Daniel 1 - Resolved

A sermon preached by Pastor Eric Price at the First Baptist Church of Centralia, Illinois on June 21, 2026.

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Daniel chapter 1, and uh I will be speaking to you on the entirety of the story in chapter 1, and I will read that story now. Starting in Daniel chapter 1, verse 1. 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 delivered Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his God in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his God. Then the king ordered Aspenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king's service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility. Young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and the literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service. Among those who were chosen were some from Judah. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishel, Meshach, and to Azariah Abednego. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine. And he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel. But the official told Daniel, I am afraid to ask. I'm afraid of my Lord the King, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you. Daniel then said to the guard, whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, please test your servants for ten days. Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the royal young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see. So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead. To these four young men, God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning, and Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds. At the end of the time set by the king to bring them into his service, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the privilege of having access to your word. We thank you that you have revealed yourself to us in these pages, and we ask that you would guide us through the example of your faithful servants to live more fully for you, to honor you with our lives. We give thanks and we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Throughout my life, I have experienced a variety of times where I moved to a new place and I was in an unfamiliar place. I've moved a lot of different times, and every time I moved, it brought with it a feeling of unfamiliarity. I was somewhere new. I didn't quite know this place. I didn't quite know what was going on. The culture, the way of doing things was a little bit different. For many years growing up, I lived overseas, and when we moved to a different country, uh, it was a different culture, different language, different uh customs, and there was a sense of unfamiliarity that I wasn't quite sure about everything around me. Things were a little unfamiliar. Then I moved back here to the US, but I moved to a very busy suburban area, which was also quite different than what I was used to. Uh very fast-paced, very congested, very different. And I felt a little out of place there. It just was new, it was unfamiliar. Then after that, I moved to a big city. And I lived in downtown Chicago, and getting used to living downtown was a totally new experience. I felt like buildings were falling in on me everywhere. I longed to see a piece of grass. It was different. And then, after many years there, I moved to southern Illinois where there's no shortage of grass. Every time I moved somewhere, things felt a little unfamiliar. Things felt a little different and uncertain. The world around me seemed just slightly strange and unusual, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. We meet Daniel and his friends in that kind of a situation. In a situation where the world around them feels uncertain and unfamiliar. Now, you may have moved in your life, or you may never have had that experience. But regardless of whether you have or you haven't, living as a Christian in this present world should feel a little bit like moving to an unfamiliar place. The world that we live in should feel just a little bit unfamiliar. When we seek to follow Christ and we live in a society and around people who don't share that commitment, it can make us feel a little bit like outsiders. Sometimes it can feel a little unsettling. People around us may not quite have the same way of doing things or the same values or the same priorities. We can be in our home country, our passport nation, and yet should feel a little bit like strangers because of our commitment to following Jesus. How should we handle that? How should we navigate that tension of living in a world that we don't fully identify with? Because if we're gonna follow Christ, we need to follow him, but we still gotta live in this world. You still gotta go shopping, still gotta do business here, still gotta go to work, all those sorts of things. So, how do we navigate this? I suppose one option could be just to retreat. Try to say I'm gonna avoid people as much as possible. I'm only gonna interact with people at church on Sunday mornings. I'm not gonna talk to anybody who doesn't share my faith. I'm not gonna talk to anybody who doesn't think exactly like I do. That could be one extreme. Another extreme might be, well, maybe I'll just forget about this following Jesus thing. The people around me don't seem too interested in it. Why should I be? It'd be a lot easier to just give it up and fit in. One option to manage the tension of living in this world is to try to retreat from society, not even be a part of it. Another option would be to fully become a part of it, to give up following Christ. Neither option is what God calls us to. And I would suggest that the example of Daniel offers us a better way. The example of Daniel and his friends in the narrative we've read offers us a model for living in an unfamiliar society that doesn't quite share the same values that we do. Daniel provides us an example of engaging with the world and making an impact while also maintaining his distinct identity as a follower of the one true God. When the story opens, Daniel and his friends are taken into captivity in Babylon. Says in verse 1 that in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar came and besieged it. This happened around 600 years before the birth of Christ. Earlier in biblical history, the kingdom of Israel had been divided into two parts because of Israel's ongoing sin. Then in 722 BC, the northern kingdom, Israel, was invaded and scattered by the Assyrian army. The southern kingdom, Judah, remained, but God repeatedly warned them that if they did not turn away from their sin and turn toward him, that they would suffer the same fate. They would experience captivity and defeat. This had been promised in the Mosaic law in Leviticus, that if they obeyed, they would experience blessing in the land, and if they disobeyed, there would be defeat and they would be exiled. So this was not new information to them, and God repeatedly gave them warning and yet they did not listen. And so here in Daniel chapter 1, when Daniel was taken into captivity, this is the beginning of God's judgment upon the southern kingdom of Israel for their sin and their refusal to turn away. That doesn't mean that Daniel himself or his friends were personally culpable for the sin. They're portrayed as being very upstanding followers of God. But the nation as a whole was suffering a kind of judgment. And it says that the Lord delivered the king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. And Daniel and his friends were taken into Babylonian captivity. They're taken into a new culture, a new society, a place where they talk differently, they look differently, they think differently, they act differently. It was unfamiliar and disorienting. And it's clear from the very beginning that this king, Nebuchadnezzar, has no intention to honor their faith in the one true God, the God that we know, revealed in Jesus Christ. Nebuchadnezzar had no interest in honoring that God. It says in verse 2 that when Nebuchadnezzar came and captured Judah, that some of the articles from the temple of God were carried off to the temple of the God in Babylonia and put into the treasure house of that God. The temple in Israel was a sacred site where people came and encountered the presence of God. In New Testament times with the coming of Christ, God's presence is not confined to any particular physical location, but the New Testament tells us that we are the temple of God, the people of God, where God dwells. In Old Testament times, God's presence was more sporadic, less universal. And God revealed himself in the temple in Israel, and there were instruments and objects there that helped them worship. Nebuchadnezzar took those instruments and put them in the temple of a false God. It was a clear sign that he had no regard for the one true God and had no intention of worshiping him. A couple of years ago in suburban Indianapolis, there was a church that was vandalized. The cross outside the church was spray painted, and satanic symbols were sprayed all over the church. Somebody was trying to communicate. I have no regard for your God, and I couldn't care less about your faith. In fact, I detest it. That's what Nebuchadnezzar was doing here. Nebuchadnezzar was sending the message, I have no regard for your God. Your faith in God yet. Doesn't mean anything to me. And so Daniel is taken into captivity along with his friends. And it says that they were to learn the language and the literature of the Babylonians. Says they were given new names. Their identity was being changed. They were no longer to be Israelites who worshiped the one true God, that they were to be Babylonians, they were to worship the Babylonian gods. They were to learn all about Babylon. Their identity was being erased. It was living in a world, in a culture, where their commitment to the one true God was not shared, their faith was not understood. Their reverence for God was not respected. In fact, they were probably mocked, considered to be outcasts because of their faith. So how does Daniel respond? How does Daniel respond to that? The rest of the narrative, and really the whole book of Daniel, tells us how Daniel responds. But I like how Rick McKinley describes Daniel's response, which we're about to see. He says that in response to the captivity, that Daniel practices participation without assimilation. Participation without assimilation. He participates in the society that he's in. He makes a contribution to it. He gets to know people there. But he never loses his distinct set of values and convictions in following God. He's around people different from him, but he exerts a positive influence on them rather than letting them exert a negative influence on him. Daniel practices participation without assimilation. He maintains his distinct identity as a follower of God when he's surrounded by a society that doesn't share the same values. How does he do that? How does he participate without assimilating? How does he maintain that distinct identity in a foreign society? Text gives us a couple of indications of that. As the story goes on, we see that Daniel makes a commitment. Daniel makes a commitment, first and foremost. He makes a commitment that he is going to maintain his distinct identity and maintain his conviction about the one true God. Verse 8. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine. Daniel resolved not to defile himself. We hear a lot about resolve at the beginning of the year, New Year's resolutions. People make resolutions that from now on I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. Whether or not they stick is a pretty open question. Talk to them around, well, this time of year. I made a New Year's resolution at the beginning of the year. Wish I remembered what it was. Daniel resolved. Daniel made a resolution. He made a commitment that he would not defile himself by eating the food that had been offered. Up until now, in the narrative, Daniel has been acted upon, but now he exerts agency. He acts. He makes a decision to define his own life rather than simply being acted upon. And the text doesn't explicitly say why Daniel didn't want to eat the king's food. It's possible that the food was unclean, according to the Mosaic law, according to Israelite law. Or it's possible that the food itself was clean, but it was prepared in a way that was inconsistent with the Old Testament law, the way God told them to do it. These Old Testament dietary regulations and food laws are not something that apply to us as New Testament believers today. But in Old Testament Israel, they were a way that the people had of honoring God in their distinct cultural setting. And so it's possible that it would have directly violated the law that God had given if Daniel were to eat it. It's also possible that he simply wanted to maintain an element of distinctiveness over the others around him. He wanted to be different in some way, in order to remind himself of who he was, that he wasn't quite like all the people around him. Regardless of Daniel's exact motivation, the text says that he resolved not to defile himself. He felt that eating the king's food would compromise his distinctiveness as a follower of God. And so he made a commitment about the type of person he would be. And if we are to maintain our distinct identity as Christ followers, it begins with resolve. It begins with a commitment. It begins with deciding the kind of people who we are going to be, and it begins by deciding that we are not going to let others steer us away from the resolve that we have to follow Christ. I like what D.A. Carson says. Carson says this. He says that people do not drift toward holiness. People do not drift toward holiness. The kind of person that God calls you to be is not something you are going to drift toward. The integrity that God calls you to live with is not something that you are accidentally going to move toward. The kind of commitment that Christ calls us to have to his kingdom is not something that we are accidentally going to acquire when we're not trying. Nobody drifts toward holiness. Nobody drifts towards the kind of life God calls them to live. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We tend to drift away. If left to our own devices and our own desires, we tend to drift away from God over time. Sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly. It begins with a commitment, with a resolve. Daniel resolved not to defile himself. Have you resolved to honor Christ wherever he's placed you? Have you resolved to honor the one true God regardless of what the people around you are doing? Daniel maintained his distinct identity by making a commitment. He resolved not to defile himself. He committed to following God. That commitment that he made was an internal commitment that he had to make in his own heart. But when we make a commitment like that, it also has to be lived out in how we interact with others. The commitments that we make, the resolve that we have, it displays itself in the way that we interact with other people. And Daniel, his commitment played out in the way that he interacted with people. Because it says in verse 10 that he went to the official and asked not to eat the king's food. Verses 8 and 9, that is. He asked not to eat the king's food. But verse 10 says that the official told Daniel that he was afraid of the king. He was afraid that if Daniel didn't eat the king's food, that Daniel's health would wither, that he would look not so good, and that the official would then be in trouble with the king, that the king would have his head. Daniel made a request not to defile himself, and it didn't work right away. And so Daniel then found a compromise. He offered a little experiment. He said, Well, let's just test it for 10 days. Verse 12, please test your servants for ten days. And then verse 13 and 14, he said, At the end of the 10 days, let's see the results. And if I look fine, we'll stick with it. If I don't look fine, we'll stop it. He proposed an experiment to see if his commitment would have a negative impact. You see, Daniel found a way to work out his commitment among the people that he was around. He found a way to work with people who thought differently than him. Who had different priorities and values than him. He did so respectfully but clearly. He displayed wisdom in how he interacted with people. One article I read says that wisdom is practical knowledge about how to get things done. Wisdom is practical knowledge about how to get things done. The resolve that we have to follow Christ needs to play itself out in wisdom, being able to interact with people and get things done effectively. Daniel displays his wisdom through the tact that he has. He has tact in how he handles people. He's diplomatic, he's respectful, but he's also direct. He's able to sensitively navigate the issue. He recognized the concern on the part of the chief official, and then he navigated that. In other words, for Daniel, being a witness to God didn't mean being obnoxious and intrusive and annoying. For us, being a witness for Christ doesn't mean that we have to go out into society and be a bull in a china shop. We can interact with people respectfully, tactfully, honor their concerns, honor where they're coming from. And yet, as we do so, still maintain our own identity and our own resolve to follow Christ. Daniel was resilient. His first attempt was not successful. He asked and he was denied. Sometimes when people cross us, especially if they feel like, if we feel like they're crossing our faith, we might have a tendency to explode, just get upset. But Daniel doesn't do that. He keeps his composure and he finds another way to address it. Daniel has tact. He has skill in interacting with people. His resolve to follow God displays itself in how he negotiates and works with people who are different than him. Maybe as you sit here this morning, you think to yourself, I want that kind of wisdom. As I read the passage this week, I wanted that kind of wisdom. But I want to encourage you that that wisdom is possible not just for Daniel, but for all those who follow Christ. In verse 17, it says this to these four young men, God gave knowledge and understanding. The source of Daniel's wisdom was God. God was the one who imparted wisdom to Daniel. It's not simply that Daniel was born with a great IQ or born with great skills, perhaps though he was. But the text explicitly says that the wisdom he displayed and the knowledge that he had came from God. And so if you feel that you do not have the wisdom needed to interact with people and to effectively witness for Christ, I invite you to ask God for wisdom. James chapter 1, verse 5, James tells us this if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all. You want wisdom? Ask for it. Jesus says, you have not because you ask not. If you want to be tactful and respectful in dealing with people, then when you're in situations where people push your buttons, ask God for wisdom. When you're in a situation where you don't know how to bear witness to Christ, ask for wisdom. When you are in a situation where somebody seems opposed to the gospel and you want to be a positive influence on them, but you don't know how to do that, ask for wisdom. God is the one who grants wisdom. When we make a resolve and a commitment to follow Him, He will give us wisdom when we ask. Daniel maintained his distinct identity by his resolve, by his wisdom in interacting with others. But the wisdom that he displayed seems a bit risky. And it was a bit risky. And so if we are to maintain our distinct identity, we need faith. We have to trust in God. Daniel did something a bit risky. He trusted in God. It's clear that the way that Daniel negotiated the situation required him to rely on God for results. It wasn't guaranteed to work. The text does tell us that at the end of the ten days they look healthier and better nourished than any of the young men. So his plan paid off. It was successful, but that wasn't a given going in. Daniel had to make a commitment from a place where the future was uncertain and the outcome wasn't quite clear. And we do not always have all of the information or all of the facts or perfect knowledge of the future. Sometimes we simply have to make decisions using wisdom based upon the circumstances in front of us. And when we act out of conviction, it requires faith. It requires that we trust in God to provide for the situation even when the outcome is uncertain. Faith is a trust and a confidence that God will go before us into the future and will take care of things even if we don't know how they will work out. I like what Paul Nyquist says about faith. He says that faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. Sometimes we have to walk forward, but we can only understand our path looking backward. Sometimes we need to step out in faith even when we don't know how it's all going to go, trusting that hindsight will reveal the providential hand of God carrying us each step of the way. We often face uncertainty in life, and managing that uncertainty, negotiating uncertainty, is a key to wisdom. Often we have to act in the face of uncertainty. And when we don't have a full picture of everything ahead, sometimes we have to act out of our resolve to follow God and a sense of wisdom about what's best. Hebrews chapter 11 tells us without faith it is impossible to please God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. But when we trust in the character of God, it helps us to act out of conviction and leave the results in his hands. Daniel maintained his distinct identity when he was in a world that didn't share his values. He practiced participation without assimilation. He was a part of society and yet maintained his own unique values. He did that by making a commitment to follow the one true God, by exercising wisdom and by trusting in God for the future. There's a quote I like by Wilbur Chapman. He says this about the way that Christians relate to the world around them. He says this it is not the ship in the water, but the water in the ship that sinks it. It is not the ship in the water, but the water in the ship that sinks it. Think about that for a minute. A ship that gets in the water doesn't automatically sink. But if the water starts to get into the ship, then it begins to sink. Now any ship is at risk of sinking, right? You know the easiest way to get a ship not to sink? Never put it in the water. Can you imagine that? Build a nice luxury cruise liner, and then the designer says, This ship is so beautiful. I need for her to sink. Just leave her sitting here on land. She won't sink that way. Right? She won't sink, but she'll be totally useless and will not fulfill the purpose that she was designed for. In order to fulfill her purpose, she's got to get into the water. That does risk sinking. But being in the water, in and of itself, doesn't make the ship sink. It's when the water gets into the ship that it begins to sink. And so Wilbur Chapman says, it is not the ship in the water, but the water in the ship that sinks it. So it's not the Christian in the world, but the world in the Christian that constitutes the danger. It is not us being out and about in the world that constitutes the danger, but the world being within us. The true danger is not that we might meet people different than us. The true danger is that we will fail to maintain our distinct commitment to Christ in the midst of interacting with others. We could become a holy huddle. We could refuse to interact with anybody other than other believers. We could be ships out of the water. But if we did that, we would not be fulfilling our purpose. Let us follow the example of Daniel with God's help. Let us participate in society without losing our distinct identity as followers of the one true God. Amen.