Be Strong and of Good Courage | Pastor Will Hawk | 26 April, 2026

God’s sovereignty sits underneath the chaos of exile, so we can face a world that doesn’t make sense without handing the story over to fear. We trace how Babylon tries to remake people through assimilation and how Daniel’s quiet resolve becomes a blueprint for faithfulness in hard places. 
• the missing battle details in Daniel 1 and why “The Lord gave” is the point 
• God ruling as cities, lives, and hopes rise and fall 
• Babylon’s strategy of conquest, temptation, and identity reshaping 
• the difference between Nebuchadnezzar’s finished-product mindset and Jesus calling the weak 
• why the renaming of Daniel and his friends targets worship and belonging 
• Daniel’s refusal of the king’s food and the question behind discernment: unto what 
• quiet resolve before public reward and why holiness often starts unseen 
• honoring authority without losing conviction and asking for wise permission 
• God giving favor, wisdom, and skill that the world cannot manufacture 
• why Scripture celebrates faithfulness in Babylon more than escape from Babylon  

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Transcript

Opening And Daniel 1 Reading

Will Hawk 0:57

Hey guys, go ahead, grab a seat, grab a seat, Daniel chapter one. Grab a seat. Chris, I had so much fun watching you stand for worship when nobody else was. And then the moment you sat down, stokes is like, let's stand and worship. It felt like he was just having fun with you. Alright, guys, Daniel chapter one. As we get ready to turn there, I want to challenge you with something. I'm gonna read a portions, portion, a portion of scripture. It's gonna take me about 30 to 45 seconds. I want you to focus on every statistic when it comes to the battle that is pointed out. Every army, every soldier, every method of war. All right, here we go. Daniel chapter. Oh, I forgot. If you guys want the notes, I'll give you about 10 seconds. If you want to grab your phone and get the notes from today, go ahead and feel free to grab those and then I will read. And I feel like when they hang out with their child and they're like doing QR codes and stuff like that, all snazzy, I have a little sense of a, hey, I, all right, we're doing this together. Daniel chapter one. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shannar to the house of his God, lowercase G, and placed the vessels and the treasury of his God. Then the king commanded Ashbonaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, and he's w here's what he was looking for: youths without blemish, of good appearance, skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace, and to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank, gave them the best stuff, and they were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. Okay. Give me one statistic of the battle. You can't do it. Do you want to know why? This is my favorite part about the opening of the book of Daniel. There's nothing given. Now, I just want you to think if you grew up in the church and you have read scripture for any amount of time, the Bible loves saying 10,000 went against 50,000. It loves talking about if they had chariots or if they had spears. It loves talking about how long the siege went on and where they were, how high the walls were. The Bible loves going into detail. Here's what you get. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and he besieged it. That is it. Do you want to know why? The whole book of Daniel hangs on that sentence. The whole book of Daniel is telling you primarily this one message. It's not that Nebuchadnezzar was smarter than anyone else, that he conquered God's people. It has nothing to do with the size of his army. It has nothing to do with his military lines and food. It doesn't have anything to do with strategy or the size of his army. Here's what it has to do with this. The Lord gave. The whole thing is about the sovereignty of God. The whole book of Daniel is about you looking at a world that doesn't make sense, and God looking back at you and says, if you could see it from my perspective, it all makes sense. Zero credit given to Nebuchadnezzar. In fact, all he does according to Scripture is show up, which means God is ruling as cities, lives, and hopes rise and fall. Let me slow down on this for a minute. I specifically pick these three words. God is ruling even as cities rise and fall. Right now, cities are tumbling in the world. Right now, they are falling. Right now, other cities are being built up. Right now, lives are coming into the world. Nurses are saying, it's a boy, and mom and dad are listening for that little cry. And right now, people are gathering around a casket as someone that they love is going on into what is next. Even as all of these things are happening, you right now, some of you come in so hopeful, like life in this moment is good, or you're trusting God to be good, and some of you got a text message on your way here. You decided to check your email, even though you try not to do it on Sunday, or one is coming 12 minutes from now and you don't even see it coming. And it is going to threaten your entire afternoon and weekend and week. And I just want you to feel this from the drop of Daniel 1. Even as cities and lives and hopes rise and fall, God is sovereignly ruling over it all. And here is what was going on in Babylon. In Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar was building a city, and this city was the greatest city the world had ever seen. He was building it for his own glory, he was building it for his own name. He wanted people to remember Nebuchadnezzar. He wanted 2,600 years later, which is approximately correct, us to be saying his name, and we are. But notice which names get more credit in the moments ahead. And in building this city, his plan was to take the best of the world around him. He would take it by conquer, he would take it by assimilation, he would take it by temptation. I can build a city in a world that anyone would flock to because it is the best on the planet. He would take what he could get, and then he was going to make it in his own image for his own name. And so what he does is he goes, and when he attacks God's people, he finds the best. Give me the kids who are attractive. Give me the kids who are good public speakers. Give me the varsity level football and basketball player. Give me the kid who's in AP classes that they've been shipping to St. Elmo on a bus into gifted classes since the second grade. Give me those kids. That's what Nebuchadnezzar wants. Because here's what he wants to do. And by the way, you want to do the same thing, okay? He wants to take a generally finished product that looks pretty good and tweak it a little bit and then say, look at what I have done. By the way, that's what a college wants to do if you're sharp. They want you to become an incredible doctor or lawyer, professor, and they want people when they walk into your office to see the name of their school in a plaque over your desk. They want you to succeed. Is it me? Am I too close? They want you to succeed, but they want you to succeed so their name looks great. Parents, don't get me wrong, we want this too, right? You parent your kid different at Walmart than you do in their bedroom. You do because you want to look a certain way. Do you want your kid to say sir and ma'am? You better believe you do. Does it matter more when you're at a friend's house having dinner together? Yes, it does. Why? Because you want your kid to be created in the image of Jesus? Yes. And because you want to look like a really good mom and you want to look like a really good dad who has taken this beautiful thing that is a like top-tier grade A, and you've just tweaked off a little bit of selfishness. But that is not who you are. It is not the kids that God has given you, and it is not the kid that you are to God. When you hire someone for your business, you do not want a project. You want a finished product that you can just slightly mold. That's what you have in the beginning of Daniel. But here is what we actually find in Christ: something incredibly different. While walking by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon, who's called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. You do not have to have a lot of historical context to know these guys were not getting pulled into Babylon. Okay? If Nebuchadnezzar had come through, he would have looked at Peter and Andrew and been like, no, dog, like they're getting seas that just get degrees. That's all that's happening. These kids are not playing on the varsity level. All this dude does is smell like fish all day. And I'm not really interested. Is there someone better? But Jesus steps in, verse 19, and he said to them, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. You see, Nebuchadnezzar wants to make them into his own image. By the way, so do you. You want to make the people around you into your own image. This is why you get in disagreement so easily. You're at work and there is a decision in front of you. You want to go option A, I would say B, but that would bother you, okay? You want to go option A, they want to go option B. And you cannot feasibly understand why anybody would want to go with option B. There must be something wrong with them. They're not that intelligent, they're not that thoughtful, they're not that introspective. The way I see it is normal. And where I'm not normal, I'm not normal, and it's pretty cool that I'm not. That's the majority of the way the ego of the human works. And in this world, Jesus steps and he says, I don't want finished products. There are none. Yesterday, uh, my U12 girls, which means most of them are 10 and 11 years old, soccer team, uh, we agreed to play a U14 team. I don't need to go into the science of biology and puberty, but let's just say you could tell which team was U-12, and you could tell which team was U14. And they're for the first time, our girls are playing on a full-size field. For the first time, they're playing with 11 instead of nine. And our girls are about 12 inches shy and 40 pounds light of everybody that they are playing against. And by the way, they held their own. Like I was so proud, like, absolutely held their own. They're leaning in, they're trying to shoulder, and they are bouncing off like uh a powerball going down the stairs. Like they are just getting crumbled on this field by these bigger, stronger, faster girls. They hold their own. It's incredible, right? And at the very end of the game, the loudest praise, the loudest celebration, the loudest lowercase G glory happened when the smallest girl on our team had this random happenstance situation where a ball was coming away from the other team's goalie, and she put all eight pounds of that leg that God had given her in. And I'm convinced that Angels in the outfield style, they grabbed that thing and they launched it into the back of the net, and everybody goes berserk. Why? Because she's the underdog. We love an underdog story. Can I teach you something about your soul and scripture? You want to be the underdog. I know in life you don't. You want to look like you have it put together, that your speech is precise, that your presentableness is poised. You want to come across whether you got kids with you or not, whether you're walking into a job description or not, and you want to look like you have it together. That is not who Jesus is looking for. Those are the people who miss Christ when he calls and he says, Come to me, you who are weak, you who are needy, you who are burdened. If you can't own the fact that you are weak and needy and burdened, you would have made Nebuchadnezzar's team. But you would have missed Christ's. Christ is not interested in taking you and cleaning you up just a bit and polishing this wonderful thing. He wants to take the person who would never have made it into an AP class. He wants to take the person who was struggling in their standardized, I was just praying with somebody, struggling in their standardized question uh test this past week, and here was their prayer. May my guesses be good. That was literally the prayer. Like I just prayed it. God make it's too late. It's too late for wisdom and study and diligence. Might my guesses be attended by your hand, oh Lord. These are the people God wants, not the finished product. But Babylon is gonna try to do something very different. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. I don't think it's me. I mean, it has to be. Look at Trent. Everybody's so disappointed with the mic in the core. He's saying, go handheld. I'm refusing and ignoring. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs, look at me, gave them names. I know what your mom called you, and I know what your dad called you. I know why they called that, but that's not what's about to happen. You're about to get a completely new name. And if you ever tried to change your name in middle school or high school, and I don't mean you went from like Kyle to Devin, I mean you went from William to Will. You can do it, you can say whatever you want to say. What people call you is what they call you. All right? And it can be very hard to get yourself out of a nickname you do not like. I don't need amens in the moment. All of the head nodding is sufficient, okay? And these guys are given nicknames. Daniel, he called Beltashazzar, Hananiah, he called Shadrach, Mishael, he called Meshach, and Azariah, he called Abednego. Why? Because he wants to erase as much as he can of the work that mom and dad did, the culture that pursuing God did. Daniel's name meant God is my judge. He is the one who sees my life and makes claims over it. He gets to decide my yesterday, today, and forever. And instead they grab him and they pull the name tag off and they say, You're going to be known as the wife of the God Bell. What? I'm a dude. Like I would have had problems with that from the drop. He looks at Misheel, who has the coolest name to me, who is what God is. Tell me something better than God, greater than God, more all-encompassing than God. Who is what God is? And instead, they say, We're gonna call you who is like Aku, the little God for the gate right over there to the west. Hananiah, you may have been called God is gracious. Look at the good gifts of my God. But how good is the gifting of your God when you have been captured and brought here? Instead, Shadrach, we will call you fearful of Aku, the moon god. Azariah, you may have thought that God was a helper, but where is his help now? Show me where your mom is or your dad. Where are your friends right now? You don't even understand the language I'm speaking. So Abinnego will be your name. You are no longer a servant of that god, you're a servant of the shining one named Nebo. Now, if I have finished this sermon and I gave you guys a quiz, and the quiz was name all the gods that they were named after, you would probably fail. And that is a very good thing, because that is the point. All of these names that they tried to give them, all of this attempt to make it stick, and most of us walked in this room not knowing any of that. Because the God who handed them over to their enemies, the God who gave them to their enemies, is the God who is sovereign when cities, lives, and hopes rise and fall. And God is not looking for finished products. Babylon can change their location, and they did, can change their label, which they did, can change their lingo, which they did, but it cannot change who they are and what they love. Babylon took them away from their families, but it couldn't take away what their families had already formed in them. One of the greatest encouragements that I take as a dad in this passage is that their mom and dad are never mentioned. Nowhere in the book of Daniel do you find out about their families. You don't know if Daniel came from a single parent home. You don't know if Shadrach, Meshach, or Abendigo had a good grandmother or a bad grandmother. You have no clue. All you know is the product that was left. And I would argue that's exactly what their mom and dad and grandma and granddad would have wanted. Leave my name out of it. I don't need the credit. I don't need to be known. Here's what I care about. Can my 17-year-old be ripped away from his family and everything that he knows and everything that I've taught him? And will he still run after the God who we love? This is what I care about. This is what I want to know. So Babylon can change a lot, but it can't change who they are and what they love. And in that moment, Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore, Daniel asked the chief of the eunuchs, by the way, this word asked, and this word allowed has massive implications for you today. He asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. Why? Why did Daniel not just eat the food that he was given? Why refuse the king's food? I'm gonna give you 10 seconds and I want you to come up with an answer. Why do you think Daniel refused to eat really good T-bone steaks and the best wine that the world could produce? Why did he decide not to touch those things? Don't answer out loud. Just give yourself five seconds. Come up with an answer. Let me give you three that are very common. Number one, ceremonial cleanliness. They wanted to be holy unto the Lord. Number two, they wanted to avoid idolatry. You tripped on idols like you trip on churches in Columbus. They were everywhere. And so here they are. Ah, we're we're not gonna get sucked into that and then personal health. All right. I'm not gonna make you answer. Raise your hand if one of your answers is on the board. Just let's look. Okay, I need to hang out with y'all because y'all came up with answers that most theologians have not come up with yet. And so either you have completely phased out, or I need to hang out and get coffee with you. The problem with these common answers is they don't really make the most sense when you study. You could say ceremonial cleanliness, but the problem was that wine wouldn't have been prohibited by any law. So it couldn't just be that. And you could say, well, they wanted to avoid idolatry. That meat was probably sacrificed to an idol. True. But so would have been the vegetables and the grains, most likely, in a city like this. So what they ate was probably still sacrificed to an idol. More and more interest on that, you can read 1 Corinthians. Maybe it was for personal health. The only problem with that is Americans who write blogs and listen to things on personal health, and you're worried about your amino acids and all kinds of stuff like that and your electrolytes. They didn't know any of that. In fact, if you were look to look at a commentary on this from more than 50 years ago, it barely even comes up. Everybody's like, I'm gonna do the Daniel fast. It's gonna be great, it's gonna be wonderful, I'm gonna lose a bunch of weight. This isn't me. They're trying to get fatter. That's literally what the Bible says. In a minute, they're gonna get praised for being fatter in the Bible. Deal with that as you will. The point was, it didn't make any sense. You don't go and eat a caloric deficit to your peers and get bigger and whiter and stronger. What God did was miraculous here. It wasn't basic biological nutritional science. So why on earth did they decide not to do this? I I think the key is right here. Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego were not the only four people abducted from Judah, but they're the only four we know about. Why? Because they resolved to do something. They decided firmly on this course of action. And what was their resolution? This matters to you today, Christian and non-believer alike. If you happen to be here checking out who Jesus is, they decided we are going to find in a culture that is against us, that's us, that we are going to look for every ounce and every inch of an opportunity to find godliness in anything. If I am being abducted from my family, I am trusting that God gave me in that way, which is exactly how this text starts. I am trusting that this is not God withholding his hand. He is giving me into this situation, and I refuse to be here and not look for something great. You get the class you don't want to be in with a teacher that you don't want. Christian, are you looking for every ounce and every inch of godliness to squeeze out of that? You don't get the promotion, you get put on the different team, you don't get accepted to the right college. You go to a job that's different than the one that you want. You marry somebody who turns out to be different than you thought they were when you dated them and married them, and a million other things. You thought life was gonna Feel like it felt in your 20s. Then you turn 40, and things just hurt all the time. And in every one of those realities, God is inviting you, like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Benigo, look for every ounce. Look for every inch. They are going to take my name tag and they're gonna change it. I can't do a thing about it. It's who they're gonna call me. If I don't answer to it, they're probably just gonna take me out back and kill me. But you know what I can do? I can try to find every inch and every ounce of godliness, and God is the one who gives me my daily bread, not a king from his table. And I'll tell you what's tough about this. I would have probably failed in this. And it's not that I would have failed because red meat is awesome. That's not why it is. I think it's a gift of God. Be honest. You don't have to answer out loud. How many of us, if we were them, would have been taken from our families and put in a new place, and when incredible food was put in front of us, would have said, At least God blessed me with this. He saw my sacrifice and he gave me this as a blessing, as a sign of his ongoing goodness to me? How many of us would have looked at what Nebuchadnezzar was bringing as compromise, and we would have seen a blessing that actually wasn't there? Can you recognize the difference between God's kindness and worldly compromise? Do you know how easy it would have been for Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to look at each other and be like, okay, let's be honest. Like, we're already smart, school's not that tough for us. They're giving us a bunch of different language, they've dressed us up a little bit, and they've changed our name tag. But bro, this is good food. And like, we didn't get this much protein. We're gonna hit the gym. We're gonna look really good. Like, we're gonna turn this thing into a body transformation. And this is gonna work out when we start going and looking for potential ladies. Like, let's make this work. God's giving us a blessing. No, they look at it and they say, There aren't a lot of places I can do this, but here I can choose to say no. I can choose to say the world would give me a lot of distraction, but here's an ounce and here's an inch where I can look for the goodness of my God. Can you recognize the difference between God's kindness and worldly compromise? I can't give you a silver bullet for this. You you need to know God's word pretty well. You need to trust that difficulty isn't coming when God turns his back, but he will often bring it intentionally. You need to pray for the Spirit of God to show you what is from Him and what is folly, what is a good gift and what the enemy has put a hook in that you can't see until you swallow it, hook, line, and sinker. You need to be in a community of people who are watching the way that you live so that the trajectory of your life might be sanctified and upward. But I would give you this one, this is not a silver bullet, but I would ask this question when something good or delightful comes into your life or an opportunity, unto what? Unto what? Okay, so it's a new job, but unto what? More money? Is that really the only reason to make a decision? A new promotion, a new opportunity, a new relationship? Are we assuming that everything that we would desire is something that God would bring? Or are we saying, unto what? Why do I want this? What do I believe it is creating? Can you recognize the difference between God's kindness and worldly compromise? Because holiness often begins with quiet resolve before it's publicly rewarded. Second time. Daniel resolved and God gave. This is the second time God has given something. Daniel resolved and God gave. He gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs. And the chief of the eunuch said to Daniel, Hey man, I get that you want to change your diet, but I fear the Lord the King, my Lord the King. He's the one who's given you food and drink. If he sees that you're in worse condition than the rest of the boys that came over, my head is gonna be in danger. Second time we see this, God gave. So on one hand, God gave Judah into the hand of their enemies, but Scripture doesn't want you to miss this. In the midst of that, he's given Daniel favor and compassion. I've hinted at this, let me make it explicit. If you think when difficulty comes, it is on one hand, and when good, delightful things come, it is on the other, you do not understand the whole of Scripture. What Daniel wants you to realize is this God gave us into the hand of our enemies, and he gave me favor and compassion in the midst of it. Notice, this exists in the midst of difficulty. God is ruling, even as cities, lives, and hopes rise and fall. Why? Daniel resolved and God gave. Now, I would encourage you, even if you don't usually get the QR code to get this one. Let me up it. I really want you to get this if you have a son. The reason that I really want you to get this is this is a QR code that takes all of Jonathan Edwards' resolutions. This is a very popular theological biblical thing. All of the resolutions that he wrote, and it is categorizing them. These resolutions, I brought mine up here with me. By the way, the version you're gonna read is sort of old English, but a bit updated. Resolution number one, I will do whatever I think to be most advantageous to God's glory. Resolution number six, to live with all of my might wherever I am. By the way, that's our Colossians verse. To endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness in the other world as I possibly can. One of them, I don't see it, uh, was this. I resolve to not pray until I can pray with faith that God wants to step into the request that I am lifting up. In other words, I'm not just praying because it's bedtime. I'm not just praying because there's food in front of me. I made a new resolution recently. I'm glad my wife isn't, she's serving in the kids' room, because I don't want her to know that I'm doing this. I, you know how when you sit down around a table, if somebody takes a bite before the blessing, like in the Christian world, you're like, mm-hmm. Maybe one day you'll be a varsity Christian like me. Jesus isn't looking for varsity Christians, he's looking for broken people. Do you want to know what I've started doing? When the blessing begins, I take a bite. I want food or drink in my mouth when we thank God, so that my senses are spurred on to say, God, this is good. You have done something incredible, but that means you gotta break out of your legalism just a little bit. That is something that I have begun doing so that my prayers, simple prayers that I've prayed since I was four, would actually take on new life and new meaning. If you are praying for somebody's life to change, maybe you need to step back and instead of saying, God, I pray that you would rescue my dad from my sin, saying, God, would you give me faith that you can even do this thing? Would you give me hope? Would you give me examples? Would you give me stories? Would you give me brothers and sisters in Christ who have seen this? Would you build up around me clouds of faith that I can pray this with fervor? I I want all of you to take a look at this. I know that won't happen. I really want the dads to take a look at this. I really want the moms and dads of young men to take a look at this because there are 250 kids on the other side of that door. And every week we are trying to make them into the image of Christ. We want them to be the ones who plant churches and create missions. We want them to be the ones who stand on stages and lead in worship. That is what we are unashamedly trying to create. Do you know how many young men were taken from Judah? I got no clue. I can tell you about four of them. I can tell you about four, and I can't tell you a thing about their mom or dad except this. They probably grew up in a family that said, Daniel, we are going to resolve for you to be a man who walks into difficulty and looks for God in it. You are going to walk into a world that offers you delights. And before you take a bite, you pause and say, God, is this a moment for me to seek you or to appreciate the good gift that you have given? And regardless of which way it goes, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, we want that moment for you. I don't do this with my sons. I probably should, but I'll tell you what I have done with them. There's a book by Robert Lewis. It's written, it's called Raising a Modern Day Knight. I still recommend it to this day. There may be a better one. Take this application, even if you don't have sons to raise for your own heart. My kids do not know Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, but they know this. If you corner them and you say, What's a godly man? And please don't do this because it's already weird enough to be a pastor's kid. But if you did, they should say, a godly man rejects passivity. If you could sit still or move, we choose to move. Our goal is to move things forward. Whether it is the faith or the kingdom of God or a project at the house or something that needs done, we reject passivity. We expect a great reward. When you work hard, you ought to be rewarded for it. And if that sounds really not Christian, might I remind you that for those of us who are trusting in Christ, when we enter heaven, there is one thing that you hear first. Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the reward of your master. When you work hard, there should be a reward on the other side of it. And it may not always be a paycheck, it might be something eternally minded. R-E-A, accept responsibility. When you make a mistake, don't shrink back. When you make a mistake, own it. The thing that changes failure into growth is accepting responsibility and lead courageously. Which means if you are not sure, if you are not sure to drive through the mud or just wait and see what happens, doing something is better than doing nothing. Have courage. Try to get the van through the mud. And if it gets stuck, celebrate that God gave you eight guys to get on the back and push it with you. This is what I I'm not telling you you need to do that, but what I am telling you is if you haven't given your kids things to aspire to, they are going to mitigate themselves to whatever the lowest common denominator is. So whether it is this or something else, if you want a Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, or Abendigo, you start doing it. You start resolving before difficulty comes. And that's what we see in them. They have the wisdom to be resolved long before it is required. And his resolve is not reckless. A lot of times young people will get uh sort of chastised for being reckless. I underlined this a few minutes ago, and I didn't want you to miss it. Did you notice what Daniel did? He knew they were going to change his name and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. They were gonna call him what they were gonna call him. But what he did do is this he went to Ashbanaz, the chief of the eunuchs, and he asked if they would allow him to do these things. Daniel was not reckless, even though he was resolved. He asked permission, he proposed a test, he worked through the chain of authority that God presented to him, and he did it with others. He knew what had yet to be written in Romans chapter 13. Do you know this? Do you believe this? Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, which means Nebuchadnezzar is exactly who he wanted over Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and a minigo. Which is why Daniel begins by saying, And God gave them into the hand of their enemy. Just as he gave him favor, there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Now look, you can not like this, but I'm just telling you that is the biblical reality. Every November, every four years, some people are happy, some people are sad, and God is still on his throne, ruling as cities and lives and hopes rise and fall. Daniel walked in and he didn't say, Well, I guess if God wanted me to be faithful, he would have given me a godly king with a godly priest and a godly family. He said, I don't have any of those things, and I can still be godly because I have resolved to be. And the things that have been put inside of me are now going to flourish in a world that thinks it's going to choke them out. Every authority that exists, and you don't have to be political with this. It means your mom and your dad too. Honor your father and mother does not come with an expiration date just because you're 45. There's still your father and your mother. The boss that you have, the coach that you have, anyone in authority over you, God has made no mistakes. The question is: are you going to look for every inch and are you going to look for every ounce of godliness to be found there? God continues to rule. So he listened to these 17-year-olds, even though his head was on the line. If you don't read this, that is a miracle. That is God picking Ashbanaz out of all the other eunuchs to say, You're the one with the heart that I'm going to move and soften. But notice he also listened to them in this matter. It's not like he was a puppet. It's not like after 10 days, Daniel, Shadrach, and Meshach, and Abinago were like, take a look, Ash Bonaz, pretty good, right? Now for our next trick, send us home. No, it's not like in this one thing, he gave them favor and he tested them for ten days. Remember that? At the end of ten days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them veggies. As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom. And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams, which means God gives what the world can't manufacture. Babylon had all of the best kids, varsity level, A students. What's the new SAT number? When I did it, it was 1600. What's the new one? It's 2400 or something like that. Seriously, we don't no one in the room knows what a great score on the SAT is. What about ACT? Nobody knows. Well, you know what? Great. I've got a bunch of underachievers. That's exactly who this sermon is for. He grabs all of the best, and none of them can compare to what four guys who trust God turn out to be. Their excellence was given by grace. It wasn't earned through education or experience or a weight room or doing travel ball. It was given by grace. But the book of Daniel does something. It never celebrates their release from Babylon. Read it in its entirety, and you will never see that. Does it celebrate their walking out of a fiery furnace? You better believe it does. And then God leaves them in Babylon. Does it celebrate Daniel walking out of a lion's den? You better believe it does. And then it leaves him right in the midst of Babylon. Because God gave Judah into the hand of their enemy, and in the midst of that, he gives Daniel favor and compassion. And in the midst of that, he gives Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego learning and skill and giftedness. Christian, the expectation is not that God would pull you out of difficulty, but that he would use you in the midst of it. They never get to celebrate their release from Babylon, but Scripture cannot stop celebrating their faithfulness in it. And if I can just be like very honest and personal with you in a moment, I didn't enjoy typing this slide. I was fine with the one that came before it. It's like, all right, like cowboy up. We don't all get released from difficulty in life. But this part, that God would put his people in difficult places to watch them flourish when the world doesn't understand how they are flourishing, that that would bring him glory, it's hard for me. It's hard because some of you are in marriages that feel that way and you want to be released from them. It's hard because some of you are in jobs that you absolutely despise and hate, but it's how you feed your kids and keep the lights on. Some of you aren't in relationships and that feels like prison. Some of you look at a bank account and it feels like, how are we gonna make it one more day? And what I want you to realize, what I need to remind myself of is they never celebrate their release from difficulty. What is celebrated is there is their faithfulness in it. Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Do you know what that is? That's resolve. I want you to look at a world that wants to crush you and say, I don't have to be loud and I don't have to be reckless, but I also don't have to be moved by it. I can remain planted firmly in the goodness of God and let him develop whatever fruit he desires to give. No, conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles. That means people who don't understand your love for Christ, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and glorify God on the day he visits. When they slander you, this is faithfulness. Christian, let me actually, non-believer, if you're not trusting in Christ right now, can I tell you this was not reckless, but it was resolved. There is a resolve in Christ to go to a broken group of people who try so hard to look so impressive and say, Stop. Come to me just as you are with all of your brokenness. Come to me with your sin. You think I haven't seen it already? Come to me with those things in your mind and in your heart that you go about doing, that you even hate them as you do them. Come here, kid. Come here. I have given you into a world that wants to crush you, but I will plant you and cause fruits of righteousness to grow. Come to me, you who are weak and heavy laden. I will give you rest. Stop trying so hard on your own. Come to me and seek forgiveness. And Christian, you can do this. The reason I didn't like that slide is because I want to be set free from stuff. But what I've realized, what God wants us to realize, is when bad things happen, if we are rooted in Christ, looking for every inch and every ounce of godliness, they are going to see something amazing, which is really great news. And if I were to drive the point home, I would say this you can resolve and be faithful in the things you doubt you can, Christian. You can resolve and be faithful in your marriage that you do not want to be in. And I'm not just talking about not having an affair. I'm saying you can resolve and be faithful to be the man who loves that woman the way you wanted to love her when she walked down the aisle toward you. And you can be the wife who wants to love and support her husband long before all of the difficulties that you have walked through over the past 20 years. You can resolve to be faithful, people in this room who are dealing with pain that will not go away. And I'm not really talking emotional. I'm saying you are just in pain, and it makes you irritable, and you can't sleep, and you're frustrated. You can resolve and you can be faithful in whatever difficulty you have found because that is who God has made you to be. And the end of Daniel, this is the only little verse that I left off, and it's so anticlimactic. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus. Now that may not stand out to you as anything fascinating, but I will tell you this. The guy who wanted to change his name is gone while Daniel is still there. God has removed this king who wanted to rewrite who Daniel was, and Daniel's still standing there, resolved and faithful. What will they observe when they see you in difficulty? Daniel outlasts a regime that tried to remake him and continued to be a voice of truth and hope, saying there is a God in every difficulty that can make you make it through. And what's really cool, Bennett, you can come up if you're coming up. I can't tell. Are you the guy? You're not the guy? Okay. Hi, Zach. Man, you Mr. Q. That's all right. Oh, well, that's good. Okay, well, good. I'm happy to hear it. Do you remember what name Daniel was given? Most won't. Because that's not really the point. The point is the person God had created it's Belt of Shazar, if that's killing you. The point is that God's much more concerned about who He wants to make you to be rather than what the world wants to make you to be. Because God God rules as cities and lives and hopes rise and fall. And I would just encourage you as we close with this. There are going to be a number of us who are praying on the back porch. If you've been trying to be an A student, a varsity human, and you want to take a breath and trust Christ, instead of you trying so hard, we would love to pray for you. I specifically would love to pray for anybody who is struggling and hardships to believe that God can be good in the midst of them. Whether it's relational or occupational or pain or whatever else, I would love to pray for you. But as we close out our time, as we stand to sing, as the ushers get ready to pass the baskets, are you trying to be a varsity human? Are you trying to run to the one who's looking to do more than polish you up, who wants to place you in God-given hard places so that you can see faithfulness and joy grow? Because this is what Christ offers that the world can't. You can't lose with Jesus. When good things come, you receive them as blessings. When bad things come, you receive them as opportunity. You are untouchable in Christ so long as you are in Him. If you want to experience that, come to Him today. Let's respond as the band leads us. And if you need prayer, we'll be on the back porch.