FBC Daily Devotional – November 30, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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day to you this Monday, first day of a new week. Hope you had a great weekend.

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Thanksgiving weekend, hope you had a good holiday Thursday. Maybe you didn't have to go to work on Friday and then enjoyed

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Saturday and then the Lord's day. I just hope it was a good weekend for you and you were able to rejoice much in the

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Lord through those days, special time set aside. Well, so here we are, new week, new beginning.

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And I want to focus today on a passage in the book of Daniel. I was reading in Daniel the other day and was struck by something that occurred in chapter one.

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And you remember the story of Daniel. Daniel was a young guy, probably an early adolescent when he was taken captive by the

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Babylonians, the Chaldeans. He was a Jewish young man and was in the nobility to some degree.

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He was of noble birth, let's put it that way. We know that because the opening verses of Daniel, the book, tell us that Nebuchadnezzar went to Jerusalem and captured a bunch of people, especially those who were in the royal family and those of noble birth.

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Among those were Daniel and then Daniel's three friends,

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Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. We often think of them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

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So here these young men are captured and they're taken into exile and they're put into a

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Babylonian school and they're expected to learn all the ins and outs of the

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Chaldean culture. And then they're to serve the king in the royal court in some way or another, depending on their skills and what they do and so forth.

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So here they are. And in this situation, one of the things that they're assigned is their portion of food.

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They're supposed to eat well because the king, of course, wants these treasures to be well cared for, to be healthy, and to have nutritious meals and so forth.

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And we read in verse five that the king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate. So they're eating royal food and of the wine that the king drank.

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And they were to be educated then for three years and then it would be determined where they go from there, depending on how they handle their education.

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But we read in verse eight that Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food and with the wine that the king drank.

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So we don't know a lot about the details of that food and drink. We don't know any details of it, frankly.

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We just have to make suppositions based upon what we know about Mosaic law regarding the dietary restrictions of the

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Jews. And apparently those dietary restrictions were violated by what the king wanted them to eat.

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And Daniel is convicted about this. He doesn't want to violate the

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Jewish law. Now, what do you do? How do you handle it when you are expected to do something that violates your conscience about what you believe

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God would have you to do? What if your employer or the government or whatever expects something of you that that violates your convictions?

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How do you handle that? Well, it is, of course, a good thing to resolve that you're not going to disobey, that you're not going to eat the king's meat and drink the king's wine, if you will.

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But what do you do with that resolution? How do you handle that?

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Well, what follows here with Daniel gives us some practical insight into these situations.

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I think it's probably the easiest thing for us to do is just get in the flesh and get angry and say,

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I'm not going to do this and just put our foot down and stomp our feet and say, you can't make me do this and just be really aggressive about it.

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But Daniel takes a different approach, and the outcome of that approach, I think, illustrates its wisdom.

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Instead of demanding something of the eunuch, the one who's responsible for Daniel's care, we read that, as you go on in verse 8, that he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.

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So Daniel is showing respect, and he's showing deference, and he's expressing a bit of humility and asks for relief for his conscience sake.

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He asks that he not do this. The prince of the eunuchs, of course, he's under responsibility to the king, and so he's concerned about this.

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He might be ready to comply, but if this doesn't go well, if turning away the king's food ends up with Daniel and his three friends becoming emaciated and not faring well and getting sick and so forth because they don't have a good diet, then it would be the prince of the eunuchs neck, if you will, or his head, probably.

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So he demurs a little bit. He says, I don't know. I'm not so sure about this. And so then

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Daniel says, okay, well, let's do this. Let's just do a test.

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He provides an alternative, a workable alternative that serves as kind of like a test program.

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So he doesn't do an all or nothing thing. He doesn't paint the guy in a corner where he has to choose between his own life and Daniel's.

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He gives an alternative, and I think that kind of gracious approach is very helpful to us as an example as we face some of these things.

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He has this internal resolution that is programmed by an underlying faith and conviction, but then he makes a gracious request to be exempted from the demand and then offers a practical solution when that gracious request is not exactly dismissed outright, but is questioned.

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He makes a practical solution and the prince of the eunuchs sees the wisdom in this.

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He says, okay, let's try this and see what happens. And you know the outcome.

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After those 10 days, their appearance was good. They looked healthy.

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They looked healthier than the others in that same program, and that's the way they're able to continue as they carried on in their schooling.

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So let's get some insight from this. Every time our convictions are threatened, let's not respond with anger and animosity and a stomping of our feet and drawing a line in the sand and creating a battle out of something that could be solved by grace and patience and humility.

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Well, our Father, we need this. We need humility. It is so easy in our world with all the conflict and even increasing expressions of hostility or animosity or disdain for the

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Christian faith. It's easy to respond in kind. Help us, Father, to know grace and to express it.

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We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your

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Monday. Hope your day gets off to a great start and you're weak as well. Have a good day.