Daniel 6: The Politics of Prayer - Linda Bailey
This Sunday at One Church, Linda Bailey brought us to Daniel 6 as we continued our series Resisting Babylon. Week six, and the most famous chapter in the book: the lions' den. But Linda's question was not whether we would survive a night with lions. It was something closer to home. Would anyone around us even know what we believe? You can watch the full message in the video above, or listen to the audio version below.
Everyone knew what Daniel stood for
The striking thing about Daniel 6 is not the lions. It is the reason Daniel ends up anywhere near them.
Daniel had done his job so well that the king planned to promote him over the whole kingdom. His rivals went looking for dirt and came up empty. He was trustworthy, they discovered, neither corrupt nor negligent. So they landed on the only angle they had left. "We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel," they said, "unless it has something to do with the law of his God."
Linda drew our attention to what that sentence quietly reveals. They all knew. Every administrator and satrap in that government knew exactly who Daniel worshipped and exactly which law he would not break. Even Darius knew. When the king ran to the den at first light, he called out to "Daniel, servant of the living God."
Daniel's faith was not a private arrangement. It was the most obvious fact about him, and it stayed obvious even when being obvious put his life at risk.
In Babylon, but not for Babylon
To feel the weight of that, Linda took us back to the beginning of the book. Nebuchadnezzar had defeated Jerusalem and carried God's people to Babylon, hand-picking their brightest young leaders to serve in the royal court. The plan was assimilation: absorb their gifts, absorb them, and make Babylon greater than it already was.
Over five or six chapters, years pass. Decades pass. Kings come and go. And Daniel does not change.
What he was doing, Linda noted, was exactly what God had told the exiles to do through the prophet Jeremiah:
Build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters. Increase in number there, do not decrease. Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
That is an extraordinary word from God, and Linda suggested it is a word of real encouragement for anyone who works outside the church. Daniel was a public servant. Think about what his days would actually have involved: people management, conflict resolution, budgets and resources, change management. Does any of that sound familiar? Whether you work in business, in a bank, in healthcare, in education, in your home or your neighbourhood, Daniel is a picture of someone who used everything he had to make the place he lived in flourish.
And yet.
Daniel lived in Babylon and was faithful in the service of its rulers, but the secret of his integrity and faithfulness was that he did not live for Babylon. He lived for another city, in the spirit of Abraham and the patriarchs who were looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
That is John Lennox, whose book on Daniel our preaching team has been reading through this series. Linda put it more simply: Daniel was in Babylon, but he was not for Babylon. He gave Babylon his hours and his gifts, no matter who was on the throne. But his allegiance belonged somewhere else, and everybody could tell.
A chosen people, a royal priesthood
Where does that kind of double life come from? Not double in the sense of hypocrisy, but in the sense of living well in one kingdom while belonging to another.
Linda traced it back generations. In Exodus 19, with the Red Sea behind them and the promised land ahead, God tells a freshly rescued people who they now are: "Out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
Centuries later, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, Peter says almost exactly the same thing to a young church: "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."
The point, Linda said, is that this is still our job description. Whatever you walk into tomorrow morning, you walk in as a chosen person and a royal priest.
Which raises the question of what a priest was actually for. Drawing on Marty Solomon of BEMA Discipleship, Linda laid out a fourfold role. A priest was God's representative on earth, a living reminder that God is present and God is here for his people. A priest helped people worship. A priest interceded in both directions, carrying God to the people and the people to God. And a priest distributed resources so that everyone had what they needed.
Underneath all four, one purpose: to put God on display, so that nobody could forget he was there and that he loved them.
One blue thread among seven white
Then came the detail that stayed with a lot of us.
Israelite priests looked different. Their clothing set them apart, including the royal blue that marked out priesthood. And that blue turns up again on the tassels of a Jewish prayer shawl, worn as a deliberate reminder of the promise in Exodus 19. Each tassel has eight threads. Seven are white. One is blue.
In every tassel you have one thread the colour of priesthood, the blue, that reminds you of your call to be a kingdom of priests. If the rest of the nations look like this, I'm supposed to look different.
We are supposed to look different. Not different for the sake of being difficult, but different because the way God calls us to live genuinely does not match what our culture offers as the good life. We should look different, speak differently, act differently. Different enough, Linda suggested, that people might even make jokes about how passionate we are.
She was honest that she needs help remembering this. She grew up in church. She has always believed God is there for her. And still, out in the busyness of work and family and everything else, it slips. So she keeps a reminder on her to-do list. Other people put a post-it note on the bathroom mirror or something in the car. A small daily prompt that God has chosen you, God loves you, and God has called you to represent him wherever you are.
Three times a day, facing Jerusalem
Daniel had a reminder too, and it was not subtle.
Verse 10: when Daniel learned the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room, where the windows opened towards Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
Just as he had done before. The decree changed nothing about his routine.
Linda drew out what that posture meant. Three times a day, in the middle of Babylon, Daniel looked past everything Babylon had to offer him: the prosperity, the growth, the power, the wealth, the promotion sitting on the table. Three times a day he looked towards Jerusalem and reminded himself that however great this kingdom was, he was made for a greater one. Three times a day he remembered whose he was, and which law he would obey above every other law.
He could resist Babylon because he knew about a better kingdom. Linda's point was that the same kingdom is in store for every one of us. Daniel was faithful on the good days, and then, when the decree came, he turned out to be faithful on the bad days too, because the good days had already shaped him.
The arrogance of the gospel
Here Linda took the sermon somewhere unexpected.
Even though Daniel's loyalty to the Emperor was established beyond question, Daniel was clearly prepared to swim against the tide of polytheism, the worship of many gods, and assert his conviction that there was only one true God, the God of heaven, whom he worshipped. He was not prepared to compromise that position even if the Emperor commanded it. That left him open to accusations of being arrogant, narrow-minded, bigoted and antisocial. How could he possibly believe that he was right and the rest were wrong? Who did he think he was?
All too familiar, Lennox says. And rather than defend ourselves, Linda agreed with the charge.
If someone outside the church hears us say we are chosen by God, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, the treasured possession of the maker of everything, there is a level of arrogance in that. She named where we had just seen it that very morning, in the baptism waters, with more baptisms coming that evening.
So you are telling me that out of all the good people in this world, Jesus is the one person who is God here on earth? Yeah, I am. And you are telling me that even though you get things wrong all the time, Jesus was willing to die for your freedom? Yeah, I do. And out of every religion and every way of life on offer, you think following Jesus is the best way a person could possibly live? Yeah, I do.
Can you hear it? In English, the way we tell someone they are arrogant is to ask whether they think they are God's gift to the world. Yeah. I do.
But then the turn, and it matters:
Our arrogance and our confidence is not in ourselves. It is in Jesus Christ, who did it all for us.
Our confidence is not in our ability or our gifts. We have what we have because our heavenly Father is generous. We can live against the grain of this world only because Jesus sacrificed everything to show us how to truly live, how to love God, and how to put God on display for the people around us.
Linda brought in Tim Keller here: whenever a Christian asserts the core of the gospel, that I know God, he loves me, and I am accepted right now, the world has to view that as arrogant. And when a Christian humbly says goodness is not enough and you must rely on Jesus, the world has to hear that as exclusive. Paul says the same thing more carefully in 2 Corinthians 3: "Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God."
Confidence, yes. Just never in ourselves.
A stone rolled away
Linda finished by pointing at a detail in the story that is easy to read straight past.
Verse 17: "A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel's situation might not be changed."
A stone. A seal. A situation that could not possibly change.
Then the stone was rolled away, and Daniel walked out without a scratch, and the most powerful man in Babylon saw that Daniel's God was greater than anything Babylon had.
Does that ring a bell?
Because there is another stone, rolled across another mouth, sealed so that nothing could change. And when that one was rolled away, the tomb was empty, and what it showed was not just one king and one nation but all of humanity: that not even death can separate us from the love of God.
Daniel, Linda said, was a foretaste. A preview of what Jesus would do, to help us remember that we are made for a greater kingdom and called to a greater purpose. So use your gifts. Do everything you can for the place you live. Live in this world wholeheartedly.
Just do not live for it. God has something better in store than anything this world can offer.
One way to live it out this week
Give yourself a blue thread.
Pick one visual reminder and put it somewhere you cannot avoid seeing it. A note on the bathroom mirror. A line at the top of your to-do list. Something on the dashboard of your car. Make it say something simple and true: God has chosen me, and I am here to put him on display. Then, like Daniel with his windows open towards Jerusalem, let it do its work more than once a day. The point is not the object. The point is that by Thursday afternoon, in the middle of the meeting or the school pickup or the difficult conversation, you remember which kingdom you actually belong to.
A short Prayer for your Week
Lord God, you have called us your treasured possession,
a holy nation, a royal priesthood, chosen and loved.
Some days we forget it entirely.
Give us the courage to be obvious about you,
in our workplaces, our schools, our homes and our neighbourhoods.
Where we are tempted to blend in, remind us of the blue thread.
Where we are afraid, remind us that our confidence is not in ourselves
but in Jesus Christ, who gave everything for us.
Help us to live well here, and to live for you.
Amen.
Personal Reflection
If someone who works alongside you was asked what you believe, what do you think they would say? Are you comfortable with that answer?
Daniel used his gifts to make Babylon flourish without living for Babylon. Where is that line hardest for you to hold at the moment?
What is one thing this world offers you that you find genuinely difficult to look past?
Small Group Discussion
Read Daniel 6:1-11. What do Daniel's rivals discover about his character, and what does that tell us about how he had been working all those years?
Daniel's enemies conclude that the only way to trap him is "something to do with the law of his God." What does it say about Daniel that this was the obvious weak point?
Read Jeremiah 29:4-7. How does God's instruction to the exiles compare with how Christians often think about engaging the wider culture?
Linda said Daniel was "in Babylon, but not for Babylon." What might that distinction look like in your own workplace, family or neighbourhood this week?
Read Exodus 19:5-6 and 1 Peter 2:9. What does it mean, practically, to think of yourself as part of a royal priesthood?
Linda described one blue thread among seven white ones as a reminder to look different. Where do you find it easiest to blend in, and where is it costing you something to stand out?
Linda admitted there is a level of "arrogance" in the claims Christians make, but said our confidence rests in Christ rather than in ourselves. How do we hold that confidence without becoming the kind of arrogant she was not describing?
Daniel prayed three times a day, facing Jerusalem, before the crisis ever came. What habit could this group build now that would hold you steady later? Take some time to pray for one another about it.