Daniel's Plan - Daniel 1: 10-15

Daniel’s Prayer and the Sovereignty of God

So let's open in prayer. Father, your word is so comforting and encouraging. It is a reflection of your sovereignty. It is a reflection of your love, and it is a reflection of your concern for your children who have trusted Christ.

We look to your word every day for solace, for comfort, for encouragement, for correction and instruction, so that we might live lives that will be honoring to you and that will give praise to your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This morning as we look into your word, let us not go beyond it or behind it, but be right in the center of what you are communicating. Illuminate us, Lord, so that we might honor you in everything we do.

And we'll thank you in Jesus' name, amen. So this has been an eventful week for many. We finished up with chapter one, verse nine of Daniel chapter one. And so what I would like to do is, let me see how far we think we're gonna make it, yeah, okay.

Let's read in Daniel chapter one through verse 16. Daniel chapter one, it's on page 1138 in my Bible. Daniel chapter one, verses one through 16. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God.

Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of officials, his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and the nobles, youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king's court.

And he ordered him to teach them the literature and 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 three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king's personal service.

Now among them, from the sons of Judah, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them. And to Daniel, he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abednego.

But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank, so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.

Now God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the officials. 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?

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 servants for 10 days and let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink.

Then 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 according to what you see. So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days.

At the end of 10 days, their appearance seemed better and they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king's choice food. So the overseer continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink and kept giving them vegetables.

Daniel’s Refusal to Defile Himself

So Daniel and his four friends have made decisions to honor God, to live in obedience to God. And beyond that, they have also made decisions, I think, now this is kind of sanctified speculation, to stay in touch with each other as much as possible.

We remember that Ezekiel has named Daniel in his book. He was a contemporary. And interestingly enough, as we talked about when we were in the introduction of this book, there are plenty of critics who look at every opportunity to detract from this book, make it not a book of scripture.

Actually, they don't intend to make it not a book of scripture, but if they say it really wasn't written by Daniel and it really wasn't written at the time that Daniel says it was written and it really didn't address the things that Daniel said it addresses, what are they doing?

What's left?

They're attacking the veracity of a book of the Bible. And so all the way through, we will be dealing, as I mentioned earlier, with each and every one of the objections that the critics have come up with over the last thousands of years and dismissing them for what they are, a specious attack on the word of God.

So we finished with chapter one, verse nine, and we looked at the fact that God had granted favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the officials so God had sovereignly moved the officials over Daniel and his friends to grant the request, Daniel's request, to eat the vegetables and water,.

Drink water.

He granted that request. He granted it reluctantly, and it was remarkable that these four men, captives, would be given such latitude by someone who was used to killing those who had any dissent at all.

In that culture, if you disagreed with the king, you could forfeit your head. It wasn't like our culture where we just yell at each other. You died, and sometimes instantaneously. It is unusual, it was unusual for a Babylonian captor to show compassion to a captive.

This in itself was a clear demonstration of the sovereignty of God as he moved those officials to deal with Daniel and his four friends, the three brothers, the three young men. I don't know if they were brothers.

The three young men in a different manner. So let's look at verse 10. And so then now 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 age?

Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king. So here the commander of the officials reveals to Daniel his main concern. It's not that they have a difference of opinion.

Over the food.

I'm sure that that may or may not have mattered to them. If he allows this, and Daniel and his friends begin to look haggard and drawn, skinny and unhealthy, the king would put him to death. That's quite a concern.

This was a very real fear. And there was no doubt precedent that this commander knew about. He probably knew about times when some official deviated from the king's orders and was killed for it. And that's a pretty permanent response from the king.

He was concerned that the king would put him to death. In the history of Babylonian officials, there were probably stories of men in the employ of the king who did not follow the king's precise orders, precise orders, and were put to death.

You were not given latitude. It was what the king's way or the highway, except that the highway would be in a hearse. So the word translated haggard comes from a Hebrew word which means to be perplexed or to look sad.

If you're feeling ill, not well, you're generally not walking around with a smile on your face and looking bright and happy and bouncy in your step. So what he was concerned about was that they would be able to observe these four youths looking worse than the rest of the youths and it would be clear that something was up, questions would be asked, it would be found out that he hadn't given them the ration that the king had commanded and he would be killed.

So it appears that these officials have more on their hands than one might realize. These young people had to be kept looking happy and healthy. Can you imagine? Teenagers, keep them looking happy and healthy.

One of the first ways to jeopardize that was to not feed them enough or to feed them the wrong things. Should the king venture to their quarters, he would have been looking comparatively at each individual youth.

If there were some that looked less healthy or happy than the others, this would have been a question the king would put to the commander of the officials and that commander had better have a very good answer and a good resolution to the problem or he would die.

So now I would expect that had the king come and seen this, seen some haggard looking youths, he would find out and if they found out that maybe they were just ill, that would be one thing. But if he found out in any way, shape or form that the commander, the underling, had not followed his precise instructions, he would be put to death.

And again, I'm certain there was precedent for this, that this wasn't just a story or an urban legend, if you will, a Babylonian legend. People had died for not doing what the king said regularly. It's a form of population control, I think.

Daniel’s Creative Appeal to the Overseer

Verse 11, but Daniel said to the overseer who was expressing these concerns, why should I lose my head? He said to the overseer whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

So he talks to him. Here Daniel begins his creative resolution to the problem that he would put to the commander of the officials. Now the King James uses the word Melzar as the person the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel and his friends, actually names him Melzar.

The word Melzar is of Persian origin and simply means butler, warden, or guardian. It's a word that means an official over or assisting others. So after discovering what the concern was of the chief commander and not being given permission, oh, and by the way, that's why in the New American Standard it's translated the overseer of the officials.

So instead of a name, it's a designation. It's a designation. So after discovering what the concern was of the chief commander and not being given permission, Daniel goes to the person under him. He didn't get the response he needed from the head honcho under the king, so he went to the guy under him.

It appears that upon being refused by the commander, Daniel's creativity leapt into action again and he came up with a new plan, a plan that he hoped would answer the objections of the commander. He took this plan to an underling, the overseer spoken of here.

This underling would likely have already heard of the refusal Daniel was given by the commander. He probably already knew that Daniel had gone to the commander and had been refused, but he wouldn't have been in the same position of losing his life in the first place and also Daniel's plan dealt with that fear.

Critics look at this different translation, by the way, of the word Melzar and based on the fact that the Septuagint indicates that Daniel actually spoke to someone named Abiezdri, Ezdri, I love it when they put 73 consonants in a row.

They call into question the entire text of Daniel. Of course they do. Later on, we will see how Calvin ably refutes this. So Daniel goes to the overseer under the commander and he proposes a plan of action and it's not, he's not, ignoring what the commander said.

He's just looking for another opportunity to put into action a plan that will keep them in obedience to God. That's a good lesson for us. If at first you don't succeed, sit down and drink something. No, try again.

I know that's not a biblical, that's not a proverb, but it's healthy to think that way. So Daniel didn't succeed the first time, he's gonna try something again. So now Daniel says in verse 12, he says, please test your servants for 10 days and let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink.

Now by the way, I haven't gotten to it today, but we are gonna talk about not using a text like this to create an entire doctrine of being vegetarians. And it's really very simple to dispatch that doctrine.

Just taste bacon. No, I'm just kidding. Only if you're, so there's a good doctrine. No Babylonians around, so we're free. I like it, I like it, okay. There are people around that think they're Babylonian.

So we will look at that in the near future. Today, suffice it to get through the next few verses and see what's going on with Daniel's cool plan, his excellent plan. So Daniel's plan was designed to allay the fear of retribution by the king on the underlings as well as to demonstrate to the overseer and eventually to the commander that they could do just fine on a different diet.

While the commander may have understood Daniel's request to be a permanent change, Daniel reduces that to a request for a simple 10-day experiment. So what he's doing is he's trying to frame this request so that it's less and less offensive to those over him so that they can see an end to the request.

Oh, he's just asking for 10 days. Well, nobody's gonna look too terrible in 10 days. I'll be able to, more than likely, this overseer had been in charge of young people before and knew the methods that they used to keep the young people healthy and looking good, and so he would be able to spot it.

He was confident in his own ability to be able to spot it.

So while the commander may have understood Daniel's,.

As I said, as a permanent change, Daniel reduces it to 10 days. Going to an underling, by the way, is not an uncommon thing, and Daniel made use of that opportunity. Calvin explains it this way. Next slide.

And here, Daniel's singular constancy, his face was set like flint towards obeying God, to doing whatever he could to obey God. He moved forward to obey God. And here, Daniel's singular constancy is observable.

Who, after trying the matter once in vain, did not cease to pursue the same object. It is a clear and serious proof of our faith when we are not fatigued when anything adverse occurs and never consider the way closed against us.

Then, if we do not retrace our steps but try always, we truly show the root of piety fixed in our hearts. Let me translate that for you. If we find one avenue of obedience to God closed, we will look for another avenue to maintain that obedience and honor what God wants.

It might have seemed excusable in Daniel after he had met with his first repulse, for who would not have said he had discharged his duty and that an obstacle had prevailed over him? Well, I tried. I did everything I could to obey God, but there was just something too big in my way.

So I guess I don't have to. But since he did not prevail with the chief, with the chief prefect, he goes to his servant. Thus, voluntarily to incur risk was the result of no common prudence, for this servant could not make the same objection as we have just heard the prefect did.

Without doubt, he had heard of Daniel's request and of his repulse and denial. Hence, Daniel is beforehand with him and shows the servant may comply without the slightest danger as if he had said, we indeed did not obtain our wish from the prefect because he was afraid of his life, but I have now thought of a new scheme by which you may both gratify us and yet not become chargeable with any crime, as the whole matter will be unknown.

So he was looking for a method, a way to discharge his duty to God to not eat meat offered to idols. Daniel was not objecting to meat. He was objecting to meat and drink offered to idols, which would indicate that they acceded to the Babylonian gods.

They agreed with the Babylonian gods. Normally, a complete vegetarian diet will not properly maintain good health. Daniel and his friends were trusting the Lord to maintain their health. The word properly translated vegetables includes beans, rice, lentils, herbs, and fruits.

Basically, their diet included anything grown in a garden. Now, there were no supermarkets in Babylon that you could go to and pick up fresh carrots or even not fresh carrots, and vegetables and stuff that had been there for a while that might have been offered to an idol and then taken to the supermarket.

This stuff would have had to been brought right out of the garden. And that was a great safety valve, if you will, for Daniel, knowing that the food that they were consuming was not offered to idols. And secondly, they didn't offer water to idols.

They offered wine to idols. They drank wine in the presence of idols. So his particular scheme, as Calvin calls it, or plan, covers pretty much every eventuality. I think Daniel probably thought this through very carefully.

A young man alone in a foreign culture with the possible fear of death at any day, any reason, even no reason, comes up with this plan to obey his God, knowing that the plan could result in his death.

So any comments or questions about 11, about, I guess we're really moving, aren't we?

Verse 12, okay.

The Ten-Day Test and God’s Favor

So verse 13, then Daniel says this. Then, he covers everything. 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 according to what you see.

So Daniel is placing himself, reminding the overseer that he is under his authority. Let us try this. Let us try it for 10 days. And then after 10 days, you observe and test us and see if it has been successful.

The test would be what they look like after 10 days. This was all visual. There were no stigma manometers and blood tests and the things that would happen today. They would just look at him and say, well, he looks pretty fat.

Looks pretty good to me. And compare them to the other young men. Daniel and his friends were convinced that they would be just fine.

Why?

They were trusting God. They were truly trusting God to keep them healthy as they obeyed him. Calvin assumes that at least part of the reason for these young men choosing the austere diet was to avoid partaking of delicacies that they normally were not accustomed to in order not to become degenerate in their attitudes and lifestyles.

So Calvin takes it to the next step, thinking that it was a regimen that they were putting themselves on not to allow themselves to do things that they were not used to doing that might dissuade them, distract them from serving God.

Next slide. Whence sprang this scrupulousness? Don't you love the language back then? Scrupulousness, that's quite the word. Because as we said yesterday, Daniel was unwilling to accustom himself. How did Calvin know we said it yesterday?

Was unwilling to accustom himself to the delicacies of the palace which would cause him to become degenerate. He wished therefore to nourish his body not only frugally but abstemiously and not to indulge in these tastes for although he was raised to the highest honors, he was always the same as if still among the most wretched captives.

There was no occasion for seeking other reasons for this abstinence of Daniel's for he might have fed on ordinary bread and other less delicate food. But he was content with pulse, which the vegetables, that's what the King James calls the vegetables.

And was continually lamenting and nourishing in his mind the remembrance of his country of which he would have been directly forgetful if he had been plunged into those luxuries of the palace. And there is a great deal of truth to that.

When we lose ourself, abandon ourselves into the happenings of the day, we can lose our connection to scripture, to God's commands, to obedience. And so Daniel at that age was a very, very careful young man.

And in that we can see God's choice of this young man to become a ruler in Babylon was excellent. But is there anything God does that isn't excellent? So finally, Daniel and his friends knew that this test they were proposing may or may not have the results intended.

Although they had complete trust in God, they were willing to subject themselves to the penalty that may come if the test failed. They were willing to subject themselves to the penalty that came if the test failed.

Now in their given situation, what else could they do? I'm not diminishing that courage at all, but they knew that they were under the authority of the people over them, the overseer, the commander, and ultimately the king.

So I would give you just a couple, as I've been thinking, there's a couple of scriptures that I'm going to be using next week when we talk about this idea of a vegetarian diet. Well, not next week, the next time we're together.

One of them is the simple verse in Genesis chapter, is it six or nine, where God says, previous to this, I'm paraphrasing, previous to this, plants were your food. Now everything that walks shall be your food.

Doesn't sound like a suggestion to me. And then in another place, and again, you have to be very careful not to build doctrines on simple statements of scripture. Just be very careful not to do that. Daniel and his three friends were following a plan to stay obedient to God and not partake in the worship of idols.

And in Babylon in those days, remember, if you ate the food they provided you, the meat, that meat had been offered to idols. And if you ate that food, you were saying to the Babylonians we honor your gods.

It wasn't just simple sitting down to dinner somewhere and finding something on the plate that you didn't like. By the way, if you all had a mother like me, and you sat down at a neighbor's house or an aunt's house, and there was something on the plate that you didn't like, what did you do?

You ate it anyway.

Or you might have, like me, tried one time to go into the bathroom and put it in the toilet, but I actually got caught. And Deidre, that was part of my hatred of Brussels sprouts. That you broke, yeah.

So any comments or questions about verse 13? We're gonna kind of finish early today. I, this week, as I said, was a tumultuous one for me, and I didn't get as much study done as I would have liked to.

Yes, right, that's important.

Their noses were not in the air. They were obedient to their captors. They said, here's a plan. Can we do this? Would you allow us to do this? Now, what do I think would have happened if the overseer, the underling, had said, no, you can't do this?

I think Daniel would have said, well, then do what you must, but I will not worship the Babylonian gods. And he would have acknowledged that he was under their authority in this particular culture, and he would not have violated his obedience to God.

And the willingness he had was unbelievable, but he wasn't arrogant, very important. And we need, as believers, it's humility that opens the way to people hearing the gospel. It's a humble countenance, a humble attitude, a not holier-than-thou attitude, an understanding that, but for the grace of God, there go I.

Really?

That's kind of one of those Christian cliches that we can actually say with our nose in the air. But for the grace of God, there go I.

No, no.

And so Daniel understood that, and Calvin talks about that. He wanted to maintain his connection to the lowliest people in his range of friends, if I would, if you would, that were captured and brought to Babylon.

So under the sovereignty of God, verse 14, the overseer, so he listened to them in this manner and tested them for 10 days. So the word translated listened is a Hebrew word which means to intelligently think upon, to thoughtfully consent.

So the overseer didn't just flippantly listen to Daniel and then make a decision. I don't know how long it took. It may have been a day or whatever, because this, while the overseer may not have been in quite the same danger as the commander, it still would have been a pretty unintelligent, if you will, thing to do to violate the king's order, even as an overseer.

And if word got back to the commander, who knows how the commander might have dealt with that overseer. So he intelligently thought about it. He thought about it carefully, and then he consented. He didn't just flippantly listen to Daniel and then make a decision.

He thought it over, and then he chose to give this test an opportunity. And the rest is history, as they say. He gave the test an opportunity, and 10 days later, well, well, I don't wanna go ahead, because maybe you haven't read ahead.

You don't wanna steal Daniel's thunder. Actually, it's the next verse. Verse 15. And at the end of 10 days, their appearance seemed better, and they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king's choice food.

The reference to better in the Hebrew is a whole body description. This does not mean that they had gained weight and they were obese. So sometimes when you see words, especially in the King James, old English words, fatter did not mean fatter.

It didn't mean that they had disregarded proper techniques and diet. It meant that they were still healthy. They still looked fine. Their tone was good. They were doing just fine. They were as good or better than all the youths around them, and the overseer could see that.

He could look at it and see it. And frankly, anyway, I don't think anyone could do that in 10 days. It refers to the fact that they looked better and were in better shape than the other youths. And again, this is not a testimony to a vegetarian diet.

It is a testimony to obedience to God and to His blessing on that obedience. When you and I obey God, regardless of the circumstances, He is free to bless us, or He is free to, from our perspective, not bless us.

And we'll see that remarkably displayed by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Hanani, Mishael, and Azariah when they face the furnace. Remember, you've all read, I mean, you've all read Daniel probably 37 times.

Whether God saves us or not, we will not bow. And I bet you they didn't do it arrogantly then either. There was no arrogance. There was a simple intention to follow and to obey God. So we're gonna tie this up here.

If there's any other questions. Comments? Go ahead and have some. We've got seven minutes, 12 minutes.

Yes. Oh yeah.

We're not talking about, it's hard sometimes for us to plunk ourselves into that culture and think like Daniel must have been thinking. I imagine he was on his knees a lot because he knew that at any step along the way, just asking the commander to do this could have resulted in death.

Just asking the overseer to do this could have resulted in death. And then what if after 10 days, they didn't look quite as good as they'd hoped? They were gonna die. Well, Daniel had complete faith in God.

He was confident in his God. Not in the overseers, not in the food, in God. And so at the end of 10 days, they were better, the scripture says. And so for my perspective as I was studying this section, this is a clear call to us today in all times of history, but especially in these tumultuous times.

What are we communicating to the world around us about our belief in Christ, about our love for God, and about our supposed love for brothers, for our fellow human beings who maybe totally disagree with everything we believe?

And in some cases, may want us dispatched. I'll not use the K word.

Dispatched.

Sounds like the pony express. Do you have my dispatch? It is incumbent upon us as believers in Christ to not be arrogant, to not be and yet not to be willing to disobey God, but to demonstrate our obedience to God in humility and kindness so that the gospel can be preached among men.

So I'm grateful for you listening this morning and that will tie things up for today. Next time we meet, we'll talk a little bit about building gigantic doctrines over one verse or over a couple of verses and forcing other people to believe that this is what you must do.

You need to put this list on your refrigerator. I'm coming to your house. I don't have room on my refrigerator. Any other comments before we close? You get a little more visiting time today. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to look again into the book of Daniel, to see these four young men who made it their decision, made their decision by your grace.

They made their decision by your grace and with your strength to trust you and to honor you in all that they did. We would like for that Lord to be a light to us today so that we will trust you and honor you in all that we do and that we will recognize your sovereignty in our lives and find comfort in that, that no matter the outcome, you are in charge you have our lives in your hands.

And we thank you for that and look forward to it in Jesus name, amen.