip back, but God tells me to pray for them. If someone hates me, I should hate back, but God tells me to love them. That’s hard stuff, but I want to be like Daniel, where my faith, not my fears, not my pride, not my circumstances determines how I react.
I knew a guy, God bless him, who went to church with me and we had a Bible study together, but he would change from praising God to cursing God in a moments notice. He’d get a new girlfriend and he’d be singing God is so good, she’d break up with him and he’d be saying “How could God let this happen to me?”
One time he got arrested and I’ll never forget him calling me, after he’d been released, and saying why, why would God let this happen, why would God abandon me!” And I thought well you were drinking and driving and you did have a bb gun that you were threatening to cap the officers with, maybe you should be thanking God that you’re alive. The reasons why he was in trouble were clear, but no matter what he’d blame God. And when he wasn’t cursing God, and he was happy with God because things were going good he’d say something like, I wonder why my family doesn’t want to become Christians. I wonder, it is a mystery, why don’t they want to be like you, I can’t imagine. I hope none of us are like him, but I’m sure some of us have dealt with similar feelings at times, maybe not to his extreme, but we’ve all probably done it.
I don’t know how desperate your situations have become in life, I don’t know all of what’s gone wrong, but I’m willing to bet that you wouldn’t want to switch places with Daniel in this part of the story. Being thrown into a pit is bad enough much less if its filled with lions, even worse if like him you’re 80 plus years. I’m sure most of us don’t have nearly as bad of a situation. Maybe one of you has a neighbor with a pit of coyotes and he’s been looking at you weird, but most of us probably don’t have as dangerous of problems, but we still have difficulties, hardships, pains, disappointments, some of us have in-laws who act like a pit of lions, or a work place that’s hostile like the Satraps.
And if we aren’t dealing with any problems right now, we have before, and we will again. How do we deal with the situations? If we do it with faith, trusting that God is with us, then the lives of believers and unbelievers will be changed, because they won’t see us but the God we serve.
I’ll never forget seeing a man I knew named Gordon, deal with brain cancer, his faith didn’t change his disease, it was terminal, but it changed me and every nurse and doctor, and janitor wondered about the God he served.
We all know this story ends with Daniel being saved from the lions, if you didn’t know it, I just ruined it for you. I’m sorry, still come next week, there’s more to learn. But in Sunday School, with little kids the lesson from this story is always, God protects. Now I don’t disagree with that lesson, God has protected me from enemies, from myself, from countless danger, but as an adult I also know there are times when the lion’s aren’t stopped, times where righteous people are taken down by horrible circumstances. If you doubt me read Fox’s Book of Martyrs, or DC talks more recent version Jesus freaks. Sometimes God doesn’t intervene.
I started this sermon with the story of Ernest Gordon, but I didn’t tell you the whole story, one day after work detail the guards counted the shovels and found one missing, and they put the prisoners in formation and demanded that the guilty man step forward, when no one did the guard pulled out his rifle and got ready to kill them one at a time until someone confessed. That’s when one of those men, who was so willing to give half his food, who was willing to wash a diseased man’s legs, who was willing to give his shirt to a man who had none stepped forward, and said “I did.” He was beaten to death in front of the rest. A few minutes later it was discovered that the guard had miscounted and all the shovels were there. No angel was sent to deflect the blows, no miracle occurred to save the man’s life.
I can’t promise you that living a life of faith will guarantee protection, I can’t tell you that living a life of faith will make problems disappear, will close the mouths of lions, but I can tell that when you live a life of faith it changes those around you. And even when you are thrown into a pit of lions it makes others marvel at the God you serve.
Live a life of faith, not because it will change your circumstances, but because it will change others.