Daniel 1:8-21

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Well, good morning. Mr. Ward, would you open us up with a word of prayer?
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Sure. Lord, to get here despite the frigid temperatures for us, and that we're able to come in.
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All right, open your Bibles to Daniel. I'm going to read the whole chapter again.
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In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem, and he besieged it.
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The Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God.
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He brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his
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God. Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of the officials, to bring some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family of the noble youths, in whom was no defect, who were good -looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding, discerning in knowledge, and who had the ability to serve in the king's court.
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And he ordered him to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans, and the king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice food, and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated for three years, and at the end of which, they were to enter the king's personal service.
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Now among them were the sons of Judah, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
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And then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them. He gave Daniel, he assigned the name
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Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abednego.
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But Daniel made up in his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food, or with the wine which he had drank, so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.
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Now God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the officials.
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And the commander of the officials said to Daniel, I am afraid of my lord the king who has appointed your food and your drink, for why should he see your faces looking more haggard than the youths who are your own age?
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Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king. But Daniel said to the overseer, whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, please, test your servant for ten days.
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Let us be given some vegetables to eat, water to drink, and let our appearance be observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food and deal with your servants as courting as you see.
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So he listened to them in this matter and he tested them for ten days. And at the end of those ten days, their appearance seemed better.
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They were more fatter than all of the youths who had been eating the choice food.
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So the overseer continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink and kept giving them vegetables.
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As these four youths, God gave them knowledge and intelligence and every branch of literature and wisdom.
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Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams. Then at the end of those days, which the king had specified for presenting them, the commander of the officials presented them before Nebuchadnezzar.
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The king talked with them, and out of them all not one was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
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So they entered the king's personal service and as for every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them, he found them to be ten times better than all of the magicians, the conjurers, who were all in his realm.
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And Daniel continued until the first year of Cyrus the king. So last week in the first seven verses, we saw they went to Babylon University.
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They were being taken into a land that was a pagan land, taken out of their homeland.
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And remember, we don't see this as them being hauled off into slavery. They are actually being taken to a land where sensual pleasure is desired.
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They're taken to a land where any type of sensual pleasure, they can be granted at their wish.
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The desire is to get them to indulge into the sensual pleasures of the
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Babylonian culture. And we saw last week that they changed their names.
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They changed their names from names that were related from the
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Jewish culture, from Yahweh and God, to those of Aku and Nebu or Nego, however you want to pronounce it, which was the god of wisdom and literature and enlightenment and all of that.
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So we need to remember they've done these things so far.
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They've been removed. I was told y 'all couldn't see back there last week.
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Is my pen not dark enough? You see it? See it? Alright. They've been removed, renamed, they're fixing to be re -educated.
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And all of these are for the purpose of getting them to react positively to Babylonian culture.
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Why would they want them to do that? Anybody? Anyone? Yeah, I think that part of it would be that these are going to be, he would use them as liaisons between Babylon as a culture and the culture they come out of to where rather than being harsh with them and then that just stirs up more animosity in between captor and captive, so now we'll get them liking our culture and once they like that culture then he could use them to go back to or be in contact with their
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Jewish heritage. Other Jewish captors, okay. Yeah, I think this, don't think,
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I know. You can't be dogmatic about everything because then your dogmatism loses its bite every time.
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I am dogmatic about this. They've been removed, renamed, re -educated so they'll react positively towards Babylonian culture because if they do, they'll remain loyal, like you said, no insurgent, no rise up, to their captor who has been very, very benevolent to them.
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Remember, Nebuchadnezzar's not treating them harshly. He's not treated them like he's going to do
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Jehoiakim. He didn't treat them like he's going to do Zedekiah where he lines Zedekiah's boys up, kills them and then pokes his eyes out because of his disobedience.
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That's not how he's treating these exiles that go. They're not slaves. They're coming to be into the king's court.
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They're coming to be part of Babylonian courtship.
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Now, it says in verse 8, Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank.
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So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.
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Now, there are several things that people say, why didn't he take the meat?
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Why? Why was he going to eat? He's plant -based.
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Huh? What? He's plant -based. He doesn't want the meat. Well, and it's not just,
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I mean, like yours reads vegetables, mine reads pulse. I looked that up.
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Sown food. Things that are sown. Correct. The grains, wheat, barley, you know, those type of things, as well as vegetables, things like that.
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But why would he not eat the meat and wine? That's the dietary restrictions.
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Okay. We'll say dietary restrictions. The dietary.
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Let's say it wasn't kosher. All right. Was the meat used in Babylonian work?
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Let's see. Idols? All right. I am going to respectfully disagree with both of these.
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I can see how you come to that conclusion. But when you talk about the dietary restrictions, when we get to Chapter 10, you know what he's doing?
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He's eating meat and wine of choice, tasty foods of the king's court. So that's why
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I don't think this is the reason. Okay. Because Chapter 10, he's doing that very thing.
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He says in Chapter 10, he says, I have been mourning and fasting for three weeks.
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I have not tasted any of the tasty foods, choice meats, and wine of the king's court.
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Okay. So I would say that this is not it. I would respectfully disagree with this because, by and large, this is imported from a
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New Testament idea of, hey, you remember the schism within the, hey, don't eat that meat.
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That meat was offered to idols, but this meat hadn't, and this, that. Look, everything, meat, vegetables, wine, it comes to the king's court.
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It had all been offered to Marduk. Okay. Every bit of that. Now, if you disagree with my conclusion,
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I'm fine with it. Okay. I respectfully disagree with you guys. I want you to know where I'm coming from.
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I say it's to not be seduced by the sensual life.
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What are they trying to get him to do? Be part of the good life. They're wanting him to, come on, taste the meat.
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It's good. Drink the wine. It's good. Look, hey, even if you want to go to dietary restrictions, you know, there was nothing off limits for them to drink with the wine.
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So that is my conclusion. What's the desire of Nebuchadnezzar bringing them in, offering them any pleasure, any food, anything you want?
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Look, he didn't just say, hey, you can have some of that meat over there. No, no, no.
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They got the best of the best. Think about this, man. You live a life of luxury, and then all of a sudden you're broke.
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Things seem a little rougher. Where was Daniel coming from? Was Daniel, by and large,
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Jewish people lived a more aesthetic, rugged life? I'm not saying he was
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John the Baptist, but I'm saying this. Everything would have been offered to idols.
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Dietary restrictions, it doesn't hold to food or, I mean, to vegetables or the wine.
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So that's why I don't hold that conclusion. I hold the conclusion it's not to be seduced by the sensual pleasure of indulging in food, indulging in the wine, and because of what it says in chapter 10 where it says he had abstained from those very things that he had been given.
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Now it says in verse 9, Now God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the eunuchs.
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Remember, eunuchs and officials is interchangeable here. For those of you that were not here last week, my conclusion is they made
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Daniel and his friends eunuchs. They were emasculated. That's why you go through this.
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You never see them trying to be indulged or lured in to any type of sensual, sexual pleasure.
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We don't see Daniel married. We don't see Daniel, when he has the opportunity to go back to the temple complex to have it rebuilt under Cyrus's decree, we don't see him going back.
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And my conclusion is he doesn't go back, not because he's in his 80s, not because he wouldn't have had the court take him there, because if you remember,
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Nehemiah, when he could go back, the Babylonian, the Persian Empire sent him back with money and everything.
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So remember, hey, that's a four -month journey from Jerusalem to Babylon. So I believe he was a eunuch.
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So here it is, the guy that was the head of those eunuchs, the commander of the officials said to Daniel, after Daniel said he didn't want to defile himself, he said, but I'm afraid of the king who's appointed me over your food and drink.
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He should be. He should be scared of Nebuchadnezzar. Look, we're in a culture now where, hey, you do something wrong with your job, you mess something up, you get fired.
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Not with Nebuchadnezzar. You do something wrong in his court, what happens? The head is gone, and this guy is going to make that very clear that's what happened, and we're going to see in Chapter 2, and we're going to see not only in Chapter 2, but further on in the book that Nebuchadnezzar, you cross him, and you don't do what you ask him to do.
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He's got this very nifty way of I'll chop you into pieces and make your house a dunghill.
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That's his quote. So the official says to him, hey,
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I'm afraid of my lord, who has appointed me over your food and your drink. Why should he see your faces looking more haggard than the youths who are your own age?
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Anybody say anything other than haggard? Worse. Just worse?
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What does he mean? He's like, look, mostly when people are on this type of fast, okay, what's going to happen?
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You get skinny. This guy is saying, hey, don't give me no food. Don't give me that stuff. Give me this other stuff.
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That man, logically thinking, is going, hey, this ain't going to work.
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I'll tell you this. Me and Sybil, we cruised a lot before all the pandemonium was shut down and all that.
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We'd go three or four times a year. We went on one that was eight days. I put on 17 pounds in eight days.
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17 pounds in eight days. I ate every time there was, I mean, all the meat.
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So this guy is saying, hey, trust me for ten days just to eat veggies, okay? So what he's saying is not logical.
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So he says, why would you come out and make yourself look worse than the youths that are your own age? And then you would make me forfeit my head.
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Once again, he knew the consequences of disobeying the king. He knew the consequences that if Daniel came out looking like he had been in a concentration camp after ten days after doing the
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Mike Smith bean diet, he was going to have his head removed.
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Well, he says here, but Daniel said to the overseer, whom the commander of the officials had appointed to Daniel, Hananiah, Misha, and Ezra, please test your servants for ten days and let us be given nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.
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It is at this point that Daniel puts God to the test.
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We think about Daniel and the lion's den, right? They didn't start there.
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It started years and years and years before that. I would even say it started before he ever even came to Babylon as a young boy being brought up by his parents, who gave him a godly name, who was as judged by God, who was taught the statutes of the old covenant, who was taught the statutes of the scriptures, who was taught, like we said before, dietary restrictions, what we can and can't do, how a
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Jewish person should live. He even would have had scriptures to read, and he would have even been at the time, as we talked in the introduction, at the time of Jeremiah.
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He would have heard the preaching and the proclamation and the teaching of Jeremiah. And he this time is going to test
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God. Not tempt God, test God. He knew that his God had put him there for a purpose and that God had put him there for a purpose and that God had given him favor with this eunuch official and that he was going to put
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God to the test to show them that the Jehovah that picked up Jehoiakim and handed him into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar was going to be the very one that was going to fatten him up at the end of ten days.
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He says in verse 11, I'm sorry, verse 13,
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Then let our appearance be observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the choice food and deal with your servants according to what you see.
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So, he says, alright, we're not the only Jewish people here. We're not the only Jewish boys who made eunuchs.
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What we want you to do is give me ten days. After ten days, you check out me and my three amigos and see if we're in better appearance.
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See if we're better looking. See if we're healthier. And it says here in verse 14,
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So he listened to them in this matter and he tested them for ten days.
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So for ten days, day in, day out. Meal after meal, they came in with beans, anything sown, vegetables, whatever those things were, and water.
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And I can only imagine as Dan, my mind,
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I read existentially. I get into the narrative. I'm going, alright, is Daniel praying at this moment, oh
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God of heaven, please let this fatten me up. Please, don't let me look like a fool.
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Please, let this be good for me. Let me let this make your name be glorified because of this.
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And it said that in verse 14, he listened to them, he tested them after ten days, and at the end of those ten days in verse 15, the appearance seemed better, and I love it.
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They were fatter. Doesn't say, hey, they were healthier. Does anybody say healthier?
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It says they were fatter after eating veggies, after eating beans, after eating whatever else that was, and drinking nothing but water.
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They were fatter than all the other youth who had been eating the king's choice food.
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So Daniel had made a commitment to himself, he wasn't going to let himself be seduced by the sensual pleasures of eating that good food.
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Hey, do you not think that Daniel smelled that stuff and it's good? Anybody ever been to a
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Brazilian steakhouse? Anybody? Have y 'all ever seen them walk around with all that meat?
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I mean, they'll be big old skewers with hunks of meat like this, and every time it goes by, you might have a big old plate of meat already, and you're like,
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I'll take some more of that too. I mean, imagine Daniel and his buddies just, I mean, meat, walking around.
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Hey, I know they probably couldn't eat, they weren't eating pork. They were probably eating with the other Jewish captives.
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And they were probably defiling themselves with, and I would say this part, they would probably have been eating horse.
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They probably would have been eating pig, because that would have been predominantly what they ate then.
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I mean, that would have been stuff that would have been delicacy. Pig were in abundance, and it was only through the
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Jewish nation that it was considered unclean. So yeah, I would imagine they would have been saying, hey, we don't care, and he makes the distinction that, hey, they've been eating all of your choice food, and we're going to look better at the end of the day.
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And he says in verse 16, the overseer continued to withhold their, when he saw that they were fatter and looked better, when they hadn't been eating the choice food of the king, in verse 16 it says, and the overseer continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink, and he kept on giving them veggies.
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So they continued on the Smith veggie diet for the rest of this time while they were being educated.
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For the next probably two and a half years or so, is how long this probably went on, it says that their time of reeducation was going to take three years.
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I don't think it was a solid 36 months. I would have seen it more like this. Remember, they count the year that they went in, the full year they were there, and that will be significant too when we get into chapter two, and it talks about Nebuchadnezzar's crazy dream and two years after being there.
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So here it is. These guys have put God to the test. Lord, we're going to trust you.
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We're going to trust you that we're going to be fatter, and we're going to be better, and we're going to be healthier than the other guys.
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Some of you may think that David wrote
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Psalm 119. We don't really know who wrote Psalm 119. My conclusion is that Daniel wrote
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Psalm 119. I would ask that y 'all would go home this week and read Psalm 119.
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Just read a couple of stanzas a day, and as you read through that, you're going to see characters of Daniel.
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He says, and I think it's in the second stanza, he says, How can a young man keep himself from being defiled in this world?
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And he says, I will hide your word in my heart that I would not sin against you. And then he goes on, and he talks about,
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Be with me, O Lord God, when I stand before kings of the earth and proclaim your truth.
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Give me the strength when the people that have accused me are holding me accountable to take my life.
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I would ask you to go read Psalm 119 with Daniel's character in view.
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And then it says here in verse 17, And as for these four youth, God gave them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom.
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Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams. That's huge. Daniel, out of just those men,
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God gave him a specific gift that he didn't give the others. And this will play out through the rest of the book.
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That he gave him the ability to understand all kinds of visions and dreams. It also says, who gave them this intelligence?
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God, not Nebuchadnezzar. When they went, they were being reeducated.
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Who gave them intelligence and wisdom? Was it Nebuchadnezzar's schoolers? No, was it the professors at Babylon University?
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Who was it? It was God. It was God that had given it to them. Remember, Daniel and his three friends had already been smart, bright young men before they got to where they were at.
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Remember, when they came in and they were taking these exiles out, what was the qualifications?
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Smart, good looking, intelligent. No freckles, no buck teeth, no zits.
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None of that. They had to be without blemish. Without blemish.
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And they were already schooled in Hebrew literature. These kids were already smart.
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Who gave them the ability to do that? God did. Who prepared Daniel and Azariah and Mishael and Ananiah for this?
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God did. God did. Now, do I think they're heartbroken that they were being ripped away from their family?
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Yes, I do. I think they were heartbroken. Do I believe that there were others, though, going, you know what,
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I ain't around mom and dad no more? Let's do it. And they hopped and skipped wherever they want.
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They go, we're going to live the good life. That was the goal of going to Babylon University, to get them to react positively to all of those things.
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Imagine they go, they're captors, the plan is to get them to like Babylon culture, so then they can be confused, right?
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Once you get a young man confused, wait a minute, this feels good, this really can't be that bad, then what do they do?
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You get them confused, they compromise, then they begin to make bad decisions. That's the goal.
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And make them loyal to Nebuchadnezzar to go, you know what, man, this guy ain't as bad as they said he was.
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You know, he takes good care of us, he gives us a nice check, we can have all the food that we want, anything we want we can have, we just go get it, all we got to do is just be loyal.
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Just be loyal. Sounds like U .S. University. What's that? Sounds like U .S. University.
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There's a good bit of that, yeah, there's a good bit of that. 7 out of 10 kids, young people, that go into college, leave the faith and never come back.
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Now, that opens up a discussion of, okay, were they ever really saved?
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Okay, that's another discussion for another time, but the problem is, if they left their home, going into a culture that was pagan, are they prepared to defend what they claim to believe when they get there?
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That is the church's fault. That's church leaders, by and large, preaching sermons of, hey,
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Jesus walked on the water, keep your eyes on Jesus. Okay, that's good, but that ain't it. How many times in 1st and 2nd
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Samuel did we come to a textual variant that I would say, hey, or where there would be an issue that liberals would point out to the fallacies of Scripture and I would bring that up so that it could be defended, so that you could say, hey, this is where they come to that conclusion.
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Hey, some of these time frames we talk about is some day liberals attack as well. So we should prepare our young people to go into a world that its desire is to pull them away from doing what is right.
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And that was the goal here. Any questions, comments so far?
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Anyone? No? Okay. Just in this first chapter, you just see the sovereignty of God.
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And the Lord gave Jehoiakim into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, brought
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Daniel into favor and tender love. As for the poor children,
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God gave them knowledge and skill and learning and wisdom. This is
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God's doing. Yeah, this is
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God's doing. I think I said last week in Isaiah, I think it's in chapter 38 or 39, where Hezekiah has the
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Babylonians come in and he shows them all the riches. And Isaiah says, yeah,
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Isaiah says, hey man, what have you done? Oh, I just showed them this here and that. He said, no, no, no, now you know what you have done.
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There's coming a day when your descendants, ones that have come from your loins, will be taken into captivity and made eunuchs.
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This is a fulfillment of that. They will be put into king's service, the king of Babylon's service.
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And they're gonna take all this stuff. And we see that's exactly what's happening. At the end of that, that little conversation with Isaiah, it's something that Hezekiah says that's really odd.
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He basically says, yeah, I know, but it won't happen in my life.
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It won't happen in my lifetime. Do we make decisions like that? Hey, it ain't gonna affect me,
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I'll be dead and gone, but that's not how we should think. Look at our political leadership and how they spend money. Oh, sure.
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Yeah. Do we make decisions like that all the time? But we as believers shouldn't make decisions like that. Hezekiah, good king, but he made a foolish decision and it wound up costing some of his offspring.
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That's why I said early on, and I think it was when we did the introduction, that I believe that these were descendants of Hezekiah because I believe that it's fulfillment with Isaiah's prophecy that, hey, your offspring's gonna be hauled off.
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And these were nobles and those of royalty. So it says that, God gave them the knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom.
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Daniel had the ability to understand all kinds of visions and dreams, and we're going to see that Daniel does have the ability to understand some visions and dreams, but when
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Daniel doesn't, as we get to some of the crazy stuff, Daniel's so humble.
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Hey, can you tell me what that meant? And that's what's good about Daniel is as we go through it,
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Daniel's asking some of the questions we will be asking. Well, hold on a minute. I don't understand that. Would you tell me what that meant?
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And then it's given with precision. Look, the historical prophetic fulfillment that is shown out to the
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T with Daniel is jaw -dropping. It has made liberal scholars for years say there's no way that Daniel was written in the 6th century.
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No way. Bert will probably tell you, Academia says he was written well after all this took place, wasn't it?
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Yep, well after. That's right.
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Yeah, they take this very passage. There's no way passages like this, even the one we'll be getting in next week, it says there's no way that a man can do that, and we say, you're right, there's no way a man can do that, but there's a
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God in heaven that can give that man the brains to understand that and to make that prophecy and then watch it come fulfilled.
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Look, if we believe that in the beginning God said, let there be light, and there was light, and he made everything out of nothing, and God's saying, hey,
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I'm gonna send this nation to come and this nation, this nation's gonna rise and this nation's gonna fall, I'm gonna make this marriage alive and this guy's gonna come, that's no problem for us.
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But for people that don't believe in the supernatural, don't believe there's a God in heaven who's in the heavens working out his eternal purposes for his own glory and for his own will, then that's hard for you people to grasp.
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Verse 18. Then at the end of those days, the king, in the end of the days which the king had specified for presenting them, the commander of the eunuchs, presented them before Nebuchadnezzar.
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Okay, so at the end of this three years, however we see that, I think it's 36 months, but at the end of those three years, who gives them their final exam per se?
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Who's that? Nebuchadnezzar. That's right. They got to stand before the, when
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I say the king of kings, not like the king of kings is Jesus, but you gotta understand, we're gonna see in the next chapter, Nebuchadnezzar was the man.
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He is going to be seen as a superpower. They're going to stand to the most powerful man in the world and he is going to give them an exam, an oral exam.
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Either ask them questions, look at this cuneiform, how do you read
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Akkadian? Whatever this is, they're going to be tested and they're gonna have to give an account to Nebuchadnezzar.
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It says in verse 19, and the king talked with them, and out of them all, not one was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, so that they entered the king's personal service.
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Look at that. They didn't go off into the sorcerers and magicians and the poetic guild.
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They went right into the court next to Nebuchadnezzar.
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It says, as for the matter of wisdom and understanding, and about that which the king consulted them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians, the conjurers, whoever else were all in his realm.
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Now, I don't think it really means ten times, okay? I think it's figuratively speaking saying, hey, they made them other people look pretty dumb.
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It made those people who thought they were smart and who appeared to be very smart, when
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Daniel and his three buddies come along, they made those guys not so smart -looking anymore.
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And it was God that did that. And then it says, in verse 21, and we'll begin to wrap it up, it says that Daniel continued until the first year of Cyrus the king.
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Who was Cyrus? He would be the king of Persia.
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We'll get to that because I believe that Cyrus and Darius is the same. I know there might be some, I believe that that's the same person.
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Go ahead, Mike. No, I was going to say it's the king that came. Yep. In chapter 7, when
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Babylon falls, in 539 -538, right there, it is
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Cyrus the Great, whom I say is Darius the Mede, and I will show you how I'll come to that conclusion.
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That's when. Yep. So he's saying, he's going to be, for the full time that Babylon was a power,
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Daniel's going to serve in the king's court for that period of time. It's interesting when we do get to chapter 8.
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Yeah, 8. That's the handwriting on the wall that they're doing whatever they're doing, partying, having them eating and drinking with the implements and all of that.
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And it is Belshazzar's grandmother or mother.
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It says when he, you know, he asked, hey, nobody can tell me what this is. Oh yeah, well, Daniel can.
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Hey, eight, nearly 70 years had passed. And there was somebody that still remembered, hey,
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I know your granddad's gone, your dad's gone, and your granddad's gone, but there's a guy that was in exile.
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He can tell you what that is. And he comes in there and he says, yeah, don't worry about it.
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He basically says Cyrus is coming in the night and your day's over. That's what that's talking about.
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And then he actually goes on to serve in Cyrus Darius the
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Medes court probably for another two to three years after that. So I would say that Daniel's, Daniel's time,
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I think I put this over there where he begins to, his writing probably covers, his exile starts out at 603, but his writing probably goes from somewhere between here and maybe here or here, somewhere right there.
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What do you think, close? Yeah, that's close. Okay. It's hard to get, like I said, they don't have a
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January 21st, you know, they don't have those type dates like they do.
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So this is probably the time frame in which he would be writing. We got just a couple of minutes for questions, disagreements, clarifications.
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Anyone? Anyone? They were offering,
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Daniel was talking about eating just vegetables. Like I'm reading
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Leviticus, and the Lord doesn't prevent them from eating any form of meat.
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Am I correct? You what now? In the book of Leviticus, I think it's like chapter 13, it talks about how the kind of meats, maybe 12, 13, 14,
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I'm not sure which one, but they were talking about like the kinds of meat that they were able to eat.
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Yeah, anything with a clove and hoof. Right. Okay, but then it gives specific things you can't eat. You can't eat a pig.
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Right, or a camel, for example. Because it chews its cud, but the hoof was weird. Right, so there was things that, and it gave specific things.
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It says these things will be unclean to you. So they weren't eating, yeah, vegetables weren't off, there was no vegetable they could not eat.
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The only vegetable that they could not eat is if they were sown in the same field. Let's say they took barley, two types of wheat, and they sowed it in the same field.
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You can't eat that because they had been mixed. That type they could not eat.
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You can't sow, matter of fact, it was against Mosaic legislation to even sow two types of grain or wheat in the same field.
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So that's why I say this part here, him deciding to eat vegetables, wouldn't, didn't fit with the idols thing.
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Because all this would have been. The wine, everything. I mean, I wouldn't even go so far as to say the water probably was.
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I mean, you're in a pagan culture to where everything was offered up to idols.
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But I do believe that that schism, like you were talking about, Mike, hey, because it had been offered to idols and all that, that is actually an import from something we read with the schism that happened within the church, back with Paul, and they're reading kind of that back into this.
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We, I don't, I don't remember seeing anything in the New Testament about,
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I mean, in the Old Testament about eating stuff that was all, I don't, not that I can remember.
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I mean, I could look a little further into it, but I don't remember seeing anything like that. Just made the suggestion he won't just eat vegetables.
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No, he said he's only vegetables because he wasn't going to defile himself with the sensual pleasures of eating the king's food. That's not how
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I see it. I don't see it. Because he could have said, hey, I'm not going to eat the pig, but dude, he could eat a bull.
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But he chose not to eat any of it. He chose not to eat any of it. Hey, he's got us walking around with filet mignon, and he's like, you know what,
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I won't eat the filet. I'll set her for the side flank. That's not what he did. He says,
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I'm not going to eat any of it. I'm not going to defile myself with any of it for this amount of time.
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And what was that time frame? You understand, it's a time they were trying to reeducate him.
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It was those three years. He was put in to be trained in the arts and literature of the
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Babylonian Empire. Imagine all the history that he learned that was probably skewed to make them look great.
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He says, I'm not going to defile myself that way. Like I said, if you go to chapter 10 and you read, he was eating meat, fine tasty foods, and wine from the king's court.
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So that's why, I don't think this is the reason. I believe this is the reason. That's the reason.
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All right, anything else? Eat Vienna sausage and rice.
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Ramen and rice. Yeah, certainly you can see, we'll just take for instance, we're live streaming this, forget the
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Bible for a second. All right, just forget, just look at what has happened with what we have seen.
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Everybody sees this. Even the unconverted liberal sees the problem with even how the anti -Semitism that has been brought up into our universities, the problem it has caused.
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All right, well from a Christian standpoint, look how the academia has attacked the
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Bible for, liberalism started late 19th century.
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I mean, and it has been attacked since then. Look at the problems.
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Kids need to be prepared. I'm not, look, if someone sends their kids to a public school or to a public university,
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I don't have a problem with that. Just be prepared to answer questions and have them be prepared that when they get there and their faith is attacked, how are they going to defend that?
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You can't say because what Mr. Foskey said or because Pastor Mike said or because Pastor Andy said.
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You gotta be able to stand on this and that person may call you a fool. Call me a fool.
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I'd rather be called a fool than lose my soul. Yeah, I'd rather be called a fool than lose my soul.
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Belshazzar learns that very thing when he's called into account. He says, no, no, no.
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Today, you're called into account. Remember the parable? The man's wanting to build these barns and do all these things and he said, no, no, no.
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Now is today. Your soul is called into account. And what does a man profit if he gained the whole world but lose his soul?
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Let me pray for you. Father God, thank you for today. Thank you for this opportunity to walk through the prophet
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Daniel. Father God, I thank you for his example. Father, as a young man dedicated to be faithful to you and faithful to your word.
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And father, as the scripture is just filled with time and time again where you have been faithful to your people who were faithful to you.
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And father, we thank you for that. We thank you for his example. Father, we ask that as we leave this place and we go into the time of corporate worship that God, you repair our hearts.
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Plow it up with the power of the spirit that we would hear the word preached. And it would be embedded in our hearts that we would love you more.