Daniel Lesson 20

Daniel in Persian Politics – Daniel 6:1-9

I will answer some of the questions handed in on the feedback cards. We were dealing with Psalm 137 because it is this Psalm that most critics of Scripture pick out because that’s the famous Psalm where the psalmist prays that the baby’s heads be dashed against the wall, and obviously it is a case in point where people will take advantage and try to discredit Scripture. So that Psalm was important to exegete that we might understand how it fits with the book of Daniel.

So we have some questions on it: are the babies in Psalm 137:9 saved by grace if they have not reached the point of God-consciousness, as in the case of David’s baby in 2 Samuel 12:23. In other words, does the unlimited atonement somehow cover all babies who die before the age of God-consciousness or just the ones of non-dammed generations? We’d have to pretty well argue that Scriptural data is scarce because what we’ve got basically to argue upon in 2 Samuel 12:23. And in that case we’ve got a baby that died not only before the age of accountability but also before he was circumcised and brought into the Old Testament covenant. If that’s the case, then we have powerful Scriptural data to argue that babies are covered with the doctrine of the unlimited atonement. Now as to, in the case of the dammed generation what happens, all we can infer and it’s just an inference from Scripture, that probably they were killed not because they weren’t covered by the atonement but they were killed in the case like believers are killed, the sin unto death. Just because someone is physically killed does not have a statement to make about their salvation. So I would hesitate to argue that the babies of Psalm 137:9 are necessarily not covered by the unlimited atonement. The best thing to do is just make a blanket statement from 2 Samuel 12 that all babies are covered and the idea that they haven’t had a chance to reject Christ.

The other question we had on the Psalm 137: in connection with Psalm 137 why is Babylon judged so harshly when they were the instruments of God’s judgment upon Israel? And the answer is given in Deuteronomy 32:27 when it says that they exceeded their rightful function as disciplinary agents. God did call Babylon to discipline, correct; but they then, after being in the position of the discipliner of Israel, exceeded it. They had a divine authorization to take Israel to the woodshed but they actually overdid it, and so God therefore damns them because of their overdoing it ala Deuteronomy 32:27.

Another question on Psalm 137: Why are the Jews selective of who they performed to? Remember the people refused to sing divine viewpoint music to a human viewpoint generation. Why are they selective of who they performed to? Isn’t that shutting ourselves off from potential believers? As long as the musician knows who and why he is performing, isn’t that Christian love? I’d argue completely the opposite; by shutting off the performances to people who could not appreciate the music, who were using their music as an emotional manipulation device, the believers of Psalm 137 were polarizing the situation for a gospel confrontation. Had they not shut off their performances, had they continued to allow their performance to be read through the grid of human viewpoint by the observers to the performance, had this gone on, then they would have compromised their position and never would have had an opportunity to present the gospel, but they forced an opportunity into the open by polarizing the environment.

I’ll give another more modern illustration of this and that is people who are theistic evolutionists are very poor evangelists, simply because they can’t present the gospel clearly if they have already compromised in the area of creation. But if you take a strong firm stand in the area of creation then you’ll find you’ve polarized the atmosphere so that people are made aware that there’s an issue and you can’t trust in Christ unless first you’ve been made aware that one view is wrong and one view is right and there’s a choice to be made. So far from cutting themselves off in Psalm 137 actually that was an act of love, to refuse to perform for people who would misunderstand. It’s just the same principle Jesus taught, don’t cast your pearls before swine. If you have a people that in rebellion against the Word of God then you treat them a certain way, and if they are responsive and open then you treat them a different way. But you do not treat all people the same way, that is not love, that is sentimentalism. That’s exactly what evangelicals have been doing and that’s why evangelicals haven’t communicated. There are whole segments in our society that the evangelical has never reached and one of those segments is the artistic segment. The area of the musician, the area of the artists, how many of them have been won to Christ? Very, very few, and it’s because we haven’t made a polarized situation right in their own back yard, and until we do we’re not going to win any of them to Christ. So polarization, the black and white issue, the confrontation is necessary before the gospel can be effectively presented.

Is there an apparent contradiction between Genesis 2:2 and John 5:17? Genesis 2:2 being that God has ceased from His work, John 5:17 that God has continued to work. The answer is Genesis 2:2 ended the creation work of God; John 5:17 is talking about the salvation work of God that began after the fall. After the fall God undertook a new work, the work of salvation. That’s amplified further in Hebrews 4:3.

In Exodus 24:10 God was seen by Moses and others. In John 1:18 Scripture indicates no one has seen God at any time. Which verse is correct? The answer is that in John 1:18 it’s talking about a whole full comprehension of the character of God. And in Exodus 24 if you read the context, Moses only saw, and it’s very clear in the Hebrew, he only saw part of God. The issue is that a Theophany in the Old Testament is always a non-comprehensive view of God, and no man has seen God in the comprehensive sense at any time except the Son, and that’s why Jesus Christ alone is authorized as the Revealer.

Another question: you said that Christian organizations are not to assume the function of a local church by administering communion. Is it also unbiblical for small groups of believers to partake of communion apart from local church service? Yes, if they’re [can’t understand word] with the administration and authority of the local church. We have numerous cases in the congregation of small communion things for people who are sick and so on, and generally it’s done through the deacons and it’s done on the churches authority. And the answer is that if an organization begins to do it, they in effect have become a functioning local church at that point. So it’s kind of an academic question.

In reference to the limitations of time of man, please refute the concept of reincarnation as an attempt to explain away this limitation, and the continuation of the soul. The continuation of the soul doesn’t solve the problem of past time, and the doctrine of incarnation is not applicable to origins. The incarnation may go back in time but it doesn’t go back to origin, that’s the point. In creation we’re dealing with origins. Furthermore, there’s no evidence for reincarnation; before I have to grapple seriously with a position, you have to present serious evidence of the fact that the position is valid and there has been yet no evidence to prove reincarnation. The Bridey Murphy thing and so on is evidence of demon possession and evidence of things that can be adequately explained within the Christian position. You do not have to revert to the reincarnation hypothesis; there is no data that would require that point.

All right, Daniel 6; in Daniel 6 we come to the last chapter of the section that deals with Daniel’s career in politics. From chapters 2-6 we deal with his career; it’s a book of wisdom, it’s a book therefore that wisdom is skill, skill in living and not just living but living in the kingdom of man. This book is very important for us as believers; it gives us a lot of doctrine, a lot of principles that are to be used today because we still live under the kingdom of man administration. By that we mean the cosmos run by Satan until the return of Christ. In the Old Testament that wasn’t so at certain points.

We might review at this point; the kingdom of man began in principle at the fall, Genesis 3:5. At that point Satan tempted man, that you can be as God knowing both good and evil. In other words, you can have comprehensive knowledge. That was the temptation, that was the original motive behind the kingdom of man. It was begun in principle at the fall. The next thing is the kingdom of man came into actual practice at Babel, Genesis 10:10, Genesis 11:1-9. At Babel you have the first use of the word “kingdom” in the Bible and it’s under the man Nimrod. Nimrod actually starts conquering. The kingdom of man is an attempt to fulfill the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28-30, that is collectively subdue the earth. The kingdom of man is man’s attempt to carry out this on his own. The kingdom of man was built on human works. The kingdom of man denies God’s grace. The kingdom of man is always trying to get the fruit without going to the cross, without relying upon grace. The kingdom of man motivation is seen in communism, it is seen in socialism, attempts to bring a perfect society into existence apart from Jesus Christ and His cross-given grace. These are all attempts at resurrecting the kingdom of man.

Now there are two restraints given in history against the kingdom of man. One restraint was given at Babel and this is what we’ll call cultural fragmentation; that is, every time somebody tries to get one of these kingdoms going they always have a problem and it crumples from inside. The Roman Empire crumbled from inside, various competing factions; the unity can never be arrived at. Communism tried it and now we’ve got a fight between the Russian communists and the Chinese communists. The reason is cultural fragmentation. The sentence of doom given at Babel essentially wipes out all kingdom attempts. You’ll never get it, no matter how much power and no matter how much dogmatism the central government has, they can never really attain a lasting true unity because of the curse of Babel, the doom of cultural fragmentation.

Now that was a restraint that operated in history alone for some time while God was developing Israel as a divine viewpoint counter culture, but after Israel was developed and you have the exile, the period of history in the book of Daniel, Israel goes out of its existence as far as its functioning primacy in history it’s no longer capable of world dominion, and then you have a second restraint. Not only do you have restraint number one, which is cultural fragmentation, but from this point on you have a second restraint that operates to hinder the attainment of the kingdom of man and that is what we’ll call the higher royalty of believers. Believers are always in competition with the kingdom of man because believers have a higher loyalty, by the first commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul,” believers have this higher loyalty to the God of the Bible. Therefore, they can never give total allegiance to the state. Therefore, the state drive to bring into existence this perfect society and this perfect kingdom is always thwarted; it’s thwarted by believers who insist upon worshiping the God of Scripture and not the god of the state.

Now this is the collision in the book of Daniel. Daniel is a believer, Daniel has a higher loyalty and Daniel is going to remain faithful to the God of Scripture against the gods of the state. There’s a tremendous conflict. Today it’s the same conflict in many, many portions of the world. Christians behind the iron curtain face the same problem as Daniel; they are called to worship at the god of the state, the god of the state is atheism, the absolute competency of man’s reason to arrive at truth apart from revelation, that man himself is self-sufficient; he doesn’t need God in any way, shape or form. And this is a faith, it can’t be proved, it’s a faith and because it is a faith it’s a faith in the god communism.

Besides understanding the tension between the believer and the kingdom of man, understanding these two restraints that are operating in the book of Daniel, that these four kingdoms face cultural fragmentation and they face the higher loyalty problem. You have Nebuchadnezzar trying to get the people in the western end of his empire together with the people in the eastern end of his empire together with the people in the north and the south, trying to keep it all together. He’s trying to have his chair on a table full of glass marbles, and keep the thing straight; you just can’t do it. For a while he manages but then the thing crumbled. The same with the Medo-Persian Empire, they always had to struggle with the Persians in the east, the Medes in the middle and the Greeks in the west; this was always a problem. Xerxes runs his campaigns up into Thrace and so on, we have the great conflict between the Persians and the Greeks. So keeping these empires going is an act of genius. Rome had the same problem.

All the kingdoms have the problem of trying to keep the different cultures, the different peoples, the different tribes and so on together. Alexander had the problem, he tried by making Greek the language of the ancient world and no sooner had Alexander died but his empire destroyed itself into four factors. So the problem of these restraints is something still with us, they are divinely given and we can give thanks to God for doing them, they are self-destruct mechanisms so that the kingdom of man can never really get going. Every time a tribe is thwarted by these restraints. Of course during the tribulation these restraints will be somewhat removed and then the kingdom of man will really come into existence.

The other thing to recall about the book of Daniel is the doctrine of separation. Since we are dealing with believers who have this higher loyalty, since these believers are now isolated on their own in alien territory surrounded by a hostile government, surrounded by social pressures against them to trust in the Word of God, believers have got to survive and they can’t survive by compromise, they can only survive by separation. So what is the doctrine of separation that we’ve seen so far in the book of Daniel?

It has various points to it; one is that we stick to major issues. You can separate on all sorts of things but you’ll find Daniel sticks to the major issue and the major issue is the issue of idolatry. Remember he could have argued about his name, after all, being renamed, that’s a point that would irk him, but he didn’t choose to fight at that point. He chose to fight the battle over in the area of his education, because you remember the curriculum demanded that he partake of a pagan communion service, and he refused to partake of the pagan communion service and that led to the confrontation. So the first thing in the doctrine of separation is you can’t fight 85 battles at the same time; pick the ground where there is a major issue and struggle at that point. Daniel 1:8 and Daniel 3:18 are references.

Another point in the doctrine of separation summarizing the teaching of Daniel is to respect the bona fide authority, even though we do not agree with the kingdom of man, we still respect bona fide authority of the fourth divine institution. The fourth divine institution is the institution of the state and Daniel always had respect, he didn’t go out and start revolutions. Daniel 1:9, Daniel 3:16. He respected the king’s legitimate authority and he always made it clear, even when he was taking his stand on separation, that he still continued to respect the authority of Nebuchadnezzar.

Then we find the options that are available. After taking these two positions, you cite the major issue, you respect the bona fide authority and then you have a confrontation. If the answer is yes, the person agrees with your position you’ve got it made, no problem. Daniel doesn’t even take that up because the conclusion is obvious. But now we have the situation in Daniel where the answer is “no.” When the answer is “no,” that is, the authorities will not permit you to function, they insist on cramming idolatry down your throat, at that point a polite defiance is the Biblical mandate, Daniel 3:16-18, the man in the fiery furnace. It is defiance of state authority at this point because the state has transgressed its rightful domain. The Apostles themselves did this, when Peter said it is right to listen to the words of God, not the words of men. They did not start a riot, however; they still respected the authority, they went to jail for their cause, but they refused to bow the knee at this point.

Now if the situation is blurry, and you get kind of a “maybe” type situation, that’s covered in Daniel 1:11-16, and in that case when you face that kind of a situation what you do is you pragmatically sell your program. You don’t sell it on the basis of the Word; you simply sell it on the basis that hey, this works. So if faced with a very blurry situation you try to get a divine viewpoint program sold to the non-believer in the society on the basis of the fact that it’s a superior program, it produces better results. So those are the ways Daniel and his companions handled themselves.

Now in Daniel 6 we start actually with the last verse of chapter 5; in the Hebrew the chapter starts at Daniel 5:31, and we are on the last of these incidents. Chapters 2-6 deal with his career, so now we come to the last chapter that deals specifically with items of Daniel’s career. This is the crisis of Medo-Persia’s Emperor worship. In Daniel 5:31 we have a man by the name of “Darius, the Mede,” it says, [30] “In that night that Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans was slain, [31] Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old,” sixty-two years old. This occurs right after the fall of Babylon in October 12, 539 BC; remember Babylon was the place from the human point of view was impregnable. They had a perfect defense, they had several years food supply, they had a water supply, they had tremendous fortresses, and yet God had written His Word, “you have been weighed and found wanting,” and that hand, that mysterious hand, came down on the plaster wall and wrote those words and within hours the divine sentence had been carried out.

So Darius, the Mede, now is the new ruler. He is the beginning of the Medo-Persia reign over Babylon. Now at this point we’re involved in one of the great controversies of Daniel because the controversy is who is Darius the Mede? Nobody knows. Darius the Mede is not called Darius the Mede in history. So we have no evidence of who Darius the Mede really is. And I’ve tried to indicate going through the book of Daniel, I want to warn you about problem areas, and here is a problem area. Darius the Mede has not yet been identified. However, when you are faced as a Christian with this kind of a problem, remember this: that you are dealing with a tremendous lack of historic material. The critic of Scripture has the problem, not you. He has the problem because he is trying to discredit your position with a very flimsy amount of material.

First we have only a fraction of the artifacts from ancient times which have survived erosion, decay, souvenir hunting, and other human destruction. Secondly, of this fraction only a fraction of that has been surveyed. Israeli teams, for example, recently surveyed 2,000 archeological sites of which 800 were previously unknown. Thirdly, of the fraction surveyed only a fraction has been excavated; in Israel, due to modern obstructions and high costs only 150 sites of 5,000 have been excavated. Fourthly, of this very small fraction of sites excavated, only a fraction have been examined and when a tel is excavated, usually only very small parts are actually dug up. One scholar estimated that to examine completely the Hatzor site would take 800 more years at the present rate of digging. Finally, of the artifactual material examined, only a fraction has been published; 50 more years would be required just to publish the materials already unearthed and examined.

Summarizing the extreme fragmentary nature of the artifactual data, Professor Yamuchi says, “if one could by an optimistic estimate reckon that one-tenth of our materials and inscriptions have survived, that six-tenths of the available sites have been surveyed, that one-fiftieth of these sites have been excavated, that one-tenth of the excavated sites have been examined, that one-half of the materials and inscriptions have been published, one would have one over ten times six over ten times one over fifty times one over ten times one-half at hand, but six one hundred thousandths of all the possible evidence. So any time that someone comes up to you and says that there’s no evidence of Darius the Mede, remember he is dealing with probably about one-millionth of the available data. So you don’t have to worry, there’s probably somewhere in the 999,000 parts that have not been discovered there’s information about this unknown figure, Darius the Mede.

There are two contending theories for it that you ought to be aware of because when you listen to Bible teachers exegete Daniel they have to go with one or the other theories. One is that Darius the Mede is the governor of Babylon under Cyrus. That’s Whitcomb’s theory and that’s been the old popular theory with evangelicals. As I exegete Daniel I am not going with that theory, I’m going with Dr. Weitzman’s theory that Darius the Mede is another name for Cyrus the Great. The evidence at the end of the chapter, Daniel 6:28, “So Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus, the Persian,” we take that to be apposition, namely “Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, that is, in the reign of Cyrus, the Persian.” Examples of where this occurs elsewhere in the Bible: 1 Chronicles 5:26. Cyrus could be called a Mede because of his mother, who was a Median. Also, Cyrus was about 62 in the year 539 BC so it would fit with his age. It does say in Daniel 9:1 that this Darius the Mede was the son of Ahasuerus, who was another name for Xerxes, but even so, Xerxes may be a title, not the proper name of a man. So for those of you who are interested in the historical details, we are following the theory that Darius is none other than another name for Cyrus.

Daniel 6:1, “It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom,” now at this point this is the second of the four kingdoms in Daniel’s vision. As the second of the four kingdoms, this is a more powerful kingdom and a less valuable kingdom than the Babylonian kingdom. Here is a map that shows the Medo-Persian Empire. Up to this point in history it was the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen and from the Biblical point of view very, very important. If you look on this map and you know the history of comparative religions, something immediately should strike you from the extant of that empire because if you notice something about the domain of that empire you’ll notice that off to the right side, the empire extends all the way to the Indus Valley. What religion was operative in this valley? Hinduism, the fountainhead of oriental religion. Look at the other side, the left side of the map to the west, and all the way over there where do you see the boundary of that empire? It cuts through Thrace, or Greece, and what was going on in Greece at this time? The rise of pre-Socratic philosophy. So at the very critical moment, when you have Jainism begin in India as a reformed movement from Hinduism, when you have Buddha teaching in India, you have the Medo-Persian Empire under Daniel, when you have Confucius teaching in China, you have at the same period the Medo-Persian Empire spreading the Word of God. When you have the pre-Socratics at Milesia, making their early claims for the rise of theoretical thought in the west, what do you have? The Medo-Persian Empire.

What are we saying in all this? That the Medo-Persian Empire in the 6^th century was filled with Jewish influence and it is not surprising that this Jewish influence triggered numerous reform movements throughout the world; rejection of the old priesthood, rejection of gross polytheism, and going over to much more of a reform type thinking. Of all of these religions, Zoroaster was doing this later on in Persia. So you have Zoroasterism, you have Jainism, you have Confucianism, you have Buddhism, you have Tao, you have the pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece, all these movements spring up interestingly with the Medo-Persian Empire. So this is a momentous time in history and when you read in this chapter that Daniel was set in command at chief administrator in this kingdom, this gives you an idea of one man’s influence, that he probably had tremendous influence in setting the Scriptures throughout the kingdom and causing polarization of men’s thinking.

Daniel 6:1, “It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes,” now on the map I’ve quoted Esther 1 because the other book that deals with the Medo-Persian Empire in the Bible is the book of Esther. However, Esther deals with the Medo-Persian Empire later in time when Xerxes is on the throne and they had 127 provinces. But you’ll notice the extent of this. And Esther was a woman, believer, who had a tremendous influence on the most powerful king of the ancient world at that time, Xerxes. So these are exciting times in world history, even though very rarely is this carefully studied.

“It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes,” each one over a district, he had these what they called satraps, and these satraps were areas of provinces, like states, like we have 50 states in our union, and he has a very good organization, and I want you to notice that the emphasis as we begin chapter 6 has to do with governmental organization. You’re going to see something later on in the chapter, and from that we’re going to learn about a principle of organization. But the chapter starts out by warning us, by drawing our attention to the fact that, hey look, here is a well-organized beautifully run kingdom.

Daniel 6:2, “And over these three presidents,” so you have a triumvirate rule of the kingdom, “of whom Daniel was one,” or “the first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage.” So Daniel is placed in one of the triumvirates of the kingdom. Now right here we obtain a tremendous principle to encourage every believer. What happened in Daniel 5? Remember in chapter 5 the fall of Babylon. Do you remember what happened in the last hours before the city of Babylon fell? Remember back at the party they were having, and how Daniel was called into the party to decipher the handwriting on the wall? And do you remember what it was that Daniel was promised? Go back and look at Daniel 5:29, “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.”

Now that is an example of a human viewpoint type of promotion. Daniel was not impressed by bribery, by this kind of pseudo-friendship. For example, in verse 17 when he was offered the job as kind of a bribe, Daniel said, “Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another,” I’m here to present the issue from the Word of God and you can take your promotion and you know what you can do with it. That’s what Daniel is saying, he doesn’t care about his promotion, he cares about the Word of God. It’s the Word of God first, promotion second. This is where a lot of men in business make a big mistake, and you get yourselves promoted into a situation and because you compromised to get the promotion now you’re really in a mess because now you’re in a situation where you’ve got to compromise more to keep your position. So men who are on the rise in business watch out for this little coin, you remember Daniel because in chapter 5 Daniel rejects a promotion that is at odds with the Word of God, and he still received it in Daniel 5:29, yes, he still gets that business promotion, but how long does it last? About four hours and the whole thing collapses; see, the point was that Daniel recognized that that promotion was no better than the overall structure of the business organization and the business organization was rotten to the core. So it didn’t phase him to get a promotion with that outfit.

So Daniel has discernment, he uses a principle found in Matthew 6:32-33, “for all these things Jesus said do the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of these things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you,” that’s the promise and that always ought to be remembered in business advancement. When somebody offers you an advance or a promotion and it’s conditioned, you cut of off right there; that is part of your testimony and you goof if you don’t make your stand at that point. The more and the longer you compromise the worse it gets to dig yourself out from the mess that you get yourself into. So make it clear, put your cards on the table at the very beginning or just part company. But don’t get yourself promoted into a position where you’re sorry you had it after you get promoted.

Daniel patiently trusts the Lord. Daniel is a man of tremendous skill, tremendous skill! And we’re going to notice something that whereas he rejects man’s promotion in chapter 5, what immediately happens in Daniel 6. He gets promoted. Now that’s what comes by trusting the Lord. Daniel gets his promotion; he gets promoted to a tremendous organization. This organization is twice as big as the Neo-Babylonian Empire. He has much more responsibility, it is a better run kingdom, and Daniel has far more influence. So now what was the smart thing? Daniel said no in Daniel 5:17, no, I don’t want that promotion, I didn’t come here to be promoted, I came here to explain the Word, if you want to promote me fine, but I’m going to explain the Word and if you don’t like it, that’s tough.

Now we come to Daniel 6 and what do you suppose made Cyrus say, hey, I’m impressed with this guy. Stop and think of the history of this whole episode. Darius the Mede is a conqueror, he has come into conquer this nation and as he conquers the nation what does he find? Somebody comes up to him and says General Cyrus or General Darius, there’s a guy that they had in their administration that is fantastic. He does a tremendous job, in fact he has practically held the kingdom together, this man is very stable, he’s very wise, and he also is known for his prophecies of the future. And somewhere in the G-2 Cyrus got hold of all this information and said hey, I’m setting up this new empire and I’ve got 120 provinces and I want to bring this thing into a good tight knit well run organization, I need men like that. And you remember that Darius, if he were Cyrus, is the man who was raised up by God anyway and he recognized patterns of history and here’s this man who prophesied of the roles of these kingdoms, in fact, he even prophesied about the victory of the Medo-Persian Empire. So he said I like that man, bring him here. So he was hired on and hired on not only as a governor but as a man from a defeated foe now elevated to one of the three triumvirates that rules the Medo-Persian Empire. Remember that the next time this issue of promotion comes up. Daniel got promoted but it was in God’s time and it was a fantastic position.

And notice why he was promoted. You might say what did Darius see that was so outstanding about Daniel. There are thousands of men who are leaders, why pick out Daniel? The text tells us, “that the princes might give accounts to them, and the king should have no damage,” and here is something that you’ll see time and time again, that the one thing that attracts business organizations to believers is their moral reliability. This is a sensitive job that Daniel is being put into; he has got to watch for insurrection, he is in a job that can be bribed. If someone wants to start trouble for Darius the first way to do it is to worm your way in and buy off one of the triumvirates; split the triumvirates, divide and conquer. There are all sorts of political intrigue associated with this job. So that’s the perfect job for the mature stable believer. Now Darius may or may not be a believer, but Darius is a smart man, he’s a smart organizer, he’s a smart businessman and he says I need a person with character to fit into this slot in my organization and I’m going to put Daniel there. Now you see, this is why… [tape turns]

… he sells himself to the world; this act is not necessarily an act of worship of everything Daniel stands for. This is not because the person has just accepted Christ. Now he may have, but the issue of hiring Daniel has nothing to do with hiring Daniel’s God. It is just the recognition of the superior character of the stable believer in a business organization. You’ll see this, and you’d better watch it and get both eyes open when this happens. People will take advantage of you as a believer, very often. I have seen this time and time again in this congregation, where men are used; men who have a tremendous testimony for Christ, who are stable and do a good job, they are laughed at, ridiculed by their organization until they have a particular job that has to be done, and who do they run to then? The believer. It’s the same way in the military. They can ridicule some Christian officer but when there’s an inspection and they have to get things ready who do they call on? The man that can get things done. And that’s the recognition. So if you expect ribbons as a believer for your testimony, forget it, you’re not going to get ribbons. The only thing you can have pragmatically to go upon that you’re making it as far as your testimony is when the chips are down, do they come to you. And if you can see that, you take that as thanks enough; you can’t expect the world to fly flags for your testimony for Christ, but there is one control that you can use; watch how they respect your character in these tough situations and if they put you in this kind of situation as they did Daniel, you just take that as sufficient, that’s the most you can expect.

So Daniel not only was promoted, but in Daniel 6:3 it says that he distinguished himself. Daniel distinguished himself above the triumvirate, “Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents” the word “presidents” are the other members of the triumvirate, “and princes,” now verse 3 illustrates another point of wisdom for those of you entering business organizations, in classroom situations, etc. you’re going to run into this one, so again you may not have run into this situation yet but you will. “Daniel distinguished himself” it’s a reflexive verb, in other words, Daniel did a better job than his peers, he excelled, he was better than they were, and then the Bible, to emphasize the point says, “because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king thought to set him over the whole realm” and the word in the Hebrew isn’t “excellent,” it means a better spirit.

Now why do we emphasize better, better, more excellent? Because now, beginning in verse 4 you’re going to have what always happens when somebody excels, jealousy and mental attitude sins on the part of the other workers in the organization. Whenever somebody excels there is always somebody with sour grapes in the group and verse 4 is where Daniel has his problem. He excels and people who are flunkies hate people who excel. That’s why so many idiots like a pure democracy, because in a pure democracy where there’s absolute equality everybody is an idiot and it make them feel better that way, the least common denominator approach. Evil men always want to make everything evil. Failures, weaklings and cowards love to have the whole organization full of cowardice because it makes them feel better; they don’t stand out that way, they blend into the scenery. But any time somebody excels it draws attention not just to the person who excels, but it draws attention to the person who isn’t excelling.

Watch this because unfortunately it’s part of our American trait. Each country has its own little tendency of –R learned behavior patterns and one of ours that we’ve got as Americans is this equality business, that everybody is equal. Everybody is not equal; there is only one place everybody is equal and that is their God-consciousness; they are equally responsible and even that could be debated. But this is the whole pitch, everything has to be equal. If we have 30 kids in the classroom and 2 kids can’t read when they’re in junior high, then we have to stop the whole class for the two jerks that can’t read, hire special teachers, penalize the parents who have studied with their children and cater to the low class.

That’s what’s going on, and after a few decades of that operation you have one big low class, because you’ve discouraged people from excelling. You’ve done everything to thwart them, like graduated income tax; it’s a penalty for progress. It penalizes the man who earns a few more dollars than someone else. In Israel they tax 10% across the board, period, regardless of how much you made, and that’s the way tax ought to be. But no, we have graduated income tax because somehow it’s a sin to be rich. This is unbiblical, it’s socialistic and here it is condemned by the Holy Spirit.

Daniel is better than his peers; he is a superior person, and as always when you have superior people you have a lot of inferior people with mental attitude jealousy that want to tear him down to size. This is why we have college professors always maligning the founding fathers of this country. Do you know why? Because they’re convicted by the founding fathers of this country; the founding fathers of this country were brilliant men, they were people who were good in many, many different fields. They were superior people and you have some guy who barely got his doctorate in lower slowbolia some place and he comes along and he’s going to teach American history, and he can’t stand it when he sees greatness so he starts maligning, anything he can do to malign the great men like Alexander Hamilton; he is always ridiculed because he was an aristocrat and you always have to put down somebody that excels. Hamilton was a genius, he wrote tracts called the Federalists that were handed out in the streets of the colonies and I dare you to read The Federalists Papers today and see if you can understand them; they were passed out as political tracts at one point in our history. We’ve come a long way down.

So Daniel faces this problem of jealousy and watch what happens. Daniel 6:4, “Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom,” because he excelled, verse 3 tells you why in two places; he had a superior spirit, the Hebrew is the word “superior,” and the word “preferred” means he distinguished himself, and because he did his job so well the rest of the people in the organization had to get rid of him, that’s the basis of a lot of labor problems today. We have a group of working men and one of the bad areas of modern labor movement is where you penalize people for production, don’t produce any more, you make me look bad, same principle here. Daniel out produced the rest of the men that were doing the same job he was doing and the union came knocking on his door, you can’t do that. Why can’t I do that? Because you make us look bad, we’ve got to all be lazy Daniel, just relax, go home, take a few days off, just cool off. Not Daniel, Daniel would continue to do the best job and that’s what got him in trouble and now we’ll see what happens.

“…but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.” They sought to find occasion, and the verb is a participle, they continually, the conducted a major investigation to find out how to get rid of this productive employee. But they could find no occasion or fault, “forasmuch as he was faithful,” and the word comes from amen, he is reliable, when he was told to do a job, he did the job. The word “faithful” means reliable, and every time they would go to somebody’s section chief or something else, they’d say what do you think of Daniel’s work, absolutely reliable, comes through every time; then they’d go to somebody else and say haven’t you had some problems with this guy Daniel over there? Oh no, Daniel gets his reports in before anybody else. So they went around and around and they couldn’t find anything.

And then in Daniel 6:5 they finally find one item, remember they’ve looked for some time, the verbs here indicate a long process of time, “Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.” Now the way it’s translated in the King James it makes it sound like they’ve had the investigation and then they’re going to launch a second one; not true, the verbs are past tense. They’ve opened… this is a smoke-filled room type meeting, they’ve opened the folder and said okay, what have we got on Daniel; well let’s see, he gets his reports in right, has good labor-management policies, he stopped this insurrection, he did this, he did that, etc. and he’s encouraged trade in his area of the 120 provinces, an outstanding performance in every area. And then they said what about this over here, I see something in the files, something about he worships three times a day. Yeah, that’s in the file, part of his testimony, his Christian testimony. So they say okay, I think that’s what we’ll hit, we’ve got it now. So then begins verse 6, they are going to pick on his Christian testimony.

Daniel 6:6, “Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius, live forever.” So they came up to King Darius, and the word “to assemble together” is used three or four times, it’s the same in the Aramaic as the Hebrew, the vocalization is different, darash, it means to come together in conspiracy. They form a conspiracy to get rid of him. It also means to throng together; it’s used in Psalm 2, “why do the nations rage against the Lord and against His Christ.” It means to conspire but also to put pressure on. So when it says they “assembled themselves together” it means (1) they were in a conspiracy together to get rid of Daniel from the job, and (2) they were coming together to put pressure on Darius; they are manipulators, they are lobbyists, who are going to pressure him. And then they start off, “King Darius, live forever, which is phony, they don’t care about King Darius living forever, all they care about is Daniel not living forever. So this is the manipulation. Now watch the manipulation, the phony loyalty, the phony allegiance.

Daniel 6:7, “All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellers, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. [8] Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” Now notice what they say in verse 7, “All the presidents,” obviously not; two of three could have but Daniel wouldn’t have, so that’s a lie, and that’s one of the things that you’ll always see pressure groups do. They always like to over-represent their position, and that’s a tactic that goes on today. Why, everybody is doing this, children learn this about the time they go to school. Everybody is doing it, and then children turn into manipulators of their parents, all the guys are doing it… I know one that’s not! God or man must always come to you, Darius, for a petition.

Now if this isn’t the most brilliant way to destroy and administration. Here we have a perfect business organization, run according to the greatest principles of management in the ancient world and what is the mental attitude sin of jealousy doing to this organization? Tying all business up for 30 days because now instead of using intermediaries… here’s the organizational chart. Darius is at the top; they have the triumvirate, and then down here various areas like this. And the triumvirate would get together and run most of the business. It’s like in a church; the deacons should be running most of the business. It’s not the job of the pastor to find out how many windows we have in the building and how much toilet paper we’ve got and other things; that’s not the job of the pastor and it wasn’t the job of Darius to pass on everything that had to go on in his empire. So here’s how an organization can be destroyed by mental attitude sins; a beautiful illustration of it. And it’s all this phony business, why king, we think so much of you, Darius, you’re such an exciting person, we love you so much, you can see the goo, the sentimentalism and it’s all phony. Look, as a good leader Darius doesn’t care about some underling saying oh, Darius, you’re such a nice man, would you just autograph my little book. Darius doesn’t care about that, Darius is a big enough man and a good enough leader so he could care less about this. You showed your respect for Darius by doing your job, not by going off and saying this and that.

So here we have mental attitude sin, jealousy, hatred, and a false façade, approbation lust, the whole kit and caboodle here operating and it’s going to tie everything up for 30 days, a real fine accomplishment. “O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed according to the law of the Medes and Persians,” now the Medes and the Persians in their particular version of the kingdom of man had a funny kind of rule. Now you know that wherever the kingdom of man goes you have to have something replace God; something has to replace God. So the Medes and the Persians took one of God’s divine attributes, which was immutability, and they brought it over into civil law. So they actually made an idol out of the state by making their law immutable, that once an administrative decision has been made it was locked down for eternity, until it was carried out. So this way the state was deified, the state picked up some of the divine attributes.

Here is a statement we have from Plutarch, he speaks of Themistocles who sought an audience with Xerxes during the time of the book of Esther, and as this Greek comes into the court the Persian man stops him, wait, before you come in and get an appointment with my king, King Xerxes, I have something to say to you, and here’s what he said. “Oh stranger, the laws of men are different and one thing is honorable to one man and to another another. But it is honorable for all to observe their own laws. It is the habit of the Greeks we are told to honor above all things liberty and equality, but amongst our many excellent laws we account this the most excellent; to honor the king, and to worship him as the image of the great preserver of the universe. If then you shall consent to our laws and fall down before the king and worship him, you may come see him and talk to him. But if your mind is otherwise you must make use of others to intercede for you, for it is not the national custom here for the king to give audience to anyone who will not worship him.” (end quote). So that’s an extra-Biblical confirmation of the Medo-Persia emperor worship that went on. The emperor was the mediator between heaven and earth; he was the high priest of God walking on earth and his laws were immutable. Now God, with a sense of humor and also with very seriousness is going to refute this Medo-Persia version of the kingdom of man.

Daniel 6:9, “Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree.” Now Daniel is going to see this and he’s going to respond to it and next week we’ll deal with Daniel’s response beginning at verse 10 but before we close we want to show you some principles that come from this passage.
These principles may make the rest of the passage clearer and they also apply in the life, so let’s summarize some of the principles we’ve seen in the first 9 verses.

The first one is that believers make their maximum testimony in organizations by showing their spiritual stability; doing a good job, yes, but the one thing that should characterize a believer is that he is reliable, that when given a job to do he does the best that he can do with what he’s got. He may not have as much skill as the man next door; he may not be as high IQ as the next person, you don’t have to worry about that, God doesn’t expect you to do something with things that you don’t have but God does expect you to do everything you can with what you’ve got. And the result is an impact for Jesus Christ. You do your job as unto the Lord; Colossians 3 gives some New Testament counterpart instructions on this; do your job as unto the Lord, not as unto man.

For example, in our history think of the Amish and other groups that have made a tremendous impact and they have a testimony that is preserved to this day because they are reliable, absolutely reliable. When the Internal Revenue Service went into Pennsylvania Dutch country and they were serving notice on the Amish farmers that they had to allot certain land for this and certain land for that, you get penalized for growing something, and they were trying to penalize these Amish farmers for growing something, and they said not the government requires you to sign this contract right here, we want you to sign right there, and they handed the Amish farmer the contract and he said well, in this country we don’t sign contracts. You don’t sign contracts? No, we don’t sign contacts, our word is our contract. So he wouldn’t sign the contract, so the government official didn’t know what to do, this wasn’t covered in the rule book so he left it and at the end of the growing season he came by to inspect the field and it was just like they had agreed upon. And he later wrote this up, there was a big long article, the government official was amazed that these people kept their word, they refused to sign but when they told you they were going to do something they did it. That’s the kind of testimony Daniel had.

The second principle that we’ve seen from this is that believers who do this will therefore be victimized by the levelers; these are the people that are always promoting equality. They do not want you to excel. People who excel are hated; that’s one reason why the Jewish people all down through history have been hated. It’s simple, they’re hard working and they excel. People who excel will be victimized by the equality crowd. It’s true of the French Revolution, it’s true of the Russian Revolution; it’s true of every great movement in history that seeks to equalize (quote) “opportunity” (end quote). Now there’s such a thing as equal opportunity and Christians should be for that, but a lot of the talk that you hear goes beyond just equal opportunity. We’re talking about equal production, equal this, equal that.

The third thing we notice from this passage is mental attitude sin of jealousy causes tremendous destruction in any group of people. It will completely shut down and lock down the production of a group. The mental attitude sin of jealousy between personnel on any team will knock that team down to zero production, and here we have the entire Medo-Persian Empire come to a grinding administrative halt for 30 days while everybody makes the proper clucking noises to Darius.

The fourth principle, and that’s actually verse 9 which we haven’t had time to develop, but it is that sincere leaders who do not have doctrine can succumb to this kind of thing. Sincerity is not enough, Darius’ is a sincere man, but he didn’t see what was happening right in front of his face. So just because you have a believer in a high place, just because the person is a nice person, sincere, doesn’t mean a thing in this kind of a situation.

Next week we’ll deal with how Daniel responds.