In The Face Of Intimidation | Daniel 6 | Pt 1

Guest (Male): God has open our ears, often pray before we get into the word. God open our ears, give us ears to hear. Jesus said it in Revelation: Those who have ears to hear, let them hear what the spirit is saying to the church. But we cannot hear if our hearts have not been pierced. If we do not have devotion toward our master, how can we hear? And sometimes our ears are pierced, but our hearts are hard.
Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to the Dwelling Place, a radio ministry from Pastor Al Pittman of Al Pittman Ministries. The purpose of this radio program is to encourage you, strengthen your walk with the Lord, and grow. To support this program financially or learn more about the ministry, visit us online at alpittmanministries.com. That's alpittmanministries.com. Thank you for partnering with us. Now, here is Pastor Al.
Al Pittman: If you have a Bible, please open to Daniel chapter 6. Amen. We're going to take a message from Daniel chapter 6 today, and I'm praying about where God wants us to go next in our verse-by-verse study, which book He wants us to go to. So if you think about it, pray and ask that God would give me wisdom in which direction He wants us to go. He is our shepherd, and He leads us to green pastures and still waters. Amen. So pray about that. Daniel chapter 6. I've entitled this message "In the Face of Intimidation." We live in a day of great intimidation, especially for the church—a day whereby to be a Christian is seen as an offense to the world. The world is intimidating a lot of believers, a lot of churches to capitulate and to bend to the will of society, of the world, rather than the will of God. And we find here in Daniel chapter 6 that great story of Daniel in the lions' den. Many of you are familiar with it; it's one of our Sunday school stories or vacation Bible school stories that are often talked about. But we want to look at how Daniel really responded to the intimidation of his day. I think we can learn a lot from Daniel from Daniel chapter 6. I was reading when I was away that there was a fan—maybe you heard or read this story—about a fan who infiltrated the Pittsburgh Steelers' training camp. He came in dressed up in a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform, looked like a player. He was there at their practice until it was found out that the guy was just a fan; he wasn't a competing player or anything. And the security then threw him out. And I thought, "You had the uniform on, he looked like a Pittsburgh Steeler, but he never played a down." And he was basically an impostor. I thought about that in relationship to the enemy of our soul, who is behind the intimidation of our day. Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8, "The devil roams around like a roaring lion." That's intimidation. "Seeking whom he may devour." Now, he is like a roaring lion, but he is not a lion at all. He is not the true lion, which there is only one lion in scripture, and it's the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and that's Jesus. Amen. He is an impostor. He's got the uniform on. He looks like the real thing. He looks like fear and unbelief and intimidation, but he's no lion at all. And so therefore, Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 9, "Resist him, how? Steadfast in the faith." And what we find here in Daniel is an example of being steadfast in the faith. And so we're going to talk about that today—how to be steadfast in the faith in a world full of intimidation. Now, a little background to our text. Many of you know that Daniel, along with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and other young men, were taken captive from Jerusalem by the Babylonians to Babylon, which is located—the ruins of Babylon—in modern-day Iraq. And so Daniel, of course, they were taken there to serve in the king's court. But then the Medo-Persians came to power and they defeated the Babylonians. And now Daniel is serving in the court of Darius, who is the king of Medo-Persia. And God's favor, divine favor, was upon Daniel, to the dismay, if you will, of his peers, as we'll see here. I want you to read along with me in verses 1 to 3. Daniel chapter 6: "It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps"—and satraps are basically what we would call mayors today—"to be over the whole kingdom, and over these were three governors, of whom Daniel was one, that the satraps might give account to them, so that the king would suffer no loss. Then this Daniel distinguished himself above the governors and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king gave thought to setting Daniel over the whole realm." Wow. The hand of God's favor was upon Daniel. Why? Because he had an excellent spirit. Not only an excellent spirit toward God but also to man. That's important for us to understand. If we're going to experience the hand of God's favor on us in your career, in your job, in your vocation, in your life, then we must have an excellent spirit toward God and man. Sometimes people say, "Me and Jesus are just fine, but I hate your guts." You can't say that you love God and hate your brother. Amen. And so Daniel had an excellent spirit toward God and man, and God's favor was upon him and the Lord was promoting him. What does an excellent spirit look like? Let me just give you a biblical reference. 1 Peter chapter 2. Peter said this: "For this is the will of God, that by doing good, you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." That is, gossip against you. "As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God." And as bondservants of God, he says, "Honor some people?" No. "Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. And honor the president." Now, I know it says "king," but in today's vernacular, that would be the president. Honor the president. Amen. Having an excellent spirit toward God and an excellent spirit toward man. Yet despite the good that Daniel brought to the nation, those who were bent and set on evil, they despised him. They despised him. Proverbs 29, verse 27 says, "An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous, and he who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked." In other words, the wicked will never accept the righteous, just as the righteous cannot accept the wicked. There's this war going on. Sounds familiar, amen? When you think about it in relationship to our own country, and despite the blessings that Christianity has brought to America, now today, Christianity is seen in our nation as an evil. But sometimes if you don't know your history, you're destined to repeat it. You're doomed to repeat it. It was the gospel—the liberty of the gospel—that gave birth to America. It was the liberty of the gospel that pricked the conscience of a nation and caused a civil war, where almost a million people lost their lives. It was the gospel that came up against the segregation of the South. It was Christian principles—not of Buddha, not of Muhammad, but of the gospel of Jesus Christ—that put the words of liberty in the mouth of a preacher by the name of Martin Luther King Jr., who walked the streets that civil rights might be granted to all. It was the gospel that has made America great. Amen. Not America that makes itself great. And yet we have forgotten our history. Bible warns us, Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20 says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." Woe. In other words, it's a warning to America and to the world. Those who call good evil and evil good are in danger of destruction. Today, devotion to Christ is considered a curse, not a blessing. Daniel was considered a curse, not a blessing to the Medo-Persian Empire. I was listening to a report the other day that some people—a lot of folks out there—got all kind of evil things to say about the president and all this. But I'm a child of the kingdom. I've got my opinions too, you know. But I'm to honor those who are in authority over me. That's what the Bible tells me to do. So I try to do that. I don't always get it right, but I try to do that. Amen. But the reality is they were talking on television—I thought it was interesting because I've never met our vice president—but he's always talking about his faith. He's always talking about the Lord and all this. And somebody was lamenting the fact, "Oh, if we get rid of Trump, we're going to end up with Pence. We're going to go from the frying pan into the fire. He's a radical Christian! Ah! The death of America!" Really? His devotion to Christ is a threat to you? No, it is the light, and the world hated the light and rejected it because their deeds were evil and dark. And so Daniel is facing kind of the same opposition because of his devotion toward God. And so Daniel had to go. "We've got to get rid of Daniel." I don't know, maybe it's because the satraps and the governors were getting kickbacks and money under the table, and Daniel, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes, is going to come along and ruin that for all of us. "He's got to go." And so what did they do? Well, verses 4 to 9, they came up with an ingenious plan: to have the king agree to legislation, to a law of political correctness that would cause Daniel's devotion to God to be in opposition with the king. And so we read here in verse 4: "So the governors and satraps sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find no charge because he was faithful; nor was there any error or fault found in him." These men said, "Man, we can't find anything against Daniel unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God, the word of his God." And so the governors and the satraps, they got together and they went to the king and they approached the king and said, "King Darius, live forever." Verse 6. Verse 7: "All the governors of the kingdom and the administrators and satraps and counselors and advisors have consulted together to establish a royal statute and to make a firm decree that whoever petitions any god or man for 30 days, except you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions." Number one, they're lying. They didn't consult everybody but Daniel. He's one of the governors. "Oh, we all got together." No, you didn't. Daniel wasn't there. And they came up with this decree that "king, no one can pray to anybody, no god, no other person, no other god, except to you, O king." And they're just stroking the king, they're stroking his narcissistic ego, and he likes it. Flattery will get you most places. The Bible says in verse 8: "Now, O king," they said, "establish the decree and sign it with writing." Pass this law, this legislation, so that it cannot be changed according to the laws of the Medes and the Persians, which does not alter. In other words, when the Medes and the Persians establish a law, it cannot be altered, it cannot be changed. Therefore, King Darius signed the written decree. He signed it. So here is the setup. Daniel is now put at odds against political correctness. Political correctness—they used political correctness as a means to demonize Daniel's devotion to his God. And we see Satan employing the same tactic today through political correctness, trying to intimidate the church. Let me tell you, I believe this with all my heart: they're coming for the church. They're coming for our tax exemption. They're coming for hate speech. "You cannot speak, preach against certain things or make a stand against certain things." They're coming for us. So get ready for it. We're living in an age of spiritual intimidation, and sometimes even physical intimidation. I was reading where the gentleman up in Lakewood, Colorado, who has a business called Masterpiece Cakeshop—you've heard about him, he's been in the news, he won a Supreme Court decision for his right to not bake a cake for a same-sex couple. Now, let me just say this before anybody gets their shorts in a bunch. Listen, seriously, Jesus died for the world. God loves the homosexual and the transgender; He loves everybody. And their sin is no greater than the one who walked in here today with pride and racism in their heart. It's no greater than the person who is committing heterosexual sin. Sin is sin for God. Amen. Praise the Lord. But the world doesn't want you to call sin "sin." And so they're constantly trying to intimidate the church and what we believe, to get us to capitulate. And so with this man in Lakewood, recently, he had a transgender person call him after he's won the Supreme Court decision, and now they want him to bake a cake in celebration of their transition. And of course, he refused. And now they're just relentlessly coming after—that's why I say they're coming for the church. It's not about homosexuality or anything; it's about the spirit of Antichrist that is in the world. And so Daniel is facing kind of the same opposition because of his devotion toward God. There's some of you who go to school, you have peer pressure. You're in high school. I remember high school. Oh, my gosh. And the peer pressure. Or you're even in elementary school, there's peer pressure. I just have to mention it's kind of a sidebar, but I just couldn't believe it. The Bible says in the last days, "thinking themselves wise, they will become fools." And I was reading where, in elementary school, this second grader in North Carolina at a school there was reprimanded for saying "ma'am" to the teacher. He was—and I'm thinking North Carolina, that's South. Amen. I was raised saying "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am," and if you said "huh," you got popped in the mouth. Amen. That's the way it was. And he was just saying "ma'am," and she was offended by it. "Oh, demeaning women" or something, I don't know. Made the boy write down dozens of times the word "ma'am, ma'am." His mother found out about it and got in the face of the principal and the teacher and did something about it. I thought, "Man, have we lost our minds?" Answer: yes. But the world is trying to intimidate, you know, this new sort of righteousness and all of this. And Daniel is under this kind of peer pressure as well, the roar of intimidation wanting us to capitulate to the foolishness of this world. But how was he able to overcome the intimidating roar in his day? That's what we're going to look at here in the next few minutes that we're here today. He was able to stand, he was able to face the intimidation of his day in three ways. There are three responses that I see. Now, Daniel is set up. They've got him now, they've got him in the crosshairs and all of this. They've got the legislation passed and all of this. And yet his response to us is a lesson for us in how we should respond today. The first response that I find here is in verses 10 to 17, but we're going to take it a piece at a time here. But his first response is that he doesn't take it personally because it's spiritual. I think it's important for us as Christians to remember that. Don't take it personally because it's spiritual. If we can just remember that we are in a spiritual battle. The problem with America is not politics, it's not the economy, it is spiritual. But sometimes we as Christians, we get caught up in the same type of rhetoric that's out there in the world, forgetting that we are children of the kingdom, and we start joining the anger and the voices of anger and trading insults like everybody else. That is not what God has called us to. And the reason we do that is because we start taking it personally when it's really spiritual. And Daniel knows that it's spiritual. How do I know that? Because I look at verse 10. Here is his first response. He says, "Now when Daniel knew..." When he knew that the writing was signed. He'd heard, "Oh, it's unfair." No, what did he do? He went home. You went home? "I'm going to get in somebody's face." Daniel went home. Why? Because he didn't take it personally because it was spiritual. In 1 Samuel chapter 8, verse 7, Samuel the prophet is lamenting the fact that the children of Israel are wanting to have a king when God said, "I'm your king." And yet they said, "No, we want a king like all the other nations." That's what they were saying. "We want to be like everybody else." Isn't that our problem sometimes? "We want to be like everybody else. I want a car like they have. I want that job. I want that woman, I want this man," whatever. And the Lord said to Samuel—he was feeling all bad about it—the Lord said to Samuel, "Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them." Don't take it personally; it's spiritual, Samuel. I've learned over the years as a pastor to make sure I don't take things personally. It's hard; I'm not going to say it's easy. It's hard, understanding that it's spiritual. And a lot of times people will bring you their problems and they want you to take their problems upon yourself, so it becomes personal for you. And I've learned over the years to say, "Okay, I can listen to you, I can pray for you, but I'm going to sleep good tonight because it's not personal, it's spiritual." I don't have to own your problem. I don't have to fix you because only God can. So I don't take it personally. "I'm leaving the church." I don't take it personally because I know it's spiritual. And unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor, labor in vain. Amen. It's His house. It's His house. So don't let people kind of hang things on you. When they bring them to you, take them to the Lord, but don't take it personally because it's always spiritual. Daniel went home because he believed that the battle he faced was not his but the Lord's. Proverbs 16:32 says that "he who is slow to anger"—see, he didn't get mad—"is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." Oh, I love that. Even Paul the apostle had to learn that. That's a lesson I've had to learn, and I'm still learning. I have not arrived, just like Paul, who said he had not arrived. But he had to learn that because Paul had a little temper. Yeah, he could have gone in for some anger management. He and Barnabas butted heads one time over Barnabas's nephew, Mark. God resolved that issue later on, but Paul didn't want anything to do with Mark because Mark abandoned them on their first missionary journey. He said, "I ain't taking that joker with me." And I'm sure Barnabas was thinking, "Well, man, I was..." His name means "Barnabas" means "son of encouragement." And Barnabas was the one there for Paul when Paul got saved and really encouraged him in the Lord and all of that. And I'm sure Barnabas is thinking, "Man, God was gracious toward you. Can't you be gracious toward somebody else?" And Paul wasn't having any of it. And God did resolve it later on, but there was a strong, heated discussion and they parted ways for a while. And Paul even had to learn to be slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. I learn that every time my wife and I get into a discussion. Amen. I used to be, when I was young and full of myself, hot-headed. Yeah. And every time I would do that, like stuck on stupid, I'd always end up looking stupid and having to come back and say, "I'm sorry." But now I've learned to be slow. Slow. Just hold your... bite your tongue. Amen. Praise the Lord. All right. Let's move on. It's getting quiet in here. Our battle—and Daniel understood this—our battle is not physical. His battle was not physical. He didn't have to stir up things and try to overthrow the government and anything like that, because he knew it was spiritual. And we're always, listen, we're always at a disadvantage when you're fighting on the enemy's terms rather than God's terms. You're always. Now, I've never boxed for a living, but I watch these boxers, these chiseled guys boxing in the ring. And one of the things they always try to do—part of the science of boxing—is get the opponent to fight your fight. You don't want them fighting his fight; sucker him into fighting your fight. And now he's off of his game, and now you can take advantage. And the devil always wants to get you to fight his fight.
Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to the Dwelling Place. We'll see you next time. God bless.