Legacies of Light: William Wilberforce

Courage doesn’t always look like a roar; sometimes it’s a window opened toward home and a quiet prayer said on schedule. We explore how Daniel faced the machinery of empire without bitterness or bravado, and how that same blend of joy, integrity, devotion, and humility showed up centuries later in William Wilberforce’s long campaign to end the slave trade and, ultimately, slavery across the British Empire. The stories unfold with human texture: a teenager abducted into Babylon who refuses to be remade, a statesman whose colleagues weaponize his prayer life, a den that should have been an ending but becomes a witness, and a parliamentarian who keeps smiling, keeps pressing bills, and keeps giving God the credit when the tide finally turns.

Along the way we challenge the assumptions we carry about success, influence, and credibility. An excellent spirit stands out more than elite access. Comprehensive integrity outlasts opposition research. Spiritual consistency is forged by daily habits, not last-minute heroics. And humility keeps victory from curdling into pride. Whether you lead a classroom, a courtroom, a crew, or a company, these four strands create a durable public witness in any age.

We close by turning to vocation as a sacred calling—teacher, builder, driver, judge, parent, pastor—and asking practical questions: What line must you draw without rage? What window must you open without fear? What habit will keep your joy steady when pressure rises? Listen, reflect, and then carry these practices into your week. If the conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help more people find it.

Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/

Transcript

Joy As A Credible Witness

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It's a reminder that the most attractive thing about your life will never be the plaque on your door, the car you drive, the house you live in, the salary you get paid. In fact, the greatest attraction to Christianity is a Christian who is happy he is one. Imagine that. Becoming a Christian and not quite getting over it. Christian to demonstrate the biblical truth that the joy of the Lord is their strength. The closer you walk with God, the easier the walk. We're under the impression that God delivers to his faithful smooth sailing. Well, there's one legacy of light in Scripture, one biography that has come to my mind that sort of shatters that misconception and puts us on the right path. It's the biography of a teenager who watched a conquering nation slaughter his people, more than likely his own parents. Without a doubt, it put an end to the life that he thought he was going to be able to live. Daniel's biography, if you want to find your way to that book named after him, does not begin with his birth. The book of Daniel begins with his abduction. Just five verses later, in fact, Daniel and his three friends are enrolled in the University of Babylon. It all happens so fast in the record of Scripture. The king has one fundamental desire in their education, and that is to turn them into Babylonian. One of our college students told me some time ago that his professor, one of his professors admitted to him that his chief aim was to destroy the faith of Christian students who took his course. He's not the first professor to do that. He's not the last to defy the living God. 3,000 years ago, Daniel and his friends are now sitting under Chaldean professors. They had their own gods, they had their own creation stories, they had their own sacrificial system to appease their gods. It looked like their gods won, by the way. They had their own moral views that would rival spring break and Mardi Gras, kind of rolled up into one long party. But even as a freshman in the university system of Babylon, Daniel refuses to join the party. You might notice verse 8 in chapter 1, but Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Historians tell us that the pagan practices of Babylon included offering the wine first as a libation of the gods, then poured out and placed before the idols. Then it would be given to the king, having supposedly been blessed by idols. So this would have been a defiling act for Daniel. You might notice, by the way, if you're newer to the faith, that Daniel and his three friends were the only young people who refused to go along. I wonder how many college freshmen over the centuries have shelved their Christianity and joined the party. Isn't it great to see a university student taking a stand for Jesus Christ today? Well, Daniel had brand new temptations he'd never faced before. I mean, when he's in Babylon, you know, when you're in Babylon, you can forget about Bethlehem. That's ancient history. This food. We have time to go through in detail, but it's a brand new temptation. It's unkosher meat. Would have been a violation of the dietary law. It's now being served. Now it might not mean much to you and me today, but where young Daniel had grown up, he's probably 17, 18, 19 years of age. If he had walked down the street of Jerusalem and smelled bacon frying in the air, somebody was in trouble. He never had to say no to that. I mean, when I grew up, teenagers didn't hide, well, they they might hide behind the barn and smoke a cigar. Not Daniel, teenagers then hid behind the barn and ate a ham sandwich. I probably made that up. But Daniel is going to become proof that you can graduate at the top of your university class without sacrificing your character. Culture does not have to refashion your character. There's so much more to this opening scene, but I really want to set the stage and move fast forward here to chapter 6. So if you'll turn over there to chapter 6 in Daniel's biography, by now he's risen to become the chief magi, Persia's leading wise man. His spiritual descendants, Persian wise men, are going to appear centuries later looking for the newborn king of the Jews. By now, Darius, the Medo-Persian king, has conquered Babylon. Chapter 6 opens with Darius restructuring the government and placing three men at the highest positions in the government. And Daniel is one of the three. He has nearly now unlimited power and prestige. He's on a first name basis with the most powerful king in this part of the known world. He's comfortable in the royal setting. But don't misunderstand, he's also hated by many in this kingdom. He's still a Jew, and the Persian politicians hated this rival. Who does he think he is? He's an outsider. He doesn't fit in here. So with his promotion, it doesn't mean it got easier. In fact, you would expect, though, Daniel could push his weight around. He has the political clout now to do it. He's at the top of the food chain, so to speak. But he said, Daniel at this point is going to provide more of a legacy than ever worth imitating. Especially for those of you who are in public service today. Perhaps you're a judge, a lawyer, a teacher, a council member, a senator, a state representative. Daniel shines the light on how to live for God in a godless world. So I want to very quickly give you four characteristics from this man's life. The first characteristic, and by the way, all these made his life harder, not easier, is this. He had a winsome personality. You might get ready to circle a couple of words in your Bibles, chapter 6 and verse 3, reads, Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps. Satraps are state governors, because, here it is, because an excellent spirit was in him. You can translate that, a gracious disposition, a winsome personality. Let me put it this way: Daniel had a great attitude. When he went to the office, when he went, met people on the street, when he dealt with these political issues and this tangled world, he might disagree. He might have to stand alone. He might have to hold his ground, but he kept his composure. He acted toward others with his gracious disposition. Don't miss the reason behind his promotion. What made him stand out wasn't his administrative genius, his problem-solving abilities. I have no doubt he had that as well. But he wasn't a standout because he knew how to manipulate the polls and hobnob with the elite and make connections with the VIPs of his world. He just worked hard. He did his job, and at the same time demonstrated this joyful spirit. This winsome, endearing, likable, engaging spirit that treated people kindly and graciously. This is a reminder that the most attractive thing about your life will never be the plaque on your door, the car you drive, the house you live in, the salary you get paid. In fact, the greatest attraction to Christianity is a Christian who is happy he is one. Imagine that. Becoming a Christian and not quite getting over it. Christians who demonstrate the biblical truth that the joy of the Lord is their strength. Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 10. Now don't overlook the obvious. At this point here, you might write it in the margin of your Bible, he's 85. It's best we can tell. He's lived for decades. Every time, by the way, you have a scene open in the early part of his biography, his life is in danger. He has every right, frankly, to be bitter, angry. An angry old man. He should be the kind of guy that if you saw him coming down the hallway, you'd duck into the break room so you wouldn't have to talk to him. I'm going to avoid that guy. He's a problem. There was anybody in politics you would never want to be around, it'd be this 85-year-old bachelor who was abducted as a teenager, lived alone his entire life in a foreign country, that constantly ridiculed his defeated nation and blasphemed his living God. How long could we take that? And smile. Now, when you'd think that God would, you know, start settling down the stormy waves in Daniel's life, uh, the biggest storm is about to break. You might be familiar with it, just about everybody out there on the street is. Let me give you the second characteristic first before we get into it of this public servant's life, and that is comprehensive integrity. Verse 4. Then the high officials and the mousetraps, I mean the satraps who wanted to catch him, sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault because he was faithful. This sounds a lot like some candidate running for office today. Do you notice how it happens? Man, they got a clean record until they start running. Then you got all this dirt that starts showing up. Well, Daniel's been a single man in Babylon his entire life. There's gotta be dirt somewhere in his record. So they effectively start tailing him around town, hack into his computer, check his internet sites, online shopping record, his mailboxes, emails. And this phrase, by the way, they are searching with regard to the kingdom, means they went all the way back to his university days. When he was first hired. There are revelations you you know you hear about today. Hey, that candidate sent a text message ten years ago. Or she wrote an email 15 years ago. Look at what she said. These Persian politicians tried everything they eventually gathered in some bigwig's office and went around the room. Hey, did you find anything? No. Did you find anything? No. Did you find anything? No. Not one thing. This guy's clean. This guy is Andy Griffin. And Gomer Pyle, you know, rolled up. Shows you how old I am. I watched all those on a black and white fuzzy television. Any of you remember those days you turned the channel with a pair of pliers? If you don't know what I'm talking about, you didn't have a happy childhood. Daniel wasn't honest at work and dishonest after hours. Hey, he looked like a clean guy, but you should see his tax record. He didn't live a righteous life Monday through Friday and then live it up on the weekend. He had comprehensive integrity. Third, spiritual consistency. Verse 5. Then these men said, We'll not find any ground for complaining against this, Daniel, unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. If you put that in today's vocabulary, what they're saying is, let's find out something about his Christian experience that doesn't fit in with society. Let's find out what he believes as a Christian and then use that against him. It's an old tactic that exists today. So they figured out a plan to use his prayer life against him. So let me just kind of summarize it for the sake of time. They go to the king and they say, look, we want to establish, oh king, you know, a 30-day prayer plan. Here it is. Whoever prays to any God but you needs to be thrown to the lion. So, King, we're going to make you the God of the month. Everybody's got to pray to you. And the king, with great humility, said, I love that idea. I'm going to sign that into law, the law of the Medes and the Persians. Now, the plan will not work if Daniel stops praying. So, what's he going to do? Well, by the way, before we get there, that's a signature question for us today. What does it take to get you to stop praying? What disappointment. What discouragement. What disillusionment. What difficulty. And you just sort of hang it up. Imagine if Daniel doesn't stop, he's a dead man. Verse 10. When Daniel knew, you might circle the word new, when he knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he had done previously. Don't rush past that. You know, don't skip ahead to the miracle section. Now, as far as Daniel knew, if he keeps praying like he usually prays, according to the prophets, toward Jerusalem, and he opened his windows as if to say, well, nothing between me and my covenant-keeping God. Well, he's the lion's next meal. Have you ever thought about the fact that he could have prayed with his windows closed? Or how about 30 days of silent praying? Unspoken prayer requests. Why not move your devotions to 3 a.m.? I mean, you you could imagine if he came to you for counsel, you might say, look, Danny, you've been praying like this for decades. What's 30 days to God? I mean, he'll be fine. Daniel refused to change his pattern when under great pressure. Now, one liberal scholar, I gotta tell you this, I love these guys. I don't know why they study the Bible. Because they're always coming to the wrong conclusion. But he suggested that these weren't real lions. This wasn't a real lion's den. This was poetic language for Daniel's political colleagues who wanted to devour him. This was just poetic language. I think Daniel would have liked a little poetry instead. But these lions were real, and Daniel was going to be their next meal. There's poetry. And that's reality. When the king can't find a loophole, because he'd signed it into law, he says to Daniel in verse 16, notice down there, then the king commanded, and Daniel is brought and cast into the Denalyons. Just before this, the king says to Daniel, May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you. You might notice Daniel doesn't respond. He doesn't beg to be spared. He doesn't yell his innocence. He doesn't say, God's gonna get me out of here. I think he doesn't say anything at all, in part, because I don't think Daniel expected to get out alive. God could deliver him. But God might choose not to. To deliver him through death to everlasting life. God was in control. And Daniel knew it. Now, because of that, I don't think Daniel started walking around the den with his hands in his pockets whistling a favorite tune. This is no problem for me. He's a real man. He's an ordinary man. I would imagine Daniel went to his knees with eyes closed, wondering while praying what you and I would be wondering. How long would it take before we died? How painful is this gonna be before I lose consciousness? He would have heard their roaring, fighting to get through that central gate. Archaeologists have helped us understand these dens. Daniel would have heard that middle gate opening. He would have braced for this crushing attack. But all of a sudden, that den grows quiet and still. The roaring stops. They're fighting to get through first and stop. And he opens his eyes soon enough to see an angel wrapping invisible supernatural duct tape or something around these lions' mouths. So they can't eat them. Have you ever thought about the fact that God could have done this without an angel? He didn't need an angel. He could have snapped his finger and he could have put them to sleep. Just fall over into deep slumber. He could have done that. God could have immediately tamed them, right? Turning them into playful cats. I tried to imagine that. You know, maybe all they Want to do now is play fetch with Daniel's sandals. I know cats don't play fetch. Cats don't play anything. They toy with oh I'm off track here. Okay, back back to the story. God sent an angel, and by the way, he did it so Daniel can use that in his testimony when he says to the king the next morning, My God sent an angel. My God did this. I want to add one more characteristic here quickly, and it would be this personal humility. Daniel could have acted with offended pride. King, who do you think I am? I was one of your leading candidates in office. I was the only honest guy you had. He could have had a chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life. He could have acted, you know, super brave. This is nothing. Obviously, King, from looking at you, I slept better down here than you did up there. This has not been a problem at all. In fact, I've gotten to know these. I've named them Fluffy, Mr. Whiskers, you know. He could have started planning his revenge. King's gonna take care of that, but Daniel didn't. With humility, he points out first and foremost, this is something my God chose to do. God did this. That reminds me of another political leader, another legacy, a man who braved his culture, stood alone, went against everybody by doing the right thing for nearly 50 years. His politician's name was William Wilberforce, whom you've probably heard of. He's born August 24th, 1759, in England. His father died when he turned nine, when William turned nine years old, and he went to live with his uncle and aunt. His uncle and aunt had been recently converted through the preaching of George Whitfield. So they raised Wilberforce under this evangelical influence. By the time he graduated from Cambridge University, he had rejected the gospel. He had become good friends with William Pitt, who soon became the youngest prime minister ever elected in England's history at the age of 24. Now, William Pitt encouraged Wilberforce to try politics. Wilberforce had no direction in life. Money he had inherited from his father, so why not? So on a whim, he ran for a seat and won at the age of 21. In fact, he would never lose an election for the rest of his nearly 50-year political career. He admitted that his first years were spent, and I quote, as a late-night party-loving, upper-class unbeliever. But he began to be convicted of his sinful life, the gospel he had rejected. When he was 24, he was traveling on vacation with some friends, and one of them happened to have come to faith in Christ, and they ended up spending hours talking. After that, he was he was interested. So he talked to his friend William Pitt. Now the prime minister William Pitt tried to talk him out of it. He told him that Christianity would, quote, render you useless to mankind. End quote. He was in anguish. He decided to meet secretly with an old slave trader named John Newton. You've heard of him? Who is pastoring nearby? The author of Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound. So Wilberforce writes a letter to John Newton saying that he wants to meet with him. But he says this, and I quote from the letter, I wish to have some serious conversation with you. Every argument against Christianity I'm coming to find is in its foundation pride. I'm sure you will let no one know of my visit till I release you from the obligation. P.S. Remember, I must see you in secret. John Newton will eventually lead William Wilberforce to faith in Christ. And to his surprise, Newton urges him to stay in politics and shine the light of truth. Wilberforce is twenty-nine years old when he makes his first public announcement in Parliament that it is his intention to abolish the slave trade. He says in his speech, quote, slavery is wickedness and a national crime. Well, you can imagine how that went over. His speech was rejected, ridiculed, his life will be threatened many times. He'll lose many of his friends. Political associates will avoid an association with them. He'll spend the next twenty years introducing one bill after another, one petition after another, one argument after another. And Parliament will either defeat them or postpone them or try to water it all down. But he keeps at it. By the early 1800s, the British Empire is now at war with France under Napoleon. And many have come to believe, politicians included, that God will not honor them by giving them success in war while at the same time defending the slave trade. And there was Wilberforce, of course, now 20 years into this, with one speech after another, printed pamphlets, slave narratives that he made public, facts about the livelihood of the slave, the horrors of their sale, the separation of enslaved families, and on and on and on. While he's battling for this cause, by the way, he's also serving the British Foreign Bible Society, the Church Missionary Society, the Society for the Poor, the alleviation of child labor conditions by forming laws, prison reform. He was shining the light on his corrupt world. In fact, he said, what we would love to hear people in public service say today, the issue at hand is defiance, he would write, against the majesty of God. You name whatever the position is. If it's wrong, it is defying Creator God. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote him a letter when John was 87 years old. And he wrote this unless God has raised you up, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and demons. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Well, finally in 1807, Wilberforce presented his position, his petition again, to abolish the slave trade, and this time it passed. There's still more work to be done. The slave trade was abolished, but not slavery in Great Britain, British colonies. So Wilberforce, his biographer, writes, fought on for 26 more years. Finally, in 1833, Wilberforce arrives with his petition against slavery itself, not just the slave trade practices, but against slavery. And he gives his final speech. He's 73 years of age. The petition is nearly unanimously approved. Now you would think that a man like Wilberforce would have been such a driven man, he would have no time for people, for small talk, for laughter. But like Daniel, if you read his biographies, he was known for his integrity, his consistency, his humility, but also this winsome personality and this joyful spirit. What most people did not know was how he suffered from lung problems and near blindness. In fact, by the age of 30, his eyesight was so poor he stopped looking in the mirror. A bachelor at the time. His clothing was humorously, they wrote, mismatched and wrinkled. He didn't get married until he was nearly 40. And that fixed his clothing problems. He also suffered from curvature of the spine that grew worse as he grew older. One biographer wrote, and I quote, one shoulder had begun to slope, and his head fell forward a little more each year until it rested on his chest, unless lifted by conscious effort. He would have looked frightening were it not for the persistent smile that remained on his face. And no one knew that he wore a brace under his clothing to keep him upright. But he was known to hum a gospel tune wherever he went. He was always smiling, always humming. He would always stop and play with children. One biographer said he would become one of them when he played. He would later write, a cold heart is criminal. It's criminal. Joy is our duty as we live for God. That's why I thought of Daniel as I read the biography of William Wilberforce, a winsome personality, comprehensive integrity, spiritual consistency, and personal humility. When that historic vote took place in Parliament in 1833, outlawing slavery throughout the empire, members of the House of Parliament, I would have loved to have seen it, turned toward him and began to cheer. He sat in his seat and wept. And then said, like Daniel, this is the work of God. What has God called you to do? What's the assignment for you? What's your vocation? Vocatio Latin for sacred calling. And it is a music teacher, homemaker, farmer, truck driver, dentist, professor, politician, pastor, policeman, judge, attorney, repairman, waiter, waitress, plumber, builder, what is your sacred calling? How do you go about it? How about this? Winsomeness, integrity, devotion, humility. And when people ask you how you do it, your response is, this is the work of God. When you do what I do, when we think like this, talk like this, like these two politicians, Daniel and William, then we are imitating true legacies of light.